'2 years later the business closed for good': Clueless owner fires pinball machine expert, pinball machine sales fall by 35%

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Emmy Pratt • Writer and Editor
Jan 9, 2024 6:00 PM EST

There is a company for everything. There are still companies that manufacture and sell old tin lunch boxes, refrigerated vending machines, and indoor play places. It's hard to imagine somebody dedicating their life to something so specific with no real booming industry around it. Still, some incredible people out there acquire esoteric knowledge, use said knowledge in their job, and get paid handsomely for it. Unfortunately, the esoteric path doesn't always work out for medieval scholars or VHS maintenance specialists, but it can work out for pinball machine experts.

This story follows an essential employee at a company that sells 'man cave' items. He singlehandedly kept the pinball machine aspect of the company afloat, accounting for about 45% of the company's revenue. When new owners came in looking to shake things up, they fired him because he refused to work regular hours. As a result, the pinball machine sales plummeted. 

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  • 01
    r/antiwork u/mackemforever. 1d 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.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 02
    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.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 04
    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 all of his time hidden away in a little room at the back of the warehouse. John was also the highest paid non-managerial employee.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 05
    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.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 06
    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
  • 07
    near 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 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
  • 08
    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.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 09
    His work hours were erratic because some weeks he might only have one machine in his workshop, but others he'd have a dozen of them. His pay was so high because the machines he worked on sold for anything from £5k to £30k.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 10
    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.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 11
    That wasn't the biggest problem however. He tasked one of the office staff with sourcing the machines that customers had requested, but it was impossible. Because of the reputation John 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
    via u/mackemforever
  • 12
    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.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 13
    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 around half a dozen machines a year he earns enough to enjoy a very comfortable semi-retirement.
    via u/mackemforever
  • 14
    Risc Terilia 1d ● Classic case of "you're not paying me for the hours, you're paying me for the years" Reply 44.2k ↓ ...
    via u/Risc_Terilia
  • 15
    Delicious_Fisherman5. 1d Knowledge and experience are worth $$ ... 960
    via u/Delicious_Fisherman5
  • 16
    notcrappyofexplainer • 1d 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. She took people off my team and put them on other teams so I had empty roles and our numbers slip
    via u/notcrappyofexplainer
  • 17
    KoalaOriginal1260 1d ● This is exactly it. People don't leave jobs, they leave managers. So many managers never learn this lesson. 392
    via u/KoalaOriginal1260
  • 18
    TalkingBackAgain 1d ● 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. Reply ↑ 874 ↓ ...
    via u/TalkingBackAgain
  • 19
    bnh1978 • 1d New owner didn't do the fundamental task of assuming ownership of an operational business.... interview and engage with all the employees. Especially the high payed outliers... Sure, there might be those people who were friends or family of the old guard that were getting sweet deals and free rides. But you give them the soft touch; "What would you say you do here..." talk and figure it out. New owner didn't look at people like they were assets. Only as liabilities. ↑ 270 +
    via u/bnh1978
  • 20
    Otherwise-Parsnip-91 • 1d 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 4154 ...
    via u/Otherwise-Parsnip-91
  • 21
    dc5trbo 1d 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 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 people they h
    via u/dc5trbo

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