Workplace Gripes – Vent Here! ! (or just share workplace stories)

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
Are coworkers or office politics driving you nuts? Any good stories? Talk to me people! (And feel free to offer your thoughts on the failures of management and business development. I’ve got lots of questions about those.)


I’ll start with two burning questions I’ve had for a couple years now –


1. Why do companies expand their staff on the idea that they MIGHT get some new contracts? This seems to go against common sense to me. I would think you would keep a small staff until you were awarded the contracts, then move quickly to hire people after the fact. Anyone else experience this in their companies?

Our company keeps adding to its staff when we already have more than enough workers to do the job. Three of my friends have confided in me that they often have nothing to do. Like absolutely NOTHING to do and nothing to put on their timesheets. They are a little ticked about the new hires. Any business planners or bosses out there want to try to explain this strategy?


2. Changing topics, what’s the point of the performance review (or staff appraisals)? A lawyer friend of mine once told me that they can fire you at any time they want, and they don’t need to justify cause. He said that having a history of good performance reviews is pretty meaningless in the end. Does anyone else find the process a total waste of time?

[/ QUOTE ]

Katie, speaking as someone involved in hiring and firing issues a lot, I'd say that documenting cause even under "at will" employment arrangements is very important. You have no idea how common it is to get sued these days. Especially, unfortunately, by women claiming sexual harassment or minorities claiming discrimination. The degree to which it happens probably would sound pretty bizarre to people who didn't have to deal with it or with the threat of it.

Critically to the whole thing is that you do not have to have a good case at all. This is handled through insurance companies, who generally find it quicker and easier to just pay off claims. A quick 10 or 20 thousand paid to contain liability quickly is often much better to them than having open-ended liability that will only get resolved god-knows-when. After all, they can just raise your rates to compensate for it. As the business owner, there's not a lot you can do about it.

A business owner without, for whatever reason, insurance coverage in effect during the time of the claimed incident faces losing his whole business, sometimes a lifetime's worth of effort -- AND still having to pay his attorneys anyway.

Your lawyer friend told you what's pretty meaningless to him, because he doesn't see himself as the huge cost burden he is. That is, if he expends any significant number of hours but wins, in his mind, it's a win for the client. So it's close to a non-issue. For him. But he didn't really bear the risk, and he isn't paying his own bill, either.

For people bearing the risk and paying the bills, and reporting to their superiors about how they handled both and why this problem ever even arose, it's valuable to have things documented so the process never gets as far as a lawyer in the first place.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]
This thread came at the perfect time. My wife is tired of listening to me complain about the same thing all the time.

Some background: I'm a programmer in a market research company. When we do surveys, "open-end" responses (ie, What do you like about the product) have to be "coded" so that we can report results. Programming sets surveys up, and produces the final results. Coding happens in between those two processes. We have project coordinators, that work with all operations departments to manage deadlines, coordinate efforts, etc.

Now, the gripe: Every day, for the past two weeks I've gotten a phone call from one or both of the same two project coordinators asking me about a process around coding and internet surveys. It's a simple question, with a simple answer, and the process has been in place for two years. Why are we paying these people so much money to coordinate things when they can't even remember a simple, basic process that happens on EVERY project?

It's a big problem around here... programming is involved in pretty much every stage of projects. So, we get people asking us abotu every stage of a project, even if it has nothing to do with our job. Our project directors (the actual market researchers) require graduate degrees to even get an interview. Many of them have phd's, and 20+ years experience. Their bonuses are bigger than my annual salary. And they call me to ask how to do their job.

It's incredibly frustrating, because after they waste hours of my time doing their job, they complain that I'm late doing mine.

Which brings up giant bitch #2: If there's delays in any stage of a project outside of programming, they get extensions, etc. Programming time lines are set in stone. If I'm supposed to have a survey ready for interviewing on Monday, and I receive it 3 days late - too bad. It has to happen on Monday. I'm constantly working overtime to make up for other departments being late. And they are never held responsible - it always comes down on us.

[/ QUOTE ]

Awesome post. I've been in this situation many times.

What makes it even worse is when you get some sly douchebag who KNOWS you will take over some of his work, so even goes out soliciting more work for "him" to do, so he can take all the credit and just pass it on to you. Worse yet, if it's just too much, he'll try to blame that on your not doing the work rather than him both overscheduling himself and you -- and then copping out on his own part to boot.

The only way I've found to deal with this kind of thing is to document what you're doing in memos and ask others what to do so that you can stick to a project and get it done. Especially useful when it's someone higher up than the douchebag and the douchebag is trying to horn in on time you needed to spend on the higher-up's project. Then the higher-up realizes he has to protect his ability to get his own projects done, and sets people straight. The "it's out of my hands" response as to what you can do, and the "The Boss" response when asked "Who authorized you to do that" can be delightful and a sorely needed comeuppance to weasels trying to throw their weight around and curry unearned favor.

[Blarg]

[ QUOTE ]

Obviously, the key to any sort of coordination position is a basic understanding of the process and life cycle of a project. I know that some of them can't be bothered to learn it, because they can just ask someone else.

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely dealt with this too. I wrote up the necessary procedures briefly(no, seriously!), distributed them, and sent a copy to higher-ups not just so everyone would know what to do, but so it was documented that I did everything I could to make the workflow go more smoothly and make clear both the minimal levels of cooperation I was asking for and how ridiculously petty it was not to get it.

BTW, I'm pretty sure a lot of this kind of thing is just passive-aggressive on their part. Some people are just lazy, but others want to take every opportunity they can to reaffirm their status, even by not doing ridiculously simple and clear things. At least, reaffirm it in their own minds. It's the very fact that it IS so easy to just do it themselves that makes them feel extra powerful for forcing you to do it for them.

[gusmahler]

[ QUOTE ]
1. Why do companies expand their staff on the idea that they MIGHT get some new contracts? This seems to go against common sense to me. I would think you would keep a small staff until you were awarded the contracts, then move quickly to hire people after the fact. Anyone else experience this in their companies?


[/ QUOTE ]

It depends on the type of business. I'm an attorney, so can only speak of the legal field. But in the legal field there are certain cases that you can only get if the firm is a certain size. E.g., let's say a big, multi-million dollar law suit is filed, and the defendant thinks they'll need a team of at least 8+ attorneys working on a case. That client will reject a 5 person firm. So you have to expand your 5 person firm to 8 people in order to get those types of cases.

Since you can't just hire people off the street to become lawyers, you sometimes need to have more lawyers than you need at the moment, in order to get the cases you want--to show the potential clients that you have the capability to handle the case.

[Blarg]

Quite true. And sometimes the case gets thrown out, the firm is out a ton of money, and a bunch of new hires are out on their asses. Rough stuff.

[katyseagull]

[ QUOTE ]

It depends on the type of business. I'm an attorney, so can only speak of the legal field. But in the legal field there are certain cases that you can only get if the firm is a certain size. E.g., let's say a big, multi-million dollar law suit is filed, and the defendant thinks they'll need a team of at least 8+ attorneys working on a case. That client will reject a 5 person firm. So you have to expand your 5 person firm to 8 people in order to get those types of cases.

Since you can't just hire people off the street to become lawyers, you sometimes need to have more lawyers than you need at the moment, in order to get the cases you want--to show the potential clients that you have the capability to handle the case.

[/ QUOTE ]


Ok, well this had actually crossed my mind. My company has expressed a lot of interest in getting government contracts. You may be onto something here. But isn't it unethical to hire unsuspecting people just to puff up a firm? It seems pretty crappy to a bunch of us.

Another thing - one of my friends at work told me that our boss has yearly "goals" just like the rest of us technicians. One of her goals is to grow her division. But doesn't common sense tell you not to grow your division if there's no work coming in? Why would a department boss focus so much on meeting her goals when they are just so silly? I guess your instinct that my company might be going after contracts that specify a large firm is the only thing that makes sense.

[ChipWrecked]

I'll just toss in here that records of employees' Internet surfing habits are kept by larger firms as part of that 'poor performance' file.

We just had to expand the disk quota for the server to hold the enormous database of these records in my company.

[Zurvan]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

It depends on the type of business. I'm an attorney, so can only speak of the legal field. But in the legal field there are certain cases that you can only get if the firm is a certain size. E.g., let's say a big, multi-million dollar law suit is filed, and the defendant thinks they'll need a team of at least 8+ attorneys working on a case. That client will reject a 5 person firm. So you have to expand your 5 person firm to 8 people in order to get those types of cases.

Since you can't just hire people off the street to become lawyers, you sometimes need to have more lawyers than you need at the moment, in order to get the cases you want--to show the potential clients that you have the capability to handle the case.

[/ QUOTE ]


Ok, well this had actually crossed my mind. My company has expressed a lot of interest in getting government contracts. You may be onto something here. But isn't it unethical to hire unsuspecting people just to puff up a firm? It seems pretty crappy to a bunch of us.


[/ QUOTE ]

This brings to mind a story.

I used to work for a call centre contractor, that had a contract with a major computer manufacturer that I will not name (but that doesn't use Windows [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]). They had a contract up for bid to replace an in-house call centre. This was a HUGE contract, that would triple our workforce, and open up higher level support jobs.

In order to look better for the contract, the company hired about 75 new support agents (when they started hiring, they had about 140). They got all trained on the bottom level product, and started working. They were taking 5-6 calls a day. I was taking 25-30 (the required standard), since I was working on a different product.

The company didn't get the contract. The day before their probation period was up, they were all taken outside to the smoking area for a "meeting". They were fired ont he spot, told that their security cards were disabled, and that they had to go home. They could return in 2 days to the head office to collect their jackets & purses, when they would have security on site. Fortunately, I had left by that point.

[A S U]

I work in estate planning. I just celebrated my 4th year with this company. Along with that I was promoted to Supervisor of my dept and got a really nice raise. This whole dept went through a complete overhaul and I was the only one left. One of my new responsibilites was to hire a new staff of 2 employees. No problem! Well this is where the gripe starts. It is really hard to find competent entry level new-hires. In a matter of 1 month, I have gone through 2 new people and a 3rd is just hanging on a thread. First guy left his 2nd day around 9 a.m. without saying a word to anybody. I don't even know if he's alive. Another one quit after 2 weeks cause it was "too hard" and the 3rd is like 2 seconds from being fired. 30 mins late today, texts/answers phone all day and I caught him chatting on AIM yesterday. It was his 3rd day!!! GRRR where do these people come from?

[govman6767]

Mortar Rounds and RPG rounds really give me too much on the job stress.
My boss will not let me Drink, Gamble, look at religiously objectionable material.

My work environment involves poisonous snakes, spiders and scorpions. The mosiqutos transmit terrible diseases and afflictions. Dust mites are biting me all the time and making my skin look like I have chicken pox.

Most of the people around me are seriously underpaid for the job they do making them extremly disgruntled and most of them are armed.

It's always 130 degrees in the summer and I'm forced to wear long sleeved jackets and pants no matter how hot it gets.

The food is always the same and crappy. I'm forced to live at my worksite in a hot tent with people who snore, cough, sneeze and play music all night long.

My boss makes me use Port o Johns that are 150 degrees dirty, smelly, filled with flies and have holes in them so passerbys can look at my pee pee.

My boss provides for my laundry which always takes 3 days to be done and I have to wait in a 130 degree room for 20 minutes just to pick it up.

My boss is extremly indecisive as to whether we are coming or going never tells us what's going on and usually waits till the last minute to tell us anything.

I'm not even allowed to quit [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Anyone else wanna bitch about their job ??

My job requires Anthrax vaccines which involve 50 million shots. Smallpox vaccination which itches and is annoying.