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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/LucyAriaRose on 2025-10-08 04:10:41+00:00.

I am NOT the Original Poster. That is Rusticwhiskey. They posted in r/MaliciousCompliance.

Thank you to u/djseifer who let me know about this post!

Do NOT comment on Original Posts. Latest update is several months old.

Mood Spoiler: happy ending

Original Post: May 18, 2021

I originally posted this as a comment on another thread, but realized it needed its own limelight.

I worked at a company that gave out exorbitant amounts of vacation. Anyone who worked there for 25+ years received 8 weeks of vacation and 2 weeks of personal time. This was a family owned company, but rather large. We ran 3 shifts totaling 250+ people.

Enter Jimmy. Jimmy was a grissled old man, he started at the company when he was just 20, now he was 63 and gave absolutely zero shits. Jimmy also knew how to make a specific part for our product, him and one other higher up in the office.

One day the plant owner comes out and announces he’s selling to a corporation. He’s older and ready to retire, he promises that there will be very little change and wishes us all well.

The new company comes in and immediately goes after many of the great benefits we had. The first thing they do is cut everyone’s max vacation down to 4 weeks, and do completely away with personal time. Anyone who’s maxed out had until December 31st of that year to use it up, and they wouldn’t pay it out. They then go into the office and clean house, firing anyone who’s close to retirement. Including Jimmy’s back up.

But they also do away with one very important rule. You no longer have to get vacation approved, you can just call in and take it.

Jimmy is pissed, and they know it. They realize he’s the only one in the building that can do his job now. So they hire a new kid for him to train, most likely to permanently replace Jimmy. So Jimmy does what anyone would do. He calls in the first training day for the new hire, and lets us know he’s going to use all of his PTO at once, and promptly takes 10 weeks off.

We had a back stock of parts he had made, so it wasn’t too unnerving. But for 10 weeks, Jimmy went and applied to other jobs, found one, and started.

Fast forward 10 weeks, Its the day Jimmy is supposed to return. He doesn’t. For two days they try calling him, and even go to his house. He’s nowhere to be found. Finally on day three he calls and resigns, and they lose their shit. The parts he makes are specialized and patented by the original founder, you can’t just hire someone off the street to make them. What eventually happened was they had to contract the original owner to come in a teach some new hires how to make them, and when he found out what all they had done it pissed him off. The last I heard he charged them a 7 figure contract to teach them how to produce the parts, and they had to pony up, or close down.

Moral of the story, don’t fuck with people’s vacation time.

Edit: Jimmy made and electronic control module that was sealed and stayed fixed in a poured unit made of a two part epoxy.

Edit #2: Jimmy didn’t exactly “Miss out” on a seven figure contract and had zero chance to take one. He left, said fuck em and moved on. When they contacted the previous owner and explained the situation it was basically a “you need my help? It’ll cost 1mil.” Type of conversation.

Final update: Thank you everyone for all of the attention this received! I had no idea this would blow up like this. I have immediate family working with the company still, so if I hear of anymore rumblings I’ll fill you all in. Also, I worked here for four years. I have a few other Jimmy stories I may post at other times on the appropriate reddits. Thank you all again!

Some of OOP’s Comments:

Commenter: So they never tried to contact the backup and rehire him?

OOP: Honestly I never asked nor was I informed. He was like 65 and had also been there for 40+ years so I’m sure they did. Why he didn’t come back, I’m not sure. My guess is he was bitter and doing just fine in early retirement.

Commenter: Jimmy is my spirit animal.

OOP: Our factory was next to another factory. In-between them was a giant gravel lot owned by the city, and they let both factories use it for excess parking. One time, Jimmy was walking out of the building and a co-worker told him their boss was coming to find him, to let him know he needed to clock back in and stay over to finish some work (about 2-3 hours).

Jimmy hustled out to his truck and waited. When the boss walked up Jimmy dead ass looked him in the face, pulled a 40 out of a cooler in the bed of his truck, and slammed it.

Now I didn’t get to see this, I was just told about it. Rumor has it they just stood and stared at each other for a minute before the boss shook his head and walked back in.

Since he was in the gravel lot and not on company property, their wasn’t anything they could do.

Jimmy was a hardass.

OOP adds:

A 40 is a 40oz can of beer. Jimmy always had a cooler with 40oz cans of either Blue Moon, or Milwaukees best in the bed of his truck.

Commenter: (downvoted) I’m cool with not being taken advantage of, but Jimmy was being a dick in this instance. Or, worked at a place he didn’t like/respect and probably should have quit long ago.

Because after this, jimmy shouldn’t be driving himself home.

Hey, if your company fucks you around, I get it. But if they’re halfway decent, you could return the favor. For the rest of us who want decent places to work who don’t hate the world every morning we wake up.

OOP: I have no idea if he drove. His wife worked across the street and his brother worked there with him, so I honestly couldn’t say. He did leave his truck there at the end of the week a lot and ride with others to the bar or river, so I couldn’t tell you. I never saw him drink and drive, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t.

On the other hand, I completely agree with how he handled it. He was already clocked out for the weekend and halfway to his truck when they decided to make him stay for overtime. He could have just said no, but he made a statement instead.

The company was bad about alerting you to overtime. They’d come out while you were waiting in line at the time clock and pull you for a double. And this was before the take over. Out of all the good reasons to work there, that was one of the few bad things.

Commenter: Firing everyone at retirement age is majorly illegal in the US, age discrimination.

OOP: Well, here’s the thing. I live in an At-Will state. They can come in and fire you at anytime and are required to give ZERO reasoning. They usually give you BS reasons though. Such as, “We’ve eliminated this position”, or “The company is going in a different direction”. They never say “You’re too old”, to cover their own ass.

Granted, you could take it to court. But you’d probably lose. It’s sad and unfair.

Edit: I should have stated this earlier, but didn’t think it relevant. They fired other people as well. Probably 10-15 people who had been there for like 10+ years. But the thing is, they hired people to replace almost everyone they fired who were of all ages. It was more to cut cost than to discriminate against age. People who had been there for multiple years had received raises. And we’re talking Dollars, not cents like most American companies. So they hired new people at the starting wage and saved a buck.

I guess a case could still have been made against them though.

Commenter: As an old guy who has been a tech exec at a dozens of companies, including being brought in on takeovers, let me confirm that this is SO real. Not as bad as entitled next generation owner whelps who haven’t a clue about running anything and then go firing key people in a hissy fit crippling the company.

Both outsiders and next gen owners have rarely a clue about the ‘secret sauce’ that made the original owner so successful. Better than average vacation or share options make for FAR better employees… alter that at your peril.

OOP: I agree 100%. This guy started this company in his basement in the late 50s and made it a 500 million dollar company. We had great benefits, great employee/employer relations, and the lowest turnover rate I’ve ever seen. The new Corp. Made it one of the worst places to work in the Area.

I still have friends that work there, and they just tried and failed to unionize. That’s a still developing story for another day though. Apparently they crossed some lines and possibly broke some laws, maybe karma will strike again.

More on the part Jimmy made:

A control module that was hand made and had to be sealed to be dropped into a two part epoxy. They honestly probably could have reverse engineered it, but my guess is they were crunched for time. I know we had a lot of backed up orders in multiple departments.

Update (Same Post): July 28, 2025 (over 4 years later)

7/28/2025 This post is still rolling in comments and likes, and I can’t believe how it’s blown up. Jimmy is …

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/1o10nvk/get_rid_of_my_vacation_have_fun_replacing_me/