In many office jobs, you’re not just trying to satisfy your boss. You need to satisfy whoever holds a stake in your work.

The person in this story respected that reality. See why it’s good that he covered himself.

You authorized it. You take the fall.

I work in complaints for a major telecom operator and we are swamped.

We are working in crisis mode as we don’t have enough people to do what we need to do, and every complaint that isn’t solved in 15 days, one way or another accrues fines from the regulator.

This urgency launched chaos.

We are in crisis mode so we just auto approve small claims as it’s cheaper than the fines for being late. I get a huuuuuge claim on my desk, easily 100 times more than the fine for being late. It’s 14 days old.

I go to my supervisor but he says it’s too big for him. He can’t authorize it and he thinks it would be cheaper to take the fine and work out everything in due time, but he’ll check with his superior and get back to me.

Fine. I go back to work, doing other cases for the rest of the day.

Next day, my supervisor’s boss comes to me asking why that particular case is on its 15th day. So I tell him. He’s furious.

Everything should be approved. It’s crisis mode. We can’t allow to be fined and so on. So I ask him to authorize it, saying once more it’s 100 times more than the fine would be.

He say he doesn’t care and he’ll authorize it. I say it needs to be investigated. Once more he just says he’ll authorize it. (His bonus is reliant on the late cases. Fewer late cases, more bonus).

So the inevitable happens.

So I say fine. Sign here. And he does. I process it and forget about it.

Come the end of the month, a huge commotion happens. Sector director is in my supervisor’s bosses office yelling like there’s no tomorrow.

I get called in and the issue is that case and the jerk who authorized it is trying to throw me under the bus.

It turns out it was a fraudulent complaint and we had to investigate it before making a decision. Sector director just asks who authorized it and I bring him the signed papers. I get sent out.

A few days later the boss gets the sack.

Gee, I wonder why.

Here is what people are talking about.

THIS. Arrogance is bad business.

It’s an important thing to follow.

Definitely, assuming the person understands the records.

I was thinking the same thing. Why are they enabling and rewarding fraud?

The satire writes itself. The incompetence!

I like when slackers get what’s coming to them.

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.