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Is there a link to this? VVV This is awesome. Spermy Smurf fucked around with this message at 15:41 on Mar 25, 2014 |
# ? Mar 25, 2014 14:27 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:20 |
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Spermy Smurf posted:Is there a link to this? Start reading Sickening's posts (and related) from about here. It goes on for a couple of pages due to the two days of stewing time mentioned earlier.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 14:44 |
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Sickening's saga was masterful, from start to finish. In this day and age of decreased value of the IT worker, I hope to read more.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 15:43 |
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I work was a temp at the moment, so I see all kinds of offices, but this story is about fax machines. I worked for a large, west-coast based candy company as help over the holiday season. Allow me to describe how we communicated with the stores. They did, in fact, have email and computers during this entire mess. Let's say that they wanted to tell us what they are sending back on the truck. They take one of the forms that are periodically sent out by mail from HQ, fill it out, and fax it to us. They would often forget, even when it was necessary for them to send it on that particular day, and you would have to call them. So we would get the fax, stamp it, initial the stamp, and fax it back to the shop so they would know we got it. We didn't just do this for this one form. Pretty much every piece of communication that wasn't keyed into the ancient command-line interface system or the slightly less ancient but still annoying shop management software went through the fax machine. Need us to make a new employee badge? Fax. Need us to add something to your order for the week? Fax. Telling us your computer is down? Fax. All of these faxes needed to be sent back to confirm, too. Most of my job was checking the machine, sorting the faxes, stamping them, faxing them back, and getting them where they needed to go. At one point, they were studying the sales of a particular item they were expanding availability on. There were three flavors and the test was going to last for like a month. So they mailed out to all 120 or so shops a packet of thirty forms with little blanks for how many of each flavor they sold and how many they had on hand. They came in haphazardly in the evening as the stores closed, and then in the morning if they realized they hadn't faxed it the night before. I then took 120 sheets of paper, put them in order by shop number, and manually entered them into an excel spreadsheet every morning. I had to keep an eye out, too, because they often hosed up and miscounted or didn't note that they had transferred some to another store. Other than checking for errors, that entire hour and a half of my morning could have been replaced by intranet site. One time they didn't have time to mail out forms for a specific thing, so they emailed everyone a form, but it was just the body of the email. So everyone dutifully printed it out... including the page and a half of CCs at the top because BCC is for suckers, I guess. We were getting faxes that were mostly just a big list of email addresses, followed by the one number I needed. We measured the paper that office went through in pallets. There were seven people, including me, in that office.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 16:11 |
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Our bonus structure used to be based on two factors: 50% of it came from company metrics (undefined), 50% came from personal metrics (your score on your review, which will ALWAYS be a 3 out of 5). Total bonus potential was 9% and they would fund different parts of the two portions at different times. So they simplified it! Now, 100% of it comes from operating income growth YOY. Easy enough and very transparent, right? They even post videos from the CFO telling us how we did that quarter, plus the year to date! So simple! Except when the math doesn't add up and people go apeshit. Can someone tell me how you can be at 11% YTD operating income growth for the first two quarters, have 10% operating income growth in the third quarter yet fall to 7% YTD? No need to do the math, I've already done it and it's not possible. With 7% YTD growth, we are looking at a bonus of around 15% of our total potential.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 16:33 |
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Commissar Kayla posted:I work was a temp at the moment, so I see all kinds of offices, but this story is about fax machines.
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# ? Mar 25, 2014 17:18 |
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Volmarias posted:Fixing the God Spreadsheet that the business makes all of it's decisions on is probably worth more than $60/hr. Literally did it as a favour for the old boss because I still work for the same company, just a different division in a different location, and he really did right by me when I was going for my current thing. Plus, it's good for the ol reputation. Team player, all that. And we're genuinely friendly. Of course, if I could REALLY do them a favour it would be to convince them to stop basing decisions on the spreadsheet. But it sounds like that ship has sailed.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 00:19 |
corkskroo posted:Literally did it as a favour for the old boss because I still work for the same company, just a different division in a different location, and he really did right by me when I was going for my current thing. Plus, it's good for the ol reputation. Team player, all that. And we're genuinely friendly. They're numbers coming from a computer. Who are you to say they're wrong? Don't even bother with that "I created the spreadsheet" nonsense.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 01:10 |
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Harry posted:They're numbers coming from a computer. Who are you to say they're wrong? Don't even bother with that "I created the spreadsheet" nonsense. It's true, it's not like they're using it to engineer bridges. And whatever damage it does will pale in comparison to the unusable multi-million dollar project management software that they built in-house over the course of the last four years and counting.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 08:05 |
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Omne posted:Our bonus structure used to be based on two factors: 50% of it came from company metrics (undefined), 50% came from personal metrics (your score on your review, which will ALWAYS be a 3 out of 5). Total bonus potential was 9% and they would fund different parts of the two portions at different times. 11+11+10-4=28 28/4=7 Did you have operational shrink in the fourth quarter? Or was there shrink reported or expected due to a write-off of some losses? It however sounds like a bookkeeping trick to keep bonuses low and it sure sounds like the people on the floor take their bonus for granted and are now upset they are cheated out of it. Over the years I learned a bonus is a very shiny carrot on a stick that will never pay out, especially if it is tied to all kind of metrics.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 09:56 |
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I'm fortunate in my job that every hour worked has to be compensated, even as a salaried employee. It's nice because hours spent traveling (even outside of work times) have to be compensated, though it's usually paid in extra vacation hours since there's a very low budget for overtime pay. So my team was instructed from on high at the beginning of March that we had to conduct a review at our contractor's site next week, and that this review is Very Important, and they might even be willing to allocate some overtime if need be to get the preparation done in time. I took it as a personal challenge to get the review done without needing to make my boss deal with going through our byzantine overtime approval process, so I moved heaven and earth to get the review done in 40 hours for week, and with three days remaining, I'm on track to be done pretty much right on time. Feels pretty good. But one of the victims of this focus on review prep was a computer-based training course that is due in early April. I don't have that much left to do, but it requires a good block of relatively uninterrupted time to be effective -- for example, three hours on an airplane with my company-issued laptop while flying out to my review. All that would require is being reimbursed the $8 for in-flight wi-fi on that flight. My boss took the request, agreed with it, passed it to our travel people, where it was promptly denied with no reason given. :/ It appears that they would have been more willing to pay me for three hours of overtime to come in on a weekend and work on that course, than to pay $8 for me to do it when they're already effectively paying me my salary to sit on a plane doing nothing. I wonder if it's too late to ask for that overtime.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 12:52 |
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Keetron posted:11+11+10-4=28 We are only through quarter 3. So, it's 7 + 15 + 10/3 != 7. I ran the hard numbers from the earnings release, we should be at 10% op income growth through three quarters. Unless going from 2000 to 2200 does not equal 10% growth. I agree with you, I think it's a trick to keep bonuses down. They did this in the name of TRANSPARENCY! but if they're fudging the numbers, people will figure it out. Before, it was nebulous and no one ever knew where we would be at on the scale. Now, we are supposed to know but their numbers don't add up.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 17:30 |
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Omne posted:We are only through quarter 3. So, it's 7 + 15 + 10/3 != 7. I ran the hard numbers from the earnings release, we should be at 10% op income growth through three quarters. Unless going from 2000 to 2200 does not equal 10% growth. Well if they want to be transparent, then ask for the underlying math to the current 7% YTD.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 19:57 |
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Oh I have, I brought it up with my manager. I think what's happening is they're allowed to take special charges against the op income number that's used for the bonus pool. So, they can report one set of numbers ("Op income growth was great! Buy our stock!") but then take charge-offs and lower it for the purpose of bonuses ("Sorry guys, we had to take a $125 million charge against aircraft retirement! No bonuses for you!"). I don't think I want to work for a publicly traded company anymore. Taking from employees to pay shareholders (and by proxy, senior management) blows. We are reducing costs to improve profit by $1.6B over the next few years, and at the same time buying back shares.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 20:45 |
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P.D.B. Fishsticks posted:I'm fortunate in my job that every hour worked has to be compensated, even as a salaried employee. It's nice because hours spent traveling (even outside of work times) have to be compensated, though it's usually paid in extra vacation hours since there's a very low budget for overtime pay. This is how I would handle my OT request: "Due to denial of requested minute travel expenses I will require overtime to complete this project". Seriously you tried your best and the company is causing its own problems.
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# ? Mar 26, 2014 22:11 |
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...Is it a thing where people in their mid-20's have no sense of what's appropriate and what's not in the workplace? For context: we just hired a new guy in our recruiting division, which I'm an admin for. His third day, he starts trying to get his girlfriend, dad, and bandmates a job with us. Not THROUGH us, but with our company. When told that it's not usually company policy to hire significant others because of potential conflicts, he says "Oh, but we've been around the world together. We've been together for five years." and therefore obviously there will be no problems. His fourth day he makes fun of a guy's religion, is a pretentious dick about someone living with his dad (he's saving for a down payment on a condo and we live in a VERY expensive area), and asks me how much I make. And then asks if I have any ambitions about being more than "just an admin." Yesterday he signs his email to a colleague with "xoxo", gets super defensive when he's called out on it being inappropriate for the workplace, and then proceeds to loudly ask if said colleague is gay. After that, he decides to start comparing his paystub with everyone else's because he thought he'd be making more money. I feel like I should be documenting everything. Should I be documenting everything? Also please reassure me that the next few people we hire won't be idiots
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 01:56 |
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TrisIsPluto posted:...Is it a thing where people in their mid-20's have no sense of what's appropriate and what's not in the workplace? You can be an inappropriate dick at any age. Since the great budget crisis reshuffling I'm a one-man team working on a project completely separate from the micromanaging managers. It's heavenly. The amount of emails I get per day has been reduced drastically. I imagine this is what it's like at companies who actually trust their employees to do their job without constant supervision and nagging
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 02:44 |
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TrisIsPluto posted:I feel like I should be documenting everything. Should I be documenting everything? Also please reassure me that the next few people we hire won't be idiots You should be documenting everything. Also, see if you can set this person on a collision course with upper management. They'll either get him shitcanned or promoted within the hour.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 12:17 |
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Volmarias posted:You should be documenting everything. Also, see if you can set this person on a collision course with upper management. They'll either get him shitcanned or promoted within the hour. The alternate approach could be to try to mentor this person. If you do it right it could help you both. But it might not be worth the effort or this could be the sort of place where that's a waste of time. Edit: You know what, probably not worth the effort.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 12:20 |
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Yeah I'd just report his rear end immediately, it's his manager's job to make sure he's not behaving like a loon.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 14:25 |
You could just do nothing and not be a drama queen about something that doesn't effect you.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 14:31 |
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TrisIsPluto posted:...Is it a thing where people in their mid-20's have no sense of what's appropriate and what's not in the workplace? 1) yes, document all of that poo poo. No guarantee anything will be done, but it's something. 2) I once worked at a place where we were all in our early/mid 20s, and while it wasn't always "100% most work-appropriate place ever" (since it was a small company where we were all laid-back overall) no one EVER did anything close to the poo poo this guy has done. It has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with him being a supreme rear end in a top hat.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 14:45 |
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yoyomama posted:2) I once worked at a place where we were all in our early/mid 20s, and while it wasn't always "100% most work-appropriate place ever" (since it was a small company where we were all laid-back overall) no one EVER did anything close to the poo poo this guy has done. It has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with him being a supreme rear end in a top hat. no place is every 100% work-appropriate (no place you would want to work anyway) but you have to be professional, this guys sounds like he doesn't know the meaning of that word.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 17:42 |
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TrisIsPluto posted:he makes fun of a guy's religion
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 17:58 |
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Harry posted:You could just do nothing and not be a drama queen about something that doesn't effect you. It sounds like he'll get worse if left unchecked.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 21:32 |
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Harry posted:You could just do nothing and not be a drama queen about something that doesn't effect you. I hope you're jokeposting and don't actually think that someone who has managed to irritate from the sounds of things a large portion of their coworkers in the space of four days should just be let to run around being shitlord supreme Volmarias, I'm 22 and I would consider about zero of those things appropriate, so don't worry we aren't all idiots.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 22:59 |
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TrisIsPluto posted:...Is it a thing where people in their mid-20's have no sense of what's appropriate and what's not in the workplace? I mean, besides the pay-stub thing being protected speech (and a social taboo that is only beneficial to employers) I think the rest is incredibly bad-mannered of anybody of *any* age.
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# ? Mar 27, 2014 23:02 |
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Claverjoe posted:I mean, besides the pay-stub thing being protected speech (and a social taboo that is only beneficial to employers) I think the rest is incredibly bad-mannered of anybody of *any* age. Yeah, you need to be tactful about pay, but it is absolutely ok for employees to discuss their pay, benefits, working conditions, safety, and treatment by management.
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 01:10 |
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willus posted:Volmarias, I'm 22 and I would consider about zero of those things appropriate, so don't worry we aren't all idiots. I don't think I suggested otherwise?
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 01:51 |
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Ugh phoneposting is the worst posting. I'm sorry, I got mixed up and thought you posted the complaint about the early 20s idiot, not trisispluto. I was responding to the please tell me they won't all be idiots plea
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 06:56 |
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willus posted:Ugh phoneposting is the worst posting. I'm sorry, I got mixed up and thought you posted the complaint about the early 20s idiot, not trisispluto. I was responding to the please tell me they won't all be idiots plea loving 20 somethings and their phones and gadgets and whatnot!
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 09:50 |
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Making fun of a colleague's religion as well as asking if another colleague is gay are grounds for immediate termination where I am from, especially if someone just arrived at a company.
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 11:02 |
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Keetron posted:Making fun of a colleague's religion as well as asking if another colleague is gay are grounds for immediate termination where I am from, especially if someone just arrived at a company. Yeah. My office is really laid-back in a lot of ways, some better than others, but behavior like that would definitely result in a serious talk from whoever's being HR this week.
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 11:30 |
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Boss has been out traveling all month... Productivity is through the roof
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 17:46 |
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Epoxy Bulletin posted:Boss has been out traveling all month... Productivity is through the roof I got so much done this week with my director in Cuba. Someone brought in a pie and we're heating it in a demo kitchen and my boss went to get ice cream for everyone. Business, Finance, and Careers > TPS reports and coversheets - Reasons it is nice to work in corporate today
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 19:59 |
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Things were a little slow today so my boss plus a couple of coworkers and I tried to make a convention giveaway toy car jump ramps of notebooks from desk to desk. In the name of research.
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# ? Mar 28, 2014 21:17 |
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So I work for a payroll/tax company for people who have domestic help (eg, individuals) and those people can get the documents they need to file their 1040 through their online account with us. Our client site is slow even at the best of times, but at quarter end/tax season, it basically stops working. Why can't we get more bandwidth? Well, higher ups say it's because it would be a waste whenever it's not quarter end and nobody's logging in. So that means virtually every client's experience with their online account is when the server is overloaded. Subsequently we get tons of angry calls and emails from people who can't get their tax documents. Good job saving money, guys!
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# ? Mar 29, 2014 01:22 |
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Chalk up another "glowing review with mediocre ratings to avoid giving real raises". Apparently our team lead quitting and us absorbing all his responsibilities is "Meeting Expectations" if they simply expect you to do half of another headcount's job who was a level above you. The worst part is there no comments whatsoever on any of the "Meets Expectations" scores while my final comments are completely glowing about stepping up to the challenge and excelling.
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# ? Mar 31, 2014 17:54 |
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The Master of Human Resources was herding a new Vice President around the office today. I thought the guy seemed off though, not your typical VP material - and of course it turns that he was born in goddamn 84'. loving McKinsey brats, always making me feel old and unaccomplished
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# ? Mar 31, 2014 19:19 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:20 |
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KabukiJoe posted:Chalk up another "glowing review with mediocre ratings to avoid giving real raises". Apparently our team lead quitting and us absorbing all his responsibilities is "Meeting Expectations" if they simply expect you to do half of another headcount's job who was a level above you. I'm still waiting on my "Yearly Compensation Meeting" where they talk about my raise. That was supposed to happen two weeks ago.
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# ? Mar 31, 2014 20:59 |