Not my job

[TickTockMan]

Have you ever told someone at work you wouldn't do something that wasn't your job?



I use to to work security at the bus department for the local school district. One day my boss (he was the head night mechanic) told the custodian to vacuum a bus a kid made a mess in. The custodian said no, not his job and they just had a staring contest for a few seconds. I loved it. The custodian was right. His job was to clean the building, not the busses. The was the drivers job.


I personally have never said no, but only because I was asked if I would help out, not told to do something.

 

[NotHardUp1]

No, not my normal thought, as I've painted bathrooms before when we had no work in production, and I am the one who asked for the paint so I could.

BUT, I have told my boss, and all the way up to the VP, that I would not do X or Y, often because it was my way of calling out the King on his new clothes. Sooo many managers sit quiet while the untenable, the unethical, and even the illegal float by.

 

[Vannie]

It's not my job to answer your questions.

 

[Vannie]

In the food service/restaurant world you are forever doing someone else's work.

 

[USEDCAR]

I worked as a nurses aide (Hated that Job) and your doing everyone work plus more for crap pay.

There was a mouse in an empty patient room and everyone looked at me like i was going to catch it. I told them not my job

 

[NotHardUp1]

I actually ended my day by telling my boss it was not my job to argue with the customer (prime contractor).

There was a $2.6M invoice about to miss getting paid before quarter closes this weekend, and the Subcontract Manager at my customer had botched this whole affair since May, so I had to elevate the problem internally to get muscle to lean in and get it paid per the contract, in time.

The idiot at the top of my program group literally forwarded my internal email to the customer, complete with a blow-by-blow of detail how he had refused to reply or take calls from our Contracts adminstrator, so he took offense and called me directly after our weekly conference call. For the record, I referred to him by title, not his name, so it wasn't a personal comment.

He was trying to rebut selected factoids, and tried to turn the topic into my company's performance, wholly unrelated to paying an invoice on time. I let him run through his complaints and never interrupted. Followed it with a pregnant pause. He finally asked if I were still there. I replied that I was and then told him I would not be reaching out to him directly as he requested. I'm in Finance. My contact with the customer is through Contracts or the Program office. I then told him I would have many things to say and had opinions about several other topics he raised, but that none of them were relevant, as I am not the voice of my company. Contracts and PMO are. I welcomed him to raise any issues he had with them present, but not otherwise. I did note that I would not have elevated the problem had we gotten any reply when asking for the status.

Nothing was said rude, just clear that I was not going to start any point by point rebuttal to his attempted complaint. It angered him. Pity.

He's just a younger engineer who was freezing out my Contracts administrator over a big deal to us, likely as an unstated punishment for schedule, but not allowed.

I later explained the conversation in detail to both the Contracts administrator and to my boss., and I repeated that it is not my job to argue with the customer. Data is presented, but my company has authorized voices, and I am not one of them.

Of course, none of this would have happened if they had not been jerking us around, if he had been professional instead of ignoring my colleague's queries, and if my idiot executive had not forwarded a private email.

Good times.

 

[PalacePaul]

I haven't openly said that but I pretended I didn't get the hints

 

[ShadowCat]

When I do elections I often have to go above and beyond! We usually have 2 precincts inside a polling place and even though EVERYTHING you need is in the books they give you at training (and if you forget your book on election day there is one with the election materials) no one can ever figure out just what the fuck they are supoosdd to do! The second precinct is ALWAYS coming to me because of their incompetence! I mean its so bad the other side has no ideajow to set up the equipment not to mention the fact that at training there is a test to pass so how the hell are they passing that when on election day they stare at you glassy eyed and slack jawed? Oh and FYI the test is open book so not getting 100 is extremely embarrassing!

 

[eddielee]

I would always do what my boss asked me to do, unless I was asked to do something that I was not qualified or experienced to do. I, like others, have always had to do things outside of my job description. It's better to go ahead and do it than spend time arguing the point.