You know you work for Megacorp when...

[Emeritus]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

(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!

 

[brewer12345]

Oh, yes, performance reviews. The latest flavor of the month is "360 evaluations" where people get evaluated by their [-]inferiors[/-] reports as well as peers and bosses. So far they have been smart enough to keep this to the highest echelons, but if they ever dump middle management (uniformly dreadful) in this stew i cannot wait to see the comments...

 

[FIREd]

Oh, yes, performance reviews. The latest flavor of the month is "360 evaluations" where people get evaluated by their [-]inferiors[/-] reports as well as peers and bosses. So far they have been smart enough to keep this to the highest echelons, but if they ever dump middle management (uniformly dreadful) in this stew i cannot wait to see the comments...

DW's company tried 360s to evaluate everyone in the company. They gave up on 360s after only 1 year.

 

[ziggy29]

My former company tried these 360s, or "upward evaluations" if you will, about 15 years ago. No one trusted them to be confidential or something that wouldn't be used in retaliation against them if they were honest about bad managers, so they scrapped it as a useless exercise.

 

[IndependentlyPoor]

The day I reported to work in Geneva (transferred from Texas with a whopping three months of after-work French lessons under my belt) they handed me the forms for the annual performance review for an engineer who would be working for me. He spoke about as much English as I did French. The day I met him we also did his performance review. What the hell, I told him what happened, we agreed that it was crazy, and he did sort of a self-evaluation.

To this day I wonder if that was some kind of test. One that I failed. Maybe they wanted me to stand my ground and just refuse to do it. I did object, but they seemed serious.

 

[wildcat]

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. )

Holy sh!t, you too?

@ Achiever51 -

Tell me you are joking

 

[scrabbler1]

For a few years in the 1990s, my division experimented with 360-reviews. The 360-part of the review was a one-page form (not part of the overall evaluation but an addendum) with some questions and mostly multiple-choice questions and some free-response questions. The answers, if written in longhand, were typed by an independent third party to protect anonymity. Someone could complete the optional form for as many people as s/he reported to for projects.

I filled it out a few times for my superiors. A few of those who worked for me filled them out. I thought the idea was pretty good, being at both ends of the forms.

Despite these safeguards, it was abandoned after a few years.

And........even though I have not worked in 18 months, I like this thread, too!

 

[Khan]

When they bring in a (non-IT) PhD to organize things and her first suggestion is to urge all the programmer cube rats to buy coffee mugs that say "Software Factory" and have a picture of a factory belching fumes.
(did not buy)

 

[kcowan]

...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.

Wow
Now there's a bunch of people with time on their hands!

 

[kumquat]

...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.

Or, a Canadian corporation with three major US offices (left over after M&A) should be relocated to "the best" central site. Committee formed and decides the CEO's home town is the "best fit".

 

[nwsteve]

Or, a Canadian corporation with three major US offices (left over after M&A) should be relocated to "the best" central site. Committee formed and decides the CEO's home town is the "best fit".

At the Megacorp where I toiled many years ago, we had an entire dept just for the purpose of buying and selling operating locations/offices/mfg facilities. As a Megacorp, reorgs were a regular event. The dept head of our Real Estate group and I were in the same "refreshment" facility one evening and I asked him what his approach would be for locating our newest regional office. He confirmed the identity of the new Regional VP and that he still had his boat. His answer was that it would either be within a half hour of his home or his boat. And it was!
Nwsteve

 

[Moscyn]

For a few years in the 1990s, my division experimented with 360-reviews. The 360-part of the review was a one-page form (not part of the overall evaluation but an addendum) with some questions and mostly multiple-choice questions and some free-response questions. The answers, if written in longhand, were typed by an independent third party to protect anonymity. Someone could complete the optional form for as many people as s/he reported to for projects.

I filled it out a few times for my superiors. A few of those who worked for me filled them out. I thought the idea was pretty good, being at both ends of the forms.

Despite these safeguards, it was abandoned after a few years.

And........even though I have not worked in 18 months, I like this thread, too!

360 reviews, oh how I dislike that. If I have to name a few reasons why I am retiring early, 360 will be one of them.

 

[jayc]

Wow
Now there's a bunch of people with time on their hands!

That sums up most tenured faculty positions that teach 4-6 hours a week.

 

[Emeritus]

That sums up most tenured faculty positions that teach 4-6 hours a week.

OFGS

How many minutes does a professional football quarterback actually play per year ?

In many jobs you only "see" a very small part of the job.

 

[brewer12345]

Not to dredge up an old thread, but this is classic MegaCorp stuff:

We get a directive from our VP to scrap the detailed, narrative, useful, descriptive doc we do every year and replace it with a useless, incomprehensible, color-coded spreadsheet (which I have to fill out). The instructions on how to fill out the sheets are what appear to be a barely intelligible draft. I called and emailed one person for guidance (on vacation). Then I emailed a department that is supposed to be entirely focused on this sort of thing. They have never heard of it. Two days later someone up their chain of command acknowledges the existence of the sheet and I am now still getting copied on Keystone Kops-style exchanges. Meanwhile, I have given up on getting usable guidance and have started doing my best, since the submission deadline is approaching...

Man am I beginning to truly hate this place.

 

[kumquat]

Screw the deadline. Do what I did: http://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f29/sudden-epiphany-49028-2.html#post910864