Conflicting instructions, having to decide

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I was just looking out my window at someone delivering the weekly free newspaper. He threw a paper at every house, including one that is unoccupied and being painted and made ready for sale.

I had this little fantasy of a hypothetical situation which is a perfect example of the kind of stuff that has always stressed me out in job situations. I thought I'd post it here and see if this is the kind of situation that would bother people on WP.

Imagine you are delivering papers. You have been told that your job is to deliver one newspaper to every single house on the street. You get ready to deliver to one house, and a neighbor says, "Nobody lives there. You don't need to deliver a paper to that house." What do you do?

If you deliver a paper anyway, then the neighbor (who has no life in this example) calls up your boss and complains that you are an idiot who wastes papers... and then your boss tells you you need to use your brain, etc. If you don't deliver the paper, then the non-resident homeowner shows up that afternoon wanting to sit in his empty house and read his free paper, and has a fit because it isn't there, and you get in trouble for not doing your job.

This is just an example, but this is the kind of thing that gets me so anxious and full of fear in jobs. These little things where you have to decide what is the right thing to do. I am HORRIBLE at making decisions at all unless it's something like what color socks to wear. And so often, the decision I make turns out to mess things up. A free newspaper is no big deal, but sometimes bad decision cost people time and money, and get lots of people angry at you.


Would a person who is not on the autistic spectrum be likely to get confused and nervous about something like that? Would you?

I would either
A) Go back and ask if I were close by
B) If I'm not close by, I would deliver the paper anyway because those were my orders. I'd then ask the boss the next day what I should do next time.

The "right" thing to do in that situation would probably be to tell the neighbor that you're under instructions to deliver a paper to every single house, and then b***h a bit about bureaucracies. Of course, I can say that, sitting here safely behind my computer...

I delivered newspapers for years and the majority of these were free papers. They give you a list each morning when you pick up your papers. They also have verifiers drive through all of the neighborhoods so they know which houses are empty. If someone complains you do hear about it, but you talk it over with your supervisor to know what the best thing to do is. Most jobs don't have as many stresses that we worry about, but it does cause anxiety wondering if you will be able to handle it. Once you settle in you'll be fine. I just try to stick to jobs that I know I will be less anxious about.

Usually just side with the bigger fish - every house means every house, not enough and oh well...

The other day my boss told me "maybe you got lucky and didn't mess them all up".. And I told him "No, if anything I'm 100% sure every one of them is 100% f'ed up"..

Basically its easier to do what your told rather than take initiative, although good it ends badly.

Life is full of these "no win" situations.

1. Your employer tells you to do X. Since he signs your paycheck, you do X.

2. Possible customer tells you to not do X. They don't sign your paycheck, but they can call your boss and complain.

As a general rule, your boss wants the customer to be happy. So, not doing X is the correct thing to do.

However, if X = delivering a newspaper to their door, that's one thing.

What if X = checking photo ID for selling alcohol. Yeah, you know the customer is over 21 (gray hair and wrinkles) but the LAW says you can't sell to someone under 21 and the store you work for (for legal reasons) says to ID everyone and anyone. In that case, disregarding the rule could get you fired because the employer is doing it to cover their legal butts.

As a general rule, if you could have done what the customer wanted and followed the rule, the employer might be upset that you didn't use "common sense," but you can ask your employer on any given rule how strictly they want it followed.

Some "rules" can be ignored for the benefit of making the customer happy. Some "rules" are not negotiable and if a customer complains, your boss will handle the heat and not blame you for doing your job.

I worked as a cashier and had to enforce many stupid company policies. If a customer was offended, I always apologized, frequently agreeing with them, and stated that I did not have the authority to change the rules. Most customers know you are just doing your job because they have been in similar situations with their jobs.

Let me one up everyone and share a bit of my life:

Boss: "Deliver a paper to every house on the block."
Me: Do as boss says.
Boss: "Why did you deliver to house X?"
Me: "Because you said to deliver to every house."
Boss: "Didn't you see that their lawn hasn't been mowed in over a week?"
Me: "No. You didn't tell me to look for that."
Boss: "You should have known."

Instead of delivering newspapers, I have to deal with constantly changing and often hidden rules. These rules often have unpredictable exceptions, like my example. Some of the exceptions are not even made explicit. I have to supervise incompetent people. I follow the rules that have been told to me. Something goes wrong because one of them made a mistake that I "should have anticipated could happen". So, I should have read that person to know to break the rule. But, I can't read people. On top of that, I have a hard time following arbitrary rules. It's one thing to always say "please" and "thank you". It's another thing to check off a box on a form that keeps changing and distracts me from actually doing work. I also trip over hidden rules: that's the only way I discover them. They often result from unpublicized rule changes.

I would do the same. The only improvement I've managed to make in 40+ years of life is to ask more questions up front when I start a job. I once delivered newspapers, put flyers on windshields, and such too, and confronted confused supervisors whose instructions I did not follow because of the "hidden rules" WoodenNickel mentioned.

So now I ask questions. There's a Japanese proverb I invoke in my mind when I need the courage to ask: "to question and ask is but a moment's shame; to question and not ask is a lifetime's shame".

Good advice Aoi

In college, I worked briefly as a security guard in a shopping center at night. I made rounds, and was supposed to check doors and make sure they were locked. It was mostly just shops on the ground floor, but there were a few second floor offices, with exterior stairs. One day I found one of the office doors open after everyone had left. I radiod it in, and my supervisor asked why I was checking the second floor doors, and told me not to do it again. Maybe the offices didn't help pay for the security service.

There will always be times when you get in trouble for doing the right thing, and there will always be additional circumstances you don't know about. All you can do is try your best, communicate, and don't let it bother you too much.

Well, I THINK, by saying "every house" the boss meant "every house WHERE PEOPLE LIVE", because without people, who will read the paper? You could not have possibly foreseen some guy turning up at that house. Right? And the neighbour was the one who told you it's an empty house. Right? Therefore, you're not the one to blame. RIGHT?

If your boss gets a complaint, explain why it happened, but do it in a SHORT way, and just tell him it won't happen again. You're bound to make f**k ups in new jobs. It's horrible, but things'll get better and more of a routine thing in a while.

I think the hypothetical boss wants you to do as you're told. "You're not paid to think". I've recently taken a hiatus from work because of crap like this. I'm studying Business at the moment and buying time. What would be perfect would be self-employment. Doing what, I haven't a clue.

I used to be paid to think. Now, it's grind out the programs and do the paperwork and, oh, don't bother us with any of those silly ideas of yours to improve efficiency and help us understand what we're doing better.


This is your interpretation. The devil here is in the details. What does it mean for a house to be occupied? A person lived there the previous week? Month? 4 weeks out of the previous 10? Is an unmowed lawn truly indicative of vacancy? Do I have time to canvass the neighbors as to whether the house is vacant? We who have autism have a difficult time with gray areas like this. And, yes, it is MY fault that I didn't read enough into the boss's vague instructions! That's the way my organization works.


My boss is making the complaint. I can't tell him it won't happen again, because it will. That's the environment I've been working in for the past several years and it only seems to be getting worse. I'd quit if I didn't have a family to support. My efforts to find another job have been unsuccessful due to my autism. My body says "uninterested" when my words say otherwise, but interviewers pay more attention to the body than the words.

It is not that hard.

Tell the neighbor that you will discuss the policy with your boss and leave the paper there that day. Talk to your boss, ask him if the policy indicates to deliver to houses that are unoccupied, or temporarily vacant. He will either fix it or not. Either way... you are off the hook. You satisfied his requirement and you kept up your word to the neighbor. If he wants you to continue to deliver the paper to vacant houses then the neighbor knows who is responsible. And your boss has been alerted by you to the problem of waste, so you fulfilled your part of the job.

If the paper requires a paid subscription for delivery, and the paper has already been paid for, I would still deliver it. For all I know, the customer can return to the house, even periodically, and collect the newspaper. The customer could still want the paper for something. As far as I'm concerned, from a business standpoint if somebody pays you for a service, you still have to provide the service even if the customer is in absentia (and in paper delivery, the customer doesn't have to be physically there to receive the delivery anyway).

However, I would think it would be conscientious of me to let the supervisory powers that be know that a customer might not be picking up papers regularly. Then it would be up to somebody else at the company, whose job is specifically to cover subscriptions and customer service, to contact the customer to inquire about continued deliveries. Of course I think it'd be a lot easier for the company to just have some kind of contractual stipulation that the company reserve the right to withhold deliveries if papers are seen to accumulate beyond a certain number.

I would welcome any info the neighbors would provide about the absent customer, but you have to take their info with a grain of salt because they could be mistaken. You'd be better off getting the info directly from the customer if at all possible. The personal opinions of the neighbor regarding your "stupidity" in delivering a paper anyway are frankly his right to have, but my right to shove up his butt. I really don't think the boss would automatically take the neighbor's side, because the boss and the company have an irate customer if the neighbor is wrong. Companies will not usually take that kind of chance.

EDIT: Just reread the original post and noticed that it mentioned delivery of a free weekly paper. Well in that case, I'd probably do what Shiggily suggested...

I seem to have responded to comments made to the OP. Still, my point about ambiguity stands. We can't be expected to know any nonverbal instruction. Blaming us for messing up on this account betrays the blamer's misunderstanding of us.