About 20 years ago, I worked in the technology field as a sales engineer, supporting sales reps. A new sales rep manager joined the field team, and didn't like the control sales engineers had over the sales process. Because I was the lead sales engineer, he decided to make me an example of his brilliance. He got a very large lead with a Bank, and proceeded to close a very large deal, without involving any sales engineers at all. Just after the deal closed, he called to gloat, saying something to the effect of "the biggest deal this month, oh wait, you did not participate at all."
About a month or so later, I get a call from that manager, in a bit of a panic, and I partake in a conference call with the customer. It is decided I need to come to the company for a meeting. At the meeting I figure out the sales manager and the sales rep totally fucked things up, and sold the customer an incompatible set of solutions. In the meeting I casually mention that maybe the customer could return one bit of stuff, and replace it with another as they were roughly the same price
After the meeting sales manager starts bitching at me for mentioning price, price was the exclusive domain the the sales rep! He calls my manager, shit all over me. I didn't like my manager at all, so when he took the sales reps side, I said F you and quit. I send a very length defense of my actions during the meeting to HR.
Four months later I get a call from another sales rep still at the company, he asks, "hey what happened at XYZ Bank?, they are suing us". I call XYZ Bank and get the email for the CIO and send them a letter explaining I was the sales engineer for the company you are suing, call me. They eventually sent a lawyer to interview me and get my side of events. My testimony was devastating to their defense, I showed the Bank the letter I sent my HR, in which I claim 'our company lied to the customer to get a sale'.
Eventually I get a subpoena to be deposed in the Bank vs. Company law suit by my former company's lawyers. By that time I was working elsewhere, and hanging out on Yahoo stock message boards, and bashing the company's stock. One day another sales rep from a distant territory that I still talked to called me to say that a huge deal we had worked on for over a year had just fallen through in dramatic fashion.
I posted it to the yahoo message board devoted to that stock. The stock crashed $13 the next day. I wondered if my post had anything to do with it.
About 6 weeks after the stock crash, it's the day before I am supposed to get deposed in the Bank vs. Company matter, I get served with a law suit by the company, they had used the SLAP laws to get my identity from Yahoo, and sue me for the post that crashed their stock! So I went to the deposition the next day, and said, "I'm sorry, the company you represent today just served me with a law suit last night, this deposition is over!" They were dumbfounded.
Turns out there were two separate legal teams, one working on defending the company against the bank's suit, and one finding that pesky internet troll that crashed their stock, and the two never noticed the same person was central to each!
The company settled with the bank and dropped their suit against me soon thereafter. That long letter I sent to HR, turns out the managers above me didn't read it. Once the lawsuit was over, the sales rep, the sales manager, and his manager were all fired.
EDIT : follow on story. When I quit, I also sold my Internet options at ATH:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/8aj6gh/how_i_learned_to_short_the_legend_of_livefreeordie/
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