managers -- you have to love them for their entertainment value

I've worked for many managers over the years, and not all are bad, but so many are so bad, and such extreme characters, I just have to sit back and laugh at some of the things I have experienced.

1)Employee:I'm so excited I delivered the project ahead of schedule.
Manager: Well, then it wasn't scheduled properly was it?

2)Manager:How many years did you go to university?
Employee: 4 years.
Manager: All those year wasted.

3)Manager holds up employees work in front of all the other employees and shouts 'look at this shit'.

4)Manager has a feedback questionaire. Tells the secretary to quickly type up the results just before a meeting and hurries into the meeting. He has not yet read the results. THe secretary says 'I think you should read this first'. Manager says 'no time'. The results are posted at the front of the room. One coment says 'NOT ONLY IS THIS GUY USELESS AS A MANAGER, HE's USELESS AS A PERSON TOO'. That was one of the nicer ones. After that comment one employee leans over to another one and says 'frank'.
I heard this story, and I just coudn't stop laughing. I knew this manager well.

5)Had a survey. THe manager gets into his weekly dept meeting and starts telling everyone how they answered the survey incorrectly. Ever since then when a new survey came out, the employees all asked 'where are the answers'.

6)Every week the manager says he wants comments from all his employees on how to improve the dept. THis has to be done during the weekly dept meeting. So, after each employee would say his piece, the manager would say 'good idea--DO IT'. Now, all these employees are overworked to begin with. So, after a few weeks, everyone wouldn't say anything. The manager got REALLY PISSED OFF. He couldn't understand why no one would suggest anything.

7)Manager forces everyone to comment on what they were doing and the general state of affairs of what they thought of their job. THis was done in the dept meeting. I knew this was going to be tricky, so being the politician I was I knew I could only say positive things. I said 'This job I have is challenging and interesting and I really like it'. A week later I was taken off the project and put on something I hated, and never given the opportunity to go back to the original job. A colleague of mine coudn't believe it. He even sent an email out to the whole dept a week later congratulating me on my new job.


8)Company about to go bankrupt. It's already announced bankruptcy process has begun. Manager makes all his employees work evenings and weekends with no pay, so he can look good and get promoted.


AH MANAGERS. THEY'RE QUITE A BREED.

Cont'd

9)Employee goes overseas to implement new technology. The impact of whether it works has serious consequences for the company. It's very difficult, but the employee succeeds and the company does very well. He gets back, and the manager soon puts him on another local project and does not like how the employee did the project (a matter of opinion), and demotes the employee, which has big monetary implications for the employee for the rest of his career.

cont'd)

10)Manager has a team of about 15 employees. Three of them are very smart. I'm talking IQs of about 150 combined with such good memories, that they could be photographic. The other 12 employees are expected to work like and be as smart as the top three. All other 12 employees become alienated, frustrated, but however do not complain for fear they may be put on the layoff list.

cont'd)

11)Company A buys company B. Company B used to pay overtime for offshift pager duty. If you were called on pager you would be compensated for time and a half for every hour. Company A changes the policy and now only pays $38 / per day, now matter how how many off hours you put in. Company A gets away with it, because this is only expected every 6 weeks and engineers are expected to occasionally put in extra time because they are classified as professionals. Now, you must realize some of these pager calls go on for 12 hours, and this is not uncommon. All the employees get alienated and frustated but no one complains because they are afraid of being put on the layoff list.

Moral of the story: It's not easy making money.

cont'd

12)Employee who worked for 42 years gets notice he's laid off. He got this when he got back from vacation. Before he was to leave, he just asked he that they would bridge some health insurance until he reached a certain age, which was just a few months away. He was turned down. Employee goes to a labour lawyer. Initially the company was only going to pay him a few weeks severance. Needless to say, the lawyer got him a MUCH bigger package, and other employees who were unaware of the rules now were made aware of the rules, and it cost the company a HELL OF A LOT OF MONEY. Now I ask you, what happened to the BOOB who turned down the initial request to bridge the health benefits? I don't know, but I'm guessing he got promoted.

cont'd
13)Employee goes to manager and volunteers for a layoff. She wants out and the package would help her out. The next round of layoffs come. The manager does not layoff the volunteer, but instead lays off someone that does not agree with him. A few months later the company goes into bankruptcy protection and the next round of layoffs come. The same employee still wants to get laid off and so gets laid off, but this time without a package because the company has declared bankruptcy.

39ajaxmale said:

Do they all get paid the same? IF so.. then why would they not be expected to perform as good as the "Top 3".

Please, keep em coming. Your cool story is getting cooler!

Click to expand...

The company advertises pay for performance, but that is just a slogan. Basically everyone with the same amount of years gets close to the same pay. In my opinion I think it is unreasonable to everyone to perform on the genius level, because there are just not genius'. Recently I got laid off from this company, and I was so happy to leave. I can't keep up with these guys and I'm tired of trying. I sleep much better and my life is so much more happy.

bill_1279 said:

The company advertises pay for performance, but that is just a slogan. Basically everyone with the same amount of years gets close to the same pay. In my opinion I think it is unreasonable to everyone to perform on the genius level, because there are just not genius'. Recently I got laid off from this company, and I was so happy to leave. I can't keep up with these guys and I'm tired of trying. I sleep much better and my life is so much more happy.

Click to expand...

meant to say 'because there are just not enough genius''

14)Employee gets laid off. After notification the employee must remain working for the company and has full access to the company network for 4 weeks. During this time, it is debatable whether the employee should do any new work for the company, because the time should be spent looking for another position within the company, or wrapping up the existing work and handing it off to someone else. As soon as the notification is given, the employee is put on pager duty for one week, a horrendous assignment. The week after that the employee is put on a helpline, another horrendous assignment. For the next
2 weeks, the employee is given new assignments every day. The employee does what is asked, but does not bust his ass. His colleagues around him cannot believe that this is happening and make fun of the employee for doing any new work, however the employee wants the manager as a reference so does it. Up until the day before the last day of work, the employee is given new work.

Moral of the story. It's not easy making money. I realize that you have to put up with stuff in order to make a buck, but holy cow, when is enough enough? The economy is so bad at this time, that most companies have people lined up to take any job, and so they can get away with this stuff, because no employee will complain, for fear they will be included in the next layoff. Many companies cut the lower 10% every year. It's doesn't matter if you are really good or not. It depends on how you measure up compared to your co-workers.

15)Employee gets a circuit board quote from many suppliers. One supplier says he will do 10 boards for free (prototypes) with the unofficial agreement that they would get the rest of the contract (possibly hundreds of copies of the boards). Manager tells the employee to get the 10 free prototypes and say we will agree to give the contract to that supplier. The 10 prototypes are done, and the boards are of good quality. The manager then tells the employee to go with a different supplier and it's up to the employee to tell the prototype manufacturer that they are out of luck. The company has posters all over the place saying that ethics is everywhere in the company and the company practices the utmost ethic standards.

16)Employee talking to his manager, giving his personal opinion and suggestions on how to make things better. Manager suddenly interrupts employee and says 'HEY--WHEN I WANT YOUR OPINION--I'LL GIVE IT TO YOU'.

17)Company is doing poorly, very poorly. Employee who is a technical engineer is spending all day every day not fixing technical problems but checking spelling and grammar on customer service reports, which report the present status of technical investigations. There's another technical engineer full time checking his work. In the meantime the company continues to get worse and worse. This directive (checking spelling and grammar) is directly from the CEO.

18)Engineer A starts to work on complex problem A. This requires becoming familiar with very difficult software code. It may take 3 weeks just to understand the code. After one day, engineer A gets interrupted. As per process, engineer B must now take over and start all over looking at the code. 2 days later, engineer B gets interrupted. As per process engineer C now takes over and starts to look at the code. He gets interrupted, and now engineer A resumes. This goes on and on for weeks. This is the defined process the engineers must follow. The process was of course not defined by engineers. It was defined by someone who never looked at code. Engineers say the process doesn't work. No one listens.

19)A high level engineer is given the responsibility to evaluate a new program called '48 hour turnaround' for software bugs. This is done via the 6 sigma process. Engineer does the work, and concludes the program will not work. Engineer is told that is the wrong conclusion and must say the program works. This directive is coming from the CEO.

20)New CEO goes into a corporation. This is a highly regarded CEO. He brings with him his right hand man. He asks his right hand man (let's call him Sam), 'how can we turn this corp around?' Sam says he was on a customer site and says the customer wants all their software bugs fixed fast. Sam has seen a similar program with consumer flat panel TVs. All TV faults were guaranted to be fixed in 48 hours. So Sam says 'we'll implement a 48 hour turnaround fix for software bugs'. CEO says 'great Sam--glad you're with me.'. Program gets rolled out. It quickly becomes the laughing stock of the company, because as any software person knows, when the software is complex, it could easily take weeks to develop a patch. Anyone that stands in the way of this program is replaced with yes men. In the meantime the company continues to spiral downward, and it has nothing to do with the inability to turn around software bugs in 48 hours. However, more and more resources is continued to be plowed into this program, until finally the company declares bankruptcy.

21)In the same CORP, canada and US has a dept called test engineering but each country does the testing differently. The US and canada argue for 10 years who has the best process. This takes about 4 man years per year to do all the arguing. At the 10th year, it was concluded that the canadian test engineering process was better. Immediately after that the canadian test engineering dept was closed and all work goes to the US. The person who made this move happen regardless of what the study said, gets the manager of the year award.