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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/bingbong_Iamwrong on 2025-09-11 02:00:52+00:00.
This happened over 5 years ago, and it still ticks me off whenever I think about it. Also sorry about how long this is lol:
I was 17 working at a big theme park, and had been working there for the better part of the year. I had quickly picked things up, and was usually regarded as the responsible one on the team when it was just a bunch of us teens working a ride. We had a college student intern lead who was... not good at leading, or training new hires... We'll call him M.
At my main ride, it required 3 people minimum to operate; One person in the control booth, one at the entrance gate, and one at the exit. However, we could have 4 or 5 if we were incredibly busy to help deal with the line. The people in the booth and at the entrance could not see the person at the exit directly, so we used radios. The control booth also had a camera on the exit gate. From day 1 on the job, we were taught hand signals in case the radio dies or for quick communication, these signals were universal across the entire park.
That summer, 3 freshly certified kids (we had to take tests to prove we paid attention to training) started the ride with someone locked inside the fence, aka: not in a seat. Twice it was another employee, once it was a guest (which was a HUGE deal). The thing with those incidents was that those in the control booth didn't notice their mistake until the others SCREAMED at them to hit the E-stop. Those new hires were either retrained or moved to a simpler ride.
Well, one incredibly busy day, there were 5 of us running things. Me, M, and 3 others. M had been called over to another ride, which normally wasn't an issue. About an hour later, someone was scheduled to go home, and M hadn't come back yet. I called the other ride and asked them to send him back. We could've run things with 3 of us, but it was super busy and we really needed a 4th. A few minutes later, someone (not our lead) was sent over to take over. Weird, but no big deal.
Another hour or so went by, someone else needed to go home, I called again asking for M. Also, all the radios' batteries were dead/dying. Things had slowed down, so I, being the spare 4th person, took the radios to the office to get fresh batteries. This took less than 10 minutes, and in that time, the guys had switched to hand signals as we were trained. When I came back, our lead had once again sent over someone else to take his spot. At this point I realized that M was probably just shooting the shit in the nice air-conditioned booth at the other ride.
Now the guy that got sent over to us was normally at a rollercoaster and hadn't been at this ride in over a month, so I gave him a quick review and he took controls. I turned around for maybe 30 seconds when I hear yelling. I turn around, and the ride was stopped maybe 3 ft off the ground with our entrance guy locked in the fence. The guy at controls saw what he did and hit the E-stop, something that the other screwups that summer did not think to do.
We had to call upper management, and wouldn't ya know? M came running over! This time the highest of the higher ups came over as well. They pulled each of us aside and interrogated us (which was odd) then walked away and talked for like half an hour. They then FIRED the guy at controls on the spot, and came up with BS reasons to get the rest of us removed from running rides. They absolutely were only doing that to make an example of us. I tried to rip into M for shirking his duties, but as an anxiety ridden kid it didn't hit very hard. I was mainly pissed off that they fired the poor guy who never should have been there in the first place.
Remember I took the already dead radios earlier? They tried to say I had 'removed communication devices from the ride area' which prevented them from letting controls know they were outside the gate. They were basically trying to pin the whole thing on me. Total bull, bc this happened after I brought them back. I assume M threw me under the bus for being 'in charge' while he wasn't there. Also, we had hand signals!!! I tried explaining that to them, but they didn't give a shit. I refused to sign the paperwork which would be admitting fault, so this fight was stretched over multiple days. Plus I was leaving for college in like 2 weeks and didn't want to spend my last days of summer cleaning bathrooms.
They gave us a new rule: if a single radio was dying, we had to call a manager to fetch us a new battery even if we had people to spare to go grab one instead. If a radio died, we had to close the ride. Managers roamed around the whole area and were responsible for sooooo much, so if you called them and it wasn't urgent, it could take a long time for them to show up. The next day, my radio was dying, I called the manager, half hour goes by, I call again. My radio died. I shut down the ride. The people in the over-an-hour line got PISSED. I explained to people that we had to close because of the radios. Naturally, they got even more pissed bc of how stupid that was. Manager shows up minutes later, I took the battery from him with a smile on my face and he left without saying a word. After many complaints, management was magically fine with us using hand signals again! I never signed that paperwork, I left for college, and funny enough, M also went to the same college. I ran into him once, he just kinda nodded at me, I gave him a dirty look, and I never saw him again. The next summer, I was rehired by the park as a lead and actually did my damn job.
TLDR: When I was working at a theme park, we had several incidents of someone at my ride starting it up with people locked inside the gate. This happened again when I was there because our lead, who was at another ride, was sending over inexperienced people instead of coming back and helping us. Upper management fired the guy who should've never been there, and my lead tried to blame it on me and get me sent to janitorial duty. I fought them, and they made up a rule stating that if a single radio battery died, we had to close the ride until a manager brought us a new one. After I closed it down many times over the next few days and got tons of complaints, they were okay with us getting the batteries ourselves/using hand signals again