[TRENCHES] Tuesday, August 26, 2014 - Defibrillation
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Defibrillation
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/defibrillation
3rd Place Gets the Gold
AnonymousAfter giving 2 years of my life to a certain “fruit” computer company, not only did one promotion open up in the department I wanted to get into, but two! Having the best sales record, best customer satisfaction score, and experience already training for the position, everybody thought one of the openings would be mine. People in the department were already congratulating me, planning on integrating me in as soon as possible.
So when the manager summoned me to his office, coworkers were literally giving me high fives on the way in. The manager started off by listing all of the accomplishments and great service I’ve given to the place. He shook my hand and said “thank you”.
Then he said I didn’t get the job.
Neither did the second most qualified person apparently. “If we lose you both, then your department will lose our two best employees!” he cheerfully stated. The job was going to the 3rd and 4th best people.
I followed up by asking why I should be motivated to work hard if all I have to be is 3rd best. His response? “Because we know that you’ll still continue to do a kick ass job for us.”
So I quit the next day. I ended up having a beer with the 2nd best guy a few months later. He ended up just not giving a shit anymore and his numbers plummeted.
But nothing made me happier to hear that the 2 guys who were promoted were so bad for the job, they royally screwed up the entire department enough to get the manager demoted and transferred to the worst store in the district.
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Regarding the story: Depending on the department, maybe the management was looking at other skill sets besides hard numbers. I was in a similar situation, during the time I worked for my previous employer. This annoyed me as well - in retrospect, and after a year of other work / employment in between, I recognize that I was lacking certain skills for this position despite having good stats.
Another beef I have is that a lot of big companies won't tell you directly why you didn't get a certain position, or give hints how to improve your chances. This can cause lots of frustrations for employees because it feels like playing a game without being given the full rule set. Otherwise, companies and management could be more honest and tell them "candidates are chosen by our own criteria". But it seems, they have to keep the peons motivated somehow.
If the managers in the story actually had more valid reasons for denying the promotion then they communicated it in the worst possible way.
As far as your second point, I fully agree. Way back, I had an internship at Microsoft and I ended up with a shitty final evaluation which torpedoed any chance of me getting a job with them in the near future. In retrospect, I realize that I did a very shitty job and simply could not manage the stress. Plus I hated the type of work I was doing there. However, what really pisses me off to this day is that until I was given the evaluation to read, I was not told that my work was subpar or that I was not meshing well with my coworkers. My bosses generally said nice things about me and my work (in retrospect they were just platitudes) so I was completely unprepared for the final rejection. I am not sure if I could have performed better ( I was not suitable for the job at all) but some honesty would have been nice.
When I went to the main PA page and saw this large zoomed in image of Isaac's mouth with the two cookies crammed in there, my first thought was "Did this illustrator used to work for Disney?"
Its like... a straight-up contender for the dickerdoodle contest.
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