offbeat
This is why you don’t let junior staff ‘save the company a few dollars’
WHO, ME? Welcome to another instalment of Who, Me? It’s The Reg’s reader-contributed column in which you admit to mistakes and reveal your escapes!This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Rohan” who told us that a few years back he worked on the IT side of a warehouse.“Management purchased software that required a large-screen tablet, but when they saw those cost over $1,000, they balked at the price,” Rohan writes.
The tech team’s resident pimply-faced youth (PFY) was therefore given the job of finding a cheaper alternative.
Rohan didn’t pay much attention because he was about to go on a holiday.While he was away, the PFY ordered a generic 14-inch Android for just $150.“It was ordered quicker than you can say ‘I’d advise against that’,” Rohan wrote.He returned from holiday and found a package on his desk, plus an email from the PFY expressing his pride in saving the company so much money.Rohan noticed the unmistakable livery of a Chinese e-tailer on the package, and after opening it found a nine-inch tablet inside. He therefore opened a dispute with the sellers, who asked to see a picture of the machine.“I duly sent one showing a tape measure rolled out to nine inches,” Rohan wrote. The vendor responded with an explanation of their proprietary tablet-sizing methodology, which Rohan applied.Using their method, the tablet was an eleven-incher, so Rohan revived the dispute.The vendor’s response was to send an image of the box the tablet came in, plus evidence that the box it arrived in had a 14-inch diagonal measurement.
