Ok, so here was one. There was a point where the Microsoft Office XP (or was it 2003?) advertised different qualifying products than it actually required. I f

Ok, so here was one. There was a point where the Microsoft Office XP (or was it 2003?) advertised different qualifying products than it actually required. I felt that if we advertised it on the box, we needed to honor that. Our managers said, no, offer a refund. So I went ahead and I generated bypass keys allowing people to install the software without a qualifying product. I did so openly. My bosses were not happy. They said they were trying to solve the problem and we needed to do things their way. So finally after a few weeks of this frustration I broke the chain of command and talked with the general manager of my department instead. He agreed that this was totally unacceptable and got the manufacturing stopped, packaging re-done, and the like. My bosses were horrified that I would break the chain of command like this and I got reprimanded by them. Of course the word came down from the top not to generate bypass keys anymore but to offer the customers a free full version we would send to them at our cost. I looked at this, and offered it to the customers, but offered as an alternative a bypass key so they could just install the software they purchased, saving our company time and money. Honestly, I was surprised we weren't sued over the problem, but I was going to be darned sure it was not over someone calling in to my line. There were plenty of other things I did: For example, I actually delivered Linux tech support a few times (always very careful to set expectations that this could not be expected in the future). Needless to say, since my loyalties were to the company and the customers over my bosses, these never came out as positives in review.