At the tail end of a massive maintenance shutdown (16 hr days for everyone, for 2 weeks) the mill leadership started a site-wide meeting with pictures and stories of their recent trip to Japan. How they went golfing, the great meals they had, their trip to the mountain, etc. They finally wrapped that up and proceeded to tell us that cost of living raises were going to be small that year due to them being “unsure about next year’s profit margins”.
There was a pretty steady wave of resignation letters for the 6 months following that meeting.
Jesus, some people just have no awareness whatsoever.
It’s almost always better for a company to have resignations than layoffs.
So it’s kind of always been a thing for them to “encourage” resignations with shit like this, then hire back new people later for drastically lower salaries.
It’s what a lot of places are doing now mandating return to the office.
Quiet firings.
That’s utterly diabolical if that was the intention
The devil himself is afraid of the machinations in the mind of the average human resources manager.
Not to mention that the company doesn’t have to pay unemployment for those that resign but do for those that are laid off.
i struggle to understand that even from a sociopathic viewpoint here, productivity drop would far exceed any wage savings
Or they don’t care because they feel they deserve it and we peons don’t.
Similar thing happened at my first job out of college. It was a year into COVID and we’d been WFH since the spring before this annual June meeting. They had just gotten done announcing that our productivity had exceeded targets, when they added two more announcements:
-
WFH was ending, and we’d all have to go back to an office that didn’t have enough desks for everyone to be there all at once but that was okay because we could all just coordinate amongst ourselves as to who gets to sit where and when and when we had in person all-hands meetings some people could just sit on the floor and work.
-
Due to a lawsuit filed against an entirely different OU we shouldn’t expect much in the way of bonuses this year.
We saw the stress the company was under between the lawsuit and the move, so over the next couple months we helped by cutting about a million dollars a year from their annual salary budget.
some people could just sit on the floor and work.
i hope you have a workplace safety agency where you are, because damn…
Where I was. I noped tf out of there, and a few weeks after they started enforcing RTO America set it’s records for daily new COVID cases and daily deaths. We really did do COVID the way we did Vietnam: it got too expensive so we gave up, declared victory and threw a bunch of people away.
-
It’s amazing how often I see executives talking about their cool trip, their new plane, or other rich person bullshit during the same presentation where they are telling their employees to suck up some furlough, reneg on bonus, or similar financial hardship.
Super mega sons of bitches Super mega…sons of bitches
tons of upvotes and comments for this one. definitely a frequent flop by management.
I thought I made people mad by ordering a curry chicken sandwich in a student-ran shop in college, but I hadn’t paid attention to an announcement that was made at the end of the class and I accidentally interrupted the minute of silence for a terrorist attack that had happened a few days before
Good lord 😂
I got called “chicken curry” for years
I remember a pause for a minute’s silence announced in the upper concourse of a train station (UK) last year. It was disconcertingly comedic as the people walking in either on the phone or with a friend were very confused at why everyone inside was standing motionless and glaring at them.
I think I was working in that station on that day, because I have a very similar anecdote. Actually someone came to buy a ticket, and was annoyed because they thought they might miss their train having to wait for the minute’s silence to end. Not even the most callous passenger I’ve come across either.
Where did you see that? I’m in the UK, can’t remember exactly which station but pretty sure it was a London station with underground
In the north! Probably not the same station then.
Honestly fuck those intercom announcements. If you want to have a minute of silence, say “we will now have a minute of silence” instead of “mrrrr mrr mrrr mr drrrrr mrrrrr mrrrrr-mrrrrrrrr” fucking shit quality can’t understand a word they say
It was an announcement in class by the teachers
Ah well then you’re just a dummy.
Similar situation, I was at an antiques shop with my parents, on November 11th, which here in the UK is a day of remembrance for people who died during WW1 and WW2. We’re observing the moment of silence, when an American guy walks in, notices the silence and loudly exclaims “Wow, who died? It’s like a mausoleum in here!” Someone, thankfully, took him to the side and quietly explained what was happening. He did apologise afterwards. I found the whole situation very funny.
At least there’s a concrete answer to his question!
Ooooof. This sounds like something I would do. Ugh. I want to hide right now just thinking about it. Glad you made it through to the other side. :)
Went to a cousin’s wedding, her parents split when she was little so I’d not seen my Uncle Mal for decades. Tbh everyone was expecting him not to show because he’s a selfish twat and knows nobody likes him.
Surprise, Mal is here. He had an inexplicably-attractive, younger date (Mal was a disgusting, horrid-breathed, lumpy old man and his date was a pretty, well-spoken woman in her 30s so we all assumed she was an escort, as Mal has no redeeming qualities).
The whole time everyone is desperately avoiding being stuck alone with him, and everyone is talking about having the same conversation… Mal has written a book, he’s a writer now, and he’s written a poem he wants to read.
He was given many hints, subtle and not-so-subtle that his poem wasn’t wanted and he agreed not to read it. Unfortunately whether due to ego or wine, he loudly interrupted someone elses toast to announce he had a poem to read. Our collective hearts sank.
It was worse than we expected, at one point including cringe-inducing references to his daughter having large breasts. It went on and on for at least 5 minutes of everyone silently looking at the floor, sneaking the occasional “No way he just said that?!” glances at each other. He eventually finished, and just stood there awkwardly for about 10 secs, I assume waiting for applause, which obviously was not forthcoming.
Read the fucking room Mal, no-one wants to hear your shitty poem and no-one cares that you’re (allegedly) a published writer now. And your breath smells like a fart pushed through an onion.
That sounds horrible but in good news this was probably the funniest story I’ve heard on Lemmy so far
The last sentence I will admit is a shameless ripoff of a line from It’s Always Sunny, rest is my writing so I’m glad you enjoyed it. At least some good came from suffering his presence!
It reminds me of Malcom in the Middle where Hal thinks he’s supposed to speak at every funeral. No one wants him to speak so they all look over at him to see if he’s going to anyway. He always takes it as a sign they they want him to speak. 😂
And your breath smells like a fart pushed through an onion.
My sides
Honesty compels me to inform you that this ending sentence was shamelessly stolen from It’s Always Sunny. Highly recommend it, first season is a bit ropey as they are literally filming, writing, scripting themselves with no experience and at the start of their acting careers. An incredible show though imo!
I swear this feels like a plot point from a Righteous Gemstones episode. Sounds like you have a real life Uncle Baby Billy
I’ve been meaning to watch this show but I was put off by the evangelical-ness of it… worth watching then? This happened in the UK about 8 yrs ago!
I was the same way. Especially as someone who lives in Texas and is surrounded by those types. Not to give anything away but it is closer to mobster than evangelicals.
Always looking for new funny shows to watch so I’ll give it a go, thanks for the rec.
I could just hear the tone in your voice when reading this. Great storytelling.
“Read the fucking room Mal” deserves to become a thing.
If I ever see an unkind comment and someone replies with “Read the fucking room Mal” I think I’d lose my shit with delight
My first job out of university.
Company is going through financial hardship. Boss cancels our collective insurance without telling us. Then the president of the company does a meeting in a shady motel reception room to announce to everyone the company isn’t going well and we all need to take a 10% pay cut. Ends the PowerPoint presentation with a photo from our major client’s ads with a lady on a beach with a laptop. President says “oh that’s going to be me in a few weeks. I’ll be going to Greece!”
The whole room just say there silent.
Fuck the rich.
Not a specifically bad instance, but everywhere I’ve worked has always had that guy who has a hundred irrelevant questions at the end of a meeting, holding up 10 or so people from actually getting on with work.
After a couple of bad questions, I’ll either excuse myself, suggest we carry on separately, or (ideally) ask to be sent a list, for me to ignore at my leisure.
Sorry Greg, we’re not here to answer your dumbass questions, or indulge your hypothetical edge cases.
It’s always hypothetical rabbit holes 🙄
They think they’re like Doctor Strange trying to map out every conceivable future
… which somehow prepares you for EVERYTHING that doesn’t happen, and nothing that actually does.
Oh wow, thank you. For some reason this statement hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve got bad anxiety/worry issues and I tend to think about all the worst case scenarios. Everything feels like the end of the world to me, thanks persistent depression. But this put a lot into perspective for me. I’m going to use this statement as a tool when I feel myself spiraling with worry. Much appreciated!
I feel that overthinking due to anxiety is like running on a treadmill. You expend a ton of energy but you’ve not actually moved forward. Better to apply that energy to preventative measures or solutions. And if it is outside of your control? Well then just like the weather, you need to accept it.
Training classes in the military was the bane of my existence when I was in. Always people asking the dumbest questions ever.
I’m the guy that needs to understand shit to move forward, so it’s like 25% dumb questions, 25% insightful questions, 25% pretentious sounding questions and 25% jokes that give white collar people heart attacks.
Don’t you think most people need to understand shit to move on? If you just ask urgent questions, then take time to digest the meeting and ask those insightful followups in a team chat, it filters out the 75% of the crap you were going to say.
Having a reputation as the guy who prolongs meetings with 25% dumb questions and 25% jokes is not a good thing.
I mean a lot of people in meetings have a good idea of what they want the scope of their involvement to be. My curiosity swamps any semblance of scope I might have. I’ve never actually gotten a reply in team chat. I don’t think most people even know it exists. I did get used to sorting out who I needed to be talking to and just hit them up after the meeting, though.
The only time I prolong shit is when I really, really disagree with something. Typically that’s an ethics issue.
Fair enough, I’ve been in those situations, that can be tough
I sit in business requirements meetings for enhancements to some software we use at work, and there’s a guy who feels the need to repeat everything everyone says in his own words (at least twice as many). The meetings used to be 30 mins but they had to extend them to an hour. And we have 2 a week.
Thanks to WFH it means I have 2 hours a week of guaranteed PlayStation time though, so I shouldn’t complain.
Yep. That woman in the case where I work. And you can’t roll your eyes in a meeting, even a Zoom meeting.
But Zoom meetings mean I can - and do - get to message coworkers and shit talk the offender while it’s happening.
Pro tip: Make it a common practice after doing this to always make sure the last message sent at least starts with something innocuous in case you need to share your screen later so the preview in Teams shows doesn’t say “Jesus Christ, Carla is such a…”
Great question Robert. Let’s go ahead and parking lot that for the right time. Make sure you send that to us in your reply to the meeting notes. I don’t want to lose track of it.
We’ll circle back to that.
I heard this years later by my former boss. He used to work for a company that just announced some lay-offs because work was slow. Right as the lay-offs were being announced the head of the company pulled into the lot with his new Porsche lease. It was terrible timing, but the corporate lease was up and the car was ordered months prior. Just made the owner look especially tone-deaf since the car came the same say as the lay-off announcement.
that reminds me of a meeting I was in with the CEO of the company I worked for and we went around the room sharing our hobbies. Everyone said things like reading books or baking or playing video games or whatever.
The CEO said collecting vintage cars.
Why are most of the stories here about dickhead executives
The janitor doesn’t usually have to address an entire room full of people.
I know hating on CEOs is par for the course for Lemmy, and I tend to agree most of the time, but being fair here, it isn’t that often that lower (or even middle) ranking employees have a chance to speak to 10, 20 or 100+ coworkers at the same time.
Depends. I work for a company that uses the SAFe methodology (whether that’s a good thing is a different discussion) there are tons of opportunities for people on the bottom of the org chart to do this.
Even in those contexts, the time is limited, tends to stay on point of some work, and in practice the audience can and will largely ignore the speakers.
Meanwhile, executives schedule regular mandatory meetings for them to spew words for 2 hours to an audience that is expected to have laptops put away and sit there and listen to the executive ramble on. That’s a whole lot of people stuck in a meeting they didn’t want anyway and a whole lot of time for the executive to go on self-involved tangents that are completely at odds with the bad news he might have to say.
A lot of the stories are fake, but also a lot of execs are dickheads
Dickhead executives are exactly the sort of people to get in a large room of people forced to be in it, and explicitly not care about “reading the room”, therefore the most likely to be in the situation, with the largest forced audiences to go talk about it.
Plant manager sending out a site wide email saying that we’re doing awesome, and we’re desperately hiring so refer all your friends. One month after layoffs were announced, and those to be layed off still had a month to go.
I don’t know where you’re from, but some countries/areas have laws against fire and rehire, it’s a disgusting practice.
Give you one guess… you won’t need it.
Something something “at will employement”? Gotta love most US states…
seen it happen before but what they do is ‘abolish’ the role, and introduce a new role with a new name, oddly similar job description (they change it enough to count as a new role) and rehire people on contract where the previous roles were permanent
Celebrities singing Imagine
We had a big mandatory meeting where an executive came in to tell us all to be happy we weren’t getting our bonuses or pay raises, and used a weird analogy about poor people being perfectly happy, because they have realistic expectations and that’s all you need to be happy.
He then had to leave early, as he quipped he was sharing a ride with a fellow executive on the private jet, and if he didn’t leave right then, he’d have to suffer flying commercial.
If you’re still there, organise your workplace. Unionise. Join the IWW - they can help you to accomplish this.
This was like a decade ago, I’m elsewhere now. Still not union, but I personally have no room to complain (reasonable hours and conditions and quite well paid).
Please tell me someone recorded this utter waste of oxygen doing the equivalent of stepping on garden tools in a Looney Tunes short. That’s so monstrously fucking stupid it could be funny (if the old adage of tragedy + time = comedy holds true, anyways).
It’s funny when summarized, but sitting there for over an hour to set up the punchline drained all enjoyment from life.
If someone bothered to record it, I’ve no idea. Nowadays (different company) all such meetings are recorded and made available, but haven’t seen an executive say something quite so boneheaded in general.
I worked a night shift at a lobby of some residential building, with another guy patrolling the building.
Some mentally unstable person wound up sitting at the lobby while the guy was on patrol (long story), so I sent him a message explaining the situation as I didn’t want to talk about it in front of the person.
The patrol guy comes back, looks at the person, looks at me and says “so, who’s the psycho?”
Good lord, what an inconsiderate asshole
As an autistic person with ADHD I am going to leave this one alone. 😬
As an ADHD person I have so many stories.
But I can’t remember a goddamn one of them.
Lady at work told our office one day at lunch that her chihuahua died because it poked its head thru the fence and the neighbours rottweiler bit its head clean off. I could not stop laughing for the rest of the day. Even now its hard not to laugh. I know Im disgusting for thinking it funny, I love animals and would never hurt one, but it was the way she said it, “clean off, i went to take him away from the fence and his collar fell off, his head was completely gone. Neighbours dog at it.”
Something about that story loops around from horrible into laughter. Its just so horrible the brain’s error handling is like “I dunno try laughing about it”
I know in real life it must have been gory and tragic, and I would normally never laugh about someone losing a pet, but the first mental image that comes to mind for me is cartoony and ridiculous so I’m with you on this one
No, that’s funny. You were right
You know what they say: it’s how you tell em.
Holy shit haha!
I don’t know the specifics and I love animals as well, but I think as a porcelain rat dog™️ owner with a rottweiler neighbour, you should anticipate some risk and act accordingly. Big dogs killing the shit out of rat sized dogs by little more than a growl is very common after all.
I just read that as a chihuahua walked into the cafe :0
Joke way to tell people, “As an autistic/ADHD person, if you want me to be able to read the room you better write it down. Preferably with bold text an bright colors.”
Lol same. Just me all the time…
“Don’t you guys have phones?”
Biggest physical room I’ve witnessed a misread happen in
There it is.
Thousands of people from all over the world. Primarily PC gamers. Paying thousands in flights and accommodation. All to see a predatory phone game get revealed.
Should have saved that shit for the quarterly shareholder report.
I came to this thread to say this one too.
An American comedian, following a long set here in Australia, told the audience to stand up and stretch. He then tried to direct us to “bend over and pat your neighbour on the fanny”. Stone cold silence did not indicate to him his mistake, and he tried several times before eventually realising he had lost his audience goodwill entirely with this starting skit.
Turned out later that he had no clue what “fanny” means here, and had to have it explained to him.
Still a weird thing to say.
Not as weird or rude as telling them to pat their neighbour on the vulva.
I think “grope your neighbor” just falls under unacceptable dumbassery from a stand-up regardless.
Like, if the bit is making people refuse to do it, why keep trying when no one laughs?
Genuinely curious what does fanny mean in Australia
It’s slang for ‘pussy’. It’s the same in the UK.
So question for any language experts: why is it different?
I’m not an expert, but “cunt” is related to similar Germanic words meaning “arse”. Etymonline just says the American “fanny” came from the British: https://www.etymonline.com/word/fanny#etymonline_v_1119
Because Australia is upside down.
And England, where we got it from?
Americans are obsessed with being different from England. See: Football / Soccer
There’s a Christmas song that became a classic in the US largely because it was hated in England.
The English were the ones that created the term soccer. It grew in popularity in America as soccer, then eventually fell out of popularity in Britain. In fact, a lot of the differences between words in the US and Britain are that Brits started using a different version of the word and Americans kept using the old one. Not all, but a lot.
Source: https://time.com/5335799/soccer-word-origin-england/
So one American circa 1776 decided “know what, mate? I think ‘fanny’ should refer to ass, not pussy”
Why?
“Coz fuck da bri’ish!!”
🍻 🍻 👏🥂
Sounds like the most American thing I’ve ever heard.
Same guy also had a hatred for useless letter "u"s.
…which one?
Well at least saying shove it up your fanny is indicating a similar location in both amarica and Australia
Wait, what does fanny mean in America?
It’s a word for butt. It sort of has a childish connotation, like a pre-school teacher might direct their class to “keep your fannys on the ground.”
Only in the US. In Commonwealth countries it’s a slang for vulva
Fanny was a nickname for Frances or Francesca.
Both the “buttocks” and “vulva” meanings may have originated from the scandalous 1748 novel Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.
Why did you get downvoted?
Yanks get tetchy.
Not just the US. Canada too.
I worked for a UK based fashion retail business and they always found it blushingly charming when I referred to what they called a 'bum bag ’ a ‘Fanny pack’.
Also, ‘Pardon me!’ Doesn’t mean excuse me in UK English. It’s more an excuse for if you do something disgusting that you are ashamed of, like if you fart or burp.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that was my take away the couple years I worked with British people.
Vulva
Okay wait, even if he meant “butt”, I feel like no one is going to follow a random comedian’s request to grope your neighbor on the butt…
No, not grope, as I said, pat.
He felt we had all been sitting down for too long, and should gently pat the stranger on the butt, presumably to help them with the pins and needles. It was weird, but we thought it was weirder still! I believe people did indeed ask a lot of questions of him, but at the time it was a massive moment of lost in translation and divided by a common language, etc.
Had a teacher tell some students that it’s rude to speak a foreign language in school (an international school)
I had to be this teacher to a bunch of 8 year old Chinese girls who only spoke Mandarin purposefully to ostracize Brazilian girl, the only non Chinese girl in the room.
It was an English speaking international school in mainland China that incouraged speaking primarily in English.
One time the company big boss did a speech telling us how we could all learn a thing or two from his protégé, and clapped him on the shoulder.
If big boss had spent more time in the office, he’d have known that Mr Protégé spent most of his working hours playing ping-pong with Big Boss’s trophy-wife.
So ping-pong is an euphemism for sex? Or was he literally playing ping-pong?
I just remembered the pattycake scene in Roger Rabbit.
Yeah, but with his balls
Oooh the agony
Oh the shame
To make his privates public for a game
You could argue that he wasn’t wrong.
