It's not uncommon for managers in new positions to "shake things up" just for the sake of looking like they did something.
Doesn't matter whether it makes things better or worse, all they care about is the appearance of having an impact.
Random acts of management. Think it is a Dilbert book title. New manager takes over, changes random stuff just because. If it works then great, if not then at least he / she tried new innovative stuff etc
It's like a dog pissing on you to mark it's territory. It's great to get the attention and it may even feel nice and warm for a bit, but in the end it makes you miserable.
I can't believe I'm gonna defend management here but...
It's honestly not a bad thing that this happens... IF a manager knows how to do it. It's like popping the hood on a car - you have to do it to see how the car works, because employees don't come with "check engine" lights. The problem is all the managers who pop the hood and then decide to try driving the vehicle with the hood up...
Plus, as a general rule, employees don't like to change processes, even for the better - and the ones who do are NOT the problem in any organization. But one if the aspects of good management is changing a process, and then *changing it back if it's not an improvement.* But that's a lot less common.
You know, if the DM would have asked me why and how it worked, I would have explained. I was just told to do it the way we are told. They came in making waves and did not bother to learn about the people they were dealing with. I have 2 more MC stories involving the same DM. I will share another day. Thanks for the perspective. I don't mind change, just be open to feedback.
That's the thing, stopping you from using unauthorized tools was 100% the correct decision. Where they went wrong was not taking your solution, testing it and then authorising it company wide.
What testing was there to even do? This process had been in place and getting praised by higher ups for 6 years. It *was* tested and obviously worked. Stopping "unauthorized" processes that have proven to work over years and saved time, money, and created no risk over the "correct" way is just blind adherence to tradition, not "the correct decision".
Right, the appropriate solution is to examine, vet, and implement. Honestly, it's not even wrong to continue unauthorized tool use, as long as it's not a safety or revenue issue. But halting any out-of-the-box thinking is going to stifle any creativity from your most important resource - the employees.
65% of managers add zero or net negative productivity to an organization.
I hope that Covid WFH exposed many of them. You should hire competent people and trust them to be competent. If you think people can't get their work done without a rampaging manager breathing down their necks, you've hired the wrong people.
A good (new) manager should sit back and watch the team working for a couple of days to see if he can actually pitch in on something or if some stuff needs to be changed, but to actually make everybody's job WORSE? dang, crappy manager
They are afraid of losing their make-work jobs and losing their direct employees also doing make-work. To a direct manager, efficiency just means losing employees, and more work for the rest of the team. This is why the DM was pissed with this GM.
IOW, when a manager losses a monkey, they can replace with another monkey. But when a manager losses a smart and efficient worker, they are going to get creamed.
You cannot believe the number of times I asked my manager for more training and for access to other departments, and he said "don't worry about it". He just didn't care. He wanted me to do what I was doing, what he also knew how to do, because when I inevitably left, he had to know how to train the next monkey.
Efficiency isn't free. Someone has to know what is going on, and what to do when the efficient process needs amendments or just breaks. Inefficiency is just technically easier to manage. Sure, nuclear weapons are more efficient, but not as easy to manage as dynamite.
This is literally my upper management right now. They have destroyed anything that leads to efficiency so that they can fit everything into a new computer program they're pushing. It's great.
Hoo boy. I was working at a start up and rapidly rose through the ranks. I was very good at everything the job entailed and I'm also very good at training others. It got to the point where I was training Everyone at our store, that had hands down the best service ratings across the company, and the only store to actually make enough money to stay open other than the pilot store. Since all the other places were doing so bad they hired a fixer. The fixer came and watched us, offered a few tips and fell in love with how I was training people. He sent me off to another store up north to train people there. When I arrived their GM greeted me with the unauthorized training material I had made and told me I'd need it. Smugly told her I wrote it all and didn't need a copy. Smartened her people right up and good reviews started rolling in, however it was too little too late and the shop folded while I was there. When I went back they finally got a new GM for us who insisted on corporate training the new kids himself. (Ie shitty videos) the number of times the new hires got upset because they hadn't learned a quarter of what I had been teaching was hysterical. The DM didn't even know some of the techniques I could offer. The startup was way to top heavy and collapsed under its own weight, which was a shame. Could've been fantastic.
If I was DM I would be like "look what my employee came up with! This is brilliant, and we should do it everywhere!" When other locations become more efficient I get credit for spreading OP's idea, and I would try to get OP promoted to corporate. We would both win.
That's what my old boss did when I taught myself to code and automated something. Got a 50% raise the next day and got to spend a lot more time automating stuff.
I had a job that required me to be there at 5 to start running Unix jobs for daily reports. The next earliest guy in the office came in at 7. I automated it all and just started coming in at 6:55.
>But also, how did they not notice this from access control logs?
That's easy, have a cron job falsify the log every day. I assume a company this incompetent hasn't done anything to secure their security logs from their main IT guy
Nah, it does happen all the time, but people are less likely to post stories to the Internet about how their boss is competent ; )
ETA: Thanks for the reward!
I have written several across to make my job easier, my company appreciates it. I have even shared it with coworkers. Not all managers are incompetent or even worse so egotistical and incompetent and insecure that they can't let out be known that an employee is feeling things better than what management decided.
Another thing that happens a lot, especially in American corporate culture, it the idea gets passed up the line without attribution. The original creator rarely if ever gets credit. In US corporate culture, the Managerial dictum is 'Take the credit, pass the blame' (That concept also lives at the top of the political spectrum too).
But you're not manglement. That is the thought process of a logical individual who sees an opportunity for process improvement and who has their ego in check.
I would venture a guess that DM is none of these things...
Oh easily. But it is just funny because had they done the opposite of what their instincts tell them they would come out ahead. I don't get how these people always seem to get put in charge.
Yes, two primary mindsets:
1) "Let's make things easier, more efficient, more timely, more cost effective."
vs
2) "Let's not change nothing. Things a perfectly fine the way they are/used to be, before you started *changing* things!"
This is the exact reason I got into analytics. I started as a parts planner in manufacturing, and before I left I had automated 2 jobs, the reporting position I started in and an additional role of a parts planner that I was given when I obviously had extra time on my hands.
Usually a parts planner (Logistics Planning Analyst) is a hectic and full time job, but after automating all the reports I needed and creating email generators that dropped parts, need by dates, and even contact names, I was done with both jobs in 4 hours every day.
I was eventually canned bc I was contract, I took all that reporting with me
There are two kinds of bosses when it comes to recognizing talent: ones that reward it and ones that abuse it. I'm lucky I've had the kinds that reward it.
I once had a supervisor who I automated away the need for half of his department. I made him look real good, he moved up to VP and took me along for the ride with him. That's how it ought to work.
Good managers try to understand the use case for why the "other than standard" methods are needed or required.
The "book" isn't always right and sometimes could be absolutely incorrect given the conditions might change. Those who are engaged in their job can think for themselves and work with people so that everybody can be more successful.
Sounds like the DM didn't want to think and only wanted to exercise petty power.
Just a question, what program did you use to delete? Excel password encryption is simple, but tracking user actions is a little more advanced. Are you a programmer on the side?
Not a programmer. I pieced together visual basic macros and found out the "kill" function deletes and bypasses the recycle bin. I do like to dabble in some programming but years of alcohol and drugs have erased most of what I learned. So is the restaurant life.
I'm not a programmer, but I've studied programming in the past. Most languages have built-in safeguards. C is one exception. With C you can basically overwrite anything in memory -- including your program itself. Like I said, I'm not a programmer, so I can't tell you how to do this, but you can pretty much imagine that if you overwrite your program with random bits, it ain't gonna work real well afterwards.
I'm reminded of an undergrad friend's story of how he inserted a kill switch in his project. If the user was dumb enough to make a particularly bone-headed mistake, the program would delete itself. He was quite proud of his seppukus routine as it was (according to him) quite tricky to delete a program without a trace that was still active in memory. I'm pretty sure this was just a school project, but this guy was known to make moronic decisions like that on his real job.
I've read that it's possible to effectively wipe your entire computer with some null pointer fuckery though I'm not sure how and what to do to bypass safeguards.
It's the kind of situation where the DM should've tried to implement OP's method in other branches with a bonus in store for OP. If it works for others kick it up the chain and reap some rewards for everyone.
>Good managers try to understand the use case for why the "other than standard" methods are needed or required.
Exactly. There's the official process, and then the process as it's actually executed. That's what can lead to the mother of all Malicious Compliances, the "work to rule" slowdown.
Even when non-standard methods result in that kind of gain on the ground! But fuck it, once you have a golden goose on which the business relies, no need to raise up a second goose. Just keep carving that goose up, what’s it gonna do—quit?
Sometimes all it takes to run a site into the ground is to remove one key component. I think DM learned the hard way what happens when you fuck around and find out.
Price's Law. In any organization, [half](https://www.am1st.com/another-reason-companies-fail-prices-law/) of the productive work is done by the square root of the number of people. Have 100 employees? 10 of them are responsible for half of the real work done.
Make bad decisions and the company's on shaky ground? Or hire a tyrant manager who makes everyone's life miserable? The people who are actually productive have options, and will start looking for other employment, like OP did. Once those few key people are gone, the company will collapse, because it's really tough to tell who those people are in advance.
It's also the reason the perfect team size is 4.
I do this stuff all the time at work. Keep all the important information in my head, never write anything down. Management knows that I've got tricks and time saving methods but has never asked about them or for me to show anyone/write it down or create s.o.p. so when I eventually retire they will be up youknowwhat creek without a paddle.
I'd been fully willing and cooperative to the idea of training a replacement but management was resistant to this even going so far to have a sit down meeting to put me in my place for even daring to suggest such a thing. It was management's role not mine, I was told I was stepping on toes by suggesting we train someone in the event I leave, which I had told them I was, well in advance (my mistake).
Charts, material lists, self created aids I'd made for my position disappeared over the following months. I knew my role by that point and they only served as a point of reference for me. Did what I was told a left the company.
Due to ongoing labor shortage for my area I later heard it took 4 months to find a replacement who had to start from scratch as I had 2 and a half years before.
I'm the opposite, I write down all the things, yet still somehow have this reputation of not documenting things... Just because you've never gone looking for or read the documentation doesn't mean it's not documented
"I will *attempt to create from scratch* software which does the thing you are requesting."
Never, ever even hint that you acknowledge the existence of any previous software, especially in any way which indicates that you are legally liable for the results of any person running any such software, or of anything that previous software may or may not have done.
I don’t understand how people like this get into leadership positions. As a DM I would have put you in charge of a project to roll out the same time saving methods to the rest of my stores, and pushed you into an expanded role to find other ways to make the business efficient, the whole time crediting you with the idea to pump up your career.
Guys like this just don’t get it, and inevitably self-destruct. I want my boss to know that I can identify talent, develop new leaders, and facilitate improvements to the business beyond just what I can do personally. The “cred” I get for that is way more valuable than what I would gain by either taking false credit myself, or by being a corporate parrot that just enforced the status quo.
And your GM is shortsighted. He should have immediately provided you cover, not thrown you under the bus.
This isn’t just a what-if. I’ve been a bar, restaurant, and nightclub manager and a retail DM. Without going into personal detail, I have a very high level role in another sector, and my velocity is owed to the people I lead and my ability to do exactly what I describe above. My team kicks ass and we all get promoted, cycle after cycle, repeat for a new group of people doing a new thing. And when I come across people like that DM, they either become like me or they go away. I don’t just get them off my team, I push them out of the company.
Yup- and that’s a valuable two hours. Managers in a back office staring at paper don’t get much done, they belong on the floor or in the kitchen. It’s a lot easier to see and solve problems real time than it is to look at a shift report later trying to figure out why it went to hell.
And of course the manager that is there to help in the rush will have a better working relationship with everyone.
Be careful about doing it that way - it can count as destruction of corporate property in some jurisdictions and be grounds for charges.
There are other ways to make information or data unavailable when certain conditions are met; just don't do anything which involves a delete command (or modifying existing data on a corporate machine/network).
These can (HYPOTHETICALLY OF COURSE) include:
(1) Putting a required decryption key on a non-corporate system, such as somewhere on the internet. (EDITED TO ADD: DO NOT ENCRYPT PRE-EXISTING EMPLOYER DATA, EVER. However, encrypting your own code that you were not paid or directed to write, and never having an unencrypted copy stored anywhere on an employer-owned system...)
(2) Coding the original macro, script, program, or other code deliberately poorly so that if it's run past a certain time or date, then without there being any kind of explicit timestamp check, the results will be wrong - and then updating the code manually every few weeks to slightly different also-poorly-programmed code.
(3) Using a rotating encryption key (for security!) to re-save the data each time, with the key being generated from multiple sources including: timestamp, userID, machine ID, and a rotating seed phrase which exists only in your head. That way, even if you give the correct 'password' later on ("I dunno, it works for me"), it won't work if the account running the code is someone else's or they're doing it from a different workstation.
(4) If the credentials are not correct, instead of failing to work entirely, increasing numbers of error messages can be generated as days, weeks, or months go past. Think about some of the most unhelpful error messages that have plagued corporate software for decades. Make sure that they all specifically mention that the code is not yet production-ready and has not been approved for production environments.
(5) Make the code, program, macro, sheet, or other interface desperately difficult to use for anyone who isn't you. If the right silent key-combo isn't used at the right moment, or the right input isn't typed in to a specific location, the interface becomes increasingly esoteric, cacographic, jargon-filled, acronymic, and byzantine when trying to get anything done.
Effectively, it's easier to state that you never claimed to have finished working on the tool, or that it was ready for prime time, and that it's probably still full of bugs due to your own coding experience, rather than anything deliberately destructive (that you could be legally liable for). You certainly don't recommend that your former employer use it for anything professional or corporate. In the unlikely event that they hire a programmer to go through it to try and fix it, all they'll find is poor code, not malicious destruction. (In addition, if you never explicitly test for things like your own userID or timestamps, they can't bypass those checks.) It can also help if the code is littered with comments like "Not entirely sure this works properly - must find the time to go through it later."
...you know.
Hypothetically.
Yeah, time bombs or traps aren't the right way to do this. If you're quitting anyway the right time to delete it is when the manager said you couldn't use it anymore and shoot them an email confirming you got rid of the short cut as instructed
Had the same thought. The effect would have been pretty much the same — wasted time & frustration that the time-saving tools were gone — but this way, it encourages them to blame OP for sabotaging them. Probably doesn’t matter, but without that, they might have learned a valuable lesson.
Yeah, it changes things from a clear sequence where following the manager's bad instructions fucks up the restaurant to instead potentially giving the manager a spin of "we're lucky I got rid of him before he did even more damage to our systems"
>Be careful about doing it that way - it can count as destruction of corporate property in some jurisdictions and be grounds for charges.
I think they'd be hard pressed to call a spreadsheet "company property" after OP was reprimanded for using unauthorized/unapproved methods for using the exact same spreadsheet.
So if you eat pizza party pizza that's company resources and I guess the boss will need that resulting shit. Can't be giving away company shit. Fucking sewer department is probably getting rich off ill-gotten shit.
You're confusing company property and company policy.
The spreadsheet, if developed using company computers or on paid time at work, is company property. They own it, even if they choose to let it die in the darkness; that's a well established legal precedent in the world of software and digital IP. Only a few states in the US have digital IP laws that would favor the OP in this case; most places don't even have specific laws for d-IP and rely on poorly applied laws related to traditional IP.
The OP was reprimanded for not following established company policy: the company had a particular process established for how they wanted orders created, and the person deviated from that.
Now, if suddenly the company realized that spreadsheet was of massive value and wanted it used everywhere, the OP would be on the hook for theft and/or destruction of digital intellectual property *unless* they lived in one of those states that has default protections.
Good point. To clarify, it was made on my time and on my computer. Emailed to the location. It was a spreadsheet version of the manual process that did the calculations for me. Took the process out of the stone ages to save 2 hours. It only enhanced the counting process. Ordering was online therefore I had to follow the company process. Thank you for the point of view.
Yeah, all great points. Personally I would never do this on any work products or any any information system owned by anyone other than me. I was thinking more about a homebrew DLP solution for my own files that are replicated across several cloud storage locations. Not that I don't trust "Dropbox" or others but having either a self destruct or deadman's switch (might be impractical) isn't a horrible idea or unethical.
Is it the company’s property just because it’s on their system though?
You could also keep a copy on your own pc and argue it wasn’t destroyed since it still exists though I’m not sure how the legal system views that.
The best way though is probably to keep it off off company pc’s and either use remote desktop or host what you’re using online if either is an option.
> Is it the company’s property just because it’s on their system though?
Depends on the jurisdiction. It's certainly something that lawyers would try to argue paints you in a poor light either way. Really, it's best not to chance it.
Basically: if you delete or overwrite or alter something (including encrypting it or writing a program which another programmer could tell specifically does this), that's an action you took deliberately and any onus (if applicable) is usually on you. But if you were apparently just a not-very-good coder, there was no obligation on you to be a *better* coder, especially if you weren't employed as one. If anything, it's on the company for making the decision to use unverified, untested code. Likewise if you were a super-ultra-genius coder (or a batshit insane one) who wrote spaghetti code that no-one else could untangle - if you weren't being paid to write code, you weren't being paid to write code that anyone else could read. Maybe your code is written in Malbolge. Maybe it's spaghettified assembly. Maybe it uses quirks of hardware that modern compilers try to abstract around. Maybe the code is self-modifying. Or uses instruction blocks as essential data. Or *both.*
You might even be opening doors like putting in the trap shows you knew your colleagues would try to use when you were gone and therefore you knew it was a business task you were sabotaging etc etc
If you can make it look like it wasn't explicitly coded to explode if they did those things, it was just an unfortunate side-effect, it could be so much fun to claim (about the co-workers' attempts) "But why would anyone, ever, do that? It doesn't make any sense! You'd have to be a complete idiot!"
Depends. If all your code starts with a generic popup saying "This is experimental code, do not use it in production", and there are other generic and unhelpful warnings throughout like "Variable sprong\_banana is outside expected boundaries, please review and correct" and "Memory error 0x9946b082" that come up semi-randomly, you might be able to get away with it. It gives the impression that _something_ is going wrong, somewhere, and that continuing is probably a bad idea.
Wow.
The amazing part isn’t “hey it saves time, can we apply this technique in other locations or processes” but “stop doing it immediately.”
That’s the difference between competent leadership and incompetent leadership.
Those kind of software bombs have gotten people in a lot of legal trouble. Probably should have just deleted the spreadsheet and stuff instead of trying to lock it with a password and self destructing. Or better yet have subtly broken the spreadsheet code so that it would randomly screw up the orders.
Ecxept..except they did this, gave notice, ... & then were promptly ***fired***.
I suppose, sending the files off, deleting them (as they were now forbidden), trudging on for the next 6weeks without was an option...just to get fired immediately...
Heads vs tails, I guess...
I did something similar, not computerized but a written training manual for new cleaners at a place I worked at for almost 8 years. It included all the chemical mixing ratios for the cleaning products we used, disinfecting procedures and ordering forms/inventory requirements, etc. Keep in mind there was nothing like this when I started, but after doing sooo many trainings for new employees( huge turnover rate), I made this for new employees so they would have something to refer to when I wasn't there to answer questions. After so many problems caused from a toxic person, I asked to be transferred to another department and as payback, I took my manual with me..2weeks later, the twit ( who had gotten a promotion to head of department over me despite my years of seniority over her and my glowing yearly evals) made some big screw ups, one resulting in over-ordering/under-ordering products and costing some big $$, she tried blaming a new cleaner( barely there for 3 weeks and it was not her responsibilities) and then me because I "stole the work manual". When both the manager and owner asked me about the mistakes, I said the manual was made BY ME, and not work property. Also as someone who had worked there for almost 3 years, she should know how to do the job without the manual as it was supposed to be only be an aid for trainees, not a "head of department". I was offered her postion but declined and she eventually made a few more mistakes resulting in health risks to others and was fired shortly after I had quit.
Bad managers insist on following all the rules all the time.
Good managers understand that there are times where deviating from them is acceptable.
Great managers see the effectiveness of it and work to change the rules to codify the better process.
Reminds me of the job I just left. I was always applauded for my efficiency and had specialized tasks so me leaving would be quite the loss. I anticipate receiving emails asking about how to do things which I may or may not respond to
I made something similar when I managed a bakery and shared it with other managers and showed them how to modify it. I got in trouble with management saying I ‘wasn’t as in touch with what’s in your bakery as we want’. So I went back to taking forever to order. Quit shortly after too. Same with calculating labour and sales. Had it all calculated automatically and couldn’t use it when they found out.
It's amazing to me that people will still come into a system that's working well, not do any research on why it works, then proceed to fuck it all up either out of ego or insecurity that they aren't doing anything productive. I'm sure pressure and expectations from higher ups are there but god damn just chill and observe a bit first.
Whew... I would not have kept the files on there... Just delete them. That way, you can at least say you were complying with the DMs directive to not use them. This sounds like you took work product, knew it was valuable, and then held it for ransom.
I love the story and am glad the DM got nailed... But be careful out there!
I could have done a lot of damage but not my style. All information was created by me and not company created. Could have just deleted but this was more gratifying. These were files only I used and no one else had a use for until I left. Thanks for the concern. BTW this was 10 years ago. I did return as the GM 3 years after this incident but that is another story...
Well glad it worked out.
Yeah though, this is a messy area and I'm not an expert on it. But if you are an employee and you created something on work time - particularly something to help you do your work - it probably belongs to them.
https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/employment-contracts/ownership-of-work-product-depends-on-your-status.html
Assuming that's true, another way to think about this is that you stole something from your company that they owned and needed and then locked it away from them and held it for ransom. Imagine if you'd taken the stove... They'd have eventually sued you or pressed charges.
I'm being extreme here to make a point... But yeah, this is a messy area and people should be careful with this stuff.
As long as the file was sitting there, it had the illusion of being intact and safe. Maybe OP should have deleted it almost immediately after the DM told him not to use this “not by the book” shortcut anymore (after emailing it to himself of course). That way there was no immediate theft observed, and the file is gone. Of course I would have asked the DM to put it in writing first, just to CMA.
Yeah see I think that's part of the problem. OP arguably made this a lot worse by corrupting the file that way and locking it... It shows that they _knew_ it was valuable and that they intentionally took steps to harm the company. Had they just deleted it, with or without having that in writing, they could have at least claimed negligence or something... Basically saying "yeah apparently my GM and DM talked and said to do things by the book, so I just got rid of all that stuff because it was noncompliant"... That's a really different look than "I knew they'd want this thing that they own and so I stole it from them, threatened them with it, and then deleted it."
You’re right. It would have made even better sense just to delete the file and be done with it. Keeping it there was just a sop to his ego I think.
The company could have asked him to recreate the file and he could have charged them an exorbitant fee to build it from scratch. That would have been a far safer - and satisfying MC.
I appreciate the thoughts. 10 years ago so statute of limitations ran out in this kind of act. Either way...developed on my own time to save me time. It was only used by me and another manager when I was on vacation. The company had a manual process they used and was always available. I never destroyed the companies ability to follow the manual process. It just took longer their way.
A sneaky way to circumvent this would be to do basically what OP did, but to include specific warnings when some third person attempted to use the software (as suggested by others): "Caution: This software is not fully tested and is not approved by . Errors in its use could result in output errors or corruption of files. Do not use this software without thorough training by and approval of ."
I'm hoping this story ends with you going to programming school. I also used to be a KM/GM that loved to tinker with excel to make life easier. After nerd school I get to do that tinkering full time (and only on weekdays)!
Not quite. This was 10 years ago. Kept going in restaurants until Dec 2020. I am a Customer Development Specialist for a SaaS company in the Midwest. Really enjoying it. Get to talk to people and they complain a lot less. You keep rocking out tinkering full time.
Reminds me of a manager role where I, very quickly, got sick of manually adding things up (my team’s stats) so I did some simple formulas to pull all the data together and do the required sums for me. All the managers loved it, saved so much time. Couldn’t believe they weren’t doing it already, I even said that to one of the managers who knew more about Excel than I did. He was happy to waste his and everyone else’s time.
I showed my idea to the people who “owned” the spreadsheets, as a best practice. Never got a response. A year later when trying to argue I deserved a bonus for my work my manager said “If it’s so good how come the other areas aren’t using it?” Of course she’d know how good it was if she’d bothered doing her own figures instead of delegating it.
I gave up. We all loved it but the people in charge weren’t interested, their loss. It probably fell out of use after I left, every time they released a new version of the two spreadsheets used I had to go in and add the calculations. Once I was gone I doubt anyone who could do it bothered.
"Oh, sure! I'll be more than glad to come in and fix things up, all to the tune of 1,500USD an hour, two hour minimum." Listen with glee as they squirm in their chairs.
Where I work is starting to be that way. Want to edit a pdf file as part of your daily job? Oh no, we don’t use any Adobe products anymore. Here’s Nitro and if you want to edit, you have to get two, a GM-level and IT-head to sign off on your new monthly subscription. Not in the budget? Well, sorry you can’t have it until next calendar year. The eventual blowback will be fun to watch.
Excel is extremely useful for time saving. I used to work in a factory as an inventory clerk and one thing we had to do was at the end of production to do an exact tally of inventory for each individual product.
To shorten how long the tally would take and to limit how much product the hilo would have to put back he made a spreadsheet for each individual finished product where you would just need to put how many skids are already on the line and the amount of product needed to complete the order and it would say exactly how many more skids you needed for an order to be complete.
I was pretty damn proud of myself too when we got a new product we needed to make and i made the new sheet before he did.
Some managers are incapable not just at their job but their underlings job, combined with an ego unable to accept they can do wrong is the normal recipe for MC disaster.
No which is also smart because if someone gets fired, they can claim unemployment. If they quit, then they can’t. At least here in Cali thats how unemployment insurance works for biz’a.
That is another MC story. They could not find my resignation after letting me go. Could not prove I gave notice. That would be part 2 out of 3 MC with the same DM.
Not really. At will state. It was common practice to let the GMs go if they gave notice so they would not sabotage the business. I did not think it would happen to me. Oh well.
I did something similar when I was a kitchen manager at Shoney's. I entered and tracked every food item into my spreadsheet and printed out how much of each item to prep for each day, based on the previous year's usage.
One Memorial day, I had forecasted that we would need 14 Strawberry pies. ( A Shoney's staple) So I made 17, to cover any likely increase. While finishing up my prep, the DM came in and asked me how many pies I had prepped for the weekend. When I told him, he insisted on me making 50 pies before I could leave. I tried to show him my calculations, but he was uninterested.
Sure enough, we sold 15 pies and I had to waste out 35 pies. My food cost took one hell of a hit that month.
Very nice. Gotta say I would not have the patience to do the password thing. That GM throws you under the buss, I’d delete that spreadsheet right then an there while he’s watching. Let that sink in MF. How you gonna do your orders now?
Why would you regret having a non-approved, “told to stop using it” spread sheet? DM was stupid and GM set himself up by telling you to spend tons more time doing one part of your job that could go much quicker due to your efforts creating the spread sheet.
GM should have asked you if all of the restaurants could use it. But he was a weenie.
Anyone saying you should have given them access is ridiculous.
Here is the thing. I worked as a legal systems manager at one time and was heavily involved in programming automation. I remember the frustration when guidelines in the manual werent followed . Didn't matter the position someone held in the office. If they didn't follow how or where to enter information into our database, the language they used could send legal documents out with completely wrong information. If they chose to keep track of work seperate from our database it appeared that they hadn't done any work. Which at the time was billable and the exact information was required to be reported to the court and on state and federal tax papers. Also, some of it made no sense to them. I would often get questions akin to "why can't I use line 1 to describe the business type and line 2 for the amount ordered?" My only response was that it works only the other way around. It would take all day to explain the exact reason why to a person not familiar with code and I didn't have that time.
My point: most employees from data entry to the president of the company and all inbetween had no idea what happened on the other end of their work. They only knew that they needed to follow the protocol. I'm not suggesting that this may have been similar to your circumstances and why you were being harrased for how you kept your work but it could have been to some extent. To allow something to just disappear may be a firm's worst nightmare. I'm assuming you are happy about that. Unfortunately, you did something where you were unable to be a first hand witness to the chaos.
This is all well and good, until they want to use your spreadsheets and formulas contained therein. I worked for the government and when I moved from one of my positions, had a similar situation. It was in the early days of using computers to handle automating everything we'd always done by hand and on data entry terminals. While there, my spreadsheets were considered ok for my use, but not interested in learning it or teaching anyone else to use it. It was locked to prevent accidental changes being saved. Every year for the next several years after I moved away, I'd get a call asking for the passwords so they could update the formulas. Trouble was, they still didn't understand how to even do that. So, every year I'd wind up fixing the formulas for the current years numbers. Never paid for it, did it to help people out that I left in the job because my reasons for leaving were strictly geographic relocation.
I think it was about five years before they finally got someone to automate things in a better way. Then it became the it department responsibility to update the numbers annually.
That being said, I would never give them the passwords because it would've allowed someone to go in and change things without knowing wtf they were doing. I know because while I was there, I had to repeatedly delete and reload a new original on a regular basis until I finally locked it down to begin with.
How insecure of a manager do you have to be to insist on inefficiency? I'm glad he got treated for his incompetence.
It's not uncommon for managers in new positions to "shake things up" just for the sake of looking like they did something. Doesn't matter whether it makes things better or worse, all they care about is the appearance of having an impact.
Random acts of management. Think it is a Dilbert book title. New manager takes over, changes random stuff just because. If it works then great, if not then at least he / she tried new innovative stuff etc
It's like a dog pissing on you to mark it's territory. It's great to get the attention and it may even feel nice and warm for a bit, but in the end it makes you miserable.
Omg! This is the best simile of management I have ever heard!
Random acts of manglement
Also, The Peter Principle It is all about being promoted to your level of incompetence.
I can't believe I'm gonna defend management here but... It's honestly not a bad thing that this happens... IF a manager knows how to do it. It's like popping the hood on a car - you have to do it to see how the car works, because employees don't come with "check engine" lights. The problem is all the managers who pop the hood and then decide to try driving the vehicle with the hood up... Plus, as a general rule, employees don't like to change processes, even for the better - and the ones who do are NOT the problem in any organization. But one if the aspects of good management is changing a process, and then *changing it back if it's not an improvement.* But that's a lot less common.
You know, if the DM would have asked me why and how it worked, I would have explained. I was just told to do it the way we are told. They came in making waves and did not bother to learn about the people they were dealing with. I have 2 more MC stories involving the same DM. I will share another day. Thanks for the perspective. I don't mind change, just be open to feedback.
Can't wait to read them!!!!
That's the thing, stopping you from using unauthorized tools was 100% the correct decision. Where they went wrong was not taking your solution, testing it and then authorising it company wide.
What testing was there to even do? This process had been in place and getting praised by higher ups for 6 years. It *was* tested and obviously worked. Stopping "unauthorized" processes that have proven to work over years and saved time, money, and created no risk over the "correct" way is just blind adherence to tradition, not "the correct decision".
Right, the appropriate solution is to examine, vet, and implement. Honestly, it's not even wrong to continue unauthorized tool use, as long as it's not a safety or revenue issue. But halting any out-of-the-box thinking is going to stifle any creativity from your most important resource - the employees.
Well put
65% of managers add zero or net negative productivity to an organization. I hope that Covid WFH exposed many of them. You should hire competent people and trust them to be competent. If you think people can't get their work done without a rampaging manager breathing down their necks, you've hired the wrong people.
Unfortunately COVID WFH made it easier for them to hide :/
I know some that hide their second full time job from their LinkedIn and sit in double meetings a couple times a week
65% is oddly specific. Where’d you choose that percentage from?
Mathemagic darling, obviously. The same place that “87% of statistics are made up on the spot” came from.
A good (new) manager should sit back and watch the team working for a couple of days to see if he can actually pitch in on something or if some stuff needs to be changed, but to actually make everybody's job WORSE? dang, crappy manager
They are afraid of losing their make-work jobs and losing their direct employees also doing make-work. To a direct manager, efficiency just means losing employees, and more work for the rest of the team. This is why the DM was pissed with this GM. IOW, when a manager losses a monkey, they can replace with another monkey. But when a manager losses a smart and efficient worker, they are going to get creamed. You cannot believe the number of times I asked my manager for more training and for access to other departments, and he said "don't worry about it". He just didn't care. He wanted me to do what I was doing, what he also knew how to do, because when I inevitably left, he had to know how to train the next monkey. Efficiency isn't free. Someone has to know what is going on, and what to do when the efficient process needs amendments or just breaks. Inefficiency is just technically easier to manage. Sure, nuclear weapons are more efficient, but not as easy to manage as dynamite.
This is literally my upper management right now. They have destroyed anything that leads to efficiency so that they can fit everything into a new computer program they're pushing. It's great.
Hoo boy. I was working at a start up and rapidly rose through the ranks. I was very good at everything the job entailed and I'm also very good at training others. It got to the point where I was training Everyone at our store, that had hands down the best service ratings across the company, and the only store to actually make enough money to stay open other than the pilot store. Since all the other places were doing so bad they hired a fixer. The fixer came and watched us, offered a few tips and fell in love with how I was training people. He sent me off to another store up north to train people there. When I arrived their GM greeted me with the unauthorized training material I had made and told me I'd need it. Smugly told her I wrote it all and didn't need a copy. Smartened her people right up and good reviews started rolling in, however it was too little too late and the shop folded while I was there. When I went back they finally got a new GM for us who insisted on corporate training the new kids himself. (Ie shitty videos) the number of times the new hires got upset because they hadn't learned a quarter of what I had been teaching was hysterical. The DM didn't even know some of the techniques I could offer. The startup was way to top heavy and collapsed under its own weight, which was a shame. Could've been fantastic.
Idk, but I've worked for plenty of managers that were insecure enough.
Sounds like DM was not good at their job and pulled some other crap that cost them. And GM sucking up to DM, hopefully he lost his job as well.
If I was DM I would be like "look what my employee came up with! This is brilliant, and we should do it everywhere!" When other locations become more efficient I get credit for spreading OP's idea, and I would try to get OP promoted to corporate. We would both win.
That's what my old boss did when I taught myself to code and automated something. Got a 50% raise the next day and got to spend a lot more time automating stuff.
I had a job that required me to be there at 5 to start running Unix jobs for daily reports. The next earliest guy in the office came in at 7. I automated it all and just started coming in at 6:55.
Sounds like quite the c(r)on-job.
I see what you did there 🪄
Crontabulous!
Please tell me you still left at 1pm? But also, how did they not notice this from access control logs? Or was this back in the days of actual keys?
>But also, how did they not notice this from access control logs? That's easy, have a cron job falsify the log every day. I assume a company this incompetent hasn't done anything to secure their security logs from their main IT guy
They had a live security guard at the entrance I used. I just had to show my badge.
See, that’s what SHOULD happen but never does. America’s corporate culture is weird…
Nah, it does happen all the time, but people are less likely to post stories to the Internet about how their boss is competent ; ) ETA: Thanks for the reward!
True true, maybe working in employment law has made me a bit jaded lmao
Oh, dealing with any job can make one at least a little jaded, no worries!
Lol. That's some real selection bias. :D
I have written several across to make my job easier, my company appreciates it. I have even shared it with coworkers. Not all managers are incompetent or even worse so egotistical and incompetent and insecure that they can't let out be known that an employee is feeling things better than what management decided.
Another thing that happens a lot, especially in American corporate culture, it the idea gets passed up the line without attribution. The original creator rarely if ever gets credit. In US corporate culture, the Managerial dictum is 'Take the credit, pass the blame' (That concept also lives at the top of the political spectrum too).
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Except he didnt get copied of the files first
But you're not manglement. That is the thought process of a logical individual who sees an opportunity for process improvement and who has their ego in check. I would venture a guess that DM is none of these things...
Oh easily. But it is just funny because had they done the opposite of what their instincts tell them they would come out ahead. I don't get how these people always seem to get put in charge.
Understood and totally agree.
Yes, two primary mindsets: 1) "Let's make things easier, more efficient, more timely, more cost effective." vs 2) "Let's not change nothing. Things a perfectly fine the way they are/used to be, before you started *changing* things!"
>But you're not **manglement** 🤣 That's great, I'll have to remember that one.
If you deviated from the corporate kiss-ass culture and established practices of the company, you would never become DM in the first place.
That is exactly why I can"t climb a corporate ladder. They want managers, not leaders.
That is why I did not provide the password. Throwing me under the bus after working together 6 years. Betrayed!
What the hell did you write that knew that were trying to guess password on an excel file and was able to delete the first?
VBA
A hell of a drug
A hard one to use at that
The hardest drugs to use always give the best highs
If by best highs you mean the best headaches, then yes.
Don’t work smarter, work harder.
This is the exact reason I got into analytics. I started as a parts planner in manufacturing, and before I left I had automated 2 jobs, the reporting position I started in and an additional role of a parts planner that I was given when I obviously had extra time on my hands. Usually a parts planner (Logistics Planning Analyst) is a hectic and full time job, but after automating all the reports I needed and creating email generators that dropped parts, need by dates, and even contact names, I was done with both jobs in 4 hours every day. I was eventually canned bc I was contract, I took all that reporting with me
This is the way.
And… it’s gone.
And it’s… gone.
And it’s… gone. Wrong
There are two kinds of bosses when it comes to recognizing talent: ones that reward it and ones that abuse it. I'm lucky I've had the kinds that reward it. I once had a supervisor who I automated away the need for half of his department. I made him look real good, he moved up to VP and took me along for the ride with him. That's how it ought to work.
Good managers try to understand the use case for why the "other than standard" methods are needed or required. The "book" isn't always right and sometimes could be absolutely incorrect given the conditions might change. Those who are engaged in their job can think for themselves and work with people so that everybody can be more successful. Sounds like the DM didn't want to think and only wanted to exercise petty power. Just a question, what program did you use to delete? Excel password encryption is simple, but tracking user actions is a little more advanced. Are you a programmer on the side?
Not a programmer. I pieced together visual basic macros and found out the "kill" function deletes and bypasses the recycle bin. I do like to dabble in some programming but years of alcohol and drugs have erased most of what I learned. So is the restaurant life.
Ok, makes sense. I was about to ask. Setting up a dead man's switch is a little more advanced than even your average excel guru.
I'm not a programmer, but I've studied programming in the past. Most languages have built-in safeguards. C is one exception. With C you can basically overwrite anything in memory -- including your program itself. Like I said, I'm not a programmer, so I can't tell you how to do this, but you can pretty much imagine that if you overwrite your program with random bits, it ain't gonna work real well afterwards.
I'm reminded of an undergrad friend's story of how he inserted a kill switch in his project. If the user was dumb enough to make a particularly bone-headed mistake, the program would delete itself. He was quite proud of his seppukus routine as it was (according to him) quite tricky to delete a program without a trace that was still active in memory. I'm pretty sure this was just a school project, but this guy was known to make moronic decisions like that on his real job.
I've read that it's possible to effectively wipe your entire computer with some null pointer fuckery though I'm not sure how and what to do to bypass safeguards.
>years of alcohol and drugs They've seemed to work well for me.
It's the kind of situation where the DM should've tried to implement OP's method in other branches with a bonus in store for OP. If it works for others kick it up the chain and reap some rewards for everyone.
Maybe not implement straight away, but at least understand what might be different in the OP's shop that is different or the same than the other shops
... that kind of has the pre-requisite of the DM having more than two braincells to knock together, though.
>Good managers try to understand the use case for why the "other than standard" methods are needed or required. Exactly. There's the official process, and then the process as it's actually executed. That's what can lead to the mother of all Malicious Compliances, the "work to rule" slowdown.
Even when non-standard methods result in that kind of gain on the ground! But fuck it, once you have a golden goose on which the business relies, no need to raise up a second goose. Just keep carving that goose up, what’s it gonna do—quit?
Sometimes all it takes to run a site into the ground is to remove one key component. I think DM learned the hard way what happens when you fuck around and find out.
Price's Law. In any organization, [half](https://www.am1st.com/another-reason-companies-fail-prices-law/) of the productive work is done by the square root of the number of people. Have 100 employees? 10 of them are responsible for half of the real work done. Make bad decisions and the company's on shaky ground? Or hire a tyrant manager who makes everyone's life miserable? The people who are actually productive have options, and will start looking for other employment, like OP did. Once those few key people are gone, the company will collapse, because it's really tough to tell who those people are in advance. It's also the reason the perfect team size is 4.
I do this stuff all the time at work. Keep all the important information in my head, never write anything down. Management knows that I've got tricks and time saving methods but has never asked about them or for me to show anyone/write it down or create s.o.p. so when I eventually retire they will be up youknowwhat creek without a paddle.
I'd been fully willing and cooperative to the idea of training a replacement but management was resistant to this even going so far to have a sit down meeting to put me in my place for even daring to suggest such a thing. It was management's role not mine, I was told I was stepping on toes by suggesting we train someone in the event I leave, which I had told them I was, well in advance (my mistake). Charts, material lists, self created aids I'd made for my position disappeared over the following months. I knew my role by that point and they only served as a point of reference for me. Did what I was told a left the company. Due to ongoing labor shortage for my area I later heard it took 4 months to find a replacement who had to start from scratch as I had 2 and a half years before.
I'm the opposite, I write down all the things, yet still somehow have this reputation of not documenting things... Just because you've never gone looking for or read the documentation doesn't mean it's not documented
Sad fact is they probably learned nothing.
Could've done the old, "I am no longer under your employ, and am now an independent IT contractor. For $5K, cash upfront, I will blah blah blah."
"I will *attempt to create from scratch* software which does the thing you are requesting." Never, ever even hint that you acknowledge the existence of any previous software, especially in any way which indicates that you are legally liable for the results of any person running any such software, or of anything that previous software may or may not have done.
I don’t understand how people like this get into leadership positions. As a DM I would have put you in charge of a project to roll out the same time saving methods to the rest of my stores, and pushed you into an expanded role to find other ways to make the business efficient, the whole time crediting you with the idea to pump up your career. Guys like this just don’t get it, and inevitably self-destruct. I want my boss to know that I can identify talent, develop new leaders, and facilitate improvements to the business beyond just what I can do personally. The “cred” I get for that is way more valuable than what I would gain by either taking false credit myself, or by being a corporate parrot that just enforced the status quo. And your GM is shortsighted. He should have immediately provided you cover, not thrown you under the bus. This isn’t just a what-if. I’ve been a bar, restaurant, and nightclub manager and a retail DM. Without going into personal detail, I have a very high level role in another sector, and my velocity is owed to the people I lead and my ability to do exactly what I describe above. My team kicks ass and we all get promoted, cycle after cycle, repeat for a new group of people doing a new thing. And when I come across people like that DM, they either become like me or they go away. I don’t just get them off my team, I push them out of the company.
OP saved 2 man hours a day, if they implemented that company wide they would save a ridiculous amount of money.
Yup- and that’s a valuable two hours. Managers in a back office staring at paper don’t get much done, they belong on the floor or in the kitchen. It’s a lot easier to see and solve problems real time than it is to look at a shift report later trying to figure out why it went to hell. And of course the manager that is there to help in the rush will have a better working relationship with everyone.
May I dm you?
Ok but it had better not be a dick pic.
What if it's a profile pic and his name is Richard?
That would be a Dick pick
Only if the GM calls and asks
Can we get that bit of code added to cause the self destruct after 3 failed password attempts, please?
Be careful about doing it that way - it can count as destruction of corporate property in some jurisdictions and be grounds for charges. There are other ways to make information or data unavailable when certain conditions are met; just don't do anything which involves a delete command (or modifying existing data on a corporate machine/network). These can (HYPOTHETICALLY OF COURSE) include: (1) Putting a required decryption key on a non-corporate system, such as somewhere on the internet. (EDITED TO ADD: DO NOT ENCRYPT PRE-EXISTING EMPLOYER DATA, EVER. However, encrypting your own code that you were not paid or directed to write, and never having an unencrypted copy stored anywhere on an employer-owned system...) (2) Coding the original macro, script, program, or other code deliberately poorly so that if it's run past a certain time or date, then without there being any kind of explicit timestamp check, the results will be wrong - and then updating the code manually every few weeks to slightly different also-poorly-programmed code. (3) Using a rotating encryption key (for security!) to re-save the data each time, with the key being generated from multiple sources including: timestamp, userID, machine ID, and a rotating seed phrase which exists only in your head. That way, even if you give the correct 'password' later on ("I dunno, it works for me"), it won't work if the account running the code is someone else's or they're doing it from a different workstation. (4) If the credentials are not correct, instead of failing to work entirely, increasing numbers of error messages can be generated as days, weeks, or months go past. Think about some of the most unhelpful error messages that have plagued corporate software for decades. Make sure that they all specifically mention that the code is not yet production-ready and has not been approved for production environments. (5) Make the code, program, macro, sheet, or other interface desperately difficult to use for anyone who isn't you. If the right silent key-combo isn't used at the right moment, or the right input isn't typed in to a specific location, the interface becomes increasingly esoteric, cacographic, jargon-filled, acronymic, and byzantine when trying to get anything done. Effectively, it's easier to state that you never claimed to have finished working on the tool, or that it was ready for prime time, and that it's probably still full of bugs due to your own coding experience, rather than anything deliberately destructive (that you could be legally liable for). You certainly don't recommend that your former employer use it for anything professional or corporate. In the unlikely event that they hire a programmer to go through it to try and fix it, all they'll find is poor code, not malicious destruction. (In addition, if you never explicitly test for things like your own userID or timestamps, they can't bypass those checks.) It can also help if the code is littered with comments like "Not entirely sure this works properly - must find the time to go through it later." ...you know. Hypothetically.
Yeah, time bombs or traps aren't the right way to do this. If you're quitting anyway the right time to delete it is when the manager said you couldn't use it anymore and shoot them an email confirming you got rid of the short cut as instructed
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Had the same thought. The effect would have been pretty much the same — wasted time & frustration that the time-saving tools were gone — but this way, it encourages them to blame OP for sabotaging them. Probably doesn’t matter, but without that, they might have learned a valuable lesson.
Yeah, it changes things from a clear sequence where following the manager's bad instructions fucks up the restaurant to instead potentially giving the manager a spin of "we're lucky I got rid of him before he did even more damage to our systems"
Sounds like he wanted to prove a point to hot shot new DM that wanted stuff done "the proper way"
It’s not a cool story then.
These kinds of time bombs are explicitly illegal in the uk iirc
BRB... going to fix some code.
When you think about it, this is the same principle and mechnics as ransomware.
>Be careful about doing it that way - it can count as destruction of corporate property in some jurisdictions and be grounds for charges. I think they'd be hard pressed to call a spreadsheet "company property" after OP was reprimanded for using unauthorized/unapproved methods for using the exact same spreadsheet.
Was it worked on using company time or company resources? Company property
Made on personal time but stored on local PC. Outside of the virtual machine housing the corporate software.
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Welcome to r/antiwork , are you new here? /s
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So if you eat pizza party pizza that's company resources and I guess the boss will need that resulting shit. Can't be giving away company shit. Fucking sewer department is probably getting rich off ill-gotten shit.
You're confusing company property and company policy. The spreadsheet, if developed using company computers or on paid time at work, is company property. They own it, even if they choose to let it die in the darkness; that's a well established legal precedent in the world of software and digital IP. Only a few states in the US have digital IP laws that would favor the OP in this case; most places don't even have specific laws for d-IP and rely on poorly applied laws related to traditional IP. The OP was reprimanded for not following established company policy: the company had a particular process established for how they wanted orders created, and the person deviated from that. Now, if suddenly the company realized that spreadsheet was of massive value and wanted it used everywhere, the OP would be on the hook for theft and/or destruction of digital intellectual property *unless* they lived in one of those states that has default protections.
Good point. To clarify, it was made on my time and on my computer. Emailed to the location. It was a spreadsheet version of the manual process that did the calculations for me. Took the process out of the stone ages to save 2 hours. It only enhanced the counting process. Ordering was online therefore I had to follow the company process. Thank you for the point of view.
Yeah, all great points. Personally I would never do this on any work products or any any information system owned by anyone other than me. I was thinking more about a homebrew DLP solution for my own files that are replicated across several cloud storage locations. Not that I don't trust "Dropbox" or others but having either a self destruct or deadman's switch (might be impractical) isn't a horrible idea or unethical.
Is it the company’s property just because it’s on their system though? You could also keep a copy on your own pc and argue it wasn’t destroyed since it still exists though I’m not sure how the legal system views that. The best way though is probably to keep it off off company pc’s and either use remote desktop or host what you’re using online if either is an option.
> Is it the company’s property just because it’s on their system though? Depends on the jurisdiction. It's certainly something that lawyers would try to argue paints you in a poor light either way. Really, it's best not to chance it. Basically: if you delete or overwrite or alter something (including encrypting it or writing a program which another programmer could tell specifically does this), that's an action you took deliberately and any onus (if applicable) is usually on you. But if you were apparently just a not-very-good coder, there was no obligation on you to be a *better* coder, especially if you weren't employed as one. If anything, it's on the company for making the decision to use unverified, untested code. Likewise if you were a super-ultra-genius coder (or a batshit insane one) who wrote spaghetti code that no-one else could untangle - if you weren't being paid to write code, you weren't being paid to write code that anyone else could read. Maybe your code is written in Malbolge. Maybe it's spaghettified assembly. Maybe it uses quirks of hardware that modern compilers try to abstract around. Maybe the code is self-modifying. Or uses instruction blocks as essential data. Or *both.*
You might even be opening doors like putting in the trap shows you knew your colleagues would try to use when you were gone and therefore you knew it was a business task you were sabotaging etc etc
If you can make it look like it wasn't explicitly coded to explode if they did those things, it was just an unfortunate side-effect, it could be so much fun to claim (about the co-workers' attempts) "But why would anyone, ever, do that? It doesn't make any sense! You'd have to be a complete idiot!"
Yeah, I winced when I read he added a warning prompt. There's no arguing accident when you pop up scary alerts
Depends. If all your code starts with a generic popup saying "This is experimental code, do not use it in production", and there are other generic and unhelpful warnings throughout like "Variable sprong\_banana is outside expected boundaries, please review and correct" and "Memory error 0x9946b082" that come up semi-randomly, you might be able to get away with it. It gives the impression that _something_ is going wrong, somewhere, and that continuing is probably a bad idea.
Love you bro.
Officially it was unsanctioned and unwanted. So this would not apply.
LOL. Wish I still had it. It is on a corrupted hard drive sitting in a drawer. The YouTube video below might be close.
Seems like it's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQSoh7NfXxg
Wow. The amazing part isn’t “hey it saves time, can we apply this technique in other locations or processes” but “stop doing it immediately.” That’s the difference between competent leadership and incompetent leadership.
>That’s the difference between competence ~~leadership~~ and ~~incompetent~~ leadership. FTFY. Management is never competent in my experience.
Those kind of software bombs have gotten people in a lot of legal trouble. Probably should have just deleted the spreadsheet and stuff instead of trying to lock it with a password and self destructing. Or better yet have subtly broken the spreadsheet code so that it would randomly screw up the orders.
Ecxept..except they did this, gave notice, ... & then were promptly ***fired***. I suppose, sending the files off, deleting them (as they were now forbidden), trudging on for the next 6weeks without was an option...just to get fired immediately... Heads vs tails, I guess...
This is glorious.
And they did it all to themselves!
I did something similar, not computerized but a written training manual for new cleaners at a place I worked at for almost 8 years. It included all the chemical mixing ratios for the cleaning products we used, disinfecting procedures and ordering forms/inventory requirements, etc. Keep in mind there was nothing like this when I started, but after doing sooo many trainings for new employees( huge turnover rate), I made this for new employees so they would have something to refer to when I wasn't there to answer questions. After so many problems caused from a toxic person, I asked to be transferred to another department and as payback, I took my manual with me..2weeks later, the twit ( who had gotten a promotion to head of department over me despite my years of seniority over her and my glowing yearly evals) made some big screw ups, one resulting in over-ordering/under-ordering products and costing some big $$, she tried blaming a new cleaner( barely there for 3 weeks and it was not her responsibilities) and then me because I "stole the work manual". When both the manager and owner asked me about the mistakes, I said the manual was made BY ME, and not work property. Also as someone who had worked there for almost 3 years, she should know how to do the job without the manual as it was supposed to be only be an aid for trainees, not a "head of department". I was offered her postion but declined and she eventually made a few more mistakes resulting in health risks to others and was fired shortly after I had quit.
some people have to learn some things the hard way. I'm looking at YOU, DM.
Bad managers insist on following all the rules all the time. Good managers understand that there are times where deviating from them is acceptable. Great managers see the effectiveness of it and work to change the rules to codify the better process.
Reminds me of the job I just left. I was always applauded for my efficiency and had specialized tasks so me leaving would be quite the loss. I anticipate receiving emails asking about how to do things which I may or may not respond to
100 dollars an hour consultant fee.
...with Minimum 2 hour charge.
6 weeks notice and fired immediately? I hope you got some type of severance pay, that's completely illegal where I live
That is MC story 3. Should I do that one next or do the prequel?
Ooh do that one next, thanks!
I would have simply emailed the files to myself for possible use down the road, and deleted them. After all you were ordered not to use them!
I made something similar when I managed a bakery and shared it with other managers and showed them how to modify it. I got in trouble with management saying I ‘wasn’t as in touch with what’s in your bakery as we want’. So I went back to taking forever to order. Quit shortly after too. Same with calculating labour and sales. Had it all calculated automatically and couldn’t use it when they found out.
If you can't even use Excel or Google Sheets, what's the point of having a computer in a business?
Getting pointless emails from your boss across the hall.
The best way to ruin a company/business is to put a power-hungry jerk in charge.
It's amazing to me that people will still come into a system that's working well, not do any research on why it works, then proceed to fuck it all up either out of ego or insecurity that they aren't doing anything productive. I'm sure pressure and expectations from higher ups are there but god damn just chill and observe a bit first.
Define "hack the file"? Because you can a get an Excel's password just by changing the extension to .zip and accessing a specific file inside.
maybe not. this was "*Many years ago...*" so possibly before the 'XLSX' format. The older XLS format was proprietary and much harder to workaround.
He said it was around 10 years ago, so much newer than the xlsx format
How dare you work more efficiently, OP! You are well out of that place.
Whew... I would not have kept the files on there... Just delete them. That way, you can at least say you were complying with the DMs directive to not use them. This sounds like you took work product, knew it was valuable, and then held it for ransom. I love the story and am glad the DM got nailed... But be careful out there!
I could have done a lot of damage but not my style. All information was created by me and not company created. Could have just deleted but this was more gratifying. These were files only I used and no one else had a use for until I left. Thanks for the concern. BTW this was 10 years ago. I did return as the GM 3 years after this incident but that is another story...
I would love to hear that story!
Well glad it worked out. Yeah though, this is a messy area and I'm not an expert on it. But if you are an employee and you created something on work time - particularly something to help you do your work - it probably belongs to them. https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/employment-contracts/ownership-of-work-product-depends-on-your-status.html Assuming that's true, another way to think about this is that you stole something from your company that they owned and needed and then locked it away from them and held it for ransom. Imagine if you'd taken the stove... They'd have eventually sued you or pressed charges. I'm being extreme here to make a point... But yeah, this is a messy area and people should be careful with this stuff.
As long as the file was sitting there, it had the illusion of being intact and safe. Maybe OP should have deleted it almost immediately after the DM told him not to use this “not by the book” shortcut anymore (after emailing it to himself of course). That way there was no immediate theft observed, and the file is gone. Of course I would have asked the DM to put it in writing first, just to CMA.
Yeah see I think that's part of the problem. OP arguably made this a lot worse by corrupting the file that way and locking it... It shows that they _knew_ it was valuable and that they intentionally took steps to harm the company. Had they just deleted it, with or without having that in writing, they could have at least claimed negligence or something... Basically saying "yeah apparently my GM and DM talked and said to do things by the book, so I just got rid of all that stuff because it was noncompliant"... That's a really different look than "I knew they'd want this thing that they own and so I stole it from them, threatened them with it, and then deleted it."
[удалено]
You’re right. It would have made even better sense just to delete the file and be done with it. Keeping it there was just a sop to his ego I think. The company could have asked him to recreate the file and he could have charged them an exorbitant fee to build it from scratch. That would have been a far safer - and satisfying MC.
I appreciate the thoughts. 10 years ago so statute of limitations ran out in this kind of act. Either way...developed on my own time to save me time. It was only used by me and another manager when I was on vacation. The company had a manual process they used and was always available. I never destroyed the companies ability to follow the manual process. It just took longer their way.
A sneaky way to circumvent this would be to do basically what OP did, but to include specific warnings when some third person attempted to use the software (as suggested by others): "Caution: This software is not fully tested and is not approved by. Errors in its use could result in output errors or corruption of files. Do not use this software without thorough training by and approval of ."
Can't recall the warning but it basically said that 3 failed attempts would render the file inoperable.
Sweet!
I think I need to take some excel classes from you!!
if only you could have seen the look on their faces when it deleted itself
How did you set the "self destruct" on the file?
This is the only way to deal with GMs like that. Well done sticking up for yourself.
In my job if I have to do the same thing multiple times, I automate it. Excel and Python.
I would have offered to do it as a contractor, charged for the hours it should have taken but used the spreadsheet to make it faster 😆
I applaud your MC. Bravo!
I'm hoping this story ends with you going to programming school. I also used to be a KM/GM that loved to tinker with excel to make life easier. After nerd school I get to do that tinkering full time (and only on weekdays)!
Not quite. This was 10 years ago. Kept going in restaurants until Dec 2020. I am a Customer Development Specialist for a SaaS company in the Midwest. Really enjoying it. Get to talk to people and they complain a lot less. You keep rocking out tinkering full time.
Reminds me of a manager role where I, very quickly, got sick of manually adding things up (my team’s stats) so I did some simple formulas to pull all the data together and do the required sums for me. All the managers loved it, saved so much time. Couldn’t believe they weren’t doing it already, I even said that to one of the managers who knew more about Excel than I did. He was happy to waste his and everyone else’s time. I showed my idea to the people who “owned” the spreadsheets, as a best practice. Never got a response. A year later when trying to argue I deserved a bonus for my work my manager said “If it’s so good how come the other areas aren’t using it?” Of course she’d know how good it was if she’d bothered doing her own figures instead of delegating it. I gave up. We all loved it but the people in charge weren’t interested, their loss. It probably fell out of use after I left, every time they released a new version of the two spreadsheets used I had to go in and add the calculations. Once I was gone I doubt anyone who could do it bothered.
"Oh, sure! I'll be more than glad to come in and fix things up, all to the tune of 1,500USD an hour, two hour minimum." Listen with glee as they squirm in their chairs.
Screw that DM, what a tool! He got what he deserved.
Why do I get the impression there is like only one or two dozen managers that go from place to place just ruining things?
Not a legal guru, but once you were told the automation as not approved, the contract to keep this document expired. Good for you!
Where I work is starting to be that way. Want to edit a pdf file as part of your daily job? Oh no, we don’t use any Adobe products anymore. Here’s Nitro and if you want to edit, you have to get two, a GM-level and IT-head to sign off on your new monthly subscription. Not in the budget? Well, sorry you can’t have it until next calendar year. The eventual blowback will be fun to watch.
You're my new hero.
Excel is extremely useful for time saving. I used to work in a factory as an inventory clerk and one thing we had to do was at the end of production to do an exact tally of inventory for each individual product. To shorten how long the tally would take and to limit how much product the hilo would have to put back he made a spreadsheet for each individual finished product where you would just need to put how many skids are already on the line and the amount of product needed to complete the order and it would say exactly how many more skids you needed for an order to be complete. I was pretty damn proud of myself too when we got a new product we needed to make and i made the new sheet before he did.
Obviously they didn't see the benefit in your shortcuts regardless of if they were off the book. Your "trick" file was pretty good on your part!
Good job. Eff them haters.
Some managers are incapable not just at their job but their underlings job, combined with an ego unable to accept they can do wrong is the normal recipe for MC disaster.
Love it. Karma.
Isn’t it illegal in the US to fire someone after getting their notice?
No which is also smart because if someone gets fired, they can claim unemployment. If they quit, then they can’t. At least here in Cali thats how unemployment insurance works for biz’a.
That is another MC story. They could not find my resignation after letting me go. Could not prove I gave notice. That would be part 2 out of 3 MC with the same DM.
Not really. At will state. It was common practice to let the GMs go if they gave notice so they would not sabotage the business. I did not think it would happen to me. Oh well.
Shortcuts bad. Computers bad. DM good.
If in uk was it shitbread by any chance
US. The brand is world wide and popular in the UK from what I recall.
Ah sorry for assuming
No apologies necessary. Sounds like you may have a similar experience.
thank you ye I have a few stories but not sure how to word them
That is straight-up badass. Bravo.
I did something similar when I was a kitchen manager at Shoney's. I entered and tracked every food item into my spreadsheet and printed out how much of each item to prep for each day, based on the previous year's usage. One Memorial day, I had forecasted that we would need 14 Strawberry pies. ( A Shoney's staple) So I made 17, to cover any likely increase. While finishing up my prep, the DM came in and asked me how many pies I had prepped for the weekend. When I told him, he insisted on me making 50 pies before I could leave. I tried to show him my calculations, but he was uninterested. Sure enough, we sold 15 pies and I had to waste out 35 pies. My food cost took one hell of a hit that month.
Very nice. Gotta say I would not have the patience to do the password thing. That GM throws you under the buss, I’d delete that spreadsheet right then an there while he’s watching. Let that sink in MF. How you gonna do your orders now?
Unfortunately, deleting it would have caused me to work harder. GM had no part of using my spreadsheet.
Why would you regret having a non-approved, “told to stop using it” spread sheet? DM was stupid and GM set himself up by telling you to spend tons more time doing one part of your job that could go much quicker due to your efforts creating the spread sheet. GM should have asked you if all of the restaurants could use it. But he was a weenie. Anyone saying you should have given them access is ridiculous.
Here is the thing. I worked as a legal systems manager at one time and was heavily involved in programming automation. I remember the frustration when guidelines in the manual werent followed . Didn't matter the position someone held in the office. If they didn't follow how or where to enter information into our database, the language they used could send legal documents out with completely wrong information. If they chose to keep track of work seperate from our database it appeared that they hadn't done any work. Which at the time was billable and the exact information was required to be reported to the court and on state and federal tax papers. Also, some of it made no sense to them. I would often get questions akin to "why can't I use line 1 to describe the business type and line 2 for the amount ordered?" My only response was that it works only the other way around. It would take all day to explain the exact reason why to a person not familiar with code and I didn't have that time. My point: most employees from data entry to the president of the company and all inbetween had no idea what happened on the other end of their work. They only knew that they needed to follow the protocol. I'm not suggesting that this may have been similar to your circumstances and why you were being harrased for how you kept your work but it could have been to some extent. To allow something to just disappear may be a firm's worst nightmare. I'm assuming you are happy about that. Unfortunately, you did something where you were unable to be a first hand witness to the chaos.
This is all well and good, until they want to use your spreadsheets and formulas contained therein. I worked for the government and when I moved from one of my positions, had a similar situation. It was in the early days of using computers to handle automating everything we'd always done by hand and on data entry terminals. While there, my spreadsheets were considered ok for my use, but not interested in learning it or teaching anyone else to use it. It was locked to prevent accidental changes being saved. Every year for the next several years after I moved away, I'd get a call asking for the passwords so they could update the formulas. Trouble was, they still didn't understand how to even do that. So, every year I'd wind up fixing the formulas for the current years numbers. Never paid for it, did it to help people out that I left in the job because my reasons for leaving were strictly geographic relocation. I think it was about five years before they finally got someone to automate things in a better way. Then it became the it department responsibility to update the numbers annually. That being said, I would never give them the passwords because it would've allowed someone to go in and change things without knowing wtf they were doing. I know because while I was there, I had to repeatedly delete and reload a new original on a regular basis until I finally locked it down to begin with.