There’s a work story going around Reddit that is so absurd, it could be out of a movie. Management gives the woman a new directive: no more making coffee for salespeople, that's not your job. She follows it. A salesman demands coffee anyway. She politely refuses. Her boss fired her because she didn’t make coffee.
Then, in the same breath tells her to keep coming in until they find a fill-in.
If that made you laugh, angry, or both, welcome to the club.
A rule that existed for a reason
It happened in Australia in 2005, but the dynamics are timeless and very familiar to American workers.
The woman, an American who had moved abroad after marrying, was working as a receptionist in a loan brokerage. It was common knowledge that salesmen expected female support staff to serve them coffee as part of the job description. Management put in a formal policy, knowing this was driving women out of these roles. No more coffee runs for salespeople.
She did what the rules said, and she got fired for it.
Not only did the supervisor who fired her ignore her own rule, but she also punished the only person actually trying to uphold it.
This isn't about just one bad boss
This is not the isolated story of what happened to this woman. It’s a pattern repeated in workplaces across the US every day, only in less cartoonish forms.
