‘Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me’: After blaming an inexperienced design engineer, sales rep gets hit with karma and loses his job

Advertisement
  • 01
    106 "You'll see, I'll get the last laugh..."
  • 02
    Sales representative tried to get me fired for his mistake
  • 03
    This experience goes back to 1990 and first real job after college. Its a time before email and everything business related was done though Fax. I was working for a global enterprise as a design engineer. I was the first graduate my department had every had since before me design engineers had gone though apprenticeships to get to this high level that I started at at. So to start with I'm not from a subservient background and that does not go
  • 04
    down well. I got the usual hazing for going to get everyone a cup of tea from the canteen on the other side of the site (in ceramic cups) a clearly impossible task which I avoided being humiliated by just telling them to There was a bit of this till they realised I did not care about their opinion of me. Once that stopped I got on with the job I've always been respectful of knowledge so learnt a huge
  • 05
    amount. One of the things I was warned was critical was to keep notes and records of all instructions. For this there was a massive filing process for all faxed requests and any requests over the phone were confirmed by fax before work commenced, with photocopies also held in a mater file since faxes degraded over time. This is critical for later.
  • 06
    We had a real mix of well informed and complete chancers in sales. Since they got large bonuses for for large sales they did tend to over promise and expected our special projects division to pick up the slack they had created. The big boss (BB) was a man who'd made himself and did quite a good job, an engineer who had move into management (not part of my hazing) who knew his stuff and encouraged me to find things out from the
  • 07
    R&D department engineers and scientists. Because of this I learnt about current thinking and future innovations which aided my design work. We got news of a massive sales win in Singapore $800,000 in 1990 which would be worth $1,899,470.54 in 2024 so it was a big deal. The BB decided it was time for me to shine so I was given the whole thing to deal with since it was all non standard with a lot of
  • 08
    complexity. So I got the 40 page fax and read right though it. On the face of it, it was a modification of a standard car park lighting product but having read the full attached specification it included a request that all the lighting would be dimmable and have white light to first aid the control of light pollution and second support security as white light was better for security camera filming. This confused me and I should have gone to BB to
  • 09
    raise my concerns, but wanted to show I could handle this. First thing I did was talk to R&D since the standard lamp and gear for the fitting was SOX (high pressure sodium) to find out if there was a way in the pipeline to meet the requirement. I was told it was impossible but that a new lamp and gear would be available with white light but lower wattage so would require 30% more lighting to maintain
  • 10
    the same coverage. However it could not be dimmed in the same way as office lighting but could be set for step dimming (presets) to give the appearance of dimming. That would push the unit cost up by 50%. At this point I expect you can see where this is going. The sales representative had done a fantastic job of selling something that we would make a loss in if we stayed to the original price. I took my findings and faxed it all to the sales
  • 11
    representative and due to time zones it was not until the next day before the world blew up. I arrived the next day to see BB in a conference with a bunch of people in his corner office, he looked up when I came in and spoke for a bit longer before calling me into his office. The people in there included corporate legal, sales and some other heads of department including production. He held
  • 12
    in his hand the work order Fax confirmation that had arrived overnight for the Singapore. project. He was straight to the point and asked me "why have you told the sales representative, we cannot do this work, it looks straight forward to us". I responded that "I'd faxed him the additional details that were need to be approved by his client to get their approval to proceed". He told me that the
  • 13
    sales representative had raised a formal complaint on me from not doing as requested and had confirmed the order details over night. I explained with everything I had done in response to the client specification. I asked to see the new one he had and upon close inspection found that the special technical requirements were missing. I said "this is not the original work order'. I was told to get the original one from the filing. So I went to get it,
  • 14
    the Fax was missing and so was the master photocopy plus the Fax I sent the day before. I went and told BB and he said "so we have no proof of what was asked or what you told him either". Things were looking pretty bad for me, until I dropped my bombshell. "BB I don't know what happened to the master copies but I have copies of all correspondence myself". I was able to show my notebook with copies of the original Fax and my response. They asked
  • 15
    for the documents and I said I'd make them copies (honestly never trust anyone) so it was clear I could defend myself if needed. Aftermath, the Global Sales Director who had been in the office fired the sales representative and sent in a new sales person with an engineer to the client. My BB congratulated me for protecting the division. and suggested that all engineers kept secondary copies of work instructions in
  • 16
    future as I had. It was never discovered who had been in the master files and removed the Faxes and photocopies, but a site memo was put out about Industrial Espionage (cover story) that basically said anyone found with master work orders would be fired on the spot and charged with theft.
  • 17
    Effective-Several • 6 hr. ago Good for you! So great that you have a strong CYA instinct.
  • 18
    MMW_Oxford OP. 5 hr. ago Thanks :) my first full time job and a really useful experience
  • 19
    Scarletwitch713. 5 hr. ago Not entirely sure what the compliance was but a great story all the same
  • 20
    MMW_Oxford OP 5 hr. ago Oh it was the record keeping, I had to do it for all work orders and responses, I suppose the malicious bit was I did it a bit more than was expected.
  • 21
    Parking-Fix-8143 3 hr. ago • You were wise beyond your years. Well done Grasshopper.
  • 22
    MMW_Oxford OP. 3 hr. ago Thanks its been useful knowledge my entire career
  • 23
    Bigstachedad 2 hr. ago • Always, always, always document everything and cover your a Never trust anyone in a business environment to have your back. You are not there to make friends.
  • 24
    Burd31 2 hr. ago Very entertaining story. Id almost watch this as a show or something.

Tags

Scroll Down For The Next Article