[TRENCHES] Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - Attire
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Attire
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/attire
How Not to Become a Manager
AnonymousYears ago, I worked as a contractor for a hardware company that ran gaming benchmarks on their products and competition. Benchmarking effectively means starting some script, playing games/watching movies/etc. for two hours, writing down the results, making one change, and doing it all over again.
Everyone loved their job except for my team. My team lead had the sole goal of becoming a manager, but decided that with only two employees they would never make him one. He decided to make it look like we had so much work to do that they needed to give him more testers.
While everyone was playing games, we had to look like we were working in a lab with no windows. We began working 60-80 hour weeks doing random busy work. Even better, he was a time-Nazi who would give us 10 hour long assignments at 5pm that were due the next morning, and then he would yell at us for showing up at 9:05 AM after a whole three hours of sleep.
After eighteen months of working these hours, while also taking a college course during work hours that was approved in writing by my team lead, I was told by upper management that I was being considered for full employment. Two weeks later, after working over Christmas, I was called by the contracting agency to tell me that my contract was not being renewed for missing too much work.
It turns out that my team lead kept a spreadsheet with all the days I showed up even a minute after 9 AM, and showed me as skipping work during the hour I left to take the course he had approved. When they told him about hiring me on he showed them the spreadsheet, said I was missing too much work, and convinced them to hire two high school kids on the cheap to replace me so he could have more employees.
Another team lead later told me that when they announced that I had been let go, the other team leads insisted that they would have taken me, and asked if they planned on firing any other good testers. By the
time they realized their mistake they were restricted from hiring me back for three months due to my contract. I got a call three months later, but I had already taken a management job elsewhere.
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As for Q's utilikilt: I take it this means he doesn't read The Oatmeal.
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Sure you do, ya nanci.
Q is rocking those pants, I have to say.
Q has a utilikilt but not a neckbeard. Factual inaccuracy.
Yeah just keep being proud....
The rest of us: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/utilikilt
There is a difference between a kilt and a utilikilt.
I've worked brutal crunches so I completely understand the massive drain that comes with them, but if you have a manager like that, you have to understand that he will in fact be a douche that keeps track of things like the time you come in. The best you can do it plan to come in 15 minutes early and don't give him an excuse to get angry (and if he's one of those people that believe if you get to your desk early, you start working early, either bill him for those hours or sit in your car and play on your phone/read a book until 8:55).
And I have a friend with a utlilikilt. He loves it, the people he has accidentally flashed, not-so-much.
-edit-
As an additional note, every contractor position I've ever heard of requires you to keep track of your time. Some places the employees do it, some places the managers help. If you're coming in late and billing full time then that is a problem. I doubt the person writing the story was doing that, but if you have a manager that is seriously trying to be promoted, it wouldn't be that unusual for them to be that anal about something so small.
The manager also logged him as missing work while he was attending a college course that the same manager had approved in writing. There was no winning here.
But holy shit, there are employment laws against what this guy is describing. Any employer who will fire someone over being a few minutes late but asks you to work well past your shift isn't worth working for. In the end, they did him a huge favor by firing him.
Also, what the hell is a utilikilt? I found a web site, but I still have no idea what the difference is between a kilt and a utilikilt.
I'd imagine that the proper course of action in this case would be to talk directly with the manager (or whoever was over the team lead) and let them know what was going on. Possibly pointing out that none of the other teams are on 80 hour weeks in a dungeon doing "busy work". This should have been a conversation held well before the contract ended.
As for kilt vs utilikilt, I think the utilikilt has pockets built in, while a traditional kilt does not. Could be wrong though.
Back in college, when I was working in the giant videoscreen factory, at one point they decided to start getting really anal about people being there right when the bell rang. So they brought us all into the room where we'd stretch before our shifts, and they said that, from then on, if you come in after the bell rang, even by a few seconds, they were going to put your name on a list. This was clearly presented as being just the most ominous and horrible fate that could be imagined, having your name on a list.
I raised my hand.
"What are you going to do with the list?"
"We're going to write down names of people who come in late."
"Yeah, but then what? What are you going to do with the names?"
"Uhhhhh, well, we will... have them. Uh, in a list. Which will be... filed."
Anyway, it was shortly after that that I started wearing a watch, so I could make sure not to enter the room until immediately before the bell rang, because if fifteen seconds was going to be that important to them, then I was going to make sure fifteen seconds was at least that important to me.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
Yeah, if your boss is one of those bosses that keeps that close track of time, you really have two realistic options 1) play by their rules or 2) quit. I say realistic because you could complain to HR or their boss, but realistically, that probably isn't going to get much done.
So if they say they really care about you being there at a specific time and they go as far to yell at you for even being a few minutes late, then I would hope you would be smart enough to know that you should be there on time. If you're late and they fire you for being late, then it's really your own fault.
That said, the getting written up for being absent for when the author had a class is another issue, but as far as the boss keeping track of time down to the minute, that's within his right, especially if you're a contractor (actually more so if you're a contractor).
At my first job after college I was inspecting drug cartridges on a packing line. We worked 12 hour shifts, and the place was almost an hour drive from where I lived. I found out after being there almost 2 months, that I wasn't getting my full time, because they apparently didn't count you as being there at 7 unless you clocked in a 6:45, and didn't count you as leaving at seven unless you clocked out at 7:15. You were just expected to sit around in the cafeteria.
I said fuck that. I will gladly lose that half hour of pay every shift if it means I get to retain the one half hour of my day that didn't involve being at work, getting ready for and driving to/from work, or sleeping.
And then a month later I got a better, closer job.
I keep seeing responses like this in these threads. I feel like it's kind of a tautology, and it kinda misses the entire point.
Let's say my boss demands I wear a tuxedo to work. I'm a software guy, I never see customers, there's no real reason for me to not just show up in a sweatshirt. Let's say I show up in a sweatshirt, and my boss yells at me. This is my boss being an asshole.
I know my boss isn't breaking any laws by telling me to wear a tuxedo, or by yelling at me when I don't. I know my boss wouldn't have yelled at me if I'd just worn a tuxedo like he told me to. I know I could just find another job. These facts are so obvious as to be a given; if I were some kind of indentured servant, I probably would've mentioned that; if I have some kind of tuxedo allergy that prevents me from wearing a tuxedo, I probably would've have mentioned that. The point of relating the anecdote isn't "guys, what should I do about this situation?" The point of relating the anecdote is "guys, check out what an asshole my boss is."
I'm not trying to say "I can't believe my boss yelled at me for not doing something that he was within his legal rights to tell me to do." I'm trying to say "I can't believe my boss is such a huge asshole."
Note: I can wear whatever I want to work. My actual boss is actually pretty cool. This is just a hypothetical scenario.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are
You´re missing the point that companies aren't democracies, and the if the boss is an asshole, your deal with it or quit.
When someone says "My boss is an asshole," it's not because they're some kind of helpless fawn, struggling to walk for the first time, new to the world and unaware that they can quit a job. No shit they can quit their job. They probably think about quitting their job half a dozen times a day. They may have already decided to quit once they find a new job. Maybe they've been looking for months and the market just isn't there. Maybe they're on track to get promoted out of that position under that asshole boss, or the asshole boss is close to retirement, or they like other things about the job to outweigh the asshole boss, or any of a million other possibilities. In any case, they are still, right now, stuck with an asshole boss.
So to cope, maybe they tell someone else about the shitty thing their asshole boss did. If that person is a normal human being who experiences empathy, they will relate, and they will validate that person's feelings. Perhaps they will commiserate, and tell a similar story of an asshole boss they've had, and then at least the person with the asshole boss will feel a little better.
Hopefully, the person they try to relate to won't be the sort of clueless dullard who assumes them to be so stupid as to have no grasp of the fundamental nature of the world around them, and who dispenses insultingly useless advice out of some compulsion to prove how worldly and cynical they are and how weak, simple, and pathetic anyone else would have to be to ever seek out the comfort of relating to another fucking human being.
your = belonging to you
their = belonging to them
there = not here
they're = they are