I'm a teacher so I'm just lost on this one.

A manager manages (ideally). How the fuck is making sure shifts are properly filled NOT his/her job description?

I keep reading these stories and it just seems unreal they wouldn't be doing that.

My wife was 8 months pregnant and started having regular painful contractions. She thought it was just braxton hicks contractions and ignored it all day while i was at work. Then out of nowhere her water broke. I took her to the ER the night before my morning shift on what was my "friday" (we didn't work traditional days and hours, so it was technically Thursday but my 2 days off were Fri/Sat) as soon as we got settled in to the ER I called the manager on duty and told them what was going on. That guy was great, told me not to worry about it, focus on my family, and they'll handle tings on their end. Perfect, exactly how that conversation should have gone. As we learned more about what was going on, and that delivery was eminent and serious concerns about his health being as early as he was. I called the same night manager, updated him, and told him to pull me off next week's schedule. At worst I was worried my son would end up in the NICU, at best, we hadn't finished his nursery so when we would go home I'd have to get everything finished and help my wife recover. Again night supervisor is 100% chill and wishes me and my wife luck, hopes my son is good etc, generally a decent human being.

Luckily my son was born with only minor complications, he spends one night in observation and we're sent home. All is good. I keep in touch with management and let them know I'll be back the following week. All seems fine.

Day 1 back at work, all is good, I return to the office at the end of my shift and I'm pulled into the general managers office. Let's cal him "Richard" ;) I figure it's to talk about how's the wife, how's the kid... etc. The GM is a dad, and always acted like a decent person up till now. No, instead he hands me a write up for missing a shift without giving 24 hours notice... Excuse me? WTF! I explained it all to him, because I hadn't talked to him. He listened and said, yeah that's what the manager said, but policy is policy, no exceptions. I refused to sign it, cussed him out, told him where he could stick the write up and went home... At this point I'm fully expecting that to get me fired. I started looking for a new job. Next morning I show up to work, two suits from corporate are in the office and call me in to a meeting with the regional VP, a HR manager and Richard. They apologized to me about this, said it was all a misunderstanding, Mr. Richard was technically following the employee handbook, and that HR would make sure the write up was not part of my employee file... however they still wanted me to sign the write up... so I did.

Then I decided a bit of malicious compliance was due. So after that, every time Mr. Richard did ANYTHING that went against the "company bible" I made sure to file a complaint with HR every...single...time... which was multiple times a day usually. After 3 months the company eventually fired Mr. Richard due to incompetence...

The day I came in and saw his desk cleared out was one of my happiest days at that job. ☺️

TLDR: I was written up for failing to give 24 hours notice I couldn't work a shift because my wife went into labor and delivered my son 5 weeks premature. Used same reasoning that got me written up to get GM fired.

This was at a software company, where, like all other companies, it’s common practice to spend more money justifying not paying workers a fair share than it would cost to pay the fair share.

The irony in this is that it was a full sunk-cost. The results went against what they thought they would say and they had to get rid of them. It’s like paying someone to tell you you’re stupid