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Cheesus posted:Email is too valuable these days as a paper trail. My IT manager tries his hardest to get everything in email so when he gets the inevitable "This is your fault!" he can point to email.
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Nov 19, 2011 16:46
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Defenestration posted:The opposite of this problem: We had an evil boss who would NEVER email anything. She'd tell us to do it one way, then once we'd done it, she'd say "Why did you do it that way! I told you to do the exact opposite!" I had a boss like that once. I took to emailing him back every time, "To make sure I was clear on what we had just talked about." I'd then give a quick precis of his orders and ask him to let me know if I'd got anything wrong. That then gave me an out if I needed to cover my rear end.
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Nov 19, 2011 22:35
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Thursday my bosses bosses boss was here for a meeting. This woman terrifies my boss and basically everyone else. Wednesday I got to watch her freak out, then tell my coworker that he had to attend the meeting (despite it having nothing to do with our particular job). I have every Thursday off, so I relished the gently caress out of it. Bosses aren't here today so my coworkers surrounded me and told me (without prompting) that they miss hearing me talk, have all complained to the boss about my direct supervisors harassment and I have their support. We all agreed I'm basically hosed. Im six hours into my eight hour shift and have done roughly two hours of work. I need to practice my interview skills so I can get a decent, full time admin gig. Apparently, however, they're hiring new people for what I do. I honestly hope they lay me off. They block my attempts to get more hours, so I only make 600$/mo. Unemployment will give me 1600$/mo. Partial unemployment gives me ~800/mo right now. I'd literally be better off jobless. How... disheartening.
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Nov 19, 2011 23:07
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MC Hawking fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Jun 15, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2011 00:04
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today my supervisor interrupted my work to talk about groupon and if I'd ever used it. The same supervisor who told me I'm not allowed to speak about anything that isn't work related at work. Then she conducted my monthly evaluation, which only happens every three months or so, to go on about what a great and caring supervisor she is and how she is grooming us for advancement. Slopehead posted:If you're making such mad bucks jobless then why aren't you in Drunkstraviganza bachelor chat every weekend wearing no pants attempting to make a concerted effort to examine the bottom of a whiskey bottle. I'm not jobless at the moment. I'm working the 26.5 hours per week they'll give me. Boyfriend is at my place most weekend nights and for some reason he doesn't want me getting drunk with goons on the internet  I may be available Saturday night if I don't go out with friends. Tell bigsexywill I said happy birthday
ladyweapon fucked around with this message at 00:18 on Nov 22, 2011 |
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Nov 22, 2011 00:15
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My new boss sent me an email to let me know he had my desk assignment and new phone number all set, and that he was ordering my business cards. Obviously they've got me whipped pretty hard, because I was super excited about the prospect of finally having business cards 
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Nov 22, 2011 00:18
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RazorBunny posted:My new boss sent me an email to let me know he had my desk assignment and new phone number all set, and that he was ordering my business cards. I felt like a total badass when I got business cards. You're not alone.
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Nov 22, 2011 01:27
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Wait until the day you are issued business cards and a corporate guidance on who you are allowed to give them to. 
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Nov 22, 2011 02:28
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Did it include fishbowls at diners for your chance to win a free breakfast?
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Nov 22, 2011 02:48
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That'd be awesome. (Unfortunately, there are no diners in this area anymore.  )It was three pages long and included a long set of legalese under which I can only distribute business cards to vendors and individuals who meet the company's standards of business criteria (aka people with whom we may do business, etc). They are also not to be left in uncontrolled environments, apparently. No putting my card on bulletin boards, for example. (Not that I would... who the hell is going to hire a pharma scientist based on a card pinned in a grocery store?)
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Nov 22, 2011 04:26
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Sundae posted:That'd be awesome. (Unfortunately, there are no diners in this area anymore. ...where the gently caress do you work? Antarctica? Some FLDS compound in south Utah?
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Nov 22, 2011 04:30
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Nowhere now (got laid off  ) but it was a tiny town in eastern Connecticut. There were two diners, both of which have gone out of business and been replaced by Five Guys burgers.There is one remaining place that calls itself a diner, but anyone who has ever set foot in a diner would instantly call it a fast-food joint instead. (Actually - there might also be one Denny's about 15 min from here, come to think of it.) For some reason, this area really likes to segregate its foods. You have some kickass breakfast-only joints, some kickass dinner-only restaurants, etc, but you don't have the good old 24/7 diner with the ridiculously huge menu of awesomeness. EDIT:  Places (A) and (E) are out of business. Place (C) is the fast-food one. I hadn't heard of (B), so there's that! The rest are quite far away, given I-95 traffic and the small roads there. Getting to D is actually a 30+ min drive. Sundae fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Nov 22, 2011 |
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Nov 22, 2011 04:41
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We can be made redundant and accept a package that includes us not being able to apply for government jobs for a year despite it being involuntary redundancy, or we might be offered a continuing position out of the pool of currently vacant positions in the organisation(but at our current pay grade), which at this point is limited to administrative and call centre positions - which will look like poison on my resume because it will be a huge step down from where I am at the moment. Thanks, re-org.
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Nov 22, 2011 08:42
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RazorBunny posted:My new boss sent me an email to let me know he had my desk assignment and new phone number all set, and that he was ordering my business cards. I've had business cards in two seperate jobs, but I always totally forgot to bring them with me when I was seeing someone from outside the company. They sucked anyway.
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Nov 22, 2011 09:03
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Sundae posted:For some reason, this area really likes to segregate its foods. You have some kickass breakfast-only joints, some kickass dinner-only restaurants, etc, but you don't have the good old 24/7 diner with the ridiculously huge menu of awesomeness. Yeah, you really have to get onto I-91 or I-84 to be close to the good diners here in CT.
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Nov 22, 2011 11:37
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Solkanar512 posted:I felt like a total badass when I got business cards. You're not alone. One of the first things I did when I started my own business was to order 1000 business cards all with a layout and look but mostly title the way I wanted it.
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Nov 22, 2011 13:02
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Blue_monday posted:I work as the office assistant at a doctors office (previously mentioned). I've worked here since March and realized today that there is absolutely no "getting ahead" on my paperwork/other stuff. No matter how quickly I get anything off my desk there is always something to replace it. This was also my everyday when I did a repeat summer intern thing at an office in the file room, except I was facing poo poo that went back 10 years or more. To make it worse the other summer intern who arrived a week before me was so completely unaware of how ultimately futile our work was so she was irritably enthusiastic and commanding and talked down to me like I was 10. I wonder if that epiphany ever hit her before the summer was over. gently caress you, there is no possible way on earth anyone would ever catch up on this poo poo in 3 years, let alone 3 months. We're just here to help slightly dig them out of an endless pit, that will refill in a month after we leave because it is literally impossible to keep up without constant help. She made a what should be a typical lovely mundane job, unbearable, until she was relocated to another floor and I almost never saw her again. At least it paid alright and I was allowed to listen to music all day because I only saw my real boss once a day (boss lady of the file room was great and very understanding of how lousy our work was), but I don't think I could handle working a job like that without knowing there was an end in sight. Then again I'm very unemployed right now so ugh.
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Nov 22, 2011 14:28
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the jizz taxi posted:I've had business cards in two seperate jobs, but I always totally forgot to bring them with me when I was seeing someone from outside the company. They sucked anyway. I work for a large corporation, and the business cards are standardized. They're not glorious or anything, but they're simple and clean-looking, and not ugly. My transfer paperwork has all gone through, so I start on the 5th!
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Nov 22, 2011 16:06
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It's company policy that all full time people here get a box of business cards. Makes sense for the lobbyists and sales people, but the building maintenance guys? Me? (My title is "Information Specialist" which sounds like "Spy" but isn't). I fold most of mine into origami iPhone stands so I can watch stuff while I work. I thought I posted this but I guess I'm just insane or posted it in the Skyrim thread, but here's one of the benefits of working in D.C.:  Everyone in my building got one. We also have very specific rules for how long you have to decide to stay or leave in an emergency before the building locks down. Is this a U.S. corporate thing, international corporate thing or just a terrorist target corporate thing? And while I was looking to see if I posted this, Man-Thing posted:
Couldn't be that because his feet were in front of the toilet by a good six inches. The Aphasian fucked around with this message at 16:11 on Nov 22, 2011 |
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Nov 22, 2011 16:08
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It's not that confusing
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Not an international corporate thing certainly, because my former company removed all our first aid kits back in May 2009 for "cost savings." That's right... it's cheaper for us to die than to let us have easy access to band-aids. They even blocked my purchase order when I tried to get a laboratory emergency kit for our lab that doesn't have access to emergency services. (I think I posted this a few years ago, but it never gets old to me.  )Edit: Oh yes, I did. Back in April 2010. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3295066&userid=88303#post375679335
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Nov 22, 2011 16:35
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The Aphasian posted:Everyone in my building got one. We also have very specific rules for how long you have to decide to stay or leave in an emergency before the building locks down. Is this a U.S. corporate thing, international corporate thing or just a terrorist target corporate thing? That sounds more like a DC thing then corporation. We've had an office admin pushing for a defibrillator kit for about a year, but those cost a couple thousand bucks, so that isn't happening.
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Nov 22, 2011 17:33
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CitizenKain posted:That sounds more like a DC thing then corporation. We've had an office admin pushing for a defibrillator kit for about a year, but those cost a couple thousand bucks, so that isn't happening. Huh. We have one on every other floor. I thought that was strange, hoping people only had heart attacks on even-numbered floors. Now I feel like a jerk for complaining about my job. (We only have three microwaves in the employee kitchen!  )
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Nov 22, 2011 17:45
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Sundae posted:Not an international corporate thing certainly, because my former company removed all our first aid kits back in May 2009 for "cost savings."
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Nov 22, 2011 18:18
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quote:While I can imagine there are a few things that need to be refreshed on a periodic basis, what about the rest? I've had bandaids in my house for 5 years that were fine when I needed them over the summer. Take basically any stereotype of any major player of any industry. Environmental inconsideration, dehumanization of employees, exploitation of developing nations, abuse of H1B visas, bribery of governments, shady investments, bribery, illegal wheelings and dealings, buying senators... I don't care which stereotypes you want to pick. Pick however many you'd like, in fact. Now, roll all those stereotypes into one massive company. Imagine that this company's board of directors is worried because they aren't maintaining exponential profit growth, so they decide they're going to up the ante and meet profit goals through every means possible, even if it kills the company within five years, even if it kills their employees. They removed first aid kits because they could. Maybe removing them saves $5.00. Maybe, however, removing them drives a malcontent to quit his job. If so, they save even more because now they don't have to pay his severance agreement when they lay him off in six months! Maybe they can reduce the total number of global safety operations staff by three FTEs now that first aid kits don't need to be checked on anymore. That might save $150K right there. So on, so forth. That's my pformer company. Typo intended for company identification. That theoretical poo poo-stain of a company exists, and I worked for it for four years. The first thing I did when I got laid off was to go home and offer my wife a toast. I'm unemployed and I'm still happy to be out of there. edit: That being said, I'm grateful for having had the opportunity to work there. They paid me damned well for my time (even if the monetary value I added was far, far in excess of what I was paid), and their severance agreement was enough to get me started on the road to awesomeness, hopefully. I'm walking away with almost the median US pre-tax income in a post-tax severance cash payment. My student loans are all but paid for now, and hopefully now I can pursue my real goals.
Sundae fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Nov 22, 2011 |
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Nov 22, 2011 18:31
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My company has lost probably 5 employees in the last 6 months (aka 8-13% of the company), and replaced those full time positions with 2 new part-time people. Our sociopath sales staff keep signing us up for projects we can't handle because they make the commission on the sale and have no motivation to consider whether or not we actually deliver on it. I was promoted 3 months ago and have spent maybe 10% of my time on those new duties because it seems to take people for-loving-ever to learn things I have been trying to teach them for months. When I do have time for my new duties, I feel like I'm loving them up and taking 50% longer than I should because nobody has time to train me properly. We've had 2 people give notice for the next 2 weeks, which is going to increase workload even more on both myself and the people who would be showing me what to do. Dear company: What's the loving point of pushing 25% sales growth if your customer satisfaction drops and your employees are quitting because they don't want to have to work 50 hour weeks so some douchebag in sales can make an extra few grand each year? At least people are too busy to latch on to whatever the latest buzzword is. I'll synergize my fist assets in someone's face portfolio if I start hearing that junk around the office.
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Nov 22, 2011 20:54
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Pleads posted:My company has lost probably 5 employees in the last 6 months (aka 8-13% of the company), and replaced those full time positions with 2 new part-time people. Our sociopath sales staff keep signing us up for projects we can't handle because they make the commission on the sale and have no motivation to consider whether or not we actually deliver on it. I was promoted 3 months ago and have spent maybe 10% of my time on those new duties because it seems to take people for-loving-ever to learn things I have been trying to teach them for months. Refuse all shipments until you get a cut in the bonus and Sales stops loving around.
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Nov 22, 2011 21:48
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Pleads posted:Dear company: What's the loving point of pushing 25% sales growth if your customer satisfaction drops and your employees are quitting because they don't want to have to work 50 hour weeks so some douchebag in sales can make an extra few grand each year? This is how I've felt of late, because it's happening more and more. I hate being behind. Even if it's out of my hands. Even if it's entirely someone else's fault. Even when I've made everyone who needs to be aware, aware. Because damnit, it's my project I feel responsible for it and being put in a position where I'm forced to be late makes me very uncomfortable, which then turns into anger directed at my employer for doing that to me. Gah!
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Nov 22, 2011 22:02
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Edit: Nothing is permanent.
The Aphasian fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Oct 1, 2014 |
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Nov 22, 2011 22:28
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My company laid off 24 field service people last week so we could hit some asinine goal of 18% margins by 2012 and whatever gently caress stick that made that goal could collect their bonus. When it was presented to us in 2010 we were told explicitly by someone with VP in front of their title that this would not result in a change in head count or increase in prices but through internal efficiency improvements that we were somehow supposed to magically come up with. Never mind that our customer base has been growing the entire time the initiative has been in place without an increase in head count. Never mind that the remaining field service people are some how supposed to make up the slack left by the absence of these people on product lines we haven't even been trained on. And never mind that we'll have to rehire for those roles again in the near future because we'll fail to meet our metrics with regard to customer response time without them. Stupid corporate fucks. I wish someone would have the balls to tell them, "No, you can't just lay these people off so you can meet some arbitrary number that you made no effort in reaching." Assholes. Every last one of them.
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Nov 22, 2011 23:42
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Sundae posted:Not an international corporate thing certainly, because my former company removed all our first aid kits back in May 2009 for "cost savings." The opposite of this: We have first aid kits all over the offices. Doctors office. It never, ever occurs to me to get anything out of a first aid kit when I can just grab a (good) bandaid from storageor one of the clinic rooms. I would also not use whatever antibacterial/wound cleaner in the kits when I have nice perscritpion stuff floating around. Our super awesome MD receptionist is leaving because her masters supervisor said she isn't allowed to work. My heart is actually broken because all the clinic staff have reached this perfect symbiotic relationship. It was so refreshing after the previous crazed receptionist. I'm also not looking forward to training in a new person. Everything related to clinic is supposed to be done a certain way, and while it isnt complicated loving LISTEN TO WHAT I SAY AND MAKE AN EFFORT.
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Nov 23, 2011 05:53
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Blue_monday posted:loving LISTEN TO WHAT I SAY AND MAKE AN EFFORT. Good Lord this. Been training this girl for seven days (also healthcare). She hasn't written down most of what i've asked her to (which is essential; don't come in here like you know what you're doing already!) So yesterday I gave her the whole day to take her notes and integrate them with the Giant Binder of How To Do Everything so she could get a feel for the scope and practice of the job. She came to me this morning with five checklists, four of which I had already made for her (she copied them word for word, but with poorer spelling and grammar). If she doesn't survive these next couple days with a more patient but tougher trainer, I believe she doesn't stand a chance.
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Nov 23, 2011 08:32
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The Aphasian posted:But I got it done in an hour and she told me she's grown to expect that kind of discrepancy between estimate and delivery and now I feel like I'm screwed no matter what. If you are screwed no matter what, you might as well stand up for yourself and tell her that this is the last time you will finish something before your estimated time. What is the worst she can do to you? Make you misarable?
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Nov 23, 2011 09:35
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I saw this article on engadget today about the layoff of 17K people by Nokia Siemens and thought you would enjoy the doublespeak in the quotation from the company explaining why: quote:"These planned reductions are expected to be driven by aligning the company's workforce with its new strategy as well as through a range of productivity and efficiency measures. These planned measures are expected to include elimination of the company's matrix organizational structure, site consolidation, transfer of activities to global delivery centers, consolidation of certain central functions, cost synergies from the integration of Motorola's wireless assets, efficiencies in service operations, and company-wide process simplification." I don't even work in corporate and the sheer amount of fluff, nonsense words, and sheer babble makes my head spin. Then again that might be the lack of sleep. Matrix organizational structures? Cost synergies? Company wide process simplifications? Why can't you just say "we're losing money hand over fist and we're gonna have to cut back a heck of a lot. It sucks but hey, we've hosed off for the past few years in terms of hardware/software development and it's really biting us in the rear end right now." MC Hawking fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Nov 23, 2011 |
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Nov 23, 2011 14:22
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I like the over-emphasis on 'planned' too. No no, you see it's all fine - although our current situation is the result of a massive reorg due to panic, it's all planned so that's ok. Everyone be cool.
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Nov 23, 2011 14:36
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Slopehead posted:Haha. This was either written by a very bad copywriter or supervised by a very witless manager (or both). My best guess is that it was edited by way too many people who thought that corporatese still tricks people. It baffles me that so many managers still think that this is an effective way to communicate. This kind of obfuscation is what makes unions and employees even angrier than they would have been if you'd have said: "Yo guys, we're going to have to fire some people because we've got too many people doing redundant work."
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Nov 23, 2011 15:31
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Worse yet, hidden in the buzzwords is something that's actually a big change for the remaining employees. On top of the layoffs, of course. A matrix organizational structure is sort of a compromise between sorting your employees by role versus sorting them by project. Basically you have sales/engineering/marketing/etc. managers overseeing their respective departments, while the employees also work under a project manager, where each project has employees with different specialties. There are obvious downsides to this (each employee has two managers, more managers overall versus another structure) but transitioning to a different system company-wide is bound to slow down and disrupt all their ongoing projects. Which I bet there are a lot of, given that the whole point of Nokia Siemens is to develop, market, and sell electronic widgets.
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Nov 25, 2011 06:28
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sericks posted:Worse yet, hidden in the buzzwords is something that's actually a big change for the remaining employees. On top of the layoffs, of course. In my previous company they tried to half-assedly introduce that matrix structure. It worked out horribly. What I really resented the most was that I was made 'project leader' for a number of things, but everyone on the team was my hierarchical equal, so it was impossible for me to tell them "you're gonna deliver this to me by that date" without sufficient authority to back it up. What made it worse was that our supervisor frequently overruled our schedules, and then wondered whether we were always pushing so dangerously close to deadlines. Ugh.
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Nov 25, 2011 09:40
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the jizz taxi posted:In my previous company they tried to half-assedly introduce that matrix structure. It worked out horribly. You mean you got extra responsibilities without the required resources (mandate in this case) to do your work? Sounds like a common thing these days.
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Nov 25, 2011 11:34
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Keetron posted:You mean you got extra responsibilities without the required resources (mandate in this case) to do your work? Sounds like a common thing these days. More or less. What was super-idiotic was that I was coordinating project A, of which my colleague Gustav was part, but Gustav was also coordinating project B, and I was on that team as a member. Both projects also had deadlines that were in a week from each other.
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Nov 25, 2011 11:59
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There are, maybe, five cars in the parkning lot today. The lights keep turning off because they're not sensing any movement. Currently Blasting Lamb of God over my speakers. I love it when no one is in the office. 
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Nov 25, 2011 17:54
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