Workplace BS

myself said:
Kind of like the same idea of lifting a dumbell with one arm but being able to lift more than twice the amount when using 2 arms?/quote]

This involves the recruitment of additional torso muscles. If your two additional horses are Clydesdales on steroids they would be able to handle more weight than two more of the original breed.

An engineer/scientist/accountant would call this cheating.

Upper management would call it innovative business creativity. Total Quality Management.
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The other day, kicking around the same subject with my family members working in different big corps, we found that this malaise is widespread. I remember fondly the first place I worked after college. I heard from people who are still there. It has changed, and I would suffer the same BS had I stay. Well, I would have had a nice pension with 30 yr service, but who would have known....

Somebody told me this is like the system under Communism. The orders and slogans came from the top down. The peons, rank-and-files and middle management do not believe it, but tell each other just to tough it out. It's truly "the emperor with no clothes", but in this case, no one can identify the emperor!

What is scary is the old Communism bloc has discovered Capitalism, while we may just be gravitating towards their defunct style.

PS. I thought about it and now have my own answer. There is no single Emperor to point out to ridicule. Everything is done by committees. Hence, even the perpetrators can later deny responsibility. Just like the Communists.
 
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ziggy29 said:
"Workplace BS" is a nominee for Redundancy of the Month.
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How dare you nominate something without first running it by the mod committee, Andy, and then mod emeritus committee? What's this weird drive you have called initiative? Your initiative is to listen to what we say and then hit yourself across the face for not having thought of the brilliant idea first. Sorry, just got home from work. I need a couple of drinks to take the edge off the cynicism.
 
BunsGettingFirm said:
How dare you nominate something without first running it by the mod committee, Andy, and then mod emeritus committee? What's this weird drive you have called initiative? Your initiative is to listen to what we say and then hit yourself across the face for not having thought of the brilliant idea first. Sorry, just got home from work. I need a couple of drinks to take the edge off the cynicism.
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Loosen up, and spice up your fonts, will ya!;)
 
RunningBum said:
Oh, you bet. A few years ago "Who Moved My Cheese" copies could be seen on about every manager's bookshelf, because the CEO liked it. Sometime before or after there was talk about whether we were "inside the tornado" or something like that from another book.

There were always two ways to know when the latest all-managers meeting was:

1) a brief period of rampant productivity among the staff

2) followed by a month or so where every manager in every meeting spouted the same buzz phrases
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I recall watching "Who Moved My Cheese" several years ago; I couldn't control myself and asked "why not just follow the mice who knew where the cheese was".

BTW: retired USAF officers sometimes don't understand that managing civilians is different.
 
Motivation

This tread is good in that it reminds me why I ER'ed. Here's a little something featuring the actor from the movie Office Space which, IMHO, is the Citizen Kane of movies exploring the topic of office BS.
 
ziggy29 said:
Instead, we have to redefine acceptable performance such that 20% of the people who used to perform acceptably are now unacceptable even though their work didn't deteriorate. It's a load of hooey and damaging to morale. And it can make employees feel like they are competing for each other in terms of their "ranking" instead of helping each other toward a common objective.
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Which of course is an accurate perception. Teamwork at work is like "sisterhood" among women. Great to talk about, but look out if you should start to believe in it.

Ha
 
haha said:
Which of course is an accurate perception. Teamwork at work is like "sisterhood" among women. Great to talk about, but look out if you should start to believe in it.

Ha
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Just like trying to be a SNAG (sensitive new age guy): sometimes I think I don't need a vasectomy; I need my balls removed.
 
cyclone6 said:
3) We were advised that the company was going to settle on a formal, official font policy. Thats right, if you use Times New Roman, you are directly violating company policy...
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Are they at least going to use something like Arial or a modern sans-serif font? If so, consider yourself lucky, and stop complaining.

A friend of mine quit and moved to a mid-size aerospace company in town. This was in the early 90s. When he met with us for beer afterwork sometime later, he told his story. Their order was to use Courier. Yes, Courier. We cried out "No way, you are BS'ing us". He said, well the guy in charge grew up on typewriter fonts, and saw no need to change. We laughed until we cried in our beer.
 
In the federal workforce, we learn acronyms by the total immersion method.
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I was in a presentation last week by the company psychologist talking about stress and ways to cope - typical Megacorp stuff to try and 'help'. The doc was obviously going to be very dry and boring (think reading from powerpoint slides) but he did give me some great leads to spice up the meeting for the 20 or so folks and we did leave a lot less stressed than we started. For example, early on he put up a slide with the latest 3 words to describe stress and said that it used to be thought of as "flight or fight" but this was the latest thinking. I can't remember the 3 buzz words and I doubt anyone else can 'cos they started with the letters G.A.S. so I immediately piped up and said "so, what you are saying is that stress produces gas - I can certainly relate to that"

At one point he said to me, "Alan, we are obviously bonding here", to which I replied "naturally, I work in the adhesives group". He didn't get it despite the laughter in the rest of the room so I just said "it's a chemical joke - at this site we make glue". I think the poor guy was glad to be out of there.
 
I always thought Dilbert was funny. Now I'm learning it's really a horror story. :eek:
 
thaidyed said:
oh my. :rant: i really never ever wanna work at MegaCorp. I'd get arrested of fired or both my first day...
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The communists fired disgruntled workers all the time ...







with an execution squad.
 
I also work for a small company of about 30 employees. We used to have a VP something like the one you describe. He was also in charge of hiring and firing. I will always remember the day he fired a sales person and had to go hire her back because the boss liked looking at her.
 
Hey, I just thought of something....

Working for big corps all my life (except for the time I involved with failed start-ups), I thought I knew how they evolved to become so bad. We always talk about how small cos would be better. Had to be, since they have to be nimble to survive, like mammals vs. dinosaurs.

But it occured to me that many of you are talking about small cos:confused:

Could the reason these small cos were bad, because their clients are megacorp, and the disease spreads? Small cos sell to megacorps, have to have TQM in place, BS like that.

I cannot see a small outfit that serves the public directly afford this kind superflous non-productive BS.
 
"Ralph" reminds me of a sales manager I had years ago, we'll call him "Elmo." He was originally our marketing manager and was a friend of the owner of the company. When times got lean, the owner made this bozo the head of sales. Elmo went out and bought a few sales books and proceeded to have sales meetings to explain how this recession was all in our minds and wasn't really happening, we just needed to be positive.

I play tennis, and Elmo was talking to me and another guy and Elmo said that if I had started playing tennis earlier, I could have been the number one player in the world. I had had enough of his BS so I called him on it. I told him that not everyone who picks up a tennis racket and believes they are going to be the best player in the world achieves it. He told me I just didn't have enough faith.

Elmo was a big golfer and I said, "What about you? Could you be the number one golfer in the world?" He said yes. If he put his mind to it, he could be the number one golfer in the world in a couple of years. I laughed and said, "Well, why don't you do it?" He said he had a job as sales manager and he had a family. I said, "I'm sure your family wouldn't mind if you became the number one golfer in the world, and you would make a lot more money than you do now." He still said no. I couldn't resists this opportunity and said, "Elmo, sounds to me like you just don't have enough faith. Maybe you don't really believe this crap you're trying to sell us."

Sometimes you just have to call BS. I was "let go" with some severance a few months later, by Elmo, and things are much better for me today. Elmo is still at the old company and I am sure he is still a richard cranium.
 
Small company culture is determined by leadership of the owner. If the guy is upstanding and on the ball, then everyone else will at least try to be. If the guy is too busy or hands off to lead or he's slime ball himself, then all kinds of bad behaviors come out because there is no other mechanism like rules and regulations to keep people's idiocy in check. Then you're going to get the bosses who hire sales reps because they look good or a Ralph, the do nothing yeller.

NW-Bound said:
Hey, I just thought of something....

Working for big corps all my life (except for the time I involved with failed start-ups), I thought I knew how they evolved to become so bad. We always talk about how small cos would be better. Had to be, since they have to be nimble to survive, like mammals vs. dinosaurs.

But it occured to me that many of you are talking about small cos:confused:

Could the reason these small cos were bad, because their clients are megacorp, and the disease spreads? Small cos sell to megacorps, have to have TQM in place, BS like that.

I cannot see a small outfit that serves the public directly afford this kind superflous non-productive BS.
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ikubak said:
I play tennis, and Elmo was talking to me and another guy and Elmo said that if I had started playing tennis earlier, I could have been the number one player in the world. I had had enough of his BS so I called him on it. I told him that not everyone who picks up a tennis racket and believes they are going to be the best player in the world achieves it. He told me I just didn't have enough faith.

Elmo was a big golfer and I said, "What about you? Could you be the number one golfer in the world?" He said yes. If he put his mind to it, he could be the number one golfer in the world in a couple of years. I laughed and said, "Well, why don't you do it?" He said he had a job as sales manager and he had a family. I said, "I'm sure your family wouldn't mind if you became the number one golfer in the world, and you would make a lot more money than you do now." He still said no. I couldn't resists this opportunity and said, "Elmo, sounds to me like you just don't have enough faith. Maybe you don't really believe this crap you're trying to sell us."
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Absolutely hilarious, I'll bet he had a 20 handicap too. I love when people say that everyone can do anything if they just put their mind to it. Perhaps I am just to cynical.

And, by the way, I like serif font better than sans-serif.
 
What I am reading here is that US businesses, big and small are all so full of BS that they cannot possibly be productive. Just as soon as prices come back up I am going to completely divest myself of US companies and invest it all overseas. I am so glad there is no BS in my life.
Jeff
 
RunningBum said:
Oh, you bet. A few years ago "Who Moved My Cheese" copies could be seen on about every manager's bookshelf, because the CEO liked it.
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The book was thin enough that I decided to waste 20 minutes on it.

Executive summary of the book: Change happens so adapt or die. Also, if you see man-sized mice or mouse-sized men, you're probably on LSD.
 
jclarksnakes said:
What I am reading here is that US businesses, big and small are all so full of BS that they cannot possibly be productive. Just as soon as prices come back up I am going to completely divest myself of US companies and invest it all overseas. I am so glad there is no BS in my life.
Jeff
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Oh, yeah, I'm sure this is a US thing only. The rest of the world is well-known for having no barriers to business productivity. :rolleyes:

And if US businesses cannot possibly be productive, what makes you think stock prices will come back up??
 
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