People who have been doing the job always know the best way to do the job. I know this, as a non-manager, and don’t understand why actual managers can’t figure it out.

OP is in one of those jobs that can be tricky to navigate. Over time, he and the other techs have figured out the best way to handle public transit, needing materials at different sites, and packing in the most visits possible per day.

Many years ago, I used to work for a SMB Managed Service Provider as a repair technician in London. I was repairing desktops, laptops and printers. It’s pointless trying to drive in Central London, so the company would reimburse us for our monthly public transport ticket.

As a result of this, we couldn’t really carry spare parts with us like the guys with company cars elsewhere in the country, so they would get delivered to site.

The usual routine was; go to the office in the morning and collect the parts for the first call. Then ask the stores clerk to arrange delivery of the rest of my days’ calls to site, in a set order. This would be the order that I had already planned to attend to travel for the day, so the parts would get there before me and I could crack on with the first one whilst they were being delivered.

I’d usually be onsite for the first one by 0930 and would frequently manage 6/7 repairs per day.

Obviously this would depend on how much travel was involved, but all the techs would divvy up the calls first thing in the morning so that none of us were running around the city too much and we were mostly based around one area for the day.

We each had “regular” clients where we’d often go two or three times per week and knew the IT teams involved.

Then, they got a new boss who felt like “fixing” things that definitely were not broken to begin with. They tried pushing back but he outright refused to be budged.

Anyway, the MSP gets bought by a bigger MSP. We’re told not to worry (I know, right?) and that nothing would be changing, as we were one of the most productive regions in the business. And or a bit, it was everything as normal. Then the Manager announces that he’s leaving. (I bumped into him about a year later, at random, and he said that this was due to politics.) A new Golden Boy manager is parachuted in from Oop Nurth to “transform” us. Apparently, we might be the most productive team, but we weren’t the most profitable.

He devises several methods to decrease costs and raise profitability.

First off is the closure of the office and relocation of the stores to somewhere “central”. This is basically the other end of the country, so shipping has to be done the night before. Us techs are none too happy about this. Second, he wants us all to use cars (our own cars). He can’t force this, as the travel ticket is written into our contracts, and he can only change the contract with our agreement. To a man, we say “no”.

What he can do is change the shipping routine. The new process is that parts will be delivered to a commercial locker at locations in the City and we have to go and pick the parts up before heading to our first call.

So, they began doing exactly what he said and nothing more – which of course ended in disaster.

Cue MC.

We are well aware of the performance of the new owner’s chosen shipping company and usually reserve them the nickname “UK Fail”, as they never seem to hit Service Level Agreement. Further, the lockers are located in various strange locations; on the street, petrol stations, random courier offices. Kind of like how Amazon Lockers are now, but without the nice paint jobs or electronic entry. They have no way to keep tabs on who is where, or collecting what, aside from calling us.

Anyway, there’s a quick get together and we agree that, as the GB hasn’t deigned to help us and isn’t hiring replacements for those who left, we aren’t obligated to help him. The plan is; no one is to attend a locker until 1030, which is the SLA for parts delivery. No one is to carry more than one bag of parts. If you have to do multiple trips to a locker, so be it.

No one is to pick up any slack for anyone else (answer calls for help if someone is in trouble though). Do what you have been assigned, if possible, and never call in to say that you have finished all your calls for the day.

Anything that gets left over, gets left. If you get assigned an Emergency Call (some clients had SLAs that required a tech onsite in a given time, usually 4 hours), go there and wait for parts as usual. Communicate this to any new hires during their training days.

Productivity plummets. GB calls meetings and generally loses it, but hey, we’re just following his procedure, right?

Luckily their new boss seems to at least pretend to get it.

Within 12 months GB is gone and the new guy has the sense to ask us what would be a better way to run things.

Would Reddit have done anything differently? Let’s hear them out!

This person also says it’s a too-old tale.

Plenty of folks jumped on the analogy.

People really need to try to stop making things “better.”

But there is a balance to it.

Running a company is hard, and so is managing people.

But old adages exist for a reason.