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[Zrk2]

My only experience with meetings boils down to : "Hokay, so, basically, t'plant's cloosin' down. Fock ooff!"

[SalmonGod]

Yesterday was the first peaceful day at work since September.

And it's only going to last a single day, because the best on my team just announced her resignation yesterday.  And it was only peaceful, because she did so from home, by e-mail.  So management was keeping mostly quiet about it.  I heard after the day was over that certain people were being pulled aside to be given shit about it.  I just wasn't one of them.  And since the resigning individual should be at work today, I expect full drama mode to activate.

And when she's gone, things are really going to suck.  Me and her are the only two people on the team who solve problems calmly and methodically, and who seem to have the ability to pull everything back into the realm of sanity when it gets out of control.  Everyone else gets overwhelmed and dramatic and causes things to snowball.  I don't want to be on this team without her

[Sergarr]

http://xkcd.com/1493/

[SalmonGod]

So... they hit a new low.  Everything I think their bullshit has gone so far, they can no longer surprise me... they prove me wrong.

We had a hand carry last night.  For those who have missed it when I explained what this is before, it's where a courier escorts some cargo into the country on a passenger flight.  But it's still considered a commercial import that has to be cleared through customs, and the courier has to be cleared along with the cargo.

We were notified of this hand carry around 8:30 pm lastnight, due to arrive at 5 am.  Long after business hours.  Our customer knows that this is long after our business hours.  They know that hand carry clearances have special requirements that we need time to make arrangements for, especially depending on the port.  For this one, Chicago, we have to have a representative physically meet the passenger with the cargo and take the documents in to customs.  Our office is located in Indianapolis.  There are a couple specialized courier services which do this, and we normally hire one of them.  If they're not available, we get people from our local Chicago office to help us out, even though they're not responsible for this account.

We couldn't get a hold of anybody.  At all.  I prepared the entry, but we had no way to get it submitted to customs.  So when the passenger arrived at 5 am, he was stranded for a few hours.  And this was totally not our fault.  The customer set this shit up without following proper procedure or taking obvious things into consideration.

Guess what our bosses told us this morning?  That someone should have driven 3-4 hours up to Chicago in the middle of the night to get this taken care of.

It's official.  There is no recognition or respect for any boundary whatsoever.  We exist solely for the needs of business, which take precedence over things like family, sleep, and sanity.

[Zrk2]

I'm about to ask a stupid question. Don't you have a union?

Also, what the hell is wrong with everyone you work with?

[wierd]

You expected differently? 

There's a reason why your employer gives you a company ID that is a number, and calls you a Human Resource.


Treating employees like humans requires "Giving a shit". which they don't.  Their one and only loyalty and responsibility is fiduciary.  Concern for employees? Limited to legal liabilities imposed upon them. Historically, did not care about even that. (Sweat shops, slave laborers, et al.) They just want you to shut up and do the work that makes them money. (Be it making product, selling shit, or delivering packages.) They dont give a fuck about you as a person, what kind of problems your life has, or anything at all about you, other than your profitability to them.

END OF STORY.


This is why when I hear politicians trying to conflate corporations as being moral actors, I about die of hyperventilation from a fit of uncontrollable hysterical laughter.

[hector13]

Would you have been paid for this 6-8 hour round trip? Specifically, would you have been paid more considering it's on your own time, and thus have no obligation to do so?

[Frumple]

Guess what our bosses told us this morning?  That someone should have driven 3-4 hours up to Chicago in the middle of the night to get this taken care of.

Someone should have, ha. Them.

[Zrk2]

Would you have been paid for this 6-8 hour round trip? Specifically, would you have been paid more considering it's on your own time, and thus have no obligation to do so?

Salaried positions suck balls.

[nenjin]

There's times I really like working for an entrepreneur, and times I hate it.

I love that we do business with other big businesses, and yet we're a small company with totally non-professional standards, who get to be exactly who we are instead of putting on suits and spewing business garbage speak at each other.

I love that there's always something weird and quirky going on here that has zero to do with our core business.

And that's why I also hate it. I hate it that my boss hires people not because they're eminently qualified for the positions we need, but because he finds them "interesting."

"Oh, you have a robotics hobby? You're hired! You're going to work inconsistent hours, and even when you are here, you may decide you "just can't stay focused on work" so you're going to build something dumb? Splendid. I'm glad we have you on the team so you can not do the work that needs to be done. In fact, why don't you drop everything you're doing to laser engrave some cookies."

"Oh, you made a successful flash game but you're a burnt out pot head ill-equipped for this business? No problem, let's invest in you, watch you fail, then basically give you free office space so you can start up your instrument repair business which makes no real money. Glad to have you aboard!"

Despite the fact our margins are tight, my boss won't hesitate to waste money on stupid shit, like said laser engraver, who no one so far has had any answer on why we bought it. Or he'll buy an $800 brass gong from some hippy fucking gong maker because he "wants to support local businesses." Meanwhile, our wages are just barely competitive for our region and we hire more interns than we do actual employees.

My current fear is that he's going to throw good company money at a Kickstarter game that's being developed here in the building, that will, in my estimation, miss its goal by $100,000 or more. It's a shit Kickstarter in my opinion, run by a well-meaning but ultimately clueless guy who is going to watch his project go down in flames, and I'm seriously worried my boss is going to try and swoop in to save it using our money, because that's exactly the kind of losing proposition he likes to sign up for.

On the one hand, I know I'm kind of a dick for not buying into the "let's all hug and make business" vibe that goes on around here. On the other hand, I've watched start ups come and go around here as one person after another has a crack pot small business idea which folds in 6 months to a year, and it really fucking pisses me off sometimes that my boss is at the center of it all, and sometimes seems to care more about the business community than his own company. Whether it's building us a new office space  and then giving away half of it to a new company he wants to be buddies with, or cutting losers deals on office space, giving them money, exposure, whatever. Sometimes I wonder how successful we could be without all this business community bullshit distracting him (and us when he inevitably asks us to pitch in our time to help people promote. They seriously sent out a company-wide email asking people to stand out in front of the building holding signs promoting this Kickstarter. I get emails to like and favorite shit all the time because apparently, we're just a vehicle to help make someone successful around here.) And how better our lives might be when my boss wasn't suddenly waking up, realizing he has several businesses to run and swoops in to try and do in 5 minutes what he should have been doing for the last three months.

I suppose if I was making like, Google money, that would be enough to say "I just don't care because it doesn't affect me." But when every new year's meeting starts with the joke "So good news, you all still have jobs!", it fucking drives me insane to watch him waste money on stupid shit in the name of business, community, opportunity and sunshine. It's all well and good if we can stay in business every year, but if there's little chance to grow because we spend everything we make on stuff OTHER THAN THE BUSINESS, being here is ultimately a losing proposition. I don't want to be 45 making $15 bucks an hour because I like the office environment I work in.

This is also the guy that buys tickets every year to go to Burning Man, and inevitably gives them away to the newest hire who's around at the time. We literally hired a guy who worked for a couple days then went to Burning Man for a week on my boss's dime. What. The. Fuck. Does he wonder why the people that have been here 10 years increasingly feel like he doesn't really give any fucks about the business until something goes wrong?

[Ghills]

I've never worked for a business that had horrible meetings like people are describing here.

I've worked in a job where everyone had to work around the same conference table because our bosses were paranoid and cheap. That was fairly horrible, but we rose above it and remained productive. I've worked in a job where the only time I saw my coworkers was during meetings. I've worked in a job where the hierarchy was basically flat and the only official meetings were conference calls.  But everywhere I worked meetings were generally seen as one tool for specific forms of communication.   

ETA: Actually, there was that one job. I'd repressed those memories. BRB, must find cheerful photos now.

[RedKing]

Guys...I just got put in charge of a million-dollar network project. Me. The guy who still can't keep a dwarf fortress alive for more than a few years.

The really fun part is that it's already about $200,000 over budget. And the client is getting tight-fisted about paying for work that's been done. But constantly adding more requests to the project, often with little notice and then saying "well, if we didn't specifically authorize the work and agree to fund it, then we're not paying for it."

Ooookay. So the guy who works for you comes and asks me if our guys can do X, like NAO PLZ. We do X. Now you're saying that because you didn't specifically authorize X, you're not paying for it.

This is like a high-stakes game of Simon Says. 

[FearfulJesuit]

Guys...I just got put in charge of a million-dollar network project. Me. The guy who still can't keep a dwarf fortress alive for more than a few years.

The obvious solution to both problems is to add more alcohol.

[nenjin]

The really fun part is that it's already about $200,000 over budget. And the client is getting tight-fisted about paying for work that's been done. But constantly adding more requests to the project, often with little notice and then saying "well, if we didn't specifically authorize the work and agree to fund it, then we're not paying for it."

Ooookay. So the guy who works for you comes and asks me if our guys can do X, like NAO PLZ. We do X. Now you're saying that because you didn't specifically authorize X, you're not paying for it.

That's the point at which your project manager needs to have some balls with the client. Our clients do this to us all the time (adding things into a work sheet of issues that were never discussed or priced out or paid for. Our PM regularly tells them "Guys, if you didn't let us know you needed this and didn't give us a chance to price it for you, we will not do it.") At least in software clients don't know the effort it takes in terms of speccing out and programming what they want, and assume they can insert really complicated shit in there and have it cost nothing and take less than a week to do. Like integrating with dealer management systems. Clients like to assume this just happens, not realizing the amount of coordination it takes between two different companies, two different APIs, about 8 distinct pieces of software, and one or more really pissed off developers.

[Ghills]

Guys...I just got put in charge of a million-dollar network project. Me. The guy who still can't keep a dwarf fortress alive for more than a few years.

The really fun part is that it's already about $200,000 over budget. And the client is getting tight-fisted about paying for work that's been done. But constantly adding more requests to the project, often with little notice and then saying "well, if we didn't specifically authorize the work and agree to fund it, then we're not paying for it."

Ooookay. So the guy who works for you comes and asks me if our guys can do X, like NAO PLZ. We do X. Now you're saying that because you didn't specifically authorize X, you're not paying for it.

This is like a high-stakes game of Simon Says. 

1) Write down everything they ask for
2) Respond to all requests with 'Let's discuss how this expanded scope will impact timelines and cost'

People assume they can get work for free.  Lay it out clearly how much extras will cost them, and suddenly the original request is fine. Be conservative with estimates.  Plan for worst-case, double it, pass those numbers on.