Csdrhrt

Worked at this company for around 4 years, I have about 7 years in the workplace overall. I work in a team of 3 who deal with 'reporting' (mostly financial), we maintain the systems that "month end numbers" come out of and other reporting during the month.

At month end - whether that's a weekend or week day or whatever - we have to work out of hours to close down all the accounts, run the month end processes so the business people will have the numbers they need to work with.

We worked out a rota for who has to do the "out of hours" work. There isn't any pay or time off in lieu - it's just accepted as the nature of the job that we have to give up 1 in 3 month end days to do this.

We have recently (~2 months) got a new boss, recruited from outside the company. Most recently it was my turn to run the "out of hours" stuff and be on call for any process failures etc. It was a public holiday weekend. I made an offhand remark that I'd be checking the numbers Monday (public holiday). New boss said we're all on holiday, "don't do it, wait and see who actually needs this stuff and when they shout, we'll respond to it" I explained why we have to do it, what will fail if we don't, etc. Boss wouldn't listen so I dropped it, pretended to go along with it, then logged on remotely anyway and did the things we needed to do.

Now I'm worried I can be "written up" for disregarding instructions, even though I am just doing what we actually need to do.

Given that situation what I should have said to the "new boss"? Am I doing the right thing?

You have absolutely done the wrong thing. Here's how:

1- You disregarded a direct order from your boss to not do the out of hours work. He might have some things planned like review processes on how/why after hours work is necessary for a number of possible reasons. He might have even been working on trying to get you guys a better deal (time in lieu or overtime pay). For whatever reason he wanted to review and monitor the workflow. You completely ruined that for him and wasted his time and possibly others (ie he might have already had plans with his direct boss).

2- Expect fallout. At the very best you'll be the trouble maker in the boss' eyes at the very worst you could face disciplinary action.

3- Comments like "maybe I should be boss instead of him" show you have a complete lack of respect to his authority in the workplace. Be careful because this is how rumors and toxic work cultures can start. If you make yourself a threat to the new boss then be prepared to follow through (ie directly challenge him or wait for him to quietly prepare a case against you to get rid of you). When you blurt out statements like this there's no in between path.

The new boss naturally wants to impress his superior, if you stand in the way of him doing that then you will have started something that will most likely not have good consequences for you.

And of course if you really don't like the new boss then you could always find another job.

Let’s rephrase this a bit, your boss gave you a direct order which you then proceeded to totally disregard, and you are wondering if (a) there could be some negative fallout for this and (b) whether you should be the boss.

I’d say the answers are yes and no. Whether there is any negative fallout is in the future, so can’t say for sure, but it would not surprise me at all. As for b, I don’t think this in any way indicates that you should be the boss, quite the opposite.

Let’s take it as a given, that if these reports are left un-done, the company will totally fail and go out of business on Monday morning when the report isn’t available. Your response was totally inappropriate. You should have refused to leave the work undone and escalated to the next higher manager (and the next if necessary) until you get authorization to do the work. That demonstrates personal responsibility and dedication to the company.

Now, if the consequences were less drastic, you should have stopped and considered whether or not your boss considered the cost acceptable for some reason. You should have asked for written/explicit (email) acknowledgment that you had warned of the consequences and then gone ahead and let the chips fall where they gonna fall.

Instead you unilaterally decided your boss was a clueless idiot and you’d ignore him. That doesn’t make you either responsibility or dedicated, it makes you someone that considers your manager an obstacle to be gotten around or ignored. Even if you are 100% correct in your evaluation of your boss, that doesn’t say anything at all about your qualifications. And your only positive point is that you’ve been there long enough to know that not running a report would be bad, they could hire a kindergartener and make sure that didn’t happen again.