I was originally hired as an Emergency Medical Technician by a hospital. After a few years the local Fire Department took over EMS. The only thing that changed is that the taxpayers had to pay to have our ambulances repainted and we all got new uniforms.
One day while driving my partner and I get flagged down; the man's truck had caught fire. We could see visible flames between the cab and the box. My partner grabbed the fire extinguisher on the console and I ran around to the back and got the fire extinguisher from the rear compartment. We doused the flames before the engine arrived. We made our report on the radio and went back to the station to restock.
We were later told that the fire extinguishers should only be used if our vehicle was on fire, and not for civilians.
So, we were supposed to sit in Fire uniforms, in a Fire vehicle, and not put out a fire.
I can go for hours about how messed up the Fire Dept management is.
When Fire took over EMS exactly one Fire Chief took the time to do some EMS ride alongs. The rest of the brass ignored and/or sabotaged EMS in order to get rid of the oldtimers so they could be replaced by lower paid newbies.
Fire Chiefs would have either sided with the EMS bosses, or, more likely, petitioned the city for more money to train EMS in how to use the extinguishers properly.
Could it have been some sort of liability thing? Like the nurses at my old work weren't allowed to do any sort of first aid stuff to colleagues unless they were the official attendants. It's like a not your job, you'll get sued if anything goes wrong kind of thing.
As EMTs we were expected to go into dangerous situations all the time. Nobody mentioned liability. I think they were just annoyed to have to replace the equipment.
I didn't stop to greet some customers as I walked in with a cane for the third week in a row due to nerve damage.
I wasn't on the clock, we didn't have a uniform, no name tag, nobody would even know I work there until I put my shit on after I clock in.
By that time I had made it a habit of recording every interaction with management, so I just pulled out my phone, hit the record button, and asked "so to be clear, are you officially reprimanding me for NOT doing work off the clock?" and that immediately shut him up.
Managers get awfully pensive when they have recording devices capturing them.
Worked for a small business which did electronics repair, and which had recently picked up e-waste recycling. Our boss, the owner, was known for getting baked out of his mind and imagining things which he needed to tell his staff, and would think the next day that he had actually told that thing to his staff. Just to give you an idea of the kind of guy the owner is, we had two company-wide group texts for the 11 people on payroll. One had everyone, and the other had everyone except the owner. The owner never knew about that one, and honestly that arrangement was a necessity to keep turnover low and by extension the business from running aground.
Anyway, my coworker is talking to a customer at the counter, who is dropping off an old television to be recycled. The customers leave, and the owner walks in.
Owner: "Wait, is this a plasma? We can't take this!"
Coworker: "why not?"
Owner: "We can't do plasmas! We've never done plasmas!" sees the stack of plasma screen televisions "What the fuck?! Who accepted these?"
Me: "Dude, you've never mentioned that we can't do anything with plasmas before."
Owner: "Yeah! It was in the class on e-waste recycling."
Coworker: "You were the only one who took that because you didn't want to fly anyone else to Vegas for a four day conference."
At this point I think the owner started to realize he hadn't actually disseminated anything other than the logistical aspects of the e-waste business to the employees.
Owner: "So, what, no one knows what we actually accept for e-waste?"
Me: "I don't think so, man."
The owner looks at me with obvious anger and with that look that says he's about to blame me for something.
Owner: "So, what y'all want a fucking list or something?"
Coworker: "Yeah, that would be great, actually."
The owner turned red, looked about ready to angry-cry, and walked out. Went home and got baked. I don't think he ever actually put a list together. The e-waste thing fell through a few months later after I left because the warehouse he was renting and illegally living out of was like a quarter the size needed, and there wasn't any money left for processing equipment. He franchised a corporate brand like a year later.
Yeah, I guess it reads weird. I think I intended it as a early barometer to his character, but didn't expand or lampshade it properly. Oh well. It's a lemmy comment, not a graded CW essay.
This is a nice example of "I have to write an evaluation about this person but I don't know this person, I haven't spoken to this person, I've seen this person a few times while walking by. He frowns a lot"
I reported the multinational company CTO for not being able to keep his hands off me (I'm a guy btw) and a load of other employees. That report came on top of other reports of abuse, fraud, and briberies.
Mind you, this company wa so about protecting whistleblowers that I had to sign a contract about it. VPs were outraged and vowed to protect me.
I made the report, week later called into an emergency meeting with the CTO and head of HR is there too and I'm fired. I sued, won, and in that time learned that the CTO was fired the next day because, amongst things, he fired me. Even so, they didn't cancel my firing, didn't rehire me, because now I was toxic.
Never trust anyone in big companies. Never trust their contracts, never trust their words.
Yeah the fact that they didn’t reverse course shows that the toxicity ran from the top. CTO wasn’t the only bad egg. I’d bet that legal got their hands on it and figured that making it right would be admitting to doing wrong.
Yeah to them it doesn't matter if even they thought it was wrong you were fired. As soon as you went to lawyers you became their enemy. That's just how a lot of these scummy big corporations work.
We were changing office buildings and were packing our desks for the move. They have us boxes and bags for everything. The bags were oddly large, which I commented on by saying "these bags could fit a small child". Apparently some people took offense at that, as I was later sent up to HR to explain myself.
"Well... They were bags, they were large, and a small child could probably fit in them. What part of what I said is inappropriate?"
I find that often when you make people explain why they're offended by something, suddenly they can't figure it out. This will either make them realize it's not actually an issue, or more likely this will only make them angry due to the embarrassment they now feel for not being able to articulate it.
I like my workplace because I don't get in trouble for stuff like that. I was once talked to - asked if I had been snarky. I explained that I was and why they deserved it. I was basically told that I was right but it doesn't really help anything so try to avoid it in the future.
At an old job in slack I said something like "for fuck's sake, it returns a 200 OK even when there's an error" and one of the directors was like "Language, please."
So I started saying "fudge" instead of "fuck". "This deployment is fudged up. are we going to roll it back?"
They "let me go" a couple months later, but joke's on them I'm at a different job doing better work for double pay.
Thankfully I never did get formally reprimanded for cussing...
But I did stop swearing in commit summaries after multiple colleagues, over the span of months, laughed when visiting the repo for an internal tool whose latest commit, boldly displayed on top, was as I recall, fuck this or fuck you (and to be fair the pipeline system was being a prick, but I don't suppose that needed to be broadcasted so widely).
My wife and I have a young Belgian Malinois, and at about a year and a half of age she started flopping down onto the floor in a very loud and obnoxious manner whenever she was frustrated or in a fit of pique. Being very bony, she makes a loud thump.
It wasn’t long after she started this that my wife remarked,
“It sounds like a body hitting the trunk of a car.”
It was all I could do to turn to her and query just how many dead bodies she had to have transported in her car’s trunk to get that intimately familiar with the sound.
There was a super insecure manager a bunch of years ago. I didn't report to him, but occasionally worked alongside him.
I had been working with one of our customers for a few weeks on a feature they had requested. It was something out-of-the-box, so understandably, if you didn't know the context, it would be rather confusing.
Manager is set to run a meeting with them, and asks for my help as the technical expert. No problem. We get into the meeting, and the customer asks some technical questions. Before I can get a word in edgewise, Manager proceeds to pull the most inane shit out of his ass for a good 10 minutes--clearly knowing nothing that's going on, but not letting that stop him. After the customer is sufficiently confused, and Manager is starting to look a little panicked, he finally turns to me.
I figure I'll try to save him some face, so I start my reply with, "I'm not entirely sure, but are you asking...", repeating their question back. The customer is clearly relieved that I know what they're asking, and I provide the answers. Crisis averted! The meeting ends and I head back to my desk feeling good.
Until Manager storms up to my desk and proceeds to scream at me, "IF YOU'RE NOT ABSOLUTELY SURE ABOUT SOMETHING, DON'T ANSWER! NONE OF THIS 'I'M NOT SURE' BULLSHIT! NEXT TIME THINK ABOUT WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE FOR US!" and storms off. Nice projection, asshole.
I was new enough to not have the presence of mind to respond, so nothing came of it (though he was demoted not long after--possibly the shittiest manager I've ever known) so it all worked out in the end.
I was written up for being too pessimistic. It was about 8 years ago, I was a project manager at a small retail company. I was in a small meeting with my boss and the owner of the company. I was telling the owner all the possible risks associated with this new project I was given, the major one being that we didn't have enough time to complete everything by the owner imposed deadline. Calling out risks is literally one of the main responsibilities of being a project manager. Also the meeting went fine, no one got upset, it seemed everyone understood. A few days later I get called into HRs office with a write up for basically being a Debbie Downer. I was told to be more positive with my updates and stay away from any bad news. I was in total shock! A few days later I put my notice in and found a new job making twice as much. So it all worked out in the end. Thanks for the motivation Todd!
Worked for a company that hired some Harvard guy who fired the QA team for "being down on the product." He didn't see value in a team of people who did nothing but test the software and report what was wrong with it.
Right? I wish I had that same confidence in my own code, let alone an entire team of devs'! He probably carries his balls around in a wheelbarrow to pull something like that.
in most companies formal interactions, like writing people up, have to go through HR. Tha you can write people up in the US for such silly things is truly remarkable though. In my country writing someone up is only valid, if they violated the terms of their contract or disobeyed proper and legal procedures. While i guess you could write "has to be positive all the time" in the contract or company regulations it would not hold in court.
The write up is a requirement for the later firing in a lot of cases. Yes some places are at will employment anfmd you can technically just fire a person, but having a paper trail helps if they sue for wrongful termination.
I'm doing a business course atm and the professor has worked in risk management for a very long time. Probably the first thing she told us about risk management is how careful you have to be and how hard it is to get people to actually talk about risks for this exact reason. It's ridiculous, you'd think people would want to cover their bases. She also mentioned this is why it's almost always outsourced, so nobody in the company has to be the bad guy.
Anybody who spends time doublechecking they're listed where they want in a group email needs to be fired. The company is not in the business of "your ego"
the person bringing the complaint is the one disrespecting everyone.
Amen, the business is here to make money, it is not here to play safety egos up its employees. I mean unless you happen to be a pornstar, and you get off on admiration, in which case your ego is definitely the company's business.
For documenting the accurate number of hours I worked, in a teaching lab. The department head didn't believe that the lab I taught (as a grad student) needed the hours it was given. Keep in mind, I had to do everything for the lab: create the lab manual, design lab activities, get ethics approval, create lab lectures, setup and clean up the lab, and do all the marking.
Turns out, the department used that document to pay me. This was never explained to me, usually we just get paid the set amount of hours, and I was of the understanding that this was just an audit of my hours to justify what I was getting. Turns out I worked about an extra 30% of the hours set for that lab for the semester. As a result, the department couldn't fully pay me until the following year because they didn't have it in their budget to pay for that extra 30%.
I ended up getting an ear full from the department head, but he backed off when I told him I was simply doing what he asked and that I wasn't inflating the numbers to get higher pay, since I had no idea they intended to pay me based on that audit.
Perhaps it's coincidence, or perhaps it was petty revenge, but later that year at gathering of the faculty and grad students he announced that I had won a major scholarship (one that would've paid pretty well for a grad student), and had me stand up in the crowd along with the other winners. Then, immediately after the assembly, he runs up to our lab office to tell me he read the sheet wrong and I hadnt actually won the scholarship, he just read the wrong name. I spent the next few days shamefully having to explain to everyone that, no I didn't get the award.
My GF is a pool cleaner and once got written up for sending a customer a picture of dead pigeons that were in their yard.
The customer called the office screaming that she sent the pictures "to be mean."
Turns out these people had pest control out on their property to "remove" all the frogs because the frogs were "keeping them awake at night", and the birds took the bait instead.
Because our write ups are just incident reports. Like, if a shitty Karen went nuclear on a staff member, we do create a incident report. But anybody reading this will absolutely go, "fucking Karen strikes again" and it absolutely won't reflect badly on the employee.
That stuff builds up over years so that when management decides they want you out, HR has years and years of in writing marks against you to demonstrate that it's not wrongful termination.
In the last firm I was at, we got written evaluations twice a year. I never recall anybody ever getting a single positive phrase about them as a person or an employee. They were always one hundred percent negative.
I got promoted three times despite my God awful evaluations.
But when I crossed the wrong person, all those years came out and I had been an unacceptable employee for the duration of my time there.
Fortunately, my direct manager gave me the heads up so I was able to get another job before they were able to drop the hatchet. I never had to sign anything, never had to acknowledge anything, refused an exit interview, and scored an additional month's pay plus my annual profit sharing.
I got a verbal warning for referring to someone as a "guy" in my team's group chat.
As in "I've got a guy here who's running into issues with getting his loan processed. How should I proceed with assisting him?"
My language wasn't professional enough, and my manager pulled me aside to warn me not to do it again. I've since left the role, and my new team fully embraces casual conversation (my manager has outright exclaimed that "our software is a piece of shit" to much agreement). Things are much better now.
I remember there was some juicy drama about that posted on another social media site. Apparently, there was a group of customers dining out, all of whom were women. I think most of them were lesbians or something to that effect so some of their attires weren't exactly feminine. So, when the waitress asked something like, "Is that everything for you guys?" they absolutely flipped. I don't remember how much trouble she got into for it, but oh boy, I'm forever scared that such an innocent slip of the tongue could land me in some thick shite at work.
That is (hopefully was) a think in some very strict japanese companies. Also, when people had to stamp thing, they would angle their stamps to be "bowing" to the superiors who stamped first. I hope all those traditions are dead
Being mildly autistic, I usually think I would love Japan for that 'don't bother others' culture, but I'm starting to think it might actually be a hellscape for me.
it would 100% be a hellscape, you're expected to conform entirely and deviations from what's expected socially are frowned upon significantly, it is extremely lonely if you can't be a carbon copy of everyone else. especially if you're a foreigner or have non-asian-looking parents, japanese will never really see you as "japanese", at first they treat you like a tourist but then when that wears off you're seen as below others
it's one of the most conservative cultures on the planet in a lot of ways, perhaps the most conservative in the first world (although it shows it in some weird ways like in respect to the heavy objectification/dismissal/sexualization of women in japanese culture, it doesn't look like "western" sexism a lot of the time). same kind of stuff applies to korea
from an outside perspective, and a tourist's perspective, japan and korea seem like they'd be amazing places to be, beautiful and a lot of fun stuff. but for most people it's just depressing, even for the people living there – great hint as to why the suicide rate is so high, you get practically no support and everything is incredibly superficial
so yeah i would say a pretty awful environment to be in if you're neurodivergent/have a disability in any way, shape, or form, or have any differences that would make you stand out (even so little as being racially different is enough to be ostracized). also the economy is pretty stagnant if you care about that
some people have different experiences, a lot of people love japan, but it's not for a majority of people. but as with anything, if you seriously want to move somewhere you should at least do your research yourself and take a lot of visits beforehand
if you want a "don't bother others" culture you might like finland, it's pretty much like that – i mean they also have an extremely high rate of depression but the culture isn't extremely oppressive like japanese culture is
agreed. life in these countries is nasty, brutish and long. lots of convenience and cool culture, but completely negated by a horrendous work ethic, which consumes your entire life. some people are into that, but most people i know do not think of that as a good way to live.
Had a friend/roommate who's Korean. I asked him if he had plans to go back after school in Canada (his dad's and engineer, and so is he). He laughed and told me no, definitely not
Sometimes I start conversations with people completely at random and they think I'm flirting with them. Where can I go where people can just be friendly without sex?
"Finland happiest country on earth" factoid actualy just statistical error. average Finn is happy 0 times per year. Happys Antti, who lives in cave & is happy over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
Some people do better here, some worse. For me, there are some shops I even have a hard time with because they have the music playing plus various different jingles from little advertising things going in different keys, timings, etc. and all of it seemingly at 3 billion dB. I have to wear headphones just to make it through shopping. If you're sensitive to lights as well, you're going to have a bad time.
I also think the whole "don't bother others" thing can be a bit overstated compared to reality.
Also, when people had to stamp thing, they would angle their stamps to be “bowing” to the superiors who stamped first
The funniest thing is that you can also rotate the stamp slightly counterclockwise to indicate "I'm approving this proposal because it would be inconcievable to dissent from the group's thoughts, but I think you're all making a mistake by approving it" - and how much you rotate the stamp counterclockwise indicates how stupid you think the proposal is.
Used to work with an awesome chick named Velma. Boss pronounced it Thelma for three years. She finally started calling him Craig instead of Greg. Dude quit a year later after everyone else picked it up.
I put an attorney's name in the "assistant" field of a work order. That bitch called the manager to say she worked too hard to become a lawyer for me to call her a secretary, lmao
Weirdest would be that the CEO of the company I worked at then had one single runin with me in my entire tenure at that company and found that my facial expression wasn't to his liking.
I'm autistic and by that alone have little facial expression, add the meds I take for anxiety and depression and it results in that I have no facial expression at all.
So it pretty much came down to him not liking my resting face.
Tried to fire me for no reason, couldn't, because I'm in a protected class.
Managed to do so anyway by bullying me to no end until I accepted being fired.
Worst reason to be fired would be that I worked 48 hours straight on a weekend to implement vast network and server overhauls to then be fired for not being at work on monday morning.
I had the full clear from my boss and his boss and was not supposed to come in on monday unless something went bad with the upgrade (it didn't).
Simply not being there when my bosses boss wanted me to be there was all it took.
Both of those sound very illegal and you should probably have spoken to a lawyer. I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to stay at those jobs anyway but you could’ve at least gotten a nice payout.
In the first case, I accepted being fired because it was attached to being paid out for 6 months and as you expected, I wasn't looking to stay anyway. I had another job lined up already as I started to look for one right after he tried to fire me the first time, which HR halted as it was an obvious violation of my nations version of the peoples with disabilities act. I made bank of that idiot.
The second one, I wasn't actually fired because of the obvious legal ramifications. And contrary to the first situations boss, the one there didn't find this inability to fire me enough of a personal insult to make it his mission of getting rid of me.
Never do this. Always go home. Max out your overtime and go home. You will never be fired for not working 48 hours (unless you're in the military or on a train or something).
If they want you to do that, they don't have anyone else to take your place. Do the job at a normal pace and don't let them rush you.
If I had spread it out, I would literally have to have done twice the work taking more than twice the time working multiple weekends.
You wouldn't have had to do anything but work normal hours. Ask for the resources to do your job, more people, etc. If you don't get it, then the work doesn't get done. Literally go home. You are hired to work a certain amount of time, not to do the impossible.
I rarely ever let an employer tell me how to do my job when I worked for companies directly, so sorry if I'm not going to accept some internet rando telling me how to do my job now, 15 years after starting to exclusively doing contract work.
It's because I delivered results in difficult and impossible scenarios, I've been able to work for myself for the past 15 years, doing contract work explicitly because I can do the difficult and impossible, often alone. I wouldn't have been able to get to that if I didn't build a reputation as being capable of doing that.
This has allowed me to these days only work about 3-6 months out of the year and dedicate my time to my wife and personal projects the rest of the year.
I actually had a 2 year period where I did what you suggest and did the 9to5 thing doing just what the job required and that's that.
It dumped me into a black hole of boredom and depression.
I found out I work best by going balls to the walls for predetermined periods of time and then going into full chill mode doing either nothing or personal projects once done.
Not everyone is best served with the same work (or any other facet of life) cadence.
I'm with you, friend. If I'm working, I prefer to just work until it's done or I feel I need a break. For me, starting a job, it takes a couple hours to define the problem, a couple to investigate and prioritise tasks, then to start looking into solutions, and suddenly it's time to stop. Then there's all the time commuting, taking breaks, etc.
I prefer to just get in, get in the zone, knock out a slab of work and get a job done. It takes a few extra hours on a work day, so be it, it was going to be a work day anyway. By doing that, it gives me a day off? Yes please.
The thing is that it doesn't matter that there are interruptions in the network.
It isn't your job to make sure there aren't.
If you are unable to get the upgrade done in the normal 8 or so hours a day (during the weekend) because there is too much work, that means management should have put more people on the project. If something goes wrong, it isn't your fault, it is theirs.
Don't break your back bending over for a company, that wouldn't do the same for you.
That was not the reason they fired you, not being there on Monday morning, that was the excuse.
As you said the CEO wanted to fire you, so his chain of command was looking for any excuse to make it happen. You could have been there Monday morning and they would have found something else.
I was working in the military. An office job at HQ so we had to use our parade uniforms. I was working nights one week and didn't have any clean black socks, I used white.
Around 8 in the morning I was walking up the stairs to leave and passed the Naval Admiral, who promptly chewed me put for wearing white socks and dress shoes.
Kind of surprised that you see that as weird. I served myself and would never dream of wearing the uniform improperly. Especially around stars and bars. HQs got nothing better to do than dress and appearance.
I have never understood the need for black socks when wearing dress shoes. Especially since the majority of sane people definitely aren't gonna look directly at your feet and complain about white socks. If it were different colors or patterns then I could see it, but otherwise I just don't get it at all.
Those boomers learned a lesson that everyone else has still to learn: it’s annoying AF to miss half the point of an email. 80% of everyone I email as an attorney misses key information. I’ve learned to follow up every email with a phone call to go over the email because of this fact. The folks who miss the least are… THE BOOMERS
Eh, in project work 6 cc'd keep informed stakeholders to one needs this for their component of the work is pretty standard. Especially if it's a lots of moving parts project and some of the stakeholders are 2 for 1s like a delivery lead and SBA.
My petty ass would be putting them in reverse-seniority order from then on out of spite. That would be the absolute funniest thing ever to be fired for.
I introduced myself to a new client (new job) and the boss didn't like that the client joked to the boss that he better watch out for his job because I sounded like a better [what we did] than he did. Which I was. Which was why he hired me. But a month later I was working somewhere else.
I'm not OP but I still think about a series of events at my first job.
Would have been like 25 years ago, 3rd year plumbing apprentice and I was out on my own. Next job was for a real estate, the house was empty so I had to pick up the keys and then headed to the house, I was busting for a shit and the empty house was calling me. It was a blocked drain so I pulled up fast, cleared the drain before I shit myself and then went to open the back door.. and the key didn't fit, no problem I think as I heard around to the front.. key still didn't work. Fuck I'm in trouble here, there is no time to get to another toilet. I look around and see the access door into the crawlspace under the house which was pretty high, so I form a plan, use an empty bag to line a bucket and grab toilet paper out of the glovebox and head under with my homemade chamber pot. Do the business, tie the bag up and head to the bin to hide it. Once I open the lid I see the bin is completely empty.. I can't put it in there now so I put it in one of the big tool boxes on the back of the truck.
I ended up getting fired the next day, back then I partied pretty hard and was constantly late etc so definitely don't blame the boss. But the poop bag was never retrieved from the tool box. So at some point either the boss clearing it out or the next guy given that truck would have found a bag, opened it and see a big fat log.
I mean, this was when I was living in a suburb of Cleveland OH. it's not really a town thing so much as it's an industry thing. I spent 20 years running movie theaters. I worked for all the chains, both national and local. Between managers and projectionists, everyone knew everyone else.
I told the CEO that not having a disaster recovery plan was a bad idea. He did not like that. Got written up the next morning. They wouldn't even tell me exactly why I was being written up. Only that I had "not done what I was supposed to" which was apparently to sit there in silence.
Got fired from that job a few years later. My bosses boss called me at home because he didn't have the decency to do it to my face. In that moment I panicked a little but by the next day it was like a weight had been lifted. That place was a complete shit show.
I got in trouble for telling a senior manager that he was wrong on a technical issue. He sought expert advice on a control system but when the answer came back it didn't fit his conception of reality and he didn't want to hear it.
Turns out being good at management and being good at solving technical problems are skill sets that very rarely coincide in one person.
ime it usually goes the other way, someone is such a great engineer that they end up in a leadership position that they absolutely lack the soft skills for and either end up making everyone on the team resent them or burning themselves out by trying to take on work they're having trouble delegating
I got in trouble for eating chips too loudly. One of my coworkers complained to management and they had my supervisor lecture me about respecting boundaries in the workplace. The thing is that the supervisor thought it was stupid too but he still had to do it.
Meh, I can understand it to an extent. Depends on the severity.
Someone at my workplace, rather than having a meal in their break, just keep crunching raw carrots at their desk for hours on end. I don't think I'd complain to management if I was sitting close, but I'd sure as hell ask to be moved somewhere far, far away from the carrot nutcase.
Dont eat chips at work if you're seated next to other employees, especially if you're still at your desk and they are trying to work. Thats gronk behaviour. Go eat in the lunchroom.
I mean I'm probably gonna get down voted for this but........ The chips thing I can understand to a certain degree. My ex loves crunchy foods. She would bite into them with her mouth open so that it made the loudest noise possible because it was satisfying for her. In a quiet setting that noise can be extremely distracting.
The perfume thing... Some scents give me an outright headache if I'm exposed to them for too long. I haven't experienced it with perfume yet, but I have with some air freshener scents. So in that regard I get it.
Would I go to my boss about it? Nah. I'd explain my position to the individual and ask that they chew with their mouth closed or maybe use one less squirt of perfume, but I wouldn't report them over it. That's just sad.
The perfume / cologne thing - I'm not like, super sensitive but there's a couple of brands out there that make me feel like my lungs are gonna collapse if I keep breathing them. Just some kind of chemical in there or something. It's literally physically distressing, especially if I'm already feeling headachy or a bit tired.
And sometimes it's not that, it's just the smell is so thick I can taste it from feet away. I just don't want my mouth tasting like whatever it is they're wearing.
If people wear it like it's meant to be worn it ain't bad, but people who douse themselves in it so you can tell they were in the room ten minutes after they left, that's too much.
We had a person who was the guy who complained about people's scent but he reeked like bo. Like awful. That bugged me more than people's cologne.
I'm in this situation all the time. Simple solution if you're worried about it: alphabetize them by first name. It's fair and if people actually care about crap like this, they can fuck off in general. At least if you're consistent with that, they can never complain. It's insane to me that it's a thing, but people are fragile and it matters a lot to some of them
I really hope that the people I'm sending emails to take time to read the message and respond instead of looking at the order they are copied
I only look to see if I need to respond (to:) or if it's something I need to be aware of (cc:) I don't give a fuck if I'm the last on the list or whatever
Yeah, if I'm replying to an existing thread, it's whatever order Outlook defaulted to. If I'm originating an email, alphabetical. Though I do it by last name (then first in the case of a tie).
The real life hack would be to update your resume if you work with anyone senior to you who may give a slight shit about this and publicly shaming them if they tell you to do it.
I always go alphabetically by surname, if i think the recipients care about the order. Still a hassle, but at least i don't have to decide who has a higher seniority.
So where I work we just merged with a larger company. People throw around names all the time and I have no idea who any of them are. I don't even know the CEOs name. Also I don't care. They don't know my name either
I had a really insecure young manager who was almost half my age. Guy was a chickenshit. One day, while he was out, we reorganized our desks so that we'd not have our backs to the hallway. Instead, we turned our desks 180 degrees so that our backs were to the wall. He came around and said "well, this layout is not in accordance with the open office rules". I paused for a second, looked at him and replied "Oh really? No shit! How cute..." And proceeded to ignore him solemnly.
He didn't do shit. Was eventually let go for complete incompetence and negative reviews from every single one of his employees.
I didn't give maximum effort according to my pa, when an outside contractor who was giving kickbacks to my supervisor, tried to sell our company a circa 2000 used phone system.
I got in trouble at work because I sent an email to my manager about some new servers that were being installed, but didn't appear we had access to the management console. I let her know the entire team will need access so we could properly support the machines. I was pulled into a conversation... How dare I presume my direct manager who only managed my team, have any idea what we do!
This has never been an unstruction from a superior, but I just realized instinctively do go by superiority. Like, I've never gotten in trouble or known someone to get in trouble over it, but just did it that way so as not to offend without realizing people might actually be offended otherwise.
I've had both kinds of managers. Now I'm high up enough that I don't really have to deal with it because I can give as good as I get in that regard.
At no point have I ever paid any attention to where my name comes in an email. I'm pretty sure it's in alphabetical order and given my last name is towards the end of the alphabet I'm never usually even on the list of names displayed by Outlook.
Other than the douche bag who reamed you out, the rest of the managers would probably rather you left them off of that email. Sooo many bullshit emails that managers would love to not receive.
If someone has time to check and see if their listed in the "correct" order in the cc line then they're not doing their job. Ain't nobody (whose actually doing work) got time for that.
I've got a few from being in the military, but a couple off-hand are:
I got in trouble for going to lunch at the normal time, and missing a particular event (hot refuel of an aircraft, so fueling without shutting down), which unbeknownst to me was written in a kind of code on the flight schedule, and was told I should have checked with the watch Captain before going to lunch. So after that I checked in with the watch Captain at the beginning of the day to see if there were any scheduled events during lunch, or if it was at the normal time. A couple weeks later, another watch Captain absolutely reams me out, saying all I care about is lunch, and every time I'm about to say something he keeps saying "there's nothing you can say, you have nothing to say, just listen." So I kept my mouth shut and just stared at him until he finished (I worked at Blockbuster, I know how to get yelled at by someone with a blank look on my face). Then I said, "can I say something now?" And he said "FINE. What do you have to say?!" "Dan told me to do that. I missed a hot gas, and he told me to check with the watch captain." "Oh... well, he's the one who brought it up to me today, so you should probably work that out with him." No apology, no oops, just go talk to the guy who can't remember what he's ordered people to do.
Another was when we received Tesla rolling Batteries (2 ft high heavy batteries for aircraft), and they came in boxes with spray in foam on the inside (that formed around the battery when it was placed in). It was significantly more foam than box, and the foam was clearly not recyclable. So we threw the whole boxes in the dumpster after we unloaded the Teslas. The civilian contractor who was in charge of the aviation supply office came bursting in and lost his goddamn mind. and I was like, "We don't work for you? You can take it up with my chief if you want." And then our chief, who didn't feel like dealing with that mess, had us peeling foam out of the boxes (tearing the boxes up in the process) in 95 degree weather out by the dumpster for over an hour, all to put about 45% of three boxes in the recyclin bin. I had been in for significantly more time than the others, and told them that my 8 years in the military so far, that was the dumbest thing I have had to do, so it only got better from there for them.
Since you're the only person bothering to say anything, can you explain why I'm being downvoted? I have no idea what Michael Jackson has to do with any of this and feel like I accidentally stepped on a meme or something.
I have never heard anyone being scolded for that but then again this is common sense from where i come from so everyone sorts recipients by importance.
Edit:
I don't get what is so outrageous e.g. this order boss > colleagues > intern
It's just professional respect. Some also call it etiquette.
There are even courses of proper communication that teach that. It's those small things that makes your communication better. So it makes sense.
You could say that not greeting your boss also make no change as it's not needed for work. But to me it seems common sense to greet people i know when i meet them.
It's called respect. i guess, It used to be common thing. Some cultures have it even in their languages like Japanese "sempai"
edit : like this boss > colleagues > intern
The down votes aren't from people who don't believe in respect it's from the people who believe it should be boss = colleagues = intern until they prove they deserve otherwise.
Respect is earned not given.
Also seems like people mix race or whatever with professional achievements.
First you prove you can built company or contribute then i will respect you on professional level . Saying that i must respect someone for achievements they don't have, when they just came to company to learn and take time of others on the same level as respecting someone who most likely built the company makes no sense.
Again we are not talking about being rude to newcomers. I'll still hold their door, greet them, have coffee break with them but you can't seriosly except me to act as if their achievement are what they are not.
Common sense? Certainly not. I never do that. I just add people as they come to my mind. Sometimes I order by how important the mail might be for them (which is roughly the same thing, usually). If I had to work in an environment where people are so self-absorbed that they determine their worth from the order of the names in the carbon copy recipients list of an email, I'd look for another place to work in.
So if you send email to the owner of the company and to your colleagues on same level you put boss at last spot if they come to your mind as last?
BTw read what i wrote, again. There is no mention of it being mandatory in my post . It's similar thing to as when we used to hold door to next person so they don't get smashed by it. edit> I don't get what's so enraging on voluntarily ordering recipient in the mail boss > colleagues > intern.
I would. I certainly wouldn't inspect the order of the email recipients to see if I was given the right amount of "respect". I don't mind at all if someone wants to order the recipients, go ahead. But if someone gets angry at me for not ordering them, they can go get bent. I have better things to do with my time.
I certainly wouldn’t inspect the order of the email recipients to see if I was given the right amount of “respect”. I don’t mind at all if someone wants to order the recipients, go ahead. But if someone gets angry at me for not ordering them, they can go get ben
You are twisting my point 180° . I said it's respectful to do that as sender. You talk about inspecting it as recipient and being rude back at a sender.
Again you change what i said here. You make that i said it's disrespectful not to do that and it should be enforced . I say it's voluntarily and that it is respectful to do that.
Also there are more then two states to be in aside from disrespectful vs respectful.
They're saying that as a recipient, the order of names wouldn't matter to them, so they see no point in doing it as a sender.
You see it as a sign of respect, that's fine. Go ahead and order names how you choose. I do not consider it a lack of respect if I don't order them, so I don't.
Because it is inane bullshit. You receive the email no matter where on the array your fucking name is. It is complete and utter sociopathy to enforce hierarchical chest-thumping on it. Only people who's work is so without value that they need to source it from pissing on others "below" them would care about it.
Where are you getting the forcing part all the time? read damn post top down before you react to what is not written there. Otherwise you will seem like the sociopath enforcing your standards upon others.
So if you send email to the owner of the compane and to your colleagues on same level you put boss at last spot if they come to your mind as last?
Exactly. That's how I always did it and will keep doing it. Anything else sounds absolutely weird to me.
There is no mention of it being mandatory in my post
There kind of is. Because you make it sound like it's not a written rule per se but still very much a social convention that people kind of expect you to follow.
It's similar thing to as when we used to hold door to next person so they don't get smashed by it. boss > colleagues > intern.
So this is where it gets really weird. What is that even supposed to mean? How is the position in the company relevant to holding doors? If there's an intern behind me, I hold his door open. If it's the boss I do the same. Just like I'd expect both of them to do the same for me and each other. What is your list even supposed to mean? You don't hold doors for interns? Your boss doesn't do it for you? What kind of sociopathic hellhole of a system do you work in? Do you participate in that?
I once worked in a company where my supervisor demanded I'd prepare coffee for him and completely lost it when I wanted to discuss how exactly that was part of my job as a researcher. His point was that his boss had always expected his orders to be followed, no questions asked, and he'd expect the same thing from me. Needless to say I left that fucker as soon as I had another contract available (and never prepared his fucking coffee). This kind of hierarchical thinking may be appropriate for the army but certainly not for an ordinary company.
What kind of sociopathic hellhole of a system do you work in? Do you participate in that?
Asian countries, for instance, have very strict hierarchies. Japan (do a quick search on Japanese work environments for more fun - I especially 'love' the one about women being forced to wear high heels at work, not sure if it was repealed yet) and India (the caste system, 'nuff said) come to mind. I can totally see that sort of shite happening around there. Hell, it might even be considered an honor to serve coffee to your boss there.
Some European countries (mostly those that were under russian influence, but there may be some in the west that I'm not aware of) also suffer from this sort of hierarchical thinking.
No there's nothing mandatory and i said i have never seen anyone get scolded for not doing it. It's just common sense , it;'s being thought in communication courses etc just like when picking up phone you first say greetings, say company name, then your name. Because caller usually knows company and greetings but is having hard time catching your name if it;s first thing to they get "shot" at them upon you answering the phone call.
Last thing is typo from smartphone,, holding door and order of recipient in email doesn't belong to the same sentence. .
It's bewildering to me how you don't see the contradiction here. If you say it's common sense then it's so ingrained into your work culture that it might not be mandatory but still very well part of the unwritten laws governing how you work together. Not being scolded for not following it does not mean that people will not talk about it behind your back. These rules are the foundation of mobbing and bullying. None of that is an official rule but it can very well be considered mandatory if you say it's common sense to follow it.
it;'s being thought in communication courses etc just like when picking up phone you first say greetings, say company name, then your name.
I was never taught any of this and I also don't do that. Company name first? Never did that and never had anybody mention to me that I should change my behaviour in that regard.
Everything you say sounds weird as fuck to me. Would you mind telling me what country you're from?
So if you send email to the owner of the compane and to your colleagues on same level you put boss at last spot if they come to your mind as last?
Sure, why not? I think the disconnect is the people who think it is silly don't attach any importance to the order. So asking, "Would you put the most important person last?" is a non-starter as the thinking is that the CC field ends up as a list is an artifact of how email works and isn't imbued with a sense of ordering or ranking of importance. The ordering of the list could be a indicative of who came to mind first, how your email contacts are ordered, or even how a policy is written but not indicative of who you think is most important or senior.
No. I'm saying if someone doesn't think the order matters or signifies anything of importance then there is no wrong way to do it, there is no right way to do it, there are just ways to do it (of which I mentioned a couple)... because the order doesn't matter.
Before this thread I’ve never heard of this concept. I have been working in tech for 30 years and was using email before 90% of the planet. No, this is not normal.
Wrong. Boss ALWAYS goes in the “To” field regardless of who the message is addressed to. You don’t want them to receive a copy of the email rather than the original! /s
I was originally hired as an Emergency Medical Technician by a hospital. After a few years the local Fire Department took over EMS. The only thing that changed is that the taxpayers had to pay to have our ambulances repainted and we all got new uniforms.
One day while driving my partner and I get flagged down; the man's truck had caught fire. We could see visible flames between the cab and the box. My partner grabbed the fire extinguisher on the console and I ran around to the back and got the fire extinguisher from the rear compartment. We doused the flames before the engine arrived. We made our report on the radio and went back to the station to restock.
We were later told that the fire extinguishers should only be used if our vehicle was on fire, and not for civilians.
So, we were supposed to sit in Fire uniforms, in a Fire vehicle, and not put out a fire.
I'd demand that in writing.
We didn't get written up or lose pay, so it was a wash.
But yes, it would have been funny to do that.
Missed the opportunity to watch them get chewed out by the fire department leadership.
Don't get me started.
I can go for hours about how messed up the Fire Dept management is.
When Fire took over EMS exactly one Fire Chief took the time to do some EMS ride alongs. The rest of the brass ignored and/or sabotaged EMS in order to get rid of the oldtimers so they could be replaced by lower paid newbies.
Fire Chiefs would have either sided with the EMS bosses, or, more likely, petitioned the city for more money to train EMS in how to use the extinguishers properly.
Could it have been some sort of liability thing? Like the nurses at my old work weren't allowed to do any sort of first aid stuff to colleagues unless they were the official attendants. It's like a not your job, you'll get sued if anything goes wrong kind of thing.
As EMTs we were expected to go into dangerous situations all the time. Nobody mentioned liability. I think they were just annoyed to have to replace the equipment.
I didn't stop to greet some customers as I walked in with a cane for the third week in a row due to nerve damage.
I wasn't on the clock, we didn't have a uniform, no name tag, nobody would even know I work there until I put my shit on after I clock in.
By that time I had made it a habit of recording every interaction with management, so I just pulled out my phone, hit the record button, and asked "so to be clear, are you officially reprimanding me for NOT doing work off the clock?" and that immediately shut him up.
Managers get awfully pensive when they have recording devices capturing them.
Depending on where you live, you might be better off not scaring your employers with a visible recording device.
Why not let the law figure out what your bosses were asking for? In the US, attorneys will take these cases for free and be paid only if you are.
Just chiming in to say all of Canada is one party consent.
I found this out when Christian Selig (the Apollo app for Reddit developer) announced he had audio showing Reddit lied to him.
I was so happy to see he had the foresight to do that.
Was reddit 100% in the wrong on that (if anybody listened to the audio? I think it was shared as a part of Christian’s lengthy post)?
Worked for a small business which did electronics repair, and which had recently picked up e-waste recycling. Our boss, the owner, was known for getting baked out of his mind and imagining things which he needed to tell his staff, and would think the next day that he had actually told that thing to his staff. Just to give you an idea of the kind of guy the owner is, we had two company-wide group texts for the 11 people on payroll. One had everyone, and the other had everyone except the owner. The owner never knew about that one, and honestly that arrangement was a necessity to keep turnover low and by extension the business from running aground.
Anyway, my coworker is talking to a customer at the counter, who is dropping off an old television to be recycled. The customers leave, and the owner walks in.
Owner: "Wait, is this a plasma? We can't take this!"
Coworker: "why not?"
Owner: "We can't do plasmas! We've never done plasmas!" sees the stack of plasma screen televisions "What the fuck?! Who accepted these?"
Me: "Dude, you've never mentioned that we can't do anything with plasmas before."
Owner: "Yeah! It was in the class on e-waste recycling."
Coworker: "You were the only one who took that because you didn't want to fly anyone else to Vegas for a four day conference."
At this point I think the owner started to realize he hadn't actually disseminated anything other than the logistical aspects of the e-waste business to the employees.
Owner: "So, what, no one knows what we actually accept for e-waste?"
Me: "I don't think so, man."
The owner looks at me with obvious anger and with that look that says he's about to blame me for something.
Owner: "So, what y'all want a fucking list or something?"
Coworker: "Yeah, that would be great, actually."
The owner turned red, looked about ready to angry-cry, and walked out. Went home and got baked. I don't think he ever actually put a list together. The e-waste thing fell through a few months later after I left because the warehouse he was renting and illegally living out of was like a quarter the size needed, and there wasn't any money left for processing equipment. He franchised a corporate brand like a year later.
Fuck you, Matt, you goddamn moron.
I like how the company-wide group text tidbit had nothing to do with the rest of the story.
Reminded me of watching the extended cut of LoTR, where some scenes were just fluff.
Yeah, I guess it reads weird. I think I intended it as a early barometer to his character, but didn't expand or lampshade it properly. Oh well. It's a lemmy comment, not a graded CW essay.
No I instantly understood the kind of guy he was from that
It definitely paints a better picture of the kind of boss he is than any examples or stories you can tell about him
I was written up for not being happy, and again for smiling too much later in the year. I'm a software test engineer.
I can imagine that writing unit tests all day long 24/5 may not make you smile enough at first and after while it can make you smile in scary way.
I'm an autist, following rules is mega easy. Boss says smile, I smile until he says to stop.
I don't see why boss would be unhappy with that 👍 (no sarcasm)
Because this makes the boss contemplate how stupid his rules are
In my company the test engineers write and perform system-level tests. Unit testing is up to the developer.
Then switch that in your mind as example that suits you.
It is a industry knowledge that software test engineers cannot achieve true joy.
This is a nice example of "I have to write an evaluation about this person but I don't know this person, I haven't spoken to this person, I've seen this person a few times while walking by. He frowns a lot"
I reported the multinational company CTO for not being able to keep his hands off me (I'm a guy btw) and a load of other employees. That report came on top of other reports of abuse, fraud, and briberies.
Mind you, this company wa so about protecting whistleblowers that I had to sign a contract about it. VPs were outraged and vowed to protect me.
I made the report, week later called into an emergency meeting with the CTO and head of HR is there too and I'm fired. I sued, won, and in that time learned that the CTO was fired the next day because, amongst things, he fired me. Even so, they didn't cancel my firing, didn't rehire me, because now I was toxic.
Never trust anyone in big companies. Never trust their contracts, never trust their words.
Yeah the fact that they didn’t reverse course shows that the toxicity ran from the top. CTO wasn’t the only bad egg. I’d bet that legal got their hands on it and figured that making it right would be admitting to doing wrong.
It sounded like there were other sexual assailants in the company, and they were worried that you would out them.
But was HR fired?
Yes but they immediately re-hired themselves
At 100k above asking price too.
No, CTO was fired
Yeah to them it doesn't matter if even they thought it was wrong you were fired. As soon as you went to lawyers you became their enemy. That's just how a lot of these scummy big corporations work.
Did you ask them if they had any gwapes
We were changing office buildings and were packing our desks for the move. They have us boxes and bags for everything. The bags were oddly large, which I commented on by saying "these bags could fit a small child". Apparently some people took offense at that, as I was later sent up to HR to explain myself.
"Well... They were bags, they were large, and a small child could probably fit in them. What part of what I said is inappropriate?"
I find that often when you make people explain why they're offended by something, suddenly they can't figure it out. This will either make them realize it's not actually an issue, or more likely this will only make them angry due to the embarrassment they now feel for not being able to articulate it.
I think I deeply respect you, stranger.
I like my workplace because I don't get in trouble for stuff like that. I was once talked to - asked if I had been snarky. I explained that I was and why they deserved it. I was basically told that I was right but it doesn't really help anything so try to avoid it in the future.
Edit: spelling
At an old job in slack I said something like "for fuck's sake, it returns a 200 OK even when there's an error" and one of the directors was like "Language, please."
So I started saying "fudge" instead of "fuck". "This deployment is fudged up. are we going to roll it back?"
They "let me go" a couple months later, but joke's on them I'm at a different job doing better work for double pay.
Thankfully I never did get formally reprimanded for cussing...
But I did stop swearing in commit summaries after multiple colleagues, over the span of months, laughed when visiting the repo for an internal tool whose latest commit, boldly displayed on top, was as I recall,
fuck thisorfuck you(and to be fair the pipeline system was being a prick, but I don't suppose that needed to be broadcasted so widely).That's the sign of really good HR, you're totally right never do it again... :)
This was when you realized that everyone around you was an idiot and you found a new job, right?
I had actually already been looking for a few weeks by that point.
My wife and I have a young Belgian Malinois, and at about a year and a half of age she started flopping down onto the floor in a very loud and obnoxious manner whenever she was frustrated or in a fit of pique. Being very bony, she makes a loud thump.
It wasn’t long after she started this that my wife remarked,
“It sounds like a body hitting the trunk of a car.”
It was all I could do to turn to her and query just how many dead bodies she had to have transported in her car’s trunk to get that intimately familiar with the sound.
Bro, I think your wife has downvoted you
Or maybe somebody else that's thrown a lot of dead bodies in a trunk 😂
Not enough for HR to step in.
Or a large one if you cut it into pieces.
That's on you dude
There was a super insecure manager a bunch of years ago. I didn't report to him, but occasionally worked alongside him.
I had been working with one of our customers for a few weeks on a feature they had requested. It was something out-of-the-box, so understandably, if you didn't know the context, it would be rather confusing.
Manager is set to run a meeting with them, and asks for my help as the technical expert. No problem. We get into the meeting, and the customer asks some technical questions. Before I can get a word in edgewise, Manager proceeds to pull the most inane shit out of his ass for a good 10 minutes--clearly knowing nothing that's going on, but not letting that stop him. After the customer is sufficiently confused, and Manager is starting to look a little panicked, he finally turns to me.
I figure I'll try to save him some face, so I start my reply with, "I'm not entirely sure, but are you asking...", repeating their question back. The customer is clearly relieved that I know what they're asking, and I provide the answers. Crisis averted! The meeting ends and I head back to my desk feeling good.
Until Manager storms up to my desk and proceeds to scream at me, "IF YOU'RE NOT ABSOLUTELY SURE ABOUT SOMETHING, DON'T ANSWER! NONE OF THIS 'I'M NOT SURE' BULLSHIT! NEXT TIME THINK ABOUT WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE FOR US!" and storms off. Nice projection, asshole.
I was new enough to not have the presence of mind to respond, so nothing came of it (though he was demoted not long after--possibly the shittiest manager I've ever known) so it all worked out in the end.
My take away from the “you have to be sure” projection part tells me he thought he knew what he was talking about
Or he clings to some "never show uncertainty" rule he learned about and ignore everything else.
Makes me thankful for my work, even though it has its share of issues.
Part of our service training includes clarifying the problem with the customer, "so I'm clear, what you're saying is..".
I was written up for being too pessimistic. It was about 8 years ago, I was a project manager at a small retail company. I was in a small meeting with my boss and the owner of the company. I was telling the owner all the possible risks associated with this new project I was given, the major one being that we didn't have enough time to complete everything by the owner imposed deadline. Calling out risks is literally one of the main responsibilities of being a project manager. Also the meeting went fine, no one got upset, it seemed everyone understood. A few days later I get called into HRs office with a write up for basically being a Debbie Downer. I was told to be more positive with my updates and stay away from any bad news. I was in total shock! A few days later I put my notice in and found a new job making twice as much. So it all worked out in the end. Thanks for the motivation Todd!
Worked for a company that hired some Harvard guy who fired the QA team for "being down on the product." He didn't see value in a team of people who did nothing but test the software and report what was wrong with it.
Damn, what a chad
Right? I wish I had that same confidence in my own code, let alone an entire team of devs'! He probably carries his balls around in a wheelbarrow to pull something like that.
*shart
hr being involved sounds like middle management butt hurt.
in most companies formal interactions, like writing people up, have to go through HR. Tha you can write people up in the US for such silly things is truly remarkable though. In my country writing someone up is only valid, if they violated the terms of their contract or disobeyed proper and legal procedures. While i guess you could write "has to be positive all the time" in the contract or company regulations it would not hold in court.
The write up is a requirement for the later firing in a lot of cases. Yes some places are at will employment anfmd you can technically just fire a person, but having a paper trail helps if they sue for wrongful termination.
That's embarrassing... for them
I'm doing a business course atm and the professor has worked in risk management for a very long time. Probably the first thing she told us about risk management is how careful you have to be and how hard it is to get people to actually talk about risks for this exact reason. It's ridiculous, you'd think people would want to cover their bases. She also mentioned this is why it's almost always outsourced, so nobody in the company has to be the bad guy.
Anybody who spends time doublechecking they're listed where they want in a group email needs to be fired. The company is not in the business of "your ego"
the person bringing the complaint is the one disrespecting everyone.
I had a boss like that once. It was the weirdest thing ever when she mentioned that as an issue.
Amen, the business is here to make money, it is not here to play safety egos up its employees. I mean unless you happen to be a pornstar, and you get off on admiration, in which case your ego is definitely the company's business.
For documenting the accurate number of hours I worked, in a teaching lab. The department head didn't believe that the lab I taught (as a grad student) needed the hours it was given. Keep in mind, I had to do everything for the lab: create the lab manual, design lab activities, get ethics approval, create lab lectures, setup and clean up the lab, and do all the marking.
Turns out, the department used that document to pay me. This was never explained to me, usually we just get paid the set amount of hours, and I was of the understanding that this was just an audit of my hours to justify what I was getting. Turns out I worked about an extra 30% of the hours set for that lab for the semester. As a result, the department couldn't fully pay me until the following year because they didn't have it in their budget to pay for that extra 30%.
I ended up getting an ear full from the department head, but he backed off when I told him I was simply doing what he asked and that I wasn't inflating the numbers to get higher pay, since I had no idea they intended to pay me based on that audit.
Perhaps it's coincidence, or perhaps it was petty revenge, but later that year at gathering of the faculty and grad students he announced that I had won a major scholarship (one that would've paid pretty well for a grad student), and had me stand up in the crowd along with the other winners. Then, immediately after the assembly, he runs up to our lab office to tell me he read the sheet wrong and I hadnt actually won the scholarship, he just read the wrong name. I spent the next few days shamefully having to explain to everyone that, no I didn't get the award.
*edit: spelling mistakes.
He knew what he was doing.
My GF is a pool cleaner and once got written up for sending a customer a picture of dead pigeons that were in their yard.
The customer called the office screaming that she sent the pictures "to be mean."
Turns out these people had pest control out on their property to "remove" all the frogs because the frogs were "keeping them awake at night", and the birds took the bait instead.
Yes, these folks were filthy rich and entitled.
What does "written up" mean?
Because our write ups are just incident reports. Like, if a shitty Karen went nuclear on a staff member, we do create a incident report. But anybody reading this will absolutely go, "fucking Karen strikes again" and it absolutely won't reflect badly on the employee.
That stuff builds up over years so that when management decides they want you out, HR has years and years of in writing marks against you to demonstrate that it's not wrongful termination.
In the last firm I was at, we got written evaluations twice a year. I never recall anybody ever getting a single positive phrase about them as a person or an employee. They were always one hundred percent negative.
I got promoted three times despite my God awful evaluations.
But when I crossed the wrong person, all those years came out and I had been an unacceptable employee for the duration of my time there.
Fortunately, my direct manager gave me the heads up so I was able to get another job before they were able to drop the hatchet. I never had to sign anything, never had to acknowledge anything, refused an exit interview, and scored an additional month's pay plus my annual profit sharing.
It was beautiful.
Usually it means a mark on your work record, pretty much like getting an F on a paper or something.
There is no such thing a work record, a company record maybe, but beyond that balls.
Just paperwork so the whales in the office feel like they do something.
It means nothing when you live in a "at will" employment jurisdiction.
In the past, (or in a union contract) employers had to prove they had "just cause" to fire you. This would be documentation of cause.
I got a verbal warning for referring to someone as a "guy" in my team's group chat.
As in "I've got a guy here who's running into issues with getting his loan processed. How should I proceed with assisting him?"
My language wasn't professional enough, and my manager pulled me aside to warn me not to do it again. I've since left the role, and my new team fully embraces casual conversation (my manager has outright exclaimed that "our software is a piece of shit" to much agreement). Things are much better now.
Back in my retail days, I had a Karen get upset because I said "how are you guys doing tonight?" to a group that was not 100% men.
Pretty sure that's just a regional thing. I guess screw you for not being born in a "y'all" region?
I'm from not-urban Georgia and I (and most other people) say "guys" a lot too
Isn't "y'all" singular and "all y'all" plural? I've heard this but have conflicting accounts of what is true.
I remember there was some juicy drama about that posted on another social media site. Apparently, there was a group of customers dining out, all of whom were women. I think most of them were lesbians or something to that effect so some of their attires weren't exactly feminine. So, when the waitress asked something like, "Is that everything for you guys?" they absolutely flipped. I don't remember how much trouble she got into for it, but oh boy, I'm forever scared that such an innocent slip of the tongue could land me in some thick shite at work.
That is (hopefully was) a think in some very strict japanese companies. Also, when people had to stamp thing, they would angle their stamps to be "bowing" to the superiors who stamped first. I hope all those traditions are dead
Being mildly autistic, I usually think I would love Japan for that 'don't bother others' culture, but I'm starting to think it might actually be a hellscape for me.
it would 100% be a hellscape, you're expected to conform entirely and deviations from what's expected socially are frowned upon significantly, it is extremely lonely if you can't be a carbon copy of everyone else. especially if you're a foreigner or have non-asian-looking parents, japanese will never really see you as "japanese", at first they treat you like a tourist but then when that wears off you're seen as below others
it's one of the most conservative cultures on the planet in a lot of ways, perhaps the most conservative in the first world (although it shows it in some weird ways like in respect to the heavy objectification/dismissal/sexualization of women in japanese culture, it doesn't look like "western" sexism a lot of the time). same kind of stuff applies to korea
from an outside perspective, and a tourist's perspective, japan and korea seem like they'd be amazing places to be, beautiful and a lot of fun stuff. but for most people it's just depressing, even for the people living there – great hint as to why the suicide rate is so high, you get practically no support and everything is incredibly superficial
so yeah i would say a pretty awful environment to be in if you're neurodivergent/have a disability in any way, shape, or form, or have any differences that would make you stand out (even so little as being racially different is enough to be ostracized). also the economy is pretty stagnant if you care about that
some people have different experiences, a lot of people love japan, but it's not for a majority of people. but as with anything, if you seriously want to move somewhere you should at least do your research yourself and take a lot of visits beforehand
if you want a "don't bother others" culture you might like finland, it's pretty much like that – i mean they also have an extremely high rate of depression but the culture isn't extremely oppressive like japanese culture is
another suggestion could be eastern europe
agreed. life in these countries is nasty, brutish and long. lots of convenience and cool culture, but completely negated by a horrendous work ethic, which consumes your entire life. some people are into that, but most people i know do not think of that as a good way to live.
Had a friend/roommate who's Korean. I asked him if he had plans to go back after school in Canada (his dad's and engineer, and so is he). He laughed and told me no, definitely not
Sometimes I start conversations with people completely at random and they think I'm flirting with them. Where can I go where people can just be friendly without sex?
As much as I shit on Iowa/the Midwest USA, they are a wonderful place for this
Source: I am stuck in Iowa
Ohio here. Still no good. Everyone flirts with me.
Wasn't Finland the happiest country on planet?
"Finland happiest country on earth" factoid actualy just statistical error. average Finn is happy 0 times per year. Happys Antti, who lives in cave & is happy over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
Imagine that half of them are less happy than that. This is because Finns are happy entire year.How about Sweden? I've heard people usually try their hardest to avoid any unnecessary social contact
They always seem super cordial in Anna Cramling videos!
Some people do better here, some worse. For me, there are some shops I even have a hard time with because they have the music playing plus various different jingles from little advertising things going in different keys, timings, etc. and all of it seemingly at 3 billion dB. I have to wear headphones just to make it through shopping. If you're sensitive to lights as well, you're going to have a bad time.
I also think the whole "don't bother others" thing can be a bit overstated compared to reality.
Oh yeah, I live in my nose cancelling earbuds.
What’s wrong with your nose?
I'm trying to strengthen my other senses.
You might like Germany then
The funniest thing is that you can also rotate the stamp slightly counterclockwise to indicate "I'm approving this proposal because it would be inconcievable to dissent from the group's thoughts, but I think you're all making a mistake by approving it" - and how much you rotate the stamp counterclockwise indicates how stupid you think the proposal is.
Whoa. Japanese magic. Straight from anime.
I disagree so much I've rotated 360 degrees.
I was born with glass bones and paper skin yet somehow I can still withstand more damage than a middle manager's ego.
Used to work with an awesome chick named Velma. Boss pronounced it Thelma for three years. She finally started calling him Craig instead of Greg. Dude quit a year later after everyone else picked it up.
He should have started calling her LaurenI didn't see as fragile ego as his.He spelled it that way too. Unless being an asshole causes a speech impediment I don't think that was the case .
I put an attorney's name in the "assistant" field of a work order. That bitch called the manager to say she worked too hard to become a lawyer for me to call her a secretary, lmao
oof, the insecurities
That’s when you point out that you never called them that but are happy to allow them to self identify as such if they like.
Weirdest would be that the CEO of the company I worked at then had one single runin with me in my entire tenure at that company and found that my facial expression wasn't to his liking.
I'm autistic and by that alone have little facial expression, add the meds I take for anxiety and depression and it results in that I have no facial expression at all.
So it pretty much came down to him not liking my resting face.
Tried to fire me for no reason, couldn't, because I'm in a protected class.
Managed to do so anyway by bullying me to no end until I accepted being fired.
Worst reason to be fired would be that I worked 48 hours straight on a weekend to implement vast network and server overhauls to then be fired for not being at work on monday morning.
I had the full clear from my boss and his boss and was not supposed to come in on monday unless something went bad with the upgrade (it didn't).
Simply not being there when my bosses boss wanted me to be there was all it took.
Both of those sound very illegal and you should probably have spoken to a lawyer. I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to stay at those jobs anyway but you could’ve at least gotten a nice payout.
In the first case, I accepted being fired because it was attached to being paid out for 6 months and as you expected, I wasn't looking to stay anyway. I had another job lined up already as I started to look for one right after he tried to fire me the first time, which HR halted as it was an obvious violation of my nations version of the peoples with disabilities act. I made bank of that idiot.
The second one, I wasn't actually fired because of the obvious legal ramifications. And contrary to the first situations boss, the one there didn't find this inability to fire me enough of a personal insult to make it his mission of getting rid of me.
Never do this. Always go home. Max out your overtime and go home. You will never be fired for not working 48 hours (unless you're in the military or on a train or something).
If they want you to do that, they don't have anyone else to take your place. Do the job at a normal pace and don't let them rush you.
I decided to do it that way. Nobody pressured me, nobody asked me to do it.
For me it was the most logical way to get the job done without interruptions to my network and systems in the least amount of time.
If I had spread it out, I would literally have to have done twice the work taking more than twice the time working multiple weekends.
Fuck that.
You wouldn't have had to do anything but work normal hours. Ask for the resources to do your job, more people, etc. If you don't get it, then the work doesn't get done. Literally go home. You are hired to work a certain amount of time, not to do the impossible.
Lol, sure thing boss.
I rarely ever let an employer tell me how to do my job when I worked for companies directly, so sorry if I'm not going to accept some internet rando telling me how to do my job now, 15 years after starting to exclusively doing contract work.
It's because I delivered results in difficult and impossible scenarios, I've been able to work for myself for the past 15 years, doing contract work explicitly because I can do the difficult and impossible, often alone. I wouldn't have been able to get to that if I didn't build a reputation as being capable of doing that.
This has allowed me to these days only work about 3-6 months out of the year and dedicate my time to my wife and personal projects the rest of the year.
I actually had a 2 year period where I did what you suggest and did the 9to5 thing doing just what the job required and that's that.
It dumped me into a black hole of boredom and depression.
I found out I work best by going balls to the walls for predetermined periods of time and then going into full chill mode doing either nothing or personal projects once done.
Not everyone is best served with the same work (or any other facet of life) cadence.
You had boredom and depression from... working less? And asking for resources? Ok man, whatever.
Hrm, weird that that is the take away from what I said when I made it rather clear I work less now than I ever did before.
I had boredom and depression from having to be at work while not being able to do anything at any sort of pace I wanted.
If I have to be at work, I rather be busy, because being at work is what's horrible for me.
So I eventually fixed that by not having to be at work for anything but the time required to do the work.
At home, I can be idle by watching a 200 episode show in the span of a few weeks without any feelings of boredom or depression.
Sitting around at work doing barely anything of interest, yeah, that 100% causes boredom and depression.
I'm with you, friend. If I'm working, I prefer to just work until it's done or I feel I need a break. For me, starting a job, it takes a couple hours to define the problem, a couple to investigate and prioritise tasks, then to start looking into solutions, and suddenly it's time to stop. Then there's all the time commuting, taking breaks, etc.
I prefer to just get in, get in the zone, knock out a slab of work and get a job done. It takes a few extra hours on a work day, so be it, it was going to be a work day anyway. By doing that, it gives me a day off? Yes please.
Different strokes
The thing is that it doesn't matter that there are interruptions in the network.
It isn't your job to make sure there aren't.
If you are unable to get the upgrade done in the normal 8 or so hours a day (during the weekend) because there is too much work, that means management should have put more people on the project. If something goes wrong, it isn't your fault, it is theirs.
Don't break your back bending over for a company, that wouldn't do the same for you.
That was not the reason they fired you, not being there on Monday morning, that was the excuse.
As you said the CEO wanted to fire you, so his chain of command was looking for any excuse to make it happen. You could have been there Monday morning and they would have found something else.
Sorry you went through that
I was working in the military. An office job at HQ so we had to use our parade uniforms. I was working nights one week and didn't have any clean black socks, I used white.
Around 8 in the morning I was walking up the stairs to leave and passed the Naval Admiral, who promptly chewed me put for wearing white socks and dress shoes.
Kind of surprised that you see that as weird. I served myself and would never dream of wearing the uniform improperly. Especially around stars and bars. HQs got nothing better to do than dress and appearance.
Well it was either that or no socks. But I agree that I should never have bought white socks on the first place.
It's military, it's part of the drill.
Lol, this was expected, brotherman
I have never understood the need for black socks when wearing dress shoes. Especially since the majority of sane people definitely aren't gonna look directly at your feet and complain about white socks. If it were different colors or patterns then I could see it, but otherwise I just don't get it at all.
Dude, I've never been in the military and even I know not to wear white socks with dress shoes.
I guess just the fact that there are mails with six people in cc is an indication for how bad the order of command is.
Also how little they do. Only those with free time take that time to check the order.
You know it's a boomer who moves their mouse cursor under the text they're a reading.
Those boomers learned a lesson that everyone else has still to learn: it’s annoying AF to miss half the point of an email. 80% of everyone I email as an attorney misses key information. I’ve learned to follow up every email with a phone call to go over the email because of this fact. The folks who miss the least are… THE BOOMERS
Maybe you just write like a boomer?
Based, bruh.
Wait, so you call after every email to ask for more information?
Do you now know there is a reply button?
Shiiit, You are probably hated in the entire company.
This is one of two types of ironic, and I don't know which.
Ah, you're one of those who like the sound of their own voice.
No. But I’m one who thoroughly enjoys silently saying, “I told you so, repeatedly, and provably,” when shit goes sideways.
Eh, in project work 6 cc'd keep informed stakeholders to one needs this for their component of the work is pretty standard. Especially if it's a lots of moving parts project and some of the stakeholders are 2 for 1s like a delivery lead and SBA.
My petty ass would be putting them in reverse-seniority order from then on out of spite. That would be the absolute funniest thing ever to be fired for.
It's the order of importance sir! First one on the list actually gets work done!
If someone has time to scrutinize the email headers like that I can't imagine they're getting very much work done.
I introduced myself to a new client (new job) and the boss didn't like that the client joked to the boss that he better watch out for his job because I sounded like a better [what we did] than he did. Which I was. Which was why he hired me. But a month later I was working somewhere else.
I’d say you did well in the end.
Said the actress to the vicar
I was interviewing for a job as a movie theater manager.
In my neck of the woods there's a limited number of movie theaters, and everyone knows everyone else. So I was interviewing for the job when I'm told
"we heard through the grapevine that after you were fired from your last job you broke into the office and did something unspeakable on the carpet."
I still ended up getting the job.
Had you?
I'm not OP but I still think about a series of events at my first job.
Would have been like 25 years ago, 3rd year plumbing apprentice and I was out on my own. Next job was for a real estate, the house was empty so I had to pick up the keys and then headed to the house, I was busting for a shit and the empty house was calling me. It was a blocked drain so I pulled up fast, cleared the drain before I shit myself and then went to open the back door.. and the key didn't fit, no problem I think as I heard around to the front.. key still didn't work. Fuck I'm in trouble here, there is no time to get to another toilet. I look around and see the access door into the crawlspace under the house which was pretty high, so I form a plan, use an empty bag to line a bucket and grab toilet paper out of the glovebox and head under with my homemade chamber pot. Do the business, tie the bag up and head to the bin to hide it. Once I open the lid I see the bin is completely empty.. I can't put it in there now so I put it in one of the big tool boxes on the back of the truck.
I ended up getting fired the next day, back then I partied pretty hard and was constantly late etc so definitely don't blame the boss. But the poop bag was never retrieved from the tool box. So at some point either the boss clearing it out or the next guy given that truck would have found a bag, opened it and see a big fat log.
🤣🤣🤣
Oh, the adventures we had in our youth, no?
This is why I detest towns.
I mean, this was when I was living in a suburb of Cleveland OH. it's not really a town thing so much as it's an industry thing. I spent 20 years running movie theaters. I worked for all the chains, both national and local. Between managers and projectionists, everyone knew everyone else.
Where is that?
Cleveland, Ohio
Which is where exactly?
I told the CEO that not having a disaster recovery plan was a bad idea. He did not like that. Got written up the next morning. They wouldn't even tell me exactly why I was being written up. Only that I had "not done what I was supposed to" which was apparently to sit there in silence.
Got fired from that job a few years later. My bosses boss called me at home because he didn't have the decency to do it to my face. In that moment I panicked a little but by the next day it was like a weight had been lifted. That place was a complete shit show.
So did they ever need that disaster recovery plan that didn’t exist?
…Imagine the schadenfreude if the answer was “yes”.
I got in trouble for telling a senior manager that he was wrong on a technical issue. He sought expert advice on a control system but when the answer came back it didn't fit his conception of reality and he didn't want to hear it.
Turns out being good at management and being good at solving technical problems are skill sets that very rarely coincide in one person.
The Peter principle in effect
ime it usually goes the other way, someone is such a great engineer that they end up in a leadership position that they absolutely lack the soft skills for and either end up making everyone on the team resent them or burning themselves out by trying to take on work they're having trouble delegating
And then the organization doesn't bother to train them how to be a better manager.
I got in trouble for eating chips too loudly. One of my coworkers complained to management and they had my supervisor lecture me about respecting boundaries in the workplace. The thing is that the supervisor thought it was stupid too but he still had to do it.
Meh, I can understand it to an extent. Depends on the severity.
Someone at my workplace, rather than having a meal in their break, just keep crunching raw carrots at their desk for hours on end. I don't think I'd complain to management if I was sitting close, but I'd sure as hell ask to be moved somewhere far, far away from the carrot nutcase.
Bugs Bunny lookin ass
Dont eat chips at work if you're seated next to other employees, especially if you're still at your desk and they are trying to work. Thats gronk behaviour. Go eat in the lunchroom.
Why dont we take our work to the lunchroom instead
Guess we found the coworker.
Management is just glorified babysitting.
Perhaps I'm acting boomerish but I can't believe some of the shit that people get angry about at work.
Eating chips too loudly, or your on the phone too much, your cologne/perfume bother me, the windows are too dirty...
Like, it's fucking work. It's kinda supposed to be miserable
I mean I'm probably gonna get down voted for this but........ The chips thing I can understand to a certain degree. My ex loves crunchy foods. She would bite into them with her mouth open so that it made the loudest noise possible because it was satisfying for her. In a quiet setting that noise can be extremely distracting.
The perfume thing... Some scents give me an outright headache if I'm exposed to them for too long. I haven't experienced it with perfume yet, but I have with some air freshener scents. So in that regard I get it.
Would I go to my boss about it? Nah. I'd explain my position to the individual and ask that they chew with their mouth closed or maybe use one less squirt of perfume, but I wouldn't report them over it. That's just sad.
You are being boomerish, at least about the cologne/perfume thing.
I have asthma, and it reacts to scents like perfumes and cologne especially when used heavily.
I'm not there to work and struggle to breath due to some dumbfuck that doesn't want to wash their clothes.
My mom has the same thing, I hear ya here.
Managment was hired so you can be mad at it insead of company owner.
No u.
The perfume / cologne thing - I'm not like, super sensitive but there's a couple of brands out there that make me feel like my lungs are gonna collapse if I keep breathing them. Just some kind of chemical in there or something. It's literally physically distressing, especially if I'm already feeling headachy or a bit tired.
And sometimes it's not that, it's just the smell is so thick I can taste it from feet away. I just don't want my mouth tasting like whatever it is they're wearing.
Tbf I get the perfume cologne thing to a point.
If people wear it like it's meant to be worn it ain't bad, but people who douse themselves in it so you can tell they were in the room ten minutes after they left, that's too much.
We had a person who was the guy who complained about people's scent but he reeked like bo. Like awful. That bugged me more than people's cologne.
I'm in this situation all the time. Simple solution if you're worried about it: alphabetize them by first name. It's fair and if people actually care about crap like this, they can fuck off in general. At least if you're consistent with that, they can never complain. It's insane to me that it's a thing, but people are fragile and it matters a lot to some of them
I really hope that the people I'm sending emails to take time to read the message and respond instead of looking at the order they are copied
I only look to see if I need to respond (to:) or if it's something I need to be aware of (cc:) I don't give a fuck if I'm the last on the list or whatever
Yeah, if I'm replying to an existing thread, it's whatever order Outlook defaulted to. If I'm originating an email, alphabetical. Though I do it by last name (then first in the case of a tie).
I purposefully arrange addresses so that its obvious they aren't in any particular order.
It never occurred to me in all my years of office jobs that people might look at the order of CCs. That's incredibly petty.
The real life hack would be to update your resume if you work with anyone senior to you who may give a slight shit about this and publicly shaming them if they tell you to do it.
I always go alphabetically by surname, if i think the recipients care about the order. Still a hassle, but at least i don't have to decide who has a higher seniority.
"Huh, that's not the order I typed them, Outlook must have re ordered them when I sent it".
Feed them bullshit.
My favourite strategy is just to act as if you have no idea who the CTO is. Really put some off their stride.
So where I work we just merged with a larger company. People throw around names all the time and I have no idea who any of them are. I don't even know the CEOs name. Also I don't care. They don't know my name either
I had a really insecure young manager who was almost half my age. Guy was a chickenshit. One day, while he was out, we reorganized our desks so that we'd not have our backs to the hallway. Instead, we turned our desks 180 degrees so that our backs were to the wall. He came around and said "well, this layout is not in accordance with the open office rules". I paused for a second, looked at him and replied "Oh really? No shit! How cute..." And proceeded to ignore him solemnly.
He didn't do shit. Was eventually let go for complete incompetence and negative reviews from every single one of his employees.
But corporate synergy!
lol. Ok boss, please list for us the design framework we should follow.
I was taken to task aa a hostess in 1989 for saying ," enjoy your lunch" rather than "gentlemen enjoy your lunch"
Was it France?
This made me laugh really hard and not know why. Congrat
I didn't give maximum effort according to my pa, when an outside contractor who was giving kickbacks to my supervisor, tried to sell our company a circa 2000 used phone system.
You work for your dad?
Died 38 yrs ago, so you probably couldn't have given a more wrong answer.
I got in trouble at work because I sent an email to my manager about some new servers that were being installed, but didn't appear we had access to the management console. I let her know the entire team will need access so we could properly support the machines. I was pulled into a conversation... How dare I presume my direct manager who only managed my team, have any idea what we do!
(Lost all respect for her that exact moment)
Ugh, I hate that this is something I think about every time I send an email.
If cringe means I'm embarrassed for someone else, what's the word for being pissed off for someone else? I'm that.
Empathy?
That's more like the category of thing.
I've got two words: vicarious anger.
I do not see a single word for it, somebody alert the Germans.
Fremdwut
Either German doesn't have a single word for it, which I find unlikely, or Google translate doesn't know the word for it
Just use Bcc instead
I like to sometimes purposely flip the order so it's ordered as least senior 1st just to fuck with people and see if anyone calls me out on it.
Wait you mean people actually pay attention to the order?
People get cc'd into emails depending on the order I remember they exist.
Yeah same
This has never been an unstruction from a superior, but I just realized instinctively do go by superiority. Like, I've never gotten in trouble or known someone to get in trouble over it, but just did it that way so as not to offend without realizing people might actually be offended otherwise.
Weird.
Similar to this, but I put people lower in order than their seniority if they've pissed me off.
You're joking but everytime I send an email I have to check seniority and make assessment based on ego
This is so weird to me...I never knew this was even a thing, and I've been in a corporate environment for several years now
I've had both kinds of managers. Now I'm high up enough that I don't really have to deal with it because I can give as good as I get in that regard.
At no point have I ever paid any attention to where my name comes in an email. I'm pretty sure it's in alphabetical order and given my last name is towards the end of the alphabet I'm never usually even on the list of names displayed by Outlook.
Who cares?
I got in hot water for mentioning during a meeting that requiring us to schedule our sick days is how companies get around ADA rules.
Wait there are companies that require you to schedule your sick days? What on earth ...
Crapitalism!
My mind translated CCd as crowd-controlled and now I can't get that thought out of my head. :-D
Well you do want to get the highest level mobs off your healers first so
Other than the douche bag who reamed you out, the rest of the managers would probably rather you left them off of that email. Sooo many bullshit emails that managers would love to not receive.
If someone has time to check and see if their listed in the "correct" order in the cc line then they're not doing their job. Ain't nobody (whose actually doing work) got time for that.
I always put them in reverse order out of spite.
That could still be considered in order of seniority, id shuffle it
Add like the janitor or custodian to the front or back, just to mess with them
You HEATHEN! How DARE you not CC those people in order of seniority! /s
Seniority??? Do they mean age?
Seniority means how long they've worked there and/or how far up the organizational heiraechy they are.
I got a verbal warning for farting.
I've got a few from being in the military, but a couple off-hand are:
I got in trouble for going to lunch at the normal time, and missing a particular event (hot refuel of an aircraft, so fueling without shutting down), which unbeknownst to me was written in a kind of code on the flight schedule, and was told I should have checked with the watch Captain before going to lunch. So after that I checked in with the watch Captain at the beginning of the day to see if there were any scheduled events during lunch, or if it was at the normal time. A couple weeks later, another watch Captain absolutely reams me out, saying all I care about is lunch, and every time I'm about to say something he keeps saying "there's nothing you can say, you have nothing to say, just listen." So I kept my mouth shut and just stared at him until he finished (I worked at Blockbuster, I know how to get yelled at by someone with a blank look on my face). Then I said, "can I say something now?" And he said "FINE. What do you have to say?!" "Dan told me to do that. I missed a hot gas, and he told me to check with the watch captain." "Oh... well, he's the one who brought it up to me today, so you should probably work that out with him." No apology, no oops, just go talk to the guy who can't remember what he's ordered people to do.
Another was when we received Tesla rolling Batteries (2 ft high heavy batteries for aircraft), and they came in boxes with spray in foam on the inside (that formed around the battery when it was placed in). It was significantly more foam than box, and the foam was clearly not recyclable. So we threw the whole boxes in the dumpster after we unloaded the Teslas. The civilian contractor who was in charge of the aviation supply office came bursting in and lost his goddamn mind. and I was like, "We don't work for you? You can take it up with my chief if you want." And then our chief, who didn't feel like dealing with that mess, had us peeling foam out of the boxes (tearing the boxes up in the process) in 95 degree weather out by the dumpster for over an hour, all to put about 45% of three boxes in the recyclin bin. I had been in for significantly more time than the others, and told them that my 8 years in the military so far, that was the dumbest thing I have had to do, so it only got better from there for them.
Hey, royal etiquette is important!
...Hee hee :P
Thanks, Michael Jackson
Since you're the only person bothering to say anything, can you explain why I'm being downvoted? I have no idea what Michael Jackson has to do with any of this and feel like I accidentally stepped on a meme or something.
Maybe the sarcasm didn't get through 🤔 but I'm also interested in why Michael Jackson
It's the "hee, hee" I am pretty sure. I also automatically read it in a MJ singing voice.
I have never heard anyone being scolded for that but then again this is common sense from where i come from so everyone sorts recipients by importance. Edit: I don't get what is so outrageous e.g. this order boss > colleagues > intern
I am pretty sure that it doesn't make any difference so why is that common sense?
It's just professional respect. Some also call it etiquette.
There are even courses of proper communication that teach that. It's those small things that makes your communication better. So it makes sense.
You could say that not greeting your boss also make no change as it's not needed for work. But to me it seems common sense to greet people i know when i meet them.
Others would call it pettiness
People can be rude in many ways that is true
It's called respect. i guess, It used to be common thing. Some cultures have it even in their languages like Japanese "sempai"
edit : like this boss > colleagues > intern
The down votes aren't from people who don't believe in respect it's from the people who believe it should be boss = colleagues = intern until they prove they deserve otherwise.
Respect is earned not given.
Also seems like people mix race or whatever with professional achievements.
First you prove you can built company or contribute then i will respect you on professional level . Saying that i must respect someone for achievements they don't have, when they just came to company to learn and take time of others on the same level as respecting someone who most likely built the company makes no sense.
Again we are not talking about being rude to newcomers. I'll still hold their door, greet them, have coffee break with them but you can't seriosly except me to act as if their achievement are what they are not.
If they think I don't respect them because they aren't at the front of the CC list, then that is on them.
If they wanted that, they should have put it on the contract. But none of them would do that because then their pettiness is written down.
That is not what i said.
I said it's respectful to do that but have never seen anyone get scolded for it.
Well I don't think the poster is Japanese so it's not really a consideration.
Nationality is beside the point of the post.
Common sense? Certainly not. I never do that. I just add people as they come to my mind. Sometimes I order by how important the mail might be for them (which is roughly the same thing, usually). If I had to work in an environment where people are so self-absorbed that they determine their worth from the order of the names in the carbon copy recipients list of an email, I'd look for another place to work in.
So if you send email to the owner of the company and to your colleagues on same level you put boss at last spot if they come to your mind as last?
BTw read what i wrote, again. There is no mention of it being mandatory in my post . It's similar thing to as when we used to hold door to next person so they don't get smashed by it. edit> I don't get what's so enraging on voluntarily ordering recipient in the mail boss > colleagues > intern.
I would. I certainly wouldn't inspect the order of the email recipients to see if I was given the right amount of "respect". I don't mind at all if someone wants to order the recipients, go ahead. But if someone gets angry at me for not ordering them, they can go get bent. I have better things to do with my time.
You are twisting what i said. Feel free to read it again.
Nothing twisted here.
Putting the people in an arbitrary order in a CC mail is not a sign of disrespect. The people who think it is can get bent.
You are twisting my point 180° . I said it's respectful to do that as sender. You talk about inspecting it as recipient and being rude back at a sender.
Again you change what i said here. You make that i said it's disrespectful not to do that and it should be enforced . I say it's voluntarily and that it is respectful to do that. Also there are more then two states to be in aside from disrespectful vs respectful.
They're saying that as a recipient, the order of names wouldn't matter to them, so they see no point in doing it as a sender.
You see it as a sign of respect, that's fine. Go ahead and order names how you choose. I do not consider it a lack of respect if I don't order them, so I don't.
Because it is inane bullshit. You receive the email no matter where on the array your fucking name is. It is complete and utter sociopathy to enforce hierarchical chest-thumping on it. Only people who's work is so without value that they need to source it from pissing on others "below" them would care about it.
Where are you getting the forcing part all the time? read damn post top down before you react to what is not written there. Otherwise you will seem like the sociopath enforcing your standards upon others.
You call it "common sense" when it is nothing but nepotism bullshit.
Exactly. That's how I always did it and will keep doing it. Anything else sounds absolutely weird to me.
There kind of is. Because you make it sound like it's not a written rule per se but still very much a social convention that people kind of expect you to follow.
So this is where it gets really weird. What is that even supposed to mean? How is the position in the company relevant to holding doors? If there's an intern behind me, I hold his door open. If it's the boss I do the same. Just like I'd expect both of them to do the same for me and each other. What is your list even supposed to mean? You don't hold doors for interns? Your boss doesn't do it for you? What kind of sociopathic hellhole of a system do you work in? Do you participate in that?
I once worked in a company where my supervisor demanded I'd prepare coffee for him and completely lost it when I wanted to discuss how exactly that was part of my job as a researcher. His point was that his boss had always expected his orders to be followed, no questions asked, and he'd expect the same thing from me. Needless to say I left that fucker as soon as I had another contract available (and never prepared his fucking coffee). This kind of hierarchical thinking may be appropriate for the army but certainly not for an ordinary company.
Asian countries, for instance, have very strict hierarchies. Japan (do a quick search on Japanese work environments for more fun - I especially 'love' the one about women being forced to wear high heels at work, not sure if it was repealed yet) and India (the caste system, 'nuff said) come to mind. I can totally see that sort of shite happening around there. Hell, it might even be considered an honor to serve coffee to your boss there.
Some European countries (mostly those that were under russian influence, but there may be some in the west that I'm not aware of) also suffer from this sort of hierarchical thinking.
No there's nothing mandatory and i said i have never seen anyone get scolded for not doing it. It's just common sense , it;'s being thought in communication courses etc just like when picking up phone you first say greetings, say company name, then your name. Because caller usually knows company and greetings but is having hard time catching your name if it;s first thing to they get "shot" at them upon you answering the phone call.
Last thing is typo from smartphone,, holding door and order of recipient in email doesn't belong to the same sentence. .
It's bewildering to me how you don't see the contradiction here. If you say it's common sense then it's so ingrained into your work culture that it might not be mandatory but still very well part of the unwritten laws governing how you work together. Not being scolded for not following it does not mean that people will not talk about it behind your back. These rules are the foundation of mobbing and bullying. None of that is an official rule but it can very well be considered mandatory if you say it's common sense to follow it.
I was never taught any of this and I also don't do that. Company name first? Never did that and never had anybody mention to me that I should change my behaviour in that regard.
Everything you say sounds weird as fuck to me. Would you mind telling me what country you're from?
Sure, why not? I think the disconnect is the people who think it is silly don't attach any importance to the order. So asking, "Would you put the most important person last?" is a non-starter as the thinking is that the CC field ends up as a list is an artifact of how email works and isn't imbued with a sense of ordering or ranking of importance. The ordering of the list could be a indicative of who came to mind first, how your email contacts are ordered, or even how a policy is written but not indicative of who you think is most important or senior.
So you say we should order the list but only the wrong way to do it is to order it according to the achievements or importance of the recipient?
The point is that order doesn’t matter. The TO is the main persons who need to see it and the CC is for anyone who needs to be aware.
No. I'm saying if someone doesn't think the order matters or signifies anything of importance then there is no wrong way to do it, there is no right way to do it, there are just ways to do it (of which I mentioned a couple)... because the order doesn't matter.
Yes
Before this thread I’ve never heard of this concept. I have been working in tech for 30 years and was using email before 90% of the planet. No, this is not normal.
Wrong. Boss ALWAYS goes in the “To” field regardless of who the message is addressed to. You don’t want them to receive a copy of the email rather than the original! /s
I know, boss. My bad. Will be careful next time. /s