Sometimes being efficient is better than being over-efficient!

This guy shares a story of how their new VP at work created a huge mess by changing some policies! What he thought was a good idea backfired so badly that he lost his job.

Find out how the VP got fired!

You want the engineering staff to do the ordering as well? You got it.

So, for those who are unaware, companies usually have engineering staff talk with engineering of parts suppliers, detail down the specifications and whatnot, and then the list goes to the purchasing department or the purchasing folks of that particular engineering department.

This is because engineers don’t want to involve themselves with 30/60/90 days due, terms and conditions of sale, validity of quotes, remember the correct quote PDFs because they have hundreds of them, and working with finance department to understand what is the best for the overall financial health.

And now how the buyers fit in…

Also, in fairly large companies, you have buyers dedicated for each vendor or buyers dedicated to certain products, like pneumatics, electrical, heavy duty construction, mechanical components, made to order parts etc.

And the buyers themselves have internal pathways and routes so that each required product finds themselves with the correct buyer, because the engineers are mean and to lower their workload they will more often than not, dump all the parts on a single buyer.

UH OH!

A new VP comes in, sees ‘Buyers’ as bloat, fat to be trimmed, and makes a decision.

He lays off 8 buyers in that engineering department which makes whole factory material handling systems.

Systems that handle nearly all the materials moving through multi hundred thousand square footage, from raw materials warehouses and yards to finished goods sections.

We had to order the stuff ourselves.

This sounds like a problem!

Before we did though, 3 senior staff engineers ask that to be sent in a department wide email.

VP does so.

And now, starts then compliance.

Vendors ask what due terms do you want? Not aware of how deep you have to go, engineers ask for the best price.

This is where it gets WORSE!

Due in 15 days after delivery. Sure, let’s do that.

Turns out, that vendor usually was on a net 90 day due, because paying off in the next quarter would be more sensible.

What department do you want me to bill it to?

Of course mine, because I’m ordering it. (Engineers blissfully unaware, the billing happens by sales department as it gets easier to finally do profitability analysis since whichever sales department got the contract, pays for the parts too).

Things went south real quick!

Turns out our department didn’t have a single process or work route to get bills and pay them.

Now, by the time we get to the bottom of the purchasing list, the offered quotes have expired, so we get back to vendor sales teams, and get a new quote and wait, doing nothing much until we get quotes and then order stuff.

End of quarter, department finances are a total massive mess. 8 figure mess.

CFO is red faced, steaming from her ears, trying to find out what is going on.

They did what they were asked to do!

Engineers:

Oh! The best price was net due 15 days, so I selected that.

Well, I was ordering it, so the bill should come to us. Why would other department pay for the stuff that I’m asking for?

CFO: Who asked you to do the ordering yourself? This is not your job.

Finally the cherry on top!

Everyone shows her the email.

End of day, VP walked out, to be never seen again.

All the buyers who were let go, were rehired, and all of them negotiated a pay increase of $6.5/hr.

YIKES! That sounds like a lot of office trouble!

I’m glad the buyers got rehired with a raise!

Let’s find out what folks on Reddit think about this one.

This user knows why they became an engineer!

This user knows why finance people deal with the vendors!

That’s right! This user knows the incompetent VP was fired for their mess up!

HAHA! This user knows that this manager made a classic mistake!

That’s right! This user knows how big companies operate!

All the new VP had to do was keep things the way they were.

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.