Stop Production
I worked at a facility that manufactured medical devices, mainly catheters. One day, a work order came in and my manager came into the clean room to hand me the work order and to enter in the order specs (things like dip speed, dwell time, extraction speed and cure time) for the production run.
Entering in the specs is literally the one thing I wasn’t allowed to do. That had to be done by a supervisor or the manager. After he leaves, just for the hell of it, I double check the specs before I start the test run.
The specs were off. Like, WAY off. I call the manager who literally just entered them in and asked him if he knew something I didn’t and if he wanted me to correct them. He vehemently told me to leave the specs as is and run the machine as per his specs.
I ask for his reasoning (something I don’t normally do, but I had a funny feeling) and all he said was, “They won’t know the difference.” Now, considering these catheters go INSIDE of people and can cause serious injury if they are faulty, I call up the production manager and tell him what’s going down.
He’s on the phone for less than ten seconds, and all he tells me is to stop production and to hang out. Cool, I hadn’t even started so I left the clean room and took a break.
Not even five minutes later I hear some yelling, a door slam, and the production manager goes into the clean room to enter the specs into the machine and has me verify the specs right in front of him. He turns to me and says, “If this ever happens again, with anyone, let me know. Personally.”
They put him on suspension and sent him home. They started an investigation, (there’s a ton of paperwork and lots of paper trails when it comes to medical devices) and it turns out he had been fudging the numbers for a solid month and not with just this customer.
The company that had been ordering the products threw a fit, and said they would find another manufacturing company if you don’t fire the guy (my boss) immediately. It was a multimillion-dollar contract at risk, so he was gone after the week-long investigation.
All I got was a measly handshake and thanks from the owner of the company. In short: the boss was knowingly fudging the specs on medical device manufacturing. I found out, told his boss, he got fired. Story credit: Reddit / warrantyvoiderer