'They hired 3 people to replace him and still shut down': Company shuts down after new management fires highest paid mechanic to cut costs

Author image for Eleonora Bader
Eleonora Bader
Jan 14, 2024 10:00 AM EST

More often than not, new management really knows how to dig their own grave.

This new owner fired one very essential employee because the reality was that the owner had not done his homework, so he had no idea what this employee did. As it turned out, this employee was doing three jobs in one, meaning that the owner now had to replace him with three new employees. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself…

It all began when a company that sold 'man cave' items was sold, and new management was looking for ways to cut costs. They noticed that one particular employee was being paid a substantial amount, and he was working at very odd hours, coming in whenever he liked. Being the micromanagers that they were, and not having done their homework (as previously stated), they lost the game, big time, because they decided to fire him.

Read below how it all played out, and then check out this fed-up neighbor who called a towing company on a neighboring restaurant's car after someone working there took his assigned spot. Let's just say someone's car got towed, and it wasn't pretty.

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  • 01
    "They had no idea who they just fired...”
    via Canva
  • 02
    New management doesn't know what an employee does, fires them, regrets it After lurking on this sub for a while, I figure it's time to share an experience of my own. I used to work for a company that supplied a range of "man cave" type items. Pool tables, darts equipment, arcade machines, pinball machines, you get the idea.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 03
    A few years after I started working there the company was sold, and the new owner wanted to "shake things up". The company wasn't doing great financially and changes definitely did need to be made, but the very first change the new owner made very nearly sunk the entire business. At this point I shall introduce you to "John" (not his real name of course). John worked somewhere between 10 and 80 hours a week, turned up and left at completely random times, hardly ever spoke to anybody, and spent a
    via u/mackemforever
  • 04
    The new owner didn't like this, and within a few days of arriving had told John that he had to start working regular hours like the rest of his employees. John refused, and two weeks later John was fired. This was a mistake. You see, nearly 50% of the businesses income came from the sale of pinball machines. However almost none of that was from brand new machines. Almost all of it came from classic models that had been repaired and refurbished.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 05
    John was the only reason why the company could do this. He was a pinball fanatic, had spent decades building up a huge contact list of other pinball fanatics all around the world, and had a near encylopedic knowledge of these old machines. He had an uncanny ability to track down any model, no matter how rare, anywhere in the world. He could find machines that only had a handful made, several decades earlier, machines that never existed in our country, and even a few machines that never officiall
    via u/mackemforever
  • 06
    When he got his hands on them, he knew everything there was to know about the electrics, the mechanical components, he was a skilled woodworker and could repair cases so well that you'd never know they were damaged, he was an amazing painter and could bring the artwork back to life, repaint sections that were completely missing, and get the machine looking like it had never been touched. His work hours were erratic because some weeks he might only have one machine in his workshop, but others he'
    via u/mackemforever
  • 07
    After John was fired, and new orders started to pile up and old orders stopped being fulfilled, the new owner panicked. He ended up paying an electrical engineer to repair the internals, an artist to restore the artwork, and a carpenter to fix any damage to the exterior. Those three combined were costing the company more than Johns wages, and the standard of their work was nowhere near what he could produce. That wasn't the biggest problem however. He tasked one of the office staff with sourcing
    via u/mackemforever
  • 08
    had for being able to find rare machines, almost all of the customer enquiries we got were for rare machines. These weren't the kind of things you could find on ebay, they were the kind of things you could find because you knew a guy, who knew a guy, who knew somebody who owned an arcade in a different country 30 years ago and still had some old machines in his garage.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 09
    Over the next 12 months the pinball side of the business went from around 45% of the companies revenue, to less than 10%, and the business overall continued to slide as the owners cost cutting methods in all areas caused staff to leave, customers to look elsewhere, and less than 2 years later the business closed for good. As for John, he semi-retired and now just takes the occasional job when he hears about a machine that is particularly rare, or that he finds exceptionally interesting, and from
    via u/mackemforever
  • 10
    Risc Terilia 2 days ago Classic case of "you're not paying me for the hours, you're paying me for the years" 4.2k Reply Share Delicious_Fisherman5 2 days ago Knowledge and experience are worth $$ 958 Reply Share
    via u/Risc_Terilia, u/Delicious_Fisherman5
  • 11
    notcr yofexplainer · 2 days ago It's even more simple. They pay him 10% of revenue because replacing him will cost 30% of revenue. This is more rare but the cost of replacing is real for any position. I had a manager that got angry at me because I did not ride my team for every infraction. I told her, I have a happy team that performs. They show up and do their job. I don't have turnover like other teams.
    via u/notcr**yofexplainer
  • 12
    She took people off my team and put them on other teams so I had empty roles and our numbers slipped. Then I filled the positions and the other teams lost more people. They had revolving doors. I asked, what's more important, enforcing dumb rules or hitting our numbers while having happy employees? She hated my supervisor style. I had to quit due to her style. Company ended up firing her 2 months after I quit. My mental health could not take any more of her. Some people just don't get it. 817 Re
    via u/notcr**yofexplainer
  • 13
    Original1260 2 days ago Koala This is exactly it. People don't leave jobs, they leave managers. So many managers never learn this lesson. 392 Reply Share
    via u/KoalaOriginal1260
  • 14
    TalkingBackAgain - 2 days ago They saw that they paid him way more than the other people so naturally the cost-cutting-reflex kicks in and *whew* don't you know, we just saved us a ton of money. What they never ask themselves is: why is this guy getting paid so much? Because he's your institutional memory, he's the guy who knows everything. Managers, they know the cost of everything, they know the value of nothing. 868 Reply Share
    via u/TalkingBackAgain
  • 15
    AmbitiousEdi- 2 days ago New owner realizes why the old management left this guy the alone and let him do his thing. Love it. 1.1k Reply Share 337 ... WeirdSysAdmin - 2 days ago It's always the guy that they don't understand what his job is, too. Reply Share
    via u/AmbitiousEdi, u/WeirdSysAdmin
  • 16
    dc5trbo 2 days ago SocDem Reminds me of what happened to my dad. New kid came in and decided the job my dad had been doing for 25 years required a college degree and forced him to take a demotion. He was close to retirement anyway so he decided, "why the hell not?" Cue a whole lot of panic on the company's part and a whole lot of "Not my problem" from my dad. He unfortunately passed before he could retire. At the memorial, one of the guys from his company introduced himself as one of the five pe
    via u/dc5trbo
  • 17
    Otherwise-Parsnip-91 2 days ago Why do new managers never talk to anyone or ask any questions? They just come in to an unfamiliar business, make a ton of assumptions and then mess everything up from there. Many such cases. Reply Share 157 ... DriftingGeiran. 2 days ago Because generally people with enough money to buy businesses didn't actually earn that money. 129 Reply Share
    via u/Otherwise-Parsnip-91, u/DriftingGeiran
  • 18
    DullCartographer7609 2 days ago Reminds me the day I left the last company I worked for, I knew their office would struggle. Fast forward 8 months, and my old branch only has 5 ppl from 20, 10s of millions in lost revenue. Customer network gone. Processes gone. Relationships gone. And all I asked for was another $5k a year to make up the Christmas bonus we didn't get, but the VPS got. 106 Reply Share ...
    via u/DullCartographer7609
  • 19
    findingmike 2 days ago I knew a guy like this. Microsoft bought the company and laid him off. About a month later, they hired him back as a contractor for 2x his old pay. 45 Reply Share Mammoth_Clue_5871 1 day ago . Had a similar experience in education IT. We had an old graybeard that was our lead mainframe guy and only COBOL programmer. Ex NASA guy from back when NASA was putting people on the moon. He was one of the highest paid employees and he kept odd hours (5am-2pm usually).
    via u/findingmike, u/Mammonth_Clue_5871
  • 20
    New management. All of the sudden they want to know why this guy who's never here gets paid so much money. Pretty much the same thing happens, then an 'unanticipated difficulty' occurs. Long story short they hired back the same guy (at almost 3x what he got paid previously) but he would only work from home, and he no longer accepted phone calls. If you wanted to speak to him you emailed him and put it in writing.
    via u/Mammonth_Clue_5871
  • 21
    I think he worked 3-4 more years then retired, triggering another panic even after he gave them a full years notice. They ended up having to hire 4 people to replace him and still the work suffered. 17 Reply Share
    via u/Mammonth_Clue_5871

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cut costs replacement boss highest paid micromanager manager new management shut down new hire customers pinball machines mechanic Reddit company office staff machinery
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