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 never had the impression that I was too harsh mocking management. If anything, at times I doubted my capability to mock them on an appropriate level. When you hit Monty Python level you realize you have only begun.
I maintained what friends referred to as my "stupid file", where I kept copies of the various handouts, emails, flyers, and whatnot that management handed out that were SO stupid that I knew no one would believe me without evidence.
Every one one them elicits a "I thought you were kidding" response when I show them. I've had auditors refuse to accept them without corroboration, and then be absolutely stunned when they were confirmed.
One auditor had to take a half day off to process one of them because he literally could not continue to work the rest of the day after what he'd learned.
That file was over a hundred pages, the last time I counted.
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.
I never had the impression that I was too harsh mocking management. If anything, at times I doubted my capability to mock them on an appropriate level. When you hit Monty Python level you realize you have only begun.
I maintained what friends referred to as my "stupid file", where I kept copies of the various handouts, emails, flyers, and whatnot that management handed out that were SO stupid that I knew no one would believe me without evidence.
Every one one them elicits a "I thought you were kidding" response when I show them. I've had auditors refuse to accept them without corroboration, and then be absolutely stunned when they were confirmed.
One auditor had to take a half day off to process one of them because he literally could not continue to work the rest of the day after what he'd learned.
That file was over a hundred pages, the last time I counted.
Time to promote myself to not-customer. 😏 (Ex-Amazon inside joke.)
Interesting how making things right does not get people promoted. I guess you have to do everything wrong.