30 Times “Raising Morale” Completely Backfired For Management, As Shared In This Online Thread
Interview With Author
If there’s one thing many bosses have in common, it’s assuming everyone’s happy just to have a job. They continue to live in their own delusional world, even when over half of the workers in the US are plotting to take their skills elsewhere. They carry on feeling confident in their ability to build workplace camaraderie and team spirit when in reality they patronize, exploit, and micromanage. What about respect, you ask? They've probably never heard of it.
Well, it’s about time they take a hard look at the mirror. A week ago, Redditor CasperTFG_808 reached out to the Ask Reddit community inviting fellow members to open up about their "the punishment will continue until morale improves" work stories. The question deeply resonated with hundreds of employees who quickly rolled up their sleeves to reveal the most inexplicable working conditions and horrible managers they ever had to deal with.
Below, you'll find responses that prove there’s definitely a kernel of truth in the old adage, "people quit bosses, not jobs." We handpicked some of the most blood-boiling responses from the thread, so continue scrolling and upvote the ones that echoed with you most. If you have any terrible work experiences with employers who blatantly ignored your needs, be sure to share them with us in the comments!
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We were all swamped with more work than we could complete and mandatory meetings would happen often that were to discuss why we were behind and what they could do. One guy actually spoke up and said STOP HAVING SO MANY MEETINGS AND LET US WORK, EVERY MINUTE OF THIS MEETING IS PUTTING ME FURTHER BEHIND!. They literally called another meeting 30 minutes later to discuss how the last meeting was not a positive experience for them.
I'm colorblind. I asked for help once when I was assigned a work task that was color-coded in a way that I can't see. I was immediately written up, since the boss "decided" I was lying to get out of work.
I appealed the decision with HR, who sided with the boss. But they offered what they considered to be a very generous solution: I could use the company's tuition reimbursement program to go take a remedial art class. "So you can *finally* learn your colors", she said.
This was about the same time I was also written up because I stayed late to cover for a diabetic coworker who had to run home and get an insulin refill, so she didn't risk her health working alone in the building overnight. I guess overtime pay is a worse violation than death on the job or abandoning the building. I didn't stay much longer.
You folks need to learn your disabilities rights man 👨 you cannot punish people in either of these situations legally
We managed to get in touch with the author of this thread, CasperTFG_808, who was kind enough to have a little chat with us. They revealed they came up with the idea to post this question on the Ask Reddit community after they got off the phone with an old coworker. "They were telling me about the ridiculous demands that their new leadership was putting in place and how they were dumbfounded that everyone was leaving even though she had made multiple reports to HR about violations," the user told Bored Panda.
Worked in a fintech company in the UK in the 90s. It grew to around 1000 people, building towards IPO.
HR decided we needed a company magazine to boost morale and give us a sense of community.
First issue landed and the cover story was, perhaps predictably, a profile of the new CEO. A decent guy fairly well liked up until they point, worked his way through a few roles in the company.
Except the angle they decided to focus on, to show us his human side, was how he was getting tired of his current 55ft yacht and was hoping that the efforts of we, his minions, would reward him with enough bonus to be able to upgrade to a 76ft model in time for summer.
Reader, I do not believe it has the desired effect.
Each of us had to go into a room with the COO and a general manager and watch a youtube motivational video with them. It was one of those narrated videos where it's some person drawing cartoons and text on a whiteboard. Like all you can see is a hand and the whiteboard in fast motion.
Anyway, the theme of the video was that you should be following your passion and pay should be secondary and not a motivation. After the video they then asked us, individually, "would you like to ask us to lower your pay?"
As if that was the take away we should be getting from the video. It was totally absurd.
Great idea! I'll be following my passion straight out the door to a new job, thanks!
So while some workers go out of their way to stand up for themselves, others quietly accept the things their entitled bosses tell them. Still, that doesn’t stop them from sharing their nightmarish tales with everyone online. As of this writing, the question has amassed nearly 16k upvotes and 6k comments where rightfully disgruntled employees air their grievances. CasperTFG_808 said they didn’t expect the thread to blow up as much as it did and thought it would get maybe a dozen responses. "The popularity of the post totally caught me by surprise," they added.
While "no one wants to work" has become a running trend among CEOs and managers who wield power in their companies, they seem to miss what’s happening right in front of their eyes. Millions of employees all over the world have simply had enough of feeling undervalued and ignored by their employers and decide that it’s time to shine a light on delusional management and poor working conditions.
Worked my a*s off for a job, never late, always covered for people, model employee. Got pregnant (planned) but there were some severe complications, and at 7 months pregnant I had to go to the hospital for a procedure that had a chance of causing extremely pre-term labor. So bed rest for three days. I didn't have to work till day three, but informed my boss.
He told me I'd better use that time to find someone to cover my shift or I was fired.
Fortunately a coworker wasn't having that s**t and called around the other stores till they had my shift covered, but that absolutely soured my relationship with the boss. I took my maternity leave and just as it was about to end the boss texted me my new schedule. I responded "lol" and blocked his number.
Really grateful my husband works a job that allows me to be a stay at home parent.
I worked in a hospital for 10 years facilitating meetings for executives and doctors. My team was tech based but somehow we were connected to the catering department so the total team size was 10 people for years. No one in our department would fill out the "anonymous" surveys because it wouldn't be too difficult to figure out who was complaining based on content in the survey and the personalities involved. When I knew I was on my way out, I decided to put all the complaints from my team and the catering team on the survey and maxed out the space on the survey, including the maxed out salaries($10 an hour) of these older ladies and gentlemen that worked their as*es off on a daily basis. One of my picadilloes was that the upper management would always suggest to employees to pick up trash in the hallways as we moved through the building but the executives would trash every meeting room they used. I specifically noted and named an executive that spilled a full cup of coffee early in a meeting and just left it there to stain the table and drip on the floor with no attempt to clean it up. Within a few days, my managers would either look away when they saw me or they scowled at me. Nothing changed in the time I had left there but I'm glad I said what I said and a lot of people saw what I wrote.
The user noted that workers have been viewed as expendable for too long. "Many companies have lost sight of what led them to success in the past," they said. "They view employees as commodities that they can swap in and out rather than the special resources that helped build the company in the first place."
So the user offered Redditors a chance to take refuge from their horrible bosses by allowing people to spill the dirt about them in their thread. "The best part about this post was giving people space to vent. Everyone has a work story and even though I may never get through all the responses, I am so happy to give people the opportunity to get something off their chest."
CasperTFG_808 pointed out that it’s a job-seeker's market out there, so "don’t be afraid to make a move. Also, don’t be afraid to report bad behavior to HR. Many companies also have an anonymous reporting system where you can report issues," they suggested.
We had to take a survey and one question was "Aside from getting a pay increase, what would make you feel more appreciated in your current position?" And we all wrote down things like birthdays off with pay, less overtime, allow coffee/soft drinks while we are working, increase breaks from 10 minutes to 15 minutes." We all handed in the surveys.
They did not implement a single suggestion.
Not me, but had a friend whose supervisor got upset bc she heard people chatting while getting their lunches out of the fridge and making coffee. Her solution? Lock the break room at 8 a.m. (so you needed to come early if you want a cup of coffee), and lock the bathroom so people would need to approach her and ask for the key every time they needed to iuse the facilities. Imagine being in your 30s/40s and having to ask permission to use the bathroom.
To learn more about why certain corporations demand high spirits from staff while failing to meet their needs, Bored Panda reached out to Kristina Leonardi who is a nationally recognized career coach, speaker, and author of Say It To Make It: Affirmations to Empower the Heart, Mind, Spirit and Soul. She explained that employers who think that punishing their employees or making them "earn" good treatment is a good idea "have it all backward and are quite medieval in their approach."
"Creating a positive environment where employees can thrive is a win-win because when employees are happier, they will be more productive and loyal to go the extra mile," she added.
Not really me, but my brother who worked in same place before me
The company had a very bad way to handle finances, often would delay the payment on our end, but theirs were always in time.
One day my brother got feed up and said they better pay them on time, they thought it was a empty threat and delayed.
On the same moment the payment didn't get in, him and his co workers all shut down the computers, took the phone off the lines and sat around. No one were to answer calls, e-mails, clients, schedule deliveries and anything.
The thing is, if THEY didn't work, things could still be solved, but their work was exclusively dependent on our end, if we didn't take the clients/deliveries, they couldn't transport or deliver anything.
They got desperate and threatened to terminate everyone, but then how the office gonna work with 0 people? Nor would be legal since it was the law here that everytime the payment got delayed the worker didn't have to work that "extra day" he's not being paid, or they would have to receive double for it because of the delay.
Not even 2 hours in, everyone got paid. They alwyas had the money, they just didn't care about the workers.
Not exactly a beating, but once my company got all the devs together in a room and told us we have to innovate. We were confused.
Them: We need you to innovate.
Us: What do you mean, innovate?
Them: Innovate! Do innovative things. Companies that innovate see higher profits!
VP proceeds to draw a graph on the whiteboard. No numbers, just "profit" on the y-axis and "innovation" on the x-axis, and a line going diagonally up and to the right.
Them: See! Innovate!
Us: What do you want us to innovate?
Them: Innovative things. When you are working, think innovatively.
Us: Do you want us to stop what we are working on to do this innovation?
Them: No no no! Keep doing your work. But also think about innovating while you do it.
Us: You know, some of the work we already do is innovative.
Them: Can't be, or we'd be making more profit.
I left the company soon after this meeting.
Nothing is worse than a know-nothing boss who has discovered a new buzzword.
Some companies urge people to fill out surveys to measure how content they are with their jobs, benefits, and managers, yet fail to implement a single suggestion. Leonardi said they’re probably doing it for show, to check off a box, or for some regulatory reason. "If they don’t do anything with the responses then it’s a sure sign not much is going to change unless management has a change of personnel and/or heart," the career coach added.
I don't know if this fits but I love telling this GameStop story.
Anyone who's ever shopped at GameStop knows the employees always try to get you to pre-order something or subscribe to their trade-in program (or whatever it is nowadays). Our store was actually number one in the district for both (BECAUSE we only offered when it made sense and didn't harass every single customer), but of course the district manager wanted to make a name for himself so he started demanding we increase trade-ins.
How - you may ask? By asking every single customer NOT trading in games if they knew we took games in for store credit. Yes, the bright red and yellow signs plastered on every surface pushing trade-ins clearly wasn't enough. So the district manager comes in one day to show us how it's done. He harangues everyone about trades all day, and everyone's like, "Yeah. I know." He starts to get frustrated.
Towards the end of the day a kid walks in wearing a backpack and starts looking around. DM goes "HEY THERE WELCOME TO GAMESTOP HOW YOU DOIN'! YOU KNOW WE TAKE USED GAMES IN ON TRADE RIGHT?" Kid goes, "Yup.", keeps shopping. So the DM goes "Maybe you got some games at home you're not playing you want to trade in? Maybe you got some in that backpack you'd like to trade in for something new???" Kid gives the DM this confused, slightly horrified expression, mumbles "uh, no" and walks out of the store.
DM stares at the door for a few moments then turns to us, mortified beyond belief, and goes "SEE HOW EASY THAT IS??"
My last veterinary hospital was really understaffed. Management asked what they could do to improve things and we all said that even just one extra nurse would make a huge difference.
You know what we got? A f*****g colouring book.
According to management, colouring helps with mindfulness which reduces stress. The fact that we'd never have time to use it didn't seem to matter.
My organization did this! They arranged someone to come in and we all got colored pencils and a postcard and we had 30 minutes to "color our Covid experience ". LOL Did not really life morale the way they hoped.
I’m a math teacher and have been teaching for 3 years.
We had a whole new team for our grade level and my principal put me down as the gradelevel leader. Ok. No biggie. We had someone called a “math coach” who was supposed to train the newbies and help them out. Nope. He put it all on me. I was in charge of training them on curriculum, which is SO NOT MY JOB and my expertise. The team was horrible. They knew nothing and I got no help. Told my principal and was told “If you want to be a leader, you need to handle tough situations like this!” with them smiling at me.
This year, I’ve never been so burnt out. Any time I asked for help I got a “you can tough it out!” I begged for any kind of help from anyone. My new team refused to do anything bc “it’s easier if you to do it…we’re so stressed being new”. This lasted for a whole school year. Imagine doing all the work for 5 people all at once, being treated like a whipping girl, and being told that I should expect this. Their students even came to me for help because their teachers did nothing in the classroom.
My prinicpal was so shocked when I said I was leaving. I told them that I had no help and I was not standing to be treated like this when I am still a fairly new teacher. He kept saying next year will be much better because my team has improved (no they freaking haven’t). I said “Hell no. You allowed them to think I am there to do everything for them. Next year will be worse.”
Leonardi also stressed that another big issue she often hears from clients is micromanaging. "People want to be trusted and know that they are confident to perform their job well; having someone constantly double and triple check them (especially when they already have a proven track record) erodes confidence, creates unnecessary stress and anxiety, and creates low morale," she said, adding that it can ultimately push valuable employees out the door.
"It also tells the employee there is no room for them to grow or take on the responsibility or learn leadership skills which can also be an asset to the company if we're allowed to develop properly."
The president of the $2bn company insisted on mandatory Fun. You were met with reprimand and sometimes termination if you:
-Denounced corporate Fun events
-Refused a random errand that had nothing to do with your job
-Didn't go to her parties
-Went to her party but left before early morning
-Stopped going to her parties
-Didn't dress up for costume days
-Didn't decorate your area elaborately for Halloween
They offered free tickets to a company concert each year and when employees sold their tickets online, she would buy them, go to their house, and fire them.
She hired SVPs based on their ability to be evil/cruel, and they would terminate strong performing leaders who weren't yes-people, to make those around them more afraid/productive. Eventually she was ousted and all of her underlings were gloriously wiped out too, sort of like when you kill the head vampire.
When I was hired to help set up a walmart store when they first came to Canada they wanted us to do the walmart cheer at the start of the midnight shift. Go f**k yourself.
I once worked at a company where morale was very low due to extreme micromanagement, low pay, and having to provide tech support for a product that frankly sucked.
So they called us into a series of meetings to "discuss" the issue. The guy leading the meeting asked us as soon as we sat down, "Who here is happy in their job?" And like one or two people raised their hands.
He then said, "Well in this economy, you're lucky to have a job at all. Meeting over." And then he left.
One job I worked at did shift bids. You submit three shifts you are willing to work, cross your fingers and toes and hope you get any of them. My husband and I worked at the same place, but different positions. We set up our first shift bids to be opposite of each other so that we didn't have to rely on a babysitter. First 6 months it worked, last six months, our shifts overlapped by 3 hours. On top of that, people who were super agents (could take tech and support calls) were given priority shifts. Not this go around. When the majority threatened to quit, the CEO said for them to do so and he would hire new agents that he could pay less. Many left...he had a really hard time filling those spots with anyone that knew what they were doing.
Story Time
I used to work retail for a big box office supply chain, you have a 50/50 shot at guessing which one, as there are only two left. Anyway, leading into Black Friday around 2018, my store manager was really making a big deal about cross selling, ink subscriptions, protection plans, the usual stuff.
Well Black Friday comes, and this was the first Black Friday weekend I worked in 10 years that didn't offer and sort of additional compensation for the staff working that weekend. The shifts were usually 9-10+ hours, and we'd get food catered in for the staff. There also used to be incentives for "top sellers", that was taken away as well...
The staff got nothing, and in natural fashion, our numbers that weekend were the worst in the store's history, by a HUGE margin. Our store manager had a meeting with all of the store and read everyone the riot act about how disgusted he was at our numbers being so low. IE - If you don't take care of your employees, they won't take care of you.
The store manager threatened "serious repercussions" for those that didn't go above and beyond the remainder of the year to make up for the lost sales over the weekend. More than 1/3 of the staff quit before the following Spring.
Come to find out later on, the store manager withheld all of these "extras" for the employees, because if the store spends less than a certain amount of petty cash on lunches, dinners, bonus programs, etc. The store manager gets a nice fat bonus at the end of the year...
If you’re working in one of these companies that have time and again displayed that they do not care about you as an employee, the career coach wants you to consider a few things. "It’s time to do some self-reflection and realize that you are worth more. You should look for other opportunities that create supportive environments for their employees," she said. "Remember that we spend the majority of time and energy at work, so if that is a toxic environment, it carries over into our personal lives."
We had multiple people quit, repeated leadership meetings about bad attitudes, low morale, etc. (Height of the pandemic in a essential workplace) I suggested a monthly meeting with all the staff to check in, see what they were concerned about, ask if they had suggestions, to lay off on unnecessary contests for things that were LITERALLY NOT THE JOB, and generally try to lower the stress on people in general, learn what the key problems were, and show appreciation and that we cared. The manager was pressuring everyone to get a certain number of donations for rotating charities per day. It was stressing everyone out and several people said they were uncomfortable as we were in a poorer neighborhood and times were tough for a lot of people and they were not comfortable asking people who were barely scraping by to donate. This was discussed by leadership as insubordination, and the person who refused to ask people on foodstamps for donations was written off as a "bad apple". My suggestion to have meetings to talk about their concerns was shot down bc "we don't want them bringing negative things up" the solution the rest of leadership decided on was to ban the daily meme email bc it was "negative" (just normal "oh God its Monday" stuff), to "shut down" any negative talk and if we heard anyone complain or they brought it things up to us to tell them to focus on work, the contests that were not the actual job, and to have disciplinary meetings with anyone who complained or did not comply.
Literally the entire staff quit.
Those customer donations are used for company tax breaks. Manager probably had an incentive program where he would get a big bonus for his store bringing in a certain number of donations.
Manager asked what to do about low morale and high turnover. I know he’s a harda*s so I offer something simple, “well there’s only 3 chairs for the given 15-25 of us on an average day, how about we get some more?”
His response was, verbatim, “DONT YOU START THIS FIGHT WITH ME BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT GOING TO WIN”
They sent a survey about what our perceptions about the workplace were. Voicing some issues with some areas was 100% going to get you in trouble so I complained that the survey was not anonymous, anddidn't complete most of it.
Some days later I was personally contacted by 3 people wanting to find out what was wrong. They completely missed the whole point
Sounds like my mother : "tell me the truth, i promise i wont get angry or punish you"😈
"You want a company where leadership understands that the employees are what makes their company run, and that trust is the number one factor employees are looking for to feel secure and able to thrive. More than cute perks and free lunches, it is about understanding that treating employees with respect and fairness will actually yield a better bottom line for them," she concluded.
I was a nanny for this Instamommy.
I worked 10-12 hour shifts. And normally came in earlier as well as staying later because Mom only wanted the baby for her Instagram. I was exhausted and looked exhausted. She asked me about it. Thinking she was being nice I told her how tired I was.
The next day she had a floor mattress in the nursery right next to the diaper pail. She wanted me to start sleeping there since it was unsafe for me to drive home as tired as I was.
Using babies as accessories should qualify people for a special place in the afterlife... hopefully one that's on fire.
"It would be too much work for you to train new staff, so you'll just have to do your job plus most of someone else's job while we d**k around for months on a unicorn hunt looking for some magic candidate who perfectly fits into the open position with zero training"
Sincerely, the management
This JUST happened at my job! It took over a year to fill a position in a severely understaffed team. Worse still, the team was not included in the hiring process until the very end. The big boss doesn't realize it, but this fiasco has caused our positive impressions of them to fall precipitously. It sent a message to staff that we clearly don't matter and many of us are job hunting right now.
One job I had the office manager changed up the bonus structure so all regular staff had the opportunity to raise their base pay by up to $8/hour. There were no bonuses for supervisors (which I was), but, my team was so good that they all hit their top bonuses so all my direct reports made more money than me, without anywhere near as much responsibility. And I kept getting pointed out for training such an amazing team while I kept bringing up the fact that I didn’t get any bonus for having the top team and that I was the lowest paid person there. Oh how I hated that manager…
Yes, worked one place with a retention bonus. Work up to x duration equalled y increase hourly pay. Most of the managers ( who were also hourly ) had already met the criteria. So the managers started taking over shifts of leaving workers because the hourly and shift made it worth it. Upper managers got wind of this and decided that it didnt apply to managers. That meant anyone staying the season now got paid more than the manager. Next season, most of the managers didnt come back.
They would update the dress code every time anyone came in wearing anything the boss didn't like, even if it was entirely appropriate for work. Bill got a new tie for Father's Day and it has bright green stripes? All-staff email the next day banning "distracting colors."
There were only like 15 employees all working in one small building, too, so it was obvious who the boss was targeting each time.
We once had an issue with a new store manager at our store not doing his job properly, complaints were raised and a crisis meeting called. The regional manager asked us what problems we had and most people relayed their issues with the manager who ofcourse sat right there in front of us. I initially didn't say anything since i saw what this was, but when asked I responded with criticism. After the meeting, private meetings were held were every employee was basically told that the company was going to go with this worthless manager person and if someone had an issue with it , they could go and work elsewhere. And that was all that was done to try to salvage the situation.
Unfortunately for them, they completely misread the situation as every employee quit within the space of four months. All skills and knowledge needed to run the store was lost, customers dwindled, the store lost about 20% of its revenue, the store manager quit, the regional manager got reassigned and then quit, her boss got fired and the next inventory of the store was a complete disaster.
Companies are pyramids with the workers as the foundation. Try to turn that upside down to placate a manager and the whole thing WILL topple over.
I worked in a small IT-based company where the owner had some pretty bad anger issues. He also had his whole family in supervisor positions. The actual techs were great and we were a pretty tight knit group who took pride in our work.
There was a period where the tech group had shrunk pretty small and newer techs were bouncing pretty quickly after being hired once they got a real glimpse at what a s**tshow the place was. The quality of work ended up suffering enough that we had daily all hands on deck meetings talking about it and morale was a central issue.
Our main complaint was the owner's meddling and micromanaging but he never got the hint, so we kept having these daily meetings. We then came up with the joke "The meetings will continue until morale improves"
lol my old job company had a retention problem - they called all of us "dirt clods that hold up the corporate totem pole" (my words) to a mandatory meeting wanting suggestions. We just blankly stared at them and said its the pay. If you want the old guy with 30+ years experience - pay them. If you want young kids to learn the trade - pay them.
ohh nooo we cant do that....
i said if i am looking for a job i have learned theres way more than money one has to consider. I said ive looked at [glassdoor.com](https://glassdoor.com) and told them our companies rating with 500+ reviews is a 2.3 out of 5 with pay being the leading negatory comment with company culture right behind it.
i was cut short by HR and said we dont look at those and believe they are all just disgruntled ex employees.
im like so even if thats true future employees DO look at those and see that rating and read the comments and dont apply - thats why you get duds or people who use you as a stepping stone.
they then asked if anyone else had suggestions lol.
I worked for a sh**ty security company, min wage, s**t hours, s**t benefits, terrible management, which all leads to a sever staffing issue because everyone quits all the time.
One location in particular was notoriously bad for staffing, they would hire people off the street, spend a few days to train them, and they would quit the next day because of how underpaid/overworked you are for a 12h shift.
Because of this they would never send an experienced guard to work there due to them knowing they would quit and cause even more staffing issues.
I remember going to the location to fill a different duty (which was a cushy role) and meeting 5 new guards in a month. Generally one would stay for a few months before finding a better gig.
Well when my summer position was closing up, my boss came to be with a "great solution", I was offered the s**t location, I asked for a raise since it's pretty rough work, he messaged me saying he was insulted and "that's not how things work around here" so I quit.
If you did not display an enthused reaction to the 'Mandatory Fun' activities, you were put on the s**t list.
Shades of North Korea mandatory public reactions to their Dear Leader.
manager implemented weekly individual (hour long) meetings with all employees. 9/10 she just wouldn’t show up to the meeting. Generally these meetings were virtual, but sometimes she’d state in her invite that they had to be in person. Drive to the office, wait at her office door. Find out from other office employees that manager had called out for the day and hadn’t told anyone. That was year 1. Year 2, manager decided to up it to 2 individual meetings per week, and then a 3rd meeting with the entire team. Again, she would regularly just skip out on these meetings. However, if anyone ever dared to not show up or show up late to a meeting she had scheduled, she would lose her god damn mind. Turn over in that department was insanely high.
One time I worked for a **major** satellite TV company. I'd worked there twice before, so I was part of the "fast-track" training programme, designed for people who have done the job before.
It was four weeks, part-time, and on each Friday assessment I got 100% in literally all of my tests. They were Product Knowledge, Financial, Technical, and Customer Service. I got literally 100% in every test, and at the end of the fourth week the trainer told me in a feedback session that I had a lot of potential; there were supervisory positions and management roles and I could do very well there.
The following morning I got a letter - meaning that it must have been posted before I even sat that last test - from the work agency that had recruited me, saying "thank you for your valued contribution on site but your services are no longer required."
I was a developer and asked to take a course to learn a new Programming Language. I even found an after hours college course so I would not miss work, all I asked is that they cover the tuition under their already established tuition re-imbursement program. They declined my request and when I really dug in they told me, "why would we teach you updated skills? so that you can get a job elsewhere?"
I signed up for the course on my own, paid for it on my own and then found a new job using those new skills. They tried to tell me that I could not quit after leaving because I had proprietary knowledge of their code, I laughed and told them no one would care that I new their Cobol source code it's a dead language.
My wife's boss took this tack until he realized he was incentivizing his employees to quit because he was a bad boss about this. Luckily, he learned the lesson.
A place laid off half their employees one day, without warning. Then the higher-ups arranged a company-wide meeting to explain why.
During that meeting, the f**kwad who was talking said something along the lines of "we aren't a 9-5 workplace, so if you intend to only work your normal number of hours, I want you to stop and think about the importance of what we do here."
I wasn't caught in the layoffs, but I left that place soon after. That place bled people like crazy over the next few months for obvious reasons.
Working in a department store, we had abysmal loss (shoplifting) numbers. Our managers read us the riot act every morning about making sure we spoke to every customer (management believed that no thief would stick around once an employee had said hello to them), kept an eye on the shoplifters' usual hiding spots, watched ~~black~~ suspicious looking customers carefully, etc. However we were explicitly forbidden from confronting anyone, even if we saw them stealing with our own eyes. All we could do was watch them and call for Loss Prevention over the radio. Our Loss Prevention guy worked three days a week and on the days he actually worked he never seemed to be around when we needed him. So every day we just had to smile and wave as brazen thieves walked out with armloads of merchandise.
The GM decided that our loss numbers couldn't possibly be due to, you know, actual shoplifting, but had to be from employee theft. So at the end of every shift each employee had to have their bag searched by a manager before they could leave. They fired one employee and tried to have her arrested because a till she worked on came up a few dollars short a few times in a week - even though that employee was a floater who didn't have a dedicated register. She just happened to work on a few registers throughout the week that all came up $1-5 short.
Funnily enough there *were* a couple of thieves on staff, but they only stole from other employees - we weren't allowed to have locks on our lockers, so it was open season on employee's wallets. And we were still getting yelled at every day for our loss numbers.
If I could afford it, I'd wear a GoPro to work just to have video proof of staff waving bye-bye to thieves. Then I'd send the video to the GM's boss with a copy of the rules that caused this behavior.
A manager-in-training on his first day fired an employee for not doing something they were not allowed to do according to company rules. The true manager had to come in to fix it.
I'm curious if the fired employee was re-hired? (if they would even come back to such a situation)
I worked for a company with an owner that was always trying to leverage his employees. He always seemed suddenly really generous, at random. But there would always be a catch.
For example, sure you can all leave a couple hours early before the mega snowstorm hits...provided you come in a couple hours on Saturday.
One employee died unexpectedly after a surgery. No life insurance, and the widow was left with significant funeral costs, etc. Owner decides to cover it all.
A few weeks later I overhear him talking to the lead sales guy, using him as a sounding board for an idea. Owner wants to offer all employees life insurance, where the company will pay the half the premium. Because Owner is so upset at the hardship faced by deceased guy's spouse. That way, when the payout comes in case of a tragedy....the next of kin will have half the policy payout to cover the expenses.
Yep, HALF. Because of course the company was paying half the premium, so they'll be getting half the insurance money.
I was possibly more upset that the lead sales guy was kissing Owner's a*s and complimenting the idea, than I was that the scumbag owner came up with it.
Meeting weekly with an efficiency expert about how to prioritize my weekly schedule that was so full of meetings to get work done. I was encouraged to solve the same problem for my staff that were also in too many meetings. I am in charge of 4 teams and have 46 direct reports. Maybe get me some help and not solution another 12.5 hours of meetings for me to solve my too many meetings problem?
One time it was approaching the end of business. A colleague and I had completely cleared our in-trays and had nothing else to do, so we were sitting, chatting quietly, and running out the very last few minutes.
The replacement shift turned up and a couple of guys were leaning against the wall a few feet away, clearly just wanting us to leave so they could sit down, log in, and start their shift. But my colleague and I, a little uptight, remained seated until the exact minute our shift ended, then left.
The next morning, Fat Pat the supervisor came barging into the office saying "Right! Everyone into the meeting room! Yesterday there were too many people leaving a few minutes early!"
I said "Pat, I presume me and my colleague are exempt from this meeting - we left at exactly the shift end."
To which Fat Pat hiked his thumb over his shoulder and replied "No, you two get in the meeting room as well. Yes, you stayed right until the end of the shift, but **you weren't sitting totally upright in your chairs, and a passing manager saw it and thought it looked really unprofessional."**
I gave up then. It was a lousy job at the best of times - a c**ppy admin office bolted on to the side of a warehouse, with a toilet sticky with p**s and with snot sticking onto its walls. But the idea of needing to be harangued for SOMETHING, even if it was total b******t, instead of being praised for setting a good example or just simply being left alone was absolutely the last straw.
I didn't go into the meeting room, and neither did my colleague. I actually handed in my notice very shortly after. F**k that place, I was washing the memories of it off me for weeks.
We normally got bonuses of 8 to 10 percent of our salary. I know you shouldn't count on bonuses, but it was pretty consistent year after year.
Then we get a new CEO and the bonuses were like .25% of our salary - from thousands of dollars down to hundreds.
During our department (about 6000 people) meeting, someone asked the dept head about bonuses. This would have been her cue for the "tough times, we all have to do our part" speech, right?
No. She chose violence.
She rips this person a new one for even asking and says straight up that we don't get bonuses just because the company is doing well, but only if we do extraordinary work as individuals and that we don't deserve anything more, that we should take our paychecks, shut up and be happy about it.
A hardware malfunction shut down our data system for three days, resulting in over half a year of mandatory overtime to make up the lost production time.
When announcing this via email, the office supervisor used a quote by one Ferdinand Foch. He was a French general in the first world war famous for advocating the throwing of waves of men at barbed wire and machine guns because it'll totally work this time.
This was meant to be an inspirational quote.
"Anonymous Surveys" to improve morale. Anonymous as in they want your location on, market, unit number, employee ID.....
Needless to say when only a handful of people completed the survey, they threatened punishment and made us contact our supervisor to verify it was complete....
The spa I used to work at really pushed us to sell add ons and products even when being pushy is an obvious turn off for the client especially after a relaxing massage. People who weren't meeting quotas would have weekly meetings to discuss why we weren't selling enough and compare us to other therapists who were. The worst thing about it was they had a white board with all the therapists names on it showing all the sales/add ons as well as rebook rate so everyone could see how bad or good you were doing. It always sucked seeing my name near the bottom since I was a new therapist. Also, the manager liked to micromanage and we would always catch her with her ear to the door of the break room trying to make sure we weren't talking s**t about her or the owner.
Working at a certain big box retailer (the red one), when they switched up how they stocked shelves.
Instead of dropping cases down the aisles while the store was closed, we'd be required to work off of *a* cart (we weren't even allowed to have extra carts to separate trash, backstock, etc.). So every task was going to take longer.
My team also effectively had its man-hours halved; we went from 5-6 people working 3 large food truck deliveries, plus 3 people working dry goods every day, to having 3 people come in to do *both* dry goods and the reefer (which now came 5x a week with a smaller load).
Trying to push cold goods solo is also a huge time issue; you can't have stuff out of the coolers/freezers for more than 30 minutes at a time, which means working solo you hardly get anything done before you have to rotate it back. You end up spending 25% of your time shuffling stuff around instead of stocking shelves.
Making matters worse, we'd *identified* this problem; we'd started working food truck as a group instead of each doing our own thing, because having 4-6 people we could tear through an entire pallet without going over the time limit.
When we pointed out how that wasn't going to work due to the added inefficiency and our ability to count the reduced man-hours, we were told that it was fine if we didn't finish, there'd be more hours in the afternoon to finish things.
This was a lie. As soon as the switch was made, our ability to actually get our job done on time went away (before we'd been finishing *early* some days). Unfinished work piling up in the backroom made things even worse. It was also very clear that hours were short.
The "beating will continue" came in in that we were first told that our "not liking" the new system was why we couldn't make it worse. Then we were outright accused of sabotage. None of which ever solved the problem of expecting someone to push at twice the 'standard' rate they claimed to expect, then three other tasks, then zone our area to perfection (perfection to be determined by management an hour later after customers had time to mangle it).
At an old company, I was working two full time projects and was asked to take on a part time, third project. I went to my boss to explain that I'm working 90+ hour weeks, including weekends, and I'm just not equipped to keep doing that. His response: "well our CEO says that one great employee can do the work of three good ones, so it looks like you have some extra bandwidth."
I started applying for jobs aggressively that day.
The craziest thing? This same guy left that company a few years ago to join a different one. We caught up last year, and he sold me on applying for a job. My first project was with him, and it was night and day. Turns out he was a product of his environment. Just like I've grown and matured since then (I'd never even make that situation come up now), so has he.
Helps that we're now both making 3x what we were at that old place.
At my credit union I worked at, us tellers complained that our incentive pay wasn't fair compared to the other departments. The lending and wealth departments got their incentive pay just by doing their jobs. The tellers had to compete with each other so ONE of us would get incentive pay, and the requirements were difficult and out of our control. So we complained and suggested a more fair program. The GM decided that if we were going to complain, then NO ONE gets incentive pay. Everyone was pissed!!
Company lost a bunch of people during covid, so they ended WFH and told everybody to work in the office 5 days a week to "catch up". A second, larger wave of resignations quickly followed.
My boss's recent response to everyone hating the hours we keep was to tell us that our competitor makes their employees work sh**tier hours.
In an effort to simplify PTO, they rolled sick and personal days into one. Also, because you can take half-days now, you need less. So from 2 weeks vacation and 5 sick days to 12 PTO. A new employee got 5 days total until year 5 (previously you got your second week after a year). Oh, and with working a 7-5 M-Th, and 8-12 monday, you actually need to spend extra hours for those days off.
Turns out it was not a popular policy, but hey, how can anybody interview elsewhere when there's no PTO?
I never got the concept of sick days. Are employees supposed to plan sickness for a year in advance? So weird.
When my company decided to downsize, the CIO gathered everyone from IT into a large conference room to give the news. During his speech he told everyone we'd all need to make sacrifices and he himself had to sell one of his houses. Everyone in the room looked at each other trying to figure out if he was trying to make a joke. He was 100% serious.
I had a manager who would gather our team and ask us if we should do A or B. We were professionals and would provide arguments for and against both A and B, and provide her with an answer. She would then reply she had decided on C and that's what we would do.
I worked for a company which was run by Scientologists.
They started by making us watch a Scientology video before every shift. When sales didn’t improve the way they thought they would, they then made us watch them during our lunch breaks. Then they told us they wouldn’t pay us until sales improved. Then they stop commission altogether.
Eventually, I left. They then tried to sue me for supposedly being on my phone during work. I proved them wrong And they dropped it. Soon after, almost every other member of staff left the business and they were forced to close.
Why would you agree to watch pseudo-religious propaganda before your shift and during your lunch, when you're not being paid?
Not mine, but my wife's.
Works in payroll. They changed from service to software and went with the low cost provider.
At the end of the year when they were generating W2s it was a huge mess and they were working until 11:59 on the due date for mailing getting them out.
About 3 weeks later after it had settled down their CFO has a meeting and says something to the effect.
This is what we have. We aren't changing and it won't be better next year.
Worked at a brewpub that touted an employee deal of $1 beers and 50% off food following a shift. (Owner also bragged that it cost them 10 cents to make a beer). After a shift, some staff ordered a pitcher (pitcher = around 4 beers) and the bartender charged them the requisite $4 per the employee deal. The owner watched the security footage of the pitcher at the table, compared it with the $4 charge, through a massive f*****g tantrum, and took away the beer and food deal for employees all together. The bartender lost a bunch a prime shifts as well. Math is hard.
I worked at Walmart for almost five years. Pretty much every one of these things applies. No, for real, damned near every one of these 30 Things takes place at Walmart.
Walmart is a trash company to work for. I speak from experience.
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Had a principal once who was very unrealistic about attendance. A teacher had to go on maternity leave. So at a meeting, he decided he would not hire a sub, but rather punish the teachers in who were present by making them take on extra work. When someone spoke up to him about it, he said "Well she's the one who put herself in the position of having to go on maternity leave." Poor choice of words. We all began laughing, and he lost total control of the meeting.
I worked for 53 years for several employers, and suffered through many team-building / team bonding exercises. There were only two that worked as far as I could tell. 1. Boss hired separate cars for all his staff (8 of us) then sent us all on a 1-day defensive driving course. He figured the greatest chance of loss of productivity was staff getting injured/killed in car accidents. 2. Different boss sent us all (11 of us) to a newly opened military museum where we got to drive tanks, half-tracks, personnel carriers, 4WDs etc. Much to my chagrin, my female supervisor set the record for piloting a tank around the set course.
Our new owners promoted the phrase "When the going gets tough" just like the Billy Ocean song. I got a 3 day suspension for telling them it rhythms with "Go and get stuffed".
I had a manager who required his workers to be a member of his church or any local church of the same denomination, go to Bible study meetings, and be involved in church-sponsored volunteer work. Any worker who didn't do these things would get their names a list that he called his "Heathen Hit List". These workers would get the worst job assignments.
I once worked at a help desk where management decided to lay off several of the people with the most seniority. We suddenly found ourselves without much of the institutional knowledge that we needed to do our work. The executive VP who made the decision had very little knowledge of the complexity of our job. We complained enough that we were forced to do a "Who Moved my Cheese" program. I found it very insulting.
All of these make me think of something the brilliant labor organizer Chris Smalls said during a recent Congressional hearing. (Smalls is the person who is helping Amazon workers unionize.) One of the senators (Lindsey Graham) was going on and on about the company's needs, and the company's rights, and how they need to be protected. Smalls stopped him and said, “I want to address Mr. Graham. It sounds like you were talking about more of the companies & the businesses in your speech but you forgot the people are the ones who make these companies operate.” He's my hero.
Mandatory training for EVERYONE, not just the employees who were having trouble understanding the programs they were offering customers. If you missed any time, you had to start over the next session. So if things were bad and you missed days, you could possibly be "in training" forever. Also you had to "pass" your test at the end of training. I was in 4th "group" and it had become obvious that it was a complete failure. The people they were trying to retrain were not learning and the ones who knew it before going in, were frustrated because they were getting behind in their work. After 4 months, the whole retrain program was sh*t-canned. The group they were targeting never learned anything and the rest of us were behind & NOW had to do the work of the untrainable idiots. It got worse instead of better when they decided to take a different approach and put us on phones and take the untrainables off the phones, now they literally did nothing!! Still going on 5 years after I retired
I am currently working for a company who's idea to fill in vacancies is to raise the beginning pay to $14.00/hr (we've lost a huge number of people due to management). The same amount that someone who's been at the company for 2 decades! No one else got a raise. Then they decided to bump everyone making less than that amount up to $14/hr .... for the summer only. And if they are able to fill all the vacancies we can KEEP that pay. If not, All of us will be dropped back down to the pay we had before they raised it to bring people in. So .... that means, in a couple months they are going to lose almost everyone once their pay gets decreased again because the company couldn't fill in all the vacancies.
IAfter reading this thread I have an idea. Who would like to start a global company with me that was truly fair. A company where making bigger and bigger profits each year just to make shareholders happy is the biggest thing. Where a CEo does not sit in an office all day doing nothing but take home a majority of the money. Where even the cleaners were paid a decent wage for doing an important job. Where instead of worrying about profit we worries about sharing the money out more between more people do everybody could some decent time off. Where people got told off for not taking their annual leave or coming in when there were family emergencies. Somewhere people felt they could talk to people managing them without fear of being looked down and instead being treated like a child who has done something wrong. Where no matter what job you did you were made to feel like it really is, that your job is a very important role to everybody and the company. What would this company do or sell?
I worked at Walmart for almost five years. Pretty much every one of these things applies. No, for real, damned near every one of these 30 Things takes place at Walmart.
Walmart is a trash company to work for. I speak from experience.
Load More Replies... Had a principal once who was very unrealistic about attendance. A teacher had to go on maternity leave. So at a meeting, he decided he would not hire a sub, but rather punish the teachers in who were present by making them take on extra work. When someone spoke up to him about it, he said "Well she's the one who put herself in the position of having to go on maternity leave." Poor choice of words. We all began laughing, and he lost total control of the meeting.
I worked for 53 years for several employers, and suffered through many team-building / team bonding exercises. There were only two that worked as far as I could tell. 1. Boss hired separate cars for all his staff (8 of us) then sent us all on a 1-day defensive driving course. He figured the greatest chance of loss of productivity was staff getting injured/killed in car accidents. 2. Different boss sent us all (11 of us) to a newly opened military museum where we got to drive tanks, half-tracks, personnel carriers, 4WDs etc. Much to my chagrin, my female supervisor set the record for piloting a tank around the set course.
Our new owners promoted the phrase "When the going gets tough" just like the Billy Ocean song. I got a 3 day suspension for telling them it rhythms with "Go and get stuffed".
I had a manager who required his workers to be a member of his church or any local church of the same denomination, go to Bible study meetings, and be involved in church-sponsored volunteer work. Any worker who didn't do these things would get their names a list that he called his "Heathen Hit List". These workers would get the worst job assignments.
I once worked at a help desk where management decided to lay off several of the people with the most seniority. We suddenly found ourselves without much of the institutional knowledge that we needed to do our work. The executive VP who made the decision had very little knowledge of the complexity of our job. We complained enough that we were forced to do a "Who Moved my Cheese" program. I found it very insulting.
All of these make me think of something the brilliant labor organizer Chris Smalls said during a recent Congressional hearing. (Smalls is the person who is helping Amazon workers unionize.) One of the senators (Lindsey Graham) was going on and on about the company's needs, and the company's rights, and how they need to be protected. Smalls stopped him and said, “I want to address Mr. Graham. It sounds like you were talking about more of the companies & the businesses in your speech but you forgot the people are the ones who make these companies operate.” He's my hero.
Mandatory training for EVERYONE, not just the employees who were having trouble understanding the programs they were offering customers. If you missed any time, you had to start over the next session. So if things were bad and you missed days, you could possibly be "in training" forever. Also you had to "pass" your test at the end of training. I was in 4th "group" and it had become obvious that it was a complete failure. The people they were trying to retrain were not learning and the ones who knew it before going in, were frustrated because they were getting behind in their work. After 4 months, the whole retrain program was sh*t-canned. The group they were targeting never learned anything and the rest of us were behind & NOW had to do the work of the untrainable idiots. It got worse instead of better when they decided to take a different approach and put us on phones and take the untrainables off the phones, now they literally did nothing!! Still going on 5 years after I retired
I am currently working for a company who's idea to fill in vacancies is to raise the beginning pay to $14.00/hr (we've lost a huge number of people due to management). The same amount that someone who's been at the company for 2 decades! No one else got a raise. Then they decided to bump everyone making less than that amount up to $14/hr .... for the summer only. And if they are able to fill all the vacancies we can KEEP that pay. If not, All of us will be dropped back down to the pay we had before they raised it to bring people in. So .... that means, in a couple months they are going to lose almost everyone once their pay gets decreased again because the company couldn't fill in all the vacancies.
IAfter reading this thread I have an idea. Who would like to start a global company with me that was truly fair. A company where making bigger and bigger profits each year just to make shareholders happy is the biggest thing. Where a CEo does not sit in an office all day doing nothing but take home a majority of the money. Where even the cleaners were paid a decent wage for doing an important job. Where instead of worrying about profit we worries about sharing the money out more between more people do everybody could some decent time off. Where people got told off for not taking their annual leave or coming in when there were family emergencies. Somewhere people felt they could talk to people managing them without fear of being looked down and instead being treated like a child who has done something wrong. Where no matter what job you did you were made to feel like it really is, that your job is a very important role to everybody and the company. What would this company do or sell?
