When new managers come in, they often think it is a good idea to change the way things are done, which rarely works out the way they intended.

What would you do if your manager tried to do your job to prove that you were unnecessary, but his actions led to a significant lawsuit?

That is what happened to the sales engineer in this story, so after he quit, he helped the customer successfully sue the company, and much more.

Check it out.

Manager thought my job role was unnecessary, learns the hard way it wasn’t

About 20 years ago, I worked in the technology field as a sales engineer, supporting sales reps.

A new sales rep manager joined the field team, and didn’t like the control sales engineers had over the sales process.

New people to a team should never come in and make big changes.

Because I was the lead sales engineer, he decided to make me an example of his brilliance.

He got a very large lead with a Bank, and proceeded to close a very large deal, without involving any sales engineers at all.

Just after the deal closed, he called to gloat, saying something to the effect of “the biggest deal this month, oh wait, you did not participate at all.”

What a surprise, the manager didn’t know what he was doing.

About a month or so later, I get a call from that manager, in a bit of a panic, and I partake in a conference call with the customer.

It is decided I need to come to the company for a meeting.

At the meeting I figure out the sales manager and the sales rep totally messed things up, and sold the customer an incompatible set of solutions.

This seems like a simple solution.

In the meeting I casually mention that maybe the customer could return one bit of stuff, and replace it with another as they were roughly the same price

After the meeting sales manager starts yelling at me for mentioning price, price was the exclusive domain the the sales rep!

He calls my manager, talked bad about me. I didn’t like my manager at all, so when he took the sales reps side, I quit.

I send a very lengthy defense of my actions during the meeting to HR.

Wow, he is taking revenge to the next level.

Four months later I get a call from another sales rep still at the company, he asks, “hey what happened at XYZ Bank?, they are suing us.”

I call XYZ Bank and get the email for the CIO and send them a letter explaining I was the sales engineer for the company you are suing, call me.

They eventually sent a lawyer to interview me and get my side of events.

I bet he loved every second of giving this testimony.

My testimony was devastating to my former company’s defense, I showed the Bank the letter I sent my HR, in which I claim ‘our company lied to the customer to get a sale’.

Eventually I get a subpoena to be deposed in the Bank vs. Company law suit by my former company’s lawyers.

By that time I was working elsewhere, and hanging out on Yahoo stock message boards, and bashing the company’s stock.

One day another sales rep from a distant territory that I still talked to called me to say that a huge deal we had worked on for over a year had just fallen through in dramatic fashion.

I’m sure the investors took note.

I posted it to the yahoo message board devoted to that stock. The stock crashed $13 the next day. I wondered if my post had anything to do with it.

About 6 weeks after the stock crash, it’s the day before I am supposed to get deposed in the Bank vs. Company matter, I get served with a law suit by the company, they had used the SLAP laws to get my identity from Yahoo, and sue me for the post that crashed their stock!

So, I went to the deposition the next day, and said, “I’m sorry, the company you represent today just served me with a law suit last night, this deposition is over!” They were dumbfounded.

I guess these two teams should have communicated.

Turns out there were two separate legal teams, one working on defending the company against the bank’s suit, and one finding that pesky internet troll that crashed their stock, and the two never noticed the same person was central to each!

Now that is a win!

The company settled with the bank and dropped their suit against me soon thereafter.

That long letter I sent to HR, turns out the managers above me didn’t read it.

Once the lawsuit was over, the sales rep, the sales manager, and his manager were all fired.

This must have been a very satisfying experience.

Bad managers so often get away with being idiots forever.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

I’m not even sure what this is.

This commenter is correct.

This is a good point.

Here is another sales engineer.

Sales managers should always understand the engineering.

This was a very costly lesson for the manager to learn.

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.