If a person who works in logistics tells you what to do, you should probably listen, because those folks usually know what they’re doing.

But, there are always some folks who think they know better than everyone else.

This story features a logistics worker who did their best to help out a customer, but the customer had other plans.

Read on and see what you think.

Customer thinks he knows more about freight than my company who has done it for 40 years, shuts down his company because of lack of material.

“I work for a logistics, packaging and warehousing company, that delivers freight all over the world.

We have lots of customers who have issues with getting material in time to keep their production going, and when there is a issue with material they usually listen to us, since we know how to get something from A to B quickly.

We have one customer who forgot to order material, and now was close to shutting down his production, fortunately the supplier who was in another country had material on hand to deliver.

They offered him a deal…

We notified the customer that we could get material to him before shutting down his production but we would have to ship this immediately so as to not delay his production.

Now since our company understand the needs of our customers, we usually just ship material if we know it is needed and we can’t wait for approval.

This is the exchange that happened with me and their logistics Manager.

LM – Logistics Manager (customer)

ME- some guy who knows nothing about freight

PM – Purchasing Manager (customer)

Since this material is also in another country with a time difference of about 8 hours you don’t really have a lot of time to talk to people to get things moving.

Day1: LM – I need dimensions, weight and also some quotes so I can make a decision on how we want to move this.

ME – I can try to get you that, but because you need it in a few days and because of customs and the time difference we really need this to move immediately.

LM – I don’t care, I need quotes and also want to quote this myself.

ME – ok I will ask out other office if they can provide that.

They made their call.

I talked this out other office in the night, and we made the decision to ignore the LM and just fly it, because a shutdown in production would cost them thousands per hour.

Day2: LM – do you have quotes for me.

ME – sorry I don’t, because of the time constraints that I explained to you yesterday we shipped this already.

Uh oh…

LM – what do you mean you shipped this? I need quotes before I make a decision.

ME – As I explained yesterday: if I had waited for quotes we would have lost one day. You would have made a decision letting us know a few hours after our other office and the supplier are already gone.

Then to do customs and a flight plus customs here at destination would have taken another 2-3 days.

You production would have been minimum be halted for 1-2 days. We had no other choice but to ship immediately.

So on day 4 they had their parts at the plant but the logistics manager was not getting the freight costs approved, which means we were not going to get paid.

I then got a call form their purchasing department, who I get along great with.

PM – Hey ME, I have this PO request on my desk and my LM is telling me you never gave him any quotes. I sorry but without quotes I cannot approve this cost.

Here’s the deal…

ME – Hey PM, here is the situation, your LM screwed up, and was going to shut down your production because he has no clue how international freight and customs works. If we had listened to him he would have shut you down.

We decided to ignore him because of that and here is our e-mail correspondence (I attached all the e-mails, even one where he said we should have shipped FedEx or UPS, which would have taken over a week to deliver)

PM – (looking through the e-mails and laughing) I understand, I will push this PO through, but from now own just do what he says, even if you know we will shut down.

You got it!

ME – Ok.

So just the following week we then had the same issue again with some other material.

We gave him quotes which took one day and let him make a decision, not being completely malicious we even warned him we need and answer immediately so he would not have any problems.

He finally gave us an answer by morning of the next day.

This meant we had lost 2 days already. Then we had to do the customs clearance at origin which takes another day – day 3 Material goes to the airport the next day – day 4 Flies the day after – day 5 Arrives at destination airport – day 6.

This guy blew it!

Since it’s the weekend no customs clearance till Monday, the LM has already shut his production down by this point.

Monday customs clearance, we get pulled in for customs inspection, more delays.

Parts get finally delivered to them on day 8 at the end of the day.

His production has been down for 2 days already and they are way behind.

After this incident we all get pulled into a meeting with the Plant Manager, LM and PM to explain the major screw up that happened.

LM tried to blame us for everything and says we took too long.

He had the receipts!

Luckily I have everything in writing informing him what will happens if we do it his way.

We get dismissed and LM gets reamed by the Plant Manager.

From them on out LM hasn’t questioned us since and when we tell him it’s needs to be done a certain way he accepts it.”

Here’s what folks had to say on Reddit.

This person weighed in.

Another individual shared their thoughts.

This Reddit user had a lot to say.

And this individual has been there.

He tried to tell him…but the guy wouldn’t listen!

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.