We all know that the people who actually do the work every day and the people who design theĀ processesĀ needed to complete that work often are not the same person.
Which can be a problem when the processes donāt work, so the workers develop a workaround, and no one knows whatās going on with the other group.
OP worked in a showroom that had a process in place that just wasnāt working.
I work as a sales advisor in a showroom, the company recently went through some changes specifically with the way price tickets are created.
All tickets are to have QR codes linking to the item online (stupid I know), but what makes things worse is that theyāve updated the printing system, so now if a product is not on the website or just hasnāt had itās QR code linked it will output a script error making it impossible to print that ticket.
To keep work (and sales) flowing, OP came up with her own workaround.
As a result, yours truly has been making tickets from scratch for newer products or products that are just not on the site yet, for the past year.
This was supposed to be just while the other departments got the proper ones made.
Fast forward to last week and I get a email from upper management asking for a list of all the tickets needed for the showroom (a little over 100 tickets at this point).
I do so, as I thought this was just them wanting to make a push to have the rest complete.
Half an hour later and I get a follow up email saying āwe need to deal with the issue at the sourceā questioning why I didnāt inform anyone about the tickets needed.
I did, in fact Iām still waiting for some that I asked for in back in January.
They were also questioning where I even got the template for the tickets from since āthey would never give one out.ā
When the suits found out, they scolded her and told her to stop.
After responding, I received another email stating that āI should never have done thatā as āit looks unprofessional having some tickets with and without QR codes.ā
The email ended by saying that Iām to never do this again and that Iām to take the ones that I made down now and put the proper ones up.
This was further reiterated in a meeting between my manager and upper management (he let me know afterwards).
She did, right before she left for a few days.
But would you look at that, the proper price tickets still arenāt made yet and Iām on holiday for a few days.
Oh well better take them down anyway, wouldnāt want to get in trouble for having anything unprofessional up after all.
Whenever I go on holiday I block all work numbers and emails so Iām not bothered, so no idea what was happening until I went in today.
She came back to chaos and apologies.
I walk in and everyone is in a panic since nobody could remember the names and specs of the new ranges and no one could find the tickets I removed (in my locker, took the keys with me so no one could access).
Coworkers start asking me what happened to the tickets and if I could put them back up, I state that it was upper managementās decision and that there was nothing I could do without their approval.
Fast forward to the final couple of hours of the work day and I received a lovely email apologising for their ācurt reactionā in the prior email, walking back what they had said and asking me to put the tickets back up until the new ones are created, I was also offered a āsecondment to the e-commerce departmentā to help fix some of the data errors on the website.
Apparently this was due to my co-workers sending complaints to the owner about what had happened and the owner then pressuring upper management to āsort out the situation before it escalatedā.
Delicious.
To add why itās a satisfying conclusion, for me at least, the secondment is a temporary position with increased pay and is more in line with what I actually want to do.
Also yes they asked me to put them back upā¦ but I never said I did it now, did I?
Is Reddit on her side? Letās find out!
The top comment says the bosses had no idea what they were asking.
Itās never been more obvious.
Sometimes the actual source gets whatās coming to them.
You can just follow the money.
I mean what did they think happened?
I just love it when managers try to blame employees for improving things.
Likeā¦thatās not a bad thing.
If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.