You know you work for Megacorp when...

[bbbamI]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFWR We once received (I'm talking the entire corporation) a "cell foam"; i.e. a facsimile mobile phone made from "foam". Went straight from my mail slot to the trash can... Wonder how much of my nonexistent raise went to pay for that useless POS...

Yep...everyone was p.o.'d wondering about the cost of all that stuff. I unfortunately didn't have to wonder as I paid the bills.

[KM]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFWR We once received (I'm talking the entire corporation) a "cell foam"; i.e. a facsimile mobile phone made from "foam". Went straight from my mail slot to the trash can... Wonder how much of my nonexistent raise went to pay for that useless POS...

We actually got paperweights as an appreciation gift one year.

I could envision the board of directors struggling over that decision: "Hmmm.....improve health benefits or paperweight? Health benefits or paperweight? Yeah, let's do the paperweight, people love paperweights."

[jayc]

When all of the parrots and junior parrots use "reach out" and "leverage" in ever other sentence.

When HR passes out stupid books like "who moved the cheese" and tells you there will be no layoffs, rifs, or oursourcing. Just good reading.

[HFWR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KM We actually got paperweights as an appreciation gift one year. I could envision the board of directors struggling over that decision: "Hmmm.....improve health benefits or paperweight? Health benefits or paperweight? Yeah, let's do the paperweight, people love paperweights."

At least you could use a paperweight to bludgeon the idiot who came up with that stupid idea...

[IndependentlyPoor]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jayc When all of the parrots and junior parrots use "reach out" and "leverage" in ever other sentence. When HR passes out stupid books like "who moved the cheese" and tells you there will be no layoffs, rifs, or oursourcing. Just good reading.

It was "net-net" and "crisp" for us. And bullseye charts.

[IndependentlyPoor]

We actually had a week-long manadatory training for engineers to teach us to stop over designing products. There were lots of Leggo and TinkerToy exercises to teach us to design the absolute minimal thing that would meet the letter of the specifications. In other words, how to design the crappiest thing you could get away with.

Another time we had a major presentation by the management darling of the time. Sort of the anti-Demming, a few year before quality becasse the fad. His claim to fame was that he had saved Pontiac millions of dollars by convincing them that their body panel alignment standards were too tight. He got them to display several sneak-peak-at-next-years-models in a shopping mall and passed out questionnaires to the crowd. Almost nobody noticed that the hoods were poorly aligned. Voilà! Proof!

Much scarier, He also claimed to have convinced a major manufacturer of passenger jet engines that their testing requirements for turbine blades were much too stringent based on the statistics of blade failure. I remain convinced to this day that his result was off by several orders of magnitude.

[scrabbler1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by HFWR At least you could use a paperweight to bludgeon the idiot who came up with that stupid idea...

good one!

A few of the favorites I can recall from my 23 years of working:

When my company announced it was relocating from New York to New Jersey, thereby worsening the commute of most of its employees (including me), there was an article in the company newsletter by someone saying how "wonderful his extra walk was on a sunny and pleasant September morning." UMMMMM, how pleasant would that walk be in the middle of January or July or when it was raining

We all received, "I survived the relocation" mugs. When I retired in 2008, I left that mug at my cubicle. I guess it did not survive my final "relocation" LOL!

Employee satisfaction surveys, a waste on many levels. First, all the paper wasted on producing them (although in later years they were done eon line). Then, the time spent compiling them. Then, more paper wasted on printing up the results including comparisons between each department and the company average. Then, rounding everyone up by department to have staff meetings run by each department head explaining the results. Then, nothing would happen to change anything. Then, a few years later, the cycle repeats.

Closer to home, I became annoyed when my company would not offer me eligibility for its group health plan after I reduced my weekly work hours from 20 to 12 in 2007 (and I offered to pay 100% of the premiums). They told me it was for fiscal reasons, as I was now in a group of "high-risk" employees who work few hours per week. However, I pointed out to HR that the company provided subsidized health insurance for hundreds of older retirees as well as spouses and children of covered employees, none of whom actually WORKED for the company. And they cried poverty? I made sure to let the HR underling know this in my EXIT interview (another waste of time but good for venting) as a secondary reason for my resignation of this 23-year employee (the commute with its "pleasant" walk was the first reason).

[Emeritus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by stevenst Perfect. I guarantee that the stakeholders reached out and addressed the issue as a collaborative opportunity. Translation: Assigned the problem to someone else. Steve

Actually a collaborative opportunity means you formed a committee

If you say the "stakeholders resolved to have the issue determined by party best placed to address the issue" that means you "Assigned the problem to someone else."

If you are "determining the facts which have evolved since the issue was first raised" it means you gave it to an unpaid intern

[Emeritus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrabbler1 Closer to home, I became annoyed when my company would not offer me eligibility for its group health plan after I reduced my weekly work hours from 20 to 12 in 2007 (and I offered to pay 100% of the premiums). They told me it was for fiscal reasons, as I was now in a group of "high-risk" employees who work few hours per week. However, I pointed out to HR that the company provided subsidized health insurance for hundreds of older retirees as well as spouses and children of covered employees, none of whom actually WORKED for the company. .

I agree with you on the injustice issue, however we did find in our statewide survey that groups of employees who reduced their working hours were statistically far more likely to be incurring high medical expenses. Children are actually fairly cheap to cover. Retirees under 65 are expensive but the costs are fairly predictable.

[scrabbler1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emeritus I agree with you on the injustice issue, however we did find in our statewide survey that groups of employees who reduced their working hours were statistically far more likely to be incurring high medical expenses. Children are actually fairly cheap to cover. Retirees under 65 are expensive but the costs are fairly predictable.

Still makes no sense to me.

So, a full-time employee who is 60 years old, for example, can receive subsidized group health medical insurance. And if he retires, he can receive subsidized retiree medical insurance. But if he reduces his work hours without retiring, he becomes ineligible for group health insurance altogether. How is he riskier if he works more hours or less hours than his part-time hours?

Companies can't charge their employees more or less for group health based on age, but even though I was only 44 years when I lost my group health eligibility, I was treated like those just under Medicare age because they were the ones who worked less than 20 hours per week, a much less healthy group of people than me, for sure.

I argue that working fewer hours and making fewer of those awful commutes to the office made my life less stressful and made me healthier. They did not agree, so I took a $300k stock payout and left, along with my 23 years of experience. It still felt like a no-brainer, my offering to pay 100% of the group health premiums (instead of 50% I had been paying when I worked 20 hours per week).

At least we part-timers were still contributing to our company's bottom line. Retirees don't. Neither do children of covered employees. Neither do spouses of any age of covered employees, a far costlier group to insure than children.

It all turned out for the best. I love being retired.

[Emeritus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrabbler1 Still makes no sense to me. So, a full-time employee who is 60 years old, for example, can receive subsidized group health medical insurance. And if he retires, he can receive subsidized retiree medical insurance. But if he reduces his work hours without retiring, he becomes ineligible for group health insurance altogether. How is he riskier if he works more hours or less hours than his part-time hours?

You are (quite naturally) inverting the cart and the horse. It isn't that cutting back increases the risk it is that people with increased risk cut back. E.G. if you take the whole group who cut back you find a lot of folks who are undergoing chemotherapy or other therapy. If you have a lawful way to exclude an increased risk group, you do it.

[scrabbler1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emeritus You are (quite naturally) inverting the cart and the horse. It isn't that cutting back increases the risk it is that people with increased risk cut back. E.G. if you take the whole group who cut back you find a lot of folks who are undergoing chemotherapy or other therapy. If you have a lawful way to exclude an increased risk group, you do it.

Still makes no sense to me. Some of those unhealthy people retire because they can't work any more with their illnesses, arguably more serious than those who can still manage to work part-time with theirs. Why are they then offered subsidized retiree medical benefits? The retirees should be denied medical benefits or at the very least have to pay 100% of their premiums, premiums which should be much higher than those in the regular group health plan.

Company to ill person still working full-time: "If you switch to part-time (under 20 hours per week), we won't cover you. But if you keep toiling full-time or retire, we will cover you."

[Emeritus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrabbler1 Still makes no sense to me. Some of those unhealthy people retire because they can't work any more with their illnesses, arguably more serious than those who can still manage to work part-time with theirs. Why are they then offered subsidized retiree medical benefits? The retirees should be denied medical benefits or at the very least have to pay 100% of their premiums, premiums which should be much higher than those in the regular group health plan. Company to ill person still working full-time: "If you switch to part-time (under 20 hours per week), we won't cover you. But if you keep toiling full-time or retire, we will cover you."

They may repeat may have contractual agreements with the employees and retirees. I certainly have such a contract. So there is nothing they can do about the people who can retire, so they don't worry about them.

But the people who reduce hours but cant retire for whatever reason are a defined group they can screw and save money.

[kcowan]

When my company declare this year the year of the customer!

We all said, OK so what are we going to do next year?

[KM]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrabbler1 Employee satisfaction surveys, a waste on many levels. First, all the paper wasted on producing them (although in later years they were done eon line). Then, the time spent compiling them. Then, more paper wasted on printing up the results including comparisons between each department and the company average. Then, rounding everyone up by department to have staff meetings run by each department head explaining the results. Then, nothing would happen to change anything. Then, a few years later, the cycle repeats.

Ahhh.....yes....the every useful employee satisfaction survey. They announced our pension change two weeks after the deadline for our survey responses.

But that was probably just a coincidence....

[Emeritus]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KM Ahhh.....yes....the every useful employee satisfaction survey. They announced our pension change two weeks after the deadline for our survey responses. But that was probably just a coincidence....

You haven't seen silly until you see the forms and responses on student/ faculty evaluations. The form questions are almost always useless and the student answers range from the informed and thoughtful to the clearly vicious or ludicrous, although the creatively funny are always the best. My favorite was a Chemical engineer who wrote that I had dilutions of grandeur. It was either a hilarious joke , or he just couldn't spell.

However they are read. When I went up for promotion and tenure they typed up every single student comment from a whole semester of courses. The whole committee read them , and I was later told, added their own commentary.

[wildcat]

Hear buzz words and official sounding phrases like:

"I'm going to reach out to" such and such
"RIF"
"Level set"
"Value added"

Bosses request reports & a) don't understand the report or b) don't even review the report

Bosses don't know what the people under them do well enough to provide effective performance reviews

Receive emails about the virtues of exercise so you can help the company cut back on healthcare costs lead a healthier life

Good times down here in the trenches.............

[Achiever51]

...the CEO convinces the Board of Directors that the corporate headquarters staff --approx. 400 employees, plus families -- should be relocated to New York from metro Detroit.

Why? Because said CEO's new trophy wife loves New York and refuses to move to the Midwest!

Fortunately, the CEO's marriage fell apart before the plan could be implemented.

[KM]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wildcat Bosses don't know what the people under them do well enough to provide effective performance reviews

Made all the better when you are then told to do a "self-assessment", so they can then copy it into your performance review.

Also - "manage up". I have to manage all the people below me and now I have to manage all the people above me too? I must have missed that bulletin.


(As you can tell this is fast becoming my favorite thread - a great way to reduce stress after another "beat your head against the wall" day. )

[Eager Beaver]

Quote:

Originally Posted by KM (As you can tell this is fast becoming my favorite thread - a great way to reduce stress after another "beat your head against the wall" day. )

I love this thread, thanks for all the amazing responses! My day to day BS doesn't seem quite so bad now!