Respond to him with a recipe for mojitos, or something.
Ha! I knew this rant was going to be worth savoring, because my old boss (from twenty years ago) is exactly like this.
Well, no sooner did I start making dinner, get a three-minute window and open this up, and… HE CALLS!
(Now, keep in mind NO ONE calls me. If a friend needs to for some reason, they always text something like “Emergency, can you talk?” first… NOPE, not Boss Man. Phone starts ringing… extra-insistently!)
I’m in charge of a poker group that he’s a part of. But he decided to call me during dinner prep, and railroad me into new poker dates because he’d rather go to a play one of the nights. But he couched it in terms of “I’m just concerned that those dates might not work for [other member who’s never said a word about this].”
Sigh, why am I surprised?
My supervisor has decided in her exalted wisdom that we are not allowed to discuss work matters in the breakroom (she is the only one of five current sups who thinks policing conversations had on personal time is her job) and has her pet Tattle Twins who will decide from the smokers’ patio what people may be quietly conversing about on PERSONAL time inside the breakroom and run get the unfavorites like me chewed out. Interestingly enough, this particular conversation, which neither Tattle Twin actually could have heard was between me (white woman older than sup) and very nice teammate (Asian woman younger than sup). Guess who the ONLY party to have sup down her throat was (hint: not the one younger than sup). Sup has a definite pattern of treating white women older than she is (sup is African-American, just FYI) like utter crap (excepting the sycophantic Tattle Twins) while treating those of color, men, and those younger than she is quite well. Even the autistic guy (he’s open about it) on another team has noticed the pattern!
When did I start working in a (bleep) kindergarten, and is the Conversation Gestapo bit even LEGAL in California?
IANAL, but it wouldn’t seem so. Maybe you could insist that she deliver her ass-chewings in writing. Or document them in some other way, like sending her an email that summarizes the ass-chewing, and acknowledges your understanding of her arbitrary, capricious, and ad hoc “policy” without commenting on your disagreement with it. If she responds to the email, that would, I believe, count as acknowledging that it happened.
I LOVE the incriminating email idea…
Or, you could do what we did back in high school. As soon as we discovered that one of our friends would “narc us out” (literally!) to the police whenever we’d plan a party, we started having conversations just out of sight of him.
We had a weeks-long buildup of circumstantial evidence pointing to The Big Party Where The Cartel Was Hand-Delivering Cocaine. This was on a Friday night, at a palatial home (think “the house from Risky Business”).
We hid in the bushes up the block, and at the stroke of eleven (“Delivery Time”), five unmarked cars (indeed, three were cops’ personal muscle cars) wheel up the curved driveway and surround the house.
The innocent and quite affluent owners of the house who were indeed having a party that night were justifiably irate, and they were the types to say things like “I know the Chief personally from the country club, and he’ll have your badge for this!”
Oh, and the snitch was suddenly no longer going to “Junior Detective Training” at the police station. Much more satisfying than just beating him up.
So I’m looking forward to tales of how you totally mislead/embarrass the snitches at your work. Bonus points if it gets them fired.
Say your workplace is planning on a function and you decide to participate in the planning and:
- you’re there when it is decided that it will be a turkey dinner.
- you participate in depth when it is chosen which turkey vendor we should choose - in fact, your suggestion is the one chosen.
- you agree that a vegetarian option should be added and vote “yes” for adding the additional entree
- you have bizarrely specific standards about mashed potatoes, so your recipe is added and used as one of the side dishes
- you contribute to the decisions around banquet halls, place settings, music, etc.
- you show up to help do pre-prep the day before the event, including asking someone to do a last minute supply run for a few items that weren’t planned for, but you think we will need. (and the run happens and you get everything on your list)
In other words, if you’re an integral part of planning and execution at every stage and your opinions, comments, and suggestions are listened to, carefully considered, and acted on DO NOT show up to the turkey dinner and say “Why isn’t there a ham?”
You know why there isn’t a ham? Because you didn’t ask for a fucking ham. If you had asked for a ham at any time, you could have been waist deep in pork right now - we could have had a selection, black forest ham, honey ham, westphalian ham, bayonne ham, you name it. If you had added ham to the last minute shopping list THAT YOU WROTE, the committee could have spent the day prepping it and getting it ready. But no, you wait until it’s just too damn late to do anything and then whine about the lack of ham. Yes, I’m pissed.
This is an analogy (down to the part where I actually like ham better than turkey, but made plans around all of the people who actually wanted turkey or at least agreed to it) It’s not actually a dinner.
I worked at a school where coincidently all the friends of the social director would show up first and sign up for the potluck choices so by the time the second wave of teachers would sign up (ya know, once the list was actually public), all the spots for sides and desserts were filled up. So what happened on potluck day? Every … and I mean without exception … side and dessert was some cheap-ass grocery store item probably purchased that morning. A bunch of us that like to cook homemade items for potlucks raised a stink and after a boycott, meaning an event with no home-cooked items, the rule was changed so anyone who signed up the first day could not bring store-bought items.
That’s too bad. The correct response would be to stop having potlucks. Covid killed them here, and I don’t want them to ever return.
So people that can’t be bothered to (or can’t) cook, have to cook. That’s a brilliant idea!
Well, no, I took it to mean the “no-cook” people just can’t jump onto signing up the 1st day, and they need to slow their roll until the homemade people can get onto the sheet.
I may have misunderstood, potluck politics (now there’s a band name) are a mystery to me.
Same. I took it to mean that people that enjoy cooking get first crack at the list. People that can’t/won’t cook can then sign up for whatever is left to fill out the meal. If they’re just going to buy whatever they sign up for, it doesn’t matter if it’s cupcakes or a rotisserie chicken.
Work had a recent potluck and they normally “assign” people items if they want to participate but can’t make something homemade to prevent people from just buying 3 $2 12 packs of Sam’s Choice cola and calling it a day.
They assigned me “Pizza” but apparently didn’t think this threw because
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Our work starts at 8am and lunch is at noon, so I couldn’t get a pizza before work.
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I’m not allowed to leave work to grab the pizza right before the potluck began.
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I can’t get it delivered because my work recently put in a bunch of security measures and the building is unmarked, so I’d have to wait and wave down the driver if he showed up, then walk through 10 minutes of security access points to get the pizza into the building, and my boss was unwilling again to let me do this before the lunch period began.
Literally the only way for me to bring pizza to the potluck was to call in sick and show up to the potluck on my own free time.
No. It was so that people that want to take the time and effort to cook had the option to cook whatever they wanted. So if I wanted to make a cake or homemade donuts, I wouldn’t be shut out of the “dessert” section because other people got first crack at it so they could bring in shitty pie or cupcakes from the day-old section of Krogers. There was the other issue that the social director’s friend got first crack of choosing what to bring. We pushed back against that saying it should be first-come first-choice for everyone.
Hey Mr. Manager, do you think it might have been in poor taste to loudly talk about the “cheap” $800 flatscreen that you just had installed in the break room in front of hourly workers who’ve barely seen a cost-of-living increase in their pay since 2019? (Rumor has it that the old TV was replaced because an input port no one ever used was damaged.)
It kind of depends on what kind of work matters you’re discussing. If you’re talking about pay, safety, or working conditions in the designated break area while on break, no, they can’t legally stop you from doing that. If you’re talking about strategies to land a big client or other business matters, sure, they can tell you not to discuss such things in a break room.
Banned topics included weird callers (with no identifying info), updates on call scoring criteria, and similar.
The updates on scoring criteria seems like a discussion about working conditions to me and banning it might be a violation of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Unlike others, I won’t encourage you retaliate against snitches as this will likely make your work environment more unpleasant. I do think it’s a good idea to get these restrictions of speech in writing. If you feel like your rights are being violated consider contacting the National Labor Relations Board and reporting your employer. Or maybe talk to someone in HR.
I’ll be mentioning such matters to HR soon. When I hand in my two-week notice, which is imminent for both toxic-workplace and personal-circumstance reasons.
As for the Tattle Twins, I simply no longer speak if either is in the breakroom and have been known to remove myself from their company. I’m no longer under that particular supervisor (recent schedule change put me on a different shift, thus different sup), so about the only time I’d need to interact with her is if I need help with a call and no one else is available.
If you want me to help you with a particular part number (or supplier, manufacturing plant, etc.), PUT THIS INFORMATION IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF THE EMAIL THAT YOU SEND ME OR EMPHASIZE IT IN THE TELEPHONE MESSAGE THAT YOU LEAVE.
Don’t make me dig through a string of emails hoping that someone mentioned this earlier. Don’t make me call you back to get this information - which means I have to do the research and then call you back again.
And, if you don’t know, tell me what you DO know. I might still be able to find some information that would help you.
Hope you’ve given notice!
Thought of you when I reminded a Mini-Ranter who had to give 1 1/2 weeks’ notice: