Attention to detail can make or break a business.

If you realized that employees weren’t paying attention to detail, would you call them out on it, or comply maliciously and let them face the consequences?

This employee working in a building supplies company noticed a recurring inventory issue.

He tried pointing it out in meetings, but his manager brushed it off and continued ignoring the problem.

So he decided to do exactly what was written on the order form… and the result nearly shut down operations.

Check out the full story below to find out all the details.

No cash register rolls?

I worked in distribution for a building supplies company.

Stores would manually order their store-use stuff by fax, and they would order cash register rolls by boxes of 50.

So often, they would order 2 boxes.

This man raised the concern during a team meeting.

Office staff would key it in as 2 rolls.

Then order pickers would ship 100 but bill for 2 rolls.

I brought it up at a team meeting that we were always going short by 49 or 98 rolls and explained why it was happening.

The manager said it would never happen again.

Except the next day, it was still happening.

He decided to ship exactly what was ordered.

So, I decided I would ship exactly what they ordered. The order said 2 rolls.

I opened a box and sent 2.

I figured the stores would start squawking about it right away, but nope.

Not a word. This went on for weeks.

He told the manager to start checking the cash register roll at the store.

Finally, the busiest sales weekend of the year approached, and I confessed to the manager that they might want to check cash register roll levels at the stores.

Sure enough, many stores were almost out.

And courier shipments of cash register rolls appeared at the door that day.

He almost shut down the operations on the biggest sales weekend.

They couldn’t fire me because I had shipped what was on the orders.

I almost brought down the company on their biggest sales weekend.

They started keying the orders right. Sometimes.

It’s a good thing this employee warned the manager.

Let’s read the responses of other people on Reddit to this story.

Yes, indeed.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

Someone might be pocketing some of the difference, says this person.

Finally, here’s a personal experience from this user.

If you ignore small mistakes, they can turn into big disasters.

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.