 |
By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
|
This is a long post folks...
I worked with a new foreign boss many years ago here, and as he was unfamiliar with Irish bank holidays, he asked me to do rosters earlier in the year, to help him out, as he needed to understand how the factory operates with short weeks and holidays in general. Rosters was my job anyway, sometimes deligated to supervisors, but this guy had a finger in everything to be the 'all knowing boss' kind and took over rosters to prove it. So, I let him. I knew rosters would come back to me eventually. But I decided to get him back.
I did show him all about rosters, emergencies, sick calls, etc, and then I gave all staff April 1st off when the time came. He saw this as a joke and laughed it off until he walked into the factory that fateful morning and no one was around. Silence.
After 15 minutes he calls me up from the office to ask what the hell is going on. So I told him April 1st was a national holiday here and no one was rostered to work. Planner was on the wall for 6 weeks.
He coughed, stuttered, whined and groaned about clients orders not being fulfilled and finally he spluttered 'It's Tuesday, everyone works on a Tuesday, no holidays happen on a Tuesday!'
I told him he was right and bank holidays happen on a Monday, but St. Paddy's Day can be anyday...and so can April 1st.
'No one told me this, I only heard about pancake Tuesday, there's no pancakes today!'..
Now at this point I'm hiding in a canteen on an old nokia mobile with 78 machine operators, 4 office staff, 2 team leaders, and a financial controller and security behind me. I was the floor manager and this guy was deputy operations manager.
So as we looked out onto the floor from the canteen above, those of us that could, we saw him running around the floor looking for people like a lunatic, so we decided to creep back downstairs and surprise him when in walked the actual regional manager that no one planned or saw coming this day. And in he walked with the depot manager in tow, who had an actual day off.
Our boss ran up to them when they called out where everyone was and we were completely gobsmacked, but we held our ground. You could hear a pin drop when suddenly he shouted out 'Fire drill' and ushered them out. It was comical. This guy just made up a fire demonstration to get rid of them!
All three left the building somewhere and everyone ran down to where they should be working at and pretended nothing was amiss. About 10 minutes later in he walks and nearly had a heart attack.
So we all yelled out 'April Fool!' and well, he was not impressed. He ranted, raved things like 'I'm going to work you to the bone and you'll bleed for all eternity!' and things like that when he spun around and well, you guessed it, regional manager and depot manager was stood there.
He spent the next 10 minutes, trying to tell them he was not yelling at the staff and he was victim to a cruel April fools joke but they didn't believe him! He was told to apologise to us and as he did so, the regional manager said 'How can they be playing april fools jokes in the middle of a fire drill!'
He didn't talk to me for 6 months. |
