Dear BullshitJob, I am a helpdesk guy at a huge corporate campus…and let me tell you about a conversation between me and my boss regarding Marcia. I’m gonna copy you on some emails. [Ed: Here they are…]

Marcia is having a problem with her machine, can you call her?

Hi, sure, but a few questions:
1. Who is Marcia?
2. What is her phone number?
3. What is the problem she is having?

[Ed: three days later] Have you fixed Marcia’s problem yet?

I still need to know who Marcia is, how to contact her, and what the problem is?

What, she hasn’t called you?

No.

Oh, nevermind. She says it fixed itself.

I still don’t know who Marcia is.

I knew I was quitting, so I gave 2 month notice at my job. I know, two MONTHS? But I figured it was the right thing to do, and they could hire my replacement in plenty of time. After I gave notice my boss started treating me really badly. I called in sick a few days later, leaving a message on his voicemail, and the next day he changed the sick policy to say we had to personally call everyone in the department (about 7 people) when we were calling in sick.

Effective immediately, anytime you must call in sick you are required to call each person in the department to let them know you won’t be in for the day. You must repeat this each day you do not come in to work. Print out the phone numbers for each person and keep it at home so you know how to reach everyone.

Then my boss takes me aside, tells me I’m doing a bad job. I remind him I am quitting anyway and he threatens to fire me earlier than I plan on quitting, but in the end does not.

Four months later, he emails me out of the blue and tells me he has not found a replacement and asks if I will do some contract work. Of course I say no. I learned my lesson, never give 2 months notice again!

I have not found a sufficient replacement for your position. I am the only programmer currently in the department. Would you be interested in doing some temporary contract work starting on Monday?

These are from the same department at one company

Authorizator – refers to an individual with system administrative priveleges.

Acronymize – “We do not want to acronymize our product names for clients.”

“De-Dupic” – “How this de-dupic process works . . .” referring to database “de-duping” process.

Grammatic – “Some people are just grammatic.”

“It is what it is” . . . uhm . . . what is what what is???

Our current American “heath care crisis” has given our company management the opportunity to cut benefits. Despite the insurance company raising our group rates a mere 6% this year, management has cut benefits to employees working less than 35 hours a week (previously it was 24) and is changing plans to one that requires more employee contributions and increased family deductibles.

Net savings for the company? Over 20%. Being the peon in HR, I am the one that gets to draft the memo that will be distributed to all employees telling them the news.

After getting laid off as a highly-paid programmer at a startup I had the good fortune (??) to land another job within 2 weeks. It was a three month contract at another startup company in a high-rise downtown. The pay was much less and I had no benefits – but I had to take it or lose my unemployment checks. Despite the circumstances, they saw fit to assign me the title “Senior Sofware Consultant” – a bullshit title if I’ve ever heard one. On my first day, I arrived promptly at 8:30 and they had: no desk, no chair, no computer, and nothing for me to do. My new boss was out of the office.

Feeling less than welcome, I spent the first few hours putting my Senior Software Consultant skills to work with the the office manager (a rarely helpful, frequently interrupted, and psychotically perky woman in her 40s – you know the type) removing my desk from a cardboard box and putting it together with a hex-wrench. When I was finished, they had me watch someone else program who was very annoyed at my unexpected presence and much too busy to explain anything. My first day ended with me being introduced by some manager in a department-wide meeting as “our new programming resource”.

When I showed up the next day they had put my rolling mini-desk in a busy little hallway sandwiched between two cubes. No desk had been in that location before. Consequently, as people walked around the corner during the course of the day, I was collided with no less than five times and endured endless, inane and consistantly smirky “Oh, look where they have you!”-type comments. The two cubes on either side of me were occupied by none other than my boss…and his boss.

Clicky for bigness

I am pleased to announce that Todd [last name misspelled and later corrected by SVP] has been appointed to the newly created position of Vice President, Group Marketing and will report to me. The dynamics of consumer marketing and circulation will warrant us growing our business through new revenue streams and channels and this role will be instrumental in identifying and executing on these opportunities. [Ed. Bullshit in boldface for your convenience. Evidently the company needs so many VPs they can’t even get their names straight.]

Volunteers: Assignments with impossible deadlines or pointless pet-projects work best when asking for volunteers. Offer nebulous rewards with as few specifics as possible like “an appropriate amount of comp-time”, or “the thanks of upper management”, or the ultimate, vague non-reward, “a chance to work on elite company-critical research projects in the future”.

If no one volunteers, assign it to the team-member least qualified to handle the project, or failing that, the least paid. After struggling alone, the novice employee will eventually have to ask for help from your more senior team members. Such a debacle will assure that your most qualified employees will voluteer in the future for such projects, knowing that inevitablly it will be fall on their shoulders anyway.

Embedded within a performance culture is the ability and desire to seek opportunities to enhance performance throughout the organization. I believe the Maximizing Claim Productivity Worksheet we have created will enable us to continue to find ways to improve our productivity, implement changes in a timely fashion and appropriately assess the impact of such modifications.

The leadership and willingness of the plan champions to accept a greater role in enhancing our Claim productivity is a sign of Excellence!

[Ed: Extra strength bullshit bolded for your convenience!]

Greetings to All: I want to thank everyone for their participation in the organizational assessment done by [Expensive Consultantancy Firm]. I have discussed their findings now on two occasions and feel this assessment and the implementation of recommendations are extremely important to our institutional health and viability. I am calling for a facilitated meeting with [the directors] to discuss possible next steps that in turn could be incorporated into formal recommendations to the Board. The assessment has identified a number of key areas for improvement. A well-thought out plan for addressing the concerns and issues brought forward by everyone will help us to be more efficient, thus more effective. A plan for implementing these recommendations will need to be developed. Developing an action plan will take time as will implementing the action plan. Additional resources may be needed to put the plan in place. I will be seeking your input throughout the process and look forward to developing constructive plans to improve the organizational effectiveness of [Name of Institution]. Once again, thank you.

[Ed. This is a note from the employee, and I couldn’t have written it better myself.]
Translation?

“The consultants have found out that I am worse than useless–in fact, I am a downright impediment to our progress. Thus, though one of the key recommendations of the consultants is to get rid of me, I am working desperately to conceal this from all of you. That is why, even though *another* one of their suggestions is that we have open meetings so you all have the illusion of shared authority, I am going to meet only with chosen directors. Any plan I come up with is not going to include input from any of you! Nothing is ever going to change for the better around here, not while I have anything to say about it!”

Committed to excellence, we provide supportive services necessary for learning, discovery, and service.

We adopted the above mission statement a year ago… just last week we get told that we can no longer afford customer service and the department is being outsourced overseas.