It’s frustrating when people ask for things that they don’t understand and won’t listen to you.

Sometimes you need to pick your battles.

See why, in this case, that meant giving the boss and sales staff exactly what they asked for.

Here’s that printout you wanted, sir. All 400 pages of it.

Last month, we hired a new sales guy.

He’s young, over-enthusiastic.

I shall call him Young Buck.

Young Buck thinks he knows everything, yet every time I try to explain to him – even at the most basic level – the inner machinations of the customizable software package we offer to customers, it is as if I am shooting a laser into a black hole.

I have had to show him how to minimize a window on his computer.

He’s also pain in bigger ways.

So, when he asked me, one morning last week, to print out the source code for our software so he could read it, I, of course, asked him to repeat himself, as I was unsure I had heard him correctly.

“Yes, I need to understand this thoroughly so I can sell it to our customers. You want more billable hours, don’t you?”

“Yes, I don’t make commission like you do, but those always look good on my review. A printout, however, would be a bad idea. I could show you how to open the files with Notepad if you–”

“I’d rather have something physical.”

There are a few things to note about our software package’s source code.

It’s been cobbled together from years of development, even before my time, though I’ve refactored and rewritten most of it.

With all the base code, which, might I add, is heavily and meticulously commented / documented, the printout would easily reach 400 pages.

There’s reason one.

Reason two would be that our source code is a trade secret, and for the sake of the company, I don’t want it floating around in meatspace.

I tried to convey both of these to Young Buck.

I could almost see my words shooting right out the opposite ear.

He did not like it when I told him I would not do it.

So, I was already half-expecting it when the general manager called me.

“Iris, Young Buck is telling me you won’t print out our source code for him.”

“Yes, and that’s because–”

“Iris, we take cooperation very seriously at this company. You need to cooperate with Sales so they can sell your product alongside our projects.”

“That’s not a good idea because–”

“Listen, I don’t want excuses. We need more sales. Just get on it. And make me a copy too, it sounds interesting.”

It looks like she lost the battle, but actually…

Young Buck is computer illiterate.

General Manager is twice as bad.

“Can I get that in an email, then?”

Two minutes later, the email appears in my inbox. I save it, and print myself a copy.

I ran out of paper twice before I had ONE copy ready.

The final product was pushing two inches thick, and made quite a satisfying thump as I set it down on the general manager’s desk.

I wish, dear reader, you could have seen his face when he realized what he’d asked for.

I never ended up printing a second copy.

General Manager shredded his copy because I had flabbergasted him enough to be able to explain, without interruption, that the source code was a trade secret and reassured him that it’s on our network drive anyway.

I gave both him and Young Buck access to the folder as per a second email request.

In ten days since, nobody has accessed that folder but myself.

Here is what people are saying.

I hope so! I’m sure he did.

My young garbage collector worker was like this. We refer to him as the Garbage Nazi.

Ouch. That’s mean. Do it.

It’s useless. You can’t even search it or copy/paste it.

I’m sure it was so satisfying.

Ask them if they enjoyed the reading material.

Good heavens.

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.