After being evaluated on my computer skills and being told I was at the top level I was then dinged in my review for not taking any classes offered by inhouse trainers. What is up with that?
So now I waste a day here and there sitting in a boring class and falling asleep just so I don’t have to hear it from my supervisor. That is what I call intelligent!
Oh, if we’re telling temp stories…I was a temp for 2 years. I was working for this huge corporations, cubicals, the whole 9 yards. I was covering for a woman who was maternity leave once. There were basically three teirs of people at the office, the lowest which was another woman named Glenda and myself. We were assistants to the highest. Then there was the middle tier, who was adminstrative, and had no superiority over me at all. The woman I was covering for called Glenda to say hello, and a middle teir woman named Marjory answered her phone. The woman I was covering for asked how I was working out. Marjory told her I was coming in late, leaving early, and taking long lunches. Keep in mind, Marjory had NO reason to be paying attention to any of my movements, as she was in no way supervising me. The woman I was covering for felt guilty, and called HR. The HR rep called me to her office. She confronted me with all this, and I calmly told her: A.) I was late ONCE because of a snow storm. B.) I had a 1/2 hour lunch and 2 15-minute breaks in the day. I was skipping my morning break and taking a 45 minute lunch. C.)If I was able to leave my desk on time, I was lucky. Usually I was late leaving. Marjory came in earlier then I did, and left earlier, so how the hell would she know when I was leaving? The HR woman apologized, Glenda stopped talking to Marjory. After the pregnant woman had her baby, she came back, and they offered me the exciting job of filing all day – as a temp. I politely turned them down.
Habit rules the unreflecting herd. - Wordsworth
hurry up and wait!
The best single comment showing the new ideology of the american business.
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. "
Jonathan Swift
Many of us were told “Well you all performed incredibly, but raises and reviews are based on a bell curve, so some of you have to get the low scores. You shouldn’t view this as a morale issue though, you all should still perform to the same high level because next year you could get the high score.”
Most of us left that company… soon avfter they went under because they consistanly screwed their customer by providing inferior products and non-existant support.
If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully–as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.
I was once in a position where my supervisor transferred about a week before my review was due. She wrote it and had my new supervisor administer it. I sat there and listened as he read how I was consistently late, unorganized, unhelpful to the team, etc., etc. About half way through, he said, “there must be a mistake” (uh, yeah, just a little one…I had been the person designated “in charge” while the old sup. was out, consistently a team leader, etc.). He spoke with the old sup, she said she had accidentally put the wrong comments in (?). They let me write my review, but I transferred out within a month to a 10k/yr more position. Haven’t gotten my review yet this year, but yet again, the supervisor I had when I got here was fired and my new sup has only been around a few weeks.
Here’s a good one-I had a supervisor who insisted that my review be written in PENCIL-then he wanted me to sign it-in INK! I told hime that I would never sign anything unless it was in INK-he backed off!
I had a supervisor (well, she did my reviews, even though I sat in a completely different part of the building, and I didn’t work with her or for her), who had some kind of beef with my taking late lunches. All the other admin staff would take their lunch hour from 12-ish to 1-ish, leaving me as the ONLY admin person there to answer phones or handle any ASAP requests while they were out.
I preferred to take my lunch around 2-ish, so this worked out quite well for everyone - until she got her panties in a twist one day and literally backed me against a wall, got RIGHT in my face (so angry she was actually shaking), and insisted that I take my lunch between 12 and 1 like everyone else. Um, so who’s supposed to answer the phones…?
She even went so far as to issue an office-wide memo saying that ALL employees were to take lunches between the hours of 11 and 1. Of course, the only person who ever had to adhere to that memo was me - other people took late lunches ALL the time, but I’m the only one who was written up for it… ever.
Stupid fucking cow of a cunt…
(Pardon me, but there’s simply no other way to adequately describe her…)
StoryTyler
“Not everybody does it, but everybody should.”
I’m sorry, but this has got to be one of the funniest things I have read today. I just wish I had the guts to use this expression to my sister’s face.
Shadowfox
“Distinguished” Sexy assistant to Head Honcho,
Self-Righteous Clique
Classic line from a bad boss:
“You’re a great writer, but I don’t need a great writer. I need an office full of good writers.”
Up to that moment I thought I was raising the average.
When I worked for United Artists’ we had to fill out something called a “Thought Stimulator” before they would even bother to review us, much less give us a raise. You had to answer crap like “What would help you do your job better?” I put “An actual computer” because at the time we had like a 286 or something that had a program that you just input the days numbers on and it spit out paperwork and that’s ALL it did. No word processing, so spread sheets, nothing. So my District Manager is going over this with me and he said something like “Yes, I highly recommend you get a computer.” At first I thought “Oh great, they’re getting me a computer” then I realised he meant that I, who was making in the neighborhood of $7/hr at the time, was expected to pony up the dough and buy a computer with my own money to run THEIR business. Good one!!!
One week only! Special Valentine’s Candy Heart Sig Line!
"OU KID"
I once worked as a unit secretary at a local hospital. The duties of a unit secretary involve transcribing doctor’s orders and ordering tests and medications for patients.
At my second year review I was told “You know, if you didn’t do your job so well, people would like you better.”
I wonder what the patients would say, knowing that I might arrange for them to take a lethal dose of medication just so I could be popular.
Just a few days ago, I served one of those secret-shopper people. In his review, he said that I didn’t know what I was doing, that I wasn’t in appropriate uniform and that I was grouchy. Then, to finish it off, he gave me a perfect mark.
Wha?
“If anybody wants a sheep, that is proof that he exists.”
Being a boss I gave a lot of reviews and I never had a problem because I constantly sought feedback from my employees. If they goofed up I told them. If they didn’t quit goofing up I fired them. This left me with a team that was good and felt they could talk to me.
As a supervisor it got to me that my boss wanted ME to write reviews and he wanted to give and approve them. I told him it was a waste of my time. We had a score of 1 to 5 and he didn’t believe in giving 5’s. I always countered with I will not have an unobtainable goal.
I had one member of my staff Annie who NEVER was sick, NEVER absent, ALWAYS early. I gave her a 5 on attendence and my boss was upset. I mean she got a perfect attendence how could I give her less than a 5. It went through though.
Also most bosses know in 3 minutes what the review will be. They are mostly jokes.
I had a review and my boss gave me all 3s (out of 5). On the form 3 was designated as “works as expected.”
When I told him how much I worked he was like “Well I expected that of you.” But other than that he’s a great boss so I could care less.
BTW
In Illinois at least two of the most abused labor laws are
You must take your lunch with in 5 hours of your shift start. (Hourly employees). It is soley up to the employer to enforce this. Each violation can bring a fine of $100 per occurance.
You must be paid for lunch if you are performing work related duties during it. Even if you were to say sit at your desk and the phone rang and you answered it you could make a case against being denied your right to a break.
I wrote this song to discharge some of my negative energies about my place of employment. The “bang” mentioned in the song is gunshot.
BANG by Sarina Wayne of The CATS!
i’m sitting here today
wondering when it’s going to pay
to sit in this stinking hell-hole
and do my job
they pay me just enough
so i can’t take a day off
and i think it’s time i went
and got a gun
BANG - bye boss
BANG - bye jerk
BANG - bye twit on the phone
BANG - to the chick who won’t shut up
BANG - to the moron and i go home
FREE!
so now that they’re all dead
the classifieds i read
but i see there’s no good jobs
out there for me
so i picked up this guitar
and i strummed out a few chords
and now i’m rich
cause this song’s at # 3
i was sitting here today
wondering when it’s ever gonna pay
to sit in this stinking hell-hole
and do my job
they paid me just enough
so i couldn’t take a day off
but i got even when i went
and got my gun
Chorus
Chorus
You can hear it in RA over at www.thecats.com on the “lyrics and tunes” page.
And no, I would never kill anybody or condone such a thing. It was just fun to write. And I’m not responsible for Columbine, no matter what my mother says.
Meow!
I used to be sole computer support – Netware admin, WAN troubleshooter, AND user-hand-holder for 150 users at an architecture firm that shall remain nameless (save to mention that they’re headquartered in San Francisco, and their LA office is in Santa Monica in the MGM Plaza on Colorado). Anyway, I’m the one person keeping their business going along – as everything they did was in AutoCAD, with enormous files kept on the servers, of course they were both completely dependent on the LAN being up and working perfectly AND loathe to spend a cent to insure that it remained that way. After a year of heretofore unimaginable stress, I get my performance review from the VP, who just happened to be the son of the founder of the firm. Suave, debonair, and dumber than a box of rocks… the phrase that would sound most natural coming out of his mouth would be “Do ya want fries widdat?”. After acknoledging my wonderful contributions to the firm and praising my technical skills, he tells me I don’t kiss enough ass. This I need to hear from some clod who majored in surf bunnies? I got my revenge… I gave one week’s notice and left them in the hands of my incompetent slacker “assistant” who’d been hired a month previously.
Heh, heh, heh.
I found out later through the grapevine that NOBODY who followed in my position there ever lasted more than nine months. What a shock…
Shared pain is lessened; shared joy is increased.
I just get the heck off the property during lunch. They can’t criticize what they don’t see. Also, this sounds harsh, but it really doesn’t look good to be at your desk doing anything other than working.
Remember, I’m pulling for you; we’re all in this together.
—Red Green
My personal fave was at my first law firm, where a surprising number of reviewers tended to dwell on “perception” problems. That’s where you haven’t really done anything wrong, but people have a vague notion that you might have. A case in point from several years ago: On Monday, Partner A asks me to write a brief for him, and to get him the draft by Friday. I give him the draft on Wednesday (not five days late, mind you, but two days early). He loves it. No problem, right? Wrong. He doesn’t think he’s enough of an expert in this particular area, so he wants Partner B to review it. He gives it to Partner B, and despite several gentle, polite, deferential reminders from me, Partner B lets it ferment on his desk until the following week, all the way up to the day it is due to be filed. He gets around to it at noon (I kid you not), let’s me know at 2:30 that he loves it but has some minor changes, and then I scramble like a lunatic to meet a 4:00 filing deadline in fed ct. My year-end review: “There’s a perception that you don’t always complete your work in a timely fashion; for example, there was the case for [client x] in which an important brief was filed at the last minute.”
Sorry for the long post, but ranting can be such fun.
ScottyMo,
My husband is a lawyer and I can totally relate.
If I worked someplace where I couldn’t eat lunch at my desk because people thought it didn’t “look good” I’d be out of there pretty damn fast. Also, if this was the case, how the heck could I post on the Straight Dope?!?
I heard that I stay too late working.
This was not an hourly job, either…
Yer pal,
Satan