My Evil Fucking Corporate Masters...
 

...have introduced new filtering software. Not only can I now not access the Cellar from work, but the software appears to be designed to completely filter out anything that might allow someone to maintain any semblance of sanity whatever, allowing employees to now work ceaselessly, productively, endlessly, in complete compliance with SOPs, and mindful of maximizing each and every possible opportunity for corporate profit.

I wonder when they'll start making us pay for the coffee and toilet paper? Why is it that traditional Corporate Mentality cares virtually nothing for employee morale? Why are the things that allow employees to find something worthwhile about their employment always the first things to go when times get tight?

Sounds like it's about time to start studying tarot cards during downtime, or perhaps reading from a boldly labelled grimoire, muttering things about toads?

What do you mean, you don't pay for coffee?

We've got that too. It came about after some pretty serious porn incidents. It was probably warranted, but imho the it dept. over-reacted in that now you cannot send or receive any type of image at all (.jpg, .bmp, powerpoint etc) without it being manually viewed and released by the IT crowd.

Slows things down a lot.

We lost our netnanny when the IT department forgot to pay for renewing the license. It was actually pretty cool. When you don't pay, you get locked out of ALL websites, since the software can no longer poll the good/bad list or the content filters. Because our new medical records system is a web-based piece of crap, the IT guy had to come in from home (after midnight) to uninstall the netnanny.

They have not bothered to put it back.

Taking a crap on company time is one of the most satisfying things in life...

"mmm, I'm poopin' and I'm gettin' paid for it!"

And corporate funded instant coffee tends to give me the shits, so st the moment it all works out nicely. :D

lol that's a funny one. I've never thought about it that way.

At my work you can view just about anything on the server although I think the IT guy checks out what we're viewing. He happens to be the production manager also though, so mostly he doesn't have time to do too much snooping.

I can't view anything from youtube. That's about it though. I can pretty much look at porn from all over the joint except there.

Is that because you cannot get to youtube, or the videos do not play? You might need to download the Flash Player and Shockwave Player. They are on the Adobe web site now: http://www.adobe.com. YouTube videos are all Flash videos.

It's probably that but it doesn't really matter too much. Most of our work comps don't have sound anyway, and most of the youtube stuff isn't any fun without sound.

I don't have time to spend too much time browsing at work lately anyway which sucks. I'll have to try drinking more coffee though. Maybe I could spend more time on the crapper instead.

Viewing and forwarding is encouraged at my work place. In fact, if I view porn and dont forward it to my boss - I get yelled at.

Lumberjim is your boss?

How is Mr. Clinton these days?

I found the best thing to do was start dating the IT admin. Then he let me install instant messaging software on my machine and everything.

Of course if you're not careful, you might end up married to the guy, and then he won't let you install anything on your home PC anymore. :)

At my last regular job, I ran out of work to do a lot...sometimes, I'd go days with nothing to do. So in my downtime, I'd do homework...that was a no-no. Then I started checking my e-mail via my school account (which wasn't blocked out)...then they caught onto me. Then I started surfing the internet blatantly and regularly (nothing I would call controversial)...and they put the kaibosh on that. During all this, they'd give me shit about napping and my 10-minute walks around our campus. Shortly after I got a talking-to about the internet, I left. I just can't sit around and do nothing...I go out of my mind.

Ivan the Terrible
 

Back in the days of yore (80X86, XX mh, DOS), one was required to buy ones own workstation. Files were passed back and forth on floppy discs. There was no network. Each peripheral had its own stripped down computer and cheap monitor for input. The "IT department" was an engineer or draftsman or secretary that simply enjoyed solving everyone else's hardware and software problems.

It was actually fun. Enter LANs. The help desk became Ivan the Terrible's throne.

Ah, yes, President Wilson fondly recalled those days following his second term...

Wait a minute...I just used a set up like that yesterday! Next you're gonna tell me that I can take a shit inside my house!

My employer won't give the majority of employees where I work net access you have to have a "business need" they have also taken away the ability to have a screen saver or wallpaper,corporate wallpaper only and the nastyist one of all they took away the games
no solitare minesweeper etc.

IT be watchn' all youz !!!

Well, no. Actually, it was shortly after Benjamin Franklin invented daylight saving time. They didn't even have Huggies then.

no, that's my partner. he's the leader of a vast and storied 'ring of porn'. Doors that would otherwise be closed, open for our customers thanks to his steady stream of filth and naked oddities. Credit buyers looooove the porn.

Can I assume Dilbert is blocked?

Humor does not belong in the workplace.

If you are a person and not a number at your job consider yourself lucky.

I am luckily still a person. An overworked, underpaid person, but a person nonetheless.

It's what has kept me here.

My boss lets me surf the web. She does it too. No porn though.

Im in ur puter, markin down ur websites

At what point does a boss learn what the employee is getting done rather than micromanage his time? What amazes me is how many bosses have no idea which employees are accomplishing anything and which are not. How does a boss work for his employees if he does not even know what they do or accomplish?

At my last job, I had to buy the toilet paper myself! In the beginning, it was a teeny tiny company where I was the only girl, and therefore the only one who ever thought of such things. Oh yeah, I think they still have my $30 espresso maker too, the bastids.

The evil corporate masters which I serve are also served by my boss. We have zero local control of anything, essentially. Oh, wait...that's not true. My boss got to decide which 50% of my staff was getting laid off today.

In all the time I have worked, I have never once been asked to evaluate my manager, or give any opinion on their managerial abilities or style.

And yet every manager I have had has been appraised on this by their manager. It has formed a Key Result Area for which they receive bonuses or which affects pay increases.

Hmmmmmmmmm

Sorry to hear about the redundancies in your company Els. Glad you're safe. At least I assume you're safe?!

Shit, 'spode that sucks. :( Did he by any stretch of the imagination make the right choices?

After you left, I bet they were all like "Hey, we're out of toilet paper! Where's the toilet paper?"

I still wonder if the people I used to share a house with managed to make it out of the bathroom after I left - I swear they believed in the Toilet Paper Fairy....

When I was an undergrad, my suitemates would never chip in for good toilet paper. So I started buying pink and light blue TP. Still didn't chip in. Then I would only bring in the good stuff if I was using the toilet...left them with the school-issued sandpaper. Then they started chipping in.

There were *no* right choices. With the sole remaining pain in the ass girl off on maternity leave, every single person with whom I work is a solid professional, and damn good human beings to boot. Seriously. And even the pain in the ass girl has improved greatly over my first year and a half there. But she's out of a job now, too. She just doesn't know it yet.

Today, my boss let go the nicest of the nicest, the most pro of the pros, the lady who trained me. It was traumatic, I shit you not.

The saddest part, and to answer your other questions...I *am* safe, as my boss finds me indispensible. The people he's laying off are the ones that I proposed, because it had the most minimal effect on running the business based on job descriptions, and how much of their tasks could be absorbed by those of us who remain.

So in the end, *I'm* the one who selected the losers, based on no criteria other than business. It is perhaps the most immoral thing I've ever done in my life - and that includes having fucked my cousin once - so you know how shitty I feel now. In my defense, I told my boss what the pure business course should be, and then I also told him what the moral course would be. The moral course left *me* out of a job, BTW, because Cheryl, the lady who got laid off today, had ten years on the job, and was stellar in every way. I've been there only 3.5 years now, albeit at what was once a separate branch from Cheryl's.

This has been a really, really shitty week.

Dude , Sorry to hear this , but at least you are safe !!!

But I would keep my eyes open just in case !!!

Is this due to an industry downturn, or just bad times in this organization? A national downturn or just something regional?

Sorry man.

Nationwide, housing industry starts are down nearly 25%. More in some markets, less in others. Our sales are off by closer to 30-35% over this period last year.

We have the same problem. Same with Email. No email of any kind except government email on their own net. :evil3:

You probably make less than Cheryl. There are no morals in business, only accounting.

Exactly what I thought. :thumb:

I've given this more thought. Cheryl was just as indispensible as Elspode, but his mouth is prettier.

Yeah, I'm sure I do make less than Cheryl did, but I chose to believe my boss's sunshine up the ass. I should know better. Sigh.

I sure do have a purty mouth, though.:love:

I am sorry you are in this situation, spode. I have experienced similar things in the job I had at a corporate computer giant just after it merged with a similar corporate computer giant. I came in to work one day and was one of 2 on a team that had previously been a team of 6. It seemed like the place was shutting down. I was suddenly doing the work of 3, and feeling guilty about it.

Now, still in the industry, I am looking for ways to get out and do something different. We are toying with the idea of starting a business painting houses. I think my ultimate goal is still to make a living painting canvases, though.

What regions do you believe this to be worst? Are sub-prime lender problems (that mean less available customers and more houses coming on market) adversely affecting business, do you think? And if so, are people suggesting this is short term or long term?

tw...ponzi scheme
 

Tom,

The great Ponzi Scheme of large rewards for little or no work in the Real Estate industry has come back to roost. Just like with tulips, tech stocks, and oil, the following has happened:

1. Someone figures out that the housing prices go up faster than the rate of inflation.
2. People start buying houses for the purpose of investment.
3. Some people get incredibly wealthy from this.
4. More and more people start "flipping" houses.
5. Meanwhile, the price of real estate goes up dramatically.
6. This means for people to afford houses, the mortgage companies have to get incredibly creative in financing houses, as the dollar doesn't go as far as it used to.
7. This also means that people who want to "flip" houses on a low budget also start taking out crazy financing (50 year mortgages, Adjustable Rate Mortgages, negative equity mortgages) to afford housing they don't anticipate having in 5 years from sub-prime lenders, and sub-prime arms of prime lenders (and this is where it will hurt the most!).
8. Housing starts slow, and the 5 years comes due for both groups.
9. Lots of foreclosures and personal bankruptcies.
10. Home construction companies and mortgage companies start laying off people and going out of business.
11. The effect spreads to supply houses, banks which bought the mortgages as securities (I used to do work for one, and even the Goverment-sponsored/owned banks like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae do, else why would Freddie Mac hire the former lead trader for E-Trade Bank Capital Markets, who specialized in mortgage deals?), and the economy in general.
12. The next thing you know, recession happens, unless the government steps in like they did with S&L's in the early 90's (and bailed out one run by Neil Bush as well!) with the Resolution Trust Co..
13. Combine this with the effect of creative auto financing from the sub-prime auto lending industry (ever wonder how a 20-year-old affords a Hummer H2? :)), and we have an even bigger problem (Ford Motor Credit, GMAC, and the other biggies in that industry) that can spiral and hit the manufacturers of cars where it hurts.
14. Unless that's checked, we have a really huge tax problem. Two words: Pension Funds. Those are administered by the gov after companies go insolvent, and those people end up on a combination of Social Security/Welfare/Government-Adjusted Pension. GM and Ford are already teetering at the brink, and the Chrysler unit of Daimler-Chrysler is doing so badly that Daimler wants to sell it (and the pension fund goes with!).

In other words, welcome to a potential depression.

Mitch

[after Paul fires one of his workers]
Paul Moore: Now, if there's anything I can do for you...
Employee: Well, I certainly hope you'll die soon.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Rorich: This is a brutal layoff. And all because they couldn't program Wednesday nights.
Paul Moore: You can make it less brutal by knocking a million or so off your salary... Bad joke, I'm sorry

--Broadcast News (1987)

mbpark, great summary.

It sucks when you have to lay off someone. I've only had to fire one person and even though he deserved to be fired, I still hated it.

But let's not lose sight of another important matter.

YOU FUCKED YOUR COUSIN?!!!!