Dealing with demanding clients can be tough. But it can be even tougher to deal with a manager who doesn’t listen to warnings.

Find out what can happen when managers don’t listen to experienced professionals.

Another trip down memory lane.

A very long time ago when I worked in the printing industry, I ran what was called the prep dept, or pre-press.

We made all the printing plates starting from the artwork down.

This was before computers, so it was mostly large sheet film and large cameras, etc. think 30 x 40 inch large. This is important to remember.

So, the story. We had a customer that never, ever approved anything on the first printing.

Even though she signed off on the artwork and signed off on the color proofs we provided. She always made changes even tiny ones.

She could never seem to find these issues on the artwork or proof, only the final printing.

Knowing how this client operated, they created a strategy that benefited the company.

Because of that, for this customer we always made sample runs using a much smaller press and small plates, think 11 x 14 or so.

She would make her changes and then we’d run the samples again, rinse and repeat until she was happy then we would scale up for the actual production run later.

This was actually much faster to make plates for and much less costly than setting up giant multi color printing presses which are made for high-speed, high-volume printing, not sample runs.

So everything was good, until…

Mr. sales manager comes in the department one day and announces how he’s going to save us a ton of money with this account.

We will fly her down to the plant, and she will approve the designs in person, (about 25 different ones this go round), then we could immediately run the production and save all that small one-off prep for samples.

“This will be really impressive”, etc.

I tried really hard to tell him that this was a recipe for disaster, costs involved, how she never approved anything without changes and any changes would take a day to get back on the large presses, etc. etc.

He tried.

I was talked over, he knew what he was doing, he had talked to her, he had approval from the ops manager, blah, blah, the usual sales rubish.

So, well, ok then.

The big day comes, she doesn’t like anything and wants changes and we’ve gone through all 25 designs before lunch.

Many thousands of dollars down the tubes and a whole day of the production presses time wasted.

He comes to me in a panic and wants to know how quickly we can get the changes made.

I reply tomorrow if I can talk everyone into working a double, 2 days if I can’t. “But, but, but she’s flying back out this evening”.

Sorry, I can’t re-invent the laws of physics.

This experienced professional tried to warn him, but he thought he knew better.

The owner of the company comes to me to show him the problems and what changes she wants.

So, one design I show him, her comments on the sample where the polka dot background had dots that were: “1/32 of an inch too big”.

All the changes are minor like this and no one else but her would have even noticed.

He asked “did she not approve the artwork?”, yes she did, “did she not approve the proofs?”, yes she did, here are her initials on them.

All these changes could have been quickly done and back on the smaller press within hours, not days.

Cause, you know, we’ve done this for her for a few years now.

They knew what they were dealing with, and they were saving the company so much money.

Mr. sales manager gets fired, since this was a large and high profit account, but on the way out he tries to throw me under the bus for sabotaging him, like it was personal, sigh.

I don’t miss those days or him at all.

Yikes. This manager learned a lesson the hard way.

Let’s see what Reddit had to say about this situation.

This user gave the situation a diagnosis.

This commenter did not let this one slide.

This commenter shared valuable advice for anyone in a similar situation.

Someone who also works in this industry shared some insight about the situation.

Another user had a story to share regarding salesmen crossing the line.

This commenter is telling the truth.

They tried their best to warn him, but he didn’t listen.

He paid the price.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.