My boss made me dump 40 gallons of paint down the drain

Last month at the hardware store in Portland, my manager told me to pour out old paint that was still good because we didn't have shelf space. I said no, that's bad for the pipes and the environment. He said do it or get written up. So I did it, but I also took a video of him giving the order. The pipes clogged two days later and cost the store $600 to fix. When the owner asked who did it, I showed the video. My manager got fired, and I got a $200 bonus for stopping a worse situation. Has anyone else had to deal with a boss who ignores basic common sense?

2 comments

2 Comments

william_jackson6513d ago

The whole parking lot turned into a rainbow slick" is hilarious in hindsight but I bet it wasn't funny at the time. Pro tip: always document a bad order on your phone, saves your hide every time.

terry_thomas13d ago

Funny thing about Portland and paint disposal. I used to work at this little hardware store off Burnside back in the day and we had a guy who would just dump old latex paint into the parking lot drain. Thought he was being clever because he did it at night. The whole parking lot turned into a rainbow slick for weeks and the city fined the store like eight hundred bucks. Boss tried to blame it on me but I had clocked out twenty minutes before he did it. Some people just have zero common sense about what happens after stuff goes down the drain. Good on you for recording it though, that's actually pretty smart thinking. Managers like that give the rest of us a bad name.