Auto Worker Was Told To Ignore Defects On The Assembly Line, But When He Did As He Was Told It Turned Out To Cost The Company A Lot Of Money

Matthew Gilligan

7 mins ago

Source: Shutterstock/Reddit

You gotta love it when a boss tells you to do something you KNOW is wrong.

You might have to go along with the program because you’re just a lowly worker, but that doesn’t mean you’re not waiting for it to come back to bite them.

Check out how this employee handled it!

We think you’ll be impressed…

Not a defective product? Alrighty boss.

9 years ago I used to work at a car parts manufacturing company, and I was making dashboards.

We had many sections and dashboard types we made, from analog, to hybrid to fully digital ones, and this story takes place while I was stationed at the fully digital dashboards.

There was protocol to follow…

The process to make a dashboard was very simple (too simple tbh).

Put a PCB into a frame, press a button, wait 2mins, now place the entire frame with the PCB into a different machine, connect the display, press a button, wait 5 mins, then move everything to a third machine.

Then check the cover for defects manually, put on the cover, press a button, wait 5 mins, and finally, move the whole dashboard to the checking machine.

Press start and wait 10mins all the while running from machine to machine for optimal productivity.

In 12 hours you’re supposed to make around 500-600 dashboards, if you have a good day without any toilet breaks or the machines breaking down (it happened often).

So, my story takes place while I was working on the cover part of the process.

We had a small part of the cover that was made from a see-through piece of plastic that displayed a symbol for oil change (I think) and we needed to check it for any dots or imperfections.

Any imperfection = throw it into a crate and send it to quality control.

If they deem it usable (which almost never happened) they send it back and you use it.

This one time the team leader flagged me down and told me “Hey, you’re gonna get a light at that station so you can see the imperfections better. Anything you find, send it to QC. Leave nothing out!”

Sure, boss!

I’m like great, better work conditions (somewhat). So on I go checking the covers, but there’s a problem.

Each and every single one of the covers was faulty.

They either had dots in them, or lines, some were even torn/cracked. So I flag down my team leader and tell her this.

She asked me how many I found in the last hour, I tell her over 50.

She looks at me, thinks for a bit, and smiles.

“Ok, keep doing your job, just make sure we hit our quota for the day.” I look at her puzzled for a bit, but then realise what she’s planning and smile as well.

So I go back and just do my job.

In the next few days, crates upon crates upon crates pile up at my station.

You can barely get around at this point, so the QC manager comes down because they saw a dip in our productivity, since the team leader knew that we wouldn’t be able to hit our quota for the day.

She just told me to my job, it’s not my problem they sent us defective products.

Well, you asked for it…

QC manager asks what is all this.

I just tell him, calm as I can be, that these are all defective products, all of them have either dots in the transparent part or lines going through the entire small window.

He’s fuming at this point, takes one from the crate, checks it, agrees it looks bad, and takes it to the QC station for checking.

A few hours later he comes back and tells me it’s fine, to use them all and not to check for these kinds of defects.

I tell him ” but boss, I AM supposed to check for this issue, I can’t just ignore it when it -”

“Do as I tell you to do, the QC approved it (which almost never happens) and it’s good to use. Don’t talk, just work!”

Whatever you say…

Now I’m mad but that’s the kind of work it was.

So I just do as he told me to do, I stop checking for any defects.

I just get a cover out, plop it onto the frame with the display, push it into the machine and press the button.

Our productivity skyrockets.

We hit levels never seen before at our station, even the QC manager congratulates us for increased and record productivity, and “see how easy it was, you just needed to do your job!”

I’m grinning at this point, both from anger and from anticipation, because I knew that this is going to bite him in the ass eventually.

Well, the moment of “it biting him in the rear” comes around, and he’s not pleased.

Did I mention that we made our dashboards for car manufacturers like Fiat, Volvo and Kia? Yea, big shots, especially in my country.

So the dashboards were delivered to the customers, and they were very mad at the quality.

Yikes…

As soon as they plugged it in for internal testing, they saw the dots, the lines, the cracks, everything.

It was messy.

Over 2,000 dashboards were sent back to us, demanding an explanation for this bad quality and demanding a refund.

So obviously, the eyes were pointed at the QC, who in turn, pointed his glaring eyes at me.

He walks down to me and screamed at me what was I thinking making such bad products for the sake of productivity.

I just smile and say “but boss, you told me to ignore these issues, and to just do my job, so I did.”

He’s not pleased but knows he’s in a corner, so he had to take the blame for his mistake.

All he got was a slap on the wrist (apparently he’s been with the company for a very long time and never had any write-ups, this could have been his first) and I got off scot free.

The company lost well over 5000€ because of the defective dashboards.

And I got to do the checking again, like I was supposed to do.

Never had any issues with the company again, because I knew how to do my job.

The QC avoided me for the rest of my time there, and from what I’ve heard from a friend who was working there for a bit longer after I left, he was very happy that I’m gone and that “jerk is never gonna get a job with his attitude”.

What an idiot.”