'Too bad about those sales figures': Innovative employee improves buggy app, gets fired by bosses

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Aug 20, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

This employee had to learn the hard way that many companies don't want innovation, they want employees who will keep their heads down. That is a frustrating lesson to learn if you're a bright young person in their first job, ready to tackle any issue. You find an issue, have a great idea of how to solve it and then… your boss just never implements that idea. They might ignore it entirely, or just tell you not to do that. Then you watch as your workplace carries on as usual. 

This guy had an especially rough case of being too smart for his own good. A guy who's bright and thinks outside the box doesn't belong at a company like that one anyway! If your talents aren't appreciated, you start thinking about leaving the job, because there are lots of companies that would love those kinds of smarts. If Jake was stuck at a company that never changed, he'd probably go crazy anyway. Plus, being at a job where higher-ups have sneaky incentives to make employees' jobs harder is just not worth it. 

Next up, this person wanted to fix their car with their grandfather, but as they wrote, "We eventually found out what Grandpa Kevin had done."

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  • 01
    Computer - 'Pretty soon, a lot of other people were upping their game with Jake's cool new home screen and video index database. You know what happened next.'
    via Derick David on Unsplash
  • 02
    Font - Disable an employee's innovative screen layout and video indexing application? OK. I'll do that. Too bad about those sales figures, tho. XL OC This happened back in the days when companies had call centers in the US (I'm old). I worked for Company X (not its real name). Company X got a lot of its business from inbound and outbound telemarketing. I worked for the branch of Company X that set up and managed the call centers where their CSRs worked.
    via u/hendergle
  • 03
    Font - The call center this story is about was pretty big. Hundreds/dozens of CSRS sat in a big bullpen with X- Windows terminals as their workstations. X-Windows terminals were basically just displays. Advanced for their time, but all the actual work happened on servers elsewhere. Think of the terminals as just just a screen, keyboard, and mouse that only ran the equivalent of a web browser.
    via u/hendergle
  • 04
    Font - A CSR could sit anywhere in the bullpen and flip the "ON" switch of the terminal to get the standard home page. You weren't allowed to change the standard home page, or anything else for that matter. Everything you did as a CSR was via a script. There was no deviation from the script allowed (in theory- in practice, human customers are prone to going off-script).
    via u/hendergle
  • 05
    Font - One of the "apps" (I don't think they called them that at the time, but it's essentially the same thing- an icon you could click on to do a thing) was a video player that allowed the CSRS to look up a commercial that a customer would call about (this was an inbound telemarketing site). Think of it like a private YouTube, I guess.
    via u/hendergle
  • 06
    Font - The commercials themselves didn't have a ton of information about what the services and terms that were offered, and the clipped voice-overs that came at the ends were hard to hear/interpret. So the idea was that customers would call, and then the CSR would find the commercial on the app and explain the offer to the customer, hopefully leading to a sale.
    via u/hendergle
  • 07
    Font - The app was pretty buggy. Networks, even LANs, didn't have a lot of bandwidth back then, and video playback ate up a ton of it. Plus, the descriptions in the videos' metadata weren't always the greatest. So CSR/customer conversations tended to be long discussions like "is it the one where the little boy talks to his grandpa about calling during the holidays?" "No? Is the little boy black, or white?" "Oh, it's a little girl? And it's the grandma, not the grandpa? Wait- is this the one wher
    via u/hendergle
  • 08
    Font - Call times for those types of calls were abysmal. Add to that a very confusing "home screen" layout, and the result was that sales numbers for the site were pretty bad.
    via u/hendergle
  • 09
    Font - Enter "Jake" (which might be his real name because I can't actually remember it). He was a Comp Sci major at some school that I also don't remember. Jake did NOT like the workflow of the mandatory/standard home screen, and he hated the stupid commercial-video app. So, being a Comp-Sci major, he did the logical thing: He fixed it.
    via u/hendergle
  • 10
    Font - Jake figured out that you could interrupt the boot-up process of your workstation and get it to load its configuration from somewhere else. I don't remember the exact method he used, but the end result was a very efficient workflow that allowed him to walk customers through the process in a fraction of the standard/mandatory time.
    via u/hendergle
  • 11
    Font - Jake also started writing up detailed descriptions for the commercials, indexed by topic, market (where the commercials aired), etc., and even having the era's equivalent of "tags" (e.g. "Picture:Horse" or "Character:Grandpa"). He put all that into a searchable database he created. He somehow got that on his workstation as well.
    via u/hendergle
  • 12
    Font - The end result was that Jake could take a call, figure out what video the customer was inquiring about, walk them through the offering, terms, and conditions, and sign someone up in five minutes where it took any of the other CSRs fifteen to twenty (disclaimer: I am pulling those metrics from my as The point is, Jake set things up so that he was much more efficient than others using the standard/mandatory tools).
    via u/hendergle
  • 13
    Font - Eventually, Jake's cool new home screen got noticed by other CSRs. They wanted their numbers for call duration and sales to improve as well. So they asked Jake how he did it, and Jake very kindly showed them how. Pretty soon, a lot of other people were upping their game with Jake's cool new home screen and video index database. You know what happened next.
    via u/hendergle
  • 14
    Font - One of the bullpen managers noticed that Jake's terminal always looked different from everybody else's. That WOULD NOT DO. The handbook specifically stated that employees were NOT ALLOWED to change the terminal. Worse, Jake's video index database made it easy to simplify the "script" that CSRs were required to use. Going off- script was a huge deal. Managers had these headsets that let them listen in on any call, and they could screen-mirror any employee's screen.
    via u/hendergle
  • 15
    Font - Jake got called into a meeting and let go. I never heard what happened to him, but I suspect he graduated from his Comp Sci program and went on to do great things. Jake (or whatever your name is), if you read this: sorry you got fired. That was a pretty s ty thing for them to do. I hope you invented Google or something and are now reading this from the deck of your megayacht.
    via u/hendergle
  • 16
    Font - I got called into a different meeting, the topic being "how do we prevent employees from 'hacking' the workstations?" I was like "this dude you just fired increased his efficiency and sales numbers by orders of magnitude. Shouldn't the first topic be: how do we implement these same changes for ALL of the CSRs?"
    via u/hendergle
  • 17
    Font - My suggestion was not well received. Jake's "hack" would supposedly cost the company tons of money for retraining (not to mention the salaries required of folks like me, who were tasked to prevent other CSRs from-gasp!- improving efficiency). It wasn't an approved standard. Legal hadn't reviewed it. The folks who monitor ADA hadn't vetted it. It promoted "reckless behavior" in other CSRs. "The Script" had been developed by a lot of people whose JOB it was to develop scripts. It wasn't Jak
    via u/hendergle
  • 18
    Font - I spent a lot of time and energy to convince my management and Company X's management to use Jake's improvements. But the bottom line was: I was told to "just fix it" and to obliterate all traces of Jake's "hacks." I wasn't even allowed to keep a copy of Jake's database. So I shrugged my shoulders and did exactly what I was told to do. With predictable effect.
    via u/hendergle
  • 19
    Font - Call lengths increased. Sales rates sank. CSRs who were looking at nice fat bonuses suddenly saw those become impossible, and not a few of them quit. Customers started dropping off calls because they were taking too long. Company X probably lost a ton of business, although I'd be hard pressed to quantify it.
    via u/hendergle
  • 20
    Font - But it was cool, because the bullpen managers were getting their fat bonuses for script compliance. And I got a big pat on the back for figuring out how to lock down the terminals (I honestly don't even remember how I did it. Probably just a BIOS password or something stupid like that.)
    via u/hendergle
  • 21
    Font - In the end, it probably didn't matter all that much. Company X moved all their telemarketing moved overseas, and that particular call center shut down. Technology has moved on, but I honestly hope there's someone out there hacking whatever workstations they are forced to use.
    via u/hendergle
  • 22
    Font - tl;dr: Company X had inbound telemarketing workstations with a mandatory standard home screen layout. "Jake," a clever new guy, figured out how to make it better AND set up a database to reduce the time it took to lookup commercials. Jake shared his new layout and database. The call center's metrics had major improvements. Company X found out about it and told ME to lock down the workstations, despite my impassioned and persistent recommendations to use what Jake had created. They insiste
    via u/hendergle
  • 23
    Font - amanhasthreenames. If i learned one thing in business school, its that the proper alignment of incentives can make or break a business
    via u/amanhasthreenames
  • 24
    Font - Black_Handkerchief. What I learned from this tale is to not share your rule- breaking and bonus- earning hacks with others, and to make sure it resembles the old thing... and also to implement a boss key to revert looks and functionality back to stock.
    via u/Black_Handkerchief
  • 25
    Font - KnowsIittle +3. Paid to do not think. Zero tolerance for common sense and critical thought.
    via u/KnowsIittle
  • 26
    Font - chemprofdave +3. Best revenge from "Jake": start software company that made 100s of millions by optimizing video feed and search.
    via u/chemprofdave
  • 27
    Font - AltruisticAd996. I also hope Jake went on to do magnificent things in life, he probably didn't but I would like to think SO
    via u/AltruisticAd996
  • 28
    Font - Vortexbig And yet another story of middle managers (no offense to you intended of course) getting in the way of progress. This is exactly why I left my last job, small improvements that could stack up significantly over time were punishable if discovered.
    via u/Vortexbig

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workplace-stories employee work stories computers workplace-story work smart employees computer innovation telemarketer workplace creativity in the workplace
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