THE BORE
General => The Superdeep Borehole => Topic started by: Eric P on September 02, 2008, 08:29:00 AM
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from my supervisor who has made a career of routinely fucking us over for the past year
As a side note, I'm thankful to have each of you on the team, and I appreciate that we work together in spite of the difficult times. The endurance WILL help us in the long run. It will not only equip us to persevere, it will also build character. Keep that in mind as times get hard.
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super-supervisors
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Here is one of my recent favorites. It is from my company's lawyer, who is also the owners son and shares the same name. He is 26 years old, socially distinguished mentally-challenged, and must have been extremely sheltered growing up. Here it is:
Dear All-
Some confusion seems to have arisen over my name, and particularly the spelling of my middle name. To distinguish me from G, Sr., some people call me G, Jr.; others call me G Louis, using my middle name. Either name is fine, but for those of you who prefer the version with my middle name, I would just like to make clear that my middle name is Louis and not Lewis. Also, I would like to make sure that everyone understands that the name G Louis refers to me, and not to some employee with the first name G and the last name Lewis!
Thanks,
Gjr
Name altered to protect the dimwitted. ::)
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^ :lol
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That's awesome.
The only funny mails I get is when people try to translate dutch expressions to english.
I wonder if english speaking people can figure out the meaning of this gem:
"You may not lie from your mother."
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from my supervisor who has made a career of routinely fucking us over for the past year
As a side note, I'm thankful to have each of you on the team, and I appreciate that we work together in spite of the difficult times. The endurance WILL help us in the long run. It will not only equip us to persevere, it will also build character. Keep that in mind as times get hard.
Wow... We NEVER get emails like that. Appreciation is lacking... so is morale. :lol It is what it is.
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Ugh, I used to work in a place like this - it's a good indicator that your workplace sucks or you work for a cunt. They think words can make up for treating you like garbage. Usually, you're working for a hypocrite who says "we're a team and all equals!" and then they make shit decisions without consultation.
If you're treated well every day, crap like this is unnecessary.
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that's the most patronizing tone i've ever seen in an email. why is this man allowed to manage?
good managers have two modes of communication: direct orders for short-term individual issues, and petitioning for long-term team goals. there's no place for passive-aggressive shit.
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:'(
i would seriously flip if ANYONE above me dared suggest i swallow their shit because "it builds character" and that i should "keep it in mind". fuck that patronizing, supercilious shit. work isn't a special camp for delinquents. we're here to DO A JOB and that can ALWAYS be communicated in clear, direct terms: orders/instructions, or a broader (and equally direct) request for support. "do this" or "we need to do this, now how as a team do we accomplish it".
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I had an asshole boss a few years ago who noticed productivity was falling sharply around the office over several months. His solution give a speech at a team meeting to the effect of:
"When I was an employee (which was about 20-30 years ago), sometimes we weren't happy and things weren't going well but we always knuckled down and kept working".
Needless to say, productivity dropped further after that and all four client managers (of which I was one) left within a year. What a cunt, but I learnt a lot from his cuntish ways.
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Sometimes more money is simply the best reward.
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oh if only you knew eric and prole :'(
this woman is routinely patronizing taking inappropriate tones
when i complained about it a year ago, i was told to give her time to adjust to her new role as she'd never had a management position before.
now it's just a horrific parody of management.
i'm currently writing a coverletter and dusting up my resume for a job I used to do back in Richmond before I moved to DC.
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yeah, a manager isn't dad. you don't get to patronize your employees, who are ultimately your equals, and upon whom your performance is (or should be) measured. you hafta work through them to justify your existence.
when productivity falls, you make a plan. you demonstrate an understanding of a problem, present the changes, give the orders, and accept as much feedback as you can without paralyzing the solution. when people need to be told to shape up, you say that and you tell them specifically what needs to change and why. stories from ol' grand-dad are unnecessary, unless you want to be the butt of endless behind-your-back mockery. when people succeed, you give them all the credit. if they're good employees, they'll share that credit with you.
but man, it's so easy to be a bad manager. drop the vigilance and allow yourself to become lazy, and the self-justifications start. no matter how well you think you're pulling off the excuses, your employees are probably as smart or smarter than you, and will see through it in a heartbeat. it's scary!
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Sometimes those studies that suggest a fair percentage of managers are psychopaths don't seem at all unreasonable.
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most folks get into management because they can't succeed in individual contributor roles, and/or because they have megalomaniacal tendencies. seriously! the rest of the failures became managers after getting promoted because of their accomplishments as an individual contributor, and find they simply can't manage people -- because a star performer in an ic role rarely has the skillset to be a star manager. as that blue ocean cigarillo iwata said: "no kid ever grows up dreaming of being a manager."
tangential, but largely true: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peter_Principle
it also correlates to the dilbert principle, which, while it makes an incorrect conclusion ("managers are promoted to where they can do the least damage"), observes that after the peter principle kicks in and competent employees are turned into incompetent managers, it is unavoidable that those now-incompetent managers will suck at hiring and promotion strategies :'(
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I've never read the Peter Principle. It's funny stuff, but also seems like quite an applicable theory (disturbingly enough).
In regards to "Star Performer = Great Manager", it's sad that this is used so frequently in building a business. I've seen star performers-turn-managers leave a trail of broken employees before the boss finally realises the problem is the manager, not those under him/her. A frequent problem seems to be that star performers have no clue how to (or don't want to) delegate work to those under them, let alone take the time to train those people properly.
It's nuts. And sad.
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Here's my favorite email paraphrased
Meeting Notice:
Monday 2-4pm (recurs every two weeks)
Agenda: We as a team have too many meetings. Let's meet on how to consolidate these and come up with action plans on how to lower our meeting count.
Really? A recurring meeting about how we're having too many meetings? Really?
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:lol
Not an email, but we once sent a rejection letter to a job applicant and we referred to him by the name Doug throughout the letter.
His name wasn't Doug. Talk about getting kicked while you're down.
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Here's my favorite email paraphrased
Meeting Notice:
Monday 2-4pm (recurs every two weeks)
Agenda: We as a team have too many meetings. Let's meet on how to consolidate these and come up with action plans on how to lower our meeting count.
Really? A recurring meeting about how we're having too many meetings? Really?
best one i've seen here was a mail sent to the entire TK IT department
the phrase that set off laughter from one end of the department was :
"I think Willem will be absolutely gutted that he's missing out on all the cheap cock."
:rofl :rofl :rofl