This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/Kennel_King on 2024-02-26 23:17:13.
Years ago I did a stint as a service manager for a large equipment rental company with all green equipment.
It was a new store and they had been operating for 6 months with just the store manager, (SM) his girlfriend the salesperson, rental manger, and one lone mechanic.
When I started the place was on fire, they had so many service calls every day that the mechanic was getting nothing done in the shop. Equipment was not properly checked in and inspected, annual inspections on high-reach equipment were not getting done, and the only parts we had were a few oil and air filters.
In a matter of days, I figured out the mechanic would go on a service call, if it was a quick fix he would go to sleep somewhere. fired him and hired someone who would do what was needed.
I slowly started building a parts inventory of parts that were known to fail. in 6 months I had a pretty decent supply of parts on hand. It wasn't often we had to order something to get a machine ready to rent.
One sunny afternoon I was doing paperwork in my office and in storms the store manager. He was pissed because our inventory of parts meant we took a hit on our quarterly bonus. He ordered me to only order parts as we needed them. I asked how we were supposed to keep machinery running in a timely manner, and his response? Next day air.
I told him to put that in an email and I would gladly comply. He stormed out, in 5 minutes I had a detailed email explaining how we would the next day air ALL parts. ALL PARTS. This is important because all our filters and batteries were bought locally.
In a matter of a week or so, I was running low and parts and I ordered everything from the factory. A filter that was $5 local, was $15 from the factory plus freight.
And I wasn't just making one order per day. As soon as one of the mechanics (we were up to 3, we were growing like crazy) gave me a parts list I called in the order. and sometimes I called in 10 orders per day.
this lasted 3 months. The next thing I know I get called into a meeting with the Store Manager, the Regional Manager, The head of purchasing from Corporate, and the company president. Had an idea what it was about. So I printed out that email.
It seems they were a little upset that in 3 months I had managed to rack up over $25,000 in next-day air freight. They asked the SM why I didn't have any parts, he immediately threw me under the bus saying that he had been telling me for months to build up our parts.
RM looks at me and says maybe I'm not cut out for management. I told him I was just following SM's instructions and handed him the email. He looked at it and told me, to go back to work.
I couldn't make out what was being said but there were a lot of raised voices coming from SM's office.
after the shouting Died down the Regional Manager came to my office and said he would take over until they hired a new manager. He also told me to get my parts inventory in order and don't sweat the cost.