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I knew a guy who put his two weeks notice in just before the annual Christmas bonus came out. So they stiffed him on the bonus. They ended up paying for that i

I knew a guy who put his two weeks notice in just before the annual Christmas bonus came out. So they stiffed him on the bonus. They ended up paying for that in spades. This was in the planning field and he was moving from a private consulting firm to a government job. Government is where the real power is for this industry. If they were one minute late "Sorry, we are closed/you missed the deadline." If they had any errors in their paperwork "Sorry, reapply after you fix this." Etc. Ad nauseam. By. The. Book. Every step of the way. Zero wiggle room. It had to have cost them more than the bonus they denied him.

lixtra 6y ago
> They ended up paying for that in spades. Assuming that guy behaved differently with other companies, shouldn’t we call it corruption? Edit: > This was in the planning field and he was moving from a private consulting firm to a government job. Some downvoters want explain? Seriously HN, you want this kind of government workers? < I'm not condoning what he did. I didn’t assume so. It was an interesting story to share.
- shard972 6y ago
  Maybe we need more of this kind of corruption then
- windthrown 6y ago
  Abusing the power of their job to retaliate against specific parties? Yes it sounds like pretty clear-cut corruption.
  - DoreenMichele 6y ago
    He may have only been engaging in petty schadenfreude. Given that they stiffed him, they may have been chronically a day late and a dollar short and counting on people to make an exception "just this once" (every single time) because of some sob story or other. Telling them "no" instead of falling for their con job wouldn't be corruption. I'm not condoning corruption. But I do certainly find the story funny.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Being strict and enforcing rules with one company while being tolerant and forgiving with others is how real world corruption often works. And for that matter, how bias in general works. Or nepotism.
      - DoreenMichele 6y ago
        Absolutely. Please lead me not into temptation with regards to giving me yet one more reason to bitch about how much it sucks to be me with regards to sexism on HN. But in this case real corruption would be a former employee of theirs regularly bending the rules for them. If no one else was chronically a day late and dollar short and expecting accommodation and understanding for it, telling them "no" and expecting them to actually comply with the rules is called professional ethics not corruption. Lots of shitty people get away with their shit by counting on other people being "nice" and honorable no matter how badly they themselves behave. That's actual corruption and such people often want to argue that not going along with their garbage is somehow you doing something wrong when, in fact, going along with their expectation of special dispensation in the name of "niceness" is the bad thing. Giggling at their crap biting them in the ass because someone is actually enforcing the rules for once instead of rewarding their manipulative BS is not corruption. It's schadenfreude. People who are used to doing the right thing even when it pains them very much are not bad people for getting a small thrill out of karma being a bitch to chronic assholes who think the rules don't apply to them. I don't know if this was an instance of corruption or not. Neither do you. The devil is in the details and neither of us knows all of the details. But, no, "clearly and obviously corruption" is not true. There are other possible explanations. Having dealt with asshole customers who wanted the moon when the rules explicitly forbade that, I can well imagine this was only schadenfreude and he didn't know how to clearly explain that when he told the anecdote years after the fact to a group of friends. Do you really think "good government" means someone staying late and doing work off the clock because their jackass former employer is showing up again just as the place is being locked up? If they weren't routinely a minute too late, this wouldn't have cost them anything on the order of the amount of money they screwed him out of. I don't think such accommodation would constitute good government. The fact that being held to the rules was a constant source of friction that cost them royally implicitly suggests they didn't play by the rules. It implicitly suggests they routinely and regularly were late and their paperwork was botched and they expected to simply get away with it. Being screwed by them wrt the bonus money may have protected him from stupidly "being nice" to them and thereby ending up on legal charges for corruption. That is often a slippery slope where "just this once because we are friends" becomes "in for a penny, in for a pound" and you don't know how to back out of it without being burned.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- watwut 6y ago
  It is corruption.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
inglor_cz 6y ago
This is a moral conflict if I ever saw one. Assuming that the guy was a pedant only against his former company and not everyone around. On one hand, a sleazy company gets karma-whipped. On the other hand, the overall harm from a public authority enforcing the law unevenly because of a personal grudge is not negligible either. Junior people working with him will normalize this behavior and repeat it. Neutral public institutions are a great achievement that helps the entire society grow.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  Me going on at length about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26850935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26850935 I find it tiresome that so many people think they can know for certain what was going on based on a third-hand retelling after the fact and are so certain he was up to no good. I am reminded of the importance of the "innocent until proven guilty" standard. Once people get it in their head that, clearly, he's guilty of something, all rational assessment seems to be readily abandoned in the name of a zeal for supposed righteousness and justice. The term witch hunt comes to mind.
- pm90 6y ago
  Public institutions will never be neutral as long as we have people staffing them and interacting with other people. It’s inevitable that these power dynamics would form: it’s heartening though that it can only be at the edges. That’s a very good sign.
radiator 6y ago
Cool story and I see absolutely no problem with his behaviour.

lixtra 6y ago

> They ended up paying for that in spades. Assuming that guy behaved differently with other companies, shouldn’t we call it corruption? Edit: > This was in the planning field and he was moving from a private consulting firm to a government job. Some downvoters want explain? Seriously HN, you want this kind of government workers? < I'm not condoning what he did. I didn’t assume so. It was an interesting story to share.

shard972 6y ago
Maybe we need more of this kind of corruption then
windthrown 6y ago
Abusing the power of their job to retaliate against specific parties? Yes it sounds like pretty clear-cut corruption.
- DoreenMichele 6y ago
  He may have only been engaging in petty schadenfreude. Given that they stiffed him, they may have been chronically a day late and a dollar short and counting on people to make an exception "just this once" (every single time) because of some sob story or other. Telling them "no" instead of falling for their con job wouldn't be corruption. I'm not condoning corruption. But I do certainly find the story funny.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Being strict and enforcing rules with one company while being tolerant and forgiving with others is how real world corruption often works. And for that matter, how bias in general works. Or nepotism.
    - DoreenMichele 6y ago
      Absolutely. Please lead me not into temptation with regards to giving me yet one more reason to bitch about how much it sucks to be me with regards to sexism on HN. But in this case real corruption would be a former employee of theirs regularly bending the rules for them. If no one else was chronically a day late and dollar short and expecting accommodation and understanding for it, telling them "no" and expecting them to actually comply with the rules is called professional ethics not corruption. Lots of shitty people get away with their shit by counting on other people being "nice" and honorable no matter how badly they themselves behave. That's actual corruption and such people often want to argue that not going along with their garbage is somehow you doing something wrong when, in fact, going along with their expectation of special dispensation in the name of "niceness" is the bad thing. Giggling at their crap biting them in the ass because someone is actually enforcing the rules for once instead of rewarding their manipulative BS is not corruption. It's schadenfreude. People who are used to doing the right thing even when it pains them very much are not bad people for getting a small thrill out of karma being a bitch to chronic assholes who think the rules don't apply to them. I don't know if this was an instance of corruption or not. Neither do you. The devil is in the details and neither of us knows all of the details. But, no, "clearly and obviously corruption" is not true. There are other possible explanations. Having dealt with asshole customers who wanted the moon when the rules explicitly forbade that, I can well imagine this was only schadenfreude and he didn't know how to clearly explain that when he told the anecdote years after the fact to a group of friends. Do you really think "good government" means someone staying late and doing work off the clock because their jackass former employer is showing up again just as the place is being locked up? If they weren't routinely a minute too late, this wouldn't have cost them anything on the order of the amount of money they screwed him out of. I don't think such accommodation would constitute good government. The fact that being held to the rules was a constant source of friction that cost them royally implicitly suggests they didn't play by the rules. It implicitly suggests they routinely and regularly were late and their paperwork was botched and they expected to simply get away with it. Being screwed by them wrt the bonus money may have protected him from stupidly "being nice" to them and thereby ending up on legal charges for corruption. That is often a slippery slope where "just this once because we are friends" becomes "in for a penny, in for a pound" and you don't know how to back out of it without being burned.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
watwut 6y ago
It is corruption.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

inglor_cz 6y ago

This is a moral conflict if I ever saw one. Assuming that the guy was a pedant only against his former company and not everyone around. On one hand, a sleazy company gets karma-whipped. On the other hand, the overall harm from a public authority enforcing the law unevenly because of a personal grudge is not negligible either. Junior people working with him will normalize this behavior and repeat it. Neutral public institutions are a great achievement that helps the entire society grow.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
Me going on at length about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26850935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26850935 I find it tiresome that so many people think they can know for certain what was going on based on a third-hand retelling after the fact and are so certain he was up to no good. I am reminded of the importance of the "innocent until proven guilty" standard. Once people get it in their head that, clearly, he's guilty of something, all rational assessment seems to be readily abandoned in the name of a zeal for supposed righteousness and justice. The term witch hunt comes to mind.
pm90 6y ago
Public institutions will never be neutral as long as we have people staffing them and interacting with other people. It’s inevitable that these power dynamics would form: it’s heartening though that it can only be at the edges. That’s a very good sign.

radiator 6y ago

Cool story and I see absolutely no problem with his behaviour.