This happened to me a year or so ago but it still makes me laugh, not so much “ha-ha” but “my god you people are dense” kinda way.
So I work in the contracting industry and was working for a large federal contractor who owned a technical services contract for the FAA. I work as a contracts manager so I rarely, if ever, have to go into the field to visit an active site. On one of our projects there was a shortage of field personnel so I volunteered to go and be an extra set of eyes and also get to observe the work that I had put together being done. I wasn’t told until the night before that I needed specific PPE gear to be allowed on site so I went out and spent about 215$ to get what I needed. Steel toed boots, vest, eye protection, basic stuff but adds up.
All goes well the day of the visit and I spoke to the Risk Manager for the region and she told me that I should have submitted a request before buying to get approved for reimbursement but then goes on to say “well if no one told you, since you’re in the office 99% of the time, just submit the request and we can push it through, not a big deal.” I go back home and the next day as I’m filling the request I ping my direct manager asking her to approve this as both the Risk Manager and Regional Program Director we’re fine with reimbursement request.
She immediately called me saying I broke the process and that I should have known better and now we are going to have to “jump through hoops since you didn’t do this right, you work in contracts/procurement so why didn’t you review the process?” I was stunned. Her and I had talked about the site visit a few days before and she didn’t mention me needing anything. This was less than 300$ request that higher ups had approved and she stone walled it completely. A quick fix that should have taken a day or two turned into a 3 week ordeal of her “trying to figure out the best way to fix my mistake”. That was the last straw.
Immediately set my LinkedIn profile to looking for work and within a month had found something better with less bullshit. When I told her this was my two week notice she was shocked. “I had no idea you were even considering looking”, another example of how disconnected she had become. When I told her the last straw was the fact that she made such a big deal over something so trivial and that behavior had bled into our day to day work she just kinda stumbled through a response but ultimately just wished me well.
It still blows my mind companies and managers are willing to be so obtuse to otherwise solid employees causing them to leave. This company’s profits, by the way, were around 3B$ in 2021. Oh and by the time I left the request was still pending so I didn’t get reimbursed. Lol.