forwarded "FYI" emails

[maddythebeagle]

I just put this on my official list of why I want to FIRE....maybe at 6 or 7 between weird office smells and office gossip....

My boss forwarded an email that had been forwarded 6-7 times and got down to the bottom and it was a question from an external "customer/partner" (yes I can use the buzz words)...with no response in between

Once we had an upper manager that forwarded us a stories that were common urban legends....

 

[W2R]

Add to that meaningless, stupid meetings.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

How about 7 layer forwarded emails containing meeting minutes for meaningless, stupid meetings about a product that you know is never going to be fully developed, sent by a project manager who isnt even interested in the product?

 

[W2R]

How about 7 layer forwarded emails containing meeting minutes for meaningless, stupid meetings about a product that you know is never going to be fully developed, sent by a project manager who isnt even interested in the product?

Yeah, them too!!!!! CFB's on a roll. He must work where I work!

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Dont try this at home...

 

[W2R]

Dont try this at home...

Oh yeah, that's right - - you're ER'd, you lucky duck, er, bunny!!

 

[growing_older]

Today was a day for reminding me just how much I want to escape from work. It wasn't the endless email chains, it was the flip-flops today. A big project (several months duration) is stuck on a basic question which completely affects how it is built. We've spent about 2 months building A, but recently were stopped when a previously unheard from exec suggested instead of A we build B. We cannot make any further progress until "they" decide A or B. Our VP finally decided A and if that changes we throw away what we did and start over. Less then 24 hours later, we got a memo from a Senior Project Manager changing from A to B but cautioning that a meeting later that day could change again. None of us doing the work are included in any of these meetings. Less than 3 hours later that meeting apparently did change and Senior Project Manager sent a new memo saying do not in any case do A or B, instead a new radically different solution C has been decided. Less than an hour later the Product Manager (business owner for this project) dropped by my desk to countermand this and re-assert that A was decided at the meeting. Less than another hour after that the same Product Manager returned to say he had spoken with VP (remember who advocated A originally) and learned that A was no longer supported by execs and we should discard all our work and go for C. Oh, and shortly after that he sent a memo pointing out that since no one at the company knows anything about C, everyone who knows even the littliest bit will need to attend a multi-hour long meeting to figure out if we know enough to do this, or need to hire a consultant, or need to change approach yet again. D anyone?

 

[TickTock]

D = Death Spiral.

My worst nightmare is working for five bosses, each of whom want a different thing.

Hey, just tell me the desired outcome and I'll work to make it happen, but I can't work for five different bosses, each with a different agenda...

 

[Janet H]

forwarded ....email that had been forwarded 6-7 times and got down to the bottom and it was a question from an external "customer/partner" (yes I can use the buzz words)...with no response in between.

I agree this is annoying - but not nearly as annoying as workplace information horders, the "information is power" crowd.

You may have met one, they lurk around every corner just waiting for an opportunity to run some weird little power trip at your expense. Favorite tactics include 'accidentally" forgetting to include you in the cc line of a global e-mail, misdirecting memos and mail to bypass your desk, cubicle or corner office, taking messages on your behalf that either arrive too late or are accidentally not delivered, etc.

OK - rant over.

 

[Khan]

Does anyone still wonder why one's health improves after retirement?

"Don't play those games no more."

 

[maddythebeagle]

I agree this is annoying - but not nearly as annoying as workplace information horders, the "information is power" crowd.

You may have met one, they lurk around every corner just waiting for an opportunity to run some weird little power trip at your expense. Favorite tactics include 'accidentally" forgetting to include you in the cc line of a global e-mail, misdirecting memos and mail to bypass your desk, cubicle or corner office, taking messages on your behalf that either arrive too late or are accidentally not delivered, etc.

OK - rant over.

Ha.Ha....I got a couple of those also...But I have actually grown to appreciate them keeping me out of the loop... The stuff that they forward is inane B.S...

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Okay, in the land of the "we were so poor we had to cling to the windowsills because we couldnt afford floors", here's my all-time favorite...

I actually flew to three meetings in other states, the first two had about a dozen people in them, all also primarily from elsewhere and the final one having so many people we ran it in a small auditorium.

The urgent and very important topic was what name we were going to use on an internal project that nobody outside of the company would ever hear of. On one side was the name we had just grabbed out of the air, put on all sorts of internal team promo materials, put into 20,000 powerpoint slides, and that every person in the company who would be involved knew it by. On the other side was some simpering 50 year old division head who had proposed a similar project 3 years earlier but had not been successful in getting management buy-in. He felt like we had stolen his idea, renamed it to hide our subterfuge, and taken away one of his best ideas.

So he was willing to allow all of this funny business to occur, providing we change the name to the one he had used 3 years before, and gave him general low-participative oversight of the whole program.

After tabling the discussion so we could get to more serious matters such as funding, objectives, progress and so forth, we found that every time we would mention the "bad" name, this fellow would mutter his favored name loud enough to have all discussion stop momentarily.

Halfway through the second meeting the exasperated meeting manager exclaimed that we would hereafter all refer to the program as "bob" so as to not upset anyone nor derail any further discussion.

After about a month of further expense of hundreds of hours of time on this ridiculous matter, someone up the food chain told us to change the dang name to what the other guy wanted just so he'd shut the %$@# up. After changing dozens of presentations and throwing out a few thousand bucks worth of t-shirts, pens and yes, even gum...we proceeded to enjoy spending a month or so confusing all the senior management who didnt know what this "new" program was and required explanation that it was the same thing as the "old" program. One guy was sure we were doing two different things that were the same thing, and wanted to know what the differences were. About 9 times.

 

[W2R]

Favorite tactics include 'accidentally" forgetting to include you in the cc line of a global e-mail, misdirecting memos and mail to bypass your desk, cubicle or corner office, taking messages on your behalf that either arrive too late or are accidentally not delivered, etc.

A subcategory of this would be "forgetting" to include you in the e-mail announcing a meeting related to your particular area of expertise, and sending you an "oh, so sorry, here's the time and place!" e-mail shortly before it begins. You then must attend the meeting completely cold with no idea of what is to be discussed, when everyone else is prepared and has been thinking about it for weeks, has facts and figures at hand, and has been preparing impressive visuals (all showing their expertise in what is genuinely YOUR area of expertise, plus theirs). That way they look better to management than you do when they immediately put you on the spot in front of everyone about some sticky question or other that you can't answer without totally shooting from the hip.

Happens all the time.

 

[Nords]

You guys are making me glad I joined the military... and stayed there.

Even if submariners excel at [-]knife fights in phone booths[/-] shooting each other from close range in the baffles.

 

[growing_older]

New boss has been difficult to work with, and one of his recent bad habits is hardly ever making time for me in his schedule. He reduced the frequency of our "touch base" meetings and often cancels them. So he sent out email today asking all his direct reports if we are getting enough "face time" with him. Since I'd prefer I never see the guy again, I happily answered that they were fine as is. Others on his staff all wanted no more cancellations and a few wanted more frequent meetings. Maybe I can donate my meeting time and make both them and me happier. If he doesn't happen to see me it's harder to suddenly think of ideas to micromanage or derail my projects and I can get more done. What a weird system.

 

[TickTock]

Heh. bad memories coming back...

I had a boss at [company]. Now, at this company there were very few 'rules', most things were 'guidelines', so those in charge could basically do what they wanted.

One guideline was that employees should have a review and 'salary adjustment' at least once a year.

So, after a year had gone by, I expressed my desire for a review... and again... and again...

Finally, when being blown off yet another time, I told my supervisor that I'd be back asking about this again, as it was important to me. He told me that it was NOT important to him!

:disbelief:

Well, I was young, naive, optimistic, and idealistic, so I pushed it.

He got me good. He gave me a negative review: 'not performing up to expectations' ... 'may have to cut compensation'

He taught me well. I learned from this lesson.

 

[RunningBum]

My turn.

I got a nastygram email (copying my manager) that I had failed to do some task within the required 48 hours, and I hadn't done it, so I needed to do it ASAP. Now, this is part of a SR VP's multi-part pet project, and even though it's almost entirely bogus, I knew I had to handle it in reasonable time. But I had no indication that there was any 48 hour clock on me, which by the way is almost impossible to meet. In fact when I asked about when the whole thing had to be done I was told 2 weeks, with no other deadlines. This part of it was all internal, and even though I'm working on other customer issues I'm supposed to drop those.

This is absolutely one of the things I'm looking forward to leaving behind when I leave next year. It's the stupidest project, all it's doing is taking us away from fixing real customer problems and it's being handled the worst way possible. Instead of being up front about it, they are doing it under some cloak of secrecy, in fact the first time I got wind of it was because of some "dire warning" messages in our software product that were reported by a customer in the first wave of changes, even though there was no actual problem. Caused a big headache with a major customer for no good reason.

 

[template]

Long, useless FYI emails to a wide audience? -- internal company spam. That became annoying in my former work environment.

The senders were often people who did little except to chair meetings and send email. I think their email was intended to show their worth to the company.

I constructed spam filters to discard internal company email from repeated offenders.

 

[Achiever51]

Thanks for the [bad] memories. It's all coming back to me like a bad dream.

However, sitting here at my computer, with a fresh cup of hot tea, the dogs asleep in the sun and watching the occasional deer out in the woods beyond the pool, I gotta say: I DON'T MISS THE OFFICE AT ALL!!!

 

[cube_rat]

Why did I open this thread? A reminder of the cluster f#$ks, rat holes and corporate speak (don't make me go there!) that I have endure on a daily basis

 

[Janet H]

Why did I open this thread? A reminder of the cluster f#$ks, rat holes and corporate speak (don't make me go there!) that I have endure on a daily basis

You opened this thread? You're responsible? I'm adding you to my e-mail distribution list!

 

[Donzo]

The inane mandatory conference call where the 1st 10 minutes were role call - these calls were scheduled at home office convience - so it was either 6am Pac. time or when I needed to be working with my reps - I would often wonder what was discussed and why shortly after the calls were over. We also had to put together weekly spreadsheets that we(RMs) knew no-one was reading - but if you sent it in late.......you got dinged. We had week long meetings that had 2 days content.
We always did our own reviews - and then had to re-do them until it was met with approval.....it is a amazing that I thought all of this was normal for so many years!

 

[Zoocat]

D = Death Spiral.

My worst nightmare is working for five bosses, each of whom want a different thing.

Hey, just tell me the desired outcome and I'll work to make it happen, but I can't work for five different bosses, each with a different agenda...

Been there, done that. OMG. I'm so glad to be old and unemployable.