I had a friend who was being crushed by his workload. He lived in Canada, and was the sole Canadian employee, supporting his American based company's largest (and only) Canadian customer.
Despite the customer paying for 40 hour a week on-site support, his company insisted that he could work from home. That way, he could work doing support for two other customers in the US.
Not only were they breaching the on-site requirement of the contract, they were essentially double, or even triple billing his time to other clients.
He protested, saying this was unprofessional, immoral, and quite likely illegal. He wanted to hire me to do the on site work, while he did the others. That would meet the contractual obligations, and not risk losing a seven figure account.
He was told that no, there was no need to hire anyone, everything was fine. When he pointed out that working 30km away from the customer was NOT "on site", they told him he was only a quick subway ride away if the customer really needed him on site, and they'd be fine with it.
The customer was not fine with it. They were so not fine with it, they demanded that my friend get his VP up here to talk to them in person about it.
When the VP flew up, my friend debriefed him on the status, and asked if he had any questions. The VP had only one question: "If we did lose this $3M account, how would this affect my quarterly bonus?".
Sometimes you think you're too harsh when mocking management, and sometimes, it turns out you're not harsh enough.
I had a friend who was being crushed by his workload. He lived in Canada, and was the sole Canadian employee, supporting his American based company's largest (and only) Canadian customer.
Despite the customer paying for 40 hour a week on-site support, his company insisted that he could work from home. That way, he could work doing support for two other customers in the US.
Not only were they breaching the on-site requirement of the contract, they were essentially double, or even triple billing his time to other clients.
He protested, saying this was unprofessional, immoral, and quite likely illegal. He wanted to hire me to do the on site work, while he did the others. That would meet the contractual obligations, and not risk losing a seven figure account.
He was told that no, there was no need to hire anyone, everything was fine. When he pointed out that working 30km away from the customer was NOT "on site", they told him he was only a quick subway ride away if the customer really needed him on site, and they'd be fine with it.
The customer was not fine with it. They were so not fine with it, they demanded that my friend get his VP up here to talk to them in person about it.
When the VP flew up, my friend debriefed him on the status, and asked if he had any questions. The VP had only one question: "If we did lose this $3M account, how would this affect my quarterly bonus?".
Sometimes you think you're too harsh when mocking management, and sometimes, it turns out you're not harsh enough.
And yes, they lost the account.
Time to promote myself to not-customer. 😏 (Ex-Amazon inside joke.)