Sometimes, the best way to fix a broken process is to let it break.

This man works at a fast-growing startup with poor internal systems.

He suggested working on small client credit requests, but was told that it wasn’t a priority.

The result? A massive workload shift that led to long-overdue changes.

Read the full story below for all the details.

Our software team wouldn’t help, so I forced their hand.

This happened last year.

I work for a small startup company. It’s a good company with good leadership.

However, like any startup, we are full of ideas but low on process.

This man was the Customer Service Manager in the startup company.

As we grew our client base, we needed to give small credits (typically rounding errors less than $10).

At this time, I was the Customer Service Manager.

I had filled out feature change requests in our homegrown system. This was to give our team the ability to process these credits within our system.

Those had been ignored due to the mountain of other things our internal software team was behind on.

He was told to use a spreadsheet in the meantime to deal with it.

I was told that this wasn’t a pressing concern, and that, unless the client requested it, I should use a spreadsheet so they could do them all at once.

I knew that, if done this way, it would take a good year for us to tackle this.

Furthermore, our clients would be upset.

But all clients requested to process each of their credits.

Somehow, all the clients requested every single credit right away.

Cue in our team putting in a ticket for every single credit request the day of to get processed ASAP.

We only had one billing software guy who could handle it. Due to his title and my knowing the industry, this guy makes 200k+ annually.

So, the billing software guy had to do this manually.

So daily, he would have to process $2 to $5 credits manually.

Remember that he and his team had nothing in the system to do this. So when I say manually, this involves him coding each one.

It didn’t take long for a process/button that we could click to credit on our side.

He still talks about this to his coworkers.

Some of the people I still hired work there.

I’ve moved teams since I have been promoted a couple of times, and we were just joking about it earlier this week.

It brings a smile to my face every time I think about it. Not only due to “Malicious Compliance,” but more importantly, I do like the company.

I figured this was the most effective way of forcing a spotlight on something that needed to change.

Sometimes showing how inconvenient the current process is, is the only way to get the process to change.

Let’s find out what others have to say about this on Reddit.

This person thinks it was a brilliant move.

What a deep and meaningful remark!

Here’s another valid point from this person.

Finally, this user has another lesson to share.

When leadership won’t prioritize a problem, you just gotta show them how crucial it is.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.