BS at the job/Superiors "lying" to you/etc.

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So, a friend of mine has recently got a small job at a department store.
I asked him how he's been doing with that. He told me he needs to adjust the products in the shelves; to make them more appealing to customers and to remember where what products are... and do some unpackaging, he's gradually getting to do more interesting tasks. He said he's getting used to the work enviroment. So far, so good.

Then he told me the people who pay his job hadn't paid him full wage because of a "system error", which only got noticed because he calculated that they owe him more.
He now gets his due wage, but still sucks that such things happen.

He has a supervisor who told him "the boss said" he needs to do something in front of the building. So my friend goes to the boss' office to go grab his stuff when he unexpectedly meets the boss and asks him "so, what is it that I'm supposed to do in front of the building?" and the boss was like "?". My friend still had to sweep the front of the building and get rid of weeds, but it was clear the boss hadn't said anything, so my friend's supervisor had talked some partial horses**t.
My undiagnosed Aspie mind is not amused by this "falsehood", lol.

What I want to ask you is:

• What do you think about the two scenarios that I've talked about in this thread?
• What would you do in these situations?
• Has something like this happened to you before?
• How did you cope with it?

Well ... the supervisor IS your friend's superior and I'm guessing that he/she was uncomfortable with telling your friend to sweep the front of the building and pull up the weeds so the supervisor blamed the boss.

Aside from not wanting to take responsibility for these instructions, there's nothing really wrong with the order.

I was once ordered by the general manager of my restaurant to go out and shovel snow off the sidewalks. I had to shovel snow ALL THE WAY AROUND the restaurant. It was exhausting ... but I did it because I had been told to do so and this type of instruction was within the scope of things that I was expected to do.

Now if your friend's supervisor had been told to go buy him/her some crack cocaine ... well, that's clearly illegal. An employer may not require an employee to break the law ... but pulling up weeds and sweeping the sidewalks ... that's quite permissible.



I would follow instructions.



Yep ... see my comment about having to shovel snow off the sidewalks.



What do you mean how do you cope with it? You just DO it ... it's a lawful instruction given by an immediate supervisor.

Some people believe they must manage others by controlling information (lying). It's difficult to be lied to, but you just soak it in and try to focus on doing what's asked as long as no one will get in trouble. If they will you have a problem. Sometimes after hearing it you might need to ask someone what it means if you trust anyone, or just get away to the rest room or something. It's usually best not to confront directly about lies unless you're good at that, and anyone good at it has done it and knows they are good at it. I try to go with a variant on "I know you want ___ and don't intend ___ and I'm worried that could happen even though you mean ___ if I feel it's necessary to directly address the issue. But only if there's something to gain. You want your boss to think you have his back, if possible, most of the time.

Ugh, no advice. I am sorry for your friend, it seems this is typical. I can't deal with working with people anymore.

Thanks for the replies everyone, I've learned about new ways to look at this.
I agree. It's more or less up to your own judgment of what is permissable work and what is not.
Though I must say, I still hate it when people lie to me like that.

Tell him to get out of Retail, as to aspire to at least Clerical (if not much higher!)

Lots of bullcrap in Retail.

Well he applied for multiple jobs and this is the only one he got... he really needs to pay his rent ya know.

You're right....I'm not talking about now. I'm talking about in the future.

It's also possible that Boss delegated a bunch of tasks to Supervisor, withbSupervisor responsible for getting his staffers to complete all of 'em, ie Boss told Supervisor to get steps swept, Supervisor delegated the task to Friend. So no lies (as the Boss trusts Supervisor to get all his assigned tasks done, but is too busy to keep track of which minion Supervisor has assigned to each task).

So nobody lied.

Right.

Kinda unlikely cause that store doesn't have that many employees. But it's possible, yeah.

The bottom line is that Supervisor told Friend to sweep outside and Friend reports to Supervisor. Ergo Friend was tasked with sweeping and sweep he must.

Given that sweeping isn't illegal, isn't life-threatening and, from the sounds of it, interfering with Friend's other duties, the ON WHAT BASIS / ON WHOSE AUTHORITY he was directed to perform this task is irrelevant.

Probably something weird going on, best to claim ignorance and do it.

Your friend is there for X hours a day every day. It doesn't really matter what he's doing while he's there. He just has to keep an eye on things like his paycheck because that was sh***y.

What's sh!tty about being directed to do work at work?

^ I think she was referring to the boss "accidentally" not paying full wage rather than the job itself.