Business coaches love to give a lot of useful and not-so-good advice on running a successful business, but one of the most useful tips, probably the best, is not given by them but by folklore. We are now talking about the old proverb: "Don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."
Indeed, doing this is probably the best way to shoot your own business or job in the foot, but for some reason, many managers or owners do this on a regular basis. The result, of course, turns out to be quite predictable: at best, these are financial losses, at worst, a threat to the very existence of the company or department.
A similar situation happened to the author of the original post in the Malicious Compliance community on reddit, which scored about 24.3K upvotes and almost 1K understanding comments. However, understanding someone else's example and facing a similar situation yourself are completely different things. But let's just examine this particular story...
More info: Reddit
The Original Poster worked in a company that repaired pipes for gas pipelines
Image credits: beeveephoto (not the actual image)
So, the Original Poster worked for a large company that repaired pipes for gas pipelines. The basis of the business was that the old pipe was removed, analyzed for wear and damage by special expensive measuring equipment, and then the damaged sections were replaced with new ones.
Image credits: u/Warrior004
The OP had quite a high salary and tried to work extremely diligently
As the OP himself admits, given that the parent company was also engaged in the gas business, the business of his employers was high-margin, and he also received quite a decent salary. He even agreed to spend almost two hours on daily commutes.
Image credits: u/Warrior004
There were a few people in the OP's department that maintained the high-precision measuring machine, critical to the workflow, who fully understood how it actually worked. One of them was Vladimir, an old technician who serviced all the company's equipment and was therefore very busy.
Image credits: u/Warrior004
Eventually, the OP became the only person who knew almost everything about the process-critical measurement machine
The second was Antonio, also an elderly man, and the third was just the OP, who during his work, being a very pedantic and professional person, scrupulously perceived senior masters' lessons, and over time became, as it seemed to him, an indispensable worker because he knew practically everything about this technique.
Image credits: u/Warrior004
There was also a man working in the department named Igor, who was a rather negligent person and kept his job solely due to the fact that he was the brother of Freddie - the OP's boss' boss. For a year, Igor made crucial mistakes several times in working with the machine, which then had to be eliminated by the author of the post.
Image credits: u/Warrior004
The OP's colleague used to make critical mistakes so, one day, he just collected all the information and sent it to management
Moreover, Igor repeatedly tried to shift the blame onto the OP, but he did not succeed - after all, the OP's professional reputation was simply impeccable. As a result, after another act of negligence on the part of a colleague, our hero could not stand it, so he collected and documented all the cases, and then sent them to management.
Image credits: Official U.S. Navy Page (not the actual image)
Boss told the OP he could either quit or apologize for "regularly bullying colleagues"
The next day, Freddie came to their place of work and approached the OP, demanding that he immediately apologize to Igor for the allegedly unfair accusations. Otherwise, as Freddy said, the OP will be fired immediately. However, our hero understood that this outcome was also quite possible, and expected something like this.
Image credits: u/Warrior004
The OP preferred to leave work and took the entire department down with him
In general, the OP announced that he was leaving, packed his things, and immediately left the place of work. The fact is that Antonio was on a long vacation at that time, and Vladimir could not devote enough time to setting up the measuring machine - and now it remained at Igor's full disposal.
Image credits: u/Warrior004
After a while, of course, everything went wrong in the department. Igor did not set the machine well, Antonio was completely unavailable, and Vladimir did not always have any physical ability to set everything up correctly. And the workflow in the company was built in such a way that the slightest hitch in the work of the OP's department led to stagnation in the common cause.
Image credits: u/Warrior004
After some time, the management fired the whole department and the OP's former boss as well
As a result, after some time, top management representatives arrived to investigate everything. Freddy and Igor were fired, and the managers issued a formal apology to OP as well. At least he hopes the apology was sincere...
Image credits: Paul Downey (not the actual image)
Commenters admitted that the OP was absolutely right and admired the way he handled this situation
People in the comments, of course, supported the OP, noting that although the story looks quite long, it is, in the end, completely worth reading. Well, the principle "Do not kill the goose that lays the golden eggs" worked in this situation one hundred percent.
Image credits: u/Warrior004
We also want to ask your opinion on this story. Perhaps you had to deal with something similar as well? Then, just feel free to write your own tale, and it would be nice if it had a happy ending.