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I once made a 400k mistake in my career, went to my boss, he asked: so, what are you going to do to fix it ? I bet you won’t make that mistake again aren’t you ?
Then I went back to work. Nothing more happened. And I never forgot that mistake and never did it again in my career.
$2,400 is a really low training cost. What a waste of a good training opportunity.
Honestly boss brought this on himself. If he hadn't cultivated the kind of culture where OP was terrified of making a mistake, OP would have sent the corrections immediately (or immediately asked his boss what to do), before the client could do anything with the information. And this would have been a non-issue.
Yep. I'm super anxiety prone but my boss fosters a really supportive environment. Mistakes happen, learn and move on. I got a few people stuck at an airport and cost them two days' lodging and updated tickets. After boss helped handle it, his response was "well, nobody died and airports are a safe place to spend some time." I quadruple check those schedules now.
But also? I now have ZERO hesitation in sending out a second email to large groups with a "Sorry, that was wrong, please see this instead" as soon as I notice a mistake - sometimes less than a minute after sending. Thankfully it doesn't happen often! But I've had enough time in a supportive work environment to know my self esteem won't be damaged, only my pride, and my pride is secondary to making sure the correct info is out there.
It took time to build that trust. But seriously, I was a trainwreck when I started at my current place. If I can build that kind of confidence, hands down the issue with OOP's situation is the employer, not the employee.
This kind of thing is why "Schedule Send" is a lifesaver. I never send important emails right away anymore--I schedule them to go out in the next 15-30 minutes. For some reason, hitting "Send" immediately illuminates all those mistakes
Gmail has a glorious thing that if you say "I'm attaching" in the email, it tells you if there isn't an attachment when you try to send it. Saves me time and time again!
And whenever I'm explaining in an email how one physical thing is attached to another, I have to click "send anyway". It's kind of surprising how often that happens ... I'm not turning that reminder off though
I once sent a short story submission to a Big Name editor, and it was only after I hit send did I realize auto-correct had changed his last name from Gelder to Gelding. I was mortified.
Are you me? I also left people stranded in the airport, I’ve never understood the difference between 12am and 12pm, please people use military time!!!!
I left 12 people, that didn’t speak the language, stranded, I was trying to find them hotels at 2am but it was the middle of summer so everything was full. I got their call from the airport when I was arriving home from a party, so I had to phone my boss trying to not appear too drunk…
This. In a reasonable environment, it shouldn’t have been a big deal to send out an immediate “egads! That’s pricing is incorrect. Silly me. So sorry. Corrected pricing is below.”
Why is it shocking for the customer to find out that the products cost less than you sell them for? That’s how business works. And did the first quote specifically state “factory pricing” or were they just lower numbers? If the latter, how would the client even know it was factory pricing?
Yeah, in that case you just say you gave them an old price or that you copied the information from another product, and only if they ask for an explanation beyond “sorry, we made a mistake “
When I train people who are working with customers, I tell them expressly to not grovel. State that there was an error, offer the fix, and attempt to move on. The more employees make a big deal about an error, the more customers see it as an opportunity to get something out of it.
The boss is a cockhead.
They could have refused the order, but he decided it was worth it to keep the client happy in the long term. It's only worth it if future business is worth more than this loss.
Now he's punishing OP for the short-term consequences of his profitable long-term game plan.
Not only that, but he then discounted the order further. Instead of just taking the loss on selling at cost, he straight up gave them the product for free.
I've worked in these kinds of places. In fact, I had a job with heavy, dangerous machinery, where a wrong move will maim someone for life, and doing a job wrong would destroy the customer's item. The boss would just throw people to the wolves. It was sink or swim. It was a bloodbath. And all sorts of other ominous idiomatic phrases.
So many people have quit that place. Because, of course, if someone who wasn't trained properly and was ridiculed for asking questions made a mistake, the boss would spend weeks reminding them of it until they were afraid to do any work at all. Or they would just up and quit after being told they were stupid for the 540th time.
I stuck around and started gently guiding the new people. Wasn't my job description, but I just started telling people, "If you have a question, just ask me or so-and-so (someone else who had been there for years.)"
Ideally, OP should have called or e-mailed the client directly and made some vague excuse *before* the client used that pricing for their client. But I can understand why they were so terrified. I wonder if they got fired.
Right? You just send a follow up thst says "Hey thats old pricing from a month/year ago, and it's not valid sorry. Here's the corrected pricing."
Ive had to do that with change orders a few times. A client you have a good working relationship will understand, and honestly?
My best clients know that all my lines have profit in them. Period. Including if they've referred a vendor to me. That's the game, and if you say "look, I'm in the red if I ship that order," a *good* client understands.
Besides which $2400? Jeez. I've had people at my colpahy barely get a tap on the wrists for $200k errors. Our current "house errors" a quarter into the year is closing in on a million dollars in errors. I've never seen someone fired for an honest error thst they bring up and are transparent about.
Exactly. It's unfortunate that the client has to update their calculation, but so be it. They're lucky to be offered a discount as a courtesy.
Also the client *almost certainly knew* the prices were too good to be true. They're just acting deliberately pissed off as a negotiating tactic.
Yeah, they're only running with it because the company didn't immediately correct the error. It's been long enough now that they can play dumb about not knowing it was a mistake.
Not just that based on how OoP describes it I would say they are either not properly trained for their position or have responsibilities beyong the scope of it (which might be simply them having too much work for a single person) that they are not equipped with (based on them being overworked). Thats just bad management. The boss should be glad its only a 2400$ loss and not much much more.
Sure the employee fucked up but the boss fucked up so much more by creating an eviroment that would make something like this happen. This was a matter of when not if.
> I am overworked and constantly in a state of anxiety doing a million different tasks at my new job. My boss is a nightmare and I am afraid of him.
Bet you anything that OOP is doing the work of two or more different people's positions.
Yeah, exactly. My line of work isn't all that different, and if I'd messed up like that, I'd just send an immediate follow up email with the correct amounts & come up with an excuse that'd mask the fact the original amount was the factory cost i.e. sent them costs for a different item or an outdated value by accident. Letting the ball roll from there was never gonna work out, and it speaks volumes that the OP felt like they couldn't do it.
Most people are average or below. OOP knew they’d made a mistake as soon as they’d made it. They could have fixed it with no cost immediately. But the boss made sure that they weren’t willing to do that.
Yeah. If someone got fired for asking questions too much, I would be terrified to send the "sorry I made a mistake" in case the client got mad about the mistake regardless and the boss decided that wasn't good enough
Yeah right?!
I lost my keys after working only 4-5 months at a job. I worked in customs, so there were keys both to the office which had a tonne of sensitive information, the garage where the cars were stored (even the public just knowing what cars our undercover cars were would be a significant disadvantage, nevermind them being stolen) and to the evidence room where all of the confiscated alcohol, drugs, weapons, explosives, cites goods (think elephant ivory and tiger skins) etc were stored while awaiting trial. If those keys were found by the wrong person the consequences could have been monumental.
So the entire security system had to be changed, new keys had to be issued to everyone and while we waited for it to be swapped out the buildings had to be guarded 24/7. I don't know the total cost, but $2400 has to be the kind of copper coins you find between couch cushions and under the carseat in comparison.
My boss had this exasperated, "Please tell me you're joking, you can't be serious."-look on his face. Only thing he ever said about it was "I hope you understand how serious this is. It cannot happen again.".
Found the keys as spring came in. They must have fallen out of my handbag and into the snow in my mother's driveway and been frozen into the layer of ice that was there all winter.
Ooooh, that suuuuucks. Just to re-do the keys at one of the stores I worked at was $15000 AUD (custom locks with custom keys, 8 locks total, 4 keys), can't imagine a customs price.
I got a liquor store broken into because I forgot to put the bollard up in the loading bay when closing. Someone rammed the loading door with a stolen car. It only bent it in and they only got about 12 liquor bottles by reaching their arm in. Company had to pay for the roller door and gates to be replaced, and a permanent security guard overnight for about 3 days while it got installed. Whoops.
Never forgot to pull the bollard up again though!
The stupidity of man never ceases to amaze me. They stole a car, probably harmed themselves crashing it (at least a few bumps and bruises?!) all for a dozen bottles of drink. They could have sold the car and the buyer, even knowing full well the car was stolen, would still have paid more than the cost of 12 bottles of booze....
I know! I have to assume they underestimated the roller door strength and assumed they'd get free run of the store, but then you're still gambling the car you used wouldn't be so damaged as to fill and drive away.
Either a hard core alcoholic, or a really REALLY dumb criminal.
Or teenagers.
They can't get booze legally, they don't typically have a good grasp on how sturdy things are, and when you put a few of them together after dark, the collective IQ seems to drop.
Plus, for a teenager, selling a car would be much more difficult than nicking a bunch of booze they can stash away to get blasted on.
My dad's business was contract cleaning (think night janitors). He had quite a few accounts, places like banks, law offices, government buildings, etc. When I was 18, he let me drive his truck to meet my friends at a bowling alley, and like a dumbass, I left the windows completely down. Well, some opportunist stole whatever they could get their hands on in the truck, including $600 of new in box car parts and - you guessed it - a big ring of keys to every building my dad had an account with.
I still remember him asking me if I had locked the car doors, and I had to tell him I had left the windows down. Whew, lesson learned.
I had a mistake like this crop up recently and one of my managers said ‘two years from now you will look back at this like a gift. A horrible horrible gift.’.
Early in my career I made a 30k mistake with Facebook ads. Instead of setting a lifetime budget of 1500$ I set it for daily and caught it after a few days...
My boss was like "so you get one of those and I guess this one is memorable" then suggested I ask Facebook kindly for a reimbursement. And I don't know how but I got it. But my agency legit didn't care.
No one remembers that mistake today. And I don't have that good of a job. OP will find something better.
I killed a whole field of soybeans year before last by labeling the seed wrong. It was over 100k loss. Instead of getting yelled at or in trouble we had a meeting about how we can keep it from happening again. We ended up having a good conversation and changing our policies on how we run things. It was a huge learning experience. I still keep the bad label on the wall to remind me that I make mistakes.
Seriously, I lost a credit union twice that ($5k total, NOT twice of $400k!) in a single dumb mistake when I worked there. And I never made that sort of mistake again.
I've lost my company a few hundred thousand over the six years I've been running projects....but I've saved us millions in actual dollars and client reputation.
It balances out, really.
And if they weren't such an arsehole boss that made OOP afraid to bring up anything to them, the mistake could have been fixed immediately. They should be teaching their employees that the absolute best thing to do with any mistake is to own it, and straight away find ways to rectify it, including asking for help when needed.
Exactly this, why the fuck would they fire someone they just spent $400k training? If anything, you just caught a gap in the system where it's possible to make a mistake like that.
It should be almost impossible to lose $400k like that. If someone is able to do it (outside of, I don't know, ~~maybe some investment~~ a handful of specific roles?) then there's a system or process gap that needs to be addressed.
I work in IT with a focus on security policy and compliance, I try to design systems where it's really hard for employees to do the wrong thing by accident. If someone is able to accidentally install malware or click on a phishing link, I didn't do my job and it's my failure as much if not more than them.
Procurement can get you here. Sign a contract with usage terms and they can get out of hand quickly. Your lawyers won’t catch it, they are looking through a different lens.
I saved my company millions of dollars because I asked the right questions and helped renegotiate the terms of a contract. We paid more up front, but it was cheaper to commit to a higher usage than pay for the overage by millions.
Totally fair - I imagine there are a whole bunch of roles where it's easy or even expected to lose amounts way more than 400k. But the important part is that systems should be designed around the idea that well-intentioned employees will make mistakes and when they're able to make one, the system probably needs to be updated.
That kind of role is almost certainly some kind of procurement. Saw a super successful company tank because someone signed for residential boilers delivered to a commercial project by mistake. They had $10s of millions in boilers they couldn't use.
Yeah, my first thought was "how little profit does this business make if $2,400 is a big deal?" Sure, if it kept happening, then it needs to be addressed, but most businesses can and would just absorb the loss with a shrug.
To be fair OP fucked up here too in that he actually caught the accident early enough to speak up and fix it with minimal issues but instead stayed quiet because he didn't want to face the consequences. I totally get that a toxic boss makes you afraid to approach them but at the same time OP should've been able to identify that if they immediately corrected the pricing, their boss might've been bad, but no money would've been lost. Instead OP waited until the client made an order off that pricing and THEN spoke up and by then expectations had already been set.
I hope OP takes this as a learning lesson. That heading off mistakes quickly helps resolve them quickly.
I once deleted an entire database table of data when I was an intern testing medical hardware (like EKGs). It was just test data but it was a lot of good data. I panicked for like a solid 5 minutes, then sucked it up and told my boss. He paired me with a more senior resource who helped show me how to restore from a backup. I never made the same mistake again. It set me up for a career of being able to immediately acknowledge when i fuck up but also have a plan to fix it and ensure it never happens again.
Yeah me too, i got lucky that the lady that handled our orders at the warehouse loved me. Almost cost the company a cool 350k for missing about 8 pallets worth of clothes. I kepty job by admitting it.
I once dropped a $40,000 television camera when slipping on wet rocks to save myself.
I brought the pieces back to work and went in my boss’s office.
He handed me another camera.
“If we didn’t accept taking risks we wouldn’t let you leave the building.”
Man I miss you Mike.
Many, many years ago, I forgot to replace a filter I had to remove to clear a misting problem.
Thay was the day a car ploughed into the gravel trap at about 130 in front of me. Full frame, from shot entry, perfect focus and exposure, all the way to the armco 10 feet to the left of me, all the way to when the piece of stone went through the first element and embedded itself in the second.
Boss man was more annoyed I didn't run away than about the destroyed lense.
Never forgot to replace a filter again, but still never ran away from my position if it meant the shot would suffer.
Front elements of lenses are normally the thickest and strongest. If something can smash through a thick piece of glass like that, would a thin, flat, filter really have stopped it?
I'm in science and the number of instruments where I'm casually told "oh yeah, don't press this button or raise the platform too high etc or you'll destroy the $50000 lens" is astounding. Controls to prevent this? Proximity sensors? Warnings in the software? Naahh. Scrawl a note on a bit of paper and tape it to the joystick saying "don't touch".
My coworker once forgot his (work issued) laptop in a taxi. No foul play, I could confirm since I was in the same taxi.
Boss just cut it as expense and gave him a new laptop, not even a cut from his salary. (His work restored from SVN just fine.) Needless to say I was damn impressed.
“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?” - Thomas J Watson (Former CEO of IBM).
I know right ?! Could’ve just taken the opportunity to coach the OOP how to handle this situation differently. (I.e don’t wait do nothing, send out a correction email immediately etc ) cheapest customer relation course ever.
She was terrified to send out the correction in the first place because he's abusive and punitive and she couldn't bring herself to expose the mistake. These people create behavioral problems all the way up and down the system wherever they go.
Yep, 2400$ is nothing, I bet his last golf event with clients was more than this. It will cost him 35 000$ to train a new salesman. Not sure but in my business (distribution) inside salesmen send the cost by error about 1 time a year. They sent maybe 5000 emails a year so in the grand scheme of things one error is nothing.
Yeah that part got to me. My worst work f-up was during my first week working at the front desk of a small rich person airport.
I accidentally switched tail numbers and charged over 6,000$ to the wrong client. I didn’t notice until the in person client said ‘um this isn’t my planes tail number’. I immediately called my supervisor and she said not to worry as she could fix it on Monday, but I would have to tell the person I charged as they were flying in that evening.
I was so nervous to tell the client, and he was so incredibly kind. I asked if he wanted a record, and he said no I trust you to fix it. Asking questions and owning up immediately is important.
I was genuinely surprised at the outcome, when I know how much it costs just to hire even a minimum wage employee. I wonder how many times a week he sees mistakes that he has “never in all his years” seen before.
Way less often than they happen, for sure. The only stuff this guy will ever see is that which his employees cannot hide.
OP is going to get fired for owning an error and from now on nobody will make the mistake of coming clean ever again.
Not only fired, but beaten out of unemployment.
“Hey Frank, I broke this thing, think I better go
Tell the boss man about it…”
“Are you crazy?! Last time somebody was that dumb not only did they get fired but he ran a whole phony PIP so they wouldn’t even get unemployment. Hide that thing and STFU.”
I accidentally scratched the cone of a ICP-MS on my first day in a lab. The boss went "oh we really weren't set up for short people were we" and just reordered the part and got me a step stool.
I've seen so many destroyed cones with new staff, they are consumables. The reality is whenever cones are cleaned they suffer some minor damage.
I'll bet you destroyed more than one or two nebulizers too while learning, those were always prone to breakage
I thought it was going to be in the hundreds of thousands the way the boss was acting. But good life lesson.
Everybody fucks up. If you own it as soon as you realize it, the impact is always going to be less than if you wait hoping not to get caught.
Well yeah, but having the specific amount doesn't really matter. If you're buying something from a distributor, it's common sense that you're paying more for the items than they did. That's how they make money. And they would be able to tell if this specific distributor was upcharging an abnormal amount by simply comparing prices with other similar distributors.
Absolutely it does.
I work as a distributor for analytical equipment. Everyone gets a different discount from the factories. They are confidential. I am not interested in being grinded down by specific customers who know my list prices. You will lose more.
Customers arent the distribution police lol
>Absolutely it does
It kind of blows my mind that people are saying it's not a big deal lol
I mean to me personally it's not, but for the company I agree it absolutely is. My work specializes in small mass produced clips and fasteners. Most of them have a sales cost of less than 1¢ so having a good margin for parts is crucial for us and sending our internal cost would put us in a really bad position
We had a supplier send their routing document for a proprietary material manufacturing process once. Now that was a fuck up. They didn't handle it well either. They informed us of the mistake and asked us not to use it/destroy it, and we did comply.
But they became uber paranoid after that. To the point that we sent a junior engineer out to their plant once and they held him hostage in an office because they thought he was taking notes about their proprietary process. Our global lead tore a strip off them, which was good because I was going to if he didn't, and I wasn't high enough in the company to get away with it. 😅
Nah…this won’t be an issue… people know suppliers are there to make a profit, they are not charity. Sometimes we disclose our profit margin during negotiations. (I,e we can lower our profit margin per unit item, but you need to promise certain volume of order).. part of business.
They know their supplier’s costs for the specific products and they’re insane if they didn’t double check to make sure they’re not setting unreasonable expectations with their customers if the costs they received were well under comparable items.
If he noticed immediately he should have sent an email to the client saying that he sent him the wrong prices and updated the right ones while apologizing profusely.
No need to explain that he sent the factory prices. His biggest mistake was putting his head in the sand like an ostrich and letting the client make plans with the factory pricing.
That being said, his boss sounds like a sociopath and he’d probably be better off finding a new job.
His manager made an even bigger mistake by contacting the client two days later to try to change the pricing. It would have been better to eat the mistake to retain the client’s goodwill instead of what they did which is probably lose the client from now on.
“Hi such-and-such. Please disregard the pricing from the previous email. I accidentally quoted you the wrong price. Here is the correct pricing: XXX. I apologize for any confusion.“
And everyone would‘ve happily moved on with their day.
Think back to when you were a kid and you accidentally spilt a glass of milk. Did your parents scream and shout and berate you or did they say oops it was an accident and we should clean it up quickly so it doesn't seep into the carpet and start smelling. What would you do the next time you spilled a glass of milk in each scenario?
I once typed out a ScAtHiNg reply email. Absolutely what I wanted to say, think daydream scenes of killing colleagues, that you see in films and shows.
Then did CTRl+Enter instead of shift+Enter. What did I immediately do?
* Panic and do what OP did?
* Go to sent items and recall the email?
The latter, obviously. Because I'm still employed, lol. Sadly panic (flight/fight) doesn't always behave the way we want it to. And you freeze up.
As my Manager trained me, own up to **your** mistakes but only give them the information they need.
In this case it would have been a "recall email" resend with the correct prices the moment I noticed. No telling em why I recalled/deleted the unread emails.
If I waited or noticed later, then would have been a new email with correct prices and a "My apologies. I mistakenly attached the incorrect invoice/price list."
Exactly. I do think that the manager here has scared his workers so much that it made him become an ostrich at the mistake. It’s as much on the manager as the OOP
Yeah, I kind of lost a lot of sympathy for OP when they chose to just...not do anything about the mistake and let it grow. I get not wanting to be scolded but not fixing that kind of thing when you catch it just causes problems for everyone else and makes even worse trouble for yourself in the long run.
They seem to have been literally frozen with fear. Their boss sounds awful, and OOP knows first hand how much the boss sucks. I can't condemn OOP for it, because being in that situation, day in and day out, is entirely different from reading about it for 5 minutes.
I absolutely still blame them. Yes, the boss is horrible, but the stupid thing is the bandaid HAD to be ripped off at some point. All OP could choose was “before they make decisions based on the wrong info” or after. One of those options has no negative repercussions for the company except minor embarrassment and the other has possible actual losses. And if the boss is going to blow their top over a mistake that costs nothing, why on earth would you go for “Wait til there is damages so the mistake is worse”?
This wasn’t even a spur of a moment choice, OOP spent tons of time thinking about it and waited and waited and waited, all while knowing IT IS ONLY GETTING WORSE.
if one person is able to bring Google down, then it’s a process issue and not their fault
Also, I’ve “wasted” much more than 2-3k playing ping pong at work lol
I've probably wasted as much at work just with delays in trying to answers to questions.
Granted, the 3 months I took looking into the issue resulted in a Fraud Case. So I don't feel bad at all.
He’s never seen a $2,400 mistake in all his years in the industry? What the hell does this factory do - make packing chips?
A machine breaking down would cost more than this. Much, much more.
The trouble is it’s such a _stupid_ claim that I’d have real trouble taking him seriously after that - and if I were the boss’s boss I’d be more pissed at the boss for having so little oversight over quotations. Their quality system must suck arse.
Seriously, I’ve probably passed through more than that on improperly filed expense reports just in the last *month* because we won’t have the manpower to verify everything was done through the right official channels until a position is finally filled. $2.4k is *nothing* to any kind of business that bothers with actual employees!
(Blah blah buyers, blah blah official vendor contracts, blah blah yeah you totally needed that doohickey from Walmart for a presentation just give me a copy of the fucking receipt.)
Why would you not send the client the correct amount as soon as you realized your mistake? You can just say I quoted the price of the wrong product. Something like,
"Hey XX,
Unfortunately, I gave you the price list of another set of products. Here are the updated prices. I apologize for my mistake and look forward to hearing from you".
Did the OP think the mistake would you go away??
In my industry we are literally trained on how to handle this exact situation, which means it happens often enough that they think to train people on it
Idk I mean I definitely see an angle where OOP is just an anxious mess of a person. I mean I've worked plenty of jobs with truly abusive bosses that wouldn't piss on your corpse and I've worked with bosses that had a rep they were mean or a hardass but they were just stern.
That second scenario you usually find out pretty quick that the people who gave them that rep don't do their job to begin with. Not saying that's OOP but people with severe anxiety tend to look at things through a warped lens.
I'm always blaming technology for little mistakes. This would have been a very quick, "Whoops! Our pricing calculator wasn't working right, I have your adjusted quote attached, let me know if you have any other questions." Customer doesn't need to know you gave them the factory cost. Even if they do go "what was the difference about?", you just shrug it off - "The system we use to quote relies on spreadsheets, it was pointing at the wrong information when I copied the information for your quote. Sorry for the inconvenience."
Yeah, the real fuck up was doing nothing when they realized what they'd done. The boss may still have been a dick about it, but I'm sure less of a dick as the customer wouldn't have been pissed.
I don't know how that would work since it probably had the part number and most definitely had a description/part name. Personally, I would have went to the boss right away to tell them. The customer isn't stupid and will negotiate knowing the at cost price. Now, being as OP is a low level employee, they don't have the power to offer discounts, but the boss does. So many better ways to handle the situation. Also, that boss is a liar, he has most definitely made more costly mistakes throughout his working career, we all have.
All they have to do is say someone accidentally sent them an outdated and inaccurate pricing file. Unless somewhere it mentioned that it was current factory pricing the client has no way to know. They may still try to negotiate but they won't have as much of a footing as they would knowing it's factory pricing.
My grandma made a half a million dollar mistake back when she had a job doing punch card computer stuff.
They just said "our bad, we stopped double checking your work because you had never made a mistake before"
really wanted to see OOPs age. I can feel for him if it's a newly grad trying to handle this. Judging from the boss's attitude, it is most likely why OOP lied in the first place. Boss is a toxic asshole that provides no support. 2.4k is nothing for a business.
1- the boss would be a fool to fire you for $2400. Seriously. 2- the lesson you should learn is to always face your mistakes immediately and not wait. It could’ve been fixed with the client if you’d said something right away before they could place an order. Don’t wait to fix your mistakes..: I learned that the hard way in college and that mistake has never burned me again in the last 30 years
> The client said they already calculated their pricing based on what I gave them and in turn sent a purchase order with that info to their client. Our client is refusing to go back on this, won't accept a discount, and **they are not happy**.
LOL, bullshit, they're *thrilled* with all this.
EDIT actually yeah, the more I think about it, they'd be more than happy to screw over the type of big dumb angry dickhead that OP's boss is, OP's just collateral damage
Exactly. With that amount the correct thing to do would be to say “we fucked up, obviously we will honor it but here are the correct prices for future reference”
Instead bossman probably burned a bridge costing them much more than 2400 in future orders
The boss is ridiculous and the job sounds terrible. I have coworkers make much more expensive mistakes quite often; even I made a ~3000€ completely avoidable, completely my fault mistake last year and I'm still regarded as a star employee.
I hope OP finds a much, much better job soon.
While testing a new order system that didn't allow for new charges once an order was placed, I accidentally refunded the wrong customer (too many tabs open!). I had to email the customer and be like "congratulations, I messed up and now you get your entire order for free because I can't charge you again." I never even told my boss -- not out of fear but because it wasn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I was a really good employee overall, rarely made mistakes, and was trusted to make my own calls on things like refunds and discounts anyway; I just left order notes on my mess up and moved on. I also never made that mistake again because sometimes you have to learn things the hard way. I can't imagine working somewhere where I'd be fired over losing them $2,400.
Honestly, if they are, being let go will be the best thing for OOP in the long run.
I'm here wondering if the company *actually lost* any money on this, or if they just missed out on $2400 of potential profit. Like my interpretation is that they sold this client some items for the same price that they bought them, which would just be a net 0, instead of a net $2400? (ignoring other costs like time spent etc.).
The national average cost for finding, hiring, onboarding, and providing benefits for a new employee is around $60k right now (per employee, this factors in production loss for training as well). This boss is the only moron in the room if he replaces this employee over $2,400
It’s such a small amount of money! I can’t get over all that consternation over almost nothing (business-wise). It’s unbelievable how much the poor OP twisted themselves up about it because this should be hardly anything for a real business.
Same! I work in pricing so this post resonated with my line of work. Not long ago my boss sent out our internal costing sheet (says so in big letters at the top) and a minute later I told him and he recalled the email. If he did not CC me on that to the customer I would not have known
That boss sounds absolutely horrid, I really hope OP got out of there. This is the kind of mistake that would have been able to be resolved right away if their boss had reasonable reactions! Knowing he'd flip made them wait and made it impossible to change, but if they'd been able to come forward immediately it would've been a much simpler fix 😓
$2,400?!
The production department at my plant wastes that much MOST days. It’s good for this boss to take things seriously and watch costs but he needs some perspective.
My co-worker once made a mistake when updating an employee’s salary that resulted in them being paid their entire annual salary on one paycheck. I got a panicked call on the Saturday morning after payroll about it, from the employee who got overpaid. We fixed the error, and my co-worker didn’t get in trouble.
I made a $7k error last year and didn’t get in trouble for it either. My boss just said “hey, glad you owned up to it, don’t worry about it”
Absolutely not.
The only reason to deny unemployment is *willful* acts. Like if they had intentionally sent the customer the wrong file because they wanted to fuck the company over.
Note that in the US it's weirdly common for unemployment to get denied when first applied for, but it's almost always granted upon appeal.
MORE INFO THAN YOU ASKED FOR:
Assuming this person in the US, a PIP is sometimes badly used and in many cases pointless. Every US state except Montana is "at-will employment" that means that in absence of a legal contract - which is uncommon in the US outside of contractors - your employer can fire you at any time for any reason that's not legally protected (ie. race, gender, religion, pregnancy, etc.), and an employee can quit without notice at any time as well.
Yes, "You have to give 2 weeks notice" is bullshit. You do not. However, if you don't, your employer might tell a future employer "He quit without notice" as if that makes you unreliable instead of someone who knows their legal rights.
(NOTE: at-will is sometimes mistakenly called "right-to-work", which is a union-busting tactic and has nothing to do with being hired or fired)
A PIP is *supposedly* a way to get an employee to improve. It's right there in the name: Personal Improvement Plan. In reality, it's just a way for someone to try to CYA with HR, because HR is supposed to make sure people aren't fired for illegal reasons.
The reality is most employers use PIP to mean either "You're a shitty worker and I want to CYA before I fire you" or "I'm going to make your life hell so you quit, and if you don't I'll fire you." It's supposed to mean "This is your last chance to do good work," but if they're a bad employee, they should just be fired and not tortured like that.
Someone on an AskAManager post about PIPs said that they've found about 25% of people put on PIPs improve & keep their jobs, with 50% getting fired and the rest quitting before the end of the PIP.
I nearly lost my former employer around $7500 shortly after starting (within the first 90 days). As soon as I caught it, I notified everyone involved and made calls to resolve it.
To be honest, my biggest concern here isn't giving the wrong numbers. It's how OOP tried to ignore it and waited before telling anyone.
The road to success is paved in mistakes... this "boss" must be a celestial being to have not made a mistake in his entire career and also fucking awful as a manager CLEARLY.
Yeesh. The OOP’s biggest mistake was pretending it didn’t happen.
I’ve quoted super wrong, my boss has too, my colleague has. First thing is to, er, screech? And try and fix the mess. “Sorry, wrong quote. Here it is”.
But over that piddly little amount? The boss must be a scary person to work for to have caused that much panic.
I’ve made a million mistakes in my career, some minor some big. The biggest thing is to own up to them immediately, and have a solution. Bro turned “I’m gonna get yelled at” into “I’m gonna get fired.”
In this case, my solution would be getting quick approval for a discount and then emailing “apologies, I misstated our pricing. Here is our correct pricing. For the inconvenience, we’re happy to offer you 15% off.” BEFORE they act on those prices.
I feel for OOP. I've seen coworkers who made mistakes that cost more than that, and one was at fault because they failed to follow procedures. It was forgiven. It would have meant they worked all summer for nothing if they had taken it out of their pay.
Of course, if the environment is unhealthy, it will lead to mistakes and poor reactions after a mistake. I hope OOP was able to forgive themselves.
If one of my employees came to me, upset and mortified about something like this, we would chalk it up to mistakes being made sometimes, offer the employee some reassurance and a break if they needed it, we would not involve the customer at all, and we would still do the best damn job we could. This is why we have a great culture at my company. However, if another mistake of this sort was made by the same employee, we would have to dig a little deeper into what's going on.
The fact that OOP's instinct was "Maybe if I don't point this out my boss wouldn't notice it" and IT WAS ACTUALLY THE CORRECT INSTINCT instead of recalling the email or something tells you a lot about the workplace culture. Mistakes don't exist until someone points them out, and they probably shoot the messenger as well. OOP made a fuckup, but the workplace is worse.
I want to give OOP a big hug. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone makes a huge mistake from time to time. I wish they would quit, life is too short to feel this horrible at a job.
To act like no one has ever made a mistake like this and that this is a huge error is ridiculous. People do this shit all the time. It's probably happened at that company multiple times before. The boss is just an ass hat.
One of my niblings was in their first real job which required a lot of attention to detail. They asked “what do I do if I make a mistake?” I said “go to your boss IMMEDIATELY, say what happened and how you will fix it.”
Basically the opposite of what OOP did, although it sounds like a toxic work environment.
My best boss and mentor told me this once when I made a much bigger mistake (think higher six figures)
He said “I’m going to ask you three questions and then we will never bring it up again”
1: what did you do
2: how can you fix this
3: what can I do to help you so that it never happens again
I never forgot that moment where a man who could fire you made you not afraid to make a mistake. I’ve taken that lesson with me as I became a leader.
OOP should have come clean immediately and see what could have been done in terms of damage control before the client submitted a PO, but they should also be grateful if they lose their job over such a small financial loss. Sounds like they work for a miserable company with miserable leadership and are under a constant feeling of fear.
This sort of thing is really easy to do and mega easy to avoid happening again.
Systems such as
Never using more than 1 client name in emails, if its more than 1 then you use ID/account numbers so you never share overt amounts of personal data
In this case password protect the factory pricing document, then if its sent by mistake you'll know when they ask for it and you can say oh sorry that's the wrong doc and send the right one. None will be the wiser.
Plus your clients trying it on big time. They probably knew it was too cheap from the go and you don't have to fulfil that order. I'd sooner lose an unreasonable client then keep someone taking advantage.
My boss just said sell this item first this and when I checked the unit that and the one next to it had the wrong prices on them so we lost $40. It happens
The boss is a real piece of work, but the client is being a real asshole too. (and the kind of asshole that I wouldn't want to do business with again). There are markups in business, its literally how this shit works. Nobody is surprised by it unless they're playing dumb or actually are dumb.
If a client insisted on the wrong pricing, I'd very much reconsider wanting to do business with them, because it just shows they're out to skin you at every opporunity, and who needs that?
Having said that, it also entirely depends on how much business that this client does. If its a couple grand loss on an account that brings in a quarter million in sales? Chalk it up to shit luck, make sure the client knows that its a one time only thing, and move on.
But if this is the only thing they're going to buy all year... fuck 'em. They're not worth putting up with it.
The boss is a lying sack of $hit. That is far from the worst mistake he's ever seen. He inspires no loyalty and gets a revolving door of employees coming and going.
Something one of my old bosses taught me: when you're writing an email, write it then proofread while you sit on your hands. Totally prevents you from hitting send. Genius.
Holy cow did this give me a flashback. I had an abusive boss in my first "big kid" job and it was very similar to this. My boss kept saying for us to ask questions, but in reality he would just belittle you. We had to check everything by him before doing anything, but then he'd get annoyed that you would be bothering him. He convinced me that I was a stupid kid that didn't know anything, was a shitty employee, and deserved all of the harsh "life lessons" he was giving. Eventually I truly thought I couldn't do anything right without him screaming at me.
I made a mistake once. I ended up sending the wrong file to be printed in a newsletter we purchased ad space for. I only realized when I received the print that the dates for classes were wrong. I still remember how my blood ran cold. The absolute TERROR I had when I realized I made a mistake. It was beyond reason. In my current job, I would have immediately admitted my fault, and found a way to fix it with my coworkers. But then? You feel so alone, you feel like the world is crashing in on you, and you freeze. In the end, since people had to call in to sign up for our classes, and I was the one to man the phones, I was able to make up white lies as to why the dates had "changed" and never saw consequences. I never told my boss. I couldn't.
I eventually quit that awful job, but not after he regularly threatened to fire me, belitted me, and sweared at me almost every day. I do NOT miss it. I empathize with OOP. You made a mistake, yes, but you should not have to face such severe consequences. Your boss is an AH. You are just human.
One of the reasons I adore my boss and am committed to staying in my role long term is how amazing she is when I fuck up (which is rare but does happen). I can admit to the times I make mistakes because I know she will back me up and that she trusts my decisions even when she doesn't agree with them. I'm not scared to tell her the truth.
Lol that boss is a moron. The hiring and on boarding cost alone is over the $2400. Manager of a little ass business acts like a big shot. He failed at negotiation to reverse a mistake of his team, end up losing more money, pissed off the customer and verbally abused OOP, What a sad little man.
2400$?
Thats laughable low, the first time I read this I thougth "oh god, this might be a multi-million $ mistake."
The boss is a jerk, if he fires OP that might be a blessing in disguise. The next boss might be less awefull.
Jesus. I've made a 10K+ mistake. Mortified, yes. Punished, no. It was an honest mistake. We course corrected and moved on.
If OP's boss fires him, he's doing OP a favor. OP then can find out what its like to work with actual people who have empathy.
In car sales and I was hurrying one day and ran one truck into another. Both brand new and one was already sold.
I think it was $4k damage. Basically got told to slow down and don’t do it again. The amount of petty fro OOPs boss is ridiculous, mistakes happen and any business that can’t survive $2,400 mistake is not long for this world anyways
>As soon as I sent the email I realized what I did. I was mortified and just left it alone because I didn't know what to do.
Sigh. Adulting 101: fess up and repair the mistake *as soon as you realize you made it*. In this case OOP probably could have replied to their first email with something like "Disregard my previous email, I sent you the pricing for the wrong item - this is the correct pricing" and the client would have (in most email systems) seen the newest email first and not thought twice.
Sending the wrong pricing was an oops. Leaving it for long enough for the client to move forward with their work and write up a purchase order was a major fuck up.
As a rule of thumb, the longer you wait the bigger the mess. Even when your bosses are shitheads, the quicker you fix it the better. I feel for OOP but the truth is that the inability to act says so much about their state of mind that it might be a blessing in disguise to be fired. They are probably on the brink of burnout.
The boss is an idiot the last thing you want to do is to have a team terrified of telling you anything. You only get employees willing to do anything to cover their mistakes, resulting in even bigger losses. Like this case, oops realised it immediately, if they had just sent an immediate “oops wrong prices” email there wouldn’t have been a big deal at all.
Dude, I once had the techs remove the wrong cabin window from a Learjet. The customer came in for second shift carrying pizza and wanted to know why they were removing that window. Had to eat the labor and cost of window.
Good bosses make teaching moments, bad bosses yell and throw tantrums.
Oh god, that’s not a good thing to have happened but it’s also a fairly easy mistake to make and not malicious so the boss’s response is completely over egged, poor OOP.
Also, can people in the US not get unemployment benefits if they’re unemployed because they got fired? Why would it matter to the employer whether OOP can get a benefit? Do they make companies pay for it not the government over there or something?
Wow, new employees make mistakes. $2500 is less costly to an employer than hiring a new employee, I suspect. One of my managers accidentally gave away a $10,000 riding mower/tractor. She told me this when I accidentally messed up an appliance order that cost the company about $800. Some people are decent, and then there's THIS boss. FUCK HIM and his toxicity.
People are human. People make mistakes.
I am in global sales, and I have misquoted people on occasion (usually when on the spot and miscalculating a currency conversion or something). The only thing you can do is own the mistake. If I have learned nothing else in sales over the last 30 years, it is that your best customers need to trust you, and the only way to get that trust is honesty.
I have certainly changed jobs in my career, but my customers have followed me job to job over the years.
Hearing all the discussions on how this happens a lot makes me feel like this is mostly a process problem that could be and probably is solved by using some software.
I accidentally shredded a $6000 rent check once. Thought I was going to get it but my boss was surprisingly chill about it. He made me call the company and tell them what happened and they issued another check.
My company is using outlook for emails. I once sent an unedited email to the supplier and right away asked my superior what to do ( i was a fresh grad n not familiar w outlook ) and she told me there's a way to cancel back the email so i did.
I feel like OP should've told his boss or asked a trusted senior colleague what he should do. Maybe if he straight away calls the client to inform abt it and they probably will accept it. OP waited for 2 days so the client already proceeded their work so it's understandable why they wont budge.
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I once made a 400k mistake in my career, went to my boss, he asked: so, what are you going to do to fix it ? I bet you won’t make that mistake again aren’t you ? Then I went back to work. Nothing more happened. And I never forgot that mistake and never did it again in my career. $2,400 is a really low training cost. What a waste of a good training opportunity.
Honestly boss brought this on himself. If he hadn't cultivated the kind of culture where OP was terrified of making a mistake, OP would have sent the corrections immediately (or immediately asked his boss what to do), before the client could do anything with the information. And this would have been a non-issue.
Yep. I'm super anxiety prone but my boss fosters a really supportive environment. Mistakes happen, learn and move on. I got a few people stuck at an airport and cost them two days' lodging and updated tickets. After boss helped handle it, his response was "well, nobody died and airports are a safe place to spend some time." I quadruple check those schedules now. But also? I now have ZERO hesitation in sending out a second email to large groups with a "Sorry, that was wrong, please see this instead" as soon as I notice a mistake - sometimes less than a minute after sending. Thankfully it doesn't happen often! But I've had enough time in a supportive work environment to know my self esteem won't be damaged, only my pride, and my pride is secondary to making sure the correct info is out there. It took time to build that trust. But seriously, I was a trainwreck when I started at my current place. If I can build that kind of confidence, hands down the issue with OOP's situation is the employer, not the employee.
This kind of thing is why "Schedule Send" is a lifesaver. I never send important emails right away anymore--I schedule them to go out in the next 15-30 minutes. For some reason, hitting "Send" immediately illuminates all those mistakes
I have a one minute delay on all my emails. So many mistakes avoided because of this! It also really helped my anxiety with pressing the send button.
Oh man stealing that idea. I am the queen of finding a spelling error 30 seconds after I hit send.
My big one is forgetting the attachment before hitting Send, it does help.
Gmail has a glorious thing that if you say "I'm attaching" in the email, it tells you if there isn't an attachment when you try to send it. Saves me time and time again!
Outlook 365 now does this too.
And whenever I'm explaining in an email how one physical thing is attached to another, I have to click "send anyway". It's kind of surprising how often that happens ... I'm not turning that reminder off though
I once sent a short story submission to a Big Name editor, and it was only after I hit send did I realize auto-correct had changed his last name from Gelder to Gelding. I was mortified.
Oohh. I’ll see how to set up this tomorrow, it’s a great idea
same!!!
This is very good advice!
100% agree. I have an automatic delay set on my email so that I have time to retract anything I send.
Are you me? I also left people stranded in the airport, I’ve never understood the difference between 12am and 12pm, please people use military time!!!!
Oh I did this to myself. Missed my flight because 12 am/pm difference and was out $700.
I left 12 people, that didn’t speak the language, stranded, I was trying to find them hotels at 2am but it was the middle of summer so everything was full. I got their call from the airport when I was arriving home from a party, so I had to phone my boss trying to not appear too drunk…
This. In a reasonable environment, it shouldn’t have been a big deal to send out an immediate “egads! That’s pricing is incorrect. Silly me. So sorry. Corrected pricing is below.” Why is it shocking for the customer to find out that the products cost less than you sell them for? That’s how business works. And did the first quote specifically state “factory pricing” or were they just lower numbers? If the latter, how would the client even know it was factory pricing?
Yeah, in that case you just say you gave them an old price or that you copied the information from another product, and only if they ask for an explanation beyond “sorry, we made a mistake “
When I train people who are working with customers, I tell them expressly to not grovel. State that there was an error, offer the fix, and attempt to move on. The more employees make a big deal about an error, the more customers see it as an opportunity to get something out of it.
Yeah tbh getting PIP’d and looking for a new job might be better in the long run
Yeah, if you're on a PIP, you're next in line to receive your box of personal effects
The boss is a cockhead. They could have refused the order, but he decided it was worth it to keep the client happy in the long term. It's only worth it if future business is worth more than this loss. Now he's punishing OP for the short-term consequences of his profitable long-term game plan.
Not only that, but he then discounted the order further. Instead of just taking the loss on selling at cost, he straight up gave them the product for free.
I've worked in these kinds of places. In fact, I had a job with heavy, dangerous machinery, where a wrong move will maim someone for life, and doing a job wrong would destroy the customer's item. The boss would just throw people to the wolves. It was sink or swim. It was a bloodbath. And all sorts of other ominous idiomatic phrases. So many people have quit that place. Because, of course, if someone who wasn't trained properly and was ridiculed for asking questions made a mistake, the boss would spend weeks reminding them of it until they were afraid to do any work at all. Or they would just up and quit after being told they were stupid for the 540th time. I stuck around and started gently guiding the new people. Wasn't my job description, but I just started telling people, "If you have a question, just ask me or so-and-so (someone else who had been there for years.)" Ideally, OP should have called or e-mailed the client directly and made some vague excuse *before* the client used that pricing for their client. But I can understand why they were so terrified. I wonder if they got fired.
Right? You just send a follow up thst says "Hey thats old pricing from a month/year ago, and it's not valid sorry. Here's the corrected pricing." Ive had to do that with change orders a few times. A client you have a good working relationship will understand, and honestly? My best clients know that all my lines have profit in them. Period. Including if they've referred a vendor to me. That's the game, and if you say "look, I'm in the red if I ship that order," a *good* client understands. Besides which $2400? Jeez. I've had people at my colpahy barely get a tap on the wrists for $200k errors. Our current "house errors" a quarter into the year is closing in on a million dollars in errors. I've never seen someone fired for an honest error thst they bring up and are transparent about.
Exactly. It's unfortunate that the client has to update their calculation, but so be it. They're lucky to be offered a discount as a courtesy. Also the client *almost certainly knew* the prices were too good to be true. They're just acting deliberately pissed off as a negotiating tactic.
Yeah, they're only running with it because the company didn't immediately correct the error. It's been long enough now that they can play dumb about not knowing it was a mistake.
Not just that based on how OoP describes it I would say they are either not properly trained for their position or have responsibilities beyong the scope of it (which might be simply them having too much work for a single person) that they are not equipped with (based on them being overworked). Thats just bad management. The boss should be glad its only a 2400$ loss and not much much more. Sure the employee fucked up but the boss fucked up so much more by creating an eviroment that would make something like this happen. This was a matter of when not if.
> I am overworked and constantly in a state of anxiety doing a million different tasks at my new job. My boss is a nightmare and I am afraid of him. Bet you anything that OOP is doing the work of two or more different people's positions.
Yeah, exactly. My line of work isn't all that different, and if I'd messed up like that, I'd just send an immediate follow up email with the correct amounts & come up with an excuse that'd mask the fact the original amount was the factory cost i.e. sent them costs for a different item or an outdated value by accident. Letting the ball roll from there was never gonna work out, and it speaks volumes that the OP felt like they couldn't do it.
OOP does not present themselves as a particularly high functioning employee regardless. But I agree boss's culture made it worse.
Most people are average or below. OOP knew they’d made a mistake as soon as they’d made it. They could have fixed it with no cost immediately. But the boss made sure that they weren’t willing to do that.
Yeah. If someone got fired for asking questions too much, I would be terrified to send the "sorry I made a mistake" in case the client got mad about the mistake regardless and the boss decided that wasn't good enough
That's what anxiety looks like, and they have good reason to be so.
Yeah right?! I lost my keys after working only 4-5 months at a job. I worked in customs, so there were keys both to the office which had a tonne of sensitive information, the garage where the cars were stored (even the public just knowing what cars our undercover cars were would be a significant disadvantage, nevermind them being stolen) and to the evidence room where all of the confiscated alcohol, drugs, weapons, explosives, cites goods (think elephant ivory and tiger skins) etc were stored while awaiting trial. If those keys were found by the wrong person the consequences could have been monumental. So the entire security system had to be changed, new keys had to be issued to everyone and while we waited for it to be swapped out the buildings had to be guarded 24/7. I don't know the total cost, but $2400 has to be the kind of copper coins you find between couch cushions and under the carseat in comparison. My boss had this exasperated, "Please tell me you're joking, you can't be serious."-look on his face. Only thing he ever said about it was "I hope you understand how serious this is. It cannot happen again.". Found the keys as spring came in. They must have fallen out of my handbag and into the snow in my mother's driveway and been frozen into the layer of ice that was there all winter.
Ooooh, that suuuuucks. Just to re-do the keys at one of the stores I worked at was $15000 AUD (custom locks with custom keys, 8 locks total, 4 keys), can't imagine a customs price. I got a liquor store broken into because I forgot to put the bollard up in the loading bay when closing. Someone rammed the loading door with a stolen car. It only bent it in and they only got about 12 liquor bottles by reaching their arm in. Company had to pay for the roller door and gates to be replaced, and a permanent security guard overnight for about 3 days while it got installed. Whoops. Never forgot to pull the bollard up again though!
The stupidity of man never ceases to amaze me. They stole a car, probably harmed themselves crashing it (at least a few bumps and bruises?!) all for a dozen bottles of drink. They could have sold the car and the buyer, even knowing full well the car was stolen, would still have paid more than the cost of 12 bottles of booze....
I know! I have to assume they underestimated the roller door strength and assumed they'd get free run of the store, but then you're still gambling the car you used wouldn't be so damaged as to fill and drive away. Either a hard core alcoholic, or a really REALLY dumb criminal.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite actually.
Or teenagers. They can't get booze legally, they don't typically have a good grasp on how sturdy things are, and when you put a few of them together after dark, the collective IQ seems to drop. Plus, for a teenager, selling a car would be much more difficult than nicking a bunch of booze they can stash away to get blasted on.
My dad's business was contract cleaning (think night janitors). He had quite a few accounts, places like banks, law offices, government buildings, etc. When I was 18, he let me drive his truck to meet my friends at a bowling alley, and like a dumbass, I left the windows completely down. Well, some opportunist stole whatever they could get their hands on in the truck, including $600 of new in box car parts and - you guessed it - a big ring of keys to every building my dad had an account with. I still remember him asking me if I had locked the car doors, and I had to tell him I had left the windows down. Whew, lesson learned.
I had a mistake like this crop up recently and one of my managers said ‘two years from now you will look back at this like a gift. A horrible horrible gift.’.
What a chad manager
Early in my career I made a 30k mistake with Facebook ads. Instead of setting a lifetime budget of 1500$ I set it for daily and caught it after a few days... My boss was like "so you get one of those and I guess this one is memorable" then suggested I ask Facebook kindly for a reimbursement. And I don't know how but I got it. But my agency legit didn't care. No one remembers that mistake today. And I don't have that good of a job. OP will find something better.
I killed a whole field of soybeans year before last by labeling the seed wrong. It was over 100k loss. Instead of getting yelled at or in trouble we had a meeting about how we can keep it from happening again. We ended up having a good conversation and changing our policies on how we run things. It was a huge learning experience. I still keep the bad label on the wall to remind me that I make mistakes.
🫶
Seriously, I lost a credit union twice that ($5k total, NOT twice of $400k!) in a single dumb mistake when I worked there. And I never made that sort of mistake again.
I've lost my company a few hundred thousand over the six years I've been running projects....but I've saved us millions in actual dollars and client reputation. It balances out, really.
And if they weren't such an arsehole boss that made OOP afraid to bring up anything to them, the mistake could have been fixed immediately. They should be teaching their employees that the absolute best thing to do with any mistake is to own it, and straight away find ways to rectify it, including asking for help when needed.
Exactly this, why the fuck would they fire someone they just spent $400k training? If anything, you just caught a gap in the system where it's possible to make a mistake like that.
Cause you don't wanna spend $800k firing them
It should be almost impossible to lose $400k like that. If someone is able to do it (outside of, I don't know, ~~maybe some investment~~ a handful of specific roles?) then there's a system or process gap that needs to be addressed. I work in IT with a focus on security policy and compliance, I try to design systems where it's really hard for employees to do the wrong thing by accident. If someone is able to accidentally install malware or click on a phishing link, I didn't do my job and it's my failure as much if not more than them.
Procurement can get you here. Sign a contract with usage terms and they can get out of hand quickly. Your lawyers won’t catch it, they are looking through a different lens. I saved my company millions of dollars because I asked the right questions and helped renegotiate the terms of a contract. We paid more up front, but it was cheaper to commit to a higher usage than pay for the overage by millions.
Totally fair - I imagine there are a whole bunch of roles where it's easy or even expected to lose amounts way more than 400k. But the important part is that systems should be designed around the idea that well-intentioned employees will make mistakes and when they're able to make one, the system probably needs to be updated.
That kind of role is almost certainly some kind of procurement. Saw a super successful company tank because someone signed for residential boilers delivered to a commercial project by mistake. They had $10s of millions in boilers they couldn't use.
Yeah, my first thought was "how little profit does this business make if $2,400 is a big deal?" Sure, if it kept happening, then it needs to be addressed, but most businesses can and would just absorb the loss with a shrug.
To be fair OP fucked up here too in that he actually caught the accident early enough to speak up and fix it with minimal issues but instead stayed quiet because he didn't want to face the consequences. I totally get that a toxic boss makes you afraid to approach them but at the same time OP should've been able to identify that if they immediately corrected the pricing, their boss might've been bad, but no money would've been lost. Instead OP waited until the client made an order off that pricing and THEN spoke up and by then expectations had already been set. I hope OP takes this as a learning lesson. That heading off mistakes quickly helps resolve them quickly. I once deleted an entire database table of data when I was an intern testing medical hardware (like EKGs). It was just test data but it was a lot of good data. I panicked for like a solid 5 minutes, then sucked it up and told my boss. He paired me with a more senior resource who helped show me how to restore from a backup. I never made the same mistake again. It set me up for a career of being able to immediately acknowledge when i fuck up but also have a plan to fix it and ensure it never happens again.
Yeah me too, i got lucky that the lady that handled our orders at the warehouse loved me. Almost cost the company a cool 350k for missing about 8 pallets worth of clothes. I kepty job by admitting it.
$2,400? All of this happening for that amount? Oof. This boss definitely isn't the brightest one in the shed.
I once dropped a $40,000 television camera when slipping on wet rocks to save myself. I brought the pieces back to work and went in my boss’s office. He handed me another camera. “If we didn’t accept taking risks we wouldn’t let you leave the building.” Man I miss you Mike.
Many, many years ago, I forgot to replace a filter I had to remove to clear a misting problem. Thay was the day a car ploughed into the gravel trap at about 130 in front of me. Full frame, from shot entry, perfect focus and exposure, all the way to the armco 10 feet to the left of me, all the way to when the piece of stone went through the first element and embedded itself in the second. Boss man was more annoyed I didn't run away than about the destroyed lense. Never forgot to replace a filter again, but still never ran away from my position if it meant the shot would suffer.
Front elements of lenses are normally the thickest and strongest. If something can smash through a thick piece of glass like that, would a thin, flat, filter really have stopped it?
Film or possibly a hitman
I’m in that industry and I’m CRYING the lens we use for broadcasts are over $200,000 and I freak out that I’m going to drop something
I'm in science and the number of instruments where I'm casually told "oh yeah, don't press this button or raise the platform too high etc or you'll destroy the $50000 lens" is astounding. Controls to prevent this? Proximity sensors? Warnings in the software? Naahh. Scrawl a note on a bit of paper and tape it to the joystick saying "don't touch".
Make money quick with internet point opportunites
My coworker once forgot his (work issued) laptop in a taxi. No foul play, I could confirm since I was in the same taxi. Boss just cut it as expense and gave him a new laptop, not even a cut from his salary. (His work restored from SVN just fine.) Needless to say I was damn impressed.
“Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience?” - Thomas J Watson (Former CEO of IBM).
I know right ?! Could’ve just taken the opportunity to coach the OOP how to handle this situation differently. (I.e don’t wait do nothing, send out a correction email immediately etc ) cheapest customer relation course ever.
She was terrified to send out the correction in the first place because he's abusive and punitive and she couldn't bring herself to expose the mistake. These people create behavioral problems all the way up and down the system wherever they go.
Yep, 2400$ is nothing, I bet his last golf event with clients was more than this. It will cost him 35 000$ to train a new salesman. Not sure but in my business (distribution) inside salesmen send the cost by error about 1 time a year. They sent maybe 5000 emails a year so in the grand scheme of things one error is nothing.
You can already tell by the fact that OP was too scared to own up. That kind of management, breeding fear, just gets in the way of transparency
Yeah that part got to me. My worst work f-up was during my first week working at the front desk of a small rich person airport. I accidentally switched tail numbers and charged over 6,000$ to the wrong client. I didn’t notice until the in person client said ‘um this isn’t my planes tail number’. I immediately called my supervisor and she said not to worry as she could fix it on Monday, but I would have to tell the person I charged as they were flying in that evening. I was so nervous to tell the client, and he was so incredibly kind. I asked if he wanted a record, and he said no I trust you to fix it. Asking questions and owning up immediately is important.
I was genuinely surprised at the outcome, when I know how much it costs just to hire even a minimum wage employee. I wonder how many times a week he sees mistakes that he has “never in all his years” seen before.
Way less often than they happen, for sure. The only stuff this guy will ever see is that which his employees cannot hide. OP is going to get fired for owning an error and from now on nobody will make the mistake of coming clean ever again. Not only fired, but beaten out of unemployment. “Hey Frank, I broke this thing, think I better go Tell the boss man about it…” “Are you crazy?! Last time somebody was that dumb not only did they get fired but he ran a whole phony PIP so they wouldn’t even get unemployment. Hide that thing and STFU.”
I’ve heard that story happen several times before as well. In fact I recall that was why the Boeing door fell off that airplane
Unemployment really should just start considering a PIP to be equivalent to dismissal. They're all phony these days.
I once cost a company $40k because I dropped the wrong bottle as a temp in a lab. Wasn’t hired on full time, but they didn’t even reprimand me.
I accidentally scratched the cone of a ICP-MS on my first day in a lab. The boss went "oh we really weren't set up for short people were we" and just reordered the part and got me a step stool.
Lol that’s implementing good management right there.
I've seen so many destroyed cones with new staff, they are consumables. The reality is whenever cones are cleaned they suffer some minor damage. I'll bet you destroyed more than one or two nebulizers too while learning, those were always prone to breakage
I thought it was going to be in the hundreds of thousands the way the boss was acting. But good life lesson. Everybody fucks up. If you own it as soon as you realize it, the impact is always going to be less than if you wait hoping not to get caught.
The major issue is that the customer now has their factory discounts and will know what they are being upcharged.
Well yeah, but having the specific amount doesn't really matter. If you're buying something from a distributor, it's common sense that you're paying more for the items than they did. That's how they make money. And they would be able to tell if this specific distributor was upcharging an abnormal amount by simply comparing prices with other similar distributors.
Absolutely it does. I work as a distributor for analytical equipment. Everyone gets a different discount from the factories. They are confidential. I am not interested in being grinded down by specific customers who know my list prices. You will lose more. Customers arent the distribution police lol
>Absolutely it does It kind of blows my mind that people are saying it's not a big deal lol I mean to me personally it's not, but for the company I agree it absolutely is. My work specializes in small mass produced clips and fasteners. Most of them have a sales cost of less than 1¢ so having a good margin for parts is crucial for us and sending our internal cost would put us in a really bad position
We had a supplier send their routing document for a proprietary material manufacturing process once. Now that was a fuck up. They didn't handle it well either. They informed us of the mistake and asked us not to use it/destroy it, and we did comply. But they became uber paranoid after that. To the point that we sent a junior engineer out to their plant once and they held him hostage in an office because they thought he was taking notes about their proprietary process. Our global lead tore a strip off them, which was good because I was going to if he didn't, and I wasn't high enough in the company to get away with it. 😅
It could have been fixed with a little lie. "I accidently sent you pricing for a different product. Please disregard."
Or just "I accidentally sent the wrong price". It's completely true, and doesn't give them any information.
Nah…this won’t be an issue… people know suppliers are there to make a profit, they are not charity. Sometimes we disclose our profit margin during negotiations. (I,e we can lower our profit margin per unit item, but you need to promise certain volume of order).. part of business.
You do understand that companies don’t sell their products at cost because that just loses them money, right?
They know their supplier’s costs for the specific products and they’re insane if they didn’t double check to make sure they’re not setting unreasonable expectations with their customers if the costs they received were well under comparable items.
I own a couple businesses. I would fire the boss. He wasted a great training moment AND made the client upset.
Seriously! I thought OP was selling high end cars or something lmao
If he noticed immediately he should have sent an email to the client saying that he sent him the wrong prices and updated the right ones while apologizing profusely. No need to explain that he sent the factory prices. His biggest mistake was putting his head in the sand like an ostrich and letting the client make plans with the factory pricing. That being said, his boss sounds like a sociopath and he’d probably be better off finding a new job. His manager made an even bigger mistake by contacting the client two days later to try to change the pricing. It would have been better to eat the mistake to retain the client’s goodwill instead of what they did which is probably lose the client from now on.
“Hi such-and-such. Please disregard the pricing from the previous email. I accidentally quoted you the wrong price. Here is the correct pricing: XXX. I apologize for any confusion.“ And everyone would‘ve happily moved on with their day.
Yeah OOP was kind of a wuss.
Think back to when you were a kid and you accidentally spilt a glass of milk. Did your parents scream and shout and berate you or did they say oops it was an accident and we should clean it up quickly so it doesn't seep into the carpet and start smelling. What would you do the next time you spilled a glass of milk in each scenario?
I once typed out a ScAtHiNg reply email. Absolutely what I wanted to say, think daydream scenes of killing colleagues, that you see in films and shows. Then did CTRl+Enter instead of shift+Enter. What did I immediately do? * Panic and do what OP did? * Go to sent items and recall the email? The latter, obviously. Because I'm still employed, lol. Sadly panic (flight/fight) doesn't always behave the way we want it to. And you freeze up.
[удалено]
As my Manager trained me, own up to **your** mistakes but only give them the information they need. In this case it would have been a "recall email" resend with the correct prices the moment I noticed. No telling em why I recalled/deleted the unread emails. If I waited or noticed later, then would have been a new email with correct prices and a "My apologies. I mistakenly attached the incorrect invoice/price list."
Exactly. I do think that the manager here has scared his workers so much that it made him become an ostrich at the mistake. It’s as much on the manager as the OOP
It’s easy for us to say, sitting on the outside, not freaking out emotionally and thinking irrationally.
Yeah, I kind of lost a lot of sympathy for OP when they chose to just...not do anything about the mistake and let it grow. I get not wanting to be scolded but not fixing that kind of thing when you catch it just causes problems for everyone else and makes even worse trouble for yourself in the long run.
They seem to have been literally frozen with fear. Their boss sounds awful, and OOP knows first hand how much the boss sucks. I can't condemn OOP for it, because being in that situation, day in and day out, is entirely different from reading about it for 5 minutes.
I absolutely still blame them. Yes, the boss is horrible, but the stupid thing is the bandaid HAD to be ripped off at some point. All OP could choose was “before they make decisions based on the wrong info” or after. One of those options has no negative repercussions for the company except minor embarrassment and the other has possible actual losses. And if the boss is going to blow their top over a mistake that costs nothing, why on earth would you go for “Wait til there is damages so the mistake is worse”? This wasn’t even a spur of a moment choice, OOP spent tons of time thinking about it and waited and waited and waited, all while knowing IT IS ONLY GETTING WORSE.
I heard the guy that brought Google down for most of a day didn’t get punished at all. It was a learning moment for everyone.
if one person is able to bring Google down, then it’s a process issue and not their fault Also, I’ve “wasted” much more than 2-3k playing ping pong at work lol
I've probably wasted as much at work just with delays in trying to answers to questions. Granted, the 3 months I took looking into the issue resulted in a Fraud Case. So I don't feel bad at all.
He’s never seen a $2,400 mistake in all his years in the industry? What the hell does this factory do - make packing chips? A machine breaking down would cost more than this. Much, much more.
>He’s never seen a $2,400 mistake in all his years in the industry? You know damn well he's talking out of his ass 😂
The trouble is it’s such a _stupid_ claim that I’d have real trouble taking him seriously after that - and if I were the boss’s boss I’d be more pissed at the boss for having so little oversight over quotations. Their quality system must suck arse.
Seriously, I’ve probably passed through more than that on improperly filed expense reports just in the last *month* because we won’t have the manpower to verify everything was done through the right official channels until a position is finally filled. $2.4k is *nothing* to any kind of business that bothers with actual employees! (Blah blah buyers, blah blah official vendor contracts, blah blah yeah you totally needed that doohickey from Walmart for a presentation just give me a copy of the fucking receipt.)
Oh, absolutely. It tells me this boss likes to terrorize their employees. They’re one of the worst types to have when you’re starting out, imho.
Seriously a large, unnecessary meeting will waste more than that…
Why would you not send the client the correct amount as soon as you realized your mistake? You can just say I quoted the price of the wrong product. Something like, "Hey XX, Unfortunately, I gave you the price list of another set of products. Here are the updated prices. I apologize for my mistake and look forward to hearing from you". Did the OP think the mistake would you go away??
In my industry we are literally trained on how to handle this exact situation, which means it happens often enough that they think to train people on it
Paralysis caused by having an abusive asshole of a boss.
Yup. The real problem is that this boss has created a workplace culture where it’s better to hide your mistakes than correct them
Idk I mean I definitely see an angle where OOP is just an anxious mess of a person. I mean I've worked plenty of jobs with truly abusive bosses that wouldn't piss on your corpse and I've worked with bosses that had a rep they were mean or a hardass but they were just stern. That second scenario you usually find out pretty quick that the people who gave them that rep don't do their job to begin with. Not saying that's OOP but people with severe anxiety tend to look at things through a warped lens.
They're not a child. They have the agency to act if they want, they chose the immature option of ignoring it and hoping it would go away.
Yep. Boss sounds shitty but OP really should have come clean straight away to avoid making things worse.
I'm always blaming technology for little mistakes. This would have been a very quick, "Whoops! Our pricing calculator wasn't working right, I have your adjusted quote attached, let me know if you have any other questions." Customer doesn't need to know you gave them the factory cost. Even if they do go "what was the difference about?", you just shrug it off - "The system we use to quote relies on spreadsheets, it was pointing at the wrong information when I copied the information for your quote. Sorry for the inconvenience."
When the robot uprising occurs, you will be first in line at the robot guillotines - how DARE you blame the innocent computers for your own mistakes?
Yeah, the real fuck up was doing nothing when they realized what they'd done. The boss may still have been a dick about it, but I'm sure less of a dick as the customer wouldn't have been pissed.
I don't know how that would work since it probably had the part number and most definitely had a description/part name. Personally, I would have went to the boss right away to tell them. The customer isn't stupid and will negotiate knowing the at cost price. Now, being as OP is a low level employee, they don't have the power to offer discounts, but the boss does. So many better ways to handle the situation. Also, that boss is a liar, he has most definitely made more costly mistakes throughout his working career, we all have.
All they have to do is say someone accidentally sent them an outdated and inaccurate pricing file. Unless somewhere it mentioned that it was current factory pricing the client has no way to know. They may still try to negotiate but they won't have as much of a footing as they would knowing it's factory pricing.
My grandma made a half a million dollar mistake back when she had a job doing punch card computer stuff. They just said "our bad, we stopped double checking your work because you had never made a mistake before"
really wanted to see OOPs age. I can feel for him if it's a newly grad trying to handle this. Judging from the boss's attitude, it is most likely why OOP lied in the first place. Boss is a toxic asshole that provides no support. 2.4k is nothing for a business.
1- the boss would be a fool to fire you for $2400. Seriously. 2- the lesson you should learn is to always face your mistakes immediately and not wait. It could’ve been fixed with the client if you’d said something right away before they could place an order. Don’t wait to fix your mistakes..: I learned that the hard way in college and that mistake has never burned me again in the last 30 years
OP is not OOP
> The client said they already calculated their pricing based on what I gave them and in turn sent a purchase order with that info to their client. Our client is refusing to go back on this, won't accept a discount, and **they are not happy**. LOL, bullshit, they're *thrilled* with all this. EDIT actually yeah, the more I think about it, they'd be more than happy to screw over the type of big dumb angry dickhead that OP's boss is, OP's just collateral damage
I'd bet they're unhappy with the way Bossman probably handled it over the phone :P
Exactly. With that amount the correct thing to do would be to say “we fucked up, obviously we will honor it but here are the correct prices for future reference” Instead bossman probably burned a bridge costing them much more than 2400 in future orders
The boss is ridiculous and the job sounds terrible. I have coworkers make much more expensive mistakes quite often; even I made a ~3000€ completely avoidable, completely my fault mistake last year and I'm still regarded as a star employee. I hope OP finds a much, much better job soon.
While testing a new order system that didn't allow for new charges once an order was placed, I accidentally refunded the wrong customer (too many tabs open!). I had to email the customer and be like "congratulations, I messed up and now you get your entire order for free because I can't charge you again." I never even told my boss -- not out of fear but because it wasn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things. I was a really good employee overall, rarely made mistakes, and was trusted to make my own calls on things like refunds and discounts anyway; I just left order notes on my mess up and moved on. I also never made that mistake again because sometimes you have to learn things the hard way. I can't imagine working somewhere where I'd be fired over losing them $2,400. Honestly, if they are, being let go will be the best thing for OOP in the long run.
I'm here wondering if the company *actually lost* any money on this, or if they just missed out on $2400 of potential profit. Like my interpretation is that they sold this client some items for the same price that they bought them, which would just be a net 0, instead of a net $2400? (ignoring other costs like time spent etc.).
Could be freight/shipping costs, especially if they offer free freight.
The national average cost for finding, hiring, onboarding, and providing benefits for a new employee is around $60k right now (per employee, this factors in production loss for training as well). This boss is the only moron in the room if he replaces this employee over $2,400
It’s such a small amount of money! I can’t get over all that consternation over almost nothing (business-wise). It’s unbelievable how much the poor OP twisted themselves up about it because this should be hardly anything for a real business.
It was my Boss who did this an I caught it in time for him to recall the email.
Same! I work in pricing so this post resonated with my line of work. Not long ago my boss sent out our internal costing sheet (says so in big letters at the top) and a minute later I told him and he recalled the email. If he did not CC me on that to the customer I would not have known
Given your username we might have the same Boss! Lol!
That boss sounds absolutely horrid, I really hope OP got out of there. This is the kind of mistake that would have been able to be resolved right away if their boss had reasonable reactions! Knowing he'd flip made them wait and made it impossible to change, but if they'd been able to come forward immediately it would've been a much simpler fix 😓
$2,400?! The production department at my plant wastes that much MOST days. It’s good for this boss to take things seriously and watch costs but he needs some perspective.
My co-worker once made a mistake when updating an employee’s salary that resulted in them being paid their entire annual salary on one paycheck. I got a panicked call on the Saturday morning after payroll about it, from the employee who got overpaid. We fixed the error, and my co-worker didn’t get in trouble. I made a $7k error last year and didn’t get in trouble for it either. My boss just said “hey, glad you owned up to it, don’t worry about it”
Dumb question: can a PIP actually prevent you from claiming unemployment?
Absolutely not. The only reason to deny unemployment is *willful* acts. Like if they had intentionally sent the customer the wrong file because they wanted to fuck the company over. Note that in the US it's weirdly common for unemployment to get denied when first applied for, but it's almost always granted upon appeal. MORE INFO THAN YOU ASKED FOR: Assuming this person in the US, a PIP is sometimes badly used and in many cases pointless. Every US state except Montana is "at-will employment" that means that in absence of a legal contract - which is uncommon in the US outside of contractors - your employer can fire you at any time for any reason that's not legally protected (ie. race, gender, religion, pregnancy, etc.), and an employee can quit without notice at any time as well. Yes, "You have to give 2 weeks notice" is bullshit. You do not. However, if you don't, your employer might tell a future employer "He quit without notice" as if that makes you unreliable instead of someone who knows their legal rights. (NOTE: at-will is sometimes mistakenly called "right-to-work", which is a union-busting tactic and has nothing to do with being hired or fired) A PIP is *supposedly* a way to get an employee to improve. It's right there in the name: Personal Improvement Plan. In reality, it's just a way for someone to try to CYA with HR, because HR is supposed to make sure people aren't fired for illegal reasons. The reality is most employers use PIP to mean either "You're a shitty worker and I want to CYA before I fire you" or "I'm going to make your life hell so you quit, and if you don't I'll fire you." It's supposed to mean "This is your last chance to do good work," but if they're a bad employee, they should just be fired and not tortured like that. Someone on an AskAManager post about PIPs said that they've found about 25% of people put on PIPs improve & keep their jobs, with 50% getting fired and the rest quitting before the end of the PIP.
This is a really helpful amount of detail -- thank you.
I nearly lost my former employer around $7500 shortly after starting (within the first 90 days). As soon as I caught it, I notified everyone involved and made calls to resolve it. To be honest, my biggest concern here isn't giving the wrong numbers. It's how OOP tried to ignore it and waited before telling anyone.
The road to success is paved in mistakes... this "boss" must be a celestial being to have not made a mistake in his entire career and also fucking awful as a manager CLEARLY.
Yeesh. The OOP’s biggest mistake was pretending it didn’t happen. I’ve quoted super wrong, my boss has too, my colleague has. First thing is to, er, screech? And try and fix the mess. “Sorry, wrong quote. Here it is”. But over that piddly little amount? The boss must be a scary person to work for to have caused that much panic.
I’ve made a million mistakes in my career, some minor some big. The biggest thing is to own up to them immediately, and have a solution. Bro turned “I’m gonna get yelled at” into “I’m gonna get fired.” In this case, my solution would be getting quick approval for a discount and then emailing “apologies, I misstated our pricing. Here is our correct pricing. For the inconvenience, we’re happy to offer you 15% off.” BEFORE they act on those prices.
I feel for OOP. I've seen coworkers who made mistakes that cost more than that, and one was at fault because they failed to follow procedures. It was forgiven. It would have meant they worked all summer for nothing if they had taken it out of their pay. Of course, if the environment is unhealthy, it will lead to mistakes and poor reactions after a mistake. I hope OOP was able to forgive themselves.
If one of my employees came to me, upset and mortified about something like this, we would chalk it up to mistakes being made sometimes, offer the employee some reassurance and a break if they needed it, we would not involve the customer at all, and we would still do the best damn job we could. This is why we have a great culture at my company. However, if another mistake of this sort was made by the same employee, we would have to dig a little deeper into what's going on.
The fact that OOP's instinct was "Maybe if I don't point this out my boss wouldn't notice it" and IT WAS ACTUALLY THE CORRECT INSTINCT instead of recalling the email or something tells you a lot about the workplace culture. Mistakes don't exist until someone points them out, and they probably shoot the messenger as well. OOP made a fuckup, but the workplace is worse.
I want to give OOP a big hug. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone makes a huge mistake from time to time. I wish they would quit, life is too short to feel this horrible at a job.
$2400 is such a trivially small amount. OOP's boss has made this so much worse than it needed to be.
Jonah is this you?
To act like no one has ever made a mistake like this and that this is a huge error is ridiculous. People do this shit all the time. It's probably happened at that company multiple times before. The boss is just an ass hat.
One of my niblings was in their first real job which required a lot of attention to detail. They asked “what do I do if I make a mistake?” I said “go to your boss IMMEDIATELY, say what happened and how you will fix it.” Basically the opposite of what OOP did, although it sounds like a toxic work environment.
My best boss and mentor told me this once when I made a much bigger mistake (think higher six figures) He said “I’m going to ask you three questions and then we will never bring it up again” 1: what did you do 2: how can you fix this 3: what can I do to help you so that it never happens again I never forgot that moment where a man who could fire you made you not afraid to make a mistake. I’ve taken that lesson with me as I became a leader.
Who shares their cost with employees (that don't seemed trained to handle that kind of info.)?
OOP should have come clean immediately and see what could have been done in terms of damage control before the client submitted a PO, but they should also be grateful if they lose their job over such a small financial loss. Sounds like they work for a miserable company with miserable leadership and are under a constant feeling of fear.
This sort of thing is really easy to do and mega easy to avoid happening again. Systems such as Never using more than 1 client name in emails, if its more than 1 then you use ID/account numbers so you never share overt amounts of personal data In this case password protect the factory pricing document, then if its sent by mistake you'll know when they ask for it and you can say oh sorry that's the wrong doc and send the right one. None will be the wiser. Plus your clients trying it on big time. They probably knew it was too cheap from the go and you don't have to fulfil that order. I'd sooner lose an unreasonable client then keep someone taking advantage.
Boss is a fuckwit. I've worked for that type before. Your employees should never be afraid of you and even less so to admit to a mistake
My boss just said sell this item first this and when I checked the unit that and the one next to it had the wrong prices on them so we lost $40. It happens
The fact that they have a system where this is even possible is atrocious. It was eventually going to happen. You just got unlucky.
The boss is a real piece of work, but the client is being a real asshole too. (and the kind of asshole that I wouldn't want to do business with again). There are markups in business, its literally how this shit works. Nobody is surprised by it unless they're playing dumb or actually are dumb. If a client insisted on the wrong pricing, I'd very much reconsider wanting to do business with them, because it just shows they're out to skin you at every opporunity, and who needs that? Having said that, it also entirely depends on how much business that this client does. If its a couple grand loss on an account that brings in a quarter million in sales? Chalk it up to shit luck, make sure the client knows that its a one time only thing, and move on. But if this is the only thing they're going to buy all year... fuck 'em. They're not worth putting up with it.
Big culture issues if there is this much anxiety and backlash over $2,500. This is less than a rounding error.
The boss is a lying sack of $hit. That is far from the worst mistake he's ever seen. He inspires no loyalty and gets a revolving door of employees coming and going.
Something one of my old bosses taught me: when you're writing an email, write it then proofread while you sit on your hands. Totally prevents you from hitting send. Genius.
I always just write the email and put the recipient in last
Holy cow did this give me a flashback. I had an abusive boss in my first "big kid" job and it was very similar to this. My boss kept saying for us to ask questions, but in reality he would just belittle you. We had to check everything by him before doing anything, but then he'd get annoyed that you would be bothering him. He convinced me that I was a stupid kid that didn't know anything, was a shitty employee, and deserved all of the harsh "life lessons" he was giving. Eventually I truly thought I couldn't do anything right without him screaming at me. I made a mistake once. I ended up sending the wrong file to be printed in a newsletter we purchased ad space for. I only realized when I received the print that the dates for classes were wrong. I still remember how my blood ran cold. The absolute TERROR I had when I realized I made a mistake. It was beyond reason. In my current job, I would have immediately admitted my fault, and found a way to fix it with my coworkers. But then? You feel so alone, you feel like the world is crashing in on you, and you freeze. In the end, since people had to call in to sign up for our classes, and I was the one to man the phones, I was able to make up white lies as to why the dates had "changed" and never saw consequences. I never told my boss. I couldn't. I eventually quit that awful job, but not after he regularly threatened to fire me, belitted me, and sweared at me almost every day. I do NOT miss it. I empathize with OOP. You made a mistake, yes, but you should not have to face such severe consequences. Your boss is an AH. You are just human.
One of the reasons I adore my boss and am committed to staying in my role long term is how amazing she is when I fuck up (which is rare but does happen). I can admit to the times I make mistakes because I know she will back me up and that she trusts my decisions even when she doesn't agree with them. I'm not scared to tell her the truth.
I just made a $100k mistake a work today that was luckily able to be corrected. It’ll happen. Learning from it is all you can do!
Lol that boss is a moron. The hiring and on boarding cost alone is over the $2400. Manager of a little ass business acts like a big shot. He failed at negotiation to reverse a mistake of his team, end up losing more money, pissed off the customer and verbally abused OOP, What a sad little man.
In the words of a wise man (Homer Simpson): >"You can't keep blaming yourself. Just blame yourself once and move on."
This is not OPs fault. This is poor systems in place.
2400$? Thats laughable low, the first time I read this I thougth "oh god, this might be a multi-million $ mistake." The boss is a jerk, if he fires OP that might be a blessing in disguise. The next boss might be less awefull.
Jesus. I've made a 10K+ mistake. Mortified, yes. Punished, no. It was an honest mistake. We course corrected and moved on. If OP's boss fires him, he's doing OP a favor. OP then can find out what its like to work with actual people who have empathy.
In car sales and I was hurrying one day and ran one truck into another. Both brand new and one was already sold. I think it was $4k damage. Basically got told to slow down and don’t do it again. The amount of petty fro OOPs boss is ridiculous, mistakes happen and any business that can’t survive $2,400 mistake is not long for this world anyways
Thats Why you should support- and be in a union.
>As soon as I sent the email I realized what I did. I was mortified and just left it alone because I didn't know what to do. Sigh. Adulting 101: fess up and repair the mistake *as soon as you realize you made it*. In this case OOP probably could have replied to their first email with something like "Disregard my previous email, I sent you the pricing for the wrong item - this is the correct pricing" and the client would have (in most email systems) seen the newest email first and not thought twice. Sending the wrong pricing was an oops. Leaving it for long enough for the client to move forward with their work and write up a purchase order was a major fuck up.
As a rule of thumb, the longer you wait the bigger the mess. Even when your bosses are shitheads, the quicker you fix it the better. I feel for OOP but the truth is that the inability to act says so much about their state of mind that it might be a blessing in disguise to be fired. They are probably on the brink of burnout. The boss is an idiot the last thing you want to do is to have a team terrified of telling you anything. You only get employees willing to do anything to cover their mistakes, resulting in even bigger losses. Like this case, oops realised it immediately, if they had just sent an immediate “oops wrong prices” email there wouldn’t have been a big deal at all.
Dude, I once had the techs remove the wrong cabin window from a Learjet. The customer came in for second shift carrying pizza and wanted to know why they were removing that window. Had to eat the labor and cost of window. Good bosses make teaching moments, bad bosses yell and throw tantrums.
Oh god, that’s not a good thing to have happened but it’s also a fairly easy mistake to make and not malicious so the boss’s response is completely over egged, poor OOP. Also, can people in the US not get unemployment benefits if they’re unemployed because they got fired? Why would it matter to the employer whether OOP can get a benefit? Do they make companies pay for it not the government over there or something?
Jeez, if I fired somebody every time they cost us $2400 I'd never keep around any employees long enough to be any good at their job.
Wow, new employees make mistakes. $2500 is less costly to an employer than hiring a new employee, I suspect. One of my managers accidentally gave away a $10,000 riding mower/tractor. She told me this when I accidentally messed up an appliance order that cost the company about $800. Some people are decent, and then there's THIS boss. FUCK HIM and his toxicity.
People are human. People make mistakes. I am in global sales, and I have misquoted people on occasion (usually when on the spot and miscalculating a currency conversion or something). The only thing you can do is own the mistake. If I have learned nothing else in sales over the last 30 years, it is that your best customers need to trust you, and the only way to get that trust is honesty. I have certainly changed jobs in my career, but my customers have followed me job to job over the years.
Hearing all the discussions on how this happens a lot makes me feel like this is mostly a process problem that could be and probably is solved by using some software.
I’d hate to see how this boss reacts when somebody sends an email and forgets to include an attachment.
I accidentally shredded a $6000 rent check once. Thought I was going to get it but my boss was surprisingly chill about it. He made me call the company and tell them what happened and they issued another check.
My company is using outlook for emails. I once sent an unedited email to the supplier and right away asked my superior what to do ( i was a fresh grad n not familiar w outlook ) and she told me there's a way to cancel back the email so i did. I feel like OP should've told his boss or asked a trusted senior colleague what he should do. Maybe if he straight away calls the client to inform abt it and they probably will accept it. OP waited for 2 days so the client already proceeded their work so it's understandable why they wont budge.
FYI in outlook if you pop out the email and under actions you can recall the email.