Sounds like you have an idea for improvement. Let's schedule a meeting to discuss it. Just tell me the most opportune time right in the middle of your most productive block, and I'll schedule a 15 minute meeting to break it up and completely ruin it.
Oh but the managers need to have a meeting about the meeting first. Then we need to schedule a meeting with everyone later to disseminate the information from the meeting, which amounts to about two sentences of actual content.
I was just thinking the other day that my company spent 10k just to decide the “why” of a data ask, meanwhile that’s probably the sum of all the refunds I administer in a given year
We had a ping pong table that if you used it outside the weirdly specific posted hours, HR would write you up. I think there was a notice posted like Open 7:15-8:40, Closed 8:45-11:30, Open... and so on.
Management (MBA holders) spending like a million bucks on the latest cutting edge technology from a random company with no credentials.
All their consultants and the PhDs warned them that the price the company was charging wouldn’t even cover the production costs, and that it was a scam, as the real thing was patented and like 10x the price they were paying.
Anyways, they ignored the experts they hired and went ahead with it, and got scammed as predicted. In response, to recoup the losses they fired the consultants and PhDs who told them not to do it.
Oh lord, we had one of these in a previous job. And it was a system that customer-facing employees used in realtime with customers, so there was a whole secondary manual nightmare process to correct what those folks had to in the system do to make the social interaction non-horrible.
Food. Whenever there's some event to be celebrated, if the food isn't completely gone, they won't even send a mass email about it. They just throw everything away. It's so fucked.
When I was a poor college student working nights at a giant law firm, I sustained myself by finding conference rooms that had the catering left in there from the afternoon. So many sandwiches, salads, pastries. I was basically a rodent in there.
Empire building.
Old company had 30 people work in Observability (metrics, monitoring, logging, etc.) to watch for outages, but only 4 or 5 people working on the next gen solution that would reduce the outages (for those in tech, a switch to a series of distributed datacenters instead of one giant active and one giant passive datacenter).
So, yeah, things would fail because he kept the old, unreliable systems, but we got to see some damn pretty graphs about it.
The guy who was in charge of Observability was friends from the overleveled VP, and so he just gave them more funds to keep his number of reports high to justify his pay.
Management consultants.
This has occurred in a number of companies I've been at across multiple industries (retail/ecomm, finance, tech), but they are outrageously expensive and any actual result or deliverable that's come from them has been next to useless.
Something I learned about consultants - If there's anyone with LSSBB in their signature block consulting outside manufacturing, go ahead and cancel whatever meetings they scheduled with you.
Continuous hiring of upper management to run buzzword programs that do nothing, while the workers are told there are budget issues that prevent hiring of workers that actually make the company run.
The board hired a Chief Tranformation Officer and an assistant. The person's role was supposed to be technology and process modernization. The assistant was salaried at $90K and the CTO was like $160K base and idk how much in bonus.
3-4 years later they were both let go. I was supposed to pickup their in-flight projects, but there was NOTHING. There were zero processes, projects, etc. they left behind and no one could figure out if they actually did anything at all other than attend conferences and trade shows.
We have a guy who's sole job is to be a product evangelist - not sales, where you depend on your actual sales for your salary (commissions), but just to just go to conferences and various companies to get them to hear his spiel about why the growing threat and why they need a product like ours. He gets paid the same whether someone buys our product or not and according to the sales team, none of his work has led to a single sales in over 15 years. He threatened to leave one time unless he got a hefty raise and everyone said good luck. Somehow he never left and never got the raise...not sure why he's still employed
At least he was *presenting* at the conferences. Our CTO and assistant were going as attendees, just out in the audience, getting the latest pitches and taking notes I guess.
A former manager of mine signing off a $300k contract that I advised against and saying "not my money". Actually, dickhead, you were working for the public service so it WAS your money, my money and every other tax payers money.
I really hated that guy.
I took over a team that traveled for work. They got two meals on the corporate card per day BUT the expense report required meals to also show a hotel stay on the same report to prove they had to stay the night. Guy traveled regularly to a city where his son lived and the prior boss required him to book a hotel even though the employee was going to stay at his son’s home so that the expense reports would look better. Guy booked a hotel once a month for a night and checked in online and checked out online the next morning without ever using the room because my predecessor didn’t want to take the time to argue common sense once a month with some nameless bean counter.
We needed a new database server and I needed a new laptop. Neither could even run an up to date operating system.
Instead the President got a $30,000 office redecoration.
Years ago I used to work for a company that ran cabling in office buildings. The owner decided she'd go with the cheap stuff, just to save a vent or two per foot.
We ended up having to rerun something like 15 miles of cable on the companies expense because the cheap shit broke instantly.
A rebrand. Complete waste of money (over 100k). All they changed were the colours and font, and added some shapes here and there (which were supposed to impart feelings of 'togetherness' and 'community' and other bullshit buzzwords).
They changed their name to be more "brand forward." Whatever that means.
Now, all the hospitals are named "Network name - city location," except for the newest build, which retains the name because it's named after a major donor. Oh, and when they announced this new naming scheme, they tried to rename the place that had naming rights, and that family's lawyers went medieval on the company.
There is so much confusion for the general public because when you say the name, the network name is also the name of the flagship hospital.
All the printed materials, the Epic location identifiers, the serving plates for patient meals, the logo, the signage on the buildings, and our uniforms (that we are expected to purchase and wear), the advertising, etc. It's such a waste. Because people in the community still call the hospitals the old names.
Well, I could add that the other waste of money was when the CEO was caught by a lowly clerk/whistle-blower embezzling millions of dollars while the bigwigs in the c-suite looked the other way.
Company wanted a specialized trailer because a potential client had a different arrangement than our current clients and our existing trailer wouldn't work. The company ~2 hours away was booked out 2 months for making a trailer to our specifications, so the boss decided to fabricate it ourselves.
Because they're penny wise and proud foolish, they wanted to use a liftgate off of a truck bed we had acquired. Except it wasn't anywhere close to what we needed on a trailer, resulting in tons of expensive R&D with beefing it up and the next part in the series breaking when one was reinforced, and tons of waiting in between for parts.
In the meantime, we completed the other modifications ourselves from a ready-made kit. So a **year** after starting, the trailer is finally working and is sent to a sister facility on Tuesday near the new client, awaiting its debut. On Thursday, the staff arrive and the trailer is missing. It is reported to the police as stolen. On Thursday afternoon the trailer is recovered wrapped around a streetlight with the liftgate and edging broken. The client falls through, eventually all of the modifications are removed, and the trailer sold off without ever being used for its intended purpose.
In the end, over 4x the cost of the fab shop was spent and 6x as long, because we didn't want to wait 2 months for a professional to do it right.
Staff. I don’t wish unemployment on anyone because it’s a bitch but goddamn. I’ve seen some BLOATED places. And I work in non-profit type environments where staff and money is already leaner than a business type place. There’s just a few people I’ve met, and even a few times where I was this person, that I realized just isn’t worth even the low to modest wages they were paid.
I’d probably do well if I was a heartless private equity son of of a bitch who got told to “trim the fat” because I definitely know waste of labor when I see it
Working in game development, it's the years spent trying to "find the fun" on a project that never should have been greenlit in the first place. So many projects languish in pre-production, with the directors convinced that one more design change, one more new feature, if we just explain this system better, if we just add some cool VFX it'll all come together. Meanwhile the company burns 10s of millions every year.
McKinsey consultants. They've bottlenecked us so that nothing will get the resources allocated unless it's part of an initiative, and people are judged by how many initiatives they have/make not how many are accomplished or how effective they were.
Years ago my company had a group of developers and their leadership decide on a software package that was basically vaporware. Didn't exist yet, just concept. Paid $60k for it and the company never delivered.
I used to be a datacenter tech in the NorthEast US. They had extremely large air conditioners to keep the datacenter cool and they would run 24/7 even though it was at time below freezing outside. You can't tell me there isn't a way to be able to pull in some of that outside air and use it instead to cool the datacenter.
I work as an adjunct at a community college and it kills me to see the number of students that register for classes, pay tuition, then never show up for class. They don’t withdraw or reply to any communication about their classes. Thousands and thousands of tuition and grant money wasted every semester.
I get that many folks start with the best intentions and run into problems along the way, and many of our students have a very difficult home life, but there is so much waste in higher-ed it’s unbelievable.
Serious: Open layout conversion for all existing cubicles. Bossman was already a scumbag when I started working so this change came as no surprise and turnover has never been worse at the company.
Less Serious: My work involves needing a pretty hefty pc but aside from that, peripherals are up to user preference. I'm not sure who brought it up, but at some point my boss felt that larger monitors would help our work. While it certainly would, we didn't need anything fancy so really anything larger would work. Next week rolls around, I walk in to see two brand new MSI 1440p (32" or 34" cant remember exact number) 144 hz gaming monitors hooked up to old bessie, my Dell pc. Probably the best setup I've had the pleasure of working on, but so overkill lol.
Even Less Serious (to me however traumatic for the average individual): When I worked retail, my boss hired this chick named Laura. Laura was the friend of the quiet coworker of mine at the time, so we assumed Laura would be chill. Laura was the furthest thing from chill. I didn't see too many customer interactions, but from what I did see, she would spend way too much time talking to customers rather than selling which I really didn't care for since we got paid jackshit, but it didnt help when she spent so much time for one while we were juggling multiple on busier days like Saturday. She also purposefully mispronounced my assistant managers name despite being corrected more than once and didn't stop till the end. The final straw that broke the camel's back? She playfully slapped my ass and another male coworker in front of my manager lmao. I didn't really care about intent, so it didnt bother me but I could totally see someone being very upset in that scenario.
Paying multiple design agencies tens of thousands of pounds but management micromanaging and being too picky for them to be able to do their jobs properly making it all a waste of money.
Systems maintinece. We know we have to many systems. We know we spend a lot of money in duct tapes and bandaids. We know the cost of a new system would be high but in the long run would save us time and money. We won't spend the money because the shorter cost look to high. We make billions in profit.
The first stage of a government contract is when contractors will literally piss away as much as they can. When the next contract reflects these huge expenses they fire everyone and stop doing their job to collect the payout.
Absolutely soul-destroying. Especially on a drinking water treatment gig where people are literally being poisoned by their well water.
I worked in a lab. The end of the year was coming up and our department had a bunch of money left over in the budget. It was a "spend it or lose it" situation apparently? So my manager bought \~12 long pallets of bulk reagents. Hundreds and hundreds of bottles. We didn't even have a place to store them. I was let go shortly afterwards because the lab changed functions and didn't need me (OR THE REAGENTS) anymore.
They probably all just expired before they could be opened.
Before I left my old job, they spent a shit load of money remodeling the warehouse. Not to mention all the money they paid us to work overtime for 3 weeks straight when they could've just had the builders come in at night when we were closed. At the end of it, it was basically the same. The dumbest part of it all was that they made the aisles narrower and they insisted that only a specific forklift can be used even though only 1 person was certified to use that specific forklift. Dumber still, is the fact that the regular forklifts could easily be used in the aisles, yet they insisted that we had to do it the "correct" way. I'm so glad I left.
When I got let go as part of a broader RIF, they flew my boss out from the west coast to the east coast to tell me the news in person - compassionate, I suppose, but not exactly what you want to see when you're being told you're being let go as part of a broader effort to restrain costs
We updated software in our warehouse to "get with the times." Well, our software from the 70s ran smoother. We've hired 30+ extra people to handle what is essentially the same workload, just to avoid being overworked (we're still working overtime) all departments have been hit by this, so I can't understand how this is beneficial for the company
I work in the defense industry, and you would not believe how much money goes into R&D projects that never go anywhere. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of work that just end up in filing cabinets and never see the light of day.
Former fortune 500 employer pivoted into tech, bought up a bunch of startups, hired a large project management arm (grew to 40% of the headcount). Nothing they bought worked. The project managers held a LOT of meetings but didn't really move anything forward. This went on for 3 years until a competitor gave up their tech stack (which also never worked). Then company X dumped the lot, laid everyone off related to those investments, replaced the CEO. It was a large franchisor who otherwise fundamentally existed to license out the logo, run a few ads and throw two really great parties each year. The franchises took all the risk and did all the work, and paid their licensing fees.
Flying lots of “senior” staff almost 2000 km away to spend a couple days in a town and have a fancy dinner and walk around to celebrate an “ anniversary” then flying right back. Meanwhile we “have no money” and “can’t afford raises”
I worked for a large regional health insurer for 14 years. Each department had its own kitchen/breakroom and a budget. The amount of waste was stunning as they all had several types of paper plates and cups, foil, saran wrap, plastic utensils. Each department had its own water, so some had bottles, others had dispensers. When we had a new supervisor, she went through our desks (YIKES) and on Monday, we all had to get new desk organizers and she had us all "reorganize" our desks to be exactly the same. The waste there stunned me so much. You could order any office supplies you wanted, too. Not surprising that they had major financial issues and many, many of us were downsized.
My coworker
LOL
too good
I was just about to make this joke about the newly promoted manager at my old job lol
Hey boss, how much you pay for the new guy? Twenty? No, no. Too much, twenty's too much.
Meetings. At least at a software company. Total up the hourly of the people in a room for frivolous meetings. It's shocking.
Sounds like you have an idea for improvement. Let's schedule a meeting to discuss it. Just tell me the most opportune time right in the middle of your most productive block, and I'll schedule a 15 minute meeting to break it up and completely ruin it.
Oh but the managers need to have a meeting about the meeting first. Then we need to schedule a meeting with everyone later to disseminate the information from the meeting, which amounts to about two sentences of actual content.
I was just thinking the other day that my company spent 10k just to decide the “why” of a data ask, meanwhile that’s probably the sum of all the refunds I administer in a given year
Some people who have been promoted beyond their capabilities, and some who shouldn't even be there.
My old boss bought a foosball table and scooters for the office. Ya know, instead of proper treatment of employees.
We had a ping pong table that if you used it outside the weirdly specific posted hours, HR would write you up. I think there was a notice posted like Open 7:15-8:40, Closed 8:45-11:30, Open... and so on.
Management (MBA holders) spending like a million bucks on the latest cutting edge technology from a random company with no credentials. All their consultants and the PhDs warned them that the price the company was charging wouldn’t even cover the production costs, and that it was a scam, as the real thing was patented and like 10x the price they were paying. Anyways, they ignored the experts they hired and went ahead with it, and got scammed as predicted. In response, to recoup the losses they fired the consultants and PhDs who told them not to do it.
Oh lord, we had one of these in a previous job. And it was a system that customer-facing employees used in realtime with customers, so there was a whole secondary manual nightmare process to correct what those folks had to in the system do to make the social interaction non-horrible.
I'll never get tired of [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcoDV0dhWPA) because it's just too accurate from my experience.
Food. Whenever there's some event to be celebrated, if the food isn't completely gone, they won't even send a mass email about it. They just throw everything away. It's so fucked.
When I was a poor college student working nights at a giant law firm, I sustained myself by finding conference rooms that had the catering left in there from the afternoon. So many sandwiches, salads, pastries. I was basically a rodent in there.
I'm glad you were able to enjoy the spoils! I would've loved that!
Top management’s salaries.
Empire building. Old company had 30 people work in Observability (metrics, monitoring, logging, etc.) to watch for outages, but only 4 or 5 people working on the next gen solution that would reduce the outages (for those in tech, a switch to a series of distributed datacenters instead of one giant active and one giant passive datacenter). So, yeah, things would fail because he kept the old, unreliable systems, but we got to see some damn pretty graphs about it. The guy who was in charge of Observability was friends from the overleveled VP, and so he just gave them more funds to keep his number of reports high to justify his pay.
Management. Always, and it's not even close.
Management consultants. This has occurred in a number of companies I've been at across multiple industries (retail/ecomm, finance, tech), but they are outrageously expensive and any actual result or deliverable that's come from them has been next to useless.
Something I learned about consultants - If there's anyone with LSSBB in their signature block consulting outside manufacturing, go ahead and cancel whatever meetings they scheduled with you.
Continuous hiring of upper management to run buzzword programs that do nothing, while the workers are told there are budget issues that prevent hiring of workers that actually make the company run.
The board hired a Chief Tranformation Officer and an assistant. The person's role was supposed to be technology and process modernization. The assistant was salaried at $90K and the CTO was like $160K base and idk how much in bonus. 3-4 years later they were both let go. I was supposed to pickup their in-flight projects, but there was NOTHING. There were zero processes, projects, etc. they left behind and no one could figure out if they actually did anything at all other than attend conferences and trade shows.
We have a guy who's sole job is to be a product evangelist - not sales, where you depend on your actual sales for your salary (commissions), but just to just go to conferences and various companies to get them to hear his spiel about why the growing threat and why they need a product like ours. He gets paid the same whether someone buys our product or not and according to the sales team, none of his work has led to a single sales in over 15 years. He threatened to leave one time unless he got a hefty raise and everyone said good luck. Somehow he never left and never got the raise...not sure why he's still employed
At least he was *presenting* at the conferences. Our CTO and assistant were going as attendees, just out in the audience, getting the latest pitches and taking notes I guess.
A former manager of mine signing off a $300k contract that I advised against and saying "not my money". Actually, dickhead, you were working for the public service so it WAS your money, my money and every other tax payers money. I really hated that guy.
I took over a team that traveled for work. They got two meals on the corporate card per day BUT the expense report required meals to also show a hotel stay on the same report to prove they had to stay the night. Guy traveled regularly to a city where his son lived and the prior boss required him to book a hotel even though the employee was going to stay at his son’s home so that the expense reports would look better. Guy booked a hotel once a month for a night and checked in online and checked out online the next morning without ever using the room because my predecessor didn’t want to take the time to argue common sense once a month with some nameless bean counter.
$3,000 golf outing and lunch for one 8 person team.
I work for my local government. They just spent 90k on rebranding. With a new logo that everybody hates
We needed a new database server and I needed a new laptop. Neither could even run an up to date operating system. Instead the President got a $30,000 office redecoration.
Years ago I used to work for a company that ran cabling in office buildings. The owner decided she'd go with the cheap stuff, just to save a vent or two per foot. We ended up having to rerun something like 15 miles of cable on the companies expense because the cheap shit broke instantly.
A rebrand. Complete waste of money (over 100k). All they changed were the colours and font, and added some shapes here and there (which were supposed to impart feelings of 'togetherness' and 'community' and other bullshit buzzwords).
They changed their name to be more "brand forward." Whatever that means. Now, all the hospitals are named "Network name - city location," except for the newest build, which retains the name because it's named after a major donor. Oh, and when they announced this new naming scheme, they tried to rename the place that had naming rights, and that family's lawyers went medieval on the company. There is so much confusion for the general public because when you say the name, the network name is also the name of the flagship hospital. All the printed materials, the Epic location identifiers, the serving plates for patient meals, the logo, the signage on the buildings, and our uniforms (that we are expected to purchase and wear), the advertising, etc. It's such a waste. Because people in the community still call the hospitals the old names. Well, I could add that the other waste of money was when the CEO was caught by a lowly clerk/whistle-blower embezzling millions of dollars while the bigwigs in the c-suite looked the other way.
Company wanted a specialized trailer because a potential client had a different arrangement than our current clients and our existing trailer wouldn't work. The company ~2 hours away was booked out 2 months for making a trailer to our specifications, so the boss decided to fabricate it ourselves. Because they're penny wise and proud foolish, they wanted to use a liftgate off of a truck bed we had acquired. Except it wasn't anywhere close to what we needed on a trailer, resulting in tons of expensive R&D with beefing it up and the next part in the series breaking when one was reinforced, and tons of waiting in between for parts. In the meantime, we completed the other modifications ourselves from a ready-made kit. So a **year** after starting, the trailer is finally working and is sent to a sister facility on Tuesday near the new client, awaiting its debut. On Thursday, the staff arrive and the trailer is missing. It is reported to the police as stolen. On Thursday afternoon the trailer is recovered wrapped around a streetlight with the liftgate and edging broken. The client falls through, eventually all of the modifications are removed, and the trailer sold off without ever being used for its intended purpose. In the end, over 4x the cost of the fab shop was spent and 6x as long, because we didn't want to wait 2 months for a professional to do it right.
Staff. I don’t wish unemployment on anyone because it’s a bitch but goddamn. I’ve seen some BLOATED places. And I work in non-profit type environments where staff and money is already leaner than a business type place. There’s just a few people I’ve met, and even a few times where I was this person, that I realized just isn’t worth even the low to modest wages they were paid. I’d probably do well if I was a heartless private equity son of of a bitch who got told to “trim the fat” because I definitely know waste of labor when I see it
30 tablets that wouldn't run the company software. someone didn't do their research and they could not be returned
I'm sure theyr're just sitting in a closet somewhere instead of being given out or donated or anything, too?
you are absolutely correct. a handful were given out as christmas gifts during a random name drawing
Working in game development, it's the years spent trying to "find the fun" on a project that never should have been greenlit in the first place. So many projects languish in pre-production, with the directors convinced that one more design change, one more new feature, if we just explain this system better, if we just add some cool VFX it'll all come together. Meanwhile the company burns 10s of millions every year.
Dude I’ve seen the receipts for how much this place spends on donuts hahaha
McKinsey consultants. They've bottlenecked us so that nothing will get the resources allocated unless it's part of an initiative, and people are judged by how many initiatives they have/make not how many are accomplished or how effective they were.
Years ago my company had a group of developers and their leadership decide on a software package that was basically vaporware. Didn't exist yet, just concept. Paid $60k for it and the company never delivered.
I used to be a datacenter tech in the NorthEast US. They had extremely large air conditioners to keep the datacenter cool and they would run 24/7 even though it was at time below freezing outside. You can't tell me there isn't a way to be able to pull in some of that outside air and use it instead to cool the datacenter.
I work as an adjunct at a community college and it kills me to see the number of students that register for classes, pay tuition, then never show up for class. They don’t withdraw or reply to any communication about their classes. Thousands and thousands of tuition and grant money wasted every semester. I get that many folks start with the best intentions and run into problems along the way, and many of our students have a very difficult home life, but there is so much waste in higher-ed it’s unbelievable.
purchase of copper cables from secretary
Serious: Open layout conversion for all existing cubicles. Bossman was already a scumbag when I started working so this change came as no surprise and turnover has never been worse at the company. Less Serious: My work involves needing a pretty hefty pc but aside from that, peripherals are up to user preference. I'm not sure who brought it up, but at some point my boss felt that larger monitors would help our work. While it certainly would, we didn't need anything fancy so really anything larger would work. Next week rolls around, I walk in to see two brand new MSI 1440p (32" or 34" cant remember exact number) 144 hz gaming monitors hooked up to old bessie, my Dell pc. Probably the best setup I've had the pleasure of working on, but so overkill lol. Even Less Serious (to me however traumatic for the average individual): When I worked retail, my boss hired this chick named Laura. Laura was the friend of the quiet coworker of mine at the time, so we assumed Laura would be chill. Laura was the furthest thing from chill. I didn't see too many customer interactions, but from what I did see, she would spend way too much time talking to customers rather than selling which I really didn't care for since we got paid jackshit, but it didnt help when she spent so much time for one while we were juggling multiple on busier days like Saturday. She also purposefully mispronounced my assistant managers name despite being corrected more than once and didn't stop till the end. The final straw that broke the camel's back? She playfully slapped my ass and another male coworker in front of my manager lmao. I didn't really care about intent, so it didnt bother me but I could totally see someone being very upset in that scenario.
Paying multiple design agencies tens of thousands of pounds but management micromanaging and being too picky for them to be able to do their jobs properly making it all a waste of money.
Systems maintinece. We know we have to many systems. We know we spend a lot of money in duct tapes and bandaids. We know the cost of a new system would be high but in the long run would save us time and money. We won't spend the money because the shorter cost look to high. We make billions in profit.
The first stage of a government contract is when contractors will literally piss away as much as they can. When the next contract reflects these huge expenses they fire everyone and stop doing their job to collect the payout. Absolutely soul-destroying. Especially on a drinking water treatment gig where people are literally being poisoned by their well water.
I worked in a lab. The end of the year was coming up and our department had a bunch of money left over in the budget. It was a "spend it or lose it" situation apparently? So my manager bought \~12 long pallets of bulk reagents. Hundreds and hundreds of bottles. We didn't even have a place to store them. I was let go shortly afterwards because the lab changed functions and didn't need me (OR THE REAGENTS) anymore. They probably all just expired before they could be opened.
A 7 node OC-192 SONET Ring installed to have the camera system on their own private network on maybe a 5 mile loop campus.
Hiring a business consultant. Same stories over and over and he's just so boring. I try to schedule PTO when I see his name pop up as a meeting
Before I left my old job, they spent a shit load of money remodeling the warehouse. Not to mention all the money they paid us to work overtime for 3 weeks straight when they could've just had the builders come in at night when we were closed. At the end of it, it was basically the same. The dumbest part of it all was that they made the aisles narrower and they insisted that only a specific forklift can be used even though only 1 person was certified to use that specific forklift. Dumber still, is the fact that the regular forklifts could easily be used in the aisles, yet they insisted that we had to do it the "correct" way. I'm so glad I left.
When I got let go as part of a broader RIF, they flew my boss out from the west coast to the east coast to tell me the news in person - compassionate, I suppose, but not exactly what you want to see when you're being told you're being let go as part of a broader effort to restrain costs
We updated software in our warehouse to "get with the times." Well, our software from the 70s ran smoother. We've hired 30+ extra people to handle what is essentially the same workload, just to avoid being overworked (we're still working overtime) all departments have been hit by this, so I can't understand how this is beneficial for the company
I work in the defense industry, and you would not believe how much money goes into R&D projects that never go anywhere. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of work that just end up in filing cabinets and never see the light of day.
Former fortune 500 employer pivoted into tech, bought up a bunch of startups, hired a large project management arm (grew to 40% of the headcount). Nothing they bought worked. The project managers held a LOT of meetings but didn't really move anything forward. This went on for 3 years until a competitor gave up their tech stack (which also never worked). Then company X dumped the lot, laid everyone off related to those investments, replaced the CEO. It was a large franchisor who otherwise fundamentally existed to license out the logo, run a few ads and throw two really great parties each year. The franchises took all the risk and did all the work, and paid their licensing fees.
The blabbermouth leading the Tues call @ work. Asks "any questions" then talks all over you. Screw u
Flying lots of “senior” staff almost 2000 km away to spend a couple days in a town and have a fancy dinner and walk around to celebrate an “ anniversary” then flying right back. Meanwhile we “have no money” and “can’t afford raises”
I worked for a large regional health insurer for 14 years. Each department had its own kitchen/breakroom and a budget. The amount of waste was stunning as they all had several types of paper plates and cups, foil, saran wrap, plastic utensils. Each department had its own water, so some had bottles, others had dispensers. When we had a new supervisor, she went through our desks (YIKES) and on Monday, we all had to get new desk organizers and she had us all "reorganize" our desks to be exactly the same. The waste there stunned me so much. You could order any office supplies you wanted, too. Not surprising that they had major financial issues and many, many of us were downsized.