Sometimes, the thing everyone is afraid to touch turns out to be the best fix there is.

So, what would you do if you were ordered to save the company money but not to change an expensive phone system feature that was costing the company thousands each month? Would you do everything and leave the phone system alone? Or would you find the perfect solution to save money there, too?

In the following story, one IT manager finds himself in this situation and falls into the latter. Here’s how it all happened.

Doing “something” to the phone system

Way back in the early 90’s, I was running an IT shop in a Cleveland suburb.

Among my duties was the phone system- don’t remember the exact series, but it was before IBM bought them (inside the 6′ cabinet was Rohm orange, but the outside was IBM blue). Your basic electro-mechanical TDM PBX.

We had 2 remote manufacturing plants, so long distance phone calls.

He was told not to touch the OPXs.

The company originally started about 30 miles south, before moving to the Cleveland suburb. But because the original site (and a bunch of employees’ homes) was in a different area code (InterLATA), if wifey wanted to call hubby, there were long-distance charges.

So the solution someone came up with was to have 4 Off-Premise Extensions at a cost of about $1k/month each (1990s $$).

I was given the task of reducing costs.

BUT I was told, “DO NOT SCREW WITH THE OPXs!! Ray, the Company President LOVES it, and his wife loves it, and DO NOT SCREW WITH IT!!”

The telecom consultant was confused about why they had the system.

So I did optimize plant comms with channelized T1 and muxes to route data & voice. But “DO NOT SCREW WITH THE OPXs; Ray loves them!!”

Talking with my telcomm consultant, he asked, “Why does he like the OPXs?”

I said, “So Ray’s wife (and others) can call without long-distance charges.”

His boss and the CFO both said no.

He asked, “So why not get an 800 number?”

DUH! An 800 was about $100/month, and I could route it in over one of the new T1s that manf was paying for.

Bounced it off my boss: “NO! DO NOT SCREW WITH RAY’S OPXS!”

I cautiously approached the CFO: “NO! DO NOT SCREW WITH RAY’S OPXS!”

Ray loved the idea.

The VP of HR: “NO! DO NOT SCREW WITH RAY’S OPXS!”

What the heck, I went up to Ray’s office, and said, “Look, if I make this change, all the calls are still basically free, and the company saves over $3k a month.”

Ray looked at me and said, “That is a no-brainer! Why wouldn’t you just go ahead and do it and tell everyone later?”

Wow! That was the best thing he could’ve done.

Let’s see what the readers over at Reddit think about what happened here.

Here’s an interesting observation.

This person is ahead of that excuse.

According to this comment, people were afraid to tell the boss.

Yet another person who thinks the other people were wrong for how they handled it.

He deserved a big raise!

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.