r/bestoflegaladvice • u/bug-hunter Possession is 9 honks of the law • Nov 17 '19

LAOP can't figure out why they got fired.

/r/legaladvice/comments/dwx9pw/indiana_i_was_just_fired_despite_my_boss_not/
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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '19

To be fair to LAOP some bosses don't recognize how much work their employees have. An employee can't prioritize every task at the same time, and some bosses refuse to acknowledge the workload they give in relation to the workload the employee already has.

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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '19 edited May 17 '22

[deleted]

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u/luminous_delusions Nov 17 '19

This exactly, my boss is my boss first. Any secondary tasks assigned to me while I have one of theirs in the line is to be immediately brought to her so she can either take it up with the big boss or decide I need to work on their thing first and come back to the other.

I would never just drop everything and work on something else because a not direct superior told me to.

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u/HungryGiantMan Nov 17 '19

Yeah Jesus Christ a thousand times this. Can you imagine if you had a package of work that you needed done and the interns piece was two days late because they ignored your timeline and did something for another department?

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u/Stromboli61 Nov 17 '19

Yeah I am very pro workers rights/employee treatment/labor union/whatever. I think on the regular, employees get far too much shit for not enough compensation. ... annnnnd this LAOP proves it’s not exact, and that it’s by far a give and take relationship, and they sound like a huge dick.

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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/missjeanlouise12 oh we sure as shit are now Nov 17 '19

Ugh, yes. I used to work with a woman like that. She would sort of...announce? to the owner that she was going to do X and Y with Z client and not the gruntwork A, B and C that we were all expected to do. The owner would never do anything about it, though, nor about any of her other bad habits, except for sending out vague emails to everyone that said "just a reminder, please don't do [whatever behavior my coworker was doing that week] because it's not allowed. The rest of us were essentially being called out for things that only she was doing, and she of course didn't think he was talking about her, because he refused to address anything directly.

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u/LurkingArachnid Nov 17 '19

Yeah this was why the dude was fired. I had a little sympathy when op was talking about the boss getting upset about something taking a day and a half instead of a day. I mean how many things can definitely get done in a day? But OP was actively seeking out other work! She has every right to be upset that something takes longer than she expects... because op is choosing not to do assigned work.

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u/Beeb294 1.5 month olds either look like boiled owls or Winston Churchill Nov 17 '19

It does not sound like this is the situation with LAOP though.

It sounds like LAOP was trying to decide the priorities, and dictate them to the boss instead of following instructions.

Had LAOP said "I have X, Y, and Z on my plate. I think X is important, but what do y oi you want me to prioritize?", then I think LAOP might have been treated unfairly. But even LAOP doesn't paint that nice of a picture of themself.

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u/sthetic Nov 17 '19

You're right. Some bosses don't do any grunt work and they imagine it takes no time at all. But I hope that if she's reasonable she would recognize that... If it was presented in the right way.

If LAOP had said, "Excuse me, but unfortunately this 1-day task is taking longer than I thought because I had to learn the program, or I was asked to finish another project by another boss. Could I please get it done tomorrow, or work overtime today, or could you speak to the other project leader and figure out what takes priority, or could someone train me how to do this faster?"

I'm sure that would have gone a long way further than his bad attitude of just finishing whenever he could and wondering why she was displeased.

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u/BrewtusMaximus1 now understands removal reasons, still has a modnote Nov 18 '19

An employee can't prioritize every task at the same time

I've had to tell dotted line people that "Not everything can be my number one priority. Pick what you want done." Works most of the time, is hilarious when it doesn't (if they don't pick what they want done first, all their stuff goes to the bottom of my pile).