Customer: “I can’t get into the database.”
I check the usual stuff, but it’s all fine.
Tech Support: “Can you go and check if the server is working?”
Customer: “No.”
Tech Support: “What do you mean, ‘no’?”
Customer: “No, I can’t do that.”
Tech Support: “Why not?”
Customer: “Well, it’s not there.”
Tech Support: “It’s WHAT?”
Customer: “They took it away to be upgraded.”
“I worked as a head of an IT department in a smaller insurance company. I’ve worked there only part time, or as needed (the team consisted of 2 people :)). I was about 22 at that time. We had this “game” we played with my collegue, and a good friend – once in a while I’d tell him after, say, he came back from lunch – “Joseph, such and such called, you’re supposed to go to him/her immediately, he has some problem…” and off he went ..and came back like “You moron! :))” So I teased him quite a lot like this. As we did this more and more, we went to higher positions – like President of the company called, head of such and such department called etc.. Of course you never got to talk to the real bosses – only to their secretaries to find out that…no, they didn’t call you.
ONE DAY THOUGH, I came back from lunch and he tells me – vice-president’s secretary called, that the vice president needs to discuss this and that with you (he made up something pretty believable). So I went and thought – if she hadn’t called, the secretary will tell me. I came to the big boss’ place and the secretary was on the phone and just waived at me like “Alright, go on the vice-presidents office” or just maybe she meant “No, dont’ go, they have a meeting and I didnt’ call you!”. Anyways – I went in. There was a meeting there with the bosses of all departments – there were like 5 people, in a fairly small office, all siting in front of this big boss’ desk. They were discussing something..so I took a chair from accross the room and sat down and listened and took notes for like 5 minutes. Then the vice-president interupted the speaker and she asked – “Yes Daniel, what can we do for you?” I was like – I dont’ know…tell me, what I can do for you.. and she just looked for a second at me ..and then it hit me…DAMN it – she didnt’ call me
It wasn’t all that funny then, but now I get a great laugh from this story.”
……………..
“I could go on. Here’s three.
Temped in a textbook publisher’s marketing department, entering data to send out book samples to sales prospects, then I replace the supervisor, who goes out on maternity. They tell me she’s probably not coming back and nobody can train me. So I figure 75% of it out by myself and even write up procedures for the other temps they have doing the data entry work, so as to save on training time. Then I discover the product sampling process they use is years out of date, sending sample books to people who don’t want them and keeping them from the ones who do. I decide it needs fixing now and not only save them thousands of dollars a year in costs but probably make them several times that in new sales orders. Then the field sales reps I’m supplying realize that unlike my slacker predecessor, I stay late to make sure they always get samples to send their last-minute, narrowâ€window-of-opportunity prospects, instead of flipping them the bird and going home at 4:45. I’m a hero instantly, they’ve never been treated like human beings before, they go nuts, even the warehouse likes me. Jeez, maybe the company might not only hire me but pay me a decent wage, right?
New boss comes in and replaces the old one who had promised me a future there. For a week or two she’s nice enough. Then the afternoon she reads my resume, which includes an unavoidable indication of my non-mainstream religion, she flips from Jekyll to Hyde. She’s obviously something more traditional, because I become a leper overnight. She’s now hunting down every opportunity to find me doing something wrong, except I’ve been doing it much better than her buddy my predecessor, which pisses her off even more. She tries to ambush me in my office and catch me off guard with no use for any pleasantries like hello or see you. One day she pokes her head in my office for an ambush. “Did you finish this?”, she demands. “Er, yes, I did.” “What about that?!” “Uh, yes.” “Well what about that?” “Um, well, yes, I did that three days ago. We’re even trying to get ahead on the next task.” Icicles of disappointment begin forming off the doorjamb, and she turns and stomps off in a fury. My coworkers had gathered she’d taken a new turn on me, but some of them are still stunned. One of them waits to make sure she’s gone, then peers inside to see if I’m still alive. “I couldn’t believe that, and I was standing here and heard the whole thing! She was rude, she was abrasive, she was insulting…” A second person says, “Was that really J_____?” A third tries to laugh, “Face it, C____, she *really* doesn’t like you!” A fourth coworker, however (of my boss’s religious persuasion it seemed), goes into denial any of this happened, because the coworker had watched me staying thanklessly night after night later than even she did and commiserate, “C____, all your hard work will be rewarded, I promise!” Heh, it sure did. The boss brought back my predecessor, every job there I applied to afterward went nowhere, and back I went into temp land. And I’ve seen more than one temp made the scapegoat for some the incompetence of a regular employee.
Or the legal department of the big mutual fund company. Because of a former job, I know their obscure software better than any of them do, and I’m a top-rate proofer. One day I clock in at 9:00 a.m. and stay till 10 or 11 p.m. on deadlined paralegal stuff for them, skipping dinner because the project is so important. Not only do I get no overtime or recognition, they don’t even have the grace to send out for a pizza. A different lawyer boss I get at the same company tells me to put something in the ___ file. An hour later she goes looking for it and chews me out because it turns out there are two files by that name, and she never told me about the obscure but identically labelled on. I’m stupid, this is unacceptable, etc. Of course I make the mistake, since lawyers love power above all things, of mentioning I want to help them do things right, but she never informed me the other file existed. An hour later my agency calls me and tells me “it looks like they won’t be needing you after today” (and work then got really scarce for a month or two). Actually, I was getting indispensible to the point of being tech support for the entire *floor*, but this woman lusted for the opportunity to fire somebody who (a) was male, (b) had gone to an Ivy League school, and (c) knew her for her true colors. Dunno, maybe it really was her profession: her coworker went ecstatic when she “made” two million dollars selling some bonds back to an Indian tribe they’d bought them from only half a year before. Put differently, they soaked a poverty-ridden reservation out of either meager savings or forced them to sell assets to pay the debt. But I’m not sure either of them had souls.
Temping, done rightly, can be good practice for becoming a Dalai Lama. My next boss at a new worksite had gone through five assistants before me in one week, the agency told me to just try it for a day and see how it went, I didn’t have to take it if I didn’t want. She was definitely a type A, but completely un-self-aware and for whom business ethics were silly suggestions, but surprise, she got herself canned for her apparently legendary conduct (though after blackmailing the company for a $40,000 parachute first, which she probably should have paid them instead), and I outlasted her about three years till I left. Now the firm did string me out for cheap first with 364 days’ worth (notice the legal maximum?) of “indecision” over plans for our department before hiring me. It didn’t stop the conniving woman who stole my job shortly after I finally got it either, but in spite of misrepresentations behind my back I documented my productivity daily and managed to get one slightly better.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had bosses who were positive saints, especially in scale with their superiors, who in one place compromised the organization’s core principles (that one’s a page by itself). I had to resign from that one to keep my integrity, in spite of the fact it probably cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars in income in the long run, which I could sure have used and still could, though I don’t regret it one minute. (That was how I got to be a temp when other people lost their souls and kept their jobs.) But some of them made my current boss, in the grand scheme look tame. True, in spite of good points she sometimes loses stuff on her desk and then blames you all day long for losing it, or uses an interrogatory tone of voice when she’s demanding where her keys are, which is frequently (er, after two years of patient service you think I’m hiding them?) But even when you’ve been robbed, some of it looks relative.
Keep the faith; self-respect still counts for more than most people think.”
“I work for a major medical school, Dept. of Psychiatry, and travel to state prisons to conduct psychiatric assessments of prisoners with mental health designations preparing to parole. Understand me: crazy and very dangerous men. In January, a corrections officer was murdered by a psych inmate and the state issued a state-wide emergency lockdown of all prisons, allowing entry to only “essential personnel.” I was inside a Level 4 (of 4) maximum security prison. Unbeknownst to me, the supervisors of my program phoned all my colleagues and ordered them to return home for their personal safety. Everyone except me. My phone was working, I was know to be in the prison, etc. Because I was known in the prison, I continued to work the full week, where it was tense, emotional, creepy. Inmates cheered the murder and corrections officers assaulted inmates. Trust me, I shouldn’t have been there. Upon return home and returning to the office, I was asked where I had been. I told them and my colleagues were shocked: “Didn’t you get the call?” Obviously not. It was disconcerting, to say the least, that I could be unaccounted for a full work week under a state-wide emergency conditions. At the staff meeting I made a very emphatic point about being left behind (a supervisor insisted she called & I immediately had my officemate call my cell phone to show it was operating), and I complained about not having the proper safety equipment (e.g. stab-proof vest), or the information necessary to make safety decisions in my best interest. The director said we will take this to a committee, and I said I would take it to my Union. Little of this has been resolved. 5 months later, I made a half-ass application for a supervisory position one hour before the process closed. I am by far the best trained and best experienced clinician in the program. The only other person who applied was a woman who is a knucklehead, no sense of evidenced-based medicine, uses “crystals”, “breath work,” shares personal information with sociopathic inmates trying to have a “connecting moment.” I believe they were pissed that I applied. This past thursday, I was called into the director’s office and served with “Written Warning” for “insubordination & unprofessional behaviour” because of the January staff meeting. When inquired why it took from January until June, they stated they had been too busy. Some of the issues included that I had called the supervisor “a name.” Whe I inquired as what it was, she stated, “naive.” The director asked if I was bold enough to tell the chairman of the Dept. of Psychiatry he was naive, and I responded “only if he were naive.” They were dramatically outraged. I offered to poll my peers as to their opinion, and was refused, and then suggested I would consult my attorney to depose everyone of my peers. At that point they were a bit more, shall we say, congenial. “Let’s not turn this into something contentious…” I ended this bullshit by saying, “You are playing me for a motherfucking fool; like I’m some chump from the street. Give me the paper and I’m gone.” They can’t fire me, but I certainly can’t be a supervisor with a disciplinary action. I’m no instigator, but don’t fuck with me.”