Two bad bosses do more than double the damage

Bad management decisions have a nasty habit of trickling down the business chain to ill effect. For example, when a corporate office sets policies that make no sense for those doing the actual labor, it should be no surprise to see these same guidelines complicate the lives of us working stiffs. I learned this firsthand during my days at the computer repair desk of a now-defunct electronics store.

At this establishment, the managers were determined to make us the best in customer service and repair. However, the approach was poorly planned and horribly designed — a disaster waiting to happen. One detail in particular was a sticking point: Instead of setting aside a separate part of the store for the repair area, the support zone was out in the aisle.

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I’m sure the young, idealistic, inexperienced MBA at corporate headquarters who came up with this asinine idea felt it would allow the PC repair staff to “interact with the customers and promote the store’s great PC services.” (Insert stock photo of smiling tech talking to happy customers.)

The reality was that it made it nearly impossible to complete PC repair work quickly, and it opened a security hole bigger than the Large Hadron Collider. There was only one locked-down hood for securing customer laptops. If you were working on more than one laptop at a time, you had to keep a keen eye on the others so that no one would steal them.

Officially, store policy stated that while a repair associate was working on a customer’s computer, they were not to leave it alone. The company had only one PC repair associate working at one time. Say you were working on several different machines at once and needed to use the bathroom — the preferred option was to find a member of the PC sales staff to watch the desk while you were gone.

But if the sales staff were all tied up with customers, your only option was to put everything away. A computer taken apart? Assemble the computer quickly or put the parts in a bin. In the middle of a two-hour malware scan? Stop the scan, shut down the computer, and lock it up. When you came back five minutes later, you have to pull everything back out of the cabinet and start again. Sure, this makes perfect sense (sarcasm dripping).

It got worse. The company ran into financial trouble, so it cut staff and slashed hours. On any given weeknight, it took at least three salespeople plus the PC repair tech to fully man the PC department. However, as the hours diminished, only one salesperson was assigned to the floor.

As the PC repair tech juggled jobs on several machines that needed to be completed that evening because this is what the salesperson promised, angry, impatient customers circled like sharks. “Yeah, we need some help over here. We want to buy a computer, but the other sales guy is busy.” Then from the other side, “When you get a chance, I need help with the wireless routers.” Then over the loudspeaker would come the announcement, “We need a PC repair tech at the customer service desk …”

One particular evening, I was repairing several machines at once and customers were getting restless. The snippy, cold-blooded operations manager sauntered up and said, “There are customers here who need help! Why are you just standing here? Go help them!”

I knew store policy was on my side, so I fired back: “I can’t leave these customer computers here like this.”

“I don’t care. We have people who want to buy computers and no one to help them. If we don’t meet our PC sales goal for tonight, I will hold you personally responsible and you will get written up.”

“Well, can you watch them until I get back?”

“No! I have to get back to the customer service desk. They are short-staffed up there too.”

“All right, it’ll take me a few minutes to put these computers away.”

“Leave them where they are and get to the customers.”

OK, whatever. What was supposed to be 15 minutes away from the repair area turned into an hour.

When I returned to the desk, I found a 10-year old kid playing Solitaire on a customer computer and an older couple eyeing another unit, asking, “How much does this one cost?” Exasperated, I dismissed the kid as diplomatically as I could and pointed the older couple to what we actually did have for sale.

However, something was wrong. One of the laptops was gone!

As Murphy’s Law would have it, this laptop was in for a RAM upgrade, and the salesperson had promised it would be completed right about … then. (Insert expletive.) With perfect timing, the customer came walking up the aisle. “Is my laptop all done?”

Pale-faced, I scrambled, looking around the desk, in the cabinet, and pretty much everywhere else to find it. Nope, it wasn’t there. More than likely, the laptop had left the store in someone’s jacket while I was helping customers. Sheepishly, I shook my head and told the customer, “It’s not here.”

In irate terms he demanded to see the manager. The same reptilian manager who ordered me to help customers had the guts to ask, in front of the customer, “Where is this gentleman’s laptop?!? You were supposed to be keeping an eye on the repair desk!”

By this point I was at the end of my rope and refused to be thrown under the bus. “You were the one who an hour ago told me to go wait on customers instead of doing my job here.”

The customer threw his hands up and interjected, “Look, I don’t care whose fault it is. I am a lawyer, I had lots of important data on that laptop, and if you can’t find it, I’ll sue!”

The man was true to his word. We couldn’t come up with the laptop, and sure enough, the company got sued for the cost of the laptop and the damages resulting from his loss of data — a total that fell just shy of six figures. When the corporate office looked into the matter, the manager tried again to blame me but was the one who ended up getting fired.

Some managers pay attention to potential consequences at the ground level for the decisions made higher up the chain. When they don’t, heaven help us. Newsflash: It’s for the good of the staff and the company to at least listen to what the underlings have to say.

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This story, “Two bad bosses do more than double the damage,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more crazy-but-true stories in the anonymous Off the Record blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.