Workplace Karen Faces Jail Threat For Attempting To Hinder Employee’s Life-Or-Death Mission In Misguided Power Play

“She threatened to fire me for leaving on a rescue mission. Imagine that!”

Jesse

• Published in Interesting
• April 21, 2024

In every workplace, there’s always that one superior just dying to flex their muscles whenever the manager’s away. You’d often catch them dishing out unsolicited orders and strutting around like they owned the joint.

Well, In our narrator’s (Original Poster’s) case, it was none other than the Head Of Corporate HR.  OP was what most people would call a model employee.

They’d put in a decade of exemplary service at the Search and Rescue where they worked, and their manager trusted them enough to go on solo rescue missions. However, when the manager was away on vacation, OP found themselves caught in quite the power play situation. 

OP’s pager crackled to life, announcing a local flood emergency—the kind that demanded immediate action to save lives. This was definitely an ‘OP’ kind of mission.  

They notified the plant HR and put their rescue boots on—then the unimaginable happened. Corporate HR stopped them in their tracks, declaring it “job abandonment” if they left, which would result in immediate dismissal.

Now, this wasn’t your average "oops, the coffee machine is overflowing" kind of emergency; lives were on the line! All attempts to drum this into her firm skull proved futile, so OP pulled out the big guns—the Sheriff.

The Sheriff was absolutely furious when they heard about the situation. He made sure OP left immediately, but not before threatening to send the almighty Corporate HR to the slammer for attempting to obstruct OP’s noble mission.

It’s been ten years since the incident, but Corporate HR still shoots OP the ‘stink-eye’ to this day. Their response? A hearty chuckle. She’d probably have fit right in with the County Jail residents. 

Let’s dig into the details

A bot of background

The Sheriff called in and threatened that anyone who prevents OP from leaving to join the Search And Rescue Team would be arrested

OP was eventually allowed to go. But the Corporate HR Manager still gives OP dirty looks till this day

We gathered some reactions from the Reddit community:

Looks like the manager was also wrong about the law in Colorado

“I could see this at my company. HR wants to control everything.”

“HR here, your HR person was flexing for no reason and is a c u next tuesday.”

“Another clear case of someone trying to disregard state or federal laws, then gets nailed with legal action.”

“Amazing that the HR person was kept on. With such obviously deficient decision making.”

“As an HR Manager, I bet she tells new candidates how the company is like a family.”

When malicious compliance meets karma

When duty calls, heroes don’t back down—even though obstructions may come in the form of workplace menaces riding an ego-driven power trip. 

Many of us have a ‘Corporate HR’ of our own at our respective workplaces. So, let this be your motivation; don’t be shy to “stick it to the man.” 

Who knows? They might just get a highly embarrassing threat of their own and avoid you for the total duration of your employment. And wouldn’t that be such a relief?

Jesse