Most spectacular way in which a boss has stood up for an employee/kept them on the job

In My Humble Opinion
1

Spinning off of this thread, what are some of the times that a boss has gone either over and beyond the call of duty for an employee, gone way out into left field for someone, or just gone out there to keep someone at work?

I guess that the classic example is that of Southwest Airlines’ “Pen Pal”, a frequent customer who sent complaint letters after every flight that she took, complaining about seemingly every aspect of Southwest’s operations. One of her letters was finally kicked upstairs to Herb Kelleher, the founder and CEO. Kelleher took a minute and jotted off a message of “Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.”

Down at the other end of the scale, the sheriff’s office sent a deputy to a job that I worked decades ago to serve a warrant. The security guard at the front door called the guy’s supervisor who walked out front and told the deputy that he could have his employee at the end of the shift, no sooner, and that they weren’t allowed inside the building without a search warrant. It wasn’t any sort of a moral issue for this guy; he just wanted enough warm bodies on the floor that he could make his quotas. Strangely, the deputy left without hauling the supervisor in for aiding and abetting.

2

I worked with a guy whose family owns a regional grocery chain. It is a multi-billion dollar company and his name is on the building.

A manager at one of the stores is known as being kind of a smart ass and can be hard to work for. He finally got the best of one of his employees one day and she just walked out - even though she is a single mom with kid to support and doesn’t have many other options for work. The employee was one of the hardest workers I have ever seen and probably did not deserve whatever ticked her off, IMHO.

Owner guy got wind of what happened a couple days later and personally called up the girl that walked out and offered her a job back at a different store. She accepted and has stayed with the company ever since then.

I’m sure it was just good business sense in keeping a good employee, but the thoughtfulness of that gesture always impressed me.

3

My friend had an employee that apparently had an outstanding warrant, and my friend’s boss called him and told him that the cops were going to come get the guy, don’t say anything. My friend liked his employee, he was a good wroker, etc., so he gave him a heads up so he could go turn himself in instead of getting taken down at the office. My friend’s boss fired him for it. I have no idea why an employer would want police action going down in his office instead of settling the matter quietly.

4

Tom Anderson. I can’t not mention him by name.

I took a support call from a complete tool. Tom Anderson took over the call and set the tool straight. The guy needs to get out of the software business and do seminars on management. He could call it Awesome Fucking Management Skills With Tom Anderson.

5

I used to work in a supermarket in high school. One of my coworkers got charged with raping a girl but he convinced the manager and the owner of the chain that he didn’t do it so he got to keep his job and they supported him. Of course, six months later, he murdered his girlfriend so that sort of put a damper on things. From what I hear, maximum security prison jobs don’t pay very well. I respect the company for it but sometimes these things do not end well.

6

Years ago, I worked for a hospital and there were big budget cuts, resulting in a lot of layoffs. My department cut quite a few support staff, including me - I was the most experienced person in that role, and a hard worker, but also paid more than most others at my position due to the time I’d worked there. Around the same time, one of the doctors I was working for was going to work for another hospital. They made him a counteroffer, including more money. In his “thanks but no thanks” letter he cited among his reasons how poorly they treated their workers, specifically mentioning my layoff. So I didn’t keep my job, but one of my bosses stuck up for me, and I ended up finding a much better job elsewhere.

7

Aroo?

He didn’t need a search warrant. He had an arrest warrant and that trumps everything. I’d have gone in for the guy and if the supervisor had given me crap about it, he’d have been sitting in the back seat as well, charged with interference.

8

Back in 2000 I got a job in a local factory: lab tech, 4th shift. That means I got to work 12h shifts on weekends and whenever other people were on vacation, which made up 74% of our yearly time; the other 26% was used mainly to cover for people who were off sick.

The job was new: since days have 24h, two positions. Both myself and the other new girl are pretty indistinct brunettes and both have unusual names; many people (specially the ones who only saw us once in a blue moon) confused us. I’m about two inches taller than she is, but most men would still describe me as “short” (I’m average for women, but people tend to define “tall” and “short” in reference to themselves).

We got the usual deal for that company: a 6 month contract that would become permanent upon expiration if our performance was satisfactory (and, in our case, if the positions themselves were approved by Central). This way, if for whatever reason they don’t like you (but you haven’t done anything horrendous), you get to have left for “end of contract,” which looks better than “got fired.”

30 days before the contract expired we were both told we were out: Central hadn’t approved the new posts. I felt like someone had placed an ACME portable hole under my feet, having moved back out of my parents’ house after two years helping care for my dying father and a few months of refraining from killing my mother.

Two weeks later I got my Christmas present early: our boss, whose most common state falls under “can’t be arsed,” had gone to bat for me and then some. Turns out that the posts were staying, but since the factory manager had gotten reports for both of us as “does as little as possible,” we weren’t. Boss had told the manager “Nava is doing all the calibrations, her new procedure for the chromatography means savings of 30K a year, which I’ll remind you is more than she makes, she’s now working on revising the ISO procedures, I have no idea why is anybody saying that!”

The manager asked people again, but this time she made sure to ask which of “the new girls” were they talking about: the tall one, or the short one?

When “the short one” accused me of having BJ’d my stay, I asked her whether she’d keep someone with a college degree who does less work than the high school dropouts…

9

On the bad side of “why do they keep going to bat for these people?”

Security co-worker. 400 pounds, filty, foul mouthed, rude, extremely racist, drug user.

He’d been removed from a previous account for tearing a Semplex alarm panel off the wall, causing $7k in damage, because the alarm annoyed him.

At our place, he was under a constant assault for being late, being filthy, insulting customers, being a very loud and obnoxious racist. But our manager just kept burying his write-ups and never turning them in. I firmly believe, with no actual proof, it was because the guy was supplying drugs to the boss and a few other key people.

Got fired for showing up so blind stinking drunk that they refused to allow him on the premises.

Came back 3 months later because he had agreed to go to rehab, so they agreed not to fire him. First day back, he’s bragging about how drunk he got the night before. Second night back, he’s bragging about how much weed he smoked the night before. Third night back and the GM of the place demands that he be fired because his racist remarks are echoing down the hallways and he refused to shut up. That writeup got buried and the manager refused to punish the guy.

Eventually, 3-5 months after I quit, the company came through and “shit canned” the entire team, including the manager.

About six months after that, I saw this guy walking out of the county jail, looking cleaner than I’d ever seen him.

10

I once worked for a company that declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. We operated under Ch. 11 for some time, but eventually we lost our financing and were on our way under. My boss, the corporate controller, laid me off one Friday, giving me the 4-month severance package, then hired me back as a consultant. I was given the same salary that I received as an employee and my medical insurance was paid.

I worked as a consultant for about 6 weeks before the company went under completely and all the remaining employees were laid off. Had I been laid off with everyone else, I would not have received the severance package and would have just been another unsecured creditor, so my boss really did me a huge favor.

I just wished he’d done the same for everyone else in the company.

11

…my favourite boss is revered in legend as a guy who always stuck his neck out for his staff.

Once I was sitting in the office with Export Bear and the boss, when the phone rang. Now me and Export were experts at bending the rules: for example for two years the Banqueting Department had never ordered milk: we successfully conducted raids on other departments every few days to keep our stocks up! (When they finally clicked onto what we were doing, and made us order the milk through the proper systems, noone knew how to do it!)

I can’t quite remember what we did: but me and Export had gotten up to our usual inter-departmental hijinks and we had as usual upset someone. The phone rang and the boss answered, and we watched his face get flushed, we watched as he listened to the person on the other end of the line launched into a huge tirade about us.

The tirade lasted about five minutes: then after that the boss then calmly and collectively lied to the other person to save our asses.

The boss hung up the phone, and for a few seconds just stared into space, then he turned to us and let rip. I learnt several new swear words I had never even imagined could exist as the boss tore us to shreds.

And at the end of it after he said to us for about the tenth time “DO YOU SEE WHAT I DO FOR YOU GUYS!!!”, he gave us a little wink and the barest hint of a smile and told us to get back to work.

Lesson learned, best boss, best place to work, most fun of my life.

12

I wish I could remember more details of this story that occurred at least 20 years ago. Southwest and some other airline were involved in a huge lawsuit. Herb suggested to the other CEO that they settle the matter with an arm-wrestling contest (despite being a couple of decades older than the other guy) instead of paying mega-bucks to the army of lawyers involved.

Herb’s training consisted of curling 1.75 liter bottles of Jack Daniels bourbon.

I’d work for that guy any time.

13

Just a short while after the local Outback Steakhouse opened (I know, I know…) there was a fire in the kitchen that caused extensive damage putting it out of business for a couple of months. Owner kept every employee on the payroll and had them volunteer at area charities instead.

At my employer some of the managers can be pretty fiercely protective of their employees. A customer made some rude remarks to me but it’s not like I give a shit. However another employee overheard and told him. He was pretty irate when he came to me, “Dude, you gotta TELL ME when they say things like that. That guy should have had my boot in his ass.”

14

Oh yeah, the HR department at my work keeps a count of written reprimands. Typically, these are started at the request of a department manger or higher-up and are processed by the direct supervisors. Having too many will affect one’s chances of promotion, raises and where you stand on the layoff list. At least a couple of other managers have confided that they keep written reprimands in their personal files once they are completed, stalling if anyone asks for them. That way, no one is hurt unnecessarily, but they can still be fired if necessary.

A local restaurant did more or less the same thing. Thay had a fire that gutted the decades-old building, causing them to bring everything up to the current building, electrical and plumbing codes. The staff was kept on to help clean (and I assume that they sometimes worked at other locations as well.) Over half a year later, the finally restaurant repoened with the same staff as before.

15

One early boss of mine first sideswiped me then acted heroically.
I was the guy working nights at a gas station/repair garage (remember those?)
I would be alone fixing cars brought in during the day while also minding the register for gas customers. The owner hired a part timer which I trained, I thought to help me, but he was my replacement. I asked what the deal was and the owner said he was losing money and had to drop my full-time position and replace it with a part-timer.
I was floored. I would have gladly switched to part-time rather than be out of work.
When he realized this he called every single gas station in town, while I watched, introduced himself and said he had a good man he wanted to find a spot for. The very last name in the yellow pages section said “We do need a man, send him over” He was my bane and then my rescuer in one afternoon.

16

There used to be a Cadillac dealer just off the Harbor freeway in downtown LA. Back in 1990 some developers came in and wanted the land. At 40 million the owner caved in.
The dealer principal gave each employee 1 months pay for each year they worked for him, with no cap. For the employees that were not retiring, he asked who they wanted to work for and he personally made phone calls to recommend them. Class guy.

My boss fired a customer the other day for getting out of line with our people. He is my hero.