Meeting Fun



  • Now that I'm in mgmt. I had to attend a meeting full of higher-ups (non-technical) and give them status updates. During the meeting the managers started joking around. One blurted out, "That's like a panty in a horse-raiding party!" The room erupted with laughter. I was the only one not laughing. They all started to stare at me and the laughing subsided.

    "What's the matter? You don't get it?"

    I didn't want to come off as ignorant, so I said, "You mean, a panty raid? A horse in a panty raid?"

    The managers got really quiet and serious. "What are you crazy? Don't say stuff like that. That could be misconstrued as harrassment."

    "Huh? I don't get it. What..."

    "Never mind. Let's move on."

    The managers have been giving me the cold shoulder ever since.

    What the heck does "a panty in a horse-raiding party" mean? Has anyone ever heard this expression? I looked it up online and I couldn't find any reference to it. I feel weird that I don't know what it means. Maybe it's some sort of inside joke. But the way the managers were laughing, it sounded like a common phrase...
     



  • my first thought it that you heard it wrong and they actually said something completely different.  However, I then realized who you were and came to the conclusion that your perception of their actions is completely wrong.  They were probably not laughing but instead talking about the weather.  I would say that would be about as easy to misconstrue as thinking a man with a tattoo is in fact a biker thug gang banger, but you seem to do the latter pretty well.  

     

    Also, if it was a smallish meeting, and they are pretty laid back executives, they might have been fucking with you.
     



  • My guess is that they knew it could be misconstrued as a sexual joke so turned it around deliberately.  Then all laughed because they were all in on the joke as well as "the joke".  Sounds like the Old Boy's Club just trying to get around today's corporate policies.

    Of course, the bad part is that politically you've just marked yourself as sort of an outsider because you didn't get it.  When they acted like they did NOT intend it as the actual "horse in a panty raid" phrase was like a bunch of teenagers smoking pot and getting surprised by someone who *might* be a narc.   You're going to have to work extra hard to get back into the IN crowd.  

    It just occurred to me that corporate politics is very much like high school cliques, only nastier. 



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    It just occurred to me that corporate politics is very much like high school cliques, only nastier. 

    Corporate politics is typically more like 8-year-old children fighting over who gets to have the last cookie.



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    Of course, the bad part is that politically you've just marked yourself as sort of an outsider because you didn't get it.

    Well I think it just got worse.

    One of the lower level mgr. guys caught me in the hallway this morning...one of the guys who was in the meeting and who I thought I was somewhat buddy-buddy with...he asked me "what the hell was I thinking by pulling that stunt".

    I told him that he had it all wrong and that I really didn't understand what they were laughing at. He just gave me this dirty look and said "Stop f-ing around. Or else someone's going to escort you out of here."

    I told him I wasn't "f-ing around" and that I stressed that I was truly ignorant of the whole thing. He just said "F-you man." and walked off.

    What am I supposed to do after this??? How did I offend? Who did I offend? This has to be the biggest misunderstanding. WTF?!?



  • My advice: don't care who you offended.  Business isn't for the thin skinned.

    That goes for you as well...just let it go.  Trying to repair it will just cause more damage and highlight your 'weakness'.  If someone tries to engage you on the topic again, tell them that you have work to do and leave.   It sounds like 'F-you'-man is "lower level", and you're a software manager, then he isn't in a position to escort you to the bathroom much less out of the building; so ignore him and pay attention to what his & your boss say.

    That assumes that any of this is real, to which I only assign a small likelyhood. 

    -cw



  • Watch out... he might secretly have "tats" and piercings under his suit and be waiting with some of his "thug" buddies to jump you after work.  Hey, maybe you'll get fired and have to earn a living as a developer.. preferably after being turned down for jobs by some stuck-up asshat like yourself only instead of hating tattooed folks hates folks in suits.  Karma is a bitch, sucker.

     



  • @CPound said:

    I told him I wasn't "f-ing around" and that I stressed that I was truly ignorant of the whole thing. He just said "F-you man." and walked off.

    You mean to tell me that some fine businesslike gentleman in a suit is talking like that? He sounds downright crude compared to my tattooed and pierced 23-year-old peers, who are nothing but humble and courteous.



  • @ObiWayneKenobi said:

    Watch out... he might secretly have "tats" and piercings under his suit and be waiting with some of his "thug" buddies to jump you after work.  Hey, maybe you'll get fired and have to earn a living as a developer.. preferably after being turned down for jobs by some stuck-up asshat like yourself only instead of hating tattooed folks hates folks in suits.  Karma is a bitch, sucker.

    @djork said:

    You mean to tell me that some fine businesslike gentleman in a suit is
    talking like that? He sounds downright crude compared to my tattooed
    and pierced 23-year-old peers, who are nothing but humble and courteous.

     

    Come on guys we should all be pulling for CPound.  If he loses his job, there's a chance he'll get hired at one of our companies.  I don't think any sane person would want that.


     



  • I don't know, I'd at least enjoy the opportunity to interview him.

    Hmm, now where did I put my Don Knuth mask...

    -cw



  • Wow, then this is one of those corporate cultures with unwritten but arbitrary rules.  You have to learn the rules by observation because nobody will tell you and nobody will answer even direct questions about them.  As soon as you show that you don't know the rules, you're targetted politically.  Nasty.  Get the heck out of there, man and fast.  Even honest hard workers can't ignore the politics and "just get the job done" in this kind of environment because they will take potshots at anybody who doesn't play the game according to their rules.  So you'll never accomplish anything there.

    On the tangent that everybody else is taking....  at least now you've seen a demonstration that a person's outward appearance and lack of piercings isn't necessarily an indication of character.  I can't help snickering too, although I also can empathize enough to tell you to bail out.   



  • @jetcitywoman said:

    Get the heck out of there, man and fast.

    As soon as I can, I will.

    In some weird twist of irony, I feel like walking in there with a troop of tattooed/pierced thugs and scaring those weirdos.

    All of a sudden I feel closer to the "common man" as opposed to being a part of that suit culture. 



  • After carefully re-reading the original posting, I guess the following has happened:

    The group had a subtile (supposedly non-harrassing) way of making fun about women,  by saying "a panty in a horse raid" they obviously meant "a horse in a panty raid". Cpound spilled this insider-joke by explicitely correcting it. Now they are annoyed because their little joke is no longer "innocent".

    Possible answer in such a situation: "Sorry, I don't understand the jokes heteros make". ;-)



  • Lay low for a little while. Give them your status updates and go along with what they have to say. They are probably just used to having their "gang" and they would say bull**** just to make themselves sound better. When it comes to corporate and higher ups, sometimes they just don't get anything, but make it sound like they do. If anything goes against the grain they'll just buff it out, kinda like what happened in your case. They like to think they are ALWAYS right.



  • I'm totally ditching that company.

    After much consideration, I've decided not to go back. At all. Some of my personal belongings are at the office, but it's nothing I couldn't live without.

    I contacted a friend of mine in the industry who solely focuses on contract opportunities. He's hooking me up with some cutting edge stuff. Like .NET 3.0, XAML, etc.

    I'm getting out of the whole management arena. It just wasn't for me. Too much boot licking and ass kissing.

    I already feel like a great burden has been lifted. 



  • I have figured out what actually happened:


    Cpound was recently fired by his boss when he realized what an asshat manager he was.  After a round of hiring the boss realized that the other managers had stocked up on tattooed, pierced, hairy beasts that pawed at the keyboard during strange hours.  Obviously, these new hires were the most productive members of the entire group.  When the boss asked Cpound why he had passed up all the best programmers and let them be snatched up by other managers, Cpound just made a face and said, "I don't hire those kind of people."  On his way back to his office the boss was trying to figure out what he meant by that comment when he realized that all of Cpounds new hires were suit wearing white sissy pansy prep-school boys who did more ass kissing than debugging and who couldn't tell an class from a native type.

     

    Out of work, Cpound realizes that he will probably let slip on his favorite internet forum that he has changed positions, so he comes up with an elaborate story to to make it seem that he left the company that just fired him.  He decides to go with a cluster of foul mouth executives and panty raiding horses.  The rest is history.
     



  • @tster said:

    I have figured out what actually happened:

    I still prefer my theory: CPound is a megahal. 



  • @tster said:

    he realized that all of Cpounds new hires were suit wearing white sissy pansy prep-school boys who did more ass kissing than debugging and who couldn't tell an class from a native type.

    If I were to put you in a room full of some of the guys I interviewed, you would pee in your pants.

    I don't care if you have a look-at-me-I'm-so-cool "token" tattoo or piercing. These guys were for real. You would have cried like a baby.

    Oh, and in case you're wondering what a "token" tattoo or piercing is, it's when a conservative type tries to fit in and gets a "tat" or a ring. But this is long after the trend has come and gone, so they look foolish. They are only "cool" to themselves.

    I bet tster is one of those types. 



  • @CPound said:

    I'm totally ditching that company.

    After much consideration, I've decided not to go back. At all. Some of my personal belongings are at the office, but it's nothing I couldn't live without.

    Really?  For that you're walking out and not even going back to pick up your stuff?  That seems.... odd.

     

    @CPound said:

    I contacted a friend of mine in the industry who solely focuses on contract opportunities. He's hooking me up with some cutting edge stuff. Like .NET 3.0, XAML, etc.

    Word of warning: people hiring contractors generally want people who already know the technology.  If you haven't spent much time in WPF, etc. yet you might have trouble finding someone who will pay you hourly to learn.

     

    @CPound said:

    If I were to put you in a room full of some of the guys I interviewed, you would pee in your pants.

    You jump at your own shadow...don't assume others do the same.

    -cw 



  • @CodeWhisperer said:

    Really?  For that you're walking out and not even going back to pick up your stuff?  That seems.... odd.

    I've left companies for less. Much less actually. So it's not odd at all.

    @CodeWhisperer said:

    Word of warning: people hiring contractors generally want people who already know the technology.  If you haven't spent much time in WPF, etc. yet you might have trouble finding someone who will pay you hourly to learn.

    I've known this guy since high school. He owns his own contracting company. We've been cool for the longest, so he has no problem with me taking as much time to learn the technologies as I need. Not that WPF, XAML, etc. is difficult. A trained chimp could code with it. It's not that hard.

    What, do you find WPF challenging? 



  • Not particularly, but that wasn't the point.   


    When I hire contractors -- and I have -- I'm looking specifically for people who know the technology and can get into the problem right away.  That's why I do at least mini-interviews with the people the contracting company sends over.   

    If I was looking for a WPF programmer and the contractor couldn't tell me what a dependency property was, for instance, then I'm not going to accept that person and I'll go back to the contracting company and ask them why they were wasting my time.  If they do that a couple of times, then I'm not going back to them again.

    If your buddy is willing to take that chance, and as long as the company that hires you only needs a trained chimp, then I guess you're in luck.

    -cw



  • @CodeWhisperer said:

    If I was looking for a WPF programmer and the contractor couldn't tell me what a dependency property was, for instance, then I'm not going to accept that person

    You're kidding right? That's like asking an HTML jockey what a "tag" is. That's pretty much a core fundamental of WPF/XAML. Any kid off the street could Google info like that and be prepared for your interview.

    Here's a tidbit that most people don't pick up on: if you can Google it, anybody can do it. And I mean anybody. Thanks to Google, people don't have to think for themselves anymore. You can ace interviews thanks to Google. How does that make you feel?

    @CodeWhisperer said:

    If your buddy is willing to take that chance, and as long as the company that hires you only needs a trained chimp, then I guess you're in luck.

    Touché.



  • @CPound said:

     

    Here's a tidbit that most people don't pick up on: if you can Google it, anybody can do it. And I mean anybody. Thanks to Google, people don't have to think for themselves anymore. You can ace interviews thanks to Google. How does that make you feel?

     

    Yeah, but doesn't the interviewer see you Googling?

     



  • @CPound said:

    Thanks to Google, people don't have to think for themselves anymore. You can ace interviews thanks to Google. How does that make you feel?

    I kind of doubt that. I can think of many questions that could eventually be found with Google, but which are mighty unlikely to be things someone looked up proactively before coming to the interview. Maybe Google will help someone ace an interview for the most basic of positions, but I can't see how it would help them get through anything higher than that. Unless the candidate got ahold of the interview questions beforehand or something.



  • @VGR said:

    @CPound said:

    Thanks to Google, people don't have to think for themselves anymore. You can ace interviews thanks to Google. How does that make you feel?

    I kind of doubt that. I can think of many questions that could eventually be found with Google, but which are mighty unlikely to be things someone looked up proactively before coming to the interview. Maybe Google will help someone ace an interview for the most basic of positions, but I can't see how it would help them get through anything higher than that. Unless the candidate got ahold of the interview questions beforehand or something.

    That happened to us once...  We gave a recruiting company a list of questions (and acceptable answers) to ask candidates in order to pre-screen them for us.

    The company gave each candidate a copy of our list in order to prepare them for our interview.



  • @RaspenJho said:

    That happened to us once...  We gave a recruiting company a list of questions (and acceptable answers) to ask candidates in order to pre-screen them for us.

    The company gave each candidate a copy of our list in order to prepare them for our interview.

    If I understand correctly, the recruiter gets some kind of compensation for "delivering" an acceptable candidate, it would follow from there that they no longer have your best interests at heart, and if you're handing them a treasure map, they're going to use it at every available opportunity. It's unfortunate, but it's probably pretty common.



  • @HitScan said:

    @RaspenJho said:

    That happened to us once...  We gave a recruiting company a list of questions (and acceptable answers) to ask candidates in order to pre-screen them for us.

    The company gave each candidate a copy of our list in order to prepare them for our interview.

    If I understand correctly, the recruiter gets some kind of compensation for "delivering" an acceptable candidate, it would follow from there that they no longer have your best interests at heart, and if you're handing them a treasure map, they're going to use it at every available opportunity. It's unfortunate, but it's probably pretty common.

    I don't know the details about compensation for delivering acceptable candidates, but I do no that we no longer work with that recruiting company.



  • That's like asking an HTML jockey what a "tag" is.

    Most "HTML jockeys" don't have a clue what a tag is:

    The tag starts with a < and ends with a >. there's nothing "inside" a tag except for its name and the attributes.


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