Corporate decisions can feel frustrating when they don’t seem to make any sense.

What would you do if your boss asked for your input on a major decision, completely ignored it, and then everything went exactly as you predicted? Would you stew over the wasted effort? Or would you consider there might be more going on behind the scenes?

In the following story, one employee looks back at a confusing moment in their career, and finally realizes they’d been part of a clever long game all along. Here’s what happened.

My boss used me for MC five years ago and I just figured it out.

About five years ago, I was the office guy for a small lumber mill. My direct supervisor was the general manager, but the owner was also pretty hands-on.

The mill wasn’t generating as much profit as the owner believed it could (he was probably right; the guy was smart as a whip with 60+ years of experience).

One of the things the owner tried to do was hire an outside consultant to try and find ways we could safely increase productivity or cut expenses. The guy had owned and operated his own mill and also had a ludicrous amount of experience.

By the end of the month, the company was already showing a loss.

One of the things the consultant had been pushing for was running the mill into overtime. He thought we could increase productivity without incurring more expense than we gained.

My boss asked me to run an analysis of how much we would gain/lose if we ran overtime. I did the math and gave him the results: Even in the best case, every minute of overtime would result in a net loss to the company.

This report took me several hours, as I wanted to be sure I gave him the right answer. My boss took it, nodded, and the next day announced we would be running the mill in overtime.

Two weeks later, when I prepared the end-of-month financial statements, it showed a large loss.

Here’s where they finally figured out what had happened.

I was quietly seething since I felt like I had been asked a pointless question, my time wasted, and my input ignored.

But, looking back on it with significantly more experience, I think I know what happened.

I think my boss was bothered by the consultant who had come in to tell him how to do his job and then given him bad advice.

The owner wouldn’t listen to my boss telling him he didn’t need a consultant, so he did exactly what the consultant suggested and let the owner judge for himself.

As far as my report went? I think he just wanted to be sure it wouldn’t cost us too much when he pulled the trigger.

Hilarious! It took him long enough to figure it out.

Let’s see how the folks over at Reddit feel about this story.

This sounds about right.

Interesting point of view.

This person is a boss and does the same thing.

Here’s someone who just had an epiphany.

Better late than never!

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.