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TotalLossBrain posted:Last day at my corporate job of over four years. I'm about to head into my exit interview. I saw my dream job at Sandia posted on a technology news site last week, but it was already filled. In actual TPS joy,I made the mistake of purchasing a $30 piece of software without prior approval from iTunes for work and am now dreading the back and forth with Finance on it. Finance is already the bane of my existence and this kind of excuse will either result in a mea culpa and me paying the charge (for work software) or some major escalation of email. Someday I want to work somewhere that gives me a budget for these sorts of things that I don't have to explain to anyone as long as I deliver on my goals.
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Jan 15, 2012 05:54
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dvision posted:Someday I want to work somewhere that gives me a budget for these sorts of things that I don't have to explain to anyone as long as I deliver on my goals. Someday I want to run a company where I will implement this policy and then only hire people who will not abuse it.
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Jan 15, 2012 09:55
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dvision posted:back and forth with Finance Ah, finance. I was seconded to one of our offices in Asia for a couple of months last year and finance wanted me to send all my expense receipts back to my home office in the mail. Apart from the general insanity of this, bear in mind that our expenses don't get paid until finance have have the receipts and the country I was in is notorious for its unreliable/slow/corrupt postal system. I flat out said that if that was the case then I wasn't going, as I wasn't going to have my personal finances held hostage to a postal system where you may as well just flip a coin to achieve a similar delivery rate. It still took the involvement of the director of my overall department to get them to relent and accept scanned receipts by email, which was my original suggestion. Sure enough, despite accepting the scans and paying me, when I got back they kicked off again claiming they'd told us they wanted the hardcopies on my return (bullshit). Since they were on a dump a few thousand miles away I sent them a zip file with all of the scans in it and asked whether they could just print them. This once again led to the director getting involved to get them to accept it. I understand finance has policies for a reason but gently caress me, they need to be kept up to date with the nature of the business. And don't then make up some bullshit months after we reach an alternative agreement. rolleyes fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Jan 15, 2012 |
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Jan 15, 2012 10:15
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The Aphasian posted:If you're in the "western world" you will find it nearly impossible to avoid bureaucracy. FWIW, this is basically how it works in Japan too. Kids aren't even graded on their classwork, just exams, and at the end of the year the teachers get together and decide if anyone's going to be failed (rarely happens). To be fair, the majority of kids will do their classwork even though it's not being graded, which I doubt most American kids would do.
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Jan 15, 2012 11:42
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Plinkey posted:Virgin GoZone Pedometers I am too easily amused.
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Jan 15, 2012 23:22
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I have come to a conclusion that salesmen are a necessary evil. The reason being is that you need someone to go out and find businesses. However, they make my life absolutely miserable. I love how their job is to take two minutes to write up a purchase order which takes about 10 hours to complete. It doesn't matter if I am already swamped and may take 3 days to get to. Its supposed to get done right now so he can get his commission right now. And don't you dare ask the salesmen to communicate with the customer and let the customer know there will be delays, they will refuse to ask the customer if they can wait, because that might cause us to loose the customer and we all loose our jobs. So I have to drop everything and work late on the most mind numbing job possible and when I get it done on time, my reward is to get yelled at by all the other customers that got delayed because the salesmen don't want to deal with it. , God, I feel another migraine coming on.
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Jan 16, 2012 04:38
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Telven posted:I have come to a conclusion that salesmen are a necessary evil. The reason being is that you need someone to go out and find businesses. This is what your boss is for. If/when you get a request like that turn around and throw that hot potato to your boss and let him/her decide what to do, and then communicate that to the client. You might still end up working late, but when it has happened a few times your boss will still be mad at the salesman that pulls this.
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Jan 16, 2012 07:51
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Telven posted:I have come to a conclusion that salesmen are a necessary evil. The reason being is that you need someone to go out and find businesses. So stop bending over backwards for the salesmen?
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Jan 16, 2012 17:07
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Ornamented Death posted:So stop bending over backwards for the salesmen? This only works if your manager has your back and sales departments aren't given priority over your department in upper management's eyes. How often does that happen? We had this at my old job, only instead of "salesmen" it was "Business Units" that pulled all sorts of poo poo. The big catch was that even if my manager was on my side, even the lowest-ranked BU representative literally outranked every manager in my department. A cost dispute with a BU is what eventually led to my department getting 100% liquidated from the highest manager to the lowest scientist.  (They wanted us to do all our dev work for them for free, as in use our own budget to do it all. The thing is, we had no budget of our own because we were supposed to be funded by BU expenditures. End result, we refused to do work for free, and suddenly we no longer existed.)
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Jan 16, 2012 18:50
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Ornamented Death posted:So stop bending over backwards for the salesmen? Except when your boss likes the sales numbers, they'll usually side with the salespeople over you. Even when the salespeople repeatedly sell things that are logically and practically impossible. No, we can't make PDFs for Summation. It's not because we're lazy, it's because the software literally does not work like that. But I guess we have to try anyway because your sales numbers look good! This is why I got out of litigation support and decided to become a brewer. And then I went overseas to work for a guy who wanted pilsners in under two weeks.  To paraphrase the old chestnut: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who have no redeemable qualities whatsoever go into management and sales.
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Jan 16, 2012 19:03
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Ubik posted:the salespeople repeatedly sell things that are logically and practically impossible. Me: No, I'm telling you you can't have this in the book because it is ILLEGAL Sales: But you're costing us the SALE!  My coworker: No, you can't put 50 novels (including Ulysses  ) in one textbook. You won't get permission, and if you do I estimate it will cost Fifty Thousand Dollars in feesSales: Why are you ruining my margins like this? Can't you make it cheaper?
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Jan 16, 2012 19:39
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A friend of mine works at a car dealership, working there for about a year while her fiancé finishes up his degree. I wasn't sure where to post about it, but this thread seemed the spot. I'll call my friend Susan. Let's roll. Every Stereotype you have of Car Dealerships is True -The owner owns several dealerships in the area, and shares ownership with his brother on a few others. -The owner is currently divorcing his wife, who also works at the dealership. Why? Well, she caught him having an affair with a secretary, at the very dealership they both work at. Their daughter works there too. -Nepotisim hooray! The owner frequently lets his kids drive some of the very nice cars on the lot. The daughter has wrecked one of them at least 3 times. -There is a salesman who seriously expects to be called "The Panther". -The owner's wife sometimes brings her dog (some toy breed) with her to work. This is a nice break. Except she will leave the dog in the office above Susan all day. It barks. A lot. all day. -The owner's daughter has a baby. She brings it with her to work. She lets it cry for extended periods of time. -Susan took the job as "internet manager" - essentially dealing with all of the online marketing, uploading photos and descriptions, checking car reports, etc. She has somehow become the 'IT' person as well. Susan can use a computer, but she is certainly not an IT person - she knows how to do plugs, basic programs, and troubleshooting. She only uses Macs at home, but somehow she knows more than every other person. Literal "Have you tried turning it off and turning it back on" moments at least once a week. -Have you ever seen the movie Live Hard Sell Hard? That really happens. They were excited when the the owner said he was going to finally pay for some advertisements. However, he also brought it a hired gun sales team for that week that takes a cut of the sales made by them. They are really aggressive - and really dishonest, signing customers up for gap insurance and the like without asking them. Lying about their costs and then expecting the finance office to lie too...fortunately the finance office follows the law, and refused. During this "sale" event, prices were actually marked up. They also gave away "door prizes" for anybody who came - a cheapo necklace with a pearl for the ladies, and a cheapo toolkit for the men. There was an amazing number of people who showed up simply for the prize and left. As you can guess, they ran out of items pretty quick. So, they gave away 'reserve tickets' instead, while the next order was on it's way. The hired gun salespeople just threw away the reserves they made, since they wouldn't be there by the time the customer came back to claim their prize. Guess who had to clean up their mess? Susan. The stories go on. But at least Susan only has 6 more months there, before she and her then-husband move somewhere else.
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Jan 16, 2012 20:17
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rolleyes posted:I understand finance has policies for a reason but gently caress me, they need to be kept up to date with the nature of the business. And don't then make up some bullshit months after we reach an alternative agreement. I had a huge problem with DFAS (the US military's finance department) accepting printed and electronic airline and train receipts. They kept insisting that they need hard copies, and I kept telling them that what I sent them was the actual receipt.
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Jan 16, 2012 21:51
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Crowley posted:This is what your boss is for. If/when you get a request like that turn around and throw that hot potato to your boss and let him/her decide what to do, and then communicate that to the client. You might still end up working late, but when it has happened a few times your boss will still be mad at the salesman that pulls this. Well, there is one problem with that is my boss actually promotes his behavior because "he really wants to take care of his customers"
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Jan 17, 2012 00:38
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It sounds like he wants to take care of his new customers. His old customers can go to hell cause those new orders are obviously more important.
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Jan 17, 2012 02:19
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I hate it when companies talk a big talk about employee development, but their policies clearly state that time spent attending courses or training cannot be billed to the company. There's a conference I really want to attend, but it runs Sunday-Wednesday and if I'm reading the policy correctly I would either have to make up the hours for Monday-Wednesday or take leave for that time. I hope I'm wrong, and it's just awkwardly worded, but I'm not too hopeful 
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Jan 17, 2012 04:15
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Telven posted:I have come to a conclusion that salesmen are a necessary evil. The reason being is that you need someone to go out and find businesses. While this statement is true, their actions as a lazy bunch of idiots is NOT required. Our company had a huge problem with salespeople, discounting poo poo 50% so they would make the sale and then loving off to land more lovely sales instead of helping us support the bullshit they signed us up for. One of them dumped some poo poo clients with poo poo expectations on us and then hosed off. Another literally asks the same question 10 times for a project, because he's old and can't remember anything and is universally agreed to be a pain. If we had a competent sales staff, who knew pricing and didn't shove their heads up a clients rear end for a sale (whether or not we actually make money on it) we would probably have less projects, yes, but they would be for full cost with reasonable expectations and we wouldn't have lost 10% of the company in the last 6 months due to overwork and stress. But the corporate focus has shifted, and everything is revenue now. Customer satisfaction results rarely get mentioned, and the CEO even straight up admitted the corporate culture sucked because everyone was working their asses off to still lose money. It's too early in the year so far to see if any of the sales team has been "corrected" on their poo poo, but this company is going to sink like a brick this year if they don't learn to rein in those chucklefucks. If you have a good sales team who brings in good business and works to make your job easy, cherish them. Cherish them dearly. I'm tempted to work my way onto the sales team if I stay in this job. Work from home, basically call and Skype and schmooze people all day, occasionally take trips out to warm climates, and make a commission on everything on top of the salary? Where's the dotted line.
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Jan 17, 2012 08:26
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Pleads posted:If you have a good sales team who brings in good business and works to make your job easy, cherish them. Cherish them dearly. I agree. At my previous place, you had a mixed bag of every type of salesperson. Their favourite line if they didn't get their way, no matter how idiotic a request was (like creating an ad in less than 5 hours with absolutely no idea what to put in it): "We're losing business because of you!". That line became so notorious that I actually created a scientific-looking formula to calculate how much business we were losing every day, and stuck it to the pillar next to my desk. One of my managers was very impressed.
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Jan 17, 2012 09:47
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I dread that tomorrow I'm going with my old boss for my final 2011 evaluation. I changed departments in November, since it was so late in the year, my old position's year goals are 100% of my goals for the year, upon which my bonus depends. My old boss is a loving witch and she's the only reason I moved to another department. I don't even want to see her loving face, I was so happy until the moment they assigned her to be my boss, my life went upside down because of her and I almost quit. Luckily, this is the last time I have to speak to her officially, and I LOVE my new job, so gently caress her. 
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Jan 18, 2012 07:29
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Cacahuate posted:I dread that tomorrow I'm going with my old boss for my final 2011 evaluation. I changed departments in November, since it was so late in the year, my old position's year goals are 100% of my goals for the year, upon which my bonus depends. My old boss is a loving witch and she's the only reason I moved to another department. I don't even want to see her loving face, I was so happy until the moment they assigned her to be my boss, my life went upside down because of her and I almost quit. You were at least smart enough to give notice AFTER she locked in your 2011 performance rating, right? (Before some sperg points this out, lots of companies set ratings in early/mid 4Q.)
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Jan 18, 2012 18:03
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Lady, instead of making personal calls all day, how about giving me the time-sensitive information I need so that I don't get chewed out again? set the building on fire
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Jan 19, 2012 18:57
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Lady, if you bring your lovely kid to the office, how about at least making sure it doesn't scream its loving head off while I'm on the phone? I'm quite certain it sounds rather unprofessional on the other end, to say the least. Also people, if you have a problem with your counterparts in other areas or internal customers (or really, any kind of problem), quit whining about it to me! I can't do anything about it because not only I'm not your manager, I'm in another team/department! The best I can do is suggest to talk to you mangers about it, which you ignore with various excuses. Too bad if it sounds like I'm being dismissive - it's just that this is the only way your problem can be addressed.
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Jan 20, 2012 19:39
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mobby_6kl posted:Lady, if you bring your lovely kid to the office, how about at least making sure it doesn't scream its loving head off while I'm on the phone? I'm quite certain it sounds rather unprofessional on the other end, to say the least. How in the gently caress is this even tolerated? I'm so glad I work in a manufacturing environment.
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Jan 21, 2012 00:51
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The saddest thing I ever saw when I worked in the retail industry... All the bread was delivered by outside companies. Which made sense, as bread goes bad bad much, much more quickly than literally everything else in the grocery department. From what I gather, these dudes were either franchise owners (that typically worked alone) for big companies, or independent contractors that got paid by how many stores they could handle, or just outright business owners that delivered bigger companies' bread. I forget all the details, but the way these guys worked, it was absolutely positively obvious that got paid well and got paid better if they delivered piles and piles of bread very quickly. They were also generally guys that could move at that kind of fast pace. Without fail, pretty much all of them were friendly, chill dudes that busted their asses to get that drat bread delivered, sorted, shelved, and sellable before the peak shopping hours. But there was one guy that sometimes was bringing his kid in to help with the work when school was out. You know, summers and weekends. He was like 11 or 12 and you could tell that he didn't want to be shelving bread at 8 in the drat morning. And he ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS worked slower when he had his kid with him. I have no idea how he managed to get away with that. I mean, I'm sure he found some kind of legal loophole but still...forcing your kid to shelve bread? Please. There was another guy brought his kid with him like once a month, but it wasn't like "you're going to help with my drat work and like it," but rather "when you're old enough to work, I'll give you a job, kid. When I retire, this company could be yours." Like, he was showing the kid what jobs were like, showing him what a good work ethic was, and was grooming him to eventually take over his company.
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Jan 21, 2012 02:07
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ToxicSlurpee posted:But there was one guy that sometimes was bringing his kid in to help with the work when school was out. You know, summers and weekends. He was like 11 or 12 and you could tell that he didn't want to be shelving bread at 8 in the drat morning. And he ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS worked slower when he had his kid with him. I have no idea how he managed to get away with that. I mean, I'm sure he found some kind of legal loophole but still...forcing your kid to shelve bread? Please. Child labor laws have an exemption, a parent can legally employ his child no matter how young they are, as long as the work isn't hazardous.
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Jan 21, 2012 02:26
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Megabump!Timo posted:On a slightly more morbid note, do you know that since I've started, my department actually has a suicide rate of one employee every 18 months? Barring anything catastrophic at work, I will work 40 hours this week. Pixelante posted:I worked at a homeless shelter in one of the highest concentrations of homelessness in Canada and I'm pretty sure that this is higher than the suicide rate of mentally ill, drug-addicted, Hep-C infected homeless people. Looks like I was off. We just had another suicide, so we're up to one a year. One suicide in a workplace could be attributed to a number of factors (family, friends, work, current events, medical problems, ...). Two people in the same group is a pretty awful coincidence, but could be attributed to random outside forces. Three suicides in three years from three coworkers shows a triangulation. Also, I started vomiting every morning starting around October - a few months after my boss stopped talking to me and actively made my life hell. Bile coming up every morning in the shower. Just thinking about work make me nauseated. And I'm a dude, so it's not morning sickness. Everyone on my project repeatedly said there is no way they could handle the amount of poo poo I go through and how broad my shoulders are for putting up with it. I've gained a bunch of weight. My health is poo poo. Quick update from me: Timo posted:I just never want to be one of those e/n fags that complains about his situation and never tries to fix it. New job last month. Everything is great. Vomiting stopped. Feel healthier than I have in months. Everyone is cool. Life is good. Thanks, thread.
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Jan 21, 2012 03:51
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Hooray! I started a new job 2 months ago, and its amazing how much better I feel. My new job is longer hours, more deadlines, and more responsibility, and I'm so much happier now. Having a pleasant workplace and understanding bosses makes such a big difference!
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Jan 21, 2012 04:04
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"Hey CoH, your buddy called off sick (so you'll be doing twice the work for the same pay today)."  No vomiting yet. I don't want to wait for it to come to that. I don't want to pretend like this is OK. I have a great work ethic and I can do this...but I shouldn't have to. Convincing a corporation to change its ways is a hell of a lot harder than vice versa. They say change is coming. I say bullshit. u: she just called off until Thursday at the earliest. gently caress this game. I'm not playing anymore. Her manager is cool but every time he gives me that news I give him a look like he just shot my dog. This is not going to end well. Christe Eleison fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Jan 23, 2012 |
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Jan 23, 2012 19:50
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Cup of Hemlock posted:"Hey CoH, your buddy called off sick (so you'll be doing twice the work for the same pay today)." Well whatever you do, don't get it all finished. That 2nd guy will mysteriously vanish, and you'll be expected to do it all the time.
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Jan 23, 2012 19:59
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Ghostnuke posted:Well whatever you do, don't get it all finished. That 2nd guy will mysteriously vanish, and you'll be expected to do it all the time. You're completely right. I once ended up doing the work of three people for a year that way. One of them was my manager. Ugh. Still flinch when someone sidles up and says my name.
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Jan 23, 2012 20:24
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Hi, I'm a salesman and I want to apologize for all of my brethren that make your lives difficult. Granted, I think my position is different because I'm selling a service (carpet maintenance) to my clients rather than a specific product or software...but lovely salespeople are lovely salespeople. I believe that the amount of investment a salesperson has to make in winning business is directly proportional to how much effort they are willing to put into making sure the job gets done the right way. If your company has it set up where all a salesman has to do is toss you an email and say 'do this', I would ask you to look inward and figure out how you can make that same salesman more accountable. Is it a 'order form', generated by you, that needs to be completed by the salesperson before you begin? If it's something where you will have to invest a significant amount of time to get it done...does the salesperson know how long it will take you? Does your boss know? Does their boss know? No doubt, some salespeople can be self-focused arrogant assholes that are solely focused on their next commission check...but more often than not we are in this position because we like making people happy, our coworkers included. Don't keep your complaints inside, because that solves literally nothing. /soapbox
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Jan 23, 2012 21:51
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Cup of Hemlock posted:"Hey CoH, your buddy called off sick (so you'll be doing twice the work for the same pay today)." Whatup, covering for sick buddy buddy.  I cover half of the academics in the group and my counterpart covers the other half. Her half of the people comprises: 1.) a guy who can't wipe by himself -- she checks all of his mail, opens it, and takes care of it for him, checks all his voicemails, and he doesn't check emails. 2.) an actually competent person with normal clients 3.) the person with all the angriest clients who like to yell at people. She is out of work an average of 1 day every 2 weeks. My group consists of: 1.) a guy who's calendar I manage who is basically never in town and thus never needs to be talked to or dealt with. 2.) the office stray, who needs roughly 1 piece of paper faxed every week or so. 3.) a mid-level person who I do a lot of stuff for but who will do it if I'm sick because she's so drat peculiar about how her things go. I have taken off two sick days in a year and a half.
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Jan 23, 2012 22:48
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I've worked in retail most of my life, got a fine arts degree, and do some freelance graphic design/animation stuff on the side. I have a weird problem. I fantasize about being a white collar drone in a hellish office environment. It sounds to me like being in a surreal videogame. You commute every day to a strange world where neither you, your boss, or anybody beneath you actually does anything tangible to or for anyone. Inside this surreal world, where nothing you do has any effect on anyone, there is a competitive internal political system where promotions, demotions, and layoffs are based on a set of rules that don't have anything to do with how good or bad you are at doing your job or whether or not you are helping your company. I really do want to go find an office job. I figure if I worked in one for a year and then quit, I would appreciate my life more. Government would be even better, because it wouldn't be possible to get fired no matter how hard I tried.
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Jan 24, 2012 07:58
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The Midniter posted:My direct supervisor is a holdover from a company my employer acquired in late 2007. He relocated seven hundred miles to keep his job as supervisor of the newly-created division that was a result of the acquisition. Our company on the whole switched to SAP in mid-2008, while his division continued using an ERP system that was already dated back in 1988 (no, seriously). The division he supervised was finally fully integrated on Jan. 1 2011, including jettisoning his old system and incorporating that business segment into SAP. Just wanted to check in with this thread to let everyone know that this guy was let go, I now have his job, and a 17% raise to boot! There's always hope!
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Jan 26, 2012 23:16
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The Midniter posted:Just wanted to check in with this thread to let everyone know that this guy was let go, I now have his job, and a 17% raise to boot! There's always hope! Awesome! Good things do happen. RM, did your partner come back yet? Mine finally came back today...for five hours. Then she left for a wedding for the weekend. So when tomorrow ends, she will have worked a total of five hours in six days. She's a) pregnant b) socially active and c) sick (some virus or another is going around here) so I understand - and she's cool - but certain of management just does not seem to get I cannot do the work of two people at once. Her manager is new, and doesn't tell me anything unless I ask him. The positive side of this situation is that I'm not bored at work and can even play my tiny violin for a little overtime pay. The negative, of course, is that I look bad and am just completely exhausted in the evenings. Soon, thread. Soon.
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Jan 26, 2012 23:25
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What does your manager think about you doing someone else's work?
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Jan 26, 2012 23:57
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mobby_6kl posted:What does your manager think about you doing someone else's work? She is a saint and generally takes my side. The problem is that the culture of this company basically demands it. (God knows why we don't hire more people.) So she might be more vocal if she herself didn't have to cover for other managers (like the new guy, who's currently out in the field somewhere).
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Jan 27, 2012 00:06
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Whee, it's performance review/goal development season around here! I write this kind of jargon for a living, and I am still having trouble figuring out how to make "I just want to do my loving job" sound good. My new boss is really supportive of career development and such, so I feel really bad about how totally unmotivated I am by the idea. I don't want to work in this field forever, it's just that this is where the money and jobs are around here. Every time I take a class or work on a new skill I feel like I'm shackling another weight around my ankle to stay in this industry. It also feels really pointless to do self-review when the person who is making the decisions will not give me any real credit on his eval. He had almost no involvement with me at my old job, and last year he gave me totally lackluster marks even though I busted my rear end.
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Jan 27, 2012 00:40
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It's annual performance review time. I've been spending an inordinate amount of my hours reading the forums, browsing Amazon and watching academicearth videos. I had a 10 minute meeting with my lead today on my performance.  "Things are great! Everyone in your group does a fantastic job. We've got no complaints from the customer!"Score. RazorBunny posted:Whee, it's performance review/goal development season around here! My "goal" was "Attain further responsibilities in conjunction with increase in position." They seemed to like it.
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Jan 27, 2012 00:54
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One of mine is "become more fluent in high-level functions of software I use every day," I thought that sounded pretty good.
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Jan 27, 2012 00:59
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