Most of us have been through work experiences where a new manager comes on the scene…and screws everything up.

It’s enough to drive someone mad!

But we see it over and over again…

The person who wrote this story on Reddit talked about what happened when they had to deal with it.

Check out what they had to say!

Say I’m young and I don’t know anything, with 5 years experience in parts feeders…

“I was hired as a mechanical engineer at a place that made machines to test computer chips. These were robotic sorting machines that ran first picked the parts from a tray and put them into a “boat.”

Then the boats ran around a conveyor system and were temperature conditioned to the test temperature, then tested, then brought close to room temperature, then sorted into their sort categories.

So the new manager (Mr Arrogant, his name was Tom G.) was hired, a tall, good looking, and arrogant man of the privileged class, you know what I mean. I didn’t report to him directly, but secondarily.

Dotted line as you will. Due to attrition from the dot com bust, I know was responsible for the conveyor system of this machine, which was being cost-reduced in a new model. The second generation model with more features but cost-reduced. Like that’ll work.

You know the type…

Anyway this guy was the king of not being responsible directly for anything. His skill was design review attendee. He didn’t manage anyone or anything directly, but he attended every design review.

He studied them all, and every one, he would find a flaw. Then, HE WOULD POUNCE. **** you up. Find something you or someone did wrong, wait for the right time and ahaaa! YOU SCREWED UP!!! Look how stooopid you are!!! Then he would exit with a strut, looking for the next design review.

I’ll try to explain for context:

So I inherited this design that was screwed up, whoever designed it decided to change the design in a way that it wouldn’t work. It would take a bit to explain fully, but long and short, the system is at its heart a temperature chamber with a conveyor running around it as a rectangular track.

Hot temp set point was 160°C which is 320°F. Cold set point was set with liquid nitrogen and was -60°C or -76°F. All normal materials expand with heat and shrink with cold and the new conveyor was aluminum.

This was all very technical…

It was mounted differently, and the end stops were mounted directly to the conveyor itself and the end stops moved about .08 inches (2mm) hot and .04 inches (1mm) cold, but the alignment needed to be maintained to about .03 inches (.08mm) for the system to work.

The old system did this by making the end stops mount to the baseplate of the machine. The new end stops mounted on the conveyor in the chamber, and moved with the conveyor as the conveyor got hot or cold. This avoided extra holes in the chamber.

I explained to Mr. Arrogant dotted line boss that this wasn’t going to work, I calculated it, drew it in CAD, and had worked on parts feeders for the last 5 years in machine automation for robotic assembly.

The guy just wouldn’t listen.

He dismissed me. Called me “young and inexperienced’ and “you don’t know much” and “we had a design review, so you don’t have the authority to change it”.

Fine.

I wrote down this quote and the date in my lab notebook (CYA). per Mr Arrogonat (Tom G.) I am not to change the design. I also drew the ideal conveyor design, and put it in my desk. And went back to work.

6 months later, with the system being a jam-o-matic, I roll on in, and walk past a meeting with the VP, Tom, my boss, a couple engineers, and some others and they have a conveyor sketch on the whiteboard and Tom is discussing the conveyor and how it is jamming.

This guy was about to get what was coming to him.

I’m called in as I walk by. “What do you know about this?” says my boss.

“Lemme get something.”

I run upstairs and get my lab notebook, and a cup of coffee.

“Well, I advised that the conveyor be changed a long time ago, but Tom rejected it, see here…”

I hand it to my boss, who read it, and he passed it to the VP, who read it, and said “you’re on it, go fix it, please.”

It took another year for his incompetence to be recognized to the point he was let go. He was made to manage a project for real, he refused.

He was then made to or else, he ran it into the ground and was terminated.

Totally worthless. **** you, Tom.”

Check out what readers had to say about this on Reddit.

This person had a lot to say.

Another individual shared their thoughts.

This person chimed in.

Another individual shared a story.

And this reader weighed in.

It pays to listen to your employees, folks!

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.