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In reply to the discussion: Ever had a bully for a boss? [View all]avebury
(11,186 posts)I worked in the commercial loan office of a bank and one day one I discovered that one of my co-workers made a big mistake on one of our accounts. Instead of wiring $10,000 to a Canadian bank she wired $100,000. Oops!!!!! Of course the customer's account went into overdraft which resulted in the customer calling me (I had a really good working relationship with the customer). Well the Supervisor thought that she and the co-worker could fix the problem and pretend like it never happened. There were never going to tell the account officer what happened to his account.
I sat there unable to believe what they were going to try to pull off. There was no chance in heck that the coverup would work. Man, I thought that most people learned the lesson from Watergate - the coverup is always worse then the original crime. I knew the customer well enough to know that someone would call the account officer about the incident and the account officer would have looked like an idiot for not knowing what was going on with his customer. He would then blow up (justifiably) and it would not be pretty. Plus is was just wrong wrong wrong. You don't treat co-workers like that.
Well you guessed it, I told him what happened and I got in hot water for it with my manager. I just could not sit my and let them set the guy up to look bad. It wasn't right to do that to him or to the bank. But I paid the price for it. I will say that the officer (who was working his way up the ladder) always had my back after that. When we had a change in senior leadership, my manager tried to get rid of me and Bob fought for me. Our new senior lender made the comment that it was very unusual for Bob to talk that favorably about anyone and I kept my job. Bob was a tough, no nonsense person who was good at his job.