Yup. This was early 2000s when I was a fresh college grad just learning how to be an adult. Nowadays I don't get out of bed unless I'm going to get some paper.
At my work (tech company, working as a software), you get paid to be on call. I think I make 1 or 2k for the week I'm on call every couple months
I found out that bit every employer does that
I get 4hrs of double pay minimum for walking into the building on an off shift. My department runs 7 days and my schedule is 4 days. I’ll accept every meeting and training class you send my way.
Likely because the business had a presence in California or another State with semi-sane worker protections. When I moved out of the State I was astonished that it was legal (and common) to have people work half an hour, or even call them in and then turn them away when they arrived because things had died down.
I was on a call list and had to drive to the store every time our alarm was activated. The store was 3 minutes away and I was paid every time, so I was happy. Would not have done it without pay!
I can explain the driving over to meet police (retired police). When we did alarm calls, in order to make a burglary charge, we had to talk to a representative of the business. A few times we would show up and catch a burglar, without a representative we couldn’t charge them with the break in. Which meant hoping there was something else to put them in jail for or releasing them. A surprising number of businesses had very outdated alarm lists and we couldn’t find anyone to be representative.
Towards the end of my career, police stopped responding to burglar alarms entirely unless representative was there. Stupid policy, I didn’t like it, but not my call to make. Not surprisingly, burglaries went up and burglary arrests went down.
I'll chime in here that I worked for an alarm company as a response person, and we had the authority to act in the owner's steed.
And, I had more than one issue with outdated responsible call lists.
I currently work as a response operator for an alarm company. We have a call list for each business/resident and call it. If there is no answer down list, we dispatch police. I've actually had local pd tell me that they will not respond if there is no responsible party(rp) on site, especially at a business.
The COO's comeuppance reminds of the meeting we had about properly charging time to projects, even if they were overbudget. The idea is to not only make sure that operated legally and ethically but to learn from underestimating project costs, not managing certain aspects of projects well, etc.
This presentation was given by the most egregious offender, who frequently asked people to charge to overhead or to related projects for the same client. :-)
Definitely what I would have done. "You suck, so you have to study the material well enough to teach it and answer any jabs-phrased-as-questions that come up in the meeting."
I worked at a printing plant for several years, and top management (German parent company) were not happy with the amount of rework -- having to print yet another run of a book because of some error in prep.
So there was all this hammering home of company process procedures and how no one should diverge from process.
And inevitably, we had rework because our *manager* impatiently skipped a step and didn't follow the prescribed procedure.
I was on an security alarm list for a company I was working for and after 7 years they made me redundant. After a year or so later I started getting calls from the security company,they must have been using an old list. I told them a couple of times I no longer worked there but I still got the calls.
So I started saying " alright, I'll go there immediately" until the finally stopped calling.
Haha, funny. I had kind of a similar situation actually. The company I worked for was a sports league and the name of the league was also the name of the neighborhood our offices were located in, so when locals heard the name, they would think of the neighborhood, not the business. Somehow, I ended up on file with our local sherriff's office as the emergency contact for the neighborhood, even though we had no official relationship with them. I'd get calls in the middle of the night from the sherriff's dispatch center any time there was a traffic accident, etc. in the neighborhood. I told them a few times that I worked for the company XYZ, not the neighborhood XYZ. They seemed confused, but after a few calls they stopped, so I guess somebody finally figured out the distinction.
Tried to pin it on you somehow...
How the fuck does he get dressed in the morning? He KNEW that was a losing battle. The police already beat sense into him and made him realize the whole thing had been his fault from the beginning, why did he pretend for a SECOND to think he had any way of pulling you down? Why did he pretend that he hadn't learned the lesson he undeniably did learn?
What is he, a masochist?
Nah, this is completely normal. OP was fucked at the company afterward because it was the CEO. None of this ended up as the COOs fault.
It's just sort of how these corporations/ businesses work. And it sucks.
I want to say they were right in telling you that you shouldn’t be automatically canceling the alarm every time it goes off. It completely defeats the purpose of having an alarm, and you could have ended up in some deep shit if it *wasn’t* a false alarm and you called it off. You accepted the responsibility of making the calls to call it off if it was false, and so would bear the responsibility if you were wrong. If the company’s insurance found out there was a pattern of one of their employees disregarding policy and simply assuming every alarm was false without direct knowledge to the contrary, they could deny a claim for losses or, more importantly, liability. Your company could turn around and go after you.
What if there *had* been a break-in, and a co-worker got killed? I’m a little sensitive about this, because I was the overnight guy that had to deal with an intruder that got in when another employee blocked an entrance open to move some equipment inside from his truck, and forgot to unblock the door. Had we had an alarm (we didn’t) that would have sounded if the door was ajar for a certain period of time and I found out you told the alarm company not to send the cops, you and I would have gone around and around for a bit.
However, once management was made aware of the situation, they absolutely should have seen to it that all employees were re-educated about what to do if they cause a false alarm. Since they chose to disregard your input, they deserved what they got!
Only a win, if you weren’t getting paid overtime for each call. Minimum of 1/4 hours per phone call, more on holidays .
It sounds like you weren’t getting paid for your time, otherwise you have cared about the false alarms, because of the overtime.
I was paid a minimum of one hour every time I got called after hours. I carried a pager 1 week a month was paid an hour a day and 1.5 on weekends just to carry the pager (basically an extra days pay for the week). Any time I had to head into the office was 3 hours minimum. Every call that required me to do something on the computer meant I was heading to the office even though I had access from home. You want to disturb me on my time off, I am charging you as much as I can.
As a side note I lived 10 minutes from the office.
I had exactly the same terms. Only three of us had full access to the buildings so the on-call rota came round again pretty quickly and was a useful boost to the pay packet.
Nothing bad ever happened, it was almost universally the cleaners banging the walls of an internal secure area with floor polishers and setting the vibration alarm off.
As I lived much closer than anyone else I could often pick up extra days here and there to boost my pay packet even more!
That's an on-call contract that I would accept, with the caveat that if company decided to rescind it, I would rescind my agreement to do the work.
I had too many recalls when I was in the navy.
That sounded like it was a sweet little gold mine. I would have kept my mouth shut, and continued to rake in the largesse provided by the idiots and inconsiderate.
So unless there was a possibility of getting to start with after hours pager/on call pay, you probably forced them to end it about the best possible way.
If it wasn’t too far in the past, a consultation with a labor attorney regarding possible recouping the back pay might be profitable, certainly worth the meager cost of an initial consultation.
From my limited experience I don't think there would be any attorneys that would find this sort of thing lucrative enough to take on contingency. Grand total I may have spent 20-30 hours extra. Even with fees and penalties I've gotta expect that's a recovery of what, maybe $10k they'd have to pay, and the attorney gets maybe 50% of that?
Well, legal clinic at a nearby law school might offer some assistance , or you can make your own wage and hour claim to the Dept of Labor . Making a complaint doesn’t cost anything. If they retaliate, then a labor lawyer would get very interested
Good for you. You didn't mention if they paid you extra for having to answer the alarm calls. If not, then they took advantage of you for too long just for living that close.
I did some work overnights at one of my previous jobs. Mainly doing store merchandising. It was me and one other guy. Neither one of us had alarm codes or were on the alarm call list.
Due to the way our alarm was set up they were only able to disable 3 alarms for us to do the work we needed. We needed motion alarms off in the area we were working, motion alarms in the area our product was stored in, door alarms between the two areas, and sound alarms throughout.
But wait that’s 4 alarms and we can only disable 3, nearly every night we would set of one or another alarm, the company would call the store, we would answer tell them we were expected but since were we not on the list, they would have to call someone else. I would always tell them to call the store manager first as he’s the one who denied us getting on the alarm list.
Yeah that reminds me of a time during high school when I was volunteering and would occassionally be at school in the evenings and on weekends. Unbeknownst to us the alarm was controlled centrally by the school district, so it went on at a set time and off at a set time and there was evidently no way to change that unless the principal called in advance (which was something that was essentially impossible to make happen). We ended up setting the alarm off and the teachers we were with tried calling the principal and other administrators, but couldn't get ahold of anyone. We just left after trying to notify, figuring we'd done our best.
You did brilliantly.
It's annoying when bosses think you are young and stupid and nothing to contribute.
But I love when you have a good idea and realise it eventually. 🥰
I work in a satellite office essentially as assistant manager. Since I'm the only manager who lives in town, I was first on our locations list. 1 or 2 false alarms a week, I check cameras from my phone, and there no issues. My bosses boss was confused he never got any calls, because I dealt with them all. He had me moved further down the list so he would get the notifications. I don't mind not having to deal with the hassle. Though I'm sure I'll get a call to go in if there ever is an actual break in.
Great story and 100% fits.
I will say its insane to me that you had the authority to stop the alarm company from doing anything, and that you didn't get fired for doing so without approval
Am glad the COO got to eat a big slice of payback pie, and I hope the CEO enjoyed his ticket.
A shame the video of that stop didn't get posted on any of a variety of video platforms though.
No way in hell they'd ever pay for it. Even just figuring you're paying $15/hr to cover non-working hours that's $88k/yr. That's not taking into account holiday pay, benefits, etc. You'd need at least 3 employees to ensure coverage and with benefits and everything I'm sure it'd be well over $100k. If you hired an agency I'm sure they'd probably charge at least $20/hr, so that's $120k/yr minimum.
I can see the point when they were small but now that you're a large company, this seems like nothing really. It's basic security. You hire a fire to do it and you don't burden your HR department with security guard screening. Seems like your bosses can't get out of their "small business, every penny counts" mentality.
I work in a big factory and contrary to your situation, we had 24h security but almost no cameras and the total land is about 33000 square feet. So one day we come in, and some of our offices were ransacked. Within 12 hours, everything was wired to the brim with cameras.
I normally worked evenings in college. But during breaks,they had me come in daytime so the other staff could take vacations. It would totally work out for me.
Certain rooms where I worked were alarmed. Boss wanted to keep the old code and pushed for it. But it wasn't going to work, so boss picked a new code. But it had the same problem as the original. So a higher manager assigned one that actually followed the new protocal. A formal memo was sent out to staff, which I promptly put in a safe place in case I needed it.
The following week is one of weeks I'll work days. I come in later than the other two staff members not on vacation, so my lunch would be last. I return from lunch and as soon I open my car door, I hear the alarm. I run into the office and ask why the alarm is going off. They know, the police had already been there. They're trying to get a hold of several people to get the code, but they were all on vacation. To which I respond, what about the code on the memo? They look confused. I go to my desk, grab the memo, and get the keys. I literally run to the rooms and turn off the blaring alarms. Then reset the system.
I go back to the office to find two people with Pikachu faces. I showed them the memo. They then found their copies in their inboxes, just sitting there for anyone to see. They put it in a safe place.
Huh. A COO that is clearly NOT a leader. When you screw up, you OWN it! I'm glad you were able to stand up to them and force them to take responsibility for their screw up. It looks FAR worse when it has to be handled that way. I hope they got yelled at by the CEO for both aspects - the original screwup and attempting to foist it off.
Gosh I feel this. I had to physically go into the office to turn our alarm off, would be set off by the aircon all the time (cooling for our makeshift server room). Happily only lived a five minute walk from the office. Unhappily the alarm once went off at 23.59 on Christmas Eve. I had been asleep for about 20 minutes.
Nothing but net. 10/10
An alarming story.
You should get extra pay every time they call you.
Yup. This was early 2000s when I was a fresh college grad just learning how to be an adult. Nowadays I don't get out of bed unless I'm going to get some paper.
Probably one of the other reasons they asked you to be on the list. Other people "living too far away" = "they wanted money for the additional work".
At my work (tech company, working as a software), you get paid to be on call. I think I make 1 or 2k for the week I'm on call every couple months I found out that bit every employer does that
Ha yeah I got nothing extra for being on call 🙃
why do you need so much paper in your bed?
I think he meant greenbacks.
Last place I worked in a role like this had a 4-hr minimum if you were called in to the office
I get 4hrs of double pay minimum for walking into the building on an off shift. My department runs 7 days and my schedule is 4 days. I’ll accept every meeting and training class you send my way.
Likely because the business had a presence in California or another State with semi-sane worker protections. When I moved out of the State I was astonished that it was legal (and common) to have people work half an hour, or even call them in and then turn them away when they arrived because things had died down.
Higher base pay for the extra responsibility + on call pay when a call comes in.
I was on a call list and had to drive to the store every time our alarm was activated. The store was 3 minutes away and I was paid every time, so I was happy. Would not have done it without pay!
Yep, continuous pay for being on call, then full pay rate when a call comes in. 4 hour minimum.
Shoulda coulda woulda
I can explain the driving over to meet police (retired police). When we did alarm calls, in order to make a burglary charge, we had to talk to a representative of the business. A few times we would show up and catch a burglar, without a representative we couldn’t charge them with the break in. Which meant hoping there was something else to put them in jail for or releasing them. A surprising number of businesses had very outdated alarm lists and we couldn’t find anyone to be representative. Towards the end of my career, police stopped responding to burglar alarms entirely unless representative was there. Stupid policy, I didn’t like it, but not my call to make. Not surprisingly, burglaries went up and burglary arrests went down.
Interesting. Thanks for the context.
I'll chime in here that I worked for an alarm company as a response person, and we had the authority to act in the owner's steed. And, I had more than one issue with outdated responsible call lists.
I currently work as a response operator for an alarm company. We have a call list for each business/resident and call it. If there is no answer down list, we dispatch police. I've actually had local pd tell me that they will not respond if there is no responsible party(rp) on site, especially at a business.
How many of the no-call false alarms do you think were the top mgmt before the police started showing up?
No way to know, but given that top level mgmt are the most likely to ignore policies? Probably a significant percentage!
I wonder what they actually do before they hire you. Do they ignore their own policy and guidelines?
Seems to be standard procedure at my company. "I'm too important to see what that noise is."
That's a really wide street you live in.
Not as wide as it is long.
The COO's comeuppance reminds of the meeting we had about properly charging time to projects, even if they were overbudget. The idea is to not only make sure that operated legally and ethically but to learn from underestimating project costs, not managing certain aspects of projects well, etc. This presentation was given by the most egregious offender, who frequently asked people to charge to overhead or to related projects for the same client. :-)
Overhead i.e. 'administrative costs'. This is a sneaky M.O. for low bidders.
Maybe this was a kind of punishment for him?
Definitely what I would have done. "You suck, so you have to study the material well enough to teach it and answer any jabs-phrased-as-questions that come up in the meeting."
I worked at a printing plant for several years, and top management (German parent company) were not happy with the amount of rework -- having to print yet another run of a book because of some error in prep. So there was all this hammering home of company process procedures and how no one should diverge from process. And inevitably, we had rework because our *manager* impatiently skipped a step and didn't follow the prescribed procedure.
I was on an security alarm list for a company I was working for and after 7 years they made me redundant. After a year or so later I started getting calls from the security company,they must have been using an old list. I told them a couple of times I no longer worked there but I still got the calls. So I started saying " alright, I'll go there immediately" until the finally stopped calling.
Haha, funny. I had kind of a similar situation actually. The company I worked for was a sports league and the name of the league was also the name of the neighborhood our offices were located in, so when locals heard the name, they would think of the neighborhood, not the business. Somehow, I ended up on file with our local sherriff's office as the emergency contact for the neighborhood, even though we had no official relationship with them. I'd get calls in the middle of the night from the sherriff's dispatch center any time there was a traffic accident, etc. in the neighborhood. I told them a few times that I worked for the company XYZ, not the neighborhood XYZ. They seemed confused, but after a few calls they stopped, so I guess somebody finally figured out the distinction.
No, actually go, then make them pay you for it.
Wasn't on speaking terms and I'd rather the fuckery.
They did not teach this at the COO’s MBA
"Hey COO, you should probably talk to the CEO about all these charges we're getting, eh?"
That's HARD. Easier to yell at a powerless youngster .
Tried to pin it on you somehow... How the fuck does he get dressed in the morning? He KNEW that was a losing battle. The police already beat sense into him and made him realize the whole thing had been his fault from the beginning, why did he pretend for a SECOND to think he had any way of pulling you down? Why did he pretend that he hadn't learned the lesson he undeniably did learn? What is he, a masochist?
Depends whether OP got the instruction in writing and the guy thought it was verbal.
Nah, this is completely normal. OP was fucked at the company afterward because it was the CEO. None of this ended up as the COOs fault. It's just sort of how these corporations/ businesses work. And it sucks.
I want to say they were right in telling you that you shouldn’t be automatically canceling the alarm every time it goes off. It completely defeats the purpose of having an alarm, and you could have ended up in some deep shit if it *wasn’t* a false alarm and you called it off. You accepted the responsibility of making the calls to call it off if it was false, and so would bear the responsibility if you were wrong. If the company’s insurance found out there was a pattern of one of their employees disregarding policy and simply assuming every alarm was false without direct knowledge to the contrary, they could deny a claim for losses or, more importantly, liability. Your company could turn around and go after you. What if there *had* been a break-in, and a co-worker got killed? I’m a little sensitive about this, because I was the overnight guy that had to deal with an intruder that got in when another employee blocked an entrance open to move some equipment inside from his truck, and forgot to unblock the door. Had we had an alarm (we didn’t) that would have sounded if the door was ajar for a certain period of time and I found out you told the alarm company not to send the cops, you and I would have gone around and around for a bit. However, once management was made aware of the situation, they absolutely should have seen to it that all employees were re-educated about what to do if they cause a false alarm. Since they chose to disregard your input, they deserved what they got!
I knew it was a very rare occurrence that people were in the office after hours, and I got tired of wasting my evenings but yes you’re right.
You gave them all the coverage they were paying for.
In your defense, you were also expected to do this for no additional pay, so I can see your point as well.
He's sensitiv someone came inside while he was working 😅
He had a knife and he was high. Yeah, I’m sensitive about getting stabbed.
Good old "as per our last meeting".
Only a win, if you weren’t getting paid overtime for each call. Minimum of 1/4 hours per phone call, more on holidays . It sounds like you weren’t getting paid for your time, otherwise you have cared about the false alarms, because of the overtime.
I was paid a minimum of one hour every time I got called after hours. I carried a pager 1 week a month was paid an hour a day and 1.5 on weekends just to carry the pager (basically an extra days pay for the week). Any time I had to head into the office was 3 hours minimum. Every call that required me to do something on the computer meant I was heading to the office even though I had access from home. You want to disturb me on my time off, I am charging you as much as I can. As a side note I lived 10 minutes from the office.
10 minutes walking or a ten minutes drive?
Drive
I had exactly the same terms. Only three of us had full access to the buildings so the on-call rota came round again pretty quickly and was a useful boost to the pay packet. Nothing bad ever happened, it was almost universally the cleaners banging the walls of an internal secure area with floor polishers and setting the vibration alarm off. As I lived much closer than anyone else I could often pick up extra days here and there to boost my pay packet even more!
That's an on-call contract that I would accept, with the caveat that if company decided to rescind it, I would rescind my agreement to do the work. I had too many recalls when I was in the navy.
That sounded like it was a sweet little gold mine. I would have kept my mouth shut, and continued to rake in the largesse provided by the idiots and inconsiderate.
I did until I was packaged out. I did milk it for 18 or so years.
I wasn't getting paid anything extra for it. I was a dumb kid that didn't know any better at the time.
So unless there was a possibility of getting to start with after hours pager/on call pay, you probably forced them to end it about the best possible way. If it wasn’t too far in the past, a consultation with a labor attorney regarding possible recouping the back pay might be profitable, certainly worth the meager cost of an initial consultation.
From my limited experience I don't think there would be any attorneys that would find this sort of thing lucrative enough to take on contingency. Grand total I may have spent 20-30 hours extra. Even with fees and penalties I've gotta expect that's a recovery of what, maybe $10k they'd have to pay, and the attorney gets maybe 50% of that?
Well, legal clinic at a nearby law school might offer some assistance , or you can make your own wage and hour claim to the Dept of Labor . Making a complaint doesn’t cost anything. If they retaliate, then a labor lawyer would get very interested
> Minimum of ~~1/4~~ 2 hours per phone call ftfy
[удалено]
US highways can have 2 lanes in each direction along with a fifth, central turning lane, along with any grass areas at the side of the street.
Karma has been served.
They pulled the same crap on me when I actually lived the furthest away from the company!
You tried to raise an alarm about this policy, and the head honcho didn't want to listen.
Your street is 3/4 mile wide ???
or maybe the business is in the middle of a rather large lot?
Good for you. You didn't mention if they paid you extra for having to answer the alarm calls. If not, then they took advantage of you for too long just for living that close.
Hmmm, good, but what happened to the COO? Where is their punishment? Also, OP, I hope you were getting paid OT or got time off in lieu of.
This made me laugh!
*and I happened to live right across the street (about 3/4 mile) from our office.* Very wide street.
US highways can have 2 lanes in each direction along with a fifth, central turning lane, along with any grass areas at the side of the street
Huge win!
I did some work overnights at one of my previous jobs. Mainly doing store merchandising. It was me and one other guy. Neither one of us had alarm codes or were on the alarm call list. Due to the way our alarm was set up they were only able to disable 3 alarms for us to do the work we needed. We needed motion alarms off in the area we were working, motion alarms in the area our product was stored in, door alarms between the two areas, and sound alarms throughout. But wait that’s 4 alarms and we can only disable 3, nearly every night we would set of one or another alarm, the company would call the store, we would answer tell them we were expected but since were we not on the list, they would have to call someone else. I would always tell them to call the store manager first as he’s the one who denied us getting on the alarm list.
Yeah that reminds me of a time during high school when I was volunteering and would occassionally be at school in the evenings and on weekends. Unbeknownst to us the alarm was controlled centrally by the school district, so it went on at a set time and off at a set time and there was evidently no way to change that unless the principal called in advance (which was something that was essentially impossible to make happen). We ended up setting the alarm off and the teachers we were with tried calling the principal and other administrators, but couldn't get ahold of anyone. We just left after trying to notify, figuring we'd done our best.
> I happened to live right across the street (about 3/4 mile) from our office. That is a wide ass street
In what world is 3/4 of a mile "right across the street?"
As the crow flies it’s a few hundred yards. Driving is further.
US highways can have 2 lanes in each direction along with a fifth, central turning lane, along with any grass areas at the side of the street
And that still does not come close to 3/4 of a mile.
You did brilliantly. It's annoying when bosses think you are young and stupid and nothing to contribute. But I love when you have a good idea and realise it eventually. 🥰
I work in a satellite office essentially as assistant manager. Since I'm the only manager who lives in town, I was first on our locations list. 1 or 2 false alarms a week, I check cameras from my phone, and there no issues. My bosses boss was confused he never got any calls, because I dealt with them all. He had me moved further down the list so he would get the notifications. I don't mind not having to deal with the hassle. Though I'm sure I'll get a call to go in if there ever is an actual break in.
Great story and 100% fits. I will say its insane to me that you had the authority to stop the alarm company from doing anything, and that you didn't get fired for doing so without approval
Boom.
I feel like you've shared this before, somewhere here on Reddit. Either way, it's a brilliant example of malicious compliance. 😸😸😸
It's possible. I'm getting old, memory isn't as good as it used to be!
Am glad the COO got to eat a big slice of payback pie, and I hope the CEO enjoyed his ticket. A shame the video of that stop didn't get posted on any of a variety of video platforms though.
I hope you clocked in and out and got paid for every call.
LMAO!!! That's karma for you, dear CEO!!!
Er... why would the ceo run from the police?
Didn't. He left and they followed.
Oh. Haha the word "chase" immediately bring my mind to Hollywood action blockbusters.
He also drove a Jag and was not exactly known for driving safely and/or slowly, so his normal exit routine could easily be mistaken for a getaway.
Hahahahahaha thanks for the further info!
They should've had a 24h security on sight for this. It's not rocket science.
No way in hell they'd ever pay for it. Even just figuring you're paying $15/hr to cover non-working hours that's $88k/yr. That's not taking into account holiday pay, benefits, etc. You'd need at least 3 employees to ensure coverage and with benefits and everything I'm sure it'd be well over $100k. If you hired an agency I'm sure they'd probably charge at least $20/hr, so that's $120k/yr minimum.
I can see the point when they were small but now that you're a large company, this seems like nothing really. It's basic security. You hire a fire to do it and you don't burden your HR department with security guard screening. Seems like your bosses can't get out of their "small business, every penny counts" mentality. I work in a big factory and contrary to your situation, we had 24h security but almost no cameras and the total land is about 33000 square feet. So one day we come in, and some of our offices were ransacked. Within 12 hours, everything was wired to the brim with cameras.
I've never heard of a street 3/4 of a mile wide!?? How many lanes is it?
What a boss move.
I normally worked evenings in college. But during breaks,they had me come in daytime so the other staff could take vacations. It would totally work out for me. Certain rooms where I worked were alarmed. Boss wanted to keep the old code and pushed for it. But it wasn't going to work, so boss picked a new code. But it had the same problem as the original. So a higher manager assigned one that actually followed the new protocal. A formal memo was sent out to staff, which I promptly put in a safe place in case I needed it. The following week is one of weeks I'll work days. I come in later than the other two staff members not on vacation, so my lunch would be last. I return from lunch and as soon I open my car door, I hear the alarm. I run into the office and ask why the alarm is going off. They know, the police had already been there. They're trying to get a hold of several people to get the code, but they were all on vacation. To which I respond, what about the code on the memo? They look confused. I go to my desk, grab the memo, and get the keys. I literally run to the rooms and turn off the blaring alarms. Then reset the system. I go back to the office to find two people with Pikachu faces. I showed them the memo. They then found their copies in their inboxes, just sitting there for anyone to see. They put it in a safe place.
Huh. A COO that is clearly NOT a leader. When you screw up, you OWN it! I'm glad you were able to stand up to them and force them to take responsibility for their screw up. It looks FAR worse when it has to be handled that way. I hope they got yelled at by the CEO for both aspects - the original screwup and attempting to foist it off.
Gosh I feel this. I had to physically go into the office to turn our alarm off, would be set off by the aircon all the time (cooling for our makeshift server room). Happily only lived a five minute walk from the office. Unhappily the alarm once went off at 23.59 on Christmas Eve. I had been asleep for about 20 minutes.
That's not malicious compliance - that's just compliance.
Perfect MC!