Our small office had little natural light – and that much came all from the glass door behind my back. I was, after all, the latest hire at that 4-seats desk, and I had no choice in the matter.
We were a young company of 5. My manager, one of the two partners, sat right in front of me. Which gave him the vantage point to see a tiny slice of the world outside, and most importantly, who would enter the office.
The only way for me to sense anyone approaching, was the perception of a shadow, quickly followed by the sound of the door opening. I’d then turn by three quarters and greet whoever came in, or stand up and welcome them, if they were a guest. By any stretch, not a dominant position.
One morning though, the glooming shadow of the second partner stormed in without giving me the time to turn: he rushed in, no greetings, already blowing air out of his nose as a raging bull, starting to ask questions. Questions addressed to me.
“Mr. Blank from Company A just called me this morning and told me he’s missing half a million euros. What did you do?”. He rapidly gained position in what was the equivalent of our corner office: the opposite side of the 4-seats desk, right next to his business partner. Perfect entrance view. I could tell he was barely holding himself from jumping over to my position. I saw him being physical before - lucky me, the oversized piece of bureau in our tiny office was a thick enough defence line.
Now, Company A was a massive client for us, possibly our biggest and most prestigious. One time I did some math and concluded that they were something between four and five thousand times bigger than us. Failing anything with them could mean the end for us.
I had been working with this company for more than one year. I started implementing a system that was completely new to me – come to think of it now, it was probably a beta version of whatever it was meant to be. But ignorance was bliss, and I managed to make it work for our client. Among other things, this system had to manage all the logistics distribution costs – to the tiniest detail. Company A would then send all these costs to their suppliers, who would issue an invoice for the corresponding amount. Over the past year, I had worked side-by-side with Company A, solving all their problems, translating all those to the developers who were programming the tool.
Well apparently, Mr. Blank from Company A claimed that all those calculations must have been wrong: he had some budget set aside for these costs (which have been the same for years) but apparently, we were off by half a million euros. My manager was nearly out of his mind: he was notoriously quick tempered; he’d raise his voice and act out. I remember the adrenaline making my arms twitch more than once whilst talking to him, on edge. This could have been a major reason for our little consultancy firm to be fired.
This time I was too sure of what I’ve done, so I asked calmly what he meant by that. “Well”, he said, “they claim this is not possible and that we made mistakes in calculating this! They might owe money to their suppliers and ruined their relationships!”.
In those past 12 months I had the customer pestering me because the PDF print of a some 100k€ pre-invoice would not round up to the same second decimal that they saw on screen. Negligible printing issues (the grand totals were correct) that could not have amounted to a miss of 40k - every given month.
He calmed down instantly – “yeah exactly what I thought. I’m going to call him back right away.”
A manager’s trust is not a given: not everyone can be up-to-speed with all the details, and emotions can get in the way. Keep calm and figure out the problem before loosing your cool.
In fact, keeping your cool will bring you safely home.
Eventually, the customer implicitly revealed how we saved them far more than what they paid for our services for that first year. This sort of revelations can be golden, and we did not capitalise on that. In my next job though, working directly for the software house, this was the first case study we formalised.
© 2025 marcocristini. Inspired by real events. All names and characterisations are fictionalised.