The Avenging Coo, The Salary Fix, And Other Stories Of Wrongs Being Righted

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Last week we talked about times you saw someone right someone else’s wrong. Here are 10 of my favorite stories you shared.

1. The COO

My first job out of college was working at a large corporation as an executive admin. There were five of us admins who sat in the open space, outside of the executives’ offices. Our VP of marketing was known for being a not-nice suck-up. Once a week she would come up with some sort of treat and make a big deal of handing them out to the execs, but not the admins. She would also raid the executive kitchen and help herself to any drinks, food, etc., even our own personal stuff that we poor admins brought from home. As admins, we didn’t really feel like we had a voice in the matter. The execs seemed to really like this woman, so what can you do?

One day, the marketing witch came around with cupcakes for the execs. This time, the COO was standing next to my desk and when she handed him a cupcake, he smiled, looked at me, then said to her, “What about the admins?” Marketing witch stammered a little, then stated that she must have run out.

He said, “If you don’t bring enough for everyone, then don’t bother bringing any. Also, the executive kitchen is for people on this floor only (she worked on another floor), you will need to stop taking stuff out of it and helping yourself.” It was all I could do not to laugh.

She stopped everything — she stopped bringing treats to the execs, stopped taking our stuff out of the kitchen, and stopped talking to us admins altogether unless absolutely necessary. I guess she thought one of us ratted her out. I checked with the other admins and apparently none of us had said anything. The COO was just incredibly kind and observant.

2. The salary

A former coworker recruited me to his current company. When he asked me about salary I told him $X. He said: “What I heard you ask for was $X+30k. Hold firm on $X+20k because the recruiter will try and talk you down and you won’t be happy in this role for a lower salary.”

He was extremely right and I’m very thankful for his guidance.

3. The rename

My mum was a Special Educational Needs Coordinator in a mainstream school (commonly abbreviated to SENCO, in the UK at least.) She was really bloody good at her job and ended up being made head of her department. Immediately on appointment, she informed her headmaster that she was renaming the department, and she wasn’t asking. They weren’t going to be “special needs” anymore because every kid knows what “special” means and it becomes a slur. They were going to be “learning support,” because everyone needs support now and again. They still focused 90% of their time and energy on kids who would traditionally be labelled SEN kids, but they also had the time and space for the kids who were struggling with the history homework this week and just needed a bit of occasional extra one-on-one time.

When she retired, the school library was named after her.

4. The Christmas save(s)

My husband was the VP of operations at a small tech company, second in command to the owner (who was not a good dude). The owner sucked at running a business and decided he needed to lay off all the staff except my husband, who would help him rebuild. He was too chicken to do the layoffs himself and made my husband do it. Husband successfully fought for notice and severance for these employees and called recruiters himself to help them get placements.

So husband lays off 14 people in individual meetings over two weeks, and on the second Friday can’t find the owner. Eventually the owner materializes at the end of the day and lays off my husband, effective that day. No severance. Husband also discovers that owner had backdated the last day of employment for a bunch of folks so that he would not have to pay their health insurance for December (one found out because the doctor’s office called to tell him his kids wouldn’t be covered the next week). Husband threatened to report the owner for small business tax fraud among other things and, after sending us a bunch of nasty letters from a disbarred lawyer, owner suddenly restored insurance.

And now husband is without a job or severance — in December, when no one is really hiring. But then! The mother of one of his former employees, who was an IT manager in a very large company in town, was so grateful for how husband treated her daughter that she created a new position for him on her team, called their recruiters and directed them to fast track him, and gave him a raise. This all happened within two weeks. Basically my husband saved Christmas for a handful of families, and then one of them saved it for us.

5. The salary, part 2

One of my colleagues (a man) was leaving the company, and I (a woman) was promoted to fill his role. He was worried they would underpay me. So before he left, he gave me his whole salary history. What they had paid him when he started, and how much of a raise he had gotten each year. It was amazing to have concrete salary data to use for negotiating.

6. The dick

I was a newly hired C-suite leader in a large nonprofit with some really problematic power dynamics, particularly with the super grouchy CFO; he was nasty, ignored anything that inconvenienced him, and everyone in the administrative office was terrified of him.

A few weeks into my time there, one of his sweet, bubbly and well-loved fiscal analyst employees was notified that her ex-husband, the father of her three kids, had unexpectedly passed away. While they were no longer close, she was super concerned about how her kids would react and desperately wanted to go home to be with them before they got the news from social media. Grouchy CFO wouldn’t let her. There was an upcoming deadline of hers for that evening only he could sign off on, and he was refusing to even look at it, saying, “I’ll get to that by the end of day, you can wait.” She tried to explain the situation, but he wouldn’t budge.

My office was across the hall from Super Grouchy CFO, so she drifted in, collapsed into a chair, and started crying. I felt awful for her. Our always-absent CEO wasn’t there to do anything. I knocked on CFO’s door, but he wouldn’t get up to respond to me. So I went and got the spare key and let myself into his office, asking him to finish the task they were working on so she could go home. He was belligerent and shouted at me that he would get to it when he would get to it, to mind my own business, and to get the &$#@ out of his office.

I marched right up to him as he sat on his computer (playing solitaire, no less) and said, “I have decided that this is my absolute top priority for the day, so I will stand right here and give you all the support you need, until you are able to finish this task and she can go home.” I then stood right next to him, silently, for about 10 minutes while he huffed and sputtered at me. He got so irritated that he grabbed the documents, signed them, and then shouted, “FINE, JUST GO AWAY.” The sweet analyst was so grateful and relieved, she rushed off to her car and sped home to her kids.

It’s been 15 years since then. She and I are still the best of friends.

7. The customer

I was working as a cashier and I had stepped away from my lane very briefly (I’d been asked to turn a four-hour shift into a 12-hour shift and had to flag for the front end manager that I’d need a lunch break) and a customer ended up in a different lane with one person in front of her as a result. This added no more than 90 seconds to her wait time, but she proceeded to spend the entire 90 seconds pointedly complaining to her daughter loudly enough that her intent was clearly for me to hear her talking about how I “didn’t know how to act” and she couldn’t believe I’d been so rude. It’s worth noting that I had scurried back to my register and the people who’d walked up to it after her offered to let her go first, but she ignored them (I guess she didn’t want to move her cart?).

I will never, ever forget how the person who I was ringing up said, just as pointedly and at the same volume, “Well, I think it’s rude to be a BITCH.” The complaining customer was sooooo mad but couldn’t say anything without acknowledging her own behavior. I’ve been riding that high for over a decade.

8. The course

The summer after my freshman year of college, I was enrolled in a public speaking course. It was required for graduation. After my first attempt at a speech for a class assignment, the instructor was devastatingly unkind in his public feedback, including telling me that I had failed. I did my best not to cry in front of everyone, but I’m sure that they noticed how upset I was.

At the next class, the professor publicly apologized to me for the way he had spoken to me.

I found out later that close to the entire class (it was summer, so a small group) banded together, went to his office, and scolded him.

9. The library

I work in a public library and we have to input lots of information for new library cards, including patron names. I noticed that our system had a space for preferred names and that if you used that slot, the preferred name would pop up on the screen instead of a person’s legal name. This is a HUGE benefit for trans and nonbinary folks and also for others for a whole host of reasons, so I changed our paper form to include the preferred name slot and trained my staff on how to navigate adding and using a preferred name for a patron.

The last time this came up, a teen patron was at the circulation desk with their parent, and my staff member did a fantastic job adding the teen’s preferred name. The parent looked at the teen and said, “See? I told you this was a safe place.”

10. The salary, part 3

I (a woman) started a new job. A man at my exact level started a few weeks later. About a month later, our entire group was out for drinks when we discovered the man was making $20,000 more than me for the exact same job. A senior woman in my group marched into the partner’s office first thing the next morning and read him the riot act. I immediately received a very sheepish apology, a $20,000 raise, and retro pay to my start date.

This is the value of talking about salaries with your colleagues – and of standing up for your colleagues in situations of injustice.