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This story was submitted by a Malaysian hospitality worker who wishes to remain anonymous.
I work in the marketing department for a famous hotel chain as an Assistant Events Manager, and in my many years here, I’ve seen my fair share of disagreements and vendettas between coworkers.
But the best story I’ve ever heard is the one of how my colleague and long-time friend, Dani, turned the tables on her superior, a banqueting manager named Bala, when she followed his instructions to the letter – with disastrous results.
Dani is a hotel veteran who handles event graphic design
Dani is our Events team graphic designer. She does all the work for visuals, backgrounds, mock cheques, and invitations. This includes building setpieces like flower arches for weddings and podium decorations (crests, company logos, etc).
As a hotel veteran with 15 years of experience, Dani just knows how things get done around here. This includes finessing temperamental printers, getting IT support to appear at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday night magically, and many other not-so-obvious things, like getting room service to deliver teh-O ice kosong to her desk.
Dani is also the only person in the department with access to the company’s credit card because she buys all the needed materials: Styrofoam sheets, mounting cards, and gloss paper for photo prints.
She has connections all over Sunway, Subang Jaya and even PJ for the more esoteric items at different stationary stores and always gets the best prices. She buys this stuff generally when she goes out for lunch or in the morning before coming to work.
One day, the new banqueting manager reprimanded Dani for being 15 minutes late
Recently a new banqueting manager, Bala had joined the hotel, and (in my opinion), he was a petty, conniving micromanager with delusions of adequacy.
One day, Dani came in 15 minutes late because she was on a supply run, and Bala hauled her into his office and started verbally reprimanding her.
Dani protested, saying she was buying supplies needed to do her job. She explained to Bala that she’d been doing this for almost a decade without issue, with the receipts to prove it. And the shop in question was only a 10-minute walk from the office!
Instead, Bala refused to believe her explanation. Calling it “a huge security risk”, he demanded her to return it to Finance immediately.
“You must order from Central Supply like everyone else,” she was told.
Now, here’s the thing: When supplies ran out, Dani would just run out and get it with the company card. By buying just what she needed, when it was needed, there were no massive piles of supplies lying around and taking up space.
Dani accepted the reprimand calmly, nodded in the right places, looked appropriately apologetic, and even smiled in all the right places. But internally, she declared war on Bala. As they say, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
Dani requested an order worth RM20,000 with Central Supply but was denied
Dani returned the credit card to Finance, who was very puzzled since she had been holding it for over a decade, without issue. When Bala found out, word got around that he was fuming that she went over his head to finance to return the card.
A week later, Dani then put in a MASSIVE order with Central Supply – about RM20,000 worth of materials – which included papers of different sizes and qualities, inks, hot glue, craft blades, and whiteboard markers.
When he saw her massive supply requisition, Bala refused to sign it. Based on what Dani told me, he actually balled up the request form in a fit of anger and threw it back at her!
Dani simply nodded and left his office. Later, she emailed him stating that unless the order was approved, things would grind to a halt. He replied to her email, stating that it would not be approved. She replied, “OK, boss.”
Materials for Events, Marketing, and various other departments were delayed
Two weeks later, word on the grapevine was that four projects were behind schedule because materials were unavailable.
When people asked Dani why the materials weren’t here, she shrugged and said, “I don’t have a company credit card to buy,” and told them to contact Central Supply.
But Central Supply didn’t even KNOW what some of the parts and pieces she needed were. So they bought the wrong thing — be it size or colour or type or material. Only Dani knew where to buy them at the best prices and how to use the temperamental older printers to get the best results.
For the past 15 years, everyone had depended on her to do the procurement of materials, and nobody had stopped to wonder who had been ordering them – until now. Slowly, it dawned on everyone that not only had Dani been buying for the Events department, but she had been buying for Marketing and other departments with specific needs.
When events started getting pulled because of these production delays, people from various departments came begging to Dani for help.
She just shrugged, sipped her teh-O ais kosong, and said, “Boss says I can’t do it. So I don’t do it.”
The hotel’s finances started to look bad as they made costly mistakes figuring out what she had figured out years ago, because Central Supply was massively overpaying.
I watched all of this unfold from my position as a lowly assistant events manager. It was like being in the control room of a nuclear power plant, watching a meltdown of disastrous proportions. Sooner or later, someone’s head would roll.
Clients complained, and upper management demanded answers.
Upper management of course heard what was going on when clients started calling, demanding where mock invitations and other collateral samples were. It turned out that most of the orders were weeks late!
Naturally, Bala tried to throw Dani under the bus. He put the blame on her, saying she wasn’t doing her job properly because she refused to help the other departments.
Luckily, she had everything documented in emails and hard copies of paperwork and showed everything to upper management, and it was discovered that Bala was the one who removed her company credit card access.
Bala was promptly dismissed and Dani’s credit card access was returned. She was promoted to a senior position with a 50% pay bump, and given the authority and responsibility to sign off on all materials procurement.
Dani was her usual organized self: she had freelancers ready to rescue the three projects she could not finish on time. The other three she was able to buy the materials and bring back on track in a few weeks.
Management just paid what they had to pay. Overall they didn’t lose too much money but learned an important lesson in trusting their employees.
Trust your long-time employees to do the right thing
Managers tend to overvalue the appearance of productivity over genuine efforts, especially when there are metrics and other measurements available.
The boss might want to see an employee hunched over a keyboard from 9 to 5, but this is not how good work gets done: Sometimes work is waiting for creativity to strike. Little breaks between tasks let the mind rest and adjust to the needs of the next task.
Instead, managers should cultivate open communication, allowing concerns to be addressed constructively, rather than focusing on the appearance of productivity. There should be trust, communication, and a results-oriented focus.
The emphasis on results rather than mere presence fosters a positive work environment in which genuine effort is recognised. Employees and managers who embrace these principles contribute to a collaborative, creative, and successful work environment.
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Read also: My Boss Replaced Me Then Begged Me To Come Back And Save The Company
My Boss Replaced Me Then Begged Me To Come Back And Save The Company
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