We've all been there.
We've all had that supervisor who causes you to spend most of your time trying to figure out how they ever got bumped to upper management, and you're still only filing papers. Somebody had to have died, right? And in a stunning display of selflessness, your supervisor leaped up to save the company in their hour of dire need, but in his haste, he smacked his head against the copier and instantly turned into the spacey person that you are forced to answer to every day, right?
I choose to believe that is the story behind my supervisor, because any other reason as to why he just doesn't quite reach the bar would make me way too upset over the type of people my company chooses to promote.
I worked for a local trucking company for two and half years. My department was located in a trailer next to the main building. There were two if these portable buildings next to the main office building, but when the fire marshall took one look at the layout of the trailer to building distance ratio, he advised the company that the whole layout was a huge fire hazard. So the company removed one of the portable buildings to the back of the truck yard to be used as a storage shed. This was for the best considering that our department's trailer didn't have running water, a fire alarm, or even a fire extinguisher. We did have all of the company's stored documents though, which law dictates we have to keep for 10 years. We were basically fucked if anyone came by our department with a match. With our "new storage shed", the reject portable could be a fire hazard all unto itself and not endanger any living employees.
My supervisor, who from here on out shall be referred to as Jeff, had asked me and my coworker, Rose, to start "staging" boxes of old files by the back door so that he could load them onto a pallet for our forklift guy to transport across the yard to our portable/storage shed.
We did as he asked and moved close to thirty, fifty pound Banker Boxes full of old documents by the door. We staged it in a way so that it was easy to push each pile onto a dolly for him to transport. Jeff came back without a dolly and then proceeded to life one box at a time, open the back door, kick the back door closed, climb down the stairs from the portable, and then stick the box on the pallet. He did this for about ten of the boxes and was then stopped by one of our drivers for a chat. During this time, a guy who works for the maintenance shop came by and asked why Jeff didn't come get the hand truck he requested. Clearly we didn't know, so the shop worker sighed and left.
The shop worker came back five minutes later with a hand truck. At this point, Jeff was still out in the yard chatting with a driver. The shop worker let us know that he wiped the dolly off as much as he could, but since it's a shop dolly, it was still super greasy, because apparently grease is the glitter of the shop maintenance world. Like a freaking gentleman, he advised us to keep the dolly on the door mat and load up the boxes up there. We thanked him and he went on his way.
Rose, trying to be one step ahead of our supervisor, put the dolly on the door mat on the inside of the office for when Jeff came back to continue moving boxes. She reasoned that there was no way he could miss the dolly when it was right there in front of him.
She was wrong.
Jeff came back, flung the door open, almost killed himself by tripping over the dolly as he tried to enter the office, righted himself, looked at the dolly, moved it to the side, picked up a box, and hand carried the one box downstairs to the pallet.
Rose looked distressed that her strategic placement of the dolly had accomplished absolutely nothing. When Jeff came back in to get another box, Rose attempted to talk with him about the hand truck.
Rose: Hey Jeff, the shop brought us this hand truck for you to use so that you'd have an easier time transporting boxes
Jeff: Oh neat!
Rose: But they warned us that the wheels on it are a bit greasy, so they advised keeping the it on this doormat and loading up the boxes from here.
Jeff: Oooooh. Okay!
Jeff then took the dolly, pushed it off the doormats, past the pile of boxes we had moved for him, and into the room where we had been storing the boxes previously, leaving a light trail of grease marks in his wake.
Rose just stood there in shock. I couldn't stop laughing.
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