How To Demoralize Employees: A DIY Guide for Terrible Companies
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No "GIVE ME MONEY" sign?
... Who are you?
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No "GIVE ME MONEY" sign?
... Who are you?
Someone who has trained his coworkers well enough that they don't need the sign to remind them.
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@Lorne_Kates said:
I haven't had scurvy since I started here, so he must be right.
This is along the lines of "there's no bears around here, so we know the banana in my ear keeps them away!"
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@Lorne_Kates said:
I haven't had scurvy since I started here, so he must be right.
This is along the lines of "there's no bears around here, so we know the banana in my ear keeps them away!"
Bananas are good are preventing scurvy.
Ears are bad at absorbing nutrients.
Anuses are connected to your digestive tract, which is good at absorbing nutrients.
Therefore...
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... if you get scurvy bears will stay out of your ass! It's so simple, why didn't I see it before?
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@Lorne_Kates said:
Therefore...
Well, I was speaking in the hypothetical, I don't personally stick bananas in my ear.
I think I first saw that joke on an episode of Sesame Street.
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... if you get scurvy bears will stay out of your ass! It's so simple, why didn't I see it before?
because a like wasn't enough. Also because it made me laugh out loud.
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Btw, in my ex-company, the Shenzhen office do not have pantry. All they offer is distilled water.
Somewhere I worked, we had to pay for drinkable water. The water from the faucet tasted like shit.
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The water from the faucet tasted like shit.
................... that wasn't the faucet.
Filed under:
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When you think you've seen the lowest level of Hell, you always find there are even lower levels later.
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Newbie: It will work.
Experienced: It should work.You forgot the third type of person:
Discodev: It won't work, but it anyway.
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Newbie: It will work.
Experienced: It should work.I got called on that by my big Boss last week. "You never speak in absolutes anymore!". The trouble is that after a while you've seen dead certs do totally weird things that shouldn't be possible. We should really switch to confidence intervals for discussing anything technical.
I also get called on anthropomorphising everything. I know servers hate that ;)
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"You never speak in absolutes anymore!".
"But absolutes are never true! Wait, almost never."
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"But absolutes are never true! Wait, almost never."
Meh. Absolutes are only mostly true. Unless you prove that they must be so. Most of the time nobody's got the patience to sort that out.
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Sure you've been working crunch time for 3 months straight, but look, one of those slingshot monkeys from ThinkGeek! HOW WACKY!
I don't know why people think it's even a good thing that they work in places where adults run around shooting other adults with Nerf guns or whatever.
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You sucked at nerf fights didn't you?
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At least they're not be placed on seats.
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The evil ideas thread is .
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Today's way to demoralize employees: schedule a requirements gathering meeting outside of normal working hours.
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There is a more subtle way, schedule a 1h meeting for 30min before the shift ends.
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A long time ago, I worked on a project that had weekly status meetings at 16:00 or 16:30 (I no longer remember which) Friday. No, they were not usually done by 17:00.
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I just wouldn't bother showing up to those.
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No, they were not usually done by 17:00.
Nice thing about taking the train... "It's 5:05, I have to leave for the train now... bye."
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No, they were not usually done by 17:00.
Stay to the end and then show up that amount late on the following Monday. If they are paying me for 37.5 hours, they don't get more hours by scheduling a meeting at 1630 on a Friday.
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round these parts anything less than 4 inches is considered "an annoyance"
Very belated
Come on, I expected more from you all...
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Btw, I know someone who enjoys to go work in cold days.
There is heating in his appartment, but not enough warm. His office is, on the other hand, way warmer than where he lives.
He could spend a week in his office without going home in the cold days.
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No thank you, not for me anyway. I prefer women.
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No thank you, not for me anyway. I prefer women.
What's the difference between 4 inches and a woman? :/
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What's the difference between 4 inches and a woman?
I don't know, what is the difference between 4 inches and a woman?
Filed Under: Knock knock
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I don't know, what is the difference between 4 inches and a woman?
About 10 centimeters.
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No thank you, not for me anyway. I prefer women.
A woman can have 4" and still be a woman, depending on which Fox you ask.
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I got called on that by my big Boss last week. "You never speak in absolutes anymore!".
In IT, you never speak in absolutes. You need to talk like a politician. Your new template for work conversations needs to be variations on, "I can neither confirm nor deny that statement". Mold that sentence to fit the situation.
"I believe that should be adequate."
"Prior experience says this is the right course of action."
"This is what has worked for us in the past..."
When in doubt, end all sentences with either "based upon the information I have been given", or if you really need to cover your ass "but I cannot guarantee it will work but it seems like the best course of action".
CYA
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Today's way to demoralize employees: schedule a requirements gathering meeting outside of normal working hours.
Proper response: "That's fine, can we have this meeting at the pub and have the company pick up the tab?"
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In IT, you never speak in absolutes.
I think it isn't just IT. Virtually all experts are the same in their area of expertise. The ones who aren't probably shouldn't be trusted.
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Virtually all experts are the same in their area of expertise.
Because hardly anything really is an absolute. And the more you know about your subject, the more likely you are to be able to think of possible exceptions to whatever statement you're trying to make.I struggle with this when I'm writing documentation. You start off making a simple declarative statement, then you think "well, that's not completely true, there's this rare case where it won't work like that", then you try to explain the alternative things they might see, then you realise you've just made the documentation confusing and delete all that stuff and replace it with something like "if anything unexpected happens, contact IT".
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Inverted pyramid, dude.
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I never speak in unwarranted absolutes and it drives my boss insane because that includes things like 'what caused this?' and 'can you do this task?'
Except when I DO speak in absolutes (such as "There is literally no possible way this is our fault and I have evidence"), when it drives HIS boss (who loves to give us credit for other people's failures) insane.
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Today's way to demoralize employees: schedule a requirements gathering meeting outside of normal working hours.
Variation: New manager schedules a mandatory meeting to meet the troops and lay out strategy...at 7 AM. To which said manager is 35 minutes late.
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Inverted pyramid, dude.
Depends on the users. Some of the ones I've written process documentation for, there's no point putting anything but the most vital stuff because you're lucky if they even read that. Others won't do anything without a complete step-by-step guide to cover every eventuality, with screenshots of everything. I haven't written docs for this particular set of users before so I don't really know what they'll need.
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In my experience with "professionals" this "absolute" answer avoidance thing is not so much a case of pre-emptive evasion of a (potential) incoming shit storm with your face written all over it - Although that is a very strong motivational impetus. But a defensive attack from someone (and there is increasingly always someone or several) who will not accept an incontrovertible fact, even when it is beating them about the head, who will seek to blame others.
E.g. "...It's raining outside and you said it will reign, so it's your fault that I can't do X..."
NB: In my experience the fact that I have a Degree, I am paid to work in an industry for which that degree is extremely appropriate does not mean that I am a Professional. Especially when the opinionated individual works in a business sector that the State describes and accepts as "professional" like Social Workers, Teachers and Doctors etc. A lot of this I blame on Victorian Values. I.e. anybody at any level of education, breeding or Class that works in anything remotely "engineering(ish)" cannot by definition be a professional.
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It's raining outside and you said it will reign
Is the weather suddenly in charge of the Kingdom?
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I think you qualify for a whoosh their.
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In IT, you never speak in absolutes.
That is absolutely TWWTF I've ever seen! (In reference to a TDWTF article.)
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In IT, you never speak in absolutes.
It just occurred to me that it actually depends. Are you a Sith? If you are, absolutes are totally your recommended communication strategy.
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Today, on "Revenge of the Sith": A million QA testers cried out, and then were suddenly silenced as Darth Codicus demonstrated his absolute coding prowess and renamed the main method AllTheRuns. Pray he doesn't alter the code any further.
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That's amazing.