r/maliciouscompliance | Engineers *DIDN'T* Listen To Me!

hey everyone and welcome to story time my name is Jake and today we are gonna be looking at the subreddit our such malicious compliance where people conformed to the letter but not the spirit of a request if you new around here please do hit subscribe down below so that you never miss out on another video but for now let's sit back relax and enjoy some malicious compliance hell hath no fury like a teenager scorned growing up my family run a business dealing with water and wastewater pumps by the time I was in high school I worked for them outside of school as needed and I'd grown up around the industry at the time of this story I was 16 maybe 17 I got a few funny looks out in the field sometimes but normally wasn't a problem this time it was many sales they make do our bids you go to the builders exchange which is basically a library for plans and blueprints you pull the plans get to the part applicable to you and see what they want or need then you submit a price you think will win you the job many times the plans will actually specify a model that meets their needs in which case you bid that or a comparable one other times they will give you specifications and selection and matching is up to you going through books in software for curves chart that shows how it flows under load this time was the former the job is a retrofit / expansion on the city plant the engineer had specified a model of pump he wanted and I'd matched its specs put in a submit or for approval on the substitution as required it gets approved and we are cleared to enter a bid we proceed forward putting together the bid at one point I have the plans in front of me and I'm looking at the drawings I don't like what I'm seeing which is a lot of pipe and a lot of distance I check and recheck and come up with the same result the total head head is how far your Pompey calculated by distance and including losses from the pipe is too much for the pipe that was specified way too much this puts the pump way outside its curve it's going to be deep into overload I used my correct numbers and found a proper match but not only was it significantly more expensive but physically different would require large revisions so I put together a revised of Mittal with the numbers I ran and the recommended pump it included the math from the drawings and curves faxed it over to the engineers office then I called him it did not go well not only did he not listen to me he was more than happy to lecture me how dare I a kid tell him how to do his job no he would not accept any revisions or resubmit all's I had no idea what I was talking about and I personally was no longer to have contract on this project he did not use nice words this couldn't stand it was going to cause serious problems down the line so I did the only thing I could think of I found the contract for City Planning and told him made it about three minutes into trying to explain who I was and why I was calling before he cut me off and told me to refer to engineer and to not contact him again tried again for someone else later did not make it past a receptionist as you wish I took the revised of mill and filed it to the back of the job file and moved on I wasn't needed for the rest and had other things to do plus school fast forward almost two years now going to college still working for my folks as needed Construction complete get called in for startup go smoothly as it should and the countdown to destruction begins I think the first one when after about three months only made it that long because those pumps are very well built emergency ship in a replacement second one a week or three after then another and another then the replacement stopped failing the whole time these are being invoiced including emergency shipping and having to run out to start them up every time they have no choice this is the model the pads were cast for and the piping run fall you can't directly substitute something else like say the correct pumps then it gets really fun they start returning to burnout units for warranty the factory starts receiving these and tearing them down for failure analysis I told our rep straight up that they were being run way outside their design point knowingly he was not amused warranty is denied and they are billed for the diagnostic time and shipping manufacturer was in Germany by the way shout out to all the fine folks at ksb love you these units are neither small nor light plus these are being shipped as emergency orders it's not cheap warranties officially denied to the buyer we tell them in no uncertain terms that this isn't a problem with the units this is now almost a year after the plant was due to come online now it really hits the fan City Council gets involved because this is a municipal plant lawsuits are threatened and a council meeting is scheduled to discuss further action I marked the day and arranged with my teachers to take a few days off didn't live close to home drove three and a half hours to see my parents and to visit their filing cabinet right where I left it out came the revised submittal and a quick trip to the Kinkos a local copy shop provided some wonderful blown-up posters have said submit all as well as the proofs behind a the next day I drove another two and a half hours up to said city had a lovely meatball sandwich as a restaurant right across the street from the council building and showed up to the council meeting I even dressed up nice for the occasion I didn't say anything to anyone just sat in the back in my chair with my rolled of posters next to me and waited took about 40 minutes the council finally brings up the plant guess who comes up to testify in front of the council its engineer he goes on for about 10 minutes talking bad about our company and how we are denying the warranties basically states that the problem is due to the substitution that power pumps were substandard this is a loss now counted in the millions between the downtime and replacement costs and rejected warranties labor etc Council swallows his BS hook line & sinker he sits down and the council starts discussing among themselves this is my cue I stand up approach the podium and wait for them to notice me doesn't take long as I'm a teenager in a city council meeting I introduce myself and unroll the posters hi I'm Chris P silicon from going to ruin your day before you proceed any further you should probably have a look at this which is the reverse of metal I Center engineer prior to the initial bid you'll note the date also attached you'll find the supporting calculations relevant drawings from the original plans and the recommendation of the largest suitable unit you'll also see the facts acknowledgement she showing it was received by his office immediately after sending that I contacted engineer directly and advised him of these issues he declined I was told outright to keep my nose out of things I didn't understand and to leave and nearing to the adults he was well aware the unit's would self-destruct if run at this point after that I called your planner who refused to listen and referred me back to engineer if you'd like I'd be more than willing to contact our phone provider so they can verify that fax and those calls were placed I'm grinning like the Cheshire Cat at this point and I'm not holding back the evil one bit I'm sure I look like a psychopath couldn't help her also didn't care dead silence so yeah the warranties are void as all of the units were operated well beyond their design point I still stand by the revised submittal so feel free to call when you're ready I'll leave these here still completely silent the entire council looks so shocked then after a few seconds one of the ladies on the council gave me a thank you mister silicon you can go I left my posters on the podium turned and warped made full eye contact with the engineer as long as I could with that same grin he looked like he was probably going to vomit didn't stick around to check stop by to give my folks a hug on the way back to school and that was the end of my involvement no idea what happened to engineer or planner but the city paid every invoice in full without another P they had continued to purchase replacement after replacement to limp it along while simultaneously trying to re refit the plant they finally got it fixed after about another year but by that time I can't imagine how far over the projected estimate they were it's amazing how one or two people that think they're so high in my e and their ego is so big that they don't listen to her a child that probably knows more than them costs the taxpayer or I'm assuming the taxpayer probably hundreds of thousands is so stupid but look how much I saved in the 1980s I was working for a company that did custom software development for large companies all our employees were salaried with full benefits including paid holidays and vacation I was an account manager responsible for a bunch of our people working on a project a client science this was a very important project for our biggest client generating several million dollars in revenue it was a good company to work for and we were very profitable so profitable that we were acquired by a much larger corporation that had absolutely no experience in our business within six months all of our senior managers had been forced out our branch manager my immediate superior was replaced by a guy fresh out of the corporations management training program his entire background was in finance and HR it was late October when he called me in to discuss my accounts performance specifically how our costs were out of control item one was vacation he noticed that several of my people had accrued lots of vacation days and this shows up as a liability on the balance shake I explained how this was actually a good thing when a person takes a vacation day we have to pay him but we can't build the client for his time our policy was that people could cash in their accrued vacation at any time the money we paid them was less than the revenue that they generated by working he explained that was contrary to corporate policy as people would be paid twice for the same day effective immediately all vacation must be used within the calendar year it was earned or it would be lost item number two was paid time off we had no formal policy covering personal and sick days I told my troops that I expected them to be a work everyday but if they needed to leave early or take a day off for some personal business or because they were sick I was ok with that and they'd get paid but if it became a problem like the guy who called in sick every Monday because he spent the weekend drinking or the woman who left early every Wednesday to get a manicure we would take action while we did have a couple of people who were out sick for a relatively long time most took two to three days each year sorry that was against policy effective immediately all employees will receive five personal / sick days each year and again it was a user or loser item number three was over time he couldn't believe that we were paying salaried people for working overtime I explained that again this is a good thing when a client asked our people to work overtime we build for those hours since we had already factored all of our overhead into the hourly billing range the profit margin on overtime hours was a lot higher than normal hours he couldn't grasp that as far as he was concerned salaried people do not get paid for overtime I said that if we stopped paying overtime people will stop working here and we will lose revenue he didn't believe that he assumed that everyone would happily put in the extra time for free effective immediately we would no longer pay for overtime item four was the killer there was a guy on my project rich who was widely regarded as a true expert on the software platform we were using he literally wrote a book on the subject and taught a class at the Community College we managed to land this project because we agreed that Ridge would be assigned to it because he was so good we were able to bill him out at about twice as much as the other people on the project his salary was also a lot higher than the others according to the official corporate salary guidelines Rich's salary was way above the max for his pay grade I was told to replace him with someone cheaper at this point I knew that arguing was a waste of time the next day I told my troops about the new policies regarding vacation personal time and overtime they were less than pleased I reminded them that this was the end of October and they had to use all of their accrued vacation and personal days before year end I got our recruiters looking for someone to replace Ridge in mid-december my new manager asked me again why rich was still on the payroll I said we were looking for a replacement but it was impossible to find someone with his expertise and credentials he said I had to get rich off the payroll before year end and we'd worry about finding a replacement in January I gave rich the bad news in February I attended a meeting of all the account managers in attendance was our area manager our branch managers boss branch manager proudly reported that he had eliminated overtime and the vacation backlog he had also reduced headcount rich was not the only high-value employee to be let go then his boss asked why revenue was down by almost 20 percent branch manager had no explanation and blamed the sales staff I raised my hand and explained that everyone took their accrued vacation which for my account alone was more than 200 billable days since the new policy went into effect almost everyone took that five days finally the elimination of Ooty resulted in the loss of almost 20 billable days since our average daily billing rate was $500 my account generated a hundred and fifty thousand less revenue than the previous quarter all the other account managers reported similar numbers then I said that my entire project was about to be cancelled we had missed a key deadline because so many people had taken time off but the biggest problem was Rich's termination the contract specifically said that rich would be assigned as the technical lead since he was no longer employee we were in breach of the contract and the client was going to pull the plug within a week the new branch manager was transferred to another division in another state where he could happily count paperclips and rolls of toilet paper and rich was brought back as an independent contractor he knew the position we were in and demanded a considerable increase driving our profit margin on him to almost zero but the damage was done the new policies on vacation and overtime remained in effect and we all started leaving to work for our competition within two years corporate shut it down completely some people are just idiots aren't they they think oh we're doing pretty good we're pretty profitable well what can we do to make it even more profitable I've got a good idea let's completely ruin our current staff hey everyone I hope you all had a really good day and that you enjoyed that video if you want to check out some of the videos then click on screen right now but check out the playlist down below if you enjoyed that video then please do leave a like and if you want to submit your own stories think you can do so by joining the discord in the top link in the description but thank you so much for watching and I will see you very soon

Channel: Storytime

Views: 128,479

Rating: 4.8294687 out of 5

Keywords: reddit, r/, Storytime, r\, sub, subreddit, best of reddit, reddit top posts, episode, story, time, stories, reddit stories, reddit story, r/maliciouscompliance, r/idontworkherelady, r/prorevenge, r/choosingbeggars, ozmedia, redditor, rslash, Gio Films, mister x, darkfluff, malicious, compliance, r/malicious, r/compliance, maliciouscompliance, reddit maliciouscompliance, rslash maliciouscompliance

Id: mdVluH_bb7k

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 27 2019