Sometimes, good ideas take a while to become appreciated — but sometimes, it’s just a little too late.

See what happens when one employee’s workplace solution isn’t permitted by their boss. The tides quickly change when the boss needs the data.

Delete it? You sure? OK!

So I am a fiend for excel spreadsheets. Absolutely love them and even bought an extra-extra-wide monitor for home, so I can see them in all their glory.

My boss keeps telling me that she’s an “advanced excel user, she can run macros, she can do pivot tables, she knows formulas.

Not once have I seen her create or manipulate a spreadsheet in the six months I’ve worked for her.

It’s one thing to say you know Excel, but it’s another thing to name specifics. And you’re the boss? Eek.

So I had a template on our Teams chat that we used every week. It was automated to within an inch of its life to tell us about the company’s health.

We’ve been using it for the last four months after I was given approval by the boss to make it live, gave her a tutorial and everything.

This was for the admins to all see it, and I’d only need to update the raw data once a week instead of send it manually to whoever wanted it on a given day (Up to four times a day usually).

This already sounds like a huge time-saver.

Took out about six hrs work a week having it set up like that. Well, the boss told me to take it down because a different department who hadn’t seen it was worried about personal data when one of the admins told them about it.

There isnt anything like that in there, and anything that isn’t open-access is password-hidden anyway.

Already a classic “too many cooks in the kitchen” tale.

Our IT team has to be formally requested to add a new member to our teams chat, the spreadsheet is password-protected, the tabs are password-protected and the whole company is locked down hard anyway.

So, boss orders me to take it down and delete it. “Run a fresh one for anyone who wants it.”

So, I explained there wasn’t anything in it that was “personal or private data,” but got told “Nope, delete it.”

Tried to explain we use it amongst the admins every day, and it has all these built in features/tables etc.

Nope delete it.

If this boss is anything, she’s consistent.

So, I did. The fallout? Read on.

Cue: today. Boss says to me her big boss meeting is presenting figures to the executives tomorrow.

She starts quoting figures that are wildly out from the true numbers. I questioned where they came from, and she shows me a Frankenstein report that is saying the exact opposite of what she thought, run by someone not even in our department.

Ok, this is feeling like a “fake it til you make it” kind of moment.

I tell her the accurate grand total and show her how I got there with a simple table and some screenshots I had of the original shared spreadsheet. She asks for access, and I tell her it’s been deleted.

I explained why and even showed the meeting notes where she had approved its use after viewing it.

She denies any knowledge of it, but wants it back. I said It would take me two to three days to make it again due to my workload increases.

Ok, I take back my “consistent” comment from earlier…

I saved a copy of the template, but no way am I telling her that.

This will give me breathing room to get the backlog out of my queue while she thinks I’m working on it. Let her sweat through that executive meeting knowing every figure is wrong. No one’s saving her ass [on] this team anymore.

Oof, that was some swift technological justice.

Update: three weeks later and said spreadsheet has never been reproduced.

The reason?

Our new admin started. The one who got hired as more qualified than me.

I realised something very important during the /talesfromtechsupport that followed her start. I am not handing anyone a way to look good in front of the boss on my labour.

Honestly? Brilliantly put.

When questioned about lack of spreadsheet appearing I responded, “I am no longer the most experienced excel user in the team and think New Hire will make a much better version. I’m looking forward to learning some tips and tricks from them.”

Spoiler = She’s a standard user…..*giggles maniacally*

Wow. Does this new hire have any idea what they’re stepping into? Was this person in the right for withholding the spreadsheet?

Let’s see what Reddit has to say.

One Redditor said arrogance and incompetence go hand in hand.

Another Redditor has a boss with a similar “excel expert” claim.

And another user summed up the situation with a beautiful quote.

Honestly, employees are known for embellishing their skills, but if your embellishment gets you in trouble down the line because of your pride — there’s really no one to blame but yourself.

This savvy worker had created the perfect fix, and the boss didn’t hear them out. That management technique makes for a high staff turnover, IMO.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.