Chumbawumba4ever97 posted:

No exaggeration I would rather dig ditches for a living than have a job like that. I have no idea how you do it (maybe I'm just miserable and hate fun or something).

Outrail posted:

Watched everyone quit and promoted me to run the company. I have exactly zero management experience or training.

I made some some basic pie charts with big numbers, presented them at a meeting and proposed a massive increase to my wages budget to better manage things. It looks like this will be approved, everyone is extremely happy with the work so far and my bold new vision for the company. I have three years to figure out how to do my job before our funding runs out. Nobody seems to have any problems with this.

explosivo posted:

When talking to my boss about how loving asinine this is his response was a shrug emoji. They should ban that emoji from Slack.

Noblesse Obliged posted:

Hey IT. It’s 2021 could we have some wifi?

*small gnomish man looks up from his password reseting and emits a screech of ones and zeroes before howling that un sanctified machines are heresy and blessed are the minds too small to doubt*

Outrail posted:

Hired some people and had an onboarding meeting last night. ".. And our safety and hr policies are still 'in development', so for the time being don't do anything that would get you in trouble at your last job. And don't discriminate against anyone. Also don't do anything unsafe. Being unsafe is against the rules. Any questions?" I've become everything I despise.

Various Artists posted:

Most of the work pcs are still running windows 98 and specced like a computer from 1998, which works about as well to vpn into as you expect.

If you accidentally open chrome, you basically have to restart the whole thing.

Code Jockey posted:

what in the gently caress tasks are they performing, are these like manufacturing / old-rear end robot control systems or

Fleta Mcgurn posted:

*cough*

I quit last month btw, and it was so much worse than in the letter (which I sent in November).

Riatsala posted:

the rural south

Thanatosian posted:

So, the problem with stack ranking (a system where the lowest performers get fired every year) is that it provides perverse incentives; it turns your employment into a zero-sum game.

If I'm working in a normal, healthy environment, and one of my coworkers comes to me and asks me for help, I'm probably going to go through some reasonable effort to give that coworker the help they ask for.

In a stack ranked environment, me helping that coworker means that I may be contributing to myself getting fired. In fact, if I really want to keep my job secure, it's actually probably easier for me to do it by sabotaging my coworkers than it is to do it through being a high performer myself.

ArbitraryC posted:

OTOH when you don't have stuff like there's inevitably incompetent but senior people who've phoned it in because they realize they'll never get another raise/promotion outside of years worked because they are in fact terrible at their job just hoisting all their responsibilities on the new and motivated people because the office is a team effort and management is just happy when work gets done, regardless of whether or not it's just all the newer underpaid people picking up all the slack of the guy that sits at his desk on a person call for 6 hours billing it as standby.

ultrafilter posted:

A friend who's an immunologist shared some evidence that the AstraZeneca vaccine slows transmission. It's still an open question as to whether all vaccines do that, but if one of them does that bodes well for the others.

Sanctum posted:

In 2018 my company rolled out new fleets to 3 of our operations. The operation contracted to fuel United planes got several million worth of fueling equipment but the director didn't want to put new rolling stairs out despite my insistence they were necessary as the new equipment couldn't go underwing for fueling 737's. I showed the director a picture of one of the mangled stairs we had out there and, upon seeing it, he told me to remove it from the ramp immediately as it was clearly unsafe. So I ordered some folding A-frame ladders and put those out as a temporary replacement. Next thing I know the shop manager was ordering more folding ladders and telling maintenance to weld ladder racks onto equipment. Guys, that ain't right. Imagine someone on a windy, rainy day hauling a big hose up to the wing of an airplane on a wobbly ladder for minimum wage.



_{~not the same~}

Failure to provide safe equipment results in workers doing stupid things and breaking things (including themselves.) A year later that United operation, supplied with only ladders, had 2500% more nozzle rebuilds than every other fueling fleet, both new and old, combined. Again, with a brand new fleet. The nozzles are designed to last a lifetime, unless people are regularly dropping them from heights FOR SOME REASON. Rebuild kits cost $1000-$2000 and then there's labor, downtime, considerable fines for fuel spills, cleanup, hazardous waste disposal, penalties for delaying a flight, etc. A total cost of a lot more than some goddamn stairs. I tried to make the argument that the folding ladders aren't OSHA compliant, you must maintain 3 points of contact when climbing a ladder and that's not possible when holding a heavy nozzle connected to a huge hose. The director insisted folding ladders were compliant and pretended that 3 points of contact was not required because he did not see a difference between climbing a ladder and climbing a stand with stairs and guardrail.



_{Two nozzles requiring rebuilds. Can you spot the difference between general wear and equipment abuse?}

So the director cracks down on unusually high maintenance costs and sends the general manager to our shop to lay out new guidelines for reducing expenses. Clearly the problem here is maintenance spending too much on parts, so he put restrictions on that. After that things started falling apart pretty quickly. In 2019 we lost half of the United gates. United contracted them to a different company. The new company put 2 stair frames on every gate, a small rigid frame and a larger adjustable stairs both with hand rails. Gee, now why didn't we think of that?

CarForumPoster posted:

I have to know, what job can be done WFH that would have this as a requirement?

Fleta Mcgurn posted:

The one who explained how lesbians work to me, a pansexual woman, is a virgin and about 31. His cohort, also around 30, has had one relationship, with his cousin, that started when she was 19 and he was 26. I know it was his cousin because he brings it up A LOT. He also once complained to me that the maid knocks his Gundams over and puts them back out of order.

I like this job very much but I don't like most of my coworkers.

Maggie Fletcher posted:

The workplace equivalent of a Zdzisław Beksiński painting

ben shapino posted:

christ

teen witch posted:

Today a salesperson in another office emailed a manager (who is not my manager but a manager in my office) infuriated that I didn’t add the proper salutations in my email.

The email was urgent and entirely due to them not do their end of the work. but I need to say “dear so and so” in order to make them feel good.

Barudak posted:

One of my jobs first day I got a talking to for sending an email which the first sentence didn't start with an exclamation point. I was then give a two page document outlining proper emoji usage and resources for dad-level humor to include in your emails.

Prism Mirror Lens posted:

When all the open source projects started having codes of conduct, one of them (which was frequently shared by people with good intentions) had a section on how you shouldn’t use emojis in code reviews in case someone takes them the wrong way. In both these cases I’m just left wondering, what kind of situation must have happened in the past for them to NEED emoji rules?!

Tarkus posted:

I'm genuinely convinced that office work is an unintentional work program developed by MBA's and other useless 'professionals' to circularly perpetuate an ever growing 'manager' class. This 'manager' class is supported by the 20% or so of people who are doing actual work on top of the blue collar workers that may or may not work at the company. The two times I have worked in an office setting are the only times I have been kept so busy doing such complete non-work and endless meetings about loving nothing.

Geisladisk posted:

Tarkus posted:

One thing I hate is when people make their email signature a page long like putting announcements for deals and stuff from their company along with 15 forms of contact. Some mail clients hide the signatures properly, some don't, so sometimes I have to see the see the same page of text over and over again as a scroll through a thread. Name, Company, position and 2-3 forms of contact at most is all that's needed. Oh and wildly varying colored text and fonts bug me too.

teen witch posted:

aaaaAAAAAA you have no idea how much this bugs me or they’ll change the signature to appeal to someone externally.

OR if I’m introduced to an external contact from someone internally, they’ll make my title into “Senior [title] Manager” to make it sound more important. Like I’m the only one with my title so yeah I’m senior, I’m junior, I’m every woman, it’s all in me.

teen witch posted:

Putting “idiot king” on my resume will score me a sweet six figgy

Something Awful
2020 - Present
Idiot King
• assisted in the maintenance and upkeep of a Reddit shitposting thread
• leveraged a new transfer of ownership from previous cookie incapacitated owner to new mysterious Jeff
• resolved inbound goatses from clients

Barudak posted:

Counteroffers are an attempt to waste your time so the offer you have on hand expires.

fresh_cheese posted:

-One thing I hate is the fact that we are doing Google Meets. Our district does not allow us to demand that the students turn on their cameras, so I only know if they are there if they voluntarily turn on their camera (about 4 kids out of 175), or if they respond to a question from me. About half of my students log in, then go off and watch TV or play X-box. I'm not allowed to penalize them for not actually being there, as long as they log in.

Lamech posted:

https://twitter.com/juliarburnham/status/1159901209378951168?s=20

Ciao,

Oxxidation posted:

the owner of the laboratory i worked at was the founder's son, who took over when the founder died several years ago. one of his first big initiatives was throwing out all the office furniture and replacing it with IKEA because his ex-wife "wanted to go shopping." he had all the walls painted with primer and never followed up on the next coat, so the place became hospital-blinding. his daughter bought a guinea pig and decided she didn't want to look after it so he kept it in the office instead, under the conference room table, in the dark, for years, never feeding or cleaning it (me and the company's HR rep did what we could to keep it alive), until several months ago when it developed a blowfly infestation that spread throughout the whole company - fat, buzzing flies everywhere, bloated with blood from eating this animal alive - and then it was finally carried out and never seen again. he would launch into random bouts of unprovoked, hysterical laughter, and since main office was right next to his own that meant hearing his joker-cackle several times a day. any attempt to confront him or address concerns was usually met with him doing that same laugh in the employee's face and walking back to his office

the rest of the company worked around him for the most part but i guess he saw the plague times as an opportunity to consolidate his power, though that didn't stop him from openly denying COVID was real until well into the summer. he started off the lockdown by firing two of my best coworkers, one of whom was on maternity leave and had a four-hour commute, and joking about it. he eliminated WFH. he cut vacation. he tried to cut sick time until he found out it was illegal. he ripped down our sample storage and threw all the storage boxes into the conference room, which he routinely locked so we couldn't access the samples. he promised impossible lead times on testing and turned what was once a fairly standard 12-hour opening day into a 24-hour testing sweatshop. he rearranged the technicians' lab spaces without their knowledge or permission. he tore out a bathroom sink and replaced it with a new, non-functional one that was so large it made the toilet inaccessible, and then moved the toilet paper roll to the opposite wall, beneath the massive sink. every week there was a new absurdist nightmare coming down the pipeline

last month he told me to make an edit to one of my lab reports that would have potentially allowed the client to use the data on samples other than the ones we'd tested - we had documented precedent against doing this, and it was a risky market for the end user, but his response was "i'm the boss, do it or get out and find a new job." at this time he hadn't shaved or changed his clothes in three weeks

and that is why i'm job-hunting in COVID times

Oxxidation posted:

it was a good place to work when the founder was still alive and it's in a unique position market-wise that makes it really resilient to financial problems. even after the founder passed we still had a great VP who was doing his best to modernize the place and was a decent guy for the rest of us to interact with. he was the second person the owner fired when lockdowns started

most of the staff had been there for decades and i think most of them were too used to the environment or still hanging onto glory times, and then COVID came and everyone was too scared to leave anyway (though being forced into increasingly close quarters because of all the owner's endless construction didn't help with stress)

i liked all of my coworkers a lot, pretty much all the toxicity in this place came from this one guy

e: it bears mentioning that this man is in his sixties. he'd been in a high-ranking position in the company for years before his father kicked it. i can only guess that some of the poo poo he pulled was because he was trying to "leave his mark" on the place or something

ClothHat posted:

Imagine 70 people simultaneously singing happy birthday over Zoom.

Fitzy Fitz posted:

this was the plot of an episode in a tv show... but i can't remember which one

Fitzy Fitz posted:

Mmmmm maybe. Apparently it was in the Simpsons too. I guess it is pretty common

Queen Victorian posted:

Bunch of recent posts are making me recall an intro to business management course I took in college and a huge takeaway from it was that happy employees = increased productivity. And that the way to achieve happy employees (and therefore increased productivity and improved bottom line) was to observe, listen, sympathize, figure out what they need in order to be happier and then give them that. And a lot of the time, it’s not increased compensation, it’s basic QoL poo poo like having the shift at the factory start earlier so the workers can dodge rush hour and have more evening time with their kids, providing appropriate tools/equipment, identifying and removing an ineffective/toxic manager, and if an otherwise solid employee is suddenly having trouble/less productive, figure out why by listening and then accommodate rather than fire.

This was just an entry level course available to lowly undergrads and the making employees happy bit seemed so loving obvious. But I guess that’s not how late stage hell-capitalism works and that the higher-ups making stupid, damaging decisions are too out of touch, stupid, greedy, self-serving, shortsighted, psychopathic, or some combination of the above to actually think things through and just run poo poo into the ground given enough time.

AHH F/UGH posted:

Here's the best email I ever got from one of our field techs. No information, no context, no nothing - just three words, his typical Windows 3.1 background, and his name.

Play posted:

Especially when the cause is basically guaranteed to be "subpar internet connection" every single time

Hyrax Attack! posted:

Our mandatory gratitudes in our monthly standups are different in February. So we can express love and admiration for coworkers it is a secret admirer gratitude. You have been assigned a coworker you aren't fond of. You must express why you are grateful for this person.

Cheesus posted:

I have a manager who starts out some kind of topic with not just a confrontational statement, but downright incendiary. If you don't immediately mentally shut down or attempting to hold back a knee-jerk retort "go gently caress yourself!", they then pivot almost immediately into something completely reasonable.

For example starting the conversation with "When are you going to stop beating your wife/husband/child?" then following up with "What I'm saying is that I think it would be a good idea if we treated everyone well."

Famethrowa posted:

I can't explain why this made me so immediately angry, but it did.

Inzombiac posted:

Makes it so that I'm not accountable to anyone, for the most part, and I think I could disappear for days on end and no one would notice.

I hate it.

Pocket Billiards posted:

I'm starting to come around to Agile project management for projects where you're developing something new. I spent many years in consulting under a fiercely aspergers PMs that demanded everything be captured into a gantt chart in the traditional way. For anything but the most repetitive and derivative type of work things would change so much over the course of the development that 3/4s of the plan would not every remotely resemble what was happening, yet we would still report and update it as if it was. The time you spend in meetings at the start and end of sprint cycle under Agile are much less of a burden to me than trying to maintain the illusion of the divine loving 400 task long gantt chart.

Outrail posted:

Without wanting to traumatize posters too much: What's the actual best method for document control? I like having the date but more than one edit a day turns into 20210226a bullshit. Just Filenamev01 through v99 seems the most straight forward and idiot proof (hah). No 'final' version, just pdf it or call it final when it's really done. All prior pdfs or 'finals' get deleted.

Barudak posted:

For things where you define projects and iterate on them and deliver continuous support Agile makes sense to carve this process into achievable, purposeful chunks. If your work does not come in at a pace, goes out rapidly with numerous small tasks that change daily that you can't control timing on, things don't ladder up into a product whole, have a method of objective versus qualitative or other kpi scoring, and you don't require or cannot have an ongoing scope adjustment to manage creep it doesn't make any sense* because it can't manage that properly because it was never supposed to.

Nam Taf posted:

He was an awesome PM, and we poached him back to the engineering side and now he's my boss and it rocks.


I have almost always had really good PMs and they save my arse so much trouble.

Laserface posted:

Our company wont publish an org chart because 'it might hurt peoples feelings to be on the bottom of the chart'

in reality, it lets the 10 complete shitheads in the business continue to be shitheads because literally nobody knows who they report to. They're also not grunts but regional/dept managers.

Outrail posted:

My new hire starts today, what dumb poo poo should I have her do to make her hate me as quickly as possible?

George H.W. oval office posted:

Friend was telling me about the CEO of his company was slightly annoyed about people leaving empty Keurig pods in the machine and so the VP, in an attempt to please him, setup a camera pointing directly at the coffee machine. Just lol at the insanity of people. Turns out it wasn't even plugged in and there just to spook employees

Mr. Sunshine posted:

That might sound sweet, but the realization that I could literally walk out the door and no-one at work would even ask where I was until my time reports stopped coming in was depressing as hell. Also, since I spent most of the time just sitting on my rear end, once I had to do actual work I was rusty as hell, unmotivated as hell and had completely failed to keep up with the developments in my field. By the time I quit my skills were like ten years out of date.

Splode posted:

It's particularly shocking because the US seems to have better union penetration than a lot of other western countries.

wooger posted:

From a UK perspective the leave situation in the US is horrific, and things like maternity / paternity leave aren’t a thing either there right? In most couples I know, the mother takes a year off after giving birth (mandated) and gets a mandated minimum of 90% pay for 6 weeks, £151/week after. Many employers are much more generous (I’ve seen full pay for 6 months). And even that’s poo poo compared to some other Euro countries.

goatface posted:

I have no idea how you stay sane with such minimal holiday per year.