You almost got some folks fired! (long)

[Mottom24]

I wrote part of this story in "general work chat" because, at first, it was just my manager/owner being a huge jerk. I will fill you in on what happened because it turned into a SC event.

2 weeks ago I sent the wrong items to two people, somewhere along the line their papers got mixed up. this rarely happens and could have been anyones fault. either one of the bosses wrapped the wrong item. a clerk may have put the shipping paper in the wrong bag for me to pack up. or somehow, in the process of packing, I accidently switched the papers. my mistake is more unlikely since each shipment is in a seperate bag, but nonetheless, we got yelled at. mistakes are incredibly rare, but we managed to redirect one order, so one person didn't even notice the mistake, and send a return order for the other person. no big mess, just an annoyance.

Fast forward to last week. I come in one morning to see my boss being a bit frantic coming over to the warehouse (where I work 99% of the time all alone). he asks me if I remember some womans shipment from last week. I told him it's hard to remember any one shipment since we send so many every day. he asks me to look for the paper work and I gladly look her up and go back to the store to hand it to him.

When I hand the shipment form over he asks the same question, though differently. he asks

Boss-"do you remember shipping square plates to this woman last week"
me- no. sorry, I probably wouldn't remember a small order like that
boss- well she got square plates and that isn't what she ordered, so now we need to find out who ordered square plates!

ok... no need to be snippy, but he is mad about something, and this event doesn't seem to be my fault... atleast not that I can see. so as I am getting garbage for the morning I try to smooth things over and explain why I wouldn't remember.

Me- sorry about that, unless it's an unusually expensive or large order, I probably wouldn't remember it.
Boss- WELL! we need to start remembering them because I am sure I can find someone who I can pay less and do the job right!

what?... what the hell? I have never been talked down like that in my entire life. I have worked here for over 2 years, I turned their warehouse from a trash pile to a fully working organized facility (its only 2 rooms, but trust me... you should have seen it) not only that, the day before I was hit by a car on my bike. my bike was trashed, and I hurt my knee (bruised badly, walked awkward but no major injuries) and what did I do? I dragged my bike into work with a limp anyway! so it being the day after that event I was still sore and now I was pissed he would say such a thing to me after what I just did.

I didn't respond and just went across the street to fume. later my co-worker, who comes over to the warehouse to do paperwork almost every night, came by to file some things. after I calmed down I asked her about what he said. she said she felt really bad that I had to get that treatment and that if I was over there more often, I would be used to such outbursts. she has told me they get snippy and moody every now and then, but I never figured they said shit like that to their own workforce! she told me to brush it off.

Later that night, after more detective work we find that no one has ordered square plates in over 2 weeks, nor have we gotten a shipment in of them... it was odd, and later I would almost forget about the whole thing.

Now comes today. the bosses are away on a week "vacation" to a dinnerware convention somewhere. I come in as my co-worker opens shop so I can take the garbage out. she then says.

cw- remember that shipment about square plates last week?
me- ugh... yea.
cw- well she called yesterday about them
me- what about it?
cw- apparently she didn't get square plates. she said "oops, I just opened it and I got exactly what I ordered, sorry hehe"
me- .... wait.... she didn't even open the damned shipment!?
cw- yea, apprently she just bull shitted to us for one reason or another. I just thought "yea, thanks for almost getting some of us fired".
me- I don't get it.... what was she trying to accomplish?
cw- I have no idea, but after we called her about what we found, no square plate orders and such, she called back the next day about the mistake.
me- ugh... great

I figured, in my head, she was trying to get a refund and scam us. but once she found we would actually need the shipment back to refund her, she backed out... since, you know, she doesn't have square plates in reality. I was also mad that our bosses may have considered firing some of us over a stupid event that actually wasn't even real in the first place. it shows their level of intelligence and not being able to look back at what we have done for them over the past 2 years. that on one mess up, on a whim, they would fire someone like that. I can't wait until I get out of here.

[HYHYBT]

That WOULD at least provide to your boss a good enough reason not to remember shipping any square plates...

[Dips]

A similar thing happened to my husband.

A customer called because he thought he'd been shorted two items.

The boss didn't bother verifying it, just went right to Mr. Dips and started yelling at him.

Mr. Dips tried to defend himself and asked if the customer had made sure to check the whole box.

The boss came back with that dreaded phrase. "The customer is always right." [Which is funny considering that the boss wouldn't hesitate to toss a customer out on his ear if he's acting like a jerk.]

Eventually Mr. Dips ended up losing his temper at being berated and he pushed back. He yelled at his boss and told him that he knows how to count, thank you, and he didn't appreciate being accused of screwing up with no evidence.

When he came home that night, he was pretty sure he'd just lost his job. It wasn't a good weekend.

But he went back to work on Monday and the boss pretended it never happened. As a matter of fact, the boss has treated him much better ever since the incident.

Oh, and the customer called back later and told one of Mr. Dips' co-workers that he'd found the "missing" items. He hadn't opened all the wrappings yet.

I don't know how likely it is that your customer was trying to scam or just made a mistake. Sounds a lot like a scam. It's easy to miss something in the box or not know that two small o-rings are really one large o-ring. But it's kind of hard to mistake a circle for a square. I'm just saying.

[XCashier]

What kind of fool doesn't check the entire box to make sure all the shipment is there? I've been both sender and recipient, and it is quite common to wrap small items seperately, even if they're all in the same box (prevents damage). If you've order a lot of small items, you go through all the wrappings. Time-consuming, yes, but a lot easier on the blood pressure than pitching a fit at the company only to find you were wrong to begin with.

As for the OP, it does sound like the customer was trying to scam, and stupidly. Shame on her, and shame on the boss for accepting it at face value and threatening to fire good employees on the word of a SC.

[MadMike]

Boss- WELL! we need to start remembering them because I am sure I can find someone who I can pay less and do the job right!

The tyrant who used to be in charge of my department threatened our jobs like that, and got it thrown back in his face. Not by me, but by my one coworker, who's usually a good-natured smartass. No matter how bad things get, he'll make some smartassed remark, let it all just roll off of him, and start doing whatever needs done. I never saw anything get to him, except for that one time. After we got out of the boss's office, he muttered one single word: "Asshole!"

What happened was, one of our programs was putting out all kinds of incorrect results, and some of the clients were putting pressure on the marketing assholes people, who in turn put pressure on us. We figured out what we needed to do to fix our program, but Asshole's second in command ripped us a new one, and told us we didn't have time to fix it that way, even after we tried to tell him that there was really no other way, and we'd just end up spinning our wheels.

We tried one quick fix after another, only to have the problem stay the same, if not get worse. At one point, Asshole Jr. decided to get in on it. He tested a fix on some of the affected accounts, got the results he wanted it, and had it run yet once again, without bothering to make sure that his fix didn't screw up any of the other accounts that weren't previously affected. He wasted several hours that way, and if one of us had screwed up like that, our asses would have been nailed to the wall.

We stayed late night after night trying to fix the problem, sometimes well past midnight, only to have to come back in the next morning. One night we were "saved" by a power failure. In the middle of all this, Asshole called me, my coworker, and our immediate supervisor into his office to bitch us out because the problem still wasn't fixed. He told us, "You can be replaced!"

A couple days later, after everything had finally been resolved, my coworker went to Asshole and told him he wanted to transfer to a different department. When he acted surprised and offended, he told him, "You said I could be replaced. I'm asking you to replace me." Then he added, "One way or another, I will not be working on this team after the end of the year. I don't know if Asshole took that part seriously, but I knew it wasn't an idle threat. He had confided in me that he already had another job lined up, and we was going to take it if he didn't get transferred out of our department like he wanted. He eventually got his wish, but not before having to endure a tirade from Asshole.

Interestingly enough, my coworker is still in the department he wanted to transfer to, I'm apparently a glutton for punishment because I stayed where I was, and Asshole ended up getting fired by someone higher up, who apparently found out that a lot of good, knowledgeable employees were transferring or quitting because of him. I'm pretty sure the entire department was dry-eyed when that happened.