What's the dumbest thing your company does?

[G-ManBart]

Okay, I realize that working for the government I probably get to see more stupid, short-sighted, foolish policies than most people do, but we can't be the only ones dealing with this. Just to make me feel better, what are some of the dumb policies, practices, etc you see at work. Let's leave company/agency/etc names out of it so we don't get anyone in trouble.

I'll start. We have this thing called an "Electronic Communication"...it's pretty much just an internal memo that can be used for all manner of things....they came up with the name EC when computer use became the norm and paperless was the goal. They get sent to us in the mail...hard copy

[BrianH]

If HR walks by and looks in the shop and see's us talking, we CAN'T BE SMILING.

[markcic]

Okay, I realize that working for the government I probably get to see more stupid, short-sighted, foolish policies than most people do, but we can't be the only ones dealing with this. Just to make me feel better, what are some of the dumb policies, practices, etc you see at work. Let's leave company/agency/etc names out of it so we don't get anyone in trouble.

I'll start. We have this thing called an "Electronic Communication"...it's pretty much just an internal memo that can be used for all manner of things....they came up with the name EC when computer use became the norm and paperless was the goal. They get sent to us in the mail...hard copy

That reminds me of the "wooden table flyer".

[DonT]

Construction company...dumb, dumber, or dumbest? It might be easier to list the things they do right;

(1)

(2)

(3)

well, no maybe not

It's pretty bad when you have to tell your friends, "don't hire us". Did I say that

[Lead slinger]

They could tell you that everything is alright and that our balance sheet is strong, and then when you go into work on Monday morning you find out that you now work for Citibank............

[mpolans]

Hell, I work for the government . . . we don't have enough bandwidth here.

[HSMITH]

I am supposed to get permission go buy a $2 replacement tool that is damaged in the course of my work but I can work $7000 (billable value average) worth of overtime on a weekend without permission. I can order $75K worth of parts on a job without a PO, but get chastised for not booking my hote room through the company travel agent. I took 70% out of the cost of an option package that is problematic and wrote the software to use it but it isn't the way 'we do it' so that installation is the only one of it's kind. I could write a book on this subject.....

Jumping over $100 bills to pick up nickels is something you really need to understand and appreciate in corporate America if you want to succeed.

[ChrisStock]

Hmmm... too many to list.... how about 35 page full color slick page brochures on company "news" and misc other BS that everyone throws in the garbage? You cannot even refuse to accept it, as I have done this and gotten a verbal counseling that it is "company policy" to place this POS brownnose book on my desk every month. I heard from our creative media dept that it costs nearly 25K/month to print this piece of sizzling shizzle up and distribute it. Out of the 11 other engineers and network admins I am chained to during the day, all 12 of us throw them in the "circular file" en masse as soon as the peasant tasked with distributing it has left the room. WASTEFUL.

[Greg Bell]

Jumping over $100 bills to pick up nickels is something you really need to understand and appreciate in corporate America if you want to succeed.

The former company I worked for mastered this and turned it into their corporate culture until the day the owner stood in front of 225 people and said sorry guys last day pack your stuff I'm all done.

[Greg Bell]

Current gig

5 hour all staff meeting, off site, catered lunch, brainwash sessions, etc, etc. I can't imagine the total calculated cost of this stuff.

[-JQ-]

The former company I worked for mastered this and turned it into their corporate culture until the day the owner stood in front of 225 people and said sorry guys last day pack your stuff I'm all done.

I'm expecting this one any day.

Oh and one for the list:

Making the boss' secretary a Senior VP...hmmm

[Merlin Orr]

I am an independent vendor working through another company, who in turn furnishes a product to a client. My work product is sent electronically to "my office - my "boss") who reviews, approves and forwards to the client to review, act upon my recommendation and bill for my services - with a hefty cut for the people I work through.

I, along with many many others have been working 7 days a week from can to can't for a couple of months now. My immediate boss quit without notice yesterday. They flew in another manager from out of state to try to pick up the pieces. It seems that my old boss (the one that quit yesterday) has been working 40 hours weeks and no weekends. All of the daily electronic flow (the field guys work product) is supposed to be checked, approved and forwarded to the client daily if possible. I APPEARS that the manager worked his normal 8 hours and then deleted anything he did not get to during his normal shift. When he came in the next morning he started working again and at the end of the day again deleted everything he did not get to.

So...you know what happened when he came in from his weekend off - he was supposed to be working 7 days a week - yep. He deleted everything sent in over the weekend.

Me, and others like me, the independent vendor field guys now have no idea what was done with the product we sent in to be sent to the client. Some may have made it and For Sure a lot did not make it past the desk of the guy who quit.....

'

This was all discovered yesterday.

[G-ManBart]

The former company I worked for mastered this and turned it into their corporate culture until the day the owner stood in front of 225 people and said sorry guys last day pack your stuff I'm all done.

I'm expecting this one any day.

Oh and one for the list:

Making the boss' secretary a Senior VP...hmmm

You forgot to include pics!

[-JQ-]

You forgot to include pics!

uhhh...no ...I didn't

[outerlimits]

mind control-our company forces the intranet to pop up every time u turn on a computer so they can pimp themselves. they also control what u get in terms of desktop, apps, etc (thanx bill gates). thankfully i have the IT guyz so i have that taken care of for me.

[dajarrel]

...This was all discovered yesterday.

Sure hope you guys don't have to refile everything.

Good luck to ya

dj

[AikiDale]

This company no longer exists and my stock options aren't worth the ink on the paper they are printed on....

One project was to take information from a web site and put it on our web site. (And you thought this was going to be simple?)

The person in charge did figure out how to get this done.

1. Go to web site and make a screen capture.

2. Print out screen capture.

3. Scan screen capture to get OCR editable file.

4. Edit file for content and format.

5. Print edited file.

6. Scan file and save as comma delimited file.

7. Import file in Excel edit as necessary and save as html file.

8. Print screen capture of html file.

9. Put printout of screen capture html file in managers in box for approval.

10. Scan approved printout of screen capture html file, save as .gif file and post on web site.

11. File printout.

[Patrick Sweeney]

Too bad there's no IPSC in this, because it ranks right up there.

I was the Assistant Manager of a paper warehouse dealing in the printing trades. Basically, a carton of paper to us was "personal use" volume. I typically sold pallets of paper; 100,000 sheets of 8.5X11 in a daily basis. (I was the AM because I had a "bad attitude.")

The new manager had to have inventory done by date certain, but he didn't know how to do it, and wouldn't admit it. (His previous "managerial" gig had been a pharmacy.) He called us in too late, and finally "did it himself by staying overnight." In the weeks afterwards I found printouts of inventory jammed and wedged in the oddest places in the warehouse, which went a long way to explaining why the numbers didn't match. I mean, the computer tells me we have 72,000 sheets of chromecoat card stock, 11X17, when I'm standing there looking at the two reams we actually have? (a ream of that was 250 sheets, so I'm scratching my head over about five grand in inventory disparity.)

Our main warehouse order computer is so old (this was 1999) that the screen is six inches in the diagonal, uses some programming language I've never heard of, and has four sheets of shortcut codes we've printed out and taped to the wall. Corporate decides they are going to upgrade, but we need a very specific electrical and ethernet arrangement. Which must be done by (you guessed it) date certain or we lose the funding. Two days before armageddon, he's done nothing. I call an electrician, hand him the paperwork, ge the job done, and submit the forms (with drugstoreboy's forged signature on it) on time. He get's an "atta boy" for the low cost, as it apparently came in lower than any other branch did.

It takes a year for the frakkin' computer to show up.

This is where it gets screamingly funny. The company had been an independent. Some years before I got there, Alabama Atlantic bought it. (Name changed to protect no one in particular.) While I'm there, they sell the chain, at a loss, then buy it back again. they make changes, and now turn a profitable chain into a money loser.

They decide to close the up-performing stores. Until they hired the moronic ex-pharmacy manager we were the most profitable store in the chain. after, we're bottom of the list. We're getting the axe.

We get the new inventory computer the day after we get our two-week notice. It is a re-furbed, three-year old too-small hard drive lacking the software we need model. Spinning it up, I can see from the activity files it was last turned on before we had the store wired for its installation.

I call, what to do with the new doorstop we've received? Why, box it up and send it off to a store not being closed. Total cost for air-freight shipping the computer to us, then on to the next store? At least twice the cost of buying a new one from any computer store down the street.

One last example of why they went out of business, and deserved to. A local big printer with a known reputation of being d*&kh^$ds phoned up asking for a price on a couple million sheets of 8.5X11 copy paper. I quoted them, and they asked "Can we get 3% off that if we pay in 90 days? I ask the Area manager (this was just before drugstoreboy showed up) and he said yes. I ordered, shipped and billed. At 91 days, I sent a corrected invocie, showing they owded the extra 3%.

The printer went to the Regional Manager with serial bitching, and those weasels not only took the 3% off, but gave him another multi-million sheet order at the sub-3% price.

[MI_Packer]

1. Go to web site and make a screen capture.

2. Print out screen capture.

3. Scan screen capture to get OCR editable file.

4. Edit file for content and format.

5. Print edited file.

6. Scan file and save as comma delimited file.

7. Import file in Excel edit as necessary and save as html file.

8. Print screen capture of html file.

9. Put printout of screen capture html file in managers in box for approval.

10. Scan approved printout of screen capture html file, save as .gif file and post on web site.

11. File printout.

Just shows you they don't know what they are doing. Everyone knows you need to spellcheck after step 3! Then edit and format.

[JimmyZip]

One company that I work for, there is more than one as times are hard, is owned by a family. The owner has allergies and was told by his allergist to avoid dust as much as possible. So....

His daughter, the 2nd in command, spends thousands re-decorating the office with eco-friendly furniture and flooring. She also has us install dividers in our already small office. This was all done after I stated in our quarterly meeting that I was hearing rumors of housing troubles through various builders that I do business with on the side. I also stated that housing was beginning to devalue and that would probably seriously effect our bottom-line.

The new office sucks! The old office was only 2 years old. This eco-warrior-princess throws all the old furniture IN THE TRASH! Can anyone say landfill? The new eco-friendly cork flooring off-gasses so bad you have to open and ventilate the office daily. That means not only has the EWP filled in some landfill unneccesarily, but she has depleted the ozone and the brain cells of her employees.

So what happens? Sales take a DIVE starting just weeks after the office is finished. We end up down-sizing and laying off people. The office is no longer set up properly, and EWP goes to Fiji on the company dime while I am down to working two to three nights a week.

So there you are, stupidity reigns wherever you go.

JZ

[Modoc]

I work for the Govt. of CA.......................'Nuf Said

Changed my mind and didn't feel like venting.

Edited October 4, 2008 by Modoc

[SLM]

Where I work I'm pretty sure the main requirement to get to any position over low level management is to have an IQ below 70.

Requirement two is to only speak the words "Yes, Sir! That's a great idea!"

God forbid they listen to those of us that actually make the money for the company, we might know what the customers want!!

[knightkrawler00]

I work for a dealership with seven car lines, three shops, and about thirty technicians. We all work flat rate, which is where you get payed a certain time for a repair no matter how long it actually takes. As you can imagine, there are jobs that pay really well and jobs that aren't worth doing. But, you have to take the good with the bad as it generally balances out in the end. It used to be that everybody did used car inspections, which is a really good paying job. Then management decided to have two guys dedicated to doing the used cars. This should be a fairly low paying hourly job, where the vehicle is repaired by real techs after the inspection is performed. Or a flat rate job that is given to the guys that have been there forever and just can't turn good hours anymore on the retail side, as a bonus of some sorts. Not at my place.

The job is flat rate, and the two guys are getting paid on the same scale as the rest of us, only they aren't good enough to make it as retail technicians. The system is being blatantly abused by one of the guys. He is performing repairs to cars that don't need to be done, and when something does need to be repaired he can't fix it right and it ends up with someone else fixing it. We have attempted to go to management, but they don't seem to care or want to deal with the problem since the guys look extremely good on paper with the amount of hours being turned. The problem is, the dealership is paying for those hours, unnecessary or not. I guess it doesn't matter that the "90 day account", for used cars repaired within 90 days of purchase, is empty for the first time ever. This is also the account that the salespeople get a bonus out of at the end of the year, too bad I won't be around to see "it" hit the fan when the salespeople don't get a bonus that is generally counted on as part of their salary. I'm packing up and moving as soon as my house sells, there is at least one other tech that is quitting, and most others have resumes out.

To put it into perspective. I have over ten years of experience, a college degree in this area, an ASE Master certification, and I'm a lead technician. I'm also one class and eight tests away from a GM World Class certification, think Grand Master in USPSA. I will not make half the money these guys stand to make this year !

Wrapping it up. My employer has taken two guys that simply aren't good enough to make it in a real shop and given them the highest paying, by far, technician jobs in the dealership . And management's lack of action to repair the problem is driving good honest technicians out the door.

Edited October 4, 2008 by knightkrawler00

[Hank Ellis]

Spending $5000 to house a $10,000 tractor while $30,000 pickup trucks and $7,000,000 helicopters sit outside.

Spending multi millions to implement an electronic system to track the work done on aircraft but the system only half-a$$ed works and takes twice as long to enter the data as doing it by paper. So we still have to do paper logbook entries like Orville, Wilbur, Igor, and Charles Taylor (the Wright brothers mechanician) have done for the last 100 years.

Spending thousands to ship a $5000 special tool all over the country by FedEx overnight over and over again rather than simply buying another tool.

[rupie]

This company no longer exists and my stock options aren't worth the ink on the paper they are printed on....

One project was to take information from a web site and put it on our web site. (And you thought this was going to be simple?)

The person in charge did figure out how to get this done.

1. Go to web site and make a screen capture.

2. Print out screen capture.

3. Scan screen capture to get OCR editable file.

4. Edit file for content and format.

5. Print edited file.

6. Scan file and save as comma delimited file.

7. Import file in Excel edit as necessary and save as html file.

8. Print screen capture of html file.

9. Put printout of screen capture html file in managers in box for approval.

10. Scan approved printout of screen capture html file, save as .gif file and post on web site.

11. File printout.

OMG i am not a computer genius, but I did stay at a holiday in express last night.

right click "view web page source" copy ...paste.....done?