I was originally hired as an Emergency Medical Technician by a hospital. After a few years the local Fire Department took over EMS. The only thing that changed is that the taxpayers had to pay to have our ambulances repainted and we all got new uniforms.
One day while driving my partner and I get flagged down; the man’s truck had caught fire. We could see visible flames between the cab and the box. My partner grabbed the fire extinguisher on the console and I ran around to the back and got the fire extinguisher from the rear compartment. We doused the flames before the engine arrived. We made our report on the radio and went back to the station to restock.
We were later told that the fire extinguishers should only be used if our vehicle was on fire, and not for civilians.
So, we were supposed to sit in Fire uniforms, in a Fire vehicle, and not put out a fire.
I’d demand that in writing.
We didn’t get written up or lose pay, so it was a wash.
But yes, it would have been funny to do that.
Missed the opportunity to watch them get chewed out by the fire department leadership.
Don’t get me started.
I can go for hours about how messed up the Fire Dept management is.
When Fire took over EMS exactly one Fire Chief took the time to do some EMS ride alongs. The rest of the brass ignored and/or sabotaged EMS in order to get rid of the oldtimers so they could be replaced by lower paid newbies.
Fire Chiefs would have either sided with the EMS bosses, or, more likely, petitioned the city for more money to train EMS in how to use the extinguishers properly.
Could it have been some sort of liability thing? Like the nurses at my old work weren’t allowed to do any sort of first aid stuff to colleagues unless they were the official attendants. It’s like a not your job, you’ll get sued if anything goes wrong kind of thing.
As EMTs we were expected to go into dangerous situations all the time. Nobody mentioned liability. I think they were just annoyed to have to replace the equipment.
I didn’t stop to greet some customers as I walked in with a cane for the third week in a row due to nerve damage.
I wasn’t on the clock, we didn’t have a uniform, no name tag, nobody would even know I work there until I put my shit on after I clock in.
By that time I had made it a habit of recording every interaction with management, so I just pulled out my phone, hit the record button, and asked “so to be clear, are you officially reprimanding me for NOT doing work off the clock?” and that immediately shut him up.
Managers get awfully pensive when they have recording devices capturing them.
Depending on where you live, you might be better off not scaring your employers with a visible recording device.
Why not let the law figure out what your bosses were asking for? In the US, attorneys will take these cases for free and be paid only if you are.
Just chiming in to say all of Canada is one party consent.
I found this out when Christian Selig (the Apollo app for Reddit developer) announced he had audio showing Reddit lied to him.
I was so happy to see he had the foresight to do that.
Was reddit 100% in the wrong on that (if anybody listened to the audio? I think it was shared as a part of Christian’s lengthy post)?
Worked for a small business which did electronics repair, and which had recently picked up e-waste recycling. Our boss, the owner, was known for getting baked out of his mind and imagining things which he needed to tell his staff, and would think the next day that he had actually told that thing to his staff. Just to give you an idea of the kind of guy the owner is, we had two company-wide group texts for the 11 people on payroll. One had everyone, and the other had everyone except the owner. The owner never knew about that one, and honestly that arrangement was a necessity to keep turnover low and by extension the business from running aground.
Anyway, my coworker is talking to a customer at the counter, who is dropping off an old television to be recycled. The customers leave, and the owner walks in.
Owner: “Wait, is this a plasma? We can’t take this!”
Coworker: “why not?”
Owner: “We can’t do plasmas! We’ve never done plasmas!” sees the stack of plasma screen televisions “What the fuck?! Who accepted these?”
Me: “Dude, you’ve never mentioned that we can’t do anything with plasmas before.”
Owner: “Yeah! It was in the class on e-waste recycling.”
Coworker: “You were the only one who took that because you didn’t want to fly anyone else to Vegas for a four day conference.”
At this point I think the owner started to realize he hadn’t actually disseminated anything other than the logistical aspects of the e-waste business to the employees.
Owner: “So, what, no one knows what we actually accept for e-waste?”
Me: “I don’t think so, man.”
The owner looks at me with obvious anger and with that look that says he’s about to blame me for something.
Owner: “So, what y’all want a fucking list or something?”
Coworker: “Yeah, that would be great, actually.”
The owner turned red, looked about ready to angry-cry, and walked out. Went home and got baked. I don’t think he ever actually put a list together. The e-waste thing fell through a few months later after I left because the warehouse he was renting and illegally living out of was like a quarter the size needed, and there wasn’t any money left for processing equipment. He franchised a corporate brand like a year later.
Fuck you, Matt, you goddamn moron.
I like how the company-wide group text tidbit had nothing to do with the rest of the story.
Reminded me of watching the extended cut of LoTR, where some scenes were just fluff.
Yeah, I guess it reads weird. I think I intended it as a early barometer to his character, but didn’t expand or lampshade it properly. Oh well. It’s a lemmy comment, not a graded CW essay.
No I instantly understood the kind of guy he was from that
It definitely paints a better picture of the kind of boss he is than any examples or stories you can tell about him
I was written up for not being happy, and again for smiling too much later in the year. I’m a software test engineer.
I can imagine that writing unit tests all day long 24/5 may not make you smile enough at first and after while it can make you smile in scary way.
I’m an autist, following rules is mega easy. Boss says smile, I smile until he says to stop.
I don’t see why boss would be unhappy with that 👍 (no sarcasm)
Because this makes the boss contemplate how stupid his rules are
In my company the test engineers write and perform system-level tests. Unit testing is up to the developer.
Then switch that in your mind as example that suits you.
It is a industry knowledge that software test engineers cannot achieve true joy.
This is a nice example of “I have to write an evaluation about this person but I don’t know this person, I haven’t spoken to this person, I’ve seen this person a few times while walking by. He frowns a lot”
I reported the multinational company CTO for not being able to keep his hands off me (I’m a guy btw) and a load of other employees. That report came on top of other reports of abuse, fraud, and briberies.
Mind you, this company wa so about protecting whistleblowers that I had to sign a contract about it. VPs were outraged and vowed to protect me.
I made the report, week later called into an emergency meeting with the CTO and head of HR is there too and I’m fired. I sued, won, and in that time learned that the CTO was fired the next day because, amongst things, he fired me. Even so, they didn’t cancel my firing, didn’t rehire me, because now I was toxic.
Never trust anyone in big companies. Never trust their contracts, never trust their words.
Yeah the fact that they didn’t reverse course shows that the toxicity ran from the top. CTO wasn’t the only bad egg. I’d bet that legal got their hands on it and figured that making it right would be admitting to doing wrong.
It sounded like there were other sexual assailants in the company, and they were worried that you would out them.
But was HR fired?
Yes but they immediately re-hired themselves
At 100k above asking price too.
No, CTO was fired
Yeah to them it doesn’t matter if even they thought it was wrong you were fired. As soon as you went to lawyers you became their enemy. That’s just how a lot of these scummy big corporations work.
Did you ask them if they had any gwapes
We were changing office buildings and were packing our desks for the move. They have us boxes and bags for everything. The bags were oddly large, which I commented on by saying “these bags could fit a small child”. Apparently some people took offense at that, as I was later sent up to HR to explain myself.
“Well… They were bags, they were large, and a small child could probably fit in them. What part of what I said is inappropriate?”
I find that often when you make people explain why they’re offended by something, suddenly they can’t figure it out. This will either make them realize it’s not actually an issue, or more likely this will only make them angry due to the embarrassment they now feel for not being able to articulate it.
I think I deeply respect you, stranger.
I like my workplace because I don’t get in trouble for stuff like that. I was once talked to - asked if I had been snarky. I explained that I was and why they deserved it. I was basically told that I was right but it doesn’t really help anything so try to avoid it in the future.
Edit: spelling
At an old job in slack I said something like “for fuck’s sake, it returns a 200 OK even when there’s an error” and one of the directors was like “Language, please.”
So I started saying “fudge” instead of “fuck”. “This deployment is fudged up. are we going to roll it back?”
They “let me go” a couple months later, but joke’s on them I’m at a different job doing better work for double pay.
Thankfully I never did get formally reprimanded for cussing…
But I did stop swearing in commit summaries after multiple colleagues, over the span of months, laughed when visiting the repo for an internal tool whose latest commit, boldly displayed on top, was as I recall,
fuck thisorfuck you(and to be fair the pipeline system was being a prick, but I don’t suppose that needed to be broadcasted so widely).
That’s the sign of really good HR, you’re totally right never do it again… :)
This was when you realized that everyone around you was an idiot and you found a new job, right?
I had actually already been looking for a few weeks by that point.
My wife and I have a young Belgian Malinois, and at about a year and a half of age she started flopping down onto the floor in a very loud and obnoxious manner whenever she was frustrated or in a fit of pique. Being very bony, she makes a loud thump.
It wasn’t long after she started this that my wife remarked,
“It sounds like a body hitting the trunk of a car.”
It was all I could do to turn to her and query just how many dead bodies she had to have transported in her car’s trunk to get that intimately familiar with the sound.
Bro, I think your wife has downvoted you
Or maybe somebody else that’s thrown a lot of dead bodies in a trunk 😂
tbh that’s a strange thing to remark…
Not enough for HR to step in.
Or a large one if you cut it into pieces.
That’s on you dude
There was a super insecure manager a bunch of years ago. I didn’t report to him, but occasionally worked alongside him.
I had been working with one of our customers for a few weeks on a feature they had requested. It was something out-of-the-box, so understandably, if you didn’t know the context, it would be rather confusing.
Manager is set to run a meeting with them, and asks for my help as the technical expert. No problem. We get into the meeting, and the customer asks some technical questions. Before I can get a word in edgewise, Manager proceeds to pull the most inane shit out of his ass for a good 10 minutes–clearly knowing nothing that’s going on, but not letting that stop him. After the customer is sufficiently confused, and Manager is starting to look a little panicked, he finally turns to me.
I figure I’ll try to save him some face, so I start my reply with, “I’m not entirely sure, but are you asking…”, repeating their question back. The customer is clearly relieved that I know what they’re asking, and I provide the answers. Crisis averted! The meeting ends and I head back to my desk feeling good.
Until Manager storms up to my desk and proceeds to scream at me, “IF YOU’RE NOT ABSOLUTELY SURE ABOUT SOMETHING, DON’T ANSWER! NONE OF THIS ‘I’M NOT SURE’ BULLSHIT! NEXT TIME THINK ABOUT WHAT THAT LOOKS LIKE FOR US!” and storms off. Nice projection, asshole.
I was new enough to not have the presence of mind to respond, so nothing came of it (though he was demoted not long after–possibly the shittiest manager I’ve ever known) so it all worked out in the end.
My take away from the “you have to be sure” projection part tells me he thought he knew what he was talking about
Or he clings to some “never show uncertainty” rule he learned about and ignore everything else.
Makes me thankful for my work, even though it has its share of issues.
Part of our service training includes clarifying the problem with the customer, “so I’m clear, what you’re saying is…”.
I was written up for being too pessimistic. It was about 8 years ago, I was a project manager at a small retail company. I was in a small meeting with my boss and the owner of the company. I was telling the owner all the possible risks associated with this new project I was given, the major one being that we didn’t have enough time to complete everything by the owner imposed deadline. Calling out risks is literally one of the main responsibilities of being a project manager. Also the meeting went fine, no one got upset, it seemed everyone understood. A few days later I get called into HRs office with a write up for basically being a Debbie Downer. I was told to be more positive with my updates and stay away from any bad news. I was in total shock! A few days later I put my notice in and found a new job making twice as much. So it all worked out in the end. Thanks for the motivation Todd!
Worked for a company that hired some Harvard guy who fired the QA team for “being down on the product.” He didn’t see value in a team of people who did nothing but test the software and report what was wrong with it.
Damn, what a chad
Right? I wish I had that same confidence in my own code, let alone an entire team of devs’! He probably carries his balls around in a wheelbarrow to pull something like that.
*shart
hr being involved sounds like middle management butt hurt.
in most companies formal interactions, like writing people up, have to go through HR. Tha you can write people up in the US for such silly things is truly remarkable though. In my country writing someone up is only valid, if they violated the terms of their contract or disobeyed proper and legal procedures. While i guess you could write “has to be positive all the time” in the contract or company regulations it would not hold in court.
The write up is a requirement for the later firing in a lot of cases. Yes some places are at will employment anfmd you can technically just fire a person, but having a paper trail helps if they sue for wrongful termination.
That’s embarrassing… for them
I’m doing a business course atm and the professor has worked in risk management for a very long time. Probably the first thing she told us about risk management is how careful you have to be and how hard it is to get people to actually talk about risks for this exact reason. It’s ridiculous, you’d think people would want to cover their bases. She also mentioned this is why it’s almost always outsourced, so nobody in the company has to be the bad guy.
Anybody who spends time doublechecking they’re listed where they want in a group email needs to be fired. The company is not in the business of “your ego”
the person bringing the complaint is the one disrespecting everyone.
I had a boss like that once. It was the weirdest thing ever when she mentioned that as an issue.
Amen, the business is here to make money, it is not here to play safety egos up its employees. I mean unless you happen to be a pornstar, and you get off on admiration, in which case your ego is definitely the company’s business.
For documenting the accurate number of hours I worked, in a teaching lab. The department head didn’t believe that the lab I taught (as a grad student) needed the hours it was given. Keep in mind, I had to do everything for the lab: create the lab manual, design lab activities, get ethics approval, create lab lectures, setup and clean up the lab, and do all the marking.
Turns out, the department used that document to pay me. This was never explained to me, usually we just get paid the set amount of hours, and I was of the understanding that this was just an audit of my hours to justify what I was getting. Turns out I worked about an extra 30% of the hours set for that lab for the semester. As a result, the department couldn’t fully pay me until the following year because they didn’t have it in their budget to pay for that extra 30%.
I ended up getting an ear full from the department head, but he backed off when I told him I was simply doing what he asked and that I wasn’t inflating the numbers to get higher pay, since I had no idea they intended to pay me based on that audit.
Perhaps it’s coincidence, or perhaps it was petty revenge, but later that year at gathering of the faculty and grad students he announced that I had won a major scholarship (one that would’ve paid pretty well for a grad student), and had me stand up in the crowd along with the other winners. Then, immediately after the assembly, he runs up to our lab office to tell me he read the sheet wrong and I hadnt actually won the scholarship, he just read the wrong name. I spent the next few days shamefully having to explain to everyone that, no I didn’t get the award.
*edit: spelling mistakes.
He knew what he was doing.
My GF is a pool cleaner and once got written up for sending a customer a picture of dead pigeons that were in their yard.
The customer called the office screaming that she sent the pictures “to be mean.”
Turns out these people had pest control out on their property to “remove” all the frogs because the frogs were “keeping them awake at night”, and the birds took the bait instead.
Yes, these folks were filthy rich and entitled.
What does “written up” mean?
Because our write ups are just incident reports. Like, if a shitty Karen went nuclear on a staff member, we do create a incident report. But anybody reading this will absolutely go, “fucking Karen strikes again” and it absolutely won’t reflect badly on the employee.
That stuff builds up over years so that when management decides they want you out, HR has years and years of in writing marks against you to demonstrate that it’s not wrongful termination.
In the last firm I was at, we got written evaluations twice a year. I never recall anybody ever getting a single positive phrase about them as a person or an employee. They were always one hundred percent negative.
I got promoted three times despite my God awful evaluations.
But when I crossed the wrong person, all those years came out and I had been an unacceptable employee for the duration of my time there.
Fortunately, my direct manager gave me the heads up so I was able to get another job before they were able to drop the hatchet. I never had to sign anything, never had to acknowledge anything, refused an exit interview, and scored an additional month’s pay plus my annual profit sharing.
It was beautiful.
Usually it means a mark on your work record, pretty much like getting an F on a paper or something.
There is no such thing a work record, a company record maybe, but beyond that balls.
Just paperwork so the whales in the office feel like they do something.
It means nothing when you live in a “at will” employment jurisdiction.
In the past, (or in a union contract) employers had to prove they had “just cause” to fire you. This would be documentation of cause.
I got a verbal warning for referring to someone as a “guy” in my team’s group chat.
As in “I’ve got a guy here who’s running into issues with getting his loan processed. How should I proceed with assisting him?”
My language wasn’t professional enough, and my manager pulled me aside to warn me not to do it again. I’ve since left the role, and my new team fully embraces casual conversation (my manager has outright exclaimed that “our software is a piece of shit” to much agreement). Things are much better now.
Back in my retail days, I had a Karen get upset because I said “how are you guys doing tonight?” to a group that was not 100% men.
Pretty sure that’s just a regional thing. I guess screw you for not being born in a “y’all” region?
I’m from not-urban Georgia and I (and most other people) say “guys” a lot too
Isn’t “y’all” singular and “all y’all” plural? I’ve heard this but have conflicting accounts of what is true.
I remember there was some juicy drama about that posted on another social media site. Apparently, there was a group of customers dining out, all of whom were women. I think most of them were lesbians or something to that effect so some of their attires weren’t exactly feminine. So, when the waitress asked something like, “Is that everything for you guys?” they absolutely flipped. I don’t remember how much trouble she got into for it, but oh boy, I’m forever scared that such an innocent slip of the tongue could land me in some thick shite at work.
That is (hopefully was) a think in some very strict japanese companies. Also, when people had to stamp thing, they would angle their stamps to be “bowing” to the superiors who stamped first. I hope all those traditions are dead
Being mildly autistic, I usually think I would love Japan for that ‘don’t bother others’ culture, but I’m starting to think it might actually be a hellscape for me.
it would 100% be a hellscape, you’re expected to conform entirely and deviations from what’s expected socially are frowned upon significantly, it is extremely lonely if you can’t be a carbon copy of everyone else. especially if you’re a foreigner or have non-asian-looking parents, japanese will never really see you as “japanese”, at first they treat you like a tourist but then when that wears off you’re seen as below others
it’s one of the most conservative cultures on the planet in a lot of ways, perhaps the most conservative in the first world (although it shows it in some weird ways like in respect to the heavy objectification/dismissal/sexualization of women in japanese culture, it doesn’t look like “western” sexism a lot of the time). same kind of stuff applies to korea
from an outside perspective, and a tourist’s perspective, japan and korea seem like they’d be amazing places to be, beautiful and a lot of fun stuff. but for most people it’s just depressing, even for the people living there – great hint as to why the suicide rate is so high, you get practically no support and everything is incredibly superficial
so yeah i would say a pretty awful environment to be in if you’re neurodivergent/have a disability in any way, shape, or form, or have any differences that would make you stand out (even so little as being racially different is enough to be ostracized). also the economy is pretty stagnant if you care about that
some people have different experiences, a lot of people love japan, but it’s not for a majority of people. but as with anything, if you seriously want to move somewhere you should at least do your research yourself and take a lot of visits beforehand
if you want a “don’t bother others” culture you might like finland, it’s pretty much like that – i mean they also have an extremely high rate of depression but the culture isn’t extremely oppressive like japanese culture is
another suggestion could be eastern europe
agreed. life in these countries is nasty, brutish and long. lots of convenience and cool culture, but completely negated by a horrendous work ethic, which consumes your entire life. some people are into that, but most people i know do not think of that as a good way to live.
Had a friend/roommate who’s Korean. I asked him if he had plans to go back after school in Canada (his dad’s and engineer, and so is he). He laughed and told me no, definitely not
Sometimes I start conversations with people completely at random and they think I’m flirting with them. Where can I go where people can just be friendly without sex?
As much as I shit on Iowa/the Midwest USA, they are a wonderful place for this
Source: I am stuck in Iowa
Ohio here. Still no good. Everyone flirts with me.
they also have an extremely high rate of depression
Wasn’t Finland the happiest country on planet?
“Finland happiest country on earth” factoid actualy just statistical error. average Finn is happy 0 times per year. Happys Antti, who lives in cave & is happy over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
average Finn is happy 0 times per year
Imagine that half of them are less happy than that. This is because Finns are happy entire year.
How about Sweden? I’ve heard people usually try their hardest to avoid any unnecessary social contact
They always seem super cordial in Anna Cramling videos!
Some people do better here, some worse. For me, there are some shops I even have a hard time with because they have the music playing plus various different jingles from little advertising things going in different keys, timings, etc. and all of it seemingly at 3 billion dB. I have to wear headphones just to make it through shopping. If you’re sensitive to lights as well, you’re going to have a bad time.
I also think the whole “don’t bother others” thing can be a bit overstated compared to reality.
Oh yeah, I live in my nose cancelling earbuds.
nose cancelling earbuds
What’s wrong with your nose?
I’m trying to strengthen my other senses.
You might like Germany then
Also, when people had to stamp thing, they would angle their stamps to be “bowing” to the superiors who stamped first
The funniest thing is that you can also rotate the stamp slightly counterclockwise to indicate “I’m approving this proposal because it would be inconcievable to dissent from the group’s thoughts, but I think you’re all making a mistake by approving it” - and how much you rotate the stamp counterclockwise indicates how stupid you think the proposal is.
Whoa. Japanese magic. Straight from anime.
how much you rotate the stamp counterclockwise indicates how stupid you think the proposal is.
I disagree so much I’ve rotated 360 degrees.
I put an attorney’s name in the “assistant” field of a work order. That bitch called the manager to say she worked too hard to become a lawyer for me to call her a secretary, lmao
oof, the insecurities
That’s when you point out that you never called them that but are happy to allow them to self identify as such if they like.
I was born with glass bones and paper skin yet somehow I can still withstand more damage than a middle manager’s ego.
Used to work with an awesome chick named Velma. Boss pronounced it Thelma for three years. She finally started calling him Craig instead of Greg. Dude quit a year later after everyone else picked it up.
He should have started calling her LaurenI didn’t see as fragile ego as his.deleted by creator
He spelled it that way too. Unless being an asshole causes a speech impediment I don’t think that was the case .
