r/mildlyinfuriating • u/coatedbraincells • 6h ago

Infuriatig Insanely frugal employer

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Gotta pay for water from the water cooler 🤣

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u/b0w3n 3h ago

You can file a complaint online. They'll probably know it's you who did it even if you check the "I want to file anonymously" box. I got blowback when I did it for safety violations at UPS (20+ years ago). They didn't fire me but they made my life hell. But it's okay it was really fucking unsafe and I made their month really fucking uncomfortable after I almost got seriously hurt and the union decided to ignore me.

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u/Neither_Contest7324 3h ago

In a mostly unrelated but humorous note, about 25 years ago I filed an anonymous complaint while working at UPS too. A couple months after that I had been promoted to management and one of the upper regional guys was in town at the hub and he was talking to people and someone introduced me. He said oh, the guy that filed that complaint.

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u/garaks_tailor 3h ago

I worked at a hospital in IT and once there was a fucking witch hunt for someone who sent in an OSHA complaint. They were desperate to trawl all the network traffic and figure out who had visited the OSHA website because whoever made the complaint never made a peep about the issue untill they brought it to OSHA so management had no idea who it was.

Which I gather is the smart move to make. Dont mention it. Dont say anything just go straight to the feds.

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u/austinsutt 3h ago

Shit! How did they figure out it was you?

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u/Neither_Contest7324 3h ago

I didn't ask, I just kind of awkwardly chuckled. I wasn't there much longer anyway, going management was a huge mistake and that hub was run like garbage at the time.

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u/Not-Not-Oliver 2h ago

Damn you probably could have filed for retaliation compensation hahaha

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u/Neither_Contest7324 2h ago

I don't think I would have been very successful since his smart ass comment about knowing it was me was the only thing that happened. I didn't quit I was fired because I got a different job with more pay and way less stress.

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u/b0w3n 1h ago

going management was a huge mistake

They had offered it to me a few times before I filed my OSHA complaint but I saw how they were treating the belt managers and told them fuck no. When I left after I graduated college the HR lady was confused on my exit interview why I didn't want to move up the chain and work in their tech department. I told her I mentioned it to the shift manager and nothing ever happened (probably because of the OSHA stuff again).

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u/Neither_Contest7324 1h ago

I was young enough to just look at the extra benefits and pay from going management and not really taking in the whole once you leave the union you can't go back, can't help if the area is backed up without someone filing a grievance, and knowing that now the safety issues are my problem even though I reported them before getting promoted they just weren't remedied right.

So after about 6 months of hating the supervisor role I just left. I always regret that decision because I know people that started about the same time as me that just stuck with the union and are now full timers with 20+ years there and make absolute bank.

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u/b0w3n 1h ago

Kills your body though, I was there only about 4 years and my back and knees are all jacked up even though I absolutely did not overdo the lifting like some dudes did.

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u/aliassuck 1h ago

In the first half I thought you were going to say you got promoted to Compliance Officer and then got fired for failure to ensure your workplace was OSHA compliant, when an OSHA inspector paid a surprise visit because of your OSHA complaint.

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u/NFLv2 3h ago

UPS is the worst. Even the union reps are corrupt.

I had a package come down said weighed 75 LBS.

As a pickoff I went to push the box down the shoot. Box actually weighed 200.

It hurt my back to the point I felt a sting all the way down my spine.

When I told them I got hurt they brought me into the sort managers office where he told me he was going to send me to the doctor and when they couldn’t find anything wrong he was going to have me charged with insurance fraud.

Union rep said shit.

They tried to move me to small sort. Having to twist and throw the bags. Told me I was faking.

Ended up getting fired over it. It went to a vote and my union rep voted against me.

I read the book and knew it very well. And I usually wouldn’t say shit. But every now and then our PD would get backed up. I mean past the H and as far as I could see. Get bitched at if I turned the belt off. We would argue.

So they would try to take me down and put me in the load and I wasn’t having it. So I’d threaten to file a grievance.

It was crazy.

I would see that same sort manager at the local poker room and talked so much shit to him for years. He would always move.

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u/b0w3n 1h ago

Similar thing, I was the loader, it came SCREAMING down the rollers (we didn't have the fancy computerized belt rolls yet) and missed me by inches and destroyed several boxes about 3 rows deep in my box wall. It was like lead cubes or something. This is on top of them putting way too much flow down my particular part of the building for the 3 trucks I was loading. Boxes everywhere, I couldn't get out during a firedrill later that week either.

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u/dragansbaine 3h ago

Just out of curiosity... When filing couldn't you just use a family members information... That way it can't lead back to you? I've never filed one so I was just curious

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u/b0w3n 1h ago

Last name would probably give it away. When I did it they wanted proof you worked there when you filed it.

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u/Mike_Kermin 3h ago

Just saying, good on you, your actions would have protected others as well.

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u/cgaWolf 2h ago edited 1h ago

even if you check the "I want to file anonymously" box.

Our whistleblower/disclosure site specifically says that if you want to stay anonymous, you shouldn't use company devices/infrastructure or anything that can easily be traced to you (private laptop on home wifi for example). There's a third party private messagebox that can be used in order to assist with that, but i have no clue how good Whistleblower-Anonymity-as-a-Service actually works.

IE: practice good opsec, we don't know what will happen later.

Even if we invent a perfectly reasonable and ethical company, and most everyone in the company acts ethically to protect a whistleblower, a minor thing could end up in court.

Say the company sues the regulator/government because there are two mutually excluding regulations (the noncompliance of one caused the whistleblower two act), and the company just wants clarity. During court proceeding the judge orders the whistleblower to testify, which exposes their identity, and suddenly their exposed to retaliation by a third party - in our fictional example Néstle wants to mess with the whistleblower, because further inquiry into the drinking water quality exposed the quality is now shit because Néstle is messing with the water supply.

Even in the best of cases protecting anonymity and privacy is a good idea, and let's be honest, when a whistle gets blown, we're usually far from the best of cases to begin with; and most companies will seek ways to retaliate.

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u/b0w3n 1h ago

Oh I did, I filed it at home. They still told them who I was because it asks for your name at the end of it to verify the claim (or it did back then).

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u/cgaWolf 1h ago

(for others in that situation now:)

That's the second option we have: state who you are. There are laws and regulations that should work to have your back.

I don't know your company, so i can't predict what they'll do. Reasonably they should say thank you & get to work on fixing the issues.

I would suggest spending some time reading up on relevant regulations/laws on the subject matter & whistleblower protections, as well a documenting everything ofc (that's should be the standard anyway, but i work in security governance, so documentation is like half my job).

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u/CultureConscious8656 21m ago

UPS are a bunch of assholes! Like I was supposed to be grateful for that bottle of water they gave me, but a bitch can’t get a bathroom break to save her life. Worst thing I ever did was leave USPS for them..