'That’s ridiculous, use your brain': General Manager's rude order costs company big when employee maliciously complies

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  • 01
    Font - Posted by u/savagejimmy85 42 minutes ago All orders must be connected within 3 days or escalate. Sure thing boss XL OC TLDR; GM told us to escalate orders. Cost the company new customers, weeks of overtime, and reduced remuneration I used to manage the activations department for an ISP. I wouldn't say I managed the team as my style is they worked with me, not for me. I was simply the departments leader. For some context, the company had been growing for quite some time, but unfortunately
  • 02
    Font - The old team of 3 plus the manager used to have one person work on the oldest tickets in their queue, plus two on the newest tickets to keep things moving, being interrupted by calls, walk ups and messages. The manager would handle billing and cancellations. The same ticket would often get handled by multiple agents in a day, often the same agent multiple times too. Almost every day they were all doing unpaid overtime (we're all salaried employees) to handle the spill over from support th
  • 03
    Font - We made many changes over the time and I became an expert in the backed of the ticketing system. But the biggest change was we changed our workflow to a priority system. And everything now had a due date. All new tickets had a due date of the day they came in. If the customer wanted their connection on a different date, and the pre- check showed no tech was required, that became the new due date. If a tech was needed, the appointment became the due date. If the customer emailed us against
  • 04
    Font - My priorities were handle the cancellations and billing. When done I followed the same priority as the team unless I was in meetings. The teams priorities were (oversimplified): 1: Get new orders (and relocations) vetted, techs booked, and set applicable due dates. 2: Activate the completed orders or update the customer, tech and due date if there were issues. 3: *IMPORTANT* Escalate overdue orders, and follow up escalations (due date). 4: Activate voice orders. 5: Finally everything else
  • 05
    Font - It became a well oiled machine. The escalations were maybe 0.5% -1% of our orders. As we had so few complaints and typically raving positive reviews from our customers the general manager didn't really understand how we worked or the depth of the changes that made us so efficient. My daily report was usually skipped in the end of day meetings as we had minimal issues. He focused on the other departments
  • 06
    Font - The way we worked now meant that tech issues or appointment issues were also escalated and resolved quickly as nothing slipped through the cracks anymore. The Internet wholesaler worked really well with us as we set clear expectations with our customers, and we always had great data to back up the escalation process. Our most remote customers who had to wait long times for techs completely understood. Usually a tech was taking a charted bush flight out there followed by some off road driv
  • 07
    Font - Now while we had so many orders coming in, we had just as many, usually more some days, customers cancelling their services, largely due to the long support wait times or poor quality support response emails. The meant the general manager was panicking about our record showing we were losing customer to the board and shareholders. In front of everyone he had a massive yelling fit directed at me about the companies negative growth, and this was my fault and I need to have every customer co
  • 08
    Font - After that public dressing down I immediately sent him an email confirming what he just said. I got it back in writing. Techs take longer than 3 days those orders and escalations become our NUMBER ONE PRIORITY. He didn't say business days. So I sat with my team and informed them that our ticket queue is going to be in a world of hurt, but we need to make it clear to him that he doesn't understand how we work, what we do, and that the way he spoke about us was inappropriate.
  • 09
    Font - They are not to stress about the numbers, they are not to do unpaid overtime. I don't care that they are on a salary. Salary accounts for reasonable overtime, and this is not reasonable. They are to end work when their shift ends. Do not accept time off in leui. Only accept paid overtime. I will take the fallout. They aren't paid to be stressed.
  • 10
    Font - Most days we have to work on about 300 tickets total. And today was a Friday. Customer not getting connected until Tuesday. Well thats 4 days. Escalate. Customers roads impassable due to flood so tech has to wait for dry weather. Too bad. Escalate. We escalated about 50 new orders that day. Which meant Monday we had the usual weekend and Monday orders plus those 50. That day over 100 new orders were escalated, plus the 50 followed up. So our queue reflected we had about 450 tickets due. L
  • 11
    Font - Come the next Monday the support managers were screaming at me to get my department in order. I directed them to the general manager. A meeting was called with all department managers over the current state the business found themselves in. When I was asked what was going on, I simply pointed to the email, referenced the dressing down my team got, and informed him I was simply following orders. "That's ridiculous, use your brain. You should know what should be escalated". I pointed out th
  • 12
    Font - He wasn't having it. No, the new orders were our number one priority again. Get people connected. I again move to object, but another angry outburst informing me to do as he says. Cue malicious compliance round 2 and another follow up email confirming. We stopped following up the escalations as we had too many new order tickets to process. By the end of week the wholesaler called an emergency meeting with the company board, a meeting I was not a part of. They were threatening to pull our
  • 13
    Font - The fallout. My team and I were given a blank cheque for overtime to get us back in order. Unfortunately no other staff from other team could assist in a meaningful way. But my team were only too happy to put in as many hours of paid overtime the workplace laws would allow. The company also supplied dinners. It ended up taking us over 6 weeks to undo the damage the general manager had us cause with the OT. The wholesaler also reduced the remuneration we got paid as they no longer consider
  • 14
    Font - FOxyLove Vote . FOng "managers". Most useless fog title in the world. Reply Share 10 min. ago Haunting-Contact-72 +1 · 5 min. ago Manglers Vote Reply Share
  • 15
    Font - TatsmyLife. just now I think this is the best malicious compliance I have ever seen on this subreddit Vote Reply Share
  • 16
    Font - CoderJoe1 It's hard training the top executives. The struggle is real. Vote c3p-bro +3 · 29 min. ago Vote "Manage up" Reply Share +1 18 min. ago Reply Share
  • 17
    Font - Zoreb1 +2. just now If it ain't broke don't fix it. Vote Reply Share

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