“Fire Me, I Dare You”: True Stories of Defying the Boss and Winning

Mary vs. Andy

I worked at a Cheeburger Cheeburger for 5 years out of high school while I got my degree. I started as a dishwasher and by year 3 was the shift leader and working the grill on rushes on Sat/Sun. During the holiday season(right now), we would do 9-11k days for a 25-table restaurant which meant we always had a line out the door.

For our shifts, we would generally have four people working. One on the grill, one on the fryer, one doing the bun setup and one dropping buns to toast. On this particular night, I had the three dumbest people at the restaurant. These people were restaurant lifers who just didn’t have a good work ethic.

Fast forward to about 7 pm, the height of the rush. I have at least 15 tickets on the grill with at least 10 hanging on the ticket machine. We were always told to keep tickets to 15 minutes. I may not have been 100%, but I would say 80% of those tickets went out on time and CORRECTLY. The 3 potatoes I am with are helping, but not keeping up. As the grill guy, I need to constantly turn around and start making buns to help them keep up.

Now I LOVE the owners of this place. They were kind to me and continue to help if I ever need a recommendation for anything. The manager on staff at the time however was a 55-year-old woman who seemed upset at herself at the fact shes managing a small restaurant. Sorry Mary(name changed), I didn’t make your life choices.

Mary then proceeds to storm back to the line and scream in my face “THE LAST TWO TICKETS WERE 18 MINUTES ANDY, GET IT TOGETHER OR GO HOME”

I look her back and say “I’m doing the best I can with what I got Mary”. She responds and says “Well your best isn’t good enough”.

Oh. Okay. Guess we’re doing it this way then.

I look her square in her stupid face and say “If you can do better, go ahead. I bet you can’t though”. And I stood there and stared at her. It felt like an hour, but someone else on shift said it was about 15 seconds of us just staring at each other, as the kitchen slowly goes to sh*t around us.

Mary said nothing and walked away. Never heard another word about it and worked there for another 2 years.

Fighting For The Right

Worked at a cancer nonprofit.

Hired a lady who knew about us because her kid had cancer.

The boss wanted me to fire her because she had to come in late or leave early to take her kid to chemo.

I refused. The boss said she’d fire me if I didn’t. I told her she could go right ahead. Our CEO said no way.

SplendidTit

From Grill to Glory

I was working at McDonalds and I had this manager that hated me for some reason. We’ll call her Hailey because that is her real name.

So one shift I am on the grill as I usually am when Hailey comes back and orders me to make salads. I do as I am told and go into the cooler and get out the sack of salad ingredients and the plastic salad containers. I begin working on the first salad when Hailey pops up and tells me to go on my 10-minute break. She says she’ll take over here. So I go.

10 minutes later I get back from the break room to find all the salads completed and up in the salad cooler up front. So I go back to the grill.

About 30 minutes later Hailey loudly calls me into the office. I come in and she says “Zushiba when you made the salads today, you didn’t put the date or time on them, that is a clear violation of our procedures so I am writing you up“.

I look at her thinking this is a joke. But she is dead serious. In front of the other manager who was sitting in the office at the time, I realized “I give zero f*cks about this job” so I say “Hailey, you made those salads, you are the one who didn’t put the time and dates on them not me, I am not signing that“

And with that, I got up and went back to the grill. I heard nothing for the rest of my shift from Hailey. The other manager on duty said nothing either. My shift ends and I go up front and clock out. I round the counter and go to leave when Hailey stops me.

“Zushiba, stop, we need to have a talk about your attitude today please come back to the office.” In front of customers the other manager and the rest of the staff I reply from the other side of the counter “Hailey did you just see me clock out?” she answers “Yes” in her best trying to be an important McDonald’s manager voice. So I say “Good, once I clock out I am on my time, I get to spend my time however I please, and I don’t care to discuss anything with you on my time. I work tomorrow morning at 6:00 with you. When I clock in I’ll be on your time and we can talk in the office as long as you would like. But for now, I’m leaving“

And I left. The look of shock on her and everyone else’s faces was f*cking adrenaline fuel. I felt great! I almost skipped the whole way home. I fully expected to be fired in the morning but Hailey was nowhere to be seen. Instead, another manager was on duty whom I got along with great. And incidentally hated Hailey as well. She pulled me aside early in my shift and said she heard about how well I’ve been doing from other managers who were on duty yesterday and wanted to give me free lunch today!

I never did hear about that write-up ever again and I rarely heard from Hailey even when we were scheduled together.

Couldn’t Care Less

Was at the hospital and had to go to court due to serious domestic issues. I had a sociopathic manager that called me, trying to guilt trip me by saying,

“Come into work or else, do you think it’s worth my time to train you while you make excuses blah blah blah”

The last thing he said was, “Do you want to keep this job or not?”

It was a crappy overworked and underpaid job, so I laughed and before I hung up said, “Not really”

The Battle For Priorities

My wife needs an invasive operation; not life-threatening but she will need help for at least two weeks afterwards with getting around, getting fed, etc. The day I find out when I tell the department head “I’m going to be out starting on DATE [one week from now] for two weeks while my wife recovers from OPERATION. I’ll take it as sick time.”

The department head apparently loses his sh*t on my fantastical boss for this and orders him to try to talk me out of taking two weeks on short notice. My boss drops a meeting into my calendar the next day; not unusual except there’s no topic listed; this makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

We plop down and he lays it out. CIO is furious I’m taking two weeks off ‘with such short notice’, and the bossman asks if I actually need two weeks. At least he looks embarrassed by the situation he’s been dropped in the middle of; not that it matters. I’m f*cking furious.

I tell my boss, “This is NOT a negotiation. My wife is going in for surgery and I am taking two weeks to care for her. The only question I’ll entertain is whether I’m getting paid for those two weeks and whether I’ll have a job when I’m scheduled to come back.”

Two weeks approved, immediately. I was there for another year before I left for a much better gig, and cited CIO’s sh*tty behavior on this and other topics as the reason.

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Quick Thinking

I worked at KFC for four years (high school job), I was a supervisor and the young me at the time thought it was cool to have and didn’t care about the money. Coming into year four I started to wonder why I don’t get paid any more than minimum wage for being a godd*mn supervisor.

One day I knew the district manager was coming in to visit so I decided to ask him why I don’t get paid more. The dude starts making a bunch of excuses and starts lying (thinking I was a dumb high school kid). One of his lies ended up being “You wear earrings to work and don’t tuck in your shirt so that’s why you haven’t gotten your raise” Also said this: You’re not actually a manager, you need the training to do online.”

So I said, okay I’d love to do that training then (I’ve been a manager for 2 years at this point).

Buddy says “You’re not technically a manager”

So I said “Okay good to know, when customers ask to speak to the manager, I’m just gonna say we don’t have one here”

He starts getting really nervous and ends up leaving the store.

Guess who got their raise the next week. 🙂

The Tuna Standoff

I took my 1-hour lunch break at an old job. When I came back, I noticed a very strong tuna smell coming from my desk area. I really don’t like tuna and my coworkers know that. I didn’t think much of it because I didn’t eat any tuna and figured maybe someone ate some nearby.

10 or so minutes go by and the smell is still lingering very close to my desk. I look in my trash can underneath my desk and there is a can of open tuna spread all around my trash can. I look around and my boss is just dying laughing. You should know that I HATE him, he was such an a**h*le. So I say “F*ck it”.

I take the tuna can and walk towards him and his office. He tells me that I should go toss it in the trash in the kitchen. No way that’s happening. I go into his office and I dump the whole can in his trash in front of 10 or so coworkers and everyone goes quiet. I was so fed up at that point that I didn’t even care about the consequences. I walk out and go back to my seat.

I get a message later in the day from him saying to come into his office. He lectures me for 15 or so minutes about me undermining his authority and being disrespectful. Doesn’t ever mention that he shouldn’t have done it in the first place or apologize for his actions.

I quit a couple of months later because the environment was so toxic and moved into a better position at another company, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget about Bill and the tuna incident.

A Lesson In Leadership

I work at a small family business that has a high turnover rate for entry positions. The managers have tempers that tend to scare people away so they are constantly short-staffed.

One day my boss yelled at me for making a “mistake” (he literally yelled at everyone in the office every day of the week for making “mistakes”) and after he was done unloading all the stresses of his life on me he calmed down and tried to help me understand my shortcomings through a lesson.

He told me: “Glutenfreeloader, say you hire a landscaper to mow your lawn. And say after you pay him for a finished job you find out that he missed an entire section of your lawn. What would you do? You would go yell at him for not doing his job, right?”

I said, “No, I would explain to him what he did wrong and if he didn’t fix it I would hire someone else to do the job.”

He didn’t know what to say and I walked back to my desk. That was 3 months ago and I sit at the same desk while I look for another job.

Clash Of The Titans

I worked in a factory where I had every intention of having a nice long career.

Until the new General Manager was hired. To say we didn’t get along would be an insane understatement.

However, I was VERY good at my job, and without exaggeration, could fill every position in the plant from receiving, through production, to shipping and billing. (Remember, I intended to make a career here).

Well, our shift’s production and quality had been nosediving for a couple of months, and at review time, I didn’t get even a cost of living raise. I took it with good graces and doubled down on MY job, and record-keeping for our production records.

After another 30 days had passed, our numbers had been improving, so I gathered up the numbers and requested a meeting with the GM.

He flipped out when I pulled the records from my bag and started screaming at me that he knew exactly where the problem was on our shift. At the end of the screaming match he said, “Do you think this plant will shut down if you leave!!?”

To which I replied, “No! But it just might if YOU stay!!!”

And then slammed his own office door in his face.

I worked there for another 7 months, refusing any hours but my own shift, until I found another career path and left of my own volition.