The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced • Hacker News Board

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#201

Post by shinsheel » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

eli wrote: post #65

protomyth wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are putting a bit too much thought into the decision making. I figure someone walked into the book store and picked the book from the first bestseller display. Never attribute to malice or ignorance what can adequately explained by lazy.

It is very common for abusive people to exploit this attitude and commit acts that are clearly over the line but have some barely plausible innocent explanation. Gaslighting the victim is, perhaps, another intentional part of the abuse. You'd have to work pretty hard to convince me that gifting a young woman a sexually explicit novel is not malicious.

50 shades of Gray is perfect book for office manager to be "awww, you see, we are not so boring office hamsters, hehehe. We may be informal and naughty"

I promise you, when people give a f*ck about you they don't gift you the most plastic overhyped book they can find you don't even need to open.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#202

Post by szbalint » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

Ten euros worth of Amazon gift cards as birthday gift from the company.

That amount has a great way of signaling that the company is too cheap to do anything real, but too unsophisticated to realize they then should have just given a slice of cake or a birthday card.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#203

Post by GlenTheMachine » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

tssva wrote: post #187

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #79

My employer, a US DoD component, had a program called “On The Spot” awards. The idea was that if you had done something outstanding, your first line supervisor could authorize an immediate bonus of up to $1000. Being the DoD, it couldn’t be that simple. They decided that actually the bonuses had to be approved by your second, third, and fourth line supervisors. And also by the program manager at the sponsoring agency…

Besides the overtime everything else would be part of the job you were being paid to do. As a federal employee depending on your job classification you were paid either 1.5x your salary or 1.5x the salary of a GS-10 Step 1 adjusted for your locality for the overtime. Most likely in private industry you would be a salaried employee and not have received overtime pay or a bonus which exceeds what you received in overti…

Maybe they are to uniformed members of the military. I've never once seen a civilian use, display, carry, or talk about a challenge coin. They typically get thrown in the back of a desk drawer and forgotten about. We literally have no use for them whatsoever. They don't even make good paperweights.

I have a stack of fourteen of them. Most of them I was given for spending thirty minutes giving some random officer a tour of the lab. They're not exactly hard to get.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#204

Post by mcguire » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

fooblitzky wrote: post #159

The worst morale boosting gesture I've ever experienced was the CEO telling an all-staff meeting that anyone that wasn't happy to work there could get $2000 for quitting on the spot.

Once as a co-op for IBM, our manager at the weekly described a severance package.

I immediately tried to take it.

At a later meeting, when the package was modified, he started out with, "mcguire, you are not eligible."

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#205

Post by ok_coo » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:33 PM UTC

fooblitzky wrote: post #159

The worst morale boosting gesture I've ever experienced was the CEO telling an all-staff meeting that anyone that wasn't happy to work there could get $2000 for quitting on the spot.

How many people took it?

I'd probably take it on the spot. I mean, if morale is that bad already it's like you're getting a bonus for leaving. Might as well!

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#206

Post by radcon » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #151

I worked for a while for Thomson Reuters, where some years ago somebody in charge read that companies with value statements performed better than those that did not. So they hired a 3rd party consultant to write down their values and they had these posted all over the walls. They also had posters of stuff like "the mood elevator" pasted up in the kitchen: https://themoodelevator.com/ Everyone I felt like I could talk…

> So they hired a 3rd party consultant to write down their values and they had these posted all over the walls.

My previous employer did something similar with a word they invented -- except it was really just a synonym for efficiency.

The CFO got so excited that he had a bunch of posters printed out and handed out smaller versions to the supervisors. The supervisors all thought it was embarrassing but none of them had the guts to say that to the CFO.

To this day they still list that fake word in all their job postings with a little blurb about what it means, completely unaware that most applicants will probably spit their coffee out laughing at the absurdity of it. I think it might even have its own page on their website too...

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#207

Post by maxxxxx » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #151

I worked for a while for Thomson Reuters, where some years ago somebody in charge read that companies with value statements performed better than those that did not. So they hired a 3rd party consultant to write down their values and they had these posted all over the walls. They also had posters of stuff like "the mood elevator" pasted up in the kitchen: https://themoodelevator.com/ Everyone I felt like I could talk…

For me any kind of motivational posters on the wall are an immediate red flag. Usually it means that things aren't going well and management can't come up with anything better than hanging up posters. Well-run companies show their values by the way they work. They don't need posters.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#208

Post by mcguire » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

magashna wrote: post #26

I got an XXL Berkshire Hathaway shirt. I'm a medium. Thanks

IBM: I was to be sent at short notice to the International Broadcasting Convention in Amsterdam. They wanted every one to wear a "uniform": black pants and an IBM shirt. My manager said they'd get me button-down shirts, but at the meeting where they distributed the shirts, no button-downs were to be found. They'd mysteriously disappeared. They had to scrounge me up some XXL polo shirts.

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#209

Post by GlenTheMachine » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

Nexxxeh wrote: post #195

gameswithgo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A challenge coin! Are people who tend to run companies total children, or do they think that those of us working for them are children?

I think it's more a cultural thing. Not everyone is financially motivated, they want the recognition. A challenge coin is a tool for doing that. It's in a similar vein to a medal. It might have been misjudged in this instance however, but they're a thing in military circles so I can imagine how it seemed like a good idea. Tbh I'd have been really pleased, but I can appreciate that's not universal.

If you are in the military, you can use challenge coins to get yourself free drinks. The idea is that when everyone is at a bar, the guy or gal with the challenge coin from the highest ranking officer never has to pay for rounds of drinks.

I've never seen a civilian use one. We don't spend much time in bars, and the feeling I get is that if I did try to whip one out in the presence of uniformed personnel -- a challenge that I would almost certainly win, given who this coin was from -- that would be a tremendous faux pas.

So at best, this is the sort of object that carries some real meaning in a very particular social context among a very particular set of people, but that meaning doesn't carry over to anywhere else. Like baseball or Pokemon cards, I suppose. How would you feel about your boss switching out Christmas bonuses for packs of World of Warcraft cards?

Re: The worst morale-boosting gesture I've experienced

#210

Post by stavros » Tue, Jun 18, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

rsweeney21 wrote: post #146

fatnoah wrote: post #132

Oh, man, don't get me started. Two short ones: I did a stint in professional services and billed for 2600 hours @ $250/hr for a total of $650k. Essentially worked 12+ hour days for a year, and got a bonus of $1000 before taxes. I quit within a month. Next up was an appreciation gesture where we were thanked for all of our extra hard work with a pack of "Extra" gum and a delivery of baked potatoes (with all the fixing…

Most of the developers at my company (www.facetdev.com) are contract, but for the few full-timers we still have, we used to ask the team to work long hours out of the goodness of their hearts if a project needed it. That seemed wrong, so I implemented a bonus plan where you get paid 60% of everything you bill over your weekly goals and made working extra hours optional. I love writing those bonus checks!

Wait, so you pay overtime, except you pay 40% less? I must be misunderstanding.

Also please tell me you aren't proud of paying for overtime and I'm misunderstanding that too. That should be the minimum expectation.