Office Bullshit



  • Upper management has decided that we must have our own social page on our SharePoint site. We must have a profile picture. It cannot be an avatar. It must be a head shot. We must maintain it. And as if to add insult to injury, they feel it necessary to tell us that our photos can't be photos of us in bathing suits. As if I desire to see my colleagues in bathing suits anyway.

    WTF??? Do they think we're a bunch of children???

    As if we don't already have enough to do.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    And as if to add insult to injury, they feel it necessary to tell us that our photos can't be photos of us in bathing suits.

    Technically, you could put a picture of some upper management guy in bathing suit in your profile. That would still comply with the directive... however it would be no fun since the bathing suit usually is not apparent on a head shot.



  •  Does it have to be a recent picture? If not, use a baby photo.

    Of any baby.

    I mean, how are they going to prove its not a baby photo of you? All babies look the same.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    We must have a profile picture. It cannot be an avatar. It must be a head shot. We must maintain it.
     

    Does it have to show your face? Back of your head? Or wearing a mask?

    @nonpartisan said:

    And as if to add insult to injury, they feel it necessary to tell us that our photos can't be photos of us in bathing suits.

    I was about to trawl through Google Images looking for a photo of someone with a bathing suit over their head, but then realised that is probably dangerous waters to be swimming in at work.



  • I dare you to blur it out like they do on the news!



  • @thistooshallpass said:

    @nonpartisan said:
    And as if to add insult to injury, they feel it necessary to tell us that our photos can't be photos of us in bathing suits.

    Technically, you could put a picture of some upper management guy in bathing suit in your profile. That would still comply with the directive... however it would be no fun since the bathing suit usually is not apparent on a head shot.

    Yeah, that's a nice try, but there's a statement elsewhere that says "your profile picture should be a photo of your face."

    I'm torqued that they've unilaterally made this a requirement -- an internal social Web site -- when morale is still lower than a woodchuck's basement and we've got major projects ramping up. Getting sugar coated good sweetness from management these days because we, as the IT department overall, didn't do well on a morale survey. Managers seem to be fully entrenched in the Personality Ethic instead of the Character Ethic for those who have read 7 Habits. Contract coming up for negotiation (union; the whole process was fucked, regardless of whether we got raises or cuts, benefits changes, etc.), last one did not go well, morale never recovered from it. I personally got severely burned by upper management, so I'm even more cynical now.



  • This is WTF-worthy? Maybe stop being an aspie, and the WTF aspect fades away.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    This is WTF-worthy? Maybe stop being an aspie, and the WTF aspect fades away.
     

    Not anywhere near front page material for sure.  But it's really quite rare for our department to have multiple teams saying "WTF???" to one event all at the same time.  I have three other teams in my immediate vicinity, with representatives from each one staring in utter disbelief at the e-mail that, in a most cowardly fashion, came at the end of the business day.

    Whatever.  You're welcome to your opinion (which, y'know, you really ought to learn how to express -- you barely say anything around here!), and I, mine.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    What's the penalty for failing to comply forgetting to do it? Continuously?



  • @PJH said:

    What's the penalty for failing to comply forgetting to do it? Continuously?
     

    Bastards.  I just got home and looked at my profile.  Some months back they came around and took photos of everyone -- "for a visual org chart" -- and put that ugly, smiling mug as the photo on my profile.  The irony is, most of the profile is already filled in!  No idea why they sent out this "You must complete this profile!!!" piss-and-vinegar e-mail to everyone.  I do have to update it with a list of skills and things people can ask me questions about.  Problem with that is, people already know me, they know the kinds of questions I can answer, and they e-mail or call me when they have something to ask.  And vice versa, I know who to call to get my questions answered.  In the unlikely event that I am hopelessly confused and don't know who to call, I'll ask someone on my team instead of picking through this site trying to find a random name to try.

    How utterly pointless.

    The ultimate irony is that at least one of our upper management managers doesn't even have a photo on (his/her) profile.  Way to set the example.

    I don't know yet if there will be a "thou shalt blog at least once every [day|week|pay period|month|quarter|year|leap year|decade|century|millenium]" directive.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    (which, y'know, you really ought to learn how to express -- you barely say anything around here!)

    I know. Sorry, I'll try to post more.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    How utterly pointless.

     

    This is not pointless - someone will get a bonus for meeting his quarterly goal of improving communication. Unfortunately, that person won't be you; it will probably be the boss of the individual who sent you the directive by email. But there is a silver lining: maybe at some point the boss will have a bbq at his house and you will get to see the big pool that his bonus allowed him to buy, and who knows, maybe he will let you swim in it once (or at least you'll get to touch the water to see if it's cold). Meanwhile, sleep tight knowing that the person who pre-filled your profile is probably a HR clerk that is making 1/2 your salary. It's all about perspective.

    @nonpartisan said:

    I don't know yet if there will be a "thou shalt blog at least once every [day|week|pay period|month|quarter|year|leap year|decade|century|millenium]" directive.

     

    Been there... if you want i can send you my blogging script, it was basically a page-scraper stealing the "Top Story" article on eweek. It was scheduled to post the content weekly, until I figured out that the "recent activity" page in my intranet profile was not showing articles from the future, so I injected at once 1 year of  future blog posts in my profile. What is even funnier is that each entry was ending with: "This was an automated entry" and nobody ever asked any question about it.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    You're avoiding my implied question. What's to stop you ignoring them and letting your social intranet page die a death?



  • @PJH said:

    You're avoiding my implied question. What's to stop you ignoring them and letting your social intranet page die a death?

    I would advise against ignoring them. I would rather suggest to  acknowledge that the profile is not up-to-date and promise to fix it asap every time someone raises the question, and if they don't give up, after a while this kind of thing becomes a superb element to add to the "Need to improve" section in the annual self-assessment questionnaire.

    A while ago some project manager requested my presence to a daily scrum meeting for a project I did not care about. I refused but they went over my head and CCed my boss. So I agreed to go in my reply-all, but I never went, and each time the project manager came by or sent an email to ask why I was not there I apologized and said I would be there the next day. After a while it just faded away.

    I call this the IA strategy (Ignore & Apologize).

     



  • @PJH said:

    You're avoiding my implied question. What's to stop you ignoring them and letting your social intranet page die a death?

    Sorry, it wasn't intentional. The implied part of my answer was supposed to be that I don't know the consequences yet (or even how strictly they expect it to be kept up) so I don't really know what's stopping me. Once I know the consequences, if any, it will be a value judgment from there. 11 years at this place, 5 in my present position, and not a single demerit on my record.

    If it's enforced, likely what will happen is I forget ("forget" or otherwise), I get a gentle reminder, post something, rinse and repeat. But it's like having your mom continue to tell you to clean your room. And I'm torn because, while I have no allegiance to upper management, my direct managers are two of the best you've ever wanted to work for, so I don't want to disappoint them.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    11 years at this place, 5 in my present position, and not a single demerit on my record.

    The Sharepoint thing is meh. But 11 years in the same IT company? ... that's bordering on WTF territory right there.



  • @thistooshallpass said:

    @PJH said:

    You're avoiding my implied question. What's to stop you ignoring them and letting your social intranet page die a death?

    I would advise against ignoring them. I would rather suggest to  acknowledge that the profile is not up-to-date and promise to fix it asap every time someone raises the question, and if they don't give up, after a while this kind of thing becomes a superb element to add to the "Need to improve" section in the annual self-assessment questionnaire.

    A while ago some project manager requested my presence to a daily scrum meeting for a project I did not care about. I refused but they went over my head and CCed my boss. So I agreed to go in my reply-all, but I never went, and each time the project manager came by or sent an email to ask why I was not there I apologized and said I would be there the next day. After a while it just faded away.

    I call this the IA strategy (Ignore & Apologize).

     

    Agreed. After typing my previous reply, this is what I expect to happen. That said, more than one initiative has been ignored and has withered away, but it's hard to predict which ones will do this. Here's hoping.

    On the subject of reviews, per evaluation category I got a better review this year than last, but my overall review this year was deemed "proficient" instead of excellent like last year. Guessing what they did last year as a result of the excellent, that they didn't do this year because of the "proficient", is left as an (easy) exercise for the reader.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @nonpartisan said:
    11 years at this place, 5 in my present position, and not a single demerit on my record.

    The Sharepoint thing is meh. But 11 years in the same IT company? ... that's bordering on WTF territory right there.

    Three years in a department doing nothing IT related, 3 years for the same department as a department tech (not officially enterprise IT -- I recently posted about a power supply problem that outlined the arrangement), and 5 years officially with our IT department. So not as long as it seems.


  • Garbage Person

    @thistooshallpass said:

    Been there... if you want i can send you my blogging script, it was basically a page-scraper stealing the "Top Story" article on eweek. It was scheduled to post the content weekly, until I figured out that the "recent activity" page in my intranet profile was not showing articles from the future, so I injected at once 1 year of  future blog posts in my profile. What is even funnier is that each entry was ending with: "This was an automated entry" and nobody ever asked any question about it.
    I'd like to see this.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    Three years in a department doing nothing IT related, 3 years for the same department as a department tech (not officially enterprise IT -- I recently posted about a power supply problem that outlined the arrangement), and 5 years officially with our IT department. So not as long as it seems.

    Oh yah, that's not too bad at all.

    Last time we were interviewing, we talked to a guy who worked for a giganto-corporation doing web dev for 12 years. The amount of time he spent at one non-web-savvy company alone was enough for us to say "uh, no thanks." (Yeah, I'm sure I sound like a dick saying that, but 1) it's true, and 2) everybody on the interviewing panel agreed.)



  • @Weng said:

    @thistooshallpass said:

    Been there... if you want i can send you my blogging script, it was basically a page-scraper stealing the "Top Story" article on eweek. It was scheduled to post the content weekly, until I figured out that the "recent activity" page in my intranet profile was not showing articles from the future, so I injected at once 1 year of  future blog posts in my profile. What is even funnier is that each entry was ending with: "This was an automated entry" and nobody ever asked any question about it.
    I'd like to see this.

    Well at first this was a macro in a Word template and the page scraper was a batch file calling wget, and it was automated using the AT command. That was before I figured out that the connection to the database was done with Windows authentication, allowing me to inspect the data model and cook up a nice bulk insert for 1 year worth of blog posts.

    There you go, you ruined the magic by asking about the implementation, I hope you are happy.

     

     



  • @nonpartisan said:

    Yeah, that's a nice try, but there's a statement elsewhere that says "your profile picture should be a photo of your face."
    Does it specify how much of your face, or from how far away? I'm thinking you could zoom in quite a long way... exact amount of zoom to be determined by whether you want the final result to be mildly interesting, bland, or disgusting.



  •  I really fail to see the WTF is here. It's an internal web site right, which only your co-workers can see? Then it shouldn't be a problem putting a picture and some minor information up, I would reckon. And keeping it up to date is nice, since once a week you can just spend an hour on it, doing something absolutely useless and easy. And when your manager comes in and asks you what the hell you're doing, you can just reply that you're complying to company policy. It's a good time waster on those shitty slow days.



  •  is it possible to link in some video or music? nyancat or prodigy or rickrolled


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @blakeyrat said:

    I sound like a dick saying that, but 1) it's true

    Yes, your honor, this man is a dick.



  • @pbean said:

     I really fail to see the WTF is here. It's an internal web site right, which only your co-workers can see? Then it shouldn't be a problem putting a picture and some minor information up, I would reckon. And keeping it up to date is nice, since once a week you can just spend an hour on it, doing something absolutely useless and easy. And when your manager comes in and asks you what the hell you're doing, you can just reply that you're complying to company policy. It's a good time waster on those shitty slow days.

    The first WTF was making a social site mandatory, but the bigger WTF for me was the fact that they felt it necessary to explicitly state no photos in bathing suits. We are adults managing IT for a large organization. If they felt it necessary to mention attire at all, they could've just said the clothing in the photo needs to reflect the standard dress code. Everyone is aware of what that is. But they didn't feel it necessary to specify no jammies. Or bathrobes. Or togas. Or patient gowns. Or gym clothes. No, but they have a need to say no bathing suits? Really? WTF?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @nonpartisan said:

    The first WTF was making a social site mandatory, but the bigger WTF for me was the fact that they felt it necessary to explicitly state no photos in bathing suits. We are adults managing IT for a large organization. If they felt it necessary to mention attire at all, they could've just said the clothing in the photo needs to reflect the standard dress code. Everyone is aware of what that is. But they didn't feel it necessary to specify no jammies. Or bathrobes. Or togas. Or patient gowns. Or gym clothes. No, but they have a need to say no bathing suits? Really? WTF?

    Clearly, you're new to the exciting world of sexual harassment liability. Or, equally likely, there was some incident in the company regarding bathing suit pictures of which you weren't aware.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @nonpartisan said:
    Three years in a department doing nothing IT related, 3 years for the same department as a department tech (not officially enterprise IT -- I recently posted about a power supply problem that outlined the arrangement), and 5 years officially with our IT department. So not as long as it seems.

    Oh yah, that's not too bad at all.

    Last time we were interviewing, we talked to a guy who worked for a giganto-corporation doing web dev for 12 years. The amount of time he spent at one non-web-savvy company alone was enough for us to say "uh, no thanks." (Yeah, I'm sure I sound like a dick saying that, but 1) it's true, and 2) everybody on the interviewing panel agreed.)

    Yeah, doing the exact same thing for 12 years would be boring as hell. The first job was telephone answering and such. Second was general desktop support and department application support. Current position is networking. We're continuing to implement more modern technologies and designs, which means a network which is continually evolving, making it fun and different. But this also means continuing to learn these new technologies and a higher workload than just maintaining a flat network in a break/fix mode. So this just adds that extra little . . . thing . . . that we (I, at least, speaking for myself) don't need.



  • @pbean said:

     I really fail to see the WTF is here. It's an internal web site right, which only your co-workers can see? Then it shouldn't be a problem putting a picture and some minor information up, I would reckon. And keeping it up to date is nice, since once a week you can just spend an hour on it, doing something absolutely useless and easy. And when your manager comes in and asks you what the hell you're doing, you can just reply that you're complying to company policy. It's a good time waster on those shitty slow days.

    Are you serious? Management continues to pull this kind of bullshit because they know that many employees will simply grab ankle and take it. I prefer to spend those shitty slow days working on pet projects and/or studying something new, that I might become a better dev. Which, incidentally, is exactly what management should be pushing their people to do.




    Satisfying the yearly goal of some pencil-pushing jerkoff (who definitely makes more than you and me) to 'improve communication' should be dead last on any self-respecting dev's list of priorities.




    For fuck's sake, show some dignity.




    /rant



  • Jesus. It takes like 2 minutes to get someone to take a nice cellphone picture and upload it.

    Remember how we're always talking about false economies here? This thread is a perfect example... the calories wasted discussing this thing here are 50 times the amount of effort it takes to respond to a completely reasonable request. (Most companies need headshots anyway, for, say, disaster management, security access badges, etc.)

    If it was like a 4-hour pointless meeting, than yah, I'd do the ignore-and-apologize thing (which is a great tactic.) But geez, just spend the 2 minutes to upload a photo and type some details already.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Jesus. It takes like 2 minutes to get someone to take a nice cellphone picture and upload it.

    Remember how we're always talking about false economies here? This thread is a perfect example... the calories wasted discussing this thing here are 50 times the amount of effort it takes to respond to a completely reasonable request. (Most companies need headshots anyway, for, say, disaster management, security access badges, etc.)

    If it was like a 4-hour pointless meeting, than yah, I'd do the ignore-and-apologize thing (which is a great tactic.) But geez, just spend the 2 minutes to upload a photo and type some details already.

    You are not getting this....

    We are IT people, we hate to socialize, BURN FACEBOOK BURN!!!

    Thanks god the people I work for have not gone that far, there is a profile somewhere within the company inner network that has some data about me, but is very basic without a photo and even my name is wrong and it is something automatic that we don't have to maintain.



  • They said no bathing suits... they didn't say no birthday suits.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    It must be a head shot.

    I'd get a picture of mine and photoshop it into something really gory involving guns and laser sights. Just to see what the PHB and HR think of it. Hey, that'd still be playing by their rules, right?



  • @havokk said:

     Does it have to be a recent picture? If not, use a baby photo.

    Of any baby.

    I mean, how are they going to prove its not a baby photo of you? All babies look the same.

     

     

    How about picture of a baby's face, with text "\/ bathing suit (not visible in picture) \/"

     



  • @nonpartisan said:

    Yeah, that's a nice try, but there's a statement elsewhere that says "your profile picture should be a photo of your face."
     

    Does it say anything about focus?



  • @boomzilla said:

    Or, equally likely, there was some incident in the company regarding bathing suit pictures of which you weren't aware.
     

    This.  Oral tradition at my workplace tells of a mystical time (long before I started) when shorts were permitted.  Then a gentleman of gravity showed up in his bicycle shorts (without a bicycle, as I understand), and suddenly men had to wear long pants.  I wouldn't mind this so much if the air conditioning didn't conk out on a regular basis.



  • @pjt33 said:

    [quote user="nonpartisan"]Yeah, that's a nice try, but there's a statement elsewhere that says "your profile picture should be a photo of your face."

     

    Does it say anything about focus?

    [/quote]

    It probably would be more appropriate - i.e., get the point across - to post a face shot that is half your real face, and half the Incredible Hulk. Or if you want subtle, impose the Incredible Hulk eyes over yours.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    @thistooshallpass said:
    @nonpartisan said:
    And as if to add insult to injury, they feel it necessary to tell us that our photos can't be photos of us in bathing suits.

    Technically, you could put a picture of some upper management guy in bathing suit in your profile. That would still comply with the directive... however it would be no fun since the bathing suit usually is not apparent on a head shot.

    Yeah, that's a nice try, but there's a statement elsewhere that says "your profile picture should be a photo of your face."

    So make a photo of yourself, tape it to a bathing suit, put it on the head of a baby, photograph that, print it out, put it on a wooden table, take a photo and use that



  • A bad night out

     Try something like this.



  • @nonpartisan said:

    there's a statement elsewhere that says "your profile picture should be a photo of your face."
     

    Tell them you're a devout Amish and graven images are against your religion.



  • Siding with blakeyrat here, even though I think he's a management type (just a guess, but w/e). You guys are pretty much huge nerds wrt the fake pics and stuff. It's pretty b-team although by no means unexpected.



  • @Power Troll said:

    Siding with blakeyrat here, even though I think he's a management type (just a guess, but w/e). You guys are pretty much huge nerds wrt the fake pics and stuff. It's pretty b-team although by no means unexpected.

    Who cares?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Power Troll said:

    Siding with blakeyrat here, even though I think he's a management type (just a guess, but w/e).

    I don't think so, but heaven help his underlings if it ever happens.



  • @boomzilla said:

    @Power Troll said:
    Siding with blakeyrat here, even though I think he's a management type (just a guess, but w/e).

    I don't think so, but heaven help his underlings if it ever happens.

    I dunno, but he's definitely not purely technical. He's got the foresight and common sense that technical people lack when it comes to some things like this. Maybe some sort of entry-level position, or a PI, etc.



  • @Power Troll said:

    I dunno, but he's definitely not purely technical. He's got the foresight and common sense that technical people lack when it comes to some things like this. Maybe some sort of entry-level position, or a PI, etc.

    Private Investigator? Hell yah. That's what I am!



  • ... is it telling that I came here expecting to see you ranting about some crappy stuff implemented in Excel or Access?



  • @Power Troll said:

    a PI

    I can't picture blakey as a Private Investigator

     

     



  • @Scarlet Manuka said:

    @nonpartisan said:
    Yeah, that's a nice try, but there's a statement elsewhere that says "your profile picture should be a photo of your face."
    Does it specify how much of your face, or from how far away? I'm thinking you could zoom in quite a long way... exact amount of zoom to be determined by whether you want the final result to be mildly interesting, bland, or disgusting.

     

    Or something like Snoofle's avatar here --



  • My bad, I should have said project manager, not primary investigator.



  • Another option would be a shot of a crowd scene. "Yeah, that blob... [i]there[/i]... is me." Might not count as a head shot though.

    If I were to be serious, though, I'd have to agree with the people who are saying it really shouldn't be that big a deal. My company has a directory which includes everyone's photos. I actually find this very useful as I'm hopeless with remembering faces; if I have to go and visit someone I don't know well, I can look up their photo first so I at least know what I'm looking for.


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