The most unethical person I have ever worked with.



  • I have so many great anecdotes about this person, I thought I would get them all down for the record. Her name was Vicki

    It was in the run up to our new ADSL internet connection that Vicki came to me with a query. She presented me with a 10 page long phone bill showing our dual ISDN line dialling out, every 5 minutes for 24 hours a day. I was to find the culprit, who upon discovery would be severely punished. The proxy server hooked up to the ISDN lines had been helpfully logging all the connections, so it was easy to trace the connections to..... her PC. She had installed bonzi-buddy and her machine was riddled with spyware. Severe punishment was not forthcoming on this occasion.

     

    One day he had been on the phone with her insurance company regarding a small crash she had in her Merc recently. The insurers told her that she had not reported the incident soon enough and the cutoff was the previous day. Vicki insisted that she had sent them an email the day before, there must have been a technical holdup. She then burst out her office, charged in my direction and asked me how to send an email now but make it appear like it had been sent yesterday.

    I told her changing the date on her PC would not be enough, we would have to change the date on the mail server in case they checked the headers. She ordered me to change the date on the mail server, I refused, saying it would cause havoc with the companies internal email. Instead I installed a free SMTP server on an old PC, and she sent the email with confidence that it would fool the insurance people. It didnt.


    The preceding stories may make it sound like I was responsible for IT in this company, I wasn't. That honour went to a complete dimwit who had no skills for the job and whose only prior IT experience had been for a family firm. A drunken Vicki eventually confided at a Christmas party that he was only hired for his looks.

    The dimwit was from out of town, as was another employee - and they hit on the idea of sharing a flat. Vicki vetoed this idea, as the other employee was technically the dimwits supervisor. A few months later she embarked on a secret affair with a married developer.

     

    One day she was due to fly to ireland to meet with a client, the client was rather beligerent so she chickened out at the last minute, and had me call them and say she was stuck in traffic and would miss her flight. The client demanded her mobile phone number, I said I would get her to give them a call. She started dialling but I suggested to her to go out and find some traffic so the call would sound convincing - she complied.

     

    All the staff had been gathered in the meeting room, and Vicki unvieled her masterplan to cope with spurious sickdays. Any employee not calling in sick for a 6 month period would get an extra day added to thier holiday allowance. Vicki frequently boasted that she was never ill. She did however take a dozen or so unnanounced "working from home" days every year, a perk denied to all other staff members.

     

    I eventually left the company and found a much better employer. one day in the reception I bumped into an old colleague. It turns out that my old company were moving into the same building - well not my old company exactly. They had embarked on a large project personally managed by Vicki - which had gone awry and resulted in Vicki being shown the door. A few days later the VAT man showed up with a big pile of unpaid bills - forcing the company to close doors (an old owner then hired the bulk of the workforce to create a "new" business).

     Vicki was responsible for paying the VAT, how the Inland Revenue showed up a few days after she left is anyones guess.

     



  • My question is why you were assisting this person in many of these snippets. Couldn't you simply refuse to assist (such as with the email, or the suggestion of calling from traffic) and let her incompetence get her caught?



  •  It was a small firm, she was essentially second in command, the managing director didnt care what she did as long as she kept the workforce in line, which she did very well.



  • @locallunatic said:

    My question is why you were assisting this person in many of these snippets. Couldn't you simply refuse to assist (such as with the email, or the suggestion of calling from traffic) and let her incompetence get her caught?
     

    Also... if it was a 'secret affair', and you knew about it, surely that means you were the married developer? Hmm... :P



  • @barc0de said:

    ...Her name was Vicki...


    What is it now?



  • @barc0de said:

    The preceding stories may make it sound like I was responsible for IT in this company, I wasn't. That honour went to a complete dimwit who had no skills for the job and whose only prior IT experience had been for a family firm. A drunken Vicki eventually confided at a Christmas party that he was only hired for his looks.

    The dimwit was from out of town, as was another employee - and they hit on the idea of sharing a flat. Vicki vetoed this idea, as the other employee was technically the dimwits supervisor. A few months later she embarked on a secret affair with a married developer.

     

    Can you please elaborate on this? Why does her having an affair have anything to do with two other employees sharing a flat?

    Let me guess: Vicki has a background in marketing or HR.


    EDIT: Never mind. I see now that she blocked the idea because of the perceived impropriety, but then proceeded to engage in improper behavior herself.


  • @DaveyDaveDave said:

    @locallunatic said:

    My question is why you were assisting this person in many of these snippets. Couldn't you simply refuse to assist (such as with the email, or the suggestion of calling from traffic) and let her incompetence get her caught?
     

    Also... if it was a 'secret affair', and you knew about it, surely that means you were the married developer? Hmm... :P

     

    No, I worked in the same office as him, and she went from barely speaking to him to popping in every hour and making silly remarks. I confronted him and he confessed - It eventually came out a few months later (not my doing) and they now have thier own consultancy business. I dont know how his wife took the news.



  • "The most unethical person I have ever worked with."

    Have you only worked with saints, other than that? Or just not many places? This is just someone being personally unethical, but I've (briefly) worked in places where it rapidly became apparent that the whole business was unethical. I think the two worst in that respect that I've seen personally were the medical market research company whose standard procedure to get hold of doctors was to call hospitals and ask for them to page the on-call X - including, for example, the on-call resuscitation specialist - and the telesales company who wanted me to process their database of potential targets and extract people over 75 whose partner had died within the last six months. Then there are the businesses that simply habitually lie to customers/clients. Compared to those, I don't find someone who tells a few lies and breaks rules when it suits her is anything more than a typical bad manager (type j, dishonest).



  •  @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    "The most unethical person I have ever worked with."

    Have you only worked with saints, other than that? Or just not many places? This is just someone being personally unethical, but I've (briefly) worked in places where it rapidly became apparent that the whole business was unethical. I think the two worst in that respect that I've seen personally were the medical market research company whose standard procedure to get hold of doctors was to call hospitals and ask for them to page the on-call X - including, for example, the on-call resuscitation specialist - and the telesales company who wanted me to process their database of potential targets and extract people over 75 whose partner had died within the last six months. Then there are the businesses that simply habitually lie to customers/clients. Compared to those, I don't find someone who tells a few lies and breaks rules when it suits her is anything more than a typical bad manager (type j, dishonest).

    The most unethical person "I" have worked with. It's not my fault I have led a charmed life. I just wanted to pass on some funny anecdotes. What do you want, Tony Haywards personal assistant to regale you with his bosses inept antics? An accountant from Lehman Bros with some witty rejoinders? A bosnian serb to relive his war experiences?



  • @barc0de said:

     @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    "The most unethical person I have ever worked with."

    Have you only worked with saints, other than that? Or just not many places? This is just someone being personally unethical, but I've (briefly) worked in places where it rapidly became apparent that the whole business was unethical. I think the two worst in that respect that I've seen personally were the medical market research company whose standard procedure to get hold of doctors was to call hospitals and ask for them to page the on-call X - including, for example, the on-call resuscitation specialist - and the telesales company who wanted me to process their database of potential targets and extract people over 75 whose partner had died within the last six months. Then there are the businesses that simply habitually lie to customers/clients. Compared to those, I don't find someone who tells a few lies and breaks rules when it suits her is anything more than a typical bad manager (type j, dishonest).

    The most unethical person "I" have worked with. It's not my fault I have led a charmed life. I just wanted to pass on some funny anecdotes. What do you want, Tony Haywards personal assistant to regale you with his bosses inept antics? An accountant from Lehman Bros with some witty rejoinders? A bosnian serb to relive his war experiences?

    I was hoping to start some of the forum regulars on a game of one-upmanship, to be honest, but you've just blown that one out the water. I'm sure someone here worked for a company that dumped nuclear waste in daycare centres to save 20p, or something.

    P.S. I read your post, but everything after 'It's not my fault' just blended into a general sort of whiny-whine noise in my head. Nothing personal, I find those words always have that effect on the following few sentences. Forgive me if anything you said there was actually important, but I'm just being needlessly aggressive to random people today and enjoying it, so I don't care.

    P.P.S. Yes, too much coffee.



  • @SuperJames74 said:

    @barc0de said:

    ...Her name was Vicki...

    What is it now?
     

    Victor. But that is a tale for another day.



  • @barc0de said:

     @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    "The most unethical person I have ever worked with."

    Have you only worked with saints, other than that? Or just not many places? This is just someone being personally unethical, but I've (briefly) worked in places where it rapidly became apparent that the whole business was unethical. I think the two worst in that respect that I've seen personally were the medical market research company whose standard procedure to get hold of doctors was to call hospitals and ask for them to page the on-call X - including, for example, the on-call resuscitation specialist - and the telesales company who wanted me to process their database of potential targets and extract people over 75 whose partner had died within the last six months. Then there are the businesses that simply habitually lie to customers/clients. Compared to those, I don't find someone who tells a few lies and breaks rules when it suits her is anything more than a typical bad manager (type j, dishonest).

    The most unethical person "I" have worked with. It's not my fault I have led a charmed life. I just wanted to pass on some funny anecdotes. What do you want, Tony Haywards personal assistant to regale you with his bosses inept antics? An accountant from Lehman Bros with some witty rejoinders? A bosnian serb to relive his war experiences?

    If it makes you feel better, I've never worked with anybody that unethical. Incompetent, yes. Unethical, no.

    I appreciated the stories, thanks for posting.

    (Also, is that a Scott Pilgrim character in your avatar?)



  • This one is a bit unethical and sad at the same time.

    A guy creates a company building software x. The company does really well (for the niche market). A company that uses software x decides to buy the original company. All is well, the staff is moved over. Software x development goes full-scale. The software is quite good (best on the market actually, to this date probably too).

    However later on the founder of the original company starts ANOTHER company competing against the people who bought out his first company. Unsuccsessfully, fortunately, since he could not do shit, his biggest asset (a few developers) were transfered during the sale. They rewrote the software from scratch innovating in the field leagues beyond the competition.

    It gets better. So you have a company with software x is sitting on an f-ing gold mine. The software is in demand and quite supporior to software y which was the company's original piece of crap. Software y sucks. Period. However for years the company never dogfooded. In fact when the switch was to happen, the company was running 10-20 servers to handle the load to run software y for it's clients. After the clustered release of software x it was determined that not only is it awesomly redundant and would handle any one point failing with almost no interruption in service, but only 3 of the old servers would be needed to handle the entire workload. As you can see not dogfooding was a stupid idea. The company was bleeding money due to these problems, losing clients and not gaining new clients.

    However while the software x team was the best people I've had the pleasure of working with, the rest of the company... not so much. Software x was a communications layer, so while extremely important the other side was needed, which was the core competency of the company. Naturally the rest of the company didn't do shit, every team blamed the other team for any mistake made and no progress was made. The amazing new move over to dogfooding which would save the company lots of money, and yet again give the company a competitive edge against all competition got delayed for years. All the way until the company destroyed itself.

     

     

    Not realizing that programmers are your core can lead to MANY MANY MANY problems for a software-dependent company. The primary of which is not having good software.



  •  ah, but one mans unethicalness is another mans pragmatic getting things done attitude :P



  • I have never had to work with anyone truly unethical in the technology industry, thank goodness.  However, the summer before college, I worked for a moving/estate sale/liquidation company for a summer job, and had a "superior" who was simultaneously unethical and borderline belligerent.  

     I remember him flat out lying to customers and neighbors about the quality of merchandise, plans for estates, etc. as all the high-school-age workers and I sheepishly moved about carrying boxes and furniture. The lot of us were kept in line through the fear of physical force -- he was a six foot tall, 200 pound tank with a prison record and a history of throwing furniture when he got angry.  

    Thankfully, he and I were on different projects for nearly the entire summer.  The week after we were assigned to the same location, I quit to "prepare for college".  



  • @barc0de said:

    Instead I installed a free SMTP server on an old PC, and she sent the email with confidence that it would fool the insurance people. It didnt.

    So conspiracy to commit insurance fraud is ethical? IAMFI



  • @blakeyrat said:

    If it makes you feel better, I've never worked with anybody that unethical. Incompetent, yes. Unethical, no.

    I appreciated the stories, thanks for posting.

    I second this

    @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    I was hoping to start some of the forum regulars on a game of one-upmanship, to be honest
    This one time I was working on this military high-tech station that had this giant laser that could do some serious damage. My job was to maintain the defense grid, which was crap because the idiots thought security via obscurity was an excellent idea. Not to mention  they made us wear funny pointy helmets for no reason at all. Plus the boss had some anger management issues. On several occasions the guy had choked people.

    Anyway one day we blew up this entire planet that according to management was a rebel stronghold. I was already pissed that they wouldn't let me fix the security holes and this was the last straw. After a few days I quit. From what I heard afterwards the plans for the station were leaked and it was blown up in some sort of terrorist attack.

    Idiots...

     



  • @DOA said:

    This one time I was working on this military high-tech station that had this giant laser that could do some serious damage. My job was to maintain the defense grid, which was crap because the idiots thought security via obscurity was an excellent idea. Not to mention  they made us wear funny pointy helmets for no reason at all. Plus the boss had some anger management issues. On several occasions the guy had choked people. 

    Anyway one day we blew up this entire planet that according to management was a rebel stronghold. I was already pissed that they wouldn't let me fix the security holes and this was the last straw. After a few days I quit. From what I heard afterwards the plans for the station were leaked and it was blown up in some sort of terrorist attack.

    Idiots...

     

    Soooooo... were you an independent contractor?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    (Also, is that a Scott Pilgrim character in your avatar?)

     

     It is Scott Pilgrim, from the end of the third book.



  •  It's a good story although I wonder if "Vicky" isn't a "Victor" in reality, getting confusing to change all genders in my mind as I read :)

    As far as ethical goes, companies can surely be more unethical, but people I don't know of any...

     Yea, and I don't blame you for following orders, in small companies you do as you're told.

     



  • @fjo said:

     It's a good story although I wonder if "Vicky" isn't a "Victor" in reality, getting confusing to change all genders in my mind as I read :)

    As far as ethical goes, companies can surely be more unethical, but people I don't know of any...

     Yea, and I don't blame you for following orders, in small companies you do as you're told.

     

     

    It was then and is now Vicki, What it was before I joined the company I do not know.

    Institutionaly unethical behavior is a different kettle of fish. A colleague once had a job for a recruitment firm, where he would call companies whose temp contracts had recently ended. He would ask for the temp by name, pretending to be thier next of kin (which they had on file). If the temp answered they would bill and fine the company for hiring the person without the agencys permission.

    I had just been made redundant when I got the job working with Vicki, and I only worked directly under her for a few months when i became a pawn in a managerial power struggle that resulted in me not being answerable to her any more.

     

     



  • @barc0de said:

    Institutionaly unethical behavior is a different kettle of fish. A colleague once had a job for a recruitment firm, where he would call companies whose temp contracts had recently ended. He would ask for the temp by name, pretending to be thier next of kin (which they had on file). If the temp answered they would bill and fine the company for hiring the person without the agencys permission.

    I had just been made redundant when I got the job working with Vicki, and I only worked directly under her for a few months when i became a pawn in a managerial power struggle that resulted in me not being answerable to her any more.

     

     

    That reminds me of a lovely recruitment agent not so long ago, who called me up and chatted about various opportunities he had, as they do, with me wanting him to either get to the point or go away. I was looking for work, so couldn't be as rude as I usually would, and ended up (foolishly) mentioning that I'd had an interview with [company x], he finished up the call promising to email me a bunch of job specs to look at.

    Half an hour later I had a call from the agent who had forwarded me to [company x] asking whether I'd just called them up - it turned out the first agent had called [company x], given my name and asked to speak to the CTO, with questions about my second interview. Fortunately he was put through to the same HR bod who had interviewed me, who had also told me that it was a 1 stage interview process, and recognised that he was just a scumbag. I can't imagine what he was really hoping to acheive - if he'd been put through to the CTO, what would he have said? "Oh, actually, no, I just remembered, I'm not a prospective candidate at all, I'm a recruitment agent; need any staff?"

    Grr.



  • @DaveyDaveDave said:

    That reminds me of a lovely recruitment agent not so long ago, who called me up and chatted about various opportunities he had, as they do, with me wanting him to either get to the point or go away. I was looking for work, so couldn't be as rude as I usually would, and ended up (foolishly) mentioning that I'd had an interview with [company x], he finished up the call promising to email me a bunch of job specs to look at.

    Half an hour later I had a call from the agent who had forwarded me to [company x] asking whether I'd just called them up - it turned out the first agent had called [company x], given my name and asked to speak to the CTO, with questions about my second interview. Fortunately he was put through to the same HR bod who had interviewed me, who had also told me that it was a 1 stage interview process, and recognised that he was just a scumbag. I can't imagine what he was really hoping to acheive - if he'd been put through to the CTO, what would he have said? "Oh, actually, no, I just remembered, I'm not a prospective candidate at all, I'm a recruitment agent; need any staff?"

    Grr.

     

    I think the common approach is to ask your target salary, and what companies you have had interviews for, then calling them and offering someone else for a lower salary

    Another good one is asking for your upper and lower salary limits, then selling you for the upper and paying you the lower.

     



  • I wonder if she's related (or knows, perhaps) the two crooks who I had worked for previously.  They wouldn't try anything quite this bad though, but mainly were the kind of snake oil salesmen who just start a dozen businesses in the hopes that one of them strike it rich, while forcing people already working for Company A to now also work on Company B, C, D, and E.



  • Some of my best 'Vicki' moments over the years:

    At one company, 'Vicki' the HR manager (pronounced: owner's wife) had forgotten to send some financial aid form for their son. She called them on the due date and, after a morning of arguing that the entire office could hear, convinced them to take a fax copy of the form. Four or five days later she comes to me holding a form with 'Application for Financial Aid' in bold across the top of both sides, and asks me to set the date on her fax machine back. 

    At another, I was a hourly on-call troubleshooter for some industrial monitoring software. Their hatred of overtime led to the policy that if you that hadn't had 12 hours off because of an off-hours call you couldn't come in to work until you had, and then you were only there until the end of your normal shift. If you worked a weekend day, you took a weekday off. In my first two months on the job I'd only had to take five off-hours calls, and only once did I miss any sleep over it. The policy made overtime almost non existant.

    Then came a new version of the software on the first of January, designed to enforce license compliance (pronounced: We can make them pay an extra $100 for a serial dongle every time they install their site-licensed copy some where else? COOL!). But when we sent out the new version, we didn't bother to send out dongles, just a floppy and a letter saying to expect them in a week or so. No one read the letter. I had off hours calls for eleven out of the next fourteen days, and I didn't spend hardly any time in the office. The other troubleshooter spent even less time at the office than I did. 

    Friday rolls around at the end of the hellish two week experiment in sleep deprivation, and I show up just before closing to pick up my paycheck. My paycheck is $54. For the first week of hell, the've only paid me for the four hours I was in the office, and for none of the 50+ hours I spent outside of it. 

    I track down my boss, 'Vicki', and show her the pay check. She looks at me straight in the face and says 'Well, I was told we needed to get a 10% reduction in overtime this month over last to hit the bonus target. So I'm going to hold on to your time sheets until after the first of next month, then we'll pay you. Everyone wins that way!' 'But Vicki, we're hourly. We don't get a bonus, and this isn't enough to even pay for my out of pocket gas.' 'Aww, must be tough, kiddo! You'll get through it!'



  • @NoOneImportant said:

    'But Vicki, we're hourly. We don't get a bonus, and this isn't enough to even pay for my out of pocket gas.' 'Aww, must be tough, kiddo! You'll get through it!'
     

    Said you:

    "I quit."



  • @dhromed said:

    @NoOneImportant said:

    'But Vicki, we're hourly. We don't get a bonus, and this isn't enough to even pay for my out of pocket gas.' 'Aww, must be tough, kiddo! You'll get through it!'
     

    Said you:

    "I quit."

     

    The Vickis of the world dont care. My Vicki was very fond of putting people on immediate garden leave when they quit or were fired. This created an atmosphere like 70's Chile, with random people dissapearing without warning, never to be seen again. Any clients phoning for them had to be told that they werent available right now. Some clients would still be asking for the same person, years after their "disappearance". 



  • @dhromed said:

    Said you:

    "I quit."

     

    Better:

     Said you:

     "I don't think so.  Go fix my paycheck now or I'm reporting you to the Department of Labor and filing a criminal complaint for theft of services."

     



  • @barc0de said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    (Also, is that a Scott Pilgrim character in your avatar?)

     

     It is Scott Pilgrim, from the end of the third book.

    Cool. I'm a Scott Pilgrim noob, I found it from the movie trailer, but now I'm wanting to read it. (I think the movie's gonna bomb, though-- I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's too weird/complex for the movie-going public.)



  • @dhromed said:

    @NoOneImportant said:

    'But Vicki, we're hourly. We don't get a bonus, and this isn't enough to even pay for my out of pocket gas.' 'Aww, must be tough, kiddo! You'll get through it!'
     

    Said you:

    "I quit."

    After a KHITBASH



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @barc0de said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    (Also, is that a Scott Pilgrim character in your avatar?)

     

     It is Scott Pilgrim, from the end of the third book.

    Cool. I'm a Scott Pilgrim noob, I found it from the movie trailer, but now I'm wanting to read it. (I think the movie's gonna bomb, though-- I hope I'm wrong, but I think it's too weird/complex for the movie-going public.)

     

    Also cramming six books into hour or two doesn't really work well.  I just hope that they do subspace well.



  • @Rootbeer said:

    Better:

     Said you:

     "I don't think so.  Go fix my paycheck now or I'm reporting you to the Department of Labor and filing a criminal complaint for theft of services."

    Thank you. Someone with balls who doesn't just say "Guess it's time to find a new job, derp dee derp".

    I understand the idea of getting out of a hostile/demoralizing/acidic work environment, but can't people cut the bullshit once in a while, look their co-workers in the eye, and tell them what they actually mean? These management people are exactly the same as everyone else; They eat their cereal in the morning, they have relationship issues, they have sex, they embarrass themselves, etc. The point is, they have no real power, it's just a position at a company in a sea of companies.

    People are allowed to step up and demand a little respect. The only thing that separates the worker bees from upper management is a healthy dose of fear, which management knows and relies upon.

    If you aren't willing and prepared to tell a bad boss to fuck himself, then go live in a box, because you simply don't have the chops. Your boss probably DOES have the chops, and that's why they, no matter how incompetent he or she is, are the ones walking all over you.



  • @Soviut said:

    Thank you. Someone with balls who doesn't just say "Guess it's time to find a new job, derp dee derp".<snip> People are allowed to step up and demand a little respect.
    True, sometimes the sheep mentality I see in coworkers depresses me. They remind me of factory workers in the 19th century. Keep your head down and do as you're told or horrible things will happen to you.

    On the other hand of course you should know that if you're going to tell your boss off, you should be confident that you can find a decent job elsewhere. Not necessarily because he'll fire you, but because that kind of thing tends to limit your career advancement.



  • @Rootbeer said:

    "I don't think so.  Go fix my paycheck now or I'm reporting you to the Department of Labor and filing a criminal complaint for theft of services."
     

     

    My line was "You have 30 minutes to fix this before I call the Department of Labor. After that point, you're personally liable for treble damages"

    On Monday she was escorted out by police officers waiting at the elevator. 



  • @DOA said:

    On the other hand of course you should know that if you're going to tell your boss off, you should be confident that you can find a decent job elsewhere. Not necessarily because he'll fire you, but because that kind of thing tends to limit your career advancement.
    I agree it's good to have a safety net, but my experience is that standing up to the boss usually has the opposite effect on your career prospects. If your boss is a total waste of skin there's nothing you can do to improve your career prospects as much as moving elsewhere, but in other circumstances I've found that being the one worker drone the boss respects as something of an equal is a big advantage at promotion time. It seems that bosses assume you must be very good at the job or you wouldn't dare stand up to them :)



  • @Soviut said:

    @Rootbeer said:

    Better:

     Said you:

     "I don't think so.  Go fix my paycheck now or I'm reporting you to the Department of Labor and filing a criminal complaint for theft of services."

    Thank you. Someone with balls who doesn't just say "Guess it's time to find a new job, derp dee derp".

    I understand the idea of getting out of a hostile/demoralizing/acidic work environment, but can't people cut the bullshit once in a while, look their co-workers in the eye, and tell them what they actually mean? These management people are exactly the same as everyone else; They eat their cereal in the morning, they have relationship issues, they have sex, they embarrass themselves, etc. The point is, they have no real power, it's just a position at a company in a sea of companies.

    People are allowed to step up and demand a little respect. The only thing that separates the worker bees from upper management is a healthy dose of fear, which management knows and relies upon.

    If you aren't willing and prepared to tell a bad boss to fuck himself, then go live in a box, because you simply don't have the chops. Your boss probably DOES have the chops, and that's why they, no matter how incompetent he or she is, are the ones walking all over you.

    I agree with your sentiment, but that's going a little far for this situation. But not paying him, she's in violation of the law.

    Your advice applies well if you have a boss who's a jerk but technically in the right, legally. But she was actually breaking the law, right in front of his face, with no remorse. That's a totally different situation.

    The real problem with sheep-like co-workers are the ones who don't negotiate their own salary or benefits, those that don't know their own rights as workers, and worst of all in our industry: those who call for unionization *because* of that. Guh. Don't destroy my mobility because you're too much of a wuss to negotiate.



  • @davedavenotdavemaybedave said:

    @DOA said:
    On the other hand of course you should know that if you're going to tell your boss off, you should be confident that you can find a decent job elsewhere. Not necessarily because he'll fire you, but because that kind of thing tends to limit your career advancement.
    I agree it's good to have a safety net, but my experience is that standing up to the boss usually has the opposite effect on your career prospects. If your boss is a total waste of skin there's nothing you can do to improve your career prospects as much as moving elsewhere, but in other circumstances I've found that being the one worker drone the boss respects as something of an equal is a big advantage at promotion time. It seems that bosses assume you must be very good at the job or you wouldn't dare stand up to them :)

    Awhile back, I got a boss I hated. And I wasn't feeling good about my job or my company. (I'm not 100% back to normal, either, but ... things are better now.)

    Anyway, so I started telling her flat-out when her ideas were stupid. Not quite that harshly, but pretty close to it. I thought she'd tried to get me transferred. (I was pretty fire-proof at the time, since her crappiness already had caused all the other people who knew my product to leave the company... at that time, I was the only one in our group with any kind of institutional knowledge due to that.)

    What happened instead is she managed to get me two raises during a "pay freeze". Two raises in like 6 months, and a little bonus too. (I later found out half the company got raises during the "pay freeze", hah.) Completely took me by surprise, and I didn't hate her as much when our company *finally* forced her resignation. It sucks that we lost 3 really good people because of her crappy management, though.



  • @North Bus said:

    he was a six foot tall, 200 pound tank

     

     Hmmmmmm...never realized I was so tank-like.  Is your avatar to scale as well?


  • Garbage Person

    @Soviut said:

    Thank you. Someone with balls who doesn't just say "Guess it's time to find a new job, derp dee derp".

    I understand the idea of getting out of a hostile/demoralizing/acidic work environment, but can't people cut the bullshit once in a while, look their co-workers in the eye, and tell them what they actually mean?

    I did that once. Employer stiffed me for time, I told them I was going to contact the DOL if they didn't fix it. Got fired on the spot. The Department of Labor LOVED it and fined the piss out of them. Unfortunately after the punitive damages, there was nothing left in the company coffers to pay ME.


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