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Most “experts” don’t like being told they’re wrong.

In this story, a man was assisting an external consultant in installing some specialized software.

He was asked to enter some passwords only and not meddle with what the “expert” was doing.

When he tried to offer some advice and warnings, he was told to shut up.

After watching things fail more than once, he finally stepped in with a quicker fix.

Read the full story below to find out more.

Shush! I know, what I’m doing!

We had an external consultant on site to install some very specialized and very expensive software.

I, your humble system admin, was only there to enter a few admin passwords.

That was literally all I was supposed to do.

As the expert started trying a few creative things, I offered some advice. I was told to shush.

This employee tried to warn the “expert.”

He said he knew what he was doing. Alright.

If that is how he wanted to play it, then go ahead.

A little later, he asked for a USB flash drive. He wanted to transfer some data.

Some turned out to be over 130000 tiny 1 KB files. They were all in a single folder.

I genuinely tried to warn him. I said that FAT32 does not like that many small files.

He was told to shut up again… and again.

He dragged the folder to the flash drive. I was shushed again.

So, I leaned back. I watched the progress bar crawl forward.

After about 45 minutes, the inevitable happened. The file transfer crashed.

I honestly tried to help. I was shushed again.

So he tried exactly the same thing a second time.

He decided to do something about it, which didn’t even take 10 minutes.

Forty-five minutes later, it crashed again. At that point, I refused to be shushed again.

I was hungry. I wanted to go to lunch. I zipped the folder. This took about 4 minutes.

I copied the ZIP file to the USB drive. This took another 3 minutes.

I handed it back to him. The look on the expert’s face was absolutely priceless.

Lol. That must have been frustrating to watch, but very satisfying to see!

This is why you shouldn’t ignore employees who have something to say.

Imagine all that time wasted just to ignore simple advice. That moment of realization probably stung a bit, huh?

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

Lol. Short and simple.

Indeed, right?

Here’s another possible response.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a company that cut overtime, then struggled to figure out why so much work was piling up.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

Finally, another honest opinion.

Sometimes, the fastest fix is just listening the first time.