Some day I hope I’m crazy enough to gamble my savings on a small business–or rich enough that it doesn’t matter if it works out in the end–for the express purpose of empowering my employees to give customers exactly what’s coming to them. I fantasize about being able to tell someone being abusive to one of my staff to get fucked.
You’ve been listening to Daniel Tosh, haven’t you?
“I’ll pay my employees $50 every time they slap a customer in the back of the head! I know what you’re gonna say: ‘I’m just not going to eat there! I won’t be a part of those shenanigans.’ Yes you will, the food’s delicious! And everything’s under a dollar, 'cause I’m using my lottery money.”
[quote=“Dave_Hartwick, post:151, topic:555148”]
I agree that simply handing out bonuses isn’t going to fix all the problems. With my teams haven’t worked well together, the reasons generally aren’t money. Sometimes it’s a toxic person who infects the whole group with their dismal attitude. Other times it’s been conflicting objectives that are set up so that making my goals makes it harder for you to meet yours. Then there have been times where processes are out of date or poorly designed so you have groups or individuals who are bottlenecks though no fault of their own. I could go on and on. The point is, none of those could be solved by handing out checks but they can’t be solved by team building exercises either.
Most of my teams enjoy a reward lunch after a hard project or something like that. It’s during business hours and, honestly, dividing up the cost of a lunch out by each person and handing them a check would result in each of them getting a pittance anyway.
What most of us (including me) hate are the stupid HR mandated days where we play silly games or go through bogus “how would you get off this desert island” scenarios. They don’t fix the problems. Jane is still going to be a grouchy, whiny, gossip queen no matter how many active listening exercises we do. We’ll still have 20 people trying to get urgent data from Joe at the same time and then blame him or each other when we can’t get it. Clare will still resent Bob when he pushes to meet his goals and hurts her chances. And, to top it off, we spend a day out of the office while our work piles up.
But most of us grumble at home or on the internet and realize those exercises are just one more shitty thing HR requires and our manager has no choice in the matter. Every job has the occasional shitty, pointless thing you have to do. So long as our manager is working towards fixing the underlying issues and isn’t expecting the stupid games to fix them, it’s no biggie.
The managers who are stupid enough to think the team building fixes the problems? Well, hopefully we’ll get an email in the future announcing that he/she has “decided to pursue other opportunities.”
You have the right to assign work, set a time limit for successful completion of work, and decide what constitutes successful completion. You have the right to set goals and expectations. You should (and you would agree) hopefully have the right to reward the good ones, in some way, and just as hopefully have the right to discipline or remove the bad ones - according to their performance. Do you agree? You have or should have the right to recommend promotions, or maybe do the promoting, and also the right to say otherwise in a fair and equitable manner - again according to their performance. The same for pay raises. Agree?
I think you would also agree your position is not to be abused in order to demean and belittle your people or take reprisals on them when they refuse to be demeaned or belittled, or use your position to settle any personal vendetta. Agree?
As for me, I chose to not put in for management. At my grade and step, it is simply not worth the extra bother or aggravation for just a very few dollars more per month. 30 plus years in, going on 58 years old, the change is just not worth the bother.
By the way, Steve, I’m fascinated by what you said you did, and if you have any war stories, do share in some other thread.
Is his entire hate-filled diatribe against me, knowing absolutely nothing about me other than I’m at the mid-level manager point in my career, evidence enough? suxmycox:0=8
SteveG1 - Once again. I’m not sure why you are projecting all your work-problems onto me. But fair enough. I probably would not be a good fit for your union-run government contractor shop.
But, lets imagine you in my world for a bit. You’ve just been hired into a fancy New York consulting firm. Good new for you have the potential to eventually earn a hell of a lot more than you would make as a GS12 Step 10. (I looked it up. $100,858 for NYC. By comparison, consulting firms were hiring 28 year old MBAs at my school at anywhere from $75,000 to $130,000 when I graduated in 2001) Of course the downside is you will have to work with a bunch of over educated MBA types and I know you don’t like that.
So after the first couple weeks of orientation (mostly the sort of bullshit cheerleeding team building crap you hate), you are now officially on what we call “The Beach”. That means that you now have to seek out some client billable projects for you to work on. If your “utilization” (the number of hours you bill) falls below our target for whatever reason, you will be at risk of being “counselled out” (terminated).
Now since you are not at a level where you are bringing in your own clients, you are utterly dependent on managers like me to staff you on our projects. Don’t worry, I’m in the same boat as you. I need the directors who must sell work to client so the partners don’t fire them. Mostly this involves a lot of appearing eager, competant and otherwise a “team player”.
Most likely the projects will have you working long hours, possibly traveling frequently, cancelling personal events, and most likely preventing you from having any sort of real life outside of work. And I’m not even trying to be mean or malicous about it. That’s just the job.
Now here’s the kicker. If I don’t think you are the smartest, most responsive (IOW instantly responding to your Blackberry which you should carry at all times), most freaking client friendly charming mother fucker in the company, all I have to do is not put you on any more projects. Furthermore, I can just write you a shitty review and badmouth you to my colleagues. Eventually your utilization will fall low enough that the partners will simply decide to let you go.
By the way, you evaluated against your peers. So basically even if you do everything awesome, if you aren’t in the top x percent of awesome, you are still at risk of being let go. It’s called “up or out”.
There’s no contracts or “collective bargaining” or any such crap. HR is not there to be your advocate. Your “job duties” are whatever a manager, director or partner tells you they are. And you are expected to go “above and beyond” whatever those duties are anyway.
So how long do you think you would last where I work?
Now that I think about it, maybe one of those goverment union jobs wouldn’t be so bad after all.
[QUOTE=Shot From Guns;12992347
[The mentally disabled are]
people just like anyone else–some of them delightful and fun, some of them assholes–who have a demonstrable problem with their cognitive abilities. Do you disagree?
[/QUOTE]
I think you just described half the world.
Sounds like someone’s got a case of the Mondays.
At my old firm, each week we gave the 5 staff consultants who billed the most hours a free lunch on Friday as a sort of reward. Problem is everyone abused it (staff and managers alike). It went from 5 staff and a manager chaparone to another half dozen people being like “oh I’ll tag along and just expense my lunch as well”. And the venues went from someplace moderate like Heartland Brewery to freakin Del Frisco’s steakhouse.
We did the “How would you sort these 20 survival items” game. First individually then as a group. Based on the scores, my table determined that collectively, we were dumber than any of us were individually.
I don’t have the hatred for these exercises that some of you have. But I do hate that the idiots in management in HR are unable to see the inherent stupidity and ridiculous humor in some of them. I remember one new hire exercise I did like over a decade ago where we had to split into teams and put together a Powerpoint pres (consultant-speak for a Powerpoint presentation before we started calling them “decks”) saying why we love the company. So my partner (a female attorney from legal) and I wrote “It’s a great place to be yourself, provided you are just like everyone else”. They were…less than amused.
There is this
[QUOTE=msmith537 ]
*” I’d try to have you fired regardless of how good you think your work is. And here’s why. A crappy attitude like yours is infecteous. You probably make your coworkers miserable and you undermine your bosses authority. No one wants a malcontent fermenting rebellion in their group.
Yes, I want you to “pretend” as if you like being there and like getting along with your coworkers. You don’t need to grin like an idiot all day, but I expect my people to be respectful and courteous and professional and I will treat them the same way.”*
[/quote]
And “going after someone regardless” is highly professional. Got it. Where you plainly say you would get rid of anyone who did’t go along with “your” program, regardless whether it was founded or not – don’t fix the underlying cause, fire the one who is discontent BECAUSE you didn’t care to fix it. Attitudes are CAUSED. They do not come out of a vacuum. So, according to you, what work was done is irrelevant, it’s the attitude shown, genuine or not, to hell with any underlying causes. And you would apparently go out of your way to do it - fire the person and ignore the cause.
I was not projecting on you. Some – SOME - of us felt like coming into this her Pit, and were venting about these demeaning, degrading, worse than useless “team building exercise” that idiots dream up, and compel people to follow, and they then demand that everyone MUST enjoy it or else – “exercises that aggravate pre-existing problems. But you can’t get past your own sense of self importance. You would not fit in here. Most of us have a very dim view of wannabe dictators and would tell you to to your face, keep your bullshit to yourself. Most of us are former military and don’t take klndly to bullshit. As soon as you tried to sabotage one of us, as you’ve already proudly said you would, all of us would be on you. Why? We know our jobs and we do them. In return, we expect to be respected – no teaming games, none of your personal crusades and vendettas. None of that.
MBA. Master of Business. Right? New York? Not my thing. Wow. And of course the “money card”. SOME of us are not interested in the MBA suit route. In fact, I would wager most if not all the people who were capable of graduating from engineering school – any engineering school – would find your course work laughably easy. It sure isn’t rocket science, is it. I could have gone to business school, I chose not to. It didn’t appeal to me. I make my money, enough for me, and I still can afford ALL my toys.
And one of my first jobs was to write, from scratch a Statement Of Work, describing an entire project from start to finish, including the technical and staffing needs that were anticipated. For a jet fighter. Can you do that? The next was to redesign the audio intercom system. Could you do that? In short, skip the “training in house’, no orientation, hit the ground running. Here’s the cafeteria, here’s the coffee, get to work.
I don’t have to be tethered to a Blackberry or cellphone all the time. I’m not a slave or a piece of property, and judging from the regulations and requirements “they” agree with me. I guess that also means I am more than capable of getting work done at work, rather than bringing it home, I think that’s called efficiency and time management, but MBA’s apparently don’t know about that. I also don’t hae to depend (fortunately) on whether you like me or not, or what you think of me. My performance my ability to complete my work on time and accurately, trumps your personal opinions or social problem. Finally, sabotage me with a spiteful appraisal and then try to badmouth me, that proves what I already think of you, that you are a no good, lying, sneaking, back biting waste of air.
My peers don’t review me and I don’t review them. Our “review” comes solely from our direct supervisor. Our “peers” don’t watch us looking for any “weaknesses”, and do not measure us. We are not in competition with each other. Our “contracts” are there for a reason – because there was, at one time, a need for them. Any history book will tell you all aobut cronyism, nepotism, favoritism, the political spoils system, and rampant corruption. Also, to protect from assholes like you.
I’d do just fine, just as long as I didn’t have to deal with the likes of you. Now think about this. How long would you last here, without your politics and backstabbing tactics, where anyone could drop a dime on you at any time for trying to fuck someone over, AND your engineering decisions had to be backed up by data and math? A Shuttle launch doesn’t care how sharp you dress or how well you kissed up to your boss. The Space Station is unimpressed by your MBA. An F-16 or P-3 pilot really doesn’t give two shits where you got your MBA from, if his people just had to ditch. If you fuck up, you might lose a sale. If I fuck up, people can DIE. So far, I have a perfect record. I’ve overseen design and test of critical hardware and systems. I’ve personally uploaded Flight software to the Station. I am one of only TWO people who designed and wrote our database (only one of TWO who know what’s going on inside it).
How long would you last at MY job? Not even five minutes. But I don’t believe you are a hotshot MBA consultant or anything.I don’t believe you are, or ever have been a manager of anything. Frankly, I wouldn’t trust you to “manage” sharpening my pencils. You fuck up, you annoy some suit, or lose a sale. I fuck up someone can die. I think what I do is a bit more important.
If you are so good and so indispensable, I’m still waiting to “understand” a few things …
Mid level? You’re so smart, you should own a firm by now.
Why not just ONE company? Why all the moving around? Can’t hack it at one place? Your “philosophy” of sabotaging the people who didn’t see it your way didn’t go over very well?
Yes, I just called you a liar. I can come in here and talk trash about “teaming fun”. You have no say in the matter. And again, I’m calling you a liar, wioth your claims of being so smart and so important. A liar.
Ther we are. Attention to detail, something you apparently can’t muster. YOU decided that I was an asshole, based on a flippant “flame” remark. By GOD you are one stupid bastard.
Better make it a double scoop.
I have no idea who he is, but I suspect I’d like the way he thinks. Personally, I was thinking of something along the lines of, oh, Black Books.
The people who schedule these sorts of activities are, by definition, the sort of people who think they’ll also fix the underlying issues.
Oh my, the head looks uncomfortably swollen. No wonder–with a penis that small, I’m not surprised you can’t find anyone who’ll let you stick it somewhere. You should really masturbate more. Maybe then you’d be less of a smarmy asshole.
Unfortunately, yes.
And yet more pure fucking gold. At this point, I think I’m willing to offer to have up to two (2) babies of your choice.
Director: One of our middle managers has been wasting his, and the employees’, time on some silly “sort 20 survival items” game. I really don’t think he has what it takes to succeed here…
I just wanted to re-emphasize this gem. I think this shows who the real cancer in an organization would be.
Gee. Did I kill the thread? Holy fuck, doesn’t anyone see what’s so fucking WRONG with this assclown? That’s “teaming”? That’s the famous good attitude? Nobody wants to call bullshit on it?
Personally, my silence has been since I don’t think there’s any way I could ream the moron any harder or better than you already did. I think the moron’s silence is indicative of the fact that he’s busy writing one of his peons up for eyeballing him to prove that he’s still the big man he thinks he is.
Agreed with the BS call. FTR I am also an engineer in a “lives at stake” industry, and the cronyism and MBA peer networking that you are correctly calling BS on inevitably results in environment of hungry young white male middle managers ruthlessly clawing their way over each other to eventually develop into the old white male wall of executives deciding how best to down-size and outsource that very same level of middle managers.
“Make the sale”, “close the deal”, and “bill your hours quota” are why Space Shuttles explode.
Meh. I was going to responds but then I realized I just didn’t care that much and decided to go on with my life. SteveG1, good luck with all that misplaced anger.
And good luck to you, badmouthing people behind their back and writing shit reviews to feed your fucking ego. Piss off, asshole.
@SteveG1, To quote Daniel Tosh (**Bosstone **can tell you who that is), I can do anything better than you, na-na na-na boo boo, stick your head in doo-doo.
Dude, you are on message board full of elitist anti-socials who behave better and a smarter than 99% of the rest of the people in the world and you are surprised by the scorn against forced-fun?