Actually, that reminds me of the actual work ethic in the Emerald City:
“We get up by noon and get to work by 1
Take an hour for lunch and then by 2 we’re done”
My kind of schedule.
I’ve never had a parasitic backstabber for a manager, ever.
I’ve had INCOMPETENT managers. Some were good, but some were bad. But none were bad for being parasitic or backstabbing. I’ve seen backstabbing parasites as managers - never, fortunately, directly above me - but they weren’t the majority.
A little bitter, perhaps?
I referred to this phenomenon in my Douchebag Earpiece post -
“…you Alex P. Keaton Cheese-moving Fish-tossing parachute-coloring Sun Tzu “The Art of War”-buying “cause it can also apply to the modern business world, MAN” America-hating life-ruining BASTARD.”
It might also be satisfying if, partway through the Oz seminar, all of the employees march out of the room chanting
oh wee oh, we oh oh! oh wee oh, we oh oh! …
At least after the OZ seminar you can tell whether your boss is brainless, heartless or gutless. Maybe he can explain the worker hanging in the woods in that scene.
You know, there is the other Oz. I never watched it, but I’m sure there are appropriate references that could be worked in.
I would pay a hundred dollars to see that.
Funnily enough I was just thinking about writing “The S&M Guide to Management”. Which funnily enough will be about treating workers better than they are now (I could realy use a safe word at work…).
When my boss placed a copy of this fucking thing on each of our desks, I was stunned. He wasn’t the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, so I never expected much…but shit…this was lame even for him.
As another Fish Victim here, I can say there IS something worse: Laying off a third of the office one month after you wasted a day and rah-rahed every body with tales about selling fish and how we’re all in it together.
(Oh, and how about the VP in charge of the office starting the meeting with the laid-off folks by saying, “It’s days like these that make me hate my job.” Hey, fucktard, at least you still fucking have one.)
Sometimes, it just means getting out of the way, so people can do what you told them to do.
Oh yeah. There is a lot of “change just for the sake of change”. I hate it. Just about every 3 years, someone way high up decides to change EVERYTHING. That means, all the work we did on the last implementation is flushed down the toilet. It takes 3 to 4 years to really get everyone on the same page, work out the bugs, deal with the self-appointed experts who don’t know shit, and finally, a stream of auditors who all contradict each other and demand you do it their way. Finally, just when the damn “new inproved way” is starting to work, it’s time to scuttle it and charge headlong into chaos again. My first rule, if I were a manager would be “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. However, the common rule instead seems to be 'If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is".
Well, you’re a VERY lucky boy, Rick! Have a lolly! Maybe these other posters had, I dunno, DIFFERENT work experiences than you? I mean, just because other people haven’t had the exact same experiences you have, it doesn’t invalidate their experiences, does it? Or does it? Your input will be greatly appreciated!
Spend the day clicking your heels together and chanting “There’s no place like home.”
Let’s take a look at teh examples of leadership given in Oz, shall we?
First off, we have the Wicked Witch of the West. She rules through intimidation and threat, and has the power to carry off even her worst threats. She has a substatial number of minions, all of which fear and despise her. However, once someone actually stands up to her, she’s defeated quickly and from an unexpected quarter, to the delight of her former underlings.
The Wizard, while he also partially rules from intimidation, is more benevolent. However, upon examination, he’s an utter fraud. He either fakes his great works or never intends to carry them out.
The lesson to workers: Your bosses are vulnerable and/or faking their power. Challange them and they will fall.
Hmmm…
That is some great motivation speaking.
Me too. The company I worked for bought it hook, line and sinker.
Management went on a junket to Seattle and Pike Place Fish Market. When they came back everything was fishy. The point (as if anyone doesn’t know by now) is that people can have fun while they work. Employees who are happy and having fun are more productive and more satisfied.
Only the Ineffectual Middle Management Suck-Ups and their toadies (by ‘toadies’ I mean the employees who were on the same level as we, and who sucked up to the Suck-Ups) embraced the ‘fun’ aspect while giving short shrift to the ‘productivity’ aspect. In my department the thing that made us happy was to get our work done. Our data were time sensitive, and some data had to be processed more quickly than other data. It irked us that we would have a list of accounts that would need to me run manually, needed programming tweaks. etc. and our time would be taken up by stupid ‘team building’ fun tasks like ‘dress up your fish’ contests. There’s nothing wrong with having fun at work. But you can’t let the fun get in the way of work.
But it gets worse. When they laid off some people after hiring a company from India, they turned the vacant offices in to ‘The Aquarium’. Magazines, couches, an old TV set, video tapes, dart board, ping pong table… Of course most of the stuff was donated by the employees themselves. And who had time to sit back and watch a movie on video? Even Toadies didn’t use The Aquarium that much. (I’ve heard that when more of us were laid off after the Indian company took over more tasks, The Aquarium was turned into their offices.)
And all of our new programmes were fish-related. I think they still use the one they call Baracuda.
Our supervisor was a nice guy. He was fun to hang out with. Nice person. But he didn’t understand the data. He didn’t understand the processing of the data. He turned to us, the Leads, to do the things Supervisors are supposed to do. The department manager was also a nice guy. He’d go to bat for his people. But he lacked the clout to be effective. He didn’t ‘fit in’ with the higher-ups. He bought into the Fish Philosophy and didn’t understand that while we liked to have fun, we still had to do work. Gotta give him props for trying to do the right thing, but he didn’t interface well with the Vice Presidents. The VPs were completely Corporate. They gave lip-service to employees, but really didn’t give a damn. They looked after their own arses. Want to make more money? Don’t listen to the people who are actually doing the work, who are offering suggestions as to how to increase the quatlity of the data and so forth; if you want to make more money, lay people off and increase the already-heavy workload on those remaining.
Fish Philosophy is a good thing when people understand it and are able to implement it. But you have to know the difference between a fad and the underlying basis. Let me pass on an anecdote that reflects the mindset of the IMMSUs:
One manager in a department close to ours went to the New York office. I guess the NY office is laid out differently from ours. There was an account executive there who had an office. The manager was talking to another woman (who would later become a manager): ‘I can’t believe he had an office! He’s not even a manager! Why should he have an office, when we didn’t when we were at his level?’ Um… What difference does it make where someone sits in an office 3,000 miles away? If he didn’t, as a mere AE, have an office in New York, how would that effect you in California? Petty.
As I looked around at these people, they really seemed Orange County (‘Reagan Country!’ Or to me, ‘Behind The Orange Curtain’). They wanted their BMWs and Lexuses, their Big Houses in The Expensive Parts Of Town, and so forth. I’ll admit that I had a Porsche. But I bought it because it was fun to drive, and not as a ‘status symbol’. These people were all about Status. It seemed to me as if they were dead. That is, their souls were dead only their bodies didn’t know it. It was creepy.
And so they bought into the Let’s Jump On The Bandwagon/This Is The Current Trend aspect of the Fish Philosophy, but didn’t understand the – for want of a better word – spiritual aspect of it. They accepted the aroma, but not the meat.
Maybe the OP could come up with a work method based Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (Gene Wilder version). I mean those little fuckers, the Oompah Loompahs, made that fudge factory ROCK.
There, I’ve done the hard work. You finish the book, we’ll split it 67-33.
If that doesn’t fly, I have an idea about a Gilligan’s Island work philosophy, I just havn’t fleshed it all out yet.
I think you’re missing his point, or at least the point I took from his post.
It’s not that his experience invalidates the others. It’s that his experience (and mine, for that matter) shows that the picture is not as universally bleak as painted by some. He says he’s seen backstabbing parasites, but has not had them as direct managers. I don’t think his post deserved yours in reply.
My boss’ bos is in love with the book “Good To Great” By John Collins or something…keeps making us read 30 page snippets. As if we didn’t already have enough to do.
In my experience the parasitic backstabbers aren’t in the majority - because their managers and bosses don’t like them or trust them either and can do something about it. And most people who make it to manager and director are saavy enough to recognize the threatening pond scum.
Think about it. You are a Director at Really Big Corporation. One of your managers is a backstabbing parasite. Do you really want to be the next person he stabs?
On the other hand, that same dynamic encourages managers who are non-threatening, non-innovating yes-men to their bosses - because those managers make their bosses feel good and secure. But that is often not good for the people under that manager. They tend not to be real effectual, they don’t want to rock the boat and think innovative is handing out fish stickers.
You know, this reminds me of some lessons I once learned from an amazing mailman I had…