Our Department Head (a soon-to-be former University employee) has been in and out of the lab for months now. He forgets to tell us when he’ll be out of town, so many projects are held back because they need his input. When he is present, he avoids discussing shutting down the lab and what needs to be finished. (He keeps on talking about new things to do! Its like he doesn’t realize that there is a limited amount of time and money. :mad: ) His staff finally got him corralled in for a meeting today, because funding is getting low and we all need to know what’s going on.
During this meeting, I said, “Frankly sir, we’re getting fucked over.”
One of my bosses used to play rugby, and we were having a few drinks one day. He was saying something about the scrummage, and I said “Fuck you, you’ve never played front row!”
Whoah, did I feel dumb! Luckily, he thought it was pretty damn funny, and responded, “Yeah, you’re right. I haven’t.”
Yep. Things are already going down the tubes, so maybe dropping an F-bomb isn’t so bad. (My co-worker is Australian, he doesn’t see what the big deal is. Gotta love Rob the Aussie!)
He was actually sheepish. This meeting was the big boss’s post-docs, his lab techs (who will be out of job at the end of the month), my boss, my co-worker, and me. The consensus was that I said out loud what they all have been thinking.
The Big Boss is leaving for a better job and we’re supposed to pack up his things and wish him well. It hadn’t dawned on him that we’d be angry.
Well, you didn’t actually swear AT him…that would have been something like “BigBoss, you’re a fuckwit!”. What you did was merely swear in front of him. I suspect he’s heard variations of “fuck” before. Given the circumstances, I’d say no harm, no foul.
I once had a colleague who was being disciplined and her boss said he’d stand by her, he had her back, etc. Then in the hearing he basically said that, yes, there were problems with her performance, and, yes, he did think the discipline was merited – basically all the things he should have told her personally but hadn’t, in fact had reassured her the opposite.
After the hearing he said to her, “What do you think?” She said, “What do I think? I think if you’re going to fuck me you should at least buy me dinner first!” She doesn’t work there anymore – kind of a mutual decision.
*Mouse, it sounds like you said something that needed to be said. Plus, you didn’t swear at him (“You’re fucking us, you fucker!”), you just swore in your descripton. I wouldn’t sweat it.
Just last week I was in a meeting with my bossm and her boss as well. The subject of my recent overtime came up (I logged 250 hours in my last 4 weeks), and the two of them agreed thaat I would have been “royally screwed” had I been hired on salary rather than hourly.
I said, “Wouldn’t it be the two of you royally screwing me?” They both looked a bit shocked, and my boss said, “I suppose so.”
So, Mouse_Maven–now that you guys have all let the PI know how you feel, and what the consequences really are for the PI’s Big Move, what happens next? What’s your PI going to do about all the lab minions’ situations?
At a previous job, I was tempted a few times to tell my boss’s boss that my boss was a lazy-ass fuckup. Except that I considered the boss’s boss a different kind of lazy-ass fuckup, so such a statement about my boss probably wouldn’t have gone over too well, no matter how I presented it.
I was once asked what I thought about the status of certain parts of a project. The people asking already knew me as “a straight speaker” who can do diplomacy but would rather not have to.
My assessment was “half is fine, half is ef-iu but not bee-ei-ar.” Several people went pretty pale.
The Finance guy (known to everybody as one of the most serious people in the company and who had not gone pale at all) asked “why are you so sure it’s not beyond repair?”
“Because I’ve already told the guys we’re going to fix it por mis cojones and so far every time I’ve said I was doing something that way I’ve done it.”
He thought it was a perfectly acceptable answer and asked me to get in touch with him if we needed any additional help. And btw: we did get it repaired. On budget and in time.
I’m descended from people who did things like dissasemble a couple of ships, load them on muleback and humanback, cross the Istmus of Panama and reassemble the ships. They did it por cojones, too…
Of course, it’s been pointed out that it wasn’t completely horrible since it was not directed at him, but just in front of him. I figure - from reading the other posts about this guy and the situation at hand - he deserved a bluntly honest answer when involved in a discussion. I know that several times I have worked with bosses who would prefer the possibly offensive but honest comment to a passive-aggressive one or another “yes-man” type comment…
My husband used a line from a movie at work in a similar situation.
They were doing a Yard Day for the inmates at the prison. (Which is a day of games and recreation-- held outdoors, obviously.)
The person in charge of the pie-eating contest had forgotten to thaw the frozen pies beforehand. The person in charge of the music had gotten only country music albums. Two events had been scheduled simultaneously, and the ice cream the inmates were promised had melted.
The warden stared at the chaos, aghast. “What went wrong?”
“Sir,” my Hubby said, “I’ve seen monkey shit-fights at the zoo that were better organized than this.”
The warden stared at him for a moment and then burst into laughter. Luckily, it difused the tension of the moment.
