Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Olanphonia
Jul 27, 2006

I'm open to suggestions~

Miss-Bomarc posted:

Just in case you didn't feel bad enough about your job as the Chief Assistant Deputy Server Rebooter And Cable Plugger-Inner:

The Strategic Imperative Not To Hire Anybody

Holy moly the comments section of that article is just filled with poo poo.

EDIT: oh god, contentless snype

Over last summer I was working as an unpaid intern with my local government's city manager's office. Normally this was a paid internship but with the whole economy being terrible thing, they couldn't find money in the budget to pay a summer intern. The head of HR told me when I started that work normally started at 8 and ended at 5, but because I was essentially volunteering, I could make my own hours and quit whenever I wanted before my "employment" was to actually end in August. At the beginning of my time there, I tried to play the part of the industrious busy bee intern and showed up at 7:50, ate lunch at my desk, and left at 5.

I soon found out that work came in waves. Some days I would be busy most of the day drafting up policies (yes I actually wrote policy as an intern), revising city maps, and other sorts of things that other departments needed an extra hand with. On other days, after I had submitted that work for review and whatever, I would be horribly bored and would spend most of the day surfing the internet. I was deathly afraid of asking for too much work and getting behind on it when the next wave came because on the days where I was busy, I was really busy.

Not much of a corporate horror story, I know, but some days I was the most bored I've ever been. The job owned in a lot of other ways though. I got my own office with a door and 2 (!) windows, everyone was super nice and I was taken to a bunch of meetings with government leaders from other cities in Virginia. At the end of my time there they threw me a really nice little party in the conference room and they gave me a little gift bag with $300 in visa gift cards, a shirt, a coffee mug, and a card :3:. Man, I loving love those people and the best part was that I felt like I was making a difference because all of the policies I wrote were implemented and got the city and award from the VML.


poo poo now that I read this it is more of a "I loved that job" post. Oh well.

Olanphonia fucked around with this message at 18:49 on May 10, 2010

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

potidaean
Nov 23, 2005

I did a summer internship at a major pharma long ago, the place was backstab city. Every little thing that anyone could blame on anyone, it got done. I being the summer "kid" at the time, I was of course a prime target. I got ratted out for everything from breaking a $2000 balance to sleeping on the job to reading newspapers on company time. I didn't do the first one and I only did the others a couple times during my lunch break. Sure, it wasn't terribly professional of me, but no different than any other of the office drones. I found out later they were trying desperately to make their own failing interns look good and hated that I was getting actual data, even if I didn't have a whole lot to do with the success. Fortunately, our big boss cut me some slack, but it was a lot of stress for nothing.

As for management, they had a giant meeting to address company problems, mainly having to do with new recruits getting paid a lot more than long-term employees at the same position. The cafeteria was jammed and a lot of people were shouting questions. The management's answer? Ignore the questions and a play an "inspirational" video set to Van Halen's "Right Now." Yep.

CaptainCrunch
Mar 19, 2006
droppin Hamiltons!
Nth-ing the being the youngest in the department at 40 (by 10 years!) and the mindless, nearly mandatory, small talk when passing anyone in the hall.

What's more, my co-workers are robots. Not in the cool smash buildings, conquer the world way either. No, just everything they say is played back off a tape. *click* "good morning Crunch" *whirrrr*"something smells good in there" (in regards to my fresh from the truck breakfast) "happy *click*{day of the week}" all said with fake cheer in the exact same tone and inflection at the same intervals in the day. No variation, no deviation from the script.

The only emotion displayed is should you choose to not play back the scripted response, then it's simulated hurt and all too real sulking.

The notable exception is my boss who is cool-ish... but does an annoying amount of "active listening". Every SINGLE word from your mouth is paired with a matching "uh huh, yeah, right, yes, mmhmmm, hmm." I am not in the least bit exaggerating. He's a nice guy, but I want to hit the mute button on him somehow.

I need to get out of here before they replace my brain with a chip as well.

:( I'm sad this thread died.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
I'm still not sure why it got moved into PYF in the first place. It was a perfectly good thread in GBS.

I've started my applications. Hopefully I'll be out of this corporate environment and into a completely different, yet probably just as soul-draining, environment in a few months.

It'd almost be cool if somehow I piled up enough relocation packages to pay down all my loan debt over the next few years, and then could take a job I don't feel like a sinner for having. :)

jai Mundi
Jun 17, 2005

Kiss my shiny metal heinie

Sundae posted:

I'm still not sure why it got moved into PYF in the first place. It was a perfectly good thread in GBS.

I've started my applications. Hopefully I'll be out of this corporate environment and into a completely different, yet probably just as soul-draining, environment in a few months.

It'd almost be cool if somehow I piled up enough relocation packages to pay down all my loan debt over the next few years, and then could take a job I don't feel like a sinner for having. :)

Seconding this. Can we please move this thread back for some more GBS-Style whining. It's my fav.

Pixelante
Mar 16, 2006

You people will by God act like a team, or at least like people who know each other, or I'll incinerate the bunch of you here and now.

jai Mundi posted:

Seconding this. Can we please move this thread back for some more GBS-Style whining. It's my fav.

Yeah, the move kind of killed it. I don't see how this thread is any different than the "Reasons I No Longer Desire to Work in Retail" thread, except that most of us probably had hope when we started our jobs.

Spike McAwesome
Jun 18, 2004

Zombies? Or middle-management? I can't tell...
Agreed. Who are the mods up in this piece?

KaLogain
Dec 29, 2004

I got her number. How do you like them apples?
Cybernetic Crumb
Yeah I imagine the thread died because of the move, my bookmark disappeared.

But here is a story to keep the thread on track.

In my last job things were going pretty well well. Even though the industry was going through some trouble and such, my boss said we were really needed and our jobs were safe, we had actually even just hired someone new a few months ago. Our department was busy as hell getting things approved and edited, and even building new inter-company websites and storage spaces. I even got my own office and so did the new guy, we moved from cubes.

A week later I was the the one laid off, the new guy was still there, he had more "experience" in the industry. Apparently the company had a month of some more bad numbers, and I was laid off from a decision by some upper manager. My boss wasn't even the one to lay me off, it was some HR drone, my manager didn't say anything during the whole meeting when I was told. I don't care what HR or anyone else says, if you respect your employees, the direct manager is the one to tell them the bad news, no matter what.

It only took me three months to find a new job in a slightly different aspect of my industry. And then three months after that, the original company was already look for someone new in that department and they guy that had decided to have more layoffs resigned from the company. I had heard from some former co-workers that the boss and them wanted me back but I haven't heard a peep from them.

But I love my new position getting some good experience, good contacts, and its a lot of fun.

Roosevelt
Jul 18, 2009

Tony Pizzuto Says Hello
Shhh you're all going to get fired-
I heard the management here doesnt take any poo poo from the rank and file.

Sundae posted:

I've started my applications. Hopefully I'll be out of this corporate environment and into a completely different, yet probably just as soul-draining, environment in a few months.

It'd almost be cool if somehow I piled up enough relocation packages to pay down all my loan debt over the next few years, and then could take a job I don't feel like a sinner for having. :)

I'm trying to get out too. I go to sleep at night thinking about how great it's going to be when I put the boots to these guys.



edit: i thought this thread was good in gbs too :(

Roosevelt fucked around with this message at 08:17 on May 12, 2010

RedMagus
Nov 16, 2005

Male....Female...what does it matter? Power is beautiful, and I've got the power!
Grimey Drawer
It's paperwork for me. I need a form to move this item. I need to track down a guy to sign this in order to update a spreadsheet. I have to consult 3 other spreadsheets to make sure I have the right info on their job title, the right number on their computer, and their employee ID/location. I have to document all my travel, fill out an excel form to turn it in, and have to fill out a document to mail it off to the proper group. I then have to wait a month+ sometimes for some drone in travel to look it over, type all my numbers into their spreadsheet, verify i'm not ripping them off, then cut me a check.

I'm so glad I have direct deposit. Some days I think filling out a deposit slip might send me over the edge.

Why do I need all these forms guys? All I wanna do is get into the office, fix stuff that's broken, and leave. :smith:

Abbeh
May 23, 2006

When I grow up I mean to be
A Lion large and fierce to see.
(Thank you, Das Boo!)
Did anyone ever have to deal with mystery shoppers, or something similar?

We were mystery shopped in two ways at my old job (large hospital in Boston). One would be via the phone, where they would call in and expect us to go through a huge list of questions and statements and we had to do everything just right - of course if we tried to do this with any regular patient they would get angry at us wasting their time. But no, we had to ask them 10000 questions and be perfectly polite. One co-worker was written up for sounding depressed, but his voice always sounded like that. He was just sort of monotone :what:

The other way we would be shopped was in the waiting room. We had to keep it clean (makes sense, though I hate picking up other peoples tissues and whatnot) but also had to canvas it whenever people were waiting, which meant getting up from our desks, going out and asking if anyone needed help, and generally cleaning up. This was expected during our busiest clinics (they would only show up when we had way too many people booked that day) so when we were all dealing with at least three people each, one would have to tell those people to wait, canvas the room, and go back to the now angry patients (who our manager called "customers" if that clues you in to how this hospital saw the patients...).
One time I was written up for blushing! FOR BLUSHING! No mention of the fact that my desk was crammed in next to the heater and a window we couldn't shut the shade to. I was always boiling there in the winter, and freezing in the summer (yay air conditioning we can't change).

What a stupidly run place. We had more important poo poo to do than cater to the mystery shoppers, but we would get in big trouble if we didn't get at least 4.5/5

And yeah, moving this to PYF really killed it. Nothing about what I just typed is a favorite. gently caress that hospital.

Rhyos
Jan 2, 2006
It's probably my fault.
Stories from the front! My girlfriend has been canvassing the city for a graphic design job and has been rather depressed about the lack of prospects. She just wrapped up with a "team interview" for a position at a mid-sized graphic design firm in the area and it must have been one of the most awkward things ever. It seems corporate types really do lap this poo poo up.

One of the positions she had applied to and interviewed at before was a portrait studio retouching photos in Photoshop. She spoke with the photographer and his assistant. At the interview today, one of the other people interviewing for the same position was that same photographer's assistant! Apparently the folks who ran the place were rather rude and outright stated that they were only hiring women for the position because they have no women on staff, and therefore no idea how to market to women. They then proceeded to ask all sorts of stimulus/response questions.

Here are some of the gems relayed to me:
:whatup:: "When you think of tea, what comes to mind?"
:h:: (collects teasets constantly you have no idea) "Teasets, specific types of tea, their nutritional benefits, and brewing methods."
:j:: "Yoga! Spas! Asian mysticism!"

:whatup:: "What is your goal with this position?"
:h:: "To establish a foothol-"
:j:: "I want to be an award-winning team player who can carry the company to victory!"
:h:: :confused:

:whatup:: "Would you say you're motivated?"
:h:: "I need this job to survive. Hell yes, I'm motivated."
:byodame:: "I CAN'T STOP! I WON'T STOP! WOO!"

Aside from those few questions, my girlfriend wasn't really asked all that much. :byodame: cut her off and yelled whenever she'd open her mouth to speak. She's got plenty of other prospects, but both employer and other interviewee were rude and unprofessional. The interview was at 8, and the interviewer was "in a meeting" and couldn't be assed to even show his face until 9:30.

I hope she finds a job soon! 7 interviews in 2 weeks should be a good sign, right? :(

God Damn Dam God
Dec 24, 2004

I push buttons. I turn dials. I read numbers. Sometimes I make up little stories in my head about what the numbers mean.
Grimey Drawer
I work for IT Tech Support in a Bank. We only take calls from employees in the company when their poo poo breaks. What really blows my mind is every other call isn't for a fix. It's for someone asking me how to do a basic function like reset their Windows password or attach a file to email. 9 times out of ten they will explain away their lack of basic skills by saying "I'm computer illiterate." and it pisses me off to no end.

Desktop computers have been around in a corporate banking environment for over twenty years. In the last ten to fifteen years they have become commonplace in home environments. How do these people get by without at least a rudimentary knowledge of how to use a PC in the corporate world? Am I asking too much for the average person to know their left from right when it comes to the buttons on their mouse? Hell half of our users log on to their computers with a generic sign on that is pre-filled in. All they have to do is type in the name of our company as a password, and they get 10 attempts before the account is locked. How in the hell do these people lock themselves out? I can only they try about 5 times, then drool on their keyboard thinking that might work, and then just pound on the keyboard with their fists, and finish up by just smashing the keyboard against their desks thinking that will get them signed on.

The people you have to work with are easily the worst part of being a corporate drone.

waldorn
Aug 24, 2003
I worked for four long years at a corporate help desk for a medium sized retailer. After being promised at least 20 times that I'd be promoted to a sys admin role and that never happening, I decided to look for another job. I found a sys admin position at a small office furniture manufacturer. There were a number of red flags that went off in my mind during the interview process, but I didn't care as I just wanted out of help desk.

First day on the job, management tells me that they believe they are being hacked by a previous employee who was recently fired. Fair enough, so I go into active directory and get a list of all users and show them to the HR lady (who was also the wife of the CEO so you couldn't tell her anything without it going right to the CEO). I ask her to highlight all the people that currently work there. She highlighted about 20 out of 100. I went and disabled the 80 or so users that were no longer working there. Surprise! There's a bunch of people using old user id's. I was forced to re-enable them.

After I had accounts locked down as close as they'd let me. I decided I'd really start implementing some group policy to help their security worries. I did stuff like set password requirements and file permissions. Apparently their last sys admin didn't do anything at all. I wrote this huge proposal and presented it to my boss and the CEO. They approved. The day after I enabled the new policy, I had to turn it all off because the CEO didn't want to have a password. I didn't even bother arguing as it seemed pointless. My spirit was broken within the first week of working there.

I had my own office which was right next to the "server room." When I first started there, the server room had a microwave, a pizza oven and a fridge in it. I had all that stuff moved out of there, but it of course all went into my office. So, I had all that crap in addition to the only copier in the building. I had non-stop people walking into my office and talking me about the most mundane poo poo while they made copies, pizza or whatever. Drove me crazy. I of course, looked like I was interested in what they were saying to keep the peace.

A couple months later my boss comes into my office and tells me to wear lovely clothes to work the next day. I ask him why and he tells me that I'm going to be moving all the computer equipment, cubes and other furniture to a different room. After that, I'm going to be ripping out the carpeting. And no, they couldn't afford to take a factory worker off the line to help me. The rest of the office were all old ladies. Had to do it all myself.

The CEO's workstation died so I replaced it with a spare and took his back to my office. I opened the cdrom to put in the ghost disk, but there was already a cd in there. Titled: "How to Build a Better Business Plan." Was really encouraging that he was turning to lovely promotional CD's found in business magazines in an attempt to run his business better.

The CEO went around one day and disconnected all vending machines, fridges and every other light bulb in the building. Resulting in a power bill that month of 29500 instead of the normal 30000.

The last straw was when my boss came into my office one day and asked me to follow him out into the factory. He stopped in front of a metal press that was responsible for making desk drawers or something. You'll be working this metal press today! It'll be fun! Yeah....... no. It was 10 hours of putting a piece of metal into a machine, pressing a button and then putting it on a pile.

My old job opened back up at the help desk. I was rehired as soon as I applied. I didn't even put in my 2 weeks at the furniture company. Just wrote down all the passwords, told my boss I quit and left.

Roosevelt
Jul 18, 2009

Tony Pizzuto Says Hello

D is That Guy posted:

The people you have to work with are easily the worst part of being a corporate drone.

Your post reminded me of this. It's been around a while, sorry if it's old hat:

The Website is Down - Sales Guy vs. Web Dude

That70sHeidi
Aug 16, 2009
Also one of the Evil Admin. I seem to be always just this side of being let go (attendance) but because I, out of my team of 4, know how to do computery stuff, I stay. The day I quit the company might have to shut down.

Anyway, because I know how to use some features of this one software, myself and my manager are pulled into a meeting to discuss implementation of a complete format change to documentation for a huge, huge, expensive project. I TELL THEM that my template is complete, I can begin training any time.

We have a followup meeting a week later. We haven't confirmed with the client our questions on the format change, but we're meeting because.....?

3rd meeting - introduce the change to the Section Leads. Same poo poo is rehashed, "Yes, it's under control, no it will take a while and be a pain, just give us the stuff already." STILL!!!! have not sent the client our questions. I'm told to do a mockup of the change so we can all "visualize" the new format and I can get input from fuckwits.

4th meeting - wherein I present said format to said fuckwits and answer immediate questions. Still a go for formatting, but still no questions to the client and still no work to implement.

5th meeting - I present the required changes in the format, again, and we go over a timeline to get things done in. We have about two months to do a massive amount of work. Guess what the plan is?

Schedule a meeting every. loving. week. to chart our progress. If we weren't meeting, we'd actually be MAKING progress.

Also, said questions were postponed from when I did this back in April to at this point in May, when the client is visiting the office.

And as a side note? A bitch who was in charge is now not in charge of the project but is still sitting in to oversee her replacement's equally horrible but in another direction horrible management, never ever EVER fails to degrade and demean the admin group and their work.

Format change requiring weeks worth of work on thousands and thousands of pages? "Well really all you have to do is change the paper size, why are we cutting into the actual editing process so much?" Said in a flat, matter of fact voice, while not even looking at us.

:flame:

Roosevelt
Jul 18, 2009

Tony Pizzuto Says Hello
I've read through nearly every page of this marvelous thread and I have to ask:

Are there any goons out there in charge? Are any of you in positions of real management in a corporation, about which we've been complaining about so much?

Speak up if you're out there! I want to hear the other side. Anyone have any stories about dimwitted employees? The hassles of being in charge? I'm just an expendable task grunt, but we can't ALL be one of those here.

Right?

(Expecting Silence)

Vice President
Jul 4, 2007

I'm number two around here.

Are we still talking about the number of bosses? I have no idea and lately I've found out that no one else knows either

My boss is the head of the department, which is divided up into 4 parts each with their own team lead that is essentially an assistant manager, so technically I have two bosses. If both of them are gone on the same day which is frequently the case, chaos reigns. The manager rarely says "Person X is in charge today" even though we repeatedly ask for this to happen, so the 3 other team leads all decide they are my boss. All of them are never on the same page for anything, and all of them will attempt to pass the buck when someone needs a manager for something. Inevitably, the head of another department will "check in" halfway through the day and remind us that we can go to them if we need a manager. This is obviously uncoordinated as sometimes two (or yesterday, three) will email our group and tell us they are our acting boss for the day.

So probably 5 to 6 days each month there are 3 to 5 people all claiming to be my boss who all want to give me things to do but absolutely do not want to be responsible for any decisions that might need to be made or worse, sign their name on one of the twenty or thirty forms or purchase orders I will need a manager's approval or signature on to do my daily work.

FogHelmut
Dec 18, 2003

People cutting their nails in the surrounding cubes. Ugh.

Jeffrey Colon
Dec 13, 2007

Let's get down to brass tacks. How much for the ape?
I know this is awhile ago, but holy poo poo the goons complaining about people saying "Good morning" or "how are you" to them. There is not a :goonsay: big enough to quote you.

That's so ridiculous.



E: Oh, and to the goons that get 250+ worthless emails a day, upgrade to Office 2010 if at all possible (which doesn't seem very likely for most of you). It has this awesome "ignore" feature that will ignore entire threads that you're not involved in.

Jeffrey Colon fucked around with this message at 14:46 on May 13, 2010

CaptainCrunch
Mar 19, 2006
droppin Hamiltons!

Alderdash posted:

I know this is awhile ago, but holy poo poo the goons complaining about people saying "Good morning" or "how are you" to them. There is not a :goonsay: big enough to quote you.

That's so ridiculous.

It's not the "Good Morning" that I'm complaining about. It's the by rote, daily identical inflection, no variation EVER that bugs me. When I talk to people I, you know, shake it up a little. These people have the same conversations daily. Same sentences, same time of day, same cadence, same false levity.

It's like Groundhog Day around here!

These folks are all 55+ and just so stuck in their habits. The grumbling whenever (rarely) equiptment gets upgraded is unbelievable. Because they have to climb out of thier shoulder depth rut and learn something new. Which they've worked dilligently to avoid since the early 70's!

If I get breakfast or lunch at the catering truck and bring it to my desk, the same guy will say "Heeeeyyyy SOMETHING smells good over there!" every. Single. Time. As he walks by the door on his way to the other half of the office. It sounds like he's playing back a tape for all the difference there is, day in, day out. For three and a half years.

Sure it's more an annoyance and like any annoyance there are days it doesn't bother me at all. You really don't think that's worth a raised eyebrow at the very least?

CaptainVideo
May 19, 2003

SYS 64738
Think about this:

D is That Guy posted:

I work for IT Tech Support in a Bank.

Plus this:

D is That Guy posted:

Hell half of our users log on to their computers with a generic sign on that is pre-filled in. All they have to do is type in the name of our company as a password

and think about how these are the types of people who have access to your money. Your life's savings - all in their hands.

To contribute: a friend of mine told me that he got yelled at by the CEO of his company because the company email address book was listed in alphabetical order. the CEO wanted his name to be first on the list because "I'm the CEO, after all"

I had a similar experience years ago. The CEO of the company I worked at bought a new desktop (of course after comparing the specs of that machine versus everyone else's machine - at work AND at home to make sure he had the best and the fastest). This was back in the Windows 98 days when it was still a new feature to have your computer shut itself off when you shut it down. Older machines with mechanical switches would just sit at a "It is now safe to turn off your computer" screen until you hit the power button. There was a bug with the automatic shutdown feature that just made it not work on certain machines - not that it caused a problem, you just had to press the power button to turn the machine off. Of course, the CEO's new toy was one of those machines. I scoured forums and applied patches and hotfixes to no avail. Eventually, I had to give up and explain to him what was going on and, while there might be a fix coming down the tubes later, there was nothing I could do to fix it right then. He insisted that I immediately go back to my desk and call up Bill Gates to get a solution - not call Microsoft's support line, mind you, but literally call Microsoft and ask to speak to Bill. Granted, this was a podunk little company in the middle of nowheresville, Ohio, so it's not like I was calling from a multinational coproration with billions of dollars in revenue behind me. I told him I seriously doubted Bill would take my call - thinking that he was joking.
He wasn't.
I went back and explained the situation to my boss, the CIO, and he said he's handle it. Years later, we both move on and I'm talking to the former CIO. He told me that the CEO was hellbent on firing me that day for not calling up Bill Gates and asking him a support question.

Lukano
Apr 28, 2003

.

Lukano fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Aug 16, 2011

volkadav
Jan 1, 2008

Guillotine / Gulag 2020
Trying to get something out the door that:

a) Has pointless "what color to paint the bikeshed" changes and constraints put on it every day, months into the project lifecycle after they would have been appropriate/easy to do

b) Spawns daily (sometimes hourly) status requests about whether or not it is ready to launch

The killer is that the point source for the vast majority of both A and B above are the same loving person. I don't know, dude, maybe if you stopped slapping stupid poo poo onto this project it'd actually get done?

:smith:

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
My boss and I got screamed at by a senior director today.

We are two scientists in charge of developing a product. We have had a few delays due to some chemical instabilities. poo poo happens. It was to be expected with this formulation, and we warned them ahead of time that it was likely.

That's not what we got screamed at for. That would almost make sense!

It was because companies in India were claiming they could do it cheaper than we could, and because we didn't outsource our own work to India.

That's not our job. That has never been our job. The companies in India never contacted us, nobody ever mentioned these cost estimates to us, and we had no idea in the first place because it's not our job! We don't even have authority to contact another company, period, and even if we could, odds are we wouldn't intentionally undercut ourselves with a lovely 3rd-party company that can't do much of anything right.

It was a very long meeting.

Solkanar512
Dec 28, 2006

by the sex ghost

Sundae posted:


It was because companies in India were claiming they could do it cheaper than we could, and because we didn't outsource our own work to India.

That's not our job. That has never been our job. The companies in India never contacted us, nobody ever mentioned these cost estimates to us, and we had no idea in the first place because it's not our job! We don't even have authority to contact another company, period, and even if we could, odds are we wouldn't intentionally undercut ourselves with a lovely 3rd-party company that can't do much of anything right.

It was a very long meeting.

I think you should contact that company, and outsource the work your senior director does.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
That is surprisingly tempting. It should be very easy to find someone that incompetent.

Wagoneer
Jul 16, 2006

hay there!
I just signed and emailed my job offer today! I can't sleep :ohdear: It's like Christmas!

I typed up resignation letters, even though I am a contractor (I still respect them immensely).

Edit:

And this:

Pixelante posted:

Yeah, the move kind of killed it. I don't see how this thread is any different than the "Reasons I No Longer Desire to Work in Retail" thread, except that most of us probably had hope when we started our jobs.

Wagoneer fucked around with this message at 06:10 on May 14, 2010

Turnquiet
Oct 24, 2002

My friend is an eloquent speaker.

So has anyone contacted a mod to get this moved back into GBS? Or is it more likely that our corporate jobs have left us all too conditioned to learned helplessness that we just try to get through the day without even making an effort to improve things anymore?

:smith:

Dominoes
Sep 20, 2007

Goon,

Please find the attached document.


thanks,
Dominoes


How are you? Fine thanks - how are you?

Happy friday!

Dominoes fucked around with this message at 21:15 on May 14, 2010

jai Mundi
Jun 17, 2005

Kiss my shiny metal heinie

Turnquiet posted:

So has anyone contacted a mod to get this moved back into GBS? Or is it more likely that our corporate jobs have left us all too conditioned to learned helplessness that we just try to get through the day without even making an effort to improve things anymore?

:smith:

I PMed Childlike Empress. So far no response. Also, I do not work in a corporate environment.

Horrorca
Mar 24, 2010
I’m taking a 10 hour flight to Brazil on Sunday afternoon to get to a 7 hour meeting on Monday there, then immediately hoping on a plane back.

But traveling is awesome, right.

Hey heres an idea
Nov 20, 2002

Why don't you crawl up my ass and fight for air?

Horrorca posted:

I’m taking a 10 hour flight to Brazil on Sunday afternoon to get to a 7 hour meeting on Monday there, then immediately hoping on a plane back.

But traveling is awesome, right.

Well at least its in the same timezone.

scotty6435
Apr 12, 2005

Now that our company has outsourced all of our IT functions to India, I am spending half my time helping them so they know what they gently caress to do. The rest of the time is spent learning how/doing their job because otherwise it takes months to get done.

I am the most junior and poorly paid member of the 20+ team yet have twice the technical knowledge of my line-manager. Of course, I've been told there is no room for promotion or progression and we're already in year 2 of pay freezes!

Timo
Jul 12, 2001

Suit up!
Sharing pain feels so good, my brothers.

Corporate culture can be summed up by children. You know how you give your kid the super amazing, most important job of shaking a paint can while you finish painting a room? Or he sweeps the walkway after you edge it because that is so incredibly vital?

Managers act like parents, and workers act like children.

When I started (at 26), I brought the average age of my branch down to 57. That stat scared me. On small projects where I'm given the title of "manager" I act like a normal human. Pick the best people for the job, do an even amount of work to get the right job done. I'm heading for project manager and will read this thread every day so I know I'm doing the right thing and not becoming one of them.

Please.

Please don't let me be one of them.

Also, this should be mandatory viewing for managers. This is an advertisement, but it is so amazing.
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/why_you_cant_work_at_work

Timo fucked around with this message at 01:40 on May 15, 2010

Miss-Bomarc
Aug 1, 2009

Timo posted:

Managers act like parents, and workers act like children.
No; parents can generally get useful things done, and they typically have some reasoning behind the decisions they make, and when the kid doesn't understand that reasoning it's usually because the kid hasn't got the life experience he needs to understand.

Managers often just do weird poo poo and nobody understands why. To my mind, the best managers are the ones who say "here is the goal. here are the constraints. GO." Then they work nine hours a day to keep the bureaucratic bullshit out of our lives so we can get the job done.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

Miss-Bomarc posted:

Then they work nine hours a day to keep the bureaucratic bullshit out of our lives so we can get the job done.

This is my view on management, and I am very thankful that my immediate boss understands this. (Absolutely powerless middle-layer management, but at least she has a pulse.)

She actually asked me, at one point, why I skipped so many meetings related to the project. That was my answer - "I'm a lab worker right now. The senior scientists on the project aren't. THEIR job is to be in the meetings making decisions, so that I can get the labwork done."

She agreed, but last year informed me that she had to make me start attending meetings because of "employee visibility" requirements. Apparently, by being in the lab, I'm not 'visible' enough and risk getting cut.

So now, I spend 3/4 of my time stuck in meetings where I have no input anyway. :(

Miss-Bomarc
Aug 1, 2009

Sundae posted:

[My immediate manager] agreed, but last year informed me that she had to make me start attending meetings because of "employee visibility" requirements. Apparently, by being in the lab, I'm not 'visible' enough and risk getting cut.

So now, I spend 3/4 of my time stuck in meetings where I have no input anyway. :(
It's probably not your immediate manager, but instead HER immediate manager, who is engaged in a dick-measuring contest with the other people at his level and needs to have lots of people sitting near him so that the other monkeysmanagers can see how awesome he is.

Olanphonia
Jul 27, 2006

I'm open to suggestions~

Miss-Bomarc posted:

It's probably not your immediate manager, but instead HER immediate manager, who is engaged in a dick-measuring contest with the other people at his level and needs to have lots of people sitting near him so that the other monkeysmanagers can see how awesome he is.

Yeah, I waste 75% of my employees time with random meaningless meetings at least twice a week, no big deal.:smug:

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Wagoneer
Jul 16, 2006

hay there!

quote:

Please don't print this email unless it's necessary. Go Green.

I'm going to put this in my email signature then ask for 300 copies of a file that could just as easily be shown on a projector. :downs:

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply