I am opening up this as a rant space. Let me kick it off.
I have spent 2 years trying to help my co-workers, trying to take stuff off their plates, trying to lighten their workloads, listening to them vent about how busy they are while they waste everybody’s time in our meetings, blah-blah-blahbity-blah. Meanwhile, I constantly have had to scrounge for work myself. I have made a pest of myself asking what I can take to help them.
And now I’m being let go because they “don’t see a role for me in the next fiscal year.” A role that no one at the company — whose name rhymes with “Deloitte” — ever could be arsed to assign.
One guy I met with yesterday was 15 minutes late to the meeting that was all about my transitioning out at the end of the month. Thanks for making others a priority, guy who goes radio-silent at the worst times.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Rant away below.
That sucks, for sure.
Did I just find @luigi-vuoto on LinkedIn?
I don’t blame anyone for that.
It’s not me unless you see “man-whore” on the CV.
One of the things I painfully learned about corporate world… no good deed goes unpunished.
Help streamline their processes to the point where we could make a specific product at will, help them make around $350 million USD more in the fiscal year, dominate the critical US market for this product, and when I started missing days because of Cokehead Narcissist, those incompetent petty fucksticks ganged up on me and tried to fire me (10 years earlier.)
What’s funny now is that those same people (shit floats to the top) think they know what the fuck they’re doing and they really don’t. I knew what I knew because I worked in the process (unlike any of them dumbfucks who only saw it as a flow chart not how things actually worked) and I’m one smart motherfucker when it comes to workflow/process design (because I spent a good 15 years doing it as an actual engineer)… they’re scrambling trying to fix and speed up what they don’t understand. Doesn’t help they don’t listen (because they think they’re really fucking smart) but you know what the secret to my success was?? I listened to the people who did the damn job and gave them the recognition they deserved instead of being a self promoting shithead.
I feel bad for my former coworkers who are stuck in management’s cycle of stupid though.
…this is the thing that never ceases to amaze me for how the people who think they can improve things seemingly won’t do…talk to the people who are clearly good at the thing you want to do/work well & ask what would make that easier for them & what’s making it hard
…in my experience there’s an excellent chance they have workable suggestions that make demonstrable improvements
…& mostly they will just tell you that shit…for free
…but…no…it’s all “hi, we just got here so pin your ears back while we tell you why this thing we did before somewhere different is the new way to do your thing…that’ll be loadsamoney, please…thank you”
…sigh…it’s almost like they’re there to do something other than the thing they say they’re doing…which is usually to provide an expensive fig-leaf for a course of action desired by management that is detrimental to some aspects of the business…that isn’t management?
“IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!!!”
Harvey
https://apnews.com/article/harvey-weinstein-sexual-assault-trial-31d7a64b75148d1e482f3c020ffea527?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us
not much to rant about for me tbh…works sucky due to being permanently short staffed…but you know…im used to it… tho the powers what be did feel the need to annoy me about being back from my breaks late again
im not btw…fundamental difference of opinion there…if i dont get to go on break till i hear the buzzer…that clearly also means…my break doesnt end till i hear the buzzer…not i have to be back at my workstation by the time the buzzer goes….breaks are unpaid so fuck off if you think im cutting them short for you
anyways theyve been nagging me about it periodically for the last 6 years….pretty sure they just do it so they have something to nag about…they know full well im not going to change
…to your general point…once upon a time I agreed to do a short term thing for a place…broadly it was a specific task involving chasing up people who owed them money…it was supposed to take a month
…day one I go to the person running the joint & say “ok – so I took a look at your records & I just about have a handle on the bizarro spectrum of what would potentially be owing but this wouldn’t need anywhere near a month to do if you cleaned up this nightmare of bad data”
…don’t worry about it, I’m told…doesn’t matter we’ll pay you twice what we would for taking twice as long to achieve a worse result or that we don’t know who of the people turning up acting like they paid actually have…just leave it
…by the time the month ends they’ve asked me to keep coming in…when stuff stops working that they used to call in people at expensive hourly rates to sort out while everything ground to a halt until they got there but actually can be rebooted trivially easily & working again in minutes…it’s not hard to be useful
…the person running the place a year or so later…who was swapped in by the owner after I accidentally started working there…starts saying things like “every office should have one of you” & “this would be a nightmare if you weren’t here”…now…they’re british…but…they were only being semi-ironic
…then there’s new investors who decide they’re going to camp out in the place & figure out how to make it stop losing money…what with a hefty chunk of that now being theirs & all
…I mention that instead of paying increasingly large amounts to IT contractors to provide an unnecessarily complicated set-up that doesn’t really suit the way they use that stuff overhauling their database would make an extremely cost-effective improvement after which they wouldnt need the expensive stuff that keeps flaking out because the database is too old to play nice with any of its incarnations
…naturally they blow a bunch of money on an entry system that would have caused a riot if it had been implemented instead
…around then I had what I thought was a throwaway conversation with one of them where I mention I must like working there because it’s not my only work & pro rata you could argue it’s costing me money to spend the hours there that I do…was stunned when suddenly they start paying me fairly decent money…but…ok…not going to say no to that
…not too many months after that the owner swans in & wants to know why there’s someone on the payroll with no real job description because “what are we paying them for?”
…next thing you know they suddenly want to address that database issue…they get someone in to tell them how to do it…they tell me how they want me to do it
…having spent at this point years, plural, coaxing it into giving me the information we need & identifying what’s bad data I suggest that the same task could be accomplished quicker & do more things at once if we altered the order of the suggested steps…literally that’s all it would take…& I showed them how/why it was true
…they told me I was no longer required about a week later…I said fine…I was only meant to be here a month & that was years ago
…two weeks after that they call & ask me to come in urgently…I tell them I can’t on account of I have other work for other people & can’t ditch…they ask me to come after work to talk to me…I say fine
…now…they had a fairly relaxed staff dress code…the thing I was doing…less so…I turn up “suited & booted”…nobody in a place I was in most weekdays for several years recognizes me…it was surreal…like I had a mission impossible whole head mask on or something
…I go find the owner who wants to see me so bad & they don’t either…so I explain who I am & that they asked to see me & they don’t seem to be able to say why without summoning moral support…when that turns up it’s in the shape of the person now running the place & one of the investors who both do a cartoon double take when they figure out it’s me & make a great show of wondering why I look so different…I explain I came from work…they say they never saw me look like that at work…I say “you aren’t lawyers & accountants”
…they proceed to offer to pay me considerably more than twice my previous wages to un-fuck their database back to only as shit as it was when I left because the consultant lady who demanded I be fired because she couldn’t work with me ran out on them…or had a falling out with the owner she might have been shagging…depends who you asked
…I could have just said yes & told them when I could start but it was so much more enjoyable to tell them I’d get back to them when I’d checked my schedule?
[…not sure that’s a rant, exactly…but it’s hopefully suggestive that Iight get where you’re coming from…so…solidarity-adjacent, hopefully]
Those are the moments I enjoyed.
As I mentioned before. I had to unfuck a similar situation so when I did a presentation so soaked in schadenfreude that even my manager had to take to task for being such a prick/jerk.
So sorry @Memeweaver. I have nothing but commiseration for you. People suck and they really are out to get you. ( Except here at DS.)
That fucking sucks.
I’m currently working with a “tiger team” of consultants from a company that also rhymes with Deloitte and they’re so annoying. Like ask me for contacts for a part of the project that we already had email conversations about and I’m telling them to go search in Outlook for the topic they’re asking me about since they were already included in the conversation.