  

It all started with a new manager at work. He was a young Staff Sargent in the Marine Corp with a few combat tours overseas that managed at a security company after he left the Marines. He was related to the office manager and he was hired to manage the shop personnel and some company drivers. He introduced himself as the new sheriff in town and said he was going to take control of how the shop was run. He never once managed a shop like ours, and I was annoyed at the presumption he was going to tell me how to do my job since I have be working in the industry since for a long time (1980). 

The first policy he came up with was to create a preapproval paper trail for every purchase in the shop. Every purchase, no matter how small, had to preapproved by him before we could proceed. This was inhibitive to the flow of work in the shop. My objections fell on deaf ears. 

I took one of these approval forms and filled it out for a “parts kit” to the tune of $72.50 for him to sign. I got it back and made a few updates to the form, the decimal was changed to a comma and a zero was added to the total. The item being purchased was corrected to a “race car parts kit.” Now the form was for $72,500. 

I turned it into the account dept with an “invoice” for said race car. The accounting manager looked at me with some apprehension. I insisted with the “purchase” and she updated the manager’s monthly expense tally. When the manager found out about it, he promptly hit the ceiling because, he was unable to explain it.  He ran down to the accounting dept and grabbed the paperwork.  

Seeing my updates on the form he runs out to the shop, with other curious employees from his dept following to see what all the commotion was about, and confronts me in the middle of the shop. He hits me square in the head first thing and then rips into me about how it’s not funny to circumvent his process. I pick myself up off the floor with a smirk on my face that I can’t stop and let him finish his rant.  

The stack of preapproval forms disappeared after that incident. 