I work in a small lab that used to be an independent company but was bought out by a bigger company a few years ago. All of the lab employees are now employees of the bigger company.
There is one employee who is routinely late, doesn't work his full 8 hours and is just honestly the worst. Last week he ended up no calling no showing one day. The office manager called HR just for guidance on how to handle the situation especially because the lab director wanted to ignore the situation. The office manager was worried about liability if it was ignored and no one tried to reach out to him.
This resulted in the HR manager, and the company's president pulling the lab director and office manager into a meeting about the situation. In the meeting the lab director got upset and said it wasn't the office manager's job to go to HR. HR mentioned that she was the office manager and she could do that. The lab director then said “She's not really a manager, we only made her 'manager' so that she can be salary exempt”.