Measuring and managing wasteful spending and labor is a necessary part of business, but a lot of managers don’t want to do this for some reason.

Those managers also don’t like to take suggestions from staff.

Take the manager in this story. Follow along to see where his ego got him.

Costing my boss hundreds of dollars because he won´t listen to my ideas

I’ve made it my duty to remove everything from the store as soon as it expires, as my boss mandated.

This includes items we make in the store like sandwiches. We’re not allowed to eat anything that’s expired. It has to be thrown out.

I made a list for my colleagues to look up when things expire.

The rules start to stink. Literally.

With that, every shelf has now empty holes without stock, and my boss’s office is full with expired stuff because she “Needs to check every item to make sure none of us is eating it.”

I calculated that over $400 worth of food went to the trash in half a week because we didn’t discount them.

I’ve asked a lot of customers about their opinion to implement such a discount to reduce the waste of food and I just got positive responses!

My boss however was not happy that I talked about problems with customers and got pretty mad at me.

The numbers don’t lie. In this case, they scream.

I showed him the numbers I calculated and what we could potentially earn with a discount of 20% based on the customer’s opinions I got when talking to them.

The majority of them would buy more to save food and with a discount, they’d much rather buy something.

My boss was too stunned to speak when I told him that she’s losing thousands of dollars a month to the trash can, but since it wasn’t his idea he’d rather lose the money than admitting I’m right…

Check out what people are saying.

It makes me sad that a lot of kids have to do this, but I’m glad they get food.

This is so, true. A lot of managers and clients have zero humility. It’s not about improving the business for them.

Indeed. You don’t get anywhere by trying to help managers who don’t want things to improve. Focus on finding an employer who does.

I disagreed with this part, too. It’s not appropriate to do market research for your employer without consent.

I thought of this, too. I imagine it could be easy to get sued. Maybe there’s a way around that?

I hate to see food thrown out. What a shame.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.