Corporate Overreach: EVA to 'Activities with Extra Vehicles'!

[D H]

From another thread:

If you want a job based on education, you need to start applying right away. The HR department of any company will try their hardest to see the company fail, and they do this by inefficient hiring and firing policies.

Dang you Shawn, now I need to clean my computer screen.

This thread is about practices that would make Dilbert's pointy-haired boss turn red.

I'll start: In a former job, corporate management decided our group needed more oversight. All technical papers had to be reviewed at the corporate level. I had just written a paper for NASA that discussed, among other things, extravehicular activities, or EVAs. Corporate didn't like "extravehicular activities", (not in their dictionary), so they changed that to "activities with extra vehicles". EVA didn't work anymore, so they expanded each EVA to "activities with extra vehicles". They then shipped the document directly without giving me a chance to correct their corrections.

 

[Astronuc]

I worked for the pointy-haired guy at my previous job.

We received a lecture on punctuality to staff meetings, so as not to disrupt the productivity (time is money, don't you know). Well shortly after that, we were all called to a staff meeting, and we all got there in time, when the person (pointy hair guy) who lectured us on punctuality received a phone call, which he could have (should have) deferred but didn't. So the entire staff sat in the meeting room for about 15 minutes - discussing punctuality and its impact on our productivity.

Our pointy-haired manager (VP) did apologize for holding up the meeting.

 

[Artman]

I worked as a draftsman for a engineer. He was a genius at most things, but a little rash at times. One day there was a fire in an adjacent building. Worried about it spreading to our building, he told the man I worked with and me to start running prints of all of our mylar drawings as a backup! We had thousands of mylars. One project alone was over 500 sheets!

The other fellow told him, "Are you crazy? I'm going to go watch the fire."

I, being much younger and not wanting to outright refuse, said, "Wouldn't it be better to just roll up the mylars and move them?"

He said, "Fine, I'll do it myself!"

He ran two prints on the print machine, which took two minutes each. He saw the futility and joined us watching the fire.

 

[ShawnD]

Dang you Shawn, now I need to clean my computer screen.

At the company I was previously working for, several of the people in shipping and receiving quit at the same time, and HR was looking for new receivers. They complained that it was difficult to find people, which I knew was complete BS, so I asked what the problem was. The reply:
"We'll hold interviews for 10 people, and when we find somebody we like, they'll often just not show up or they'll call into say they've found another job"
It didn't dawn on them that instead of having some retarded week long process of interviewing 10 people, they could just hire the first person they thought was good for the job.

At that same company, 3 of the senior chemists left QC over the course of maybe 3 months. This left the department with a major shortage of people, so there were always piles of work to be done (literally piles of paper). When those 3 people were hired, the company was owned by a German contract chemical company, and those people were hired straight out of a 2-year college. Those 3 people quit their jobs after the company had been purchased by an American drug company. The job postings for replacement chemists required a 4-year B.Sc. and 10 years of experience. Ha! Good luck finding even 1 person in the city who has those credentials.
To make it even worse, I was layed off (my credentials are nowhere near that good), which brings the total to 4 job openings. Another one of the senior chemists is planning to quit in August, so that will bring the total up to 5 job openings. I don't know how HR could screw this up so bad.

That same company has also been looking for an experienced chemist to lead the QC department, and the job required something like a PhD in analytical chemistry and 8 years of experience. That job has been open for the past 7 months and it still cannot be filled.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I once had a temporary job with no distinct responsibilities. My boss went on a business trip and put me in charge of a simple project. Thirty portable computers would be delivered to the company and two people would fit them with graphics boards. My job was to see that these two guys had everything they needed to do their job. So I sat and tried to look busy for days while waiting for the delivery. One day I came into work to find the computers sitting on the loading dock outside of the receiving office. It turns out they had been delivered at 8:00 pm the previous night and stayed out in the open til morning. The receiving office still wasn't open so I took them and hid them in the work area where the two guys did their work. I locked the door and went on my way. Then the two guys showed up and saw the computers. However, they miscounted them and thought there were only 28. So they did the obvious thing. They went to some suit and told him that I had moved the computers off the loading dock without permission and that two had gone missing. I saunter into the work area to find some pointy haired guy barking at me about how I had better come up with two machines (they were there all the time, so that was easy) and that he was going to make my short remaining stay at the company miserable. He went on for about 15 minutes up until he said that he was head of shipping and responsible for the computer shipment.

Light goes on in head. Oh, he's responsible is he?

I asked him if he knew that the machines had been left on the dock all night. He looked at me and I looked at him and we both knew that he wasn't going to make any more trouble for me than I was for him.

 

[Evo]

I'll start: In a former job, corporate management decided our group needed more oversight. All technical papers had to be reviewed at the corporate level. I had just written a paper for NASA that discussed, among other things, extravehicular activities, or EVAs. Corporate didn't like "extravehicular activities", (not in their dictionary), so they changed that to "activities with extra vehicles". EVA didn't work anymore, so they expanded each EVA to "activities with extra vehicles". They then shipped the document directly without giving me a chance to correct their corrections.

 

[moose]

I'll start: In a former job, corporate management decided our group needed more oversight. All technical papers had to be reviewed at the corporate level. I had just written a paper for NASA that discussed, among other things, extravehicular activities, or EVAs. Corporate didn't like "extravehicular activities", (not in their dictionary), so they changed that to "activities with extra vehicles". EVA didn't work anymore, so they expanded each EVA to "activities with extra vehicles". They then shipped the document directly without giving me a chance to correct their corrections.

That's awesome!

When I worked at a grocery store, at one point we had a really good team of people. We all liked each other and did our job (yeah...even people at grocery stores have things to do...). However, the corporate office thought it would be a great idea to DOUBLE the amount of employees. They had to waste money on training these new people (for some reason we got around 15 hours of training initially). Then, all of the employees who have been there for a while got pissed off because our hours were cut in half due to the extra staff. Almost all of us quit. Sooo, extremely soon after doubling the staff, they had the same amount as before, but all far less competent. I was in there a few days ago and a manager was complaining about how nothing gets done.

 

[ShawnD]

When I worked at a grocery store, at one point we had a really good team of people. We all liked each other and did our job (yeah...even people at grocery stores have things to do...). However, the corporate office thought it would be a great idea to DOUBLE the amount of employees. They had to waste money on training these new people (for some reason we got around 15 hours of training initially). Then, all of the employees who have been there for a while got pissed off because our hours were cut in half due to the extra staff. Almost all of us quit. Sooo, extremely soon after doubling the staff, they had the same amount as before, but all far less competent. I was in there a few days ago and a manager was complaining about how nothing gets done.

I don't understand why they would double staff but keep the same amount of people working at any given time. That makes absolutely no sense. If they doubled employees and had twice as many people working at a time, that I could at least somewhat understand.

 

[D H]

I don't understand why they would double staff but keep the same amount of people working at any given time.

Shawn, you understand why perfectly. You made me start this thread with this little gem:

The HR department of any company will try their hardest to see the company fail, and they do this by inefficient hiring and firing policies.

 

[moose]

I don't understand why they would double staff but keep the same amount of people working at any given time. That makes absolutely no sense. If they doubled employees and had twice as many people working at a time, that I could at least somewhat understand.

The people in corporate were under the impression that everyone working there was 16 and wanted to work 15-20 hours a week. I believe the reason they gave to store managers was so that nobody would work over 20 hours in a week. WHAT THE HELL?

 

[Evo]

The people in corporate were under the impression that everyone working there was 16 and wanted to work 15-20 hours a week. I believe the reason they gave to store managers was so that nobody would work over 20 hours in a week. WHAT THE HELL?

If I'm not mistaken, there are certain financial benefits to a company when an employee works less than 20 hours a week. For the life of me I can't remember what is is, maybe someone here knows. You are classified differently when you work less than 20 hours.

 

[moose]

If I'm not mistaken, there are certain financial benefits to a company when an employee works less than 20 hours a week. For the life of me I can't remember what is is, maybe someone here knows. You are classified differently when you work less than 20 hours.

Ohhh, that may be it (though it back fired, considering that the new workers now all work over 35 anyway). Wait, nevermind, it's kind of starting to make sense. If you worked there for over a year, you needed to average over 20 hours a week to receive a bunch of the benefits. This way, they got rid of the people who have worked there for over a year... It's still retarded considering that the rating of the store (...we got ratings, I don't even want to get into the flaws in those though) dropped horribly after what they did...

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

For one thing, part timers don't get all the benefits. Total compensation is lower for two part timers at 20 hours each than a single full timer at 40 hours.

 

[ShawnD]

For one thing, part timers don't get all the benefits. Total compensation is lower for two part timers at 20 hours each than a single full timer at 40 hours.

But that assumes full time employees get benefits. Not all jobs have benefits for full time employees.

 

[Astronuc]

Management -

I'm living Diblert's life at the moment. This has prompted/provoked me to make a statement about Management/Management - and what is good management, and what is bad.


A good manager evaluates the situation, determines with input from peers and subordinates what needs to be done, then delegates responsibilities, and then provides the resources needed to accomplish the goals (i.e. get the job done). With each step

A bad manager attempts to control others. Control (or micromanagement) is wrong and counterproductive, especially when the manager makes arbitrary, ill-informed and ill-thought decisions.


There is no room for stupid egotism, vanity and insecurity in critical technology.


These days I feel like quitting, but I've got commitments for the next 6-8 months.

Sorry for the rant - but I'm frothing made at moment and there are no grizzly bears to wrestle with. Grrrrrrrr!