I was an automotive tech for a few years. The last position I held with that title was at a crappy little locally owned oil and lube shop. Now after a few years in the industry I had accumulated quite the knowledge of OSHA AND EPA standards that the automotive industry has in place.

The owner of this business is not a good man. We’re talking big game hunting trips to Africa, only gave charity for tax-breaks, and somehow ZERO empathy for people as a whole. His holiday bonuses were 25$ gift cards…. to his own store.

Now the manager of this particular location happened to be the nephew of the owner. This guys favorite line was “(if you don’t do xyz) you can take it to the house (fired)”.

I guess he could tell that every employee was turning against him, as we were all one day pulled one by one into the office to have a “talk about morale”. Two of us mechanics were already talking about starting our own small shop, taking our loyal customers with us (they would tell us that whenever we left they would stay with us)

I guess nephew found out and was none-too-happy about it. The talks were really him just trying to weasel out of anyone if we (myself and mechanic #2) were stealing business from the company (not yet!). The next day we both received a call informing us that we were suspended for two weeks due to the smell of “whiskey” on our breath (which there wasn’t). This was their way of not having to pay unemployment.

Immediately I got on the horn with the EPA, informing them that this s.o.b instructed us to dump oil and oil filters, antifreeze, differential fluid, and transmission fluid into the dumpster. Then a call to OSHA to let them know about all the standing oil in the bays, exposed electrical components, and shoddy additions to the building.

I got a text from my friend that still worked there two days ago to let me know OSHA showed up and they had to degrease the entire garage, fix the awnings, and electricians were wrapping up the wires.

A day later found out that the EPA had hit this bastard with a huuuuge fine.

Two months later all locations were sold off.

edit: I’m not sure what proper Quora etiquette is, but thanks for all the up votes! I didn’t think it would get that high!