the unflattering photographs, the cat medicine, and other times people used their power for good

Last week we talked about times people “misused” their power for good. Here are 12 of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The payout

I had a colleague, “Carol,” who decided to retire, and went in to tell our site HR person this and get the pension paperwork started. The HR person, “Grace,” was apparently unhelpful and said that she couldn’t do anything until the following week, and Carol should come back and remind her on Monday.

Two days later, Grace called Carol and the rest of her team into a meeting to inform them that their entire department was being outsourced, and they were being laid off. This is the UK; there’s legislation around minimum payments in this situation, and typically my company pays at least double the minimum, which meant Carol got something like £30k payout.

There is no way Grace wouldn’t have known about the layoffs and if she’d let Carol submit her retirement request Carol wouldn’t have qualified for the payout.

2. The time away

Many years ago, I was a supervisor at a company that offered no schedule flexibility, and working from home in my department was absolutely taboo.

I had an employee I’ll call John who was really struggling with his mental health and had no support network other than his dog. One morning, he came into my office in tears because his dog needed emergency surgery and was not to be left alone after for something like two weeks. He didn’t have that much PTO, and the company would terminate employees for taking unpaid time off.

I told him I’d handle it, just work from home and get his job done. And suddenly John was in a lot of meetings and then attending a free conference hosted at another company’s offices. Finally my boss stopped by and commented he hadn’t seen John in a while. I reiterated he was at a free conference, and my boss said he hadn’t heard of that conference before. I just cheerfully responded that John said it was going well. He looked at me and then just slowly nodded. A couple of days later, I heard him telling someone else that John had been pulled into some project meetings and might be hard to catch for a while.

John’s dog recovered and he returned to the office. No one other than my boss ever figured it out.

3. The admitted students party

You can decide if this was misusing my power for good, or merely being irresponsible.

I was a second year grad student with no professional experience, still basically a kid in terms of responsibility. Every year, admitted grad students for the next academic year would visit, and, among other activities, the current students would host a party for them and all the other students in the department so they could get to know us.

Well, every year the department struggled with enrollment. The school was well regarded, but located in a small, cold town. The department was actually shrinking due to poor enrollment. The department was also pretty quiet and nerdy, and people felt a bit isolated and lonely.

Enter … very irresponsible me. The department chair just told us to put on a party and said that we’d be reimbursed. So for a party with about 40 students (current and prospective), I bought eight cases of beer. Ten bottles of (local!) wine. And around eight bottles of liquor, including single-malt Scotch. Oh and like two bottles of soda and two bags of chips.

The party was very boisterous and went long into the night. Everyone got home safe. And then we got our highest enrollment ever, literally three times the previous year, with a group of people who were not only academically excellent but also close-knit and got along well.

My tab from the liquor store was around $500 ($750 in today’s money, with inflation) and I was never invited by the department to host this event again. It all could be coincidence but I choose to believe otherwise.

4. The unflattering photographs

There is an appointed board for a public institution in my town that has been taken over by people who do not support the mission of the institution. It’s caused a lot of controversy, community strife, and lawsuits. It’s also spurred lots of local news coverage. A photographer for the local newspaper would take and publish the most unflattering photos of the board members that he could find. He has since moved on but the paper has not bothered to take many new photos and has continued to use many of the absolutely terrible photos he took. They’ve even been used by other outlets when reporting on our community. It’s a small thing but they have caused, and continue to cause, a lot of problems so it’s nice to see them being accurately portrayed.

5. The baked goods

I have a part-time job in the bakery of a major retailer that sells more than just food. I have often baked more than I know will sell because I know it will get donated to the food banks (this particular company does allow/encourage donations of food that does not sell by the best before date). The extra amount is not something totally outrageous, just a little bit here and there that will help someone in need.

6. The off switch

One of my former libraries was next to one of the town’s middle schools, so kids would come over in droves after school to wait for their parents to come pick them up. It was a constant war between the rowdy middle schoolers and staff/regular library users. The biggest battle was over the bay of computers smack in the middle of the reading area — the kids would either blast YouTube videos at 100% volume or play intense games of Roblox. Asking them to quiet down was a Sisyphean affair; they would stop for about 10 minutes then get right back on the horse.

One of the library assistants realized that the circulation desk had an emergency on/off switch for all the computers and ended up using its power for good. If the kids got too loud and refused staff and patrons’ attempts to use the library more respectfully, the switch would be tripped. “The computers are off!” they would say, exasperatedly. “Oh no, how troubling,” the library assistant would respond. “Sometimes they get overloaded. We’ll have to call in IT to take a look, but they can’t get here for a few hours.” The kids would then get bored and leave to the park across the street.

This was only used maybe twice in my year-long stint at this library branch, but I appreciated it nonetheless.

7. The shout-outs

I have a coworker who is extremely difficult to work with. She is technically a supervisor, but it’s been years since anyone has reported to her. Business needs finally upped her work to the point where she needed help, so she was given her first employee to manage in years.

It went horribly. This was a young man’s first “official” job out of college, and he disclosed many health-related issues to her that he shouldn’t have. She hit every point on discrimination, both legally and by our policy. I work in HR, but it’s government, and getting anything done regarding dealing with how she managed him was impossible. As soon as I sent something up, she threatened legal action and it got slapped back down. She was mean, derogatory, and straight-up toxic to the poor guy. She tried to discipline him for clocking in on time (“I TOLD him he needs to be here exactly 15 minutes early!”), for using his ADA accommodations (“He can only use them as long as he isn’t being a burden, and he’s definitely misusing them!”).

It’s important to note that she was extremely volatile. Well, she had a vacation coming up and spent the week leading up to the vacation loudly complaining about how she just knew her employee would screw everything up. I saw my opportunity.

While she was gone, her employee did amazing. Our facility has adopted a practice of doing “shout-outs” — basically anyone can send a mass email congratulating people for doing a good job. I am a very bubbly person and employees are used to me being very encouraging and optimistic, so when I casually reminded everyone that this employee was doing extremely well, and his boss was concerned about his ability to do the job well in her absence, and she would definitely appreciate it if she had a flood of shout-outs for him, it didn’t come across as odd or suspicious. Also, wouldn’t it be great to tell her how great he did, in person, also in front of him directly to her?

When she returned, she looked like she was drinking poison all week having to listen to and read all the compliments. People were streaming in and out of her office for her first several days back singing his praises. (I may have helpfully reminded them to do this. Often.) And it worked beautifully. With all the glowing recommendations, I asked her if she was considering putting him in for a raise.

That did it. She flipped out and tried to make a case to fire him (her case was entirely based on his accommodations and how “difficult” his disability was to work with, so … not a good case at all). Then when she got a meeting with the HR director about it, she had a meltdown and the director told her she couldn’t be trusted to supervise this employee and she would be required to undergo extra supervisor training.

She is now no longer a supervisor, and her employee has been promoted to equal standing as her and is in line to promote to the head of the department, meaning she will need to report to him.

8. The wheel of cheese

At my first entry-level nonprofit job, at the end of a fancy reception, the executive director noticed there was a whole wheel of hard cheese that hadn’t been touched. She wrapped it in a napkin and handed it to me, saying, “Put this in your purse.” She explained that the organization had paid for this food and somebody might as well enjoy it. Some may find this gross, but I was a broke, in debt, and overwhelmed kid and it felt like such a luxury. She made me feel at ease and like we were in cahoots about something! It’s almost 15 years later and I’m an executive director now, and I use a lot of what I learned from her.

9. The raise

Never told anyone I did this, but some years back one of my then direct reports (Z) had adopted a pair of cats who developed serious health issues, and she had to take a ton of random PTO for all the emergency vet visits. I knew what the PTO was for and that her vet and medication bills were piling up, and I also knew that the department head had some complicated ideas of what it would take for someone to deserve a raise.

Previously, I unsuccessfully tried to get some of my reports’ pay bumped up but was told we’d “be fine keeping everything as is.” Fine, but when my boss asked me what was going on with Z taking all that PTO, I had a burst of inspiration and casually said, “Of course I would not be able to confirm, but I wonder if she’s been interviewing. Z is one of my star performers, and I would not be surprised if she’s getting headhunted.” That set off a rapid-fire series of emails between my boss (department head) and HR, which resulted in a promotion for my report. They even had to create a new tier for her to be able to make it happen, and I didn’t have to do anything myself.

10. The cat medicine

My very sick cat was prescribed medication that had to be filled by prescription at a commercial drugstore. It was essentially people medicine that could be used, under a veterinarian’s direction, for pets. When I went to pick it up, my heart sank at how expensive it was. I was working as an underpaid fundraiser for a nonprofit at the time, and the amount of the prescription ($90 at the time) was an absolute budget buster for me. The pharmacist at the independent (non-chain) drugstore saw how distressed I was and asked me how old my cat was. I said she was 12. The pharmacist said, “Well, then, she qualifies for the senior citizen discount,” and took 10% off of the price. And continued to give me the senior citizen discount for the rest of my cat’s life.

11. The class requirements

Three weeks shy of graduation, I went to my undergraduate research advisor and told him that I was going to drop out. I was a single parent of a pre-schooler. My dad had just undergone a really complicated surgery and I was caring for him in his recovery. He was my mom’s caregiver, which meant now I was my mom’s caregiver and I couldn’t keep up with the remaining coursework, study for finals, finish my research project, do what I needed to do to support my family, and ever sleep.

He asked if just dropping the research component would give me the space I needed to finish (it was five credit hours and I was literally there in the wee hours of the morning most days because it was the only time I could squeeze it in). I told him it would but that I wouldn’t graduate without the hours associated with it. He took my lab keys from me and said, “Oh, you misunderstand. You got an A. You’ve finished. Don’t let me see you here again until after graduation.”

I graduated with honors. My dad recovered and lived for another 25 years. My mom is doing fine. My kid is an adult now. I work in the field I trained under him to be in, doing the kind of work he valued, and I’ve been in management for 10 years showing the same kind of grace every chance I get.

He waived three weeks of work, a publication, and a presentation and the world got me in a dedicated career in save-the-world type scientific public service.

12. The retirement papers

A few years ago, I was working for a (non-U.S.) government organization. The deputy director of the department was a well-liked man in his early fifties, quiet and hard-working. His role had full job security, healthcare, and a solid pension plan.

He decided to put in his form for early retirement, in order to change career path completely. Everyone was sad to see him go as they felt he was a valuable asset, but respected his will to change even though many feared he would face age discrimination in his job search.

The procedure for retiring could take almost a year, as the services needed to calculate his rights to pension, end-of-career pay, and many more benefits that end up being quite complex. However, once that decision form is sent, there is no turning back, even if the situation changes in the meantime. This also means the decision to retire early had to be a leap of faith, as no recruiter wanted to keep a job open for a full year before you had formally ended your previous contract.

The day after he submitted this retirement request, he ended up in a terrible accident. He was hit by a drunk driver and had to be put in an artificial coma for a few days, in the ER. It was touch and go for a while, and even weeks into his year-long recovery process, his doctors did not know if he would be able to speak and walk again. A heart-breaking moment, especially since everyone knew how much of a safe driver he was. (Ultimately, he ended up doing a fine recovery and could walk again, albeit with a cane and sometimes a wheelchair).

The morning after the accident, as news reached work, his boss, the head of department, quietly took the retirement form. Without informing HR, he ripped up the form and instructed the department to avoid mentioning the plans for retirement to anyone outside.

During the year-long recovery process, the injured deputy director benefited from complete medical coverage plus a medical pay leave, and had his former job waiting for him during all of this time. He ended up returning to work, with full accommodation for his disability. He even had better prospects in the administration that were provided for him, as thanks for his years of service.

Had the director not made the retirement form disappear, he would have come out of the hospital disabled, without a job, no pay, no desperately needed health care, in a job market that was sure to eradicate him due to his age and disability. There was also no way for him to job search from his hospital bed, especially when speech was impaired at the beginning of his recovery. Unemployment was a certainty in this case. And, due to the administrative process, the retirement procedure would have gone on regardless.

Instead of full unemployment, he ended up staying a few more years in the administration, where everyone took care of him, and was able to keep on rising in the ranks.

The director took the risk of delaying his departure and going against his will when he made the paper disappear. But, as everyone recognized, he acted in the injured deputy director’s interests while he was in a coma, and absolutely made the right decision.

I have since moved on, but saw during my last days that the former deputy’s condition had improved significantly, and he almost didn’t have to rely on the cane. He was ultimately thrilled to keep on working there.

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