They flex nonstop about how many life events they miss to be at work. It's like a badge of honor to say stupid shit like "Ah my 4 YO is in the ER but I know how important this meeting is..."
“Ah my 4 YO is in the ER but I know how important this meeting is…”
And the meeting is just some dumbass monthly progress review where section heads brag about what 'they' (their team) accomplished in the last month, with at least half of it being bullshit, exaggeration, or preemptively taking credit for what they're probably totally going to do next month. Nothing would change if the meeting was entirely cancelled and skipped.
Not to that extreme, but I've seen one say how their kid cried because they were away working on some tech bro stuff, and they never want their kid to go through that again. Except they didn't have to do it in the first place anyway. It was literally a choice. They chose work because it was fun.
I have missed work events to be at something that's important to my kids and I'll continue doing that. In 20 years the only ones who will remember late hours and time spent at the office are my children.
We have a 'Lunch & Learn' at noon every other Friday... "No Actual Lunch Provided". There's no set agenda, just for people in IT throughout the company to get together and talk about anything tech related they want to discuss. It doesn't even have to be work related.
It actually sounds like a fun meeting that I'd love to attend, but... Friday is my Pad Thai day, and I'm not missing that.
Exactly this. If the lunch isn't gluten free AND good, i consider it a request for me to not attend.
Although, if they get pizza, I'll scrape half a pizza's worth of toppings on to a plate and let them see me dropping the crust in the trash. They always ask about dietary restrictions... and they consider shitty pizza shop salad a GF meal?? LOL. I always plan for my own food for events like this.
Occasionally the company sends out emails about these extra optional special seminar things, random topics, often not even about work, and they almost always seem to "conveniently" be scheduled at like 12 or 1230, when people are most likely to take lunch.
Like, I see what you are doing and I don't like it.
I can't wait to meet my peers that used the grindset mindset in the retirement home. Don't worry, I don't have kids, so neither of us will have visitors. The key difference will be them tethered to their computer striving to launch one last product.
i'm kind of curious how the retirement home will go. because i'm bringing my video games. having food prepped, like, the biggest loss for me will be my kitchen.
gran ran retirement homes so i know exactly what i'm getting into from a mechanical standpoint. social standpoint too i've already spent a good three decades of my life just hanging out and helping out. as long as i can transfer myself i'm happy in even the cheaper homes, but i wish i could tell them i wanted to cook my own meals sometimes. maybe run loose in their professional kitchens once a week, but i ain't got that kind of money.
I remember the VP of Engineering for the company I worked for held a mandatory meeting for his managers on a weekend afternoon. One of his managers was a no-show, and when he commented on it another guy said "It's his son's tenth birthday and they're having a party." The VP looked incredulous and said "Why would anyone miss an important meeting for a 10-year-old's party?" Luckily it was a rhetorical question because no one said anything. Oh, and the VP was divorced and estranged from his kids; I wonder why.
GOOD. i have run a small (generally noncustomer facing) business before. i have stated upfront to my new hires that they have to work their hours unless it's a life or death issue. Now let's go over the life issues: i want them clocking out at noon (if they work at all) on: their birthday, their spouse/SO's birthday, anniversarys, children's birthdays, sporting events/concerts, etc. (you gotta be there for your kids) if their favorite band is in town, the bakery down the street has the twists i like (not the ones you like, the ones I like), the dispensary has either of our favorite strains of weed, like, be reasonable to us and we'll be reasonable to you.
honestly by the time i got to the bakery (i was not into weed when i was employing people) they got my vibe well enough i didn't have problems with anyone i hired.
The good ones are. I best most are just the suggested auto-replies that appear under the post that people use because they're too lazy to read/type anything themselves. Comments on that site are nearly all just another way to trigger one's own profile to show up in others' feeds one more time than it would have otherwise.
Probably no one there wants to be at your shitty meeting anyway. Go be with your daughter and don’t make the rest of those assholes act like they care about your bullshit. Fuck this guy.
I was at a local live show. The singer was talking about how she sacrificed so much to make the show, and tonight is her daughter's birthday which she is missing.
Without missing a beat, a highly intoxicated woman slur-shouted "YOU'RE A TERRIBLE MOTHER!!!"
It was like all the air was sucked out of the room and we were in the vacuum of space and could not hear a single vibration of sound. The rest of the show was super low energy.
I mean the lady isn't wrong. She might have contributed to killing the mood, but why the hell would the singer say that in the first place, did she really think that would make people feel sympathetic towards her?
Imagine the singer is trapped in an abusive relationship with her manager, who forced her to work that day. Maybe this is her only source of income and her kid has special needs. Maybe she's divorced and the dad has the kid this birthday and she COULD show up but the dad would make a scene. All of these based on true stories.
I see this as they are so inefficient and bad at their job that they have to work all the time. Or they are so poorly respected that they aren't allowed the time to take off work.
They should be shamed and made fun of every time they say shit like this.
And that nanny? Missing her own son's graduation at the same time. Doesn't matter, cuz the son missed his own graduation to cater the boss's team meeting. Full productivity
So many people are ragging on this guy, but they don't understand what it's like to have 131 middle managers sing you happy birthday before they go splurge their per diem on two mai tai's and try to get the waitress, who's actually your daughter's age, to drink one.
I missed a major life event one time to travel for work. Top ten dumbest thing I ever did. I don't remember a damn thing about the trip, still remember missing the anniversary though.
And I'll admit I've done some dumb shit. I was telling people to hold my beer before it was a meme. Although I got some other people to do some pretty dumb shit too.
It's apparent that his daughters birthday is important to her. If he or they supported or even slightly cared the people behind it he wouldn't be missing his daughters birthday.
I am blessed to have my current job. It was my daughters birthday earlier this week and on the morning of her birthday she came to me (I WFH btw) a bit upset as the plans she had made for the day had fell through as both her friends cancelled.
I was able to book that PM off work with 90 minutes notice and have it approved. Daughter and I had a great day :)
My wife's and my 12th anniversary is this week... and she reminded me (again 🍆✊💦) that I usually miss our anniversaries because I'm out fucking mailboxes every night.
Not helped this year that there are still mailboxes in the world.
So I improvised instead of figuring out a solution.
This year, instead of making my wife sad, I wrote "I was at my own wedding" on every mailbox just before I fucked it.
If my wife isn't satisfied with this solution, that's her problem, not mine. I'm not here to compromise with things that aren't those fuckable mailboxes.
Moments like this remind me how lucky I am that the mailboxes I fuck can't move or talk while I tell them about my wife and then fuck them. It's like they're forced to be there.
We are all mailbox fuckers. For some people, shirking fatherhood is their mailbox fucking. For me, fucking a mailbox is my mailbox fucking ... cheers guys!
I'm a parent, just at the start of that journey really, certainly I have a lot to learn and I'm sure I'll make a lot of mistakes.
That said, it seems like quality time and shared interests is foundational. Like if you watch her ballet class every week (not playing on your phone) then I don't think she will care very much about a missed birthday and certainly not interested in a happy birthday from the team.
I doubt I'll have time to go to every ballet class but I'll sure as shit try.
Best parenting advice: Love what your kids love, and your kids will love you.
I once saw a guy in a suit, having lunch with his teenage skater-kid son in Chipotle. The line wound past them, so I could hear the kid telling his dad all about the latest episode of Dragonball Z in excruciating detail, as the Dad nodded absently, and looked like he wanted to die.
I went home and told my son my "Love What Your Kids Love" philosophy, and said that when he was young, if he had wanted to talk to me in excruciating detail about some dumb anime thing, I would have...had to cut him loose. Sorry, I just couldn't do it.
Ideally you can get in the right frame of mind to like hearing about the thing the person is talking about because you like the person and how enthusiastic they are about it. But there are limits.
As an old medic and firefighter, I missed my share of family things. Holidays were for spending time with your closest coworkers in the ER. New Year's Eve, (my wedding anniversary), often meant spending quality time crawly inside a car wreak to get someone out alive. My one daughter's high school graduation I was paged out for some little old lady's heart attack in the middle of her party.
So, was I a bad father or am I the victim of a bunch of narcistic people that decided to have the worst day of their lives and dialing 911 to ruin my any and all 4 of my daughter's special occasions?
You sacreficed your family time for the good of the community, which is a worthwile and selfless thing to do.
The post op shared is probably not about a person who sacreficed his family time for the good of the community or as a selfless act but rather out of greed for the paycheck at the end of the month.
How does transportation work when you were paged? Do you just take your own vehicle everywhere or did you leave the rest of your family to find their own way home?
This was a rural setting. So scheduling worked a bit different from it does in the big city.
First, we had just 11 people to provide 24/7/365 service. So, we would work 12hr shifts a week on as primary to respond first during the day. After a week of that you would move to the 12hr night shift for a week. Then you become secondary rig for 2 weeks. This meant you could stay home and only respond if the primary rig was busy. But you couldn't leave town. And being a rural service, a second rig wasn't always needed. So you could do birthday parties and such, but you might need to randomly. Or maybe you made only one call all day. Then you became tertiary and would only respond to All Hands On Deck emergency. You could even leave town and go shopping.
Only one time did my family witness me working call. We were headed out of town for Thanksgiving and there was a car accident-- a rollover in the ditch. My daughters got wide-eyed as I drove past the deputy controlling traffic and headed into the scene. We got close, I parked the car and jumped out and ran down the ditch. The car was on it's side and the fire department was just finishing up securing the car. And I climbed in to start caring for the patient. The 2 EMT-Bs working that day were getting busy organizing the extrication and first aid supplies, (we suspected a broken leg). The boys had fun cutting the roof off enough and rolling the dash to free the patient, and we got them out and loaded into the ambulance. I watched the rig drive away, walked back the car got in, and we drove to Grandma's house.
Interestingly, after that none of my Daughters ever complained about daddy missing a softball game or play ever again. When I had to skip out on the one Daughter's graduation party, somebody asked her where I was running off to, I heard her laugh and tell them it happens all the time and I would be back in an hour or so.
Yeah, that pager runs your whole life and controls what you can and cannot do out here in the wilds. I hated that dispatch would hit every pager in the county all summer about any little weather watch. I mean come on! It's just a watch. Page me when a tornado actually hits. Until then, let me sleep.
I thought about going to the city. Better schedule and more money and more calls. But somebody has to be out here in the hinterlands. There just ain't enough of us anywhere, city or country.
....or he could have gotten a day off to spend with his family on his daughters birthday. When we're old and dying the only people who will remember how much we worked will be our kids. Do you want them to remember Dad always being away at work or do you want them to remember time with you.
The sad part is that the answer is already given to us, your family is just a source of labor, same as you, unless you take your time back and don't ask permission and accept being unemployed.
I work with tech bros.
They flex nonstop about how many life events they miss to be at work. It's like a badge of honor to say stupid shit like "Ah my 4 YO is in the ER but I know how important this meeting is..."
And the meeting is just some dumbass monthly progress review where section heads brag about what 'they' (their team) accomplished in the last month, with at least half of it being bullshit, exaggeration, or preemptively taking credit for what they're probably totally going to do next month. Nothing would change if the meeting was entirely cancelled and skipped.
It's all about quantity in corporate. Performative employees get further quicker compared to quiet ones that actually deliver quality output.
Not to that extreme, but I've seen one say how their kid cried because they were away working on some tech bro stuff, and they never want their kid to go through that again. Except they didn't have to do it in the first place anyway. It was literally a choice. They chose work because it was fun.
I have missed work events to be at something that's important to my kids and I'll continue doing that. In 20 years the only ones who will remember late hours and time spent at the office are my children.
When my coworkers plan meetings at noon I tell them to have fun without me cause that's when I eat lunch. They don't do that anymore.
Right. Or Friday after 2pm. Fuck off with your work shit, some of us want to leave for the weekend.
They know that.
it's thursday at 1155 and i just clocked out for the weekend shuttup or my boss will notice
We have a 'Lunch & Learn' at noon every other Friday... "No Actual Lunch Provided". There's no set agenda, just for people in IT throughout the company to get together and talk about anything tech related they want to discuss. It doesn't even have to be work related.
It actually sounds like a fun meeting that I'd love to attend, but... Friday is my Pad Thai day, and I'm not missing that.
Exactly this. If the lunch isn't gluten free AND good, i consider it a request for me to not attend.
Although, if they get pizza, I'll scrape half a pizza's worth of toppings on to a plate and let them see me dropping the crust in the trash. They always ask about dietary restrictions... and they consider shitty pizza shop salad a GF meal?? LOL. I always plan for my own food for events like this.
How can you eat at a time like this???
You mean lunch time?
I have a 1h meeting at lunchtime my TZ on every work day. It helps especially the Brits to respect continental lunch times.
Occasionally the company sends out emails about these extra optional special seminar things, random topics, often not even about work, and they almost always seem to "conveniently" be scheduled at like 12 or 1230, when people are most likely to take lunch.
Like, I see what you are doing and I don't like it.
Go to the seminar and take a separate lunch break.
Oh yeah, but it also really feels like bait to get people to do it while on lunch.
There's no "feels like" about it, it's almost entirely the point.
I can't wait to meet my peers that used the grindset mindset in the retirement home. Don't worry, I don't have kids, so neither of us will have visitors. The key difference will be them tethered to their computer striving to launch one last product.
I'll be on year 40 of my retirement.
That's a nice thought but this is the kind of guy who will hire live-in care
i'm kind of curious how the retirement home will go. because i'm bringing my video games. having food prepped, like, the biggest loss for me will be my kitchen.
gran ran retirement homes so i know exactly what i'm getting into from a mechanical standpoint. social standpoint too i've already spent a good three decades of my life just hanging out and helping out. as long as i can transfer myself i'm happy in even the cheaper homes, but i wish i could tell them i wanted to cook my own meals sometimes. maybe run loose in their professional kitchens once a week, but i ain't got that kind of money.
I remember the VP of Engineering for the company I worked for held a mandatory meeting for his managers on a weekend afternoon. One of his managers was a no-show, and when he commented on it another guy said "It's his son's tenth birthday and they're having a party." The VP looked incredulous and said "Why would anyone miss an important meeting for a 10-year-old's party?" Luckily it was a rhetorical question because no one said anything. Oh, and the VP was divorced and estranged from his kids; I wonder why.
GOOD. i have run a small (generally noncustomer facing) business before. i have stated upfront to my new hires that they have to work their hours unless it's a life or death issue. Now let's go over the life issues: i want them clocking out at noon (if they work at all) on: their birthday, their spouse/SO's birthday, anniversarys, children's birthdays, sporting events/concerts, etc. (you gotta be there for your kids) if their favorite band is in town, the bakery down the street has the twists i like (not the ones you like, the ones I like), the dispensary has either of our favorite strains of weed, like, be reasonable to us and we'll be reasonable to you.
honestly by the time i got to the bakery (i was not into weed when i was employing people) they got my vibe well enough i didn't have problems with anyone i hired.
What gives people feelings of power
You decide!
Archive.org
The comments are equally deranged
I hope they are satire and/or LLM generated slop.
The good ones are. I best most are just the suggested auto-replies that appear under the post that people use because they're too lazy to read/type anything themselves. Comments on that site are nearly all just another way to trigger one's own profile to show up in others' feeds one more time than it would have otherwise.
Whenever I'm bored and I open LinkedIn, it's just a wall of slop. I don't know how anyone takes it seriously.
She'll remember that he prefers to be with his work family than her.
Next year he'll print those out and send them to her from the important conference he has to attend.
I work with tens of thousands of employees. The average person is dumber than an LLM.
Wow. What a douchebag.
Probably no one there wants to be at your shitty meeting anyway. Go be with your daughter and don’t make the rest of those assholes act like they care about your bullshit. Fuck this guy.
That's one of the saddest things I've ever heard
Ah yes, supporting the people behind by forcing you to work on your child's birthday.
I was at a local live show. The singer was talking about how she sacrificed so much to make the show, and tonight is her daughter's birthday which she is missing.
Without missing a beat, a highly intoxicated woman slur-shouted "YOU'RE A TERRIBLE MOTHER!!!"
It was like all the air was sucked out of the room and we were in the vacuum of space and could not hear a single vibration of sound. The rest of the show was super low energy.
I mean the lady isn't wrong. She might have contributed to killing the mood, but why the hell would the singer say that in the first place, did she really think that would make people feel sympathetic towards her?
Depending on the age probably
Was she wrong though?
Yeah it sounds pretty bad but we should not judge we do not know what she has been through
Explain the trauma that means a local singer can't schedule a show for a different day
Imagine the singer is trapped in an abusive relationship with her manager, who forced her to work that day. Maybe this is her only source of income and her kid has special needs. Maybe she's divorced and the dad has the kid this birthday and she COULD show up but the dad would make a scene. All of these based on true stories.
😬
Turn on your imagination
I see this as they are so inefficient and bad at their job that they have to work all the time. Or they are so poorly respected that they aren't allowed the time to take off work.
They should be shamed and made fun of every time they say shit like this.
Middle managers are a waste of resources.
"Growing up, my dad was always there for me, he would record strangers singing me happy birthday and sometimes even come home to see me!"
I think the nanny coached the daughter's reaction.
And that nanny? Missing her own son's graduation at the same time. Doesn't matter, cuz the son missed his own graduation to cater the boss's team meeting. Full productivity
Cut to 20 years later "Why does my daughter never visit doesn't she know how much I sacrificed?"
"I gave her a whole slide at the beginning of the deck where people still pay attention! Kids are so ungrateful these days"
This person sucks. Priorities in life wrong
Super American and super gross.
It is gross, but he's from the UK
Well then, he qualifies as an honorary American!
Looking forward to the posts in ten years on aitah "my daughter told me i was a horrible father and cut all contact"
So many people are ragging on this guy, but they don't understand what it's like to have 131 middle managers sing you happy birthday before they go splurge their per diem on two mai tai's and try to get the waitress, who's actually your daughter's age, to drink one.
A lot of women like older men, but yeah, not in that situation. Very disgusting.
Not sure what is more depressing: missing your child’s birthday or posting about missing your child’s birthday.
Missing your child's burthday after already having missed it all the years before and your child already complained about it.
Photo's of him with her as a baby 'cos that's the last time they interacted in person
I missed a major life event one time to travel for work. Top ten dumbest thing I ever did. I don't remember a damn thing about the trip, still remember missing the anniversary though.
And I'll admit I've done some dumb shit. I was telling people to hold my beer before it was a meme. Although I got some other people to do some pretty dumb shit too.
It's apparent that his daughters birthday is important to her. If he or they supported or even slightly cared the people behind it he wouldn't be missing his daughters birthday.
Fuck this corporate white washing bullshit.
I am blessed to have my current job. It was my daughters birthday earlier this week and on the morning of her birthday she came to me (I WFH btw) a bit upset as the plans she had made for the day had fell through as both her friends cancelled.
I was able to book that PM off work with 90 minutes notice and have it approved. Daughter and I had a great day :)
My wife's and my 12th anniversary is this week... and she reminded me (again 🍆✊💦) that I usually miss our anniversaries because I'm out fucking mailboxes every night.
Not helped this year that there are still mailboxes in the world.
So I improvised instead of figuring out a solution.
This year, instead of making my wife sad, I wrote "I was at my own wedding" on every mailbox just before I fucked it.
If my wife isn't satisfied with this solution, that's her problem, not mine. I'm not here to compromise with things that aren't those fuckable mailboxes.
Moments like this remind me how lucky I am that the mailboxes I fuck can't move or talk while I tell them about my wife and then fuck them. It's like they're forced to be there.
We are all mailbox fuckers. For some people, shirking fatherhood is their mailbox fucking. For me, fucking a mailbox is my mailbox fucking ... cheers guys!
ascii art artist
Some people put tacos in mailboxes.
https://vimeo.com/944236732?fl=pl&fe=sh
So much for keeping her off the pole.
I'm a parent, just at the start of that journey really, certainly I have a lot to learn and I'm sure I'll make a lot of mistakes.
That said, it seems like quality time and shared interests is foundational. Like if you watch her ballet class every week (not playing on your phone) then I don't think she will care very much about a missed birthday and certainly not interested in a happy birthday from the team.
I doubt I'll have time to go to every ballet class but I'll sure as shit try.
Best parenting advice: Love what your kids love, and your kids will love you.
I once saw a guy in a suit, having lunch with his teenage skater-kid son in Chipotle. The line wound past them, so I could hear the kid telling his dad all about the latest episode of Dragonball Z in excruciating detail, as the Dad nodded absently, and looked like he wanted to die.
I went home and told my son my "Love What Your Kids Love" philosophy, and said that when he was young, if he had wanted to talk to me in excruciating detail about some dumb anime thing, I would have...had to cut him loose. Sorry, I just couldn't do it.
He thought that was hilarious. He hates anime.
Well don't leave us hanging, what was it Cell Saga? Boo?
Ideally you can get in the right frame of mind to like hearing about the thing the person is talking about because you like the person and how enthusiastic they are about it. But there are limits.
I can't miss your birthday because of work if I make your birthday part of my work.☝️
Gross.
It's truly heartwarming that he painted a smiley face on the front of the baby crushing machine.
Note to self, never work for or with rick
I like how he closes his post by saying Übersetzung anzeigen. It adds dramatic effect
Does that mean "show translation"?
It's obviously Nazi stuff!!!
A heartwarming tale or a dystopic nightmare?
Heartwarming dystopian nightmare tale.
The second one. The fact that it's being framed as a heartwarming tale adds to the nightmare.
I was angry until I noticed what community this was posted to.
A meeting? Seriously?
What a waste of a human life.
But will his daughter ever be able to recreate the SEGMENT MANAGER memories? Hmm?
As an old medic and firefighter, I missed my share of family things. Holidays were for spending time with your closest coworkers in the ER. New Year's Eve, (my wedding anniversary), often meant spending quality time crawly inside a car wreak to get someone out alive. My one daughter's high school graduation I was paged out for some little old lady's heart attack in the middle of her party.
So, was I a bad father or am I the victim of a bunch of narcistic people that decided to have the worst day of their lives and dialing 911 to ruin my any and all 4 of my daughter's special occasions?
You sacreficed your family time for the good of the community, which is a worthwile and selfless thing to do.
The post op shared is probably not about a person who sacreficed his family time for the good of the community or as a selfless act but rather out of greed for the paycheck at the end of the month.
How does transportation work when you were paged? Do you just take your own vehicle everywhere or did you leave the rest of your family to find their own way home?
This was a rural setting. So scheduling worked a bit different from it does in the big city.
First, we had just 11 people to provide 24/7/365 service. So, we would work 12hr shifts a week on as primary to respond first during the day. After a week of that you would move to the 12hr night shift for a week. Then you become secondary rig for 2 weeks. This meant you could stay home and only respond if the primary rig was busy. But you couldn't leave town. And being a rural service, a second rig wasn't always needed. So you could do birthday parties and such, but you might need to randomly. Or maybe you made only one call all day. Then you became tertiary and would only respond to All Hands On Deck emergency. You could even leave town and go shopping.
Only one time did my family witness me working call. We were headed out of town for Thanksgiving and there was a car accident-- a rollover in the ditch. My daughters got wide-eyed as I drove past the deputy controlling traffic and headed into the scene. We got close, I parked the car and jumped out and ran down the ditch. The car was on it's side and the fire department was just finishing up securing the car. And I climbed in to start caring for the patient. The 2 EMT-Bs working that day were getting busy organizing the extrication and first aid supplies, (we suspected a broken leg). The boys had fun cutting the roof off enough and rolling the dash to free the patient, and we got them out and loaded into the ambulance. I watched the rig drive away, walked back the car got in, and we drove to Grandma's house.
Interestingly, after that none of my Daughters ever complained about daddy missing a softball game or play ever again. When I had to skip out on the one Daughter's graduation party, somebody asked her where I was running off to, I heard her laugh and tell them it happens all the time and I would be back in an hour or so.
One of the nicest parts of going from rural to a city was turning in that damn pager.
I do miss sleeping at night on shift, though.
Yeah, that pager runs your whole life and controls what you can and cannot do out here in the wilds. I hated that dispatch would hit every pager in the county all summer about any little weather watch. I mean come on! It's just a watch. Page me when a tornado actually hits. Until then, let me sleep.
I thought about going to the city. Better schedule and more money and more calls. But somebody has to be out here in the hinterlands. There just ain't enough of us anywhere, city or country.
You stay safe and party on!
I am feeling second hand sadness hard
Poor guy, at least he did what he could.
A tweet is more elegant
This is such a great reminder that leadership is also about being human. Small moments like this say a lot about a team’s culture.
....or he could have gotten a day off to spend with his family on his daughters birthday. When we're old and dying the only people who will remember how much we worked will be our kids. Do you want them to remember Dad always being away at work or do you want them to remember time with you.
The sad part is that the answer is already given to us, your family is just a source of labor, same as you, unless you take your time back and don't ask permission and accept being unemployed.