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The next day I came back to see a pristine desk. With all my stuff gone. Something like this happened to me too at a previous employer, some things I recovered
by gaius 8y ago
The next day I came back to see a pristine desk.
With all my stuff gone.
Something like this happened to me too at a previous employer, some things I recovered but many were just gone, the cleaning staff apparently help themselves to stuff that “former” employees leave behind, so my fancy headphones for example were just gone. Fucks given by HR/facilities? Zero. One of many similar incidents for me and my cow-orkers. And this was a desk move literally from one row to another!
It wasn’t even an algorithm per se, most of the “machine” at this place was people in India following checklists manually. You could speak to them (tho' they made this very difficult to do) and tell them to stop and they would say “yes” and do it anyway.
I had a friend at another company who was mistakenly terminated, a week later his manager called him at home to find out if he was OK, the conversation apparently went,
Are you sick? What happened?
You fired me you bastard!
No I didn't! Please come back!
Too late now, I have another job.
- romwell 8y agoA paper/protocol machine is still a machine, though. Sucks that it ate your headphones!
- gaius 8y agoI am normally big on Solidarity with fellow Workers but the humans in this loop really should be automated away, because they knew what they were doing was a mistake and did it anyway, so what value were they adding? In fact they were worse than automation because at least that can be debugged, but there is no fix for the bureaucratic mindset. Especially since you could tell them to stop and they would say "yes" and then carry on anyway... Another story from the same company, group A would enter their requirements into system 1, group B would pick up work tickets from system 2. Group A thought that group B were idiots who could never do anything right, and group B thought that group A were idiots who could never make up their minds what they wanted. But the real problem was group C who maintained systems 1 and 2 and "integrated" them with people in India manually rekeying from one to the other with frequent typos. They thought they were saving money but never considered the cost of delays and re-work in groups A and B...
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago>you could tell them to stop and they would say "yes" and then carry on anyway... // This was discussed/commented on at length a couple of weeks ago. In Indian culture, apparently, the "yes" is like a verbal tick - kinda - and just acknowledges you've spoken without giving any commitment to doing anything (nor indeed indicating any level of understanding).
- sametmax 8y agoNot exactly. If you ask "do you understand ?" and "will you do it?" they will tell you yes as well. It's not a verbal tick. It's just not socially acceptable to say no.
- krzat 8y agoI wonder if western culture has similiar quirks that we don't even realise.
- daxelrod 8y ago“How are you?” “Good” Tons of people have this exchange out of politeness. The person asking “How are you?” doesn’t really want to know details. The person answering is expected to be brief and positive. It’s only among friends that the same question is expected to get an honest and detailed answer.
- Dylan16807 8y agoBrief yes, but nothing about the question suggests they want details. As long as you're not making things too personal you can answer non-positively.
- pimeys 8y agoAs a Finn I typically answer what I really feel at that moment. It creates funny situations, but in general I think if you ask me a question I should give a truthful answer. Why would you ask if you don't want to know...
- fouc 8y agoDid you threaten to call the police about theft? Could've followed through with the threat also.
- gaius 8y agoI escalated it to building security, where I had some mates, and they reviewed what CCTV evidence there was but couldn't find anything. I don't even really blame the cleaners; people left expensive electronics, phones, wallets, whatever on their desks all the time, never any issues at all, I don't think any of them would have taken anything that wasn't from the pile, it was probably at least tacitly sanctioned by their management (who probably helped themselves first too).
- bena 8y agoYeah, I think that's the difference. They won't touch anything that's clearly for someone else. But in their mind, the previous tenant had abandoned that stuff. It was free real estate. They didn't think it was stealing because they didn't think it belonged to anyone.
- walshemj 8y ago"Ah you admit I was unfairly fired!" how about we settle for 9 months salary or my lawyers will be in touch.