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rolleyes posted:Hah. I did similar calculations for a similar training scenario once. Management found out - turns out that trying to save the company money by pointing out that the "saving the company money" program is not, in fact, saving money are not the actions of a team player. It was a call centre job, but I once presented some napkin math on how much it cost in training/reminders to staff, lost service time, 'insurance plan' costs, to ask a simple question every single call. Instead of putting a button in the customer profile for "do you have a furnace or a boiler?" and asking it once (and getting a tech to verify when they got out there). Nobody had any interest in having the CRM updated. I realize that would cost money, but in my two years there we spent so. much. time. training for it.
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Mar 11, 2015 00:36
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:On a different subject, one of the flu strains not covered by this year's flu shot is going through our department and people are dropping like flies. It's gotten to the point where as soon as a manager hears someone cough they send them home immediately. Heh, if the managers sent everyone who coughed home in my office, there wouldn't be anyone there at all. The place sounds like a TB ward more often than not. We had that flu crap going around last month; there were at least a couple weeks where half the office was out with the flu (and the other half was at work with the flu, natch). I came down with it on a Wednesday night and had to call in sick Thursday and half of Friday because I could barely stagger out of bed to pee every now and again. Made up for it by working on scheduled maintenance till 5AM that Sunday morning, I guess. At least I worked from home Friday afternoon instead of going in and infecting everyone else (not that I was really capable of driving a car at that point anyway).
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Mar 11, 2015 00:43
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Taliesyn posted:Yes and no. I have an 'official' tool that cuts 20-25 minutes off the average converstion time, but I still need to spend 5-10 minutes cleaning everything up. My home-made one allowed me to crank one out every 2 minutes. But the official ruling is that we use the other one, and it's being written into the procedures that way. How would they know you did it "the wrong way" if the results came out the same in the end?
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Mar 11, 2015 02:24
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Shipon posted:How would they know you did it "the wrong way" if the results came out the same in the end? I would assume like my work place there are documentation requirements that require you to use X tool or you get in poo poo. I got lectured about how I shouldn't edit one cell of a spreadsheet that eliminates the need to pick up a calculator.
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Mar 11, 2015 02:37
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dennyk posted:Heh, if the managers sent everyone who coughed home in my office, there wouldn't be anyone there at all. The place sounds like a TB ward more often than not. We've been struggling through with various people out with the flu since about January but yesterday an entire row of people called out with the same thing and three more went home sick during the day. One enterprising soul went down to the on site medical clinic asking if they could send up a bunch of Tamiflu for everyone to have on hand but they said no.
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Mar 11, 2015 02:54
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Isn't Tamiflu prescription?
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Mar 11, 2015 02:57
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It is, but they wouldn't even give it to people who actually had the flu so getting a script for it to have ready for when you eventually got hit was out of the question.
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Mar 11, 2015 03:42
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Reading this news, thinking of Sundae and his bird contaminated vat http://rt.com/usa/239465-tainted-childrens-tylenol-guilty-plea/
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Mar 11, 2015 04:44
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Defenestration posted:Reading this news, thinking of Sundae and his bird contaminated vat Well it's a subsidiary of his employer so color me unsurprised.
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Mar 11, 2015 08:55
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1500quidporsche posted:I would assume like my work place there are documentation requirements that require you to use X tool or you get in poo poo. Pretty much this. We get audited regularly by the state (everyone in the industry does), and have to prove we've been following written procedures, and this stupid thing generates a log file that mine doesn't. At this point, it would be more effort than I care to spend to modify mine to do so for something I'll run once a week or so.
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Mar 11, 2015 11:56
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Sundae posted:It gets even better. Apparently a bird got inside the manufacturing suite through a loading dock and took a big old dive-bomb right down the hatch of a bin full of drug on its way to the packaging line. Whole thing's ruined. Remember that major pistachio recall a few years back? It was birds. It turns out that at the time the major possessing center in California had two buildings with a open air conveyer belt between them. So birds would come by, eat their fill and leave a gift. The best part was the fact that the owners were completely clueless!
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Mar 11, 2015 12:31
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I am stuck in an 8-hour meeting with ordered-in lunch so that nobody leaves the room. Great....
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Mar 11, 2015 14:54
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Sundae posted:I am stuck in an 8-hour meeting with ordered-in lunch so that nobody leaves the room. Great.... 
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Mar 11, 2015 14:59
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Sundae posted:I am stuck in an 8-hour meeting with ordered-in lunch so that nobody leaves the room. Great.... I hope you brought your catheter.
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Mar 11, 2015 15:08
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I suspect that they read this thread and, any time I say "at least we didn't do __________," they make sure to implement it later. (I'm thinking of that stupid vote-for-bathroom-break thing.)
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Mar 11, 2015 15:26
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Sundae posted:I suspect that they read this thread and, any time I say "at least we didn't do __________," they make sure to implement it later. (I'm thinking of that stupid vote-for-bathroom-break thing.) Can you sneak a bird into this meeting?
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Mar 11, 2015 15:30
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Sundae posted:I am stuck in an 8-hour meeting with ordered-in lunch so that nobody leaves the room. Great.... I was feeling sorry for myself for my four hour meeting today. What requires everyone attention for 8 consecutive hours? Edit: also worth mentioning that 2 hours of this meeting was already covered in an email and I suspect this is just going to be rehashing this email. F1DriverQuidenBerg fucked around with this message at 15:37 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 15:32
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My boss, knowing that us employees enjoy happy hour on Fridays, has opted to now make happy hour a meeting where we will discuss company culture. 
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Mar 11, 2015 15:33
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Sundae posted:I am stuck in an 8-hour meeting with ordered-in lunch so that nobody leaves the room. Great.... But when are you supposed to do actual work?
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Mar 11, 2015 15:33
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Their answer: After 5PM. "There are 24 hours in a day, and a work day takes as many of them as it needs." My answer: I'm on vacation starting tonight, so I'll do work on Monday.
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Mar 11, 2015 15:39
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Sundae posted:Their answer: After 5PM. "There are 24 hours in a day, and a work day takes as many of them as it needs."  Oh my.
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Mar 11, 2015 15:53
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:Client corporate purchasing can get lost. You guys realize that I know exactly what your discount target is, so when I submit something to the business unit I just tell them that you're going to take a cut out of it so the actual end price will likely be X-6%? If you didn't bother with the charade, I'd price at X-6%. Wait, companies exist that pay other companies to do the purchasing for them. Whose stupid loving idea was that, purchasing isn't that hard if you do it well and you can get 50% of any quote price if you try. Someone in my organization is currently in the middle of getting a major manufacture with a two year waitlist to delver to us with a discount by June 1st with around a 30% discount.
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Mar 11, 2015 16:27
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I've been refreshing this report page for 3 hours now, trying to get it to load, but it keeps erroring out. This report is for our largest client, and the system it runs on doesn't just error out on report pages, but when actual clients and respondents are trying to use it. Having asked numerous times for some sort of upgrade on the system which has not been touched in 5 years, I get nowhere. Supporting our largest client is not important to the company.
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Mar 11, 2015 16:46
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Whelp, just got my performance review. Even though my boss had literally zero negative things to say outside of a few comments about being more confident in my leadership ability, and even though he gushed about how often people come up to him to say how much they enjoy working with me ("they usually have to say 'I know I've already told you about this, but Radbot is just great to work with'"), and even though I exceeded every quantitative goal that was set for me... I get a "5" on our 9-block system. This is "meets and sometimes exceeds expectations." Now, I get it. A lot of people I respect for their ability and attitudes got 5s too, and because of the rear end-backwards ranking system in our company, virtually no one can even BE an 8 (awesome results, average attitude), 6 (awesome attitude, average results), or 9 (you are god) as it's a very steeply sloping curve. In fact, our director wrote a long email about how getting a 5 shouldn't depress you because it means you're meeting expectations in an awesome team, which makes you awesome. I also got my "full" bonus (cut by a few hundred bucks because we couldn't hit our OpEx target) and a 2.5% raise, so financially it's all good. It's just a hit to the ego to see that loving "5" when all you hear is good feedback, and the reason you didn't get a higher score is because "we can't give the high scores to the same people every year". Why the gently caress not?
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Mar 11, 2015 17:20
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Sundae posted:I am stuck in an 8-hour meeting with ordered-in lunch so that nobody leaves the room. Great.... Time to break out the poop sock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy9o9H_l3rk
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Mar 11, 2015 17:54
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I'm ready to blow my brains out in this meeting. Hour one was highlighting the changes to our program that was all outlined in an email sent on Monday. We're now into hour two: highlighting how the changes to our program are now reflected in our proposals. This is completely loving useless and all of this can be summed up as "Since this has changed the proposal is now updated directly" F1DriverQuidenBerg fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 19:12
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You're not in a meeting, you're on a beach. The chair you are sitting is not an office chair, it is a beach chair. The conference room table is the beach stretching out before you. The laptop projector is the sun shining overhead, and the meeting speaker droning on and on is the sound of a warm wind washing over you.
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Mar 11, 2015 19:26
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Alternatively, bring a laptop and post Dickbutt on whiny E/N threads until the meeting ends.
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Mar 11, 2015 19:43
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1500quidporsche posted:I'm ready to blow my brains out in this meeting. Hour one was highlighting the changes to our program that was all outlined in an email sent on Monday. Reminds me of the time I was in a three-man workgroup. We discussed some ideas and then it was time to write it down. One guy writes a sentence in English, then changes his dictionary from Swedish to English, then spell checks the sentence. Then he corrects the mistakes. This takes maybe five minutes, because it's a laptop, he's not a good typist and has to use the touchpad to navigate menus. Then he writes another sentence, changes the dictionary from Swedish to English... For whatever reason Word always changed the dictionary back to Swedish after each and every sentence. And we get to watch our secretary fumble around the menus. The workgroup lasted for an entire 8-hour workday.
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Mar 11, 2015 19:53
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I thank God every day that I don't work in corporate. Retail is its own special hellscape and I may have to deal with customers all day and maintain twenty year old software with no documentation but at least I'm not in a suicide inducing purgatory designed for grown up children. I live vicariously by watching the office at work and pretend it's an actual documentary of your lives. MC Hawking fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 20:20
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So phase 3 of the meeting was a casual chat with our national director. There was four of us and the three others were from a different department that has completely separate issues so it was a complete shitshow. The topic of recognition came up and I finally lost it and said "I don't need a little award from sales telling me I'm a special snowflake just because I'm doing my job" national director looked at me like a deer in headlights after that comment.
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Mar 11, 2015 20:47
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Radbot posted:Whelp, just got my performance review. Even though my boss had literally zero negative things to say outside of a few comments about being more confident in my leadership ability, and even though he gushed about how often people come up to him to say how much they enjoy working with me ("they usually have to say 'I know I've already told you about this, but Radbot is just great to work with'"), and even though I exceeded every quantitative goal that was set for me... I was literally told "new employees can't exceed expectations." At this point I wonder why they don't just switch the system to "ok" and "fired", because that's pretty much all it is. The carrot doesn't exist, it's an illusion.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:36
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FrozenVent posted:I was literally told "new employees can't exceed expectations." My company actually just recently said they were getting rid of our rating scale entirely. We're a huge company and the scale is on a ridiculously steep bell curve, so enough people were complaining about being told they're awesome and then being handed a "meets expectations" rating that management just threw it out all together. They haven't actually told us what they're replacing it with yet beyond a vague "it'll be more personalized!", but even my manager was pretty candid about the fact that even if the ratings are gone the bell curve for compensation was almost certainly not changing. 
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Mar 11, 2015 22:49
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I just heard that the new employee (who is the daughter of the bosses friend) couldn't fill out her HR forms by herself. I'm sure she's really going to earn that higher-than-standard salary. At least she's sharing her position with another one of the bosses friends. If they hire one more friend they might get a whole persons worth of productivity.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:49
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I was just told we're eating a bunch of vendor costs on a project. I ran the numbers and, before this announcement, we were only being paid $47/hr by the client. Now it's going to drop to $25-$30/hr. We have just been bleeding money on this project since October. So long, GM for my bonus. So long, desire to do anything at all again on this project since ever additional hour spent will just sink us more. Here we go, super long email to CEO asking what the gently caress we are thinking supporting this system a moment longer.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:55
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1500quidporsche posted:So phase 3 of the meeting was a casual chat with our national director. There was four of us and the three others were from a different department that has completely separate issues so it was a complete shitshow. At an old job a co-worker of mine was up for promotion to a management position (he was the DBA at the time, the new position would have seen him still doing that). He was amenable to the promotion because among other things it would have put a layer between our director and the rest of the department, which was badly needed because the director was an rear end in a top hat and did a lot of bullying and micromanaging that co-worker would have been able to mitigate. He withdrew himself from consideration after attending one of the weekly 4-hour managers' meetings that the director insisted upon. They didn't have 4 hours worth of stuff to discuss, director just decided they were going to be four hours long because reasons. Any spare time he would fill by being a self-aggrandizing blowhard, basically. Oh, and they started at 11, no lunch provided. Co-worker decided he couldn't take that frequency and concentration of bullshit on top of what we already dealt with on a daily basis. That buffer would have been nice, but I told co-worker straight out that he made the right decision. Edit: He didn't decline the promotion JUST because of the meetings, but they were illustrative of what he would have had to put up with on top of everything else. Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 22:56
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Sydin posted:My company actually just recently said they were getting rid of our rating scale entirely. We're a huge company and the scale is on a ridiculously steep bell curve, so enough people were complaining about being told they're awesome and then being handed a "meets expectations" rating that management just threw it out all together. They haven't actually told us what they're replacing it with yet beyond a vague "it'll be more personalized!", but even my manager was pretty candid about the fact that even if the ratings are gone the bell curve for compensation was almost certainly not changing. Why can't they just give you a good rating and not loving tie your bonus to it? I'm OK with not getting an extra bonus, I'm not OK with being told I'm "just OK" numerically and "loving awesome" in text.
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Mar 11, 2015 22:58
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Radbot posted:Why can't they just give you a good rating and not loving tie your bonus to it? That's not what they're actually doing though. They decided that they don't want to give people bonuses, and then justified it by officially tying it to performance evaluations, while making sure management understood that nobody was to get above an acceptable rating. Of course, since managers also have the task of keeping employees happy enough to not suicide or shoot up the place, they fall back on a lot of empty verbal praise. There are no bonuses, and thanks to this strategy of justification, there are no useful performance evaluations. The gymnastics are pretty silly to me, but enough people probably buy it that they think it's better than "we're not giving bonuses anymore." Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 23:06
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That makes total sense. I just know I'd rather hear "we're not doing bonuses" anymore than "you're not getting a bonus because you, personally, suck, however please keep coming to work". Seems like it's the better strategy to retain good people.
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Mar 11, 2015 23:20
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Another way to call it a layoff http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ehealth-inc-announces-strategic-cost-reduction-program-2015-03-11-717310 Strategic Cost Reduction Program. Maybe VPs will stop staying at $400 a night hotels in Downtown Boston when they're out there to visit Westford. That and quit bringing in lovely people from Yahoo. Shadowhand00 fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Mar 11, 2015 |
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Mar 11, 2015 23:27
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