Author Topic: Workplace Irony  (Read 10962 times)

6-Saturdays

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Workplace Irony
« on: February 13, 2019, 07:54:04 AM »
I currently work for Big U (Only 10 more months, yes I'm counting the days) . Today there is a Work-Life Balance speaker giving a talk from 12 noon to 1 pm.  I feel like I'm the only one here that sees the irony of the timing of this talk...

Send help or at least snacks.

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« Last Edit: February 13, 2019, 08:02:42 AM by 6-Saturdays »

AMandM

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #1 on: February 13, 2019, 08:24:42 AM »
Ha!
Is this a mandatory event?

ketchup

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #2 on: February 13, 2019, 11:12:53 AM »

Spiffy

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #3 on: February 13, 2019, 11:37:10 AM »
A few years ago my boss bought the whole department new cushy desk chairs AND standing desks.

ixtap

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #4 on: February 13, 2019, 11:46:48 AM »
In December my husband's team moved to  new building. It was a big deal that this team was the first to get its own specially designed building in years. This month, most of them are working on an overtime project in the lab in the old building, but without cubicles to retreat to.

dcheesi

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #5 on: February 13, 2019, 11:58:04 AM »
After poor department ratings in an employee survery, a friend of mine and his whole group were subjected to weekly mandatory 8am meetings to discuss how to improve morale.

The beatings meetings will continue until morale improves...

penguintroopers

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #6 on: February 13, 2019, 12:41:47 PM »
After poor department ratings in an employee survery, a friend of mine and his whole group were subjected to weekly mandatory 8am meetings to discuss how to improve morale.

The beatings meetings will continue until morale improves...

Please tell me these were regularly scheduled on Mondays

Just Joe

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #7 on: February 13, 2019, 12:43:55 PM »
Or - during lunch... And lunch is not provided.

flipboard

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #8 on: February 13, 2019, 10:16:26 PM »
A few years ago my boss bought the whole department new cushy desk chairs AND standing desks.
Not sure where the irony is. Every standing desk user I know switches between standing and sitting each day.

Jesstache

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #9 on: February 13, 2019, 10:44:52 PM »
The huge aerospace contractor I worked for had a big "Safety Stand Down" with required attendance by the entire company (thousands).  The audio visual equipment setup for some of the screens ran wires across walkways and people tripped over them and got injured.

jinga nation

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #10 on: February 14, 2019, 07:02:51 AM »
First full-time job out of university. All-Hands meetings... mandatory.
Not allowed to ask questions during question time. None. Nada. Nyet.

Next employer, same practice as previous employer. (Maybe an industry trend?)
We (wily engineers and technicians) took to making comments/statements. Management found them to be borderline questioning so killed Question Time.
All-Hands meeting renamed to STRAP (Strategic Plan) meetings. We called them Strap-Ons. BYO Lube...

Just Joe

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #11 on: February 14, 2019, 07:38:45 AM »
Those all-hands meetings were a time waster at my previous employer. A cheerleading event for management to tell us how great everything was going with their leadership and our 50+ hour weeks.

(Oh, and everyone still isn't getting a bonus no matter how well the company is doing. Here is a $12 frozen turkey to take home with you... Merry Christmas!)

jinga nation

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #12 on: February 14, 2019, 09:02:04 AM »
The Six Sigma black belt who, using actual data from attendance and employee surveys, showed how ineffective and time-wasting and morale-reducing these quarterly meetings were, and the hit to the annual bottom line....

No surprise. Got fired.

Management instructed that Green-belt and Black-Belt 6Sigma projects are supposed to focus on products. Quite difficult when we made one custom part at a time for space projects. One engine controller, one widget to measure air speed, etc.
And how da feck am I supposed to make measurements on a constantly varying EM field? Close eyes, count to 3, record the first number I see on the meter.
Got award for best Green-Belt project. ROFLMAO.

MDfive21

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #13 on: February 14, 2019, 09:06:56 AM »
desk head constantly starts bickery fights with co-workers that bring the whole desk to a halt, and has no idea why morale is low and we're hemorrhaging employees.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯


dcheesi

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #14 on: February 14, 2019, 09:17:38 AM »
After poor department ratings in an employee survery, a friend of mine and his whole group were subjected to weekly mandatory 8am meetings to discuss how to improve morale.

The beatings meetings will continue until morale improves...

Please tell me these were regularly scheduled on Mondays
I can't recall now (it was several years ago now), but that sounds about right!

mm1970

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #15 on: February 14, 2019, 02:58:45 PM »
Ha!
Is this a mandatory event?

ah ha ha

My friend just got a new job for a government contractor.  They have *mandatory* lunch meetings that are sort of like "professional development" lectures. 

But they don't provide lunch.
And they aren't allowed to count it towards their work hours.

His wife was telling me all about it...and I laughed.  I used to be in the military.  I used to know ALL the rules.  She felt a *little* bit better when I told her it was standard.

flipboard

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #16 on: February 14, 2019, 11:53:35 PM »
Ha!
Is this a mandatory event?

ah ha ha

My friend just got a new job for a government contractor.  They have *mandatory* lunch meetings that are sort of like "professional development" lectures. 

But they don't provide lunch.
And they aren't allowed to count it towards their work hours.

His wife was telling me all about it...and I laughed.  I used to be in the military.  I used to know ALL the rules.  She felt a *little* bit better when I told her it was standard.
I'm curious - how is that even legal? If an employer tried that crap on me where I live, they'd soon be in court being told to give me back pay with interest (or more likely they'd give me back pay after being pointed to the relevant court case from X years ago).

jinga nation

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #17 on: February 15, 2019, 06:40:08 AM »
Ha!
Is this a mandatory event?

ah ha ha

My friend just got a new job for a government contractor.  They have *mandatory* lunch meetings that are sort of like "professional development" lectures. 

But they don't provide lunch.
And they aren't allowed to count it towards their work hours.

His wife was telling me all about it...and I laughed.  I used to be in the military.  I used to know ALL the rules.  She felt a *little* bit better when I told her it was standard.
I'm curious - how is that even legal? If an employer tried that crap on me where I live, they'd soon be in court being told to give me back pay with interest (or more likely they'd give me back pay after being pointed to the relevant court case from X years ago).

This is news to me. I'm a gov contractor too, since 2004. Never had mandatory lunch meetings that can't be charged. In fact, the first thing on the meeting agenda is always what are we charging the meeting towards (contract/training/overhead) and if the hour long meeting is being fully attributed to the charge code, or if half to a charge code and half on our own time. Making employees do work-related stuff on their own time can be anonymously reported directly by the employees to the govt and would cause additional and immediate oversight and audits of the contract.

Travis

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #18 on: February 15, 2019, 09:53:49 AM »
A few years ago my boss bought the whole department new cushy desk chairs AND standing desks.
Not sure where the irony is. Every standing desk user I know switches between standing and sitting each day.

I'm sitting right now because my lower back is hurting. Yesterday I was standing because the pain was in my neck.

Travis

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #19 on: February 15, 2019, 10:40:25 AM »
The Six Sigma black belt who, using actual data from attendance and employee surveys, showed how ineffective and time-wasting and morale-reducing these quarterly meetings were, and the hit to the annual bottom line....

No surprise. Got fired.

Management instructed that Green-belt and Black-Belt 6Sigma projects are supposed to focus on products. Quite difficult when we made one custom part at a time for space projects. One engine controller, one widget to measure air speed, etc.
And how da feck am I supposed to make measurements on a constantly varying EM field? Close eyes, count to 3, record the first number I see on the meter.
Got award for best Green-Belt project. ROFLMAO.

I've had mixed experiences with Six Sigma processes (redundancy isn't always wasteful), but I think your senior managers might have missed that the whole point of a Six Sigma evaluation is to look at every aspect of your business.  You can't just evaluate an assembly line and expect your problems to go away if the actual bottleneck is in a personnel matter.

jinga nation

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #20 on: February 15, 2019, 11:56:25 AM »
The Six Sigma black belt who, using actual data from attendance and employee surveys, showed how ineffective and time-wasting and morale-reducing these quarterly meetings were, and the hit to the annual bottom line....

No surprise. Got fired.

Management instructed that Green-belt and Black-Belt 6Sigma projects are supposed to focus on products. Quite difficult when we made one custom part at a time for space projects. One engine controller, one widget to measure air speed, etc.
And how da feck am I supposed to make measurements on a constantly varying EM field? Close eyes, count to 3, record the first number I see on the meter.
Got award for best Green-Belt project. ROFLMAO.

I've had mixed experiences with Six Sigma processes (redundancy isn't always wasteful), but I think your senior managers might have missed that the whole point of a Six Sigma evaluation is to look at every aspect of your business.  You can't just evaluate an assembly line and expect your problems to go away if the actual bottleneck is in a personnel matter.
It was a corporation-wide initiative to have every engineer, analyst, manager, etc., every degreed person get at least green belt certified. So the mechanical engineers designing custom components in the aerospace division had to get certified just like the process engineers on the thermostat line in the heating and controls division. Blanket policy everyone must adhere to. Managers were just a title, they wielded no power, had no say upwards, just received the message from up above and dumb-it-down for the workplace populace.
It was akin to a MLM... we were even advised which PACs to contribute to as those aligned with our business policies.
Fuck that place. Did my 3 years, got my company match vested, and got the heck out of there.
I learnt more about what-not-to-do in my career instead of what-to-do. Silver lining.

Travis

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #21 on: February 15, 2019, 02:14:54 PM »
The Six Sigma black belt who, using actual data from attendance and employee surveys, showed how ineffective and time-wasting and morale-reducing these quarterly meetings were, and the hit to the annual bottom line....

No surprise. Got fired.

Management instructed that Green-belt and Black-Belt 6Sigma projects are supposed to focus on products. Quite difficult when we made one custom part at a time for space projects. One engine controller, one widget to measure air speed, etc.
And how da feck am I supposed to make measurements on a constantly varying EM field? Close eyes, count to 3, record the first number I see on the meter.
Got award for best Green-Belt project. ROFLMAO.

I've had mixed experiences with Six Sigma processes (redundancy isn't always wasteful), but I think your senior managers might have missed that the whole point of a Six Sigma evaluation is to look at every aspect of your business.  You can't just evaluate an assembly line and expect your problems to go away if the actual bottleneck is in a personnel matter.
...
I learnt more about what-not-to-do in my career instead of what-to-do. Silver lining.

That's generally how it goes.

Apples

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #22 on: February 15, 2019, 07:13:24 PM »
My husband's last workplace was highly respected in the industry.  Turns out if you're a crew member (as in, not a site or regional manager or work for HQ), you were "encouraged"* to go to professional development conferences, which the company paid the registration for, but YOUR TIME THERE WAS UNPAID.  You had to take unpaid "time off" to go to your own professional development conference - and they had pesticide licenses and arborculture licenses that they needed continuing education credits in order to renew.  These licenses were either mandatory for the work they were doing or were a selling point in getting hired by a customer.  I couldn't believe it.

*the company always talked a good game, but then when my DH went to book going to these conferences, they would ask if he could only go for a half day (several hours away) so he could still work part of the day out with the crew and their work wouldn't slow down too much.  Um, no?

meghan88

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #23 on: February 18, 2019, 06:50:17 AM »
As a high performer in a role that supports sales, I was invited to go for an all-expenses-paid deluxe retreat, out of the country, for four days with our sales staff. 

It would've been added to my pay as a taxable benefit.

I said no as gracefully as I could.

bluebelle

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #24 on: February 19, 2019, 08:46:31 AM »
As a high performer in a role that supports sales, I was invited to go for an all-expenses-paid deluxe retreat, out of the country, for four days with our sales staff. 

It would've been added to my pay as a taxable benefit.

I said no as gracefully as I could.
wow, at a former company I worked for, they had something similar, but labeled it a conference, with a few daily sessions, to avoid it being a taxable benefit, and it didn't count towards my vacation time either....BTW, you probably didn't miss much.....as an IT person, non of the sessions were of value to me.....

hudsoncat

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #25 on: February 20, 2019, 08:30:21 AM »
My husband's last workplace was highly respected in the industry.  Turns out if you're a crew member (as in, not a site or regional manager or work for HQ), you were "encouraged"* to go to professional development conferences, which the company paid the registration for, but YOUR TIME THERE WAS UNPAID.  You had to take unpaid "time off" to go to your own professional development conference - and they had pesticide licenses and arborculture licenses that they needed continuing education credits in order to renew.  These licenses were either mandatory for the work they were doing or were a selling point in getting hired by a customer.  I couldn't believe it.

*the company always talked a good game, but then when my DH went to book going to these conferences, they would ask if he could only go for a half day (several hours away) so he could still work part of the day out with the crew and their work wouldn't slow down too much.  Um, no?

I wonder if your husband and mine used to work for the same company. Always found that frustrating too. At least he had the option of a two day conference where he could get almost all his CEUs in two days was close enough to home that he didn't need a hotel. Which was good, because the company wasn't paying for that either.

Travis

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #26 on: February 20, 2019, 07:51:41 PM »
Not my organization, but a "sister" unit: "we know there's not enough time in the week for you to do everything that you're technically supposed to do. We also know that it's national-level attention that you haven't been succeeding this past year. In an effort to keeps tabs on your productivity we need you to fill out this checklist of milestones at 1pm and 5pm every day so we can determine in 3 months if you need more training."

Meanwhile, we discovered in my organization that if we can figure out how to give the workforce more time to do just the thing we hired them for, then they'll get it done more often.  We already have automated ways of getting the metrics the above mentioned organization is looking for. They have them too.  We also consolidated all of our meetings to just Mondays and cut about 4 hours worth of meetings out of the schedule each week.

Gone_Hiking

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #27 on: February 20, 2019, 09:45:17 PM »
My husband's last workplace was highly respected in the industry.  Turns out if you're a crew member (as in, not a site or regional manager or work for HQ), you were "encouraged"* to go to professional development conferences, which the company paid the registration for, but YOUR TIME THERE WAS UNPAID.  You had to take unpaid "time off" to go to your own professional development conference - and they had pesticide licenses and arborculture licenses that they needed continuing education credits in order to renew. 

IMHO mandatory unpaid time off for professional training that's required to keep position is one of the reasons to leave an employer.  I'm sorry your DH had this experience - nobody should, really.

And some employers want to train their own like this:

The head honcho in my organization decided that leadership training for individual contributors interested in becoming managers would be a good idea.  The program consists of monthly meetings, occasional video links and books.  Books must be read during free time in the evening or during weekends - not during work time at all.  And all managers were told that they will be joining the training whether they want to or not.

Most of those book chapters have suggestions and suggestions how to put what they teach into practice.  But no, we are not here to practice.  The head honcho seems to believe that reading books alone makes you a better leader.

Those of us who understand how to become a better leader quietly wait for the time the fit hits the shan.

Alfred J Quack

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #28 on: February 21, 2019, 04:13:49 AM »
Not my organization, but a "sister" unit: "we know there's not enough time in the week for you to do everything that you're technically supposed to do. We also know that it's national-level attention that you haven't been succeeding this past year. In an effort to keeps tabs on your productivity we need you to fill out this checklist of milestones at 1pm and 5pm every day so we can determine in 3 months if you need more training."

We had this problem a while back, we were far to busy to do everything on our plate which meant we were basically supporting IT applications without doing regular maintenance. Our boss even declined a number of projects because we simply didn't have the staff for it.
Eventually the lack of regular maintence led to service interruptions, complaints from management and in general dissatisfied users. They ask how we could resolve the issue, new boss says give me 5 FTE extra to properly handle the workload and 2 temps to get back up to par.

It is so strange that management puts "improvements" above everything else and can't be bothered to spend time and money to solidify and stabalize the current environment in stead. Now the basis is weak and crumbling and still they try to improve on it rather than make sure that the base is solid.

Linea_Norway

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #29 on: February 21, 2019, 05:19:04 AM »
My husband has always worked at places where a conference is typically at Friday and Saturday. The Saturday is in his own time. I would not have been so motivated to attend.

When I go on a conference or course, any hours beyond normal working hours are not paid.

When I need to travel inland, one hour travel = one hour working time (either to be paid off or to be taken off). When I travel abroad, one hour travel = 1/2 hour working time, when travelled outside normal working hours. Once on an international trip, I was 5 hours delayed on the departure airport, on a Sunday. That was only 2,5 hours paid working time. Since then, I do like my colleagues do and plan my travel abroad under normal working hours, which I think costs my boss more in time that I don't work.

We are currently sitting in an open landscape type of office. That is to improve communication. We have all gotten sound muffling headphones, because so many of us couldn't work efficiently during the frequent, noisy periods.

dcheesi

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #30 on: February 21, 2019, 06:54:20 AM »
Not my organization, but a "sister" unit: "we know there's not enough time in the week for you to do everything that you're technically supposed to do. We also know that it's national-level attention that you haven't been succeeding this past year. In an effort to keeps tabs on your productivity we need you to fill out this checklist of milestones at 1pm and 5pm every day so we can determine in 3 months if you need more training."

We had this problem a while back, we were far to busy to do everything on our plate which meant we were basically supporting IT applications without doing regular maintenance. Our boss even declined a number of projects because we simply didn't have the staff for it.
Eventually the lack of regular maintence led to service interruptions, complaints from management and in general dissatisfied users. They ask how we could resolve the issue, new boss says give me 5 FTE extra to properly handle the workload and 2 temps to get back up to par.

It is so strange that management puts "improvements" above everything else and can't be bothered to spend time and money to solidify and stabalize the current environment in stead. Now the basis is weak and crumbling and still they try to improve on it rather than make sure that the base is solid.
Improvements are achievements that the managers can list on their annual review (and/or resume' if it's high profile enough); maintenance is just status quo and thus not noteworthy. Only way I can think of to counter this is to impose metrics that they can cite improvements on, but then we all know how that tends to go...

Travis

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #31 on: February 21, 2019, 01:04:51 PM »
Not my organization, but a "sister" unit: "we know there's not enough time in the week for you to do everything that you're technically supposed to do. We also know that it's national-level attention that you haven't been succeeding this past year. In an effort to keeps tabs on your productivity we need you to fill out this checklist of milestones at 1pm and 5pm every day so we can determine in 3 months if you need more training."

We had this problem a while back, we were far to busy to do everything on our plate which meant we were basically supporting IT applications without doing regular maintenance. Our boss even declined a number of projects because we simply didn't have the staff for it.
Eventually the lack of regular maintence led to service interruptions, complaints from management and in general dissatisfied users. They ask how we could resolve the issue, new boss says give me 5 FTE extra to properly handle the workload and 2 temps to get back up to par.

It is so strange that management puts "improvements" above everything else and can't be bothered to spend time and money to solidify and stabalize the current environment in stead. Now the basis is weak and crumbling and still they try to improve on it rather than make sure that the base is solid.
Improvements are achievements that the managers can list on their annual review (and/or resume' if it's high profile enough); maintenance is just status quo and thus not noteworthy. Only way I can think of to counter this is to impose metrics that they can cite improvements on, but then we all know how that tends to go...

Our whole enterprise becomes more automated every year, but they haven't been improving the infrastructure to keep up with the number of users or the number of systems on the network.  Our network was down 50% of the time last year.

I know that I won't find a silver bullet to make all of our problems go away, but if I can get the things we already have to work right it's a win.  I'd kill for status quo. 

Apples

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #32 on: February 22, 2019, 02:06:28 PM »
My husband's last workplace was highly respected in the industry.  Turns out if you're a crew member (as in, not a site or regional manager or work for HQ), you were "encouraged"* to go to professional development conferences, which the company paid the registration for, but YOUR TIME THERE WAS UNPAID.  You had to take unpaid "time off" to go to your own professional development conference - and they had pesticide licenses and arborculture licenses that they needed continuing education credits in order to renew. 

IMHO mandatory unpaid time off for professional training that's required to keep position is one of the reasons to leave an employer.  I'm sorry your DH had this experience - nobody should, really.


Thanks.  It was so frustrating to watch, because my DH is a very self-motivated person, and would have absolutely been awesome for that company.  But they were not supportive of training, education, or anything.  He was "reprimanded" for not being able to drive their big truck, after he had taken it along with him for the test 3 different times and wasn't allowed to use it because his manager had screwed up (sent him with a truck not heavy enough (which he had pointed out, but manager said to go anyway), once with wood chips in the back, and once without the proper paperwork).  Regional manager withheld the new safety equipment that was meant to replace aging ropes and such until DH "achieved the goal that had been set for him instead of acting irresponsibly".  Gah.  DH ended up leaving when they were going to do line clearance work and planned to have 1 actually trained-in-that person "supervise" 6 others.  DH went for 2 days of that, absolutely refused to work in one section they were doing as it was unsafe, and quit on the spot when they pressured him about it.  I've never been so happy to live well below our means; quitting that job was not stressful to our budget.

Now he works for a guy who owns the (different line of work) business and swears he works "mentally 24/7" but actually shows up at the small business for 1-3 hours a day before drinking and heading home.  Real winner.  Fortunately DH has the freedom to pursue training and set his own hours and working conditions.  Idk where all these terrible bosses come from.

eostache

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #33 on: February 23, 2019, 10:51:53 AM »
Software company, that tries to be a cool company to work for, 600ish employees, just had a supposed-to-be-enjoyable "Company Day" at a convention center downtown. Brings workers in from remote offices all over the company, I was one who flew in for it. I've been with the company less than a year.

A speaker they get is someone who did Ted Talks and talks about Happiness. He was actually a good speaker. CEO, new to the company, seems to be a chill guy. He has even communicated directly with me a couple of times (I'm a very low level data specialist) and encourages any employees to contact him directly. At the gathering he says he hates making rules and wants to just let people do their work. Says they are expecting to grow the company by 150 people by the end of 2019, and much more in future years.

For 2019 benefit changes included unlimited PTO and Work From Anywhere policy. Employees got excited about these. At about the same time management suddenly gets worried about metrics and has everyone(? - not sure of the scope) keep a time tracker of activities every day, and (according to recent Glassdoor reviews) is micromanaging the PTO and taking away WFA privileges of employees not meeting "numbers." This company is not publicly owned, no shareholders to answer to.

Anyone applying for a job there that goes on GD to look at reviews will see a sudden downturn in employee reviews whereas the company had been highly rated for some years previously.

I'm not really thinking of leaving. I am scoping out other departments in the company and keeping my saved search job search emails going every day. I'm low paid but I'm glad I have 12 months of cash in savings and no debts.

AMandM

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #34 on: February 23, 2019, 07:16:33 PM »
Gah.  DH ended up leaving when they were going to do line clearance work and planned to have 1 actually trained-in-that person "supervise" 6 others.  DH went for 2 days of that, absolutely refused to work in one section they were doing as it was unsafe, and quit on the spot when they pressured him about it.  I've never been so happy to live well below our means; quitting that job was not stressful to our budget.

This belongs in the Epic FU Money stories thread!

Apples

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #35 on: February 24, 2019, 05:45:46 AM »
Gah.  DH ended up leaving when they were going to do line clearance work and planned to have 1 actually trained-in-that person "supervise" 6 others.  DH went for 2 days of that, absolutely refused to work in one section they were doing as it was unsafe, and quit on the spot when they pressured him about it.  I've never been so happy to live well below our means; quitting that job was not stressful to our budget.

This belongs in the Epic FU Money stories thread!

Thanks!  Some version of it is on that thread from a very long time ago, at least I'm pretty sure it is.  The p.s. part is that they told him he had to give 2 weeks as it's in his contract, he agreed to 2 more weeks doing any work other than line clearance (what was the worst they could do? fire him? not be a great reference?  ooooooooh).  They gave him 1 day of other work then said he needed to come back out to line clearing.  He promptly took all company tools he had to the main office and drove home, never to go back.

scottish

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #36 on: February 24, 2019, 02:26:46 PM »
Software company, that tries to be a cool company to work for, 600ish employees, just had a supposed-to-be-enjoyable "Company Day" at a convention center downtown. Brings workers in from remote offices all over the company, I was one who flew in for it. I've been with the company less than a year.

A speaker they get is someone who did Ted Talks and talks about Happiness. He was actually a good speaker. CEO, new to the company, seems to be a chill guy. He has even communicated directly with me a couple of times (I'm a very low level data specialist) and encourages any employees to contact him directly. At the gathering he says he hates making rules and wants to just let people do their work. Says they are expecting to grow the company by 150 people by the end of 2019, and much more in future years.

For 2019 benefit changes included unlimited PTO and Work From Anywhere policy. Employees got excited about these. At about the same time management suddenly gets worried about metrics and has everyone(? - not sure of the scope) keep a time tracker of activities every day, and (according to recent Glassdoor reviews) is micromanaging the PTO and taking away WFA privileges of employees not meeting "numbers." This company is not publicly owned, no shareholders to answer to.

Anyone applying for a job there that goes on GD to look at reviews will see a sudden downturn in employee reviews whereas the company had been highly rated for some years previously.

I'm not really thinking of leaving. I am scoping out other departments in the company and keeping my saved search job search emails going every day. I'm low paid but I'm glad I have 12 months of cash in savings and no debts.

I've always suspected unlimited PTO and WFA were actually a bad sign!    You can work anywhere as long as you reply to e-mail immediately 24/7.    Take as much time off as you want as long as you still get your work done while you're gone.


moof

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #37 on: March 03, 2019, 10:39:42 AM »
Software company, that tries to be a cool company to work for, 600ish employees, just had a supposed-to-be-enjoyable "Company Day" at a convention center downtown. Brings workers in from remote offices all over the company, I was one who flew in for it. I've been with the company less than a year.

A speaker they get is someone who did Ted Talks and talks about Happiness. He was actually a good speaker. CEO, new to the company, seems to be a chill guy. He has even communicated directly with me a couple of times (I'm a very low level data specialist) and encourages any employees to contact him directly. At the gathering he says he hates making rules and wants to just let people do their work. Says they are expecting to grow the company by 150 people by the end of 2019, and much more in future years.

For 2019 benefit changes included unlimited PTO and Work From Anywhere policy. Employees got excited about these. At about the same time management suddenly gets worried about metrics and has everyone(? - not sure of the scope) keep a time tracker of activities every day, and (according to recent Glassdoor reviews) is micromanaging the PTO and taking away WFA privileges of employees not meeting "numbers." This company is not publicly owned, no shareholders to answer to.

Anyone applying for a job there that goes on GD to look at reviews will see a sudden downturn in employee reviews whereas the company had been highly rated for some years previously.

I'm not really thinking of leaving. I am scoping out other departments in the company and keeping my saved search job search emails going every day. I'm low paid but I'm glad I have 12 months of cash in savings and no debts.

I've always suspected unlimited PTO and WFA were actually a bad sign!    You can work anywhere as long as you reply to e-mail immediately 24/7.    Take as much time off as you want as long as you still get your work done while you're gone.
Yep,from where I have seen it implemented it does a couple things.  First it switches PTO from something owed to you, to something you have to ask for and justify.  Second, if you leave or get laid off it no longer gets paid out.  In short, it is a raw deal.

AnnaGrowsAMustache

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Re: Workplace Irony
« Reply #38 on: March 03, 2019, 03:01:59 PM »
OK, have recently been hauled over the coals for not immediately uploading a file to the intra-office file sharing software (because it wasn't in a usable format), anyway, big drama blah blah. Person who conducted the coal hauling subsequently got sick..... and no one can find important documentation. Yep, it's not in the file sharing cloud. Typical.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!