Did you work for a bad boss? Or worse, do you still? I would like to hear about it. Please change names when necessary.

I was working at a call center on a customer service contract for a telephone company. They had resolved a new policy that was supposed to save them money.

Whenever a customer complained of no dial tone, previously a technician would be dispatched to see if there was a problem with the wiring in the home or the signal to the home. He would do this by plugging a phone into the 'demarcation box', usually on the outside of the home.

The new policy said that we could not dispatch a technician until the customer had checked the demarcation box for a dial tone. The issue that many of my coworkers had was having to get an 80 year old find his demarc box through 4 feet of snow.

The day that the policy was supposed to come into effect the customer service reps were collected into a room to ensure understanding of the policy. At the end hands went up to discuss the hypothetical 80 year old. The manager stated that in such a case the policy would stand.

During training role playing was used extensively and it seemed like a good time to use it. I asked the manager to play the cs rep while I would play a customer. The manager refused to go along with it. I in turn expressed my refusal to go along with the policy until I saw how a manager would perform a role play of the new policy. A consensus was agreed that the reps would not have to perform the policy until the managers were willing to role play the policy.

The policy was never spoken of again, and no 80 year old ever had to search for his demarcation box. A few months later I was suspended for extremely dubious reasons.