I work for a very small company. No HR. Boss makes all decisions. Everything is to cater to his immediate wants. Very 80s businessman fake-it-til-you-make-it rich-guy-but-very-cheap sort of thing.
He was out of town for a Monday and Tuesday. He called the operations manager to tell him to assign me busy work. It didn't matter what. Something. He didn't care to see the results. It was work to keep me busy to justify me being here and keep me from going home, like most people here do, when they realize he isn't here. OM didn't. He told him he would, knew it was pointless, and didn't mention it to me.
At the end of the week, the boss asked if I “did the tasks.” He said tasks because he had no idea what they were. They weren't anything. There was no work needed, he didn't come up with it, he assigned someone else to come up with meaningless work for me to meaningless finish. I said “what tasks?”
He calls OM and complains. OM calls me into his office and says “my bad, I should have mentioned it.” I said yeah, I got the impression I was supposed to lie, but had I lied, if pressed, I would have been caught.
I am now getting something in writing saying I was told to do tasks and forgot. Keep in mind, there were never tasks because there was no work that needed done.
TLDR: Was not assigned busy work, in trouble for forgetting to do busy work that was not assigned. Should have lied.