‘I am both impressed and disgusted by the audacity of this team’: Employee sent across the world to help with project ends up as their scapegoat, leaves team high and dry

Author image for Elna McHilderson
Elna McHilderson • Managing Editor
Nov 11, 2025 8:00 PM EST

When you are a valuable employee who gets things done efficiently and properly, you better believe your company is going to want to spread your hard work around. That most likely means you are going to be asked to travel. Sounds exciting, until you end up across the world with a team who does not appreciate your expertise. Just like this employee who decided he wouldn't stand for it. 

 

He was sent across the world to help this team get their project together. They kept coming up short and they didn't know why. This employee quickly found out why once he got there. They were unorganized and not functioning as a team. In fact, they were all busy putting the blame on each other rather than actually working on fixing the problem. So, this out of towner comes to fix their mistakes and instead gets turned into the scapegoat for everything. So you know what he does? He said "forget you guys" and left them high and dry to ruminate in their own mistakes. Let's see who the scape goat is now once the project completely crashes and burns!

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  • ‘I am both impressed and disgusted by the audacity of this team’: Employee sent across the world to help with project ends up as their scapegoat, leaves team high and dry
    via Unsplash+ (and Getty Images)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • Drag me another country to fix your problems then try to blame me for them? Get left high and dry.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • This is unfolding basically in real time but we're near the end of the story now.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • This story is a bit technical in nature but I've tried to spare as many details as possible.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • My company does industrial software globally which involves multiple modules interacting with physical processes. Projects often involve installation and testing locally but my team's part is able to be deployed and tested about 90% remotely.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • There was one project in North America where my team's software was deployed months ago and we've only had to deal with fairly minor bugs since then.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • However the project overall is running hella late and the local team is struggling hard. So three weeks ago they ask me to fly out about halfway across the world to help fix it while I finish off that last 10%.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • I arrive and find that the other key software module in the system barely works, but the people on site who are supposed to be working on it instead of knuckling down and fixing it have basically been blaming everything else.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • Talking to the other team members these guys has me spent the past month blaming the mechanical and electrical designers fitters and technicians, often without real basis.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • When I arrive they seem happy that I'm here to help fix things but about a week later shock to nobody they start trying to blame me for their problems as well.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • ‘I am both impressed and disgusted by the audacity of this team’: Employee sent across the world to help with project ends up as their scapegoat, leaves team high and dry
    via Unsplash+ (and John)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • If we've said this once, we've said it a million times! Never disrespect your tech support. This guy was coming in to help this team with their poor coding, and when they turned on him, he just as easily turned right back. Tech support basically invented the Uno reverse card at work! 

  • I tolerate this for about a week, explaining to them how the system should work (I was a key designer), collecting logs and evidence of the problems and performing root cause analyses to help them locate the problem with their code.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • It doesn't stop them from trying but it keeps my hands clean and makes progress to me going home.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • Then last Friday, I get a baffling email from the group of them. Apparently they had met at a time where the project manager knew I was not available and constructed an elaborate theory about how the software I was responsible for was doing the wrong thing and convinced the PM, who is non-technical, into backing them.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • In a call to discuss it I was told by the PM that I was responsible for collaborating with the team to fix this issue which had resulted in delays to project milestones.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • I try to explain my side but get shouted down in the call. I experience a very powerful moment of clarity about what is happening and immediately change my strategy.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • That shift I explain again that I consider the issue to be unlikely and demand to see hard evidence backing this claim.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • They cannot produce anything beyond "the data at this breakpoint isn't what it should be" which I explain is not conclusive as it could still be the fault of their code.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • I then spend half the shift trying to replicate the problem and capturing network traffic logs between the two systems - the interface where these systems interact, but no matter how hard I try I cannot replicate it.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • Instead of delivering it just to them as I had been, I copy in my management back home all the way to to the top, along with a paper trail explaining showing how I had been blindsided, demanded to fix a problem that could not be traced to my area of responsibility, all without evidence, and documented names and exactly how much time had been wasted.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • ‘I am both impressed and disgusted by the audacity of this team’: Employee sent across the world to help with project ends up as their scapegoat, leaves team high and dry
    via Unsplash+ (and Getty Images)

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • It turns out I'm not alone, some privately reach out to me asking for more details explaining that they are seeing a similar thing unfolding on a different project run by members of the same team.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • I happily oblige. In the middle of the shift I explain this in clear terms to them and they lose their shit, denying what they had done, backtracking, trying to blame me some more, one looked like they might start crying.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • The next day I send a formal letter to HR back home withdrawing my consent to be there with all the legalese referencing my employment agreement and specific legal statutes and explaining that among other reasons this had become an unsafe and uncollaborative work environment.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • They agree without any fuss and I start planning to return. The PM loses their shit and almost begs me to stay because it means that I will not be present for the client sign off, and there were still things to be fixed, and the likelihood of this local team fixing them themselves is next to zero.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • I leave tomorrow and testing starts the following day. Normally this would be unfathomable but at this point I have enough evidence that I'm basically untouchable.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • I am both impressed and disgusted by the audacity of this team, but they fucked with the wrong person and just landed themselves an even bigger world of pain.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie
  • tl;dr: Failing team drags me to site so they can have another person to blame for their problems, I ensured that it backfired in their face, and now they're in the shit with nobody left willing to help them.
    via LikeASomeBoooodie

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