Fortune 500 company fires worker over a rigged survey metric that's nearly impossible to pass: ‘Apparently the world’s leading financial tech company couldn’t afford to keep me around anymore’

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Etai Eshet • Editor
Jul 19, 2026 11:15 AM EDT

Corporate America has found a new way to fire people without technically firing them: math. Not real math, obviously. The kind of math where the answer is predetermined, and the numbers are just there for flavor, like parsley on a cafeteria tray

Fortune 500 companies are rarely ever the good guys in any story, and naming names is really my thing, so let's just get into it inc.

Here's the plot in its purest form. You take a job where you talk to strangers on the phone, strangers who are, by definition, calling because something already went wrong in their day. Then you tell those strangers to grade you on a scale of 1 to 10, except secretly it's a scale of 1 to 2, because anything below a 9 counts as a personal betrayal. It's like a restaurant handing out comment cards that say "rate your meal 1-10" but quietly shredding every card that isn't a 9 or 10, then telling the chef he's fired because people "hated" the food, using data that's mostly confetti.

The genius of this system is that it doesn't measure whether you're good at your job. It measures whether a random assortment of humans, some of whom are having the worst day of their month, felt sufficiently delighted by a phone call to leave a rave review. It's the same energy as expecting a five-star Yelp review from someone whose car just got towed, except the tow truck is also somehow your fault now.

And the real punchline is the sample size problem. One cranky customer, one dropped call, one guy who apparently couldn't tell a man's voice from a woman's, and suddenly you need to go collect dozens of flawless report cards just to break even. It's less "customer service metric" and more "escape room designed by someone who hates you," where the exit door requires forty consecutive strangers to unanimously agree you're a delight, on a day when your hours got cut in half.

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  • Headset-wearing man covers his face beside bold yellow quote text on a blue textured background that reads: "it comes down to a horrible, intentionally broken formula"
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    Stressed headset worker covering his face beside a bold quote

    Subject in image is a model.

  • Earlier this week, I was fired by Intuit, Inc. I was making enough money to qualify for food stamps and apparently a Fortune 500 company - the world's leading financial tech company - couldn't afford to keep me around anymore.
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  • The reason why comes down to a horrible, intentionally broken formula. My job was to take calls from Quickbooks Online users struggling to use their crummy, overly complicated program and help those people out.
    via justintensity
  • I found the job pretty easy for someone who knows how to use the program, knows basic bookkeeping practices, and can go 5 minutes without telling a customer to shut up.
    via justintensity
  • Headset worker looks down beside bold yellow quote text on a blue textured background. “Why was my job in danger? I showed up on time and did what I was assigned to do”
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    Stressed headset worker looking down beside bold quote text about a job being in danger

    Image is representative only

  • A couple months into the job, my whole team's hours were cut suddenly. I sometimes found odd jobs to make up for the money but the point is they were barely paying me anything when they started threatening my job.
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  • Why was my job in danger? I showed up on time and did what I was assigned to do.
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  • But we were being measured by a made-up, proves- and-shows-nothing statistic called TNPS (Total Net Promote Score) - you see guys, my tnps was low.
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  • And if that sounds like nonsense to you, just brace yourself: To figure out your score they send email surveys to any customer you have had a 20 minute discussion with.
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  • If that customer gives you a six or below, you fail. 7s and 8s are trashed, and only 9s and 10s are considered good enough.
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  • In order to "meet the standards for metrics" your score must be 95, meaning 19 out of every 20 surveys you get must be a 9 or above.
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  • Why use a ten point scale and not a 5 (or even 3) point scale? Why not send surveys to people whose calls lasted at least 5 minutes rather than 20?
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  • Why is the goal 95% instead of a humanly achievable number like 75%? Because F YOU, that's why.
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  • We're only asking the people with complicated issues or simple minds to evaluate you. Well, a customer I succeeded in helping but was still grumpy gave me a 6.
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  • A person whose comments said I "went above and beyond" gave me a 1. Another 1 came from a person who I lost connection to, only to call them back a minute later.
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  • A third 1 referred to me as a woman (there are certainly ladies out there who sound like me, but I assure you I sound like a man).
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  • So was I allowed to discard these obviously false bad reviews? No!! Why? Because f you, that's why.
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  • So this means by getting these four 'detractor' reviews that I didn't deserve, I now had to get SEVENTY SIX people on the phone for a period of least 20 minutes- meaning this would take a mathematical minimum of 25 hours, or one full week after the schedule cut.
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  • Each of these 76 would have to get survey emails, actually bother to fill them out, and give only 9s or 10s or else I am apparently fired.
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  • TNPS clearly isn't a metric to measure competence, it's a Kobayashi Maru meant to justify firing good workers.
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  • When someone puts you in a no- win situation, don't accept your firing or your anything else as a loss.
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  • They don't deserve the right to tell you if you succeeded or failed, only you know that for sure.
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  • And if you're going to fill out customer service forms, give the mother r a 10. Our lives are all hard enough as it is, nobody needs. their manager at Chili's lecturing them over a 7 because the margarita was watered down.
    via justintensity
  • EDIT: Thanks for love, comrades. Bread and roses to you all. I'm gonna post a link to an article from a month ago that probably explains the truth of what happened.
    via justintensity

  • This is the trick, though. Companies love a scoreboard nobody can actually win, because a rigged scoreboard is a built-in excuse. Nobody has to say “we’re cutting costs.” They just get to say “the numbers spoke,” as if the numbers weren’t handpicked, filtered, and rounded specifically to speak in one direction. It’s corporate ventriloquism, and the dummy on the company’s knee is always saying “you’re fired,” no matter what question got asked.

    So if a stranger ever hands you a satisfaction survey, remember somewhere out there a real person’s rent is riding on your mood that day. Give the 10. Save your grudges for people who can actually defend themselves, like restaurant chains, or Congress.

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