Sometimes doing your job right means pushing back, especially when you know something is going to go wrong.

So, how would you proceed if your manager told you to ignore an obvious issue and move forward anyway, even though you were certain the customer would reject the final product? Would you follow your gut? Or would you give the manager what she wants?

In the following story, one print specialist finds himself in this predicament and decides to listen. Here’s how it all played out.

Wait? Now I’m Not Supposed to Think what the Customer Wants?

I work at a Printing Hub as a Print and Copy expert, operating the machines to print, setting up files, and quality-checking before they come out.

It is a pretty laid-back job, and I really enjoy the technical side of it, not so much my coworkers, however.

Don’t get me wrong, however, I have no doubt they are good people, but I feel that they have settled into the job a little too much, and every little change gets them riled up.

And then there is my manager, Kay, who is a good person at heart, but recently stress has been causing her to take it out on the employees. I stick with it because up until now she has been good, she at least deserves for me to stick through a stressful moment, especially coming into the holiday season.

After the proof was printed, he realized something was wrong.

Anyways, three days ago, I was working with the Big Color Machine Printer. A rather large job came in for 200 books.

This particular job was a rush order that needed to get out the same day, and the value exceeded $2000. It was also a very important client I have worked with in the past, so I wanted to be extra sure everything was ok.

When I printed my proof and leafed through the booklet, however, I noticed rectangular boxes where text should have been.

This is normally caused by our computers or printers not having the font the customer used, and I suspect they used a different font than they normally use for the Halloween Season. So I called up the customer to figure out the font they needed.

He was unable to get a hold of the customer.

No answer. Well dang.

The thing was, this order needed to start printing immediately to meet the deadline, unless I use both Color Printers we have to print the order (which is actually not recommended, since the color calibrations are different on both printers, for some reason).

I emailed the customer and put the order on hold. I knew the customer would want those fonts.

Later on, my manager, whom we will call Kay, asked me why the order was still on hold, and I explained that the file was incorrect. I even brought up the file and showed her.

She agreed that the file was incorrect. However, she insisted on printing the order anyway.

Here’s how his conversation with Kay went.

Kay: “The order is a rush job, and they absolutely need that order immediately.”

Me: “I understand that, but the file is wrong. If we produce the file and the customer rejects it, then we are out the money to produce the job.”

Kay: “SLA is more important than a quality job. We won’t get money if we fail to deliver on time.”

He knew it was a bad idea to print the order as is.

I silently remind myself that SLA includes quality: “Kay, I have dealt with this client before, I know they will reject this. I am fairly certain they would prefer waiting a day to get their stuff rather than receiving something they can’t use.”

Kay: “Kole, just print the order anyway.”

Me Dying inside: “Yes, Kay.”

Reluctantly, he printed the order.

So, this is funny, because last week Kay got after me about the exact opposite situation. There was an order we couldn’t do correctly because our machines were dumping toner on the files.

I assured Kay that I was certain the customer wouldn’t mind the toner dump, but she said I wasn’t thinking of the customer. I was thinking of the customer, as I was the customer.

Now I am thinking about the customer, and I am being told to ignore that. Ok, sure.

So I printed the order, all $2000 worth of it. It was a massive ordeal, which I knew was all going into the trash, but I did what Kay asked.

Before I left for the day, I checked our business Email and saw that the client hadn’t emailed us back. Also tried calling again, and no response.

After work, he stopped by the customer’s business.

I took one of the books with me and left for the day.

Rather than go straight home, I stopped at the business I knew would be selling or giving out what we were producing, since it was on the way, and showed the cashier.

The cashier was absolutely horrified and immediately contacted the manager, who was out for the day.

The employee thanked me for going out of my way to inform them and gave me some store credit, which I used on some paintbrushes for minis.

The head office was not happy.

Oh yeah, did I mention this place was one of the local gaming stores I started going to? I knew those booklets weren’t supposed to look like that.

The fallout didn’t happen until today. The order was completely thrown out, and we were forced to redo the entire thing at no charge. $2000 down the drain.

Kay, for the first time I can recall, tried to throw me under the bus when the Head Office asked us what happened, but my coworkers supported me, and I pointed out on the job ticket that I had actually failed the quality check. I had no idea how that order went to shipping.

I don’t know what has gotten into Kay lately, but she has been extremely off.

Yikes! That sounds like a terrible mistake.

Let’s see what the people over at Reddit think about it.

Here’s someone who’s dealt with something similar.

These are encouraging words.

In this case, it wasn’t the client.

This person thinks it’s a bad workplace.

Sounds like it’s time to find a new job, because this whole situation was a mess.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.