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I worked in a government setting where there was an entire unit of about 12 people called "the island of misfit toys".

They basically took inept employees that were too dumb to give real work to do (but not dumb enough to successfully terminate) and put them into a "Security" unit that allowed salaries to funded by some special source. As far as I could tell, their job was to assign password-reset permissions to "key users" in the field and do some sort of audit function. One of my interns automated their jobs in about 2 weeks when they all retired. They spent most of their time filing discrimination complaints about each other.

The Director was brilliant about it, he'd nominate them for awards for exceeding their KPIs or meeting project milestones, or some other nonsense, which allowed him to expand the group and put them in a separate room.

In the Fortune 500 space, I saw a similar behavior, but for a different purpose... the company did stack-ranking with 5-10% annual layoffs, and the Director-level people would scheme and fight to collect the most inept people possible. When it came time for their unit to be culled, these people would basically serve as fodder for the layoff. It was bizarre to watch.

Wow, management actively trying to recruit a few incompetent employees to their teams, in order to not have to lay off any of their good employees at stack-rank time! Now that is a pathological system.

Isn't it noble in a bizarre sort of way? It sounds like the manager is really looking out for his team. Or maybe he used to refuse to "play the game" until he had to fire a good employee.

Ya, I think that's actually the mark of a great manager... making sure he's got fodder for the inevitable wood chipper so to speak.

Pump 6 (in Pump 6 and Other Stories) seems to be a fictional extension of this. Good set of stories as well.

http://windupstories.com/stories/pumpsix/

If anyone thinks that this sounds farfetched, it really just scratches the surface of the waste and corruption in Detroit. When I was working for a contractor installing and fixing servers at various plants and facilities, the only union workers who actively appeared to be doing their jobs were the union work rules compliance guys, who hovered over us to see if there was any possible way to file a grievance over violations of the "work rules". We were not allowed to "move" a system on our own - even just an inch in order to move a cable. Plugging in ethernet cables was okay, but if we dared to plug in a power cord on our own we were fucked. If we needed a system moved a couple of feet, or plugged in, we were lucky if it took less than a week for a worker to get around to it.

Just about everyone else seemed like they were on a picnic.

I can't speak to anecdotes about Detroit unions, but by no means is this normal behavior in every industry union.

I worked in a UFCW union retail shop for two years' time during high school and saw nothing of the sort. To the contrary, everyone worked their arses off and earned minimum wage while performing every single job role in the facility except management and bookkeeping. If no customers were nearby, you were expected to clean, straighten, and develop photos. If business was especially good, you had no time to straighten shelves and got dinged for the store's good fortune by management. Turnover was rampant. You had to pay dues and yet got next to nothing for them.

Like all things, your mileage may vary.

That sounds like every retail job I've had although none were union.

Sounds a lot like the unions in Philly. In our experience, you either have a work rules guy shadowing you all day itching to fine you should you decide to plug anything into an electric socket, or you simply "pay them off" by hiring their shitty people at $40 and hour to sit and do nothing all day.

The last one we were forced to hire literally showed up with a laptop, said hello, and then sat down next to an electric outlet (which he didn't get union help to plug into!) and played video games all day. We ended up asking him to do exactly one thing on the final day of the show, and that was to carry a portable recorder over to where we were packing up all our gear. His response was an "Ehhh, yeah.. I don't think that's such a good idea." which prompted me to shout into the phone like a crazy person and go pick up the recorder myself.

It just blows my mind that some Unions have gotten to the point where, with no exaggeration, you will be fined if you plug something into an electric socket.

I had a similar experience. When I was reassigned to a new team in a building a few miles down the road, my computer was supposed to move with me for some reason. It took about a month and a half for that to actually happen.

I also recall some union workers trying to move a full rack of equipment. This was a full height rack with some DEC Alphaservers and storage arrays. Rather than pull the systems, they tried to move the rack as a whole. The whole kit and kaboodle came crashing down.

I worked at a unionized company once. Yes, we were told never to move a system or install a cable in our computer lab because the right union worker has to be involved in that. More specifically, I was told by my boss to never let anyone see us doing that. We just shut the door. Never really had a problem with it.

i worked for a company that wanted a new office in Chicago and it fell on me to handle the internet installation. You'd think it would be as easy as, run cable to office and be done. Nope. we had to get att to run it to the d-mark then had a union company run it from the d-mark to the office, but they wouldn't touch the office. i had to get another contractor to come up and finish the wiring of the office itself. that didn't include the actually company i used for internet, that had to have their own tech come in and "install" the box (this consisted of plugging it in and watching the green lights light up). What a mess.

Huh. First time I've seen it called a d-mark, usually a demarc

sorry. my slang trickled over into the internet. I learned what a demarcation point was after I had heard the word, so i always called it in my head, a d-mark. i know what it is now, but the term is stuck in my head. I'm sure I'm not the only one that's done that. I remember thinking euthanasia was about children living in Asia...

It's funny that I often have the exact opposite problem: I'll know a word because I've seen it used in print many times, but I'll have no idea of how to pronounce it.

The first time I tried to pronounce 'subpoena' while leafing through a series of Nixon-era political cartoons made my mom howl with laughter. Thanks, mom.

I remember reading Rendezvous with Rama when I was a kid, and the whole time in my head I was pronouncing rendezvous in completely phonetic English, which also happened to make my mom laugh hysterically when I first said it out loud.

So large companies should occasionally do a mark and sweep collection to account for bugs in the standard reference counting implementation. Particularly useful if the org chart allows cycles.

You know, GC isn't a bad metaphor for it. I imagine stack ranking might actually work if you approached it as a generational mark-sweep. Once a quarter, fire your bottom 10% of new employees. If an employee survives that, they move onto the next generation and skip a mark phase or three . The next time they get GC'd, they move onto the next generation and now only get it once every two or four years, etc. It would reduce overhead and false positives, and hopefully fix some of the bullshit political machinations that occur.

Have you heard of the term "Up or Out"?

Circa 2008, an employee in a 10K+ people outsourcing company, was on bench ("not assigned to any projects") for two years.

He leveraged that time for studies and subsequently got admission to a very prestigious B-School.

I know tens(and if one could immediately talk to their friends and figure) their could easily be hundreds or even thousands of such people in Indian IT companies.

I say they are perfectly fit for a B-School, they know how to make more out of doing nothing than the guy who actually works.

On a side note, I worked at a major 1,50,000+ IT firm in Bangalore, India. While on bench I practically worked 18+ hrs/day while the project manager sitting next to me couldn't get work done with his employees who were billed. Mangers did this all the time, to be known as people who got more work done by lesser number of billed people.

Back in those days, it was common for some one to be officially on bench but yet would have to work for a project.

There were rumors at a large consumer products company that I used to work at of a salesman who went to law school full time during 3 years there. He was selling products that didn't really require selling.

I heard of an example where an employee was paid for 6+ years without them showing up. The employee was forgotten or something during some restructuring. The only reason this was discovered is because the employee complained towards HR about not receiving a salary increase. HR then tried to contact the manager, couldn't find one, etc.

I've heard of several scenarios where some senior employees had screwed something up but (presumably) had too much dirt on other senior employees, that they just sent them home permanently. No job duties, still receive a paycheque, just don't come into the office please.

That might've been 'gardening leave'. When a senior employee with knowledge of company secrets leaves they're often saddled with a restraint of trade agreement that lasts at least a year and sometimes more. Because it would be illegal to prevent a person from working in their field of expertise, the company bars them from their offices but keeps paying them their regular salary until the restraint of trade period is up.

like in the Fight Club movie? :)

I don't think we're supposed to talk about that.

I find it difficult to believe that someone is that stupid.

Then you need to get out more. Stupid knows no limits.

So, you fixed the glitch?

took his stapler too.

I recently found out that Swingline never originally made a red stapler, but started making them in 2002 (3 years after Office Space was released) because they got so many requests for it after the movie was released.

Story linked here: http://www.techcomedy.com/www.redswinglinestapler.com/histor...

He isn't a bit pyro is he?

Do you mean klepto? He didn't burn the stapler...

You just outed yourself as somebody who did not watch 'Office Space'; We very much recommend it. ;)

+1 for Office Space. Or Dilbert, for that matter. I always thought they took a situation and exaggerate it to the absurd. Now I know that they were actually being conservative. Truth really is stranger than fiction...

I always thought they took a situation and exaggerate it to the absurd. Now I know that they were actually being conservative.

AFAIR, Dilbert creator Scot Adams always made sure to keep Dilbert vague and a bit extreme. But people would write into him recognising some absurd part of a current strip and ask if he was really writing about Company X?

My favorite from Scott Adams was Mission Impertinent: When he teamed up with Logitech co-founder Zappacosta to prank Logitech staff:

http://web.archive.org/web/20000817044342/http://www7.mercur...

(To Mercy News eternal shame they seem to have taken these pages down during some redesign or rebranding or whatever...)

My vicarious televisual office stapler antics have so far extended only to hiding them in jelly and throwing them out of windows.

Brazil, Office Space, Dilbert, and The Office are all in my pantheon of corporate/cubicle/office comedy. I wrote a little homage in a recent sci-fi comedy novel of mine, just because. A homage to Dwight in particular.

Oh yeah, Brazil was kind of confusing. I think I'll have to watch it again. :)

Didn't you get the memo?

You are right, the stapler survived.

Is it common to ask for an award for doing your job? Is it like getting a tip?

> Is it common to ask for an award for doing your job?

Sure it is, most people expect to be awarded a paycheck in return for doing their job.

But as to whether it is common to ask for an award over your paycheck, I think it is probably less common than it should be. IMO, it is perfectly reasonable to ask for a bonus if your actions result in a very direct, sizable and quantifiable gain or savings for the company above and beyond your normal value as an employee.

Executives at these larger companies (you generally have to be pretty large to have a 'ghost employee' problem) are constantly giving themselves raises or bonuses based on such events, so why (other than the shut-up-and-do-your-job-serf mentality too often enforced by the serfs themselves) should the non-exec be guilted into not asking for them?

I worked as a business development guy on a major contracts team. So my usual role was finding £100k+ contracts and negotiating the tender process.

I'd regularly get bonuses when the deal was closed.

However I really was a coder. I proposed a CD that we'd send to architects to showcase our work. It was a simple HTML interface that would pop up when they put the disc in. I did all of the coding, graphic design and packaging. Then mailed it to prospects and made it available to my team.

I did this without pre-negotiating any kind of extra payment even though it 'wasn't my job'. I just knew it would be incredibly useful to have a high-res portfolio.

I was very pleased when a Director gave me a £4.5k bonus for the work. Note that I completed all of the work on my salaried time.

Too many people box themselves into a 'not my job' mentality. I don't think a bonus should be expected by the OP as it was just doing his job. No harm in asking though!

I don't know. I was always turned down. I think the managers didn't actually have power to give one. I now work at a bootstrapped company where I get all of the (a/re)wards.

I will point out that one of my co-workers was given an award for "safety" because he suggested windows be installed on every door so you can see if someone is coming... talk about rearranging deck chairs.

About out safety. My workplace recently opened a new branch. Since it opened a year ago we have all been commenting about how we bang into each other or nearly do, surprisingly often. And just recently we have had 2x staff off with concussions after banging into each other. One of them periodically collapsed for a week or 2 after - I'm talking complete KO. Yes, they got and are getting medical care. If this suggestion was warranted, I not think its silly at all.

It is trivial to install a piece of tempered glass into a door.

Don't tell your boss to solve your own problem. Solve it yourself. Get quotes, ask for the company amex, and fix the problem. Don't be the guy that discovers problems, be the guy that solves problems.

This is an excellent way to get fired in many medium-to-large corporations.

That's what I thought, too, You can't just pass both Facility Management AND Procurement. Don't you know we have contracts with preferred suppliers? Besides, why are you spending time on something that's clearly not your job? Does that mean you're having unaccounted time? Let's reflect on that in the next 360-degree feedback...

EDIT Maybe I'm a bit sarcastic, but I've seen this happen. I actually had to write down everything I did in blocks of 15 minutes. I even had a 15-minute block for writing down what I did. Which is very depressing in a meta kind of way...

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that kind of coordination from employees in a large firm. Joke as we may about how big firms are inefficient how else are you going to get health, safety and legal compliance coordinated for hundreds of people. For procurement, you might see 2x the price on custom install on the glass door, but big picture the company may get special discounts, loose return rules and save a bundle across the board. As for 360 degree feedback- the last time I checked it was counted among the best methodologies for giving real employee feedback. Maybe your boss only sees your low productivity but your peers see that you spend 7 hours a day helping everyone else succeed.

Been there. I think it's a pretty good indicator that it's time to leave...

Absolutely. Bad thing is, you can't be sure to find green pastures eslsewhere.

I've done that, including marking down toilet and drink breaks. I quit six weeks after starting.

My wife is currently being asked to do the same thing at one of the largest FInancial SERVices company in the US. I was surprised by this kind of bureaucracy but it's falling into perspective now.

Offtopic, but are you the actual Rational Male, or just using the same screen name?

I have no idea who you're talking about. I took the handle from the film L.A. Confidential.

No problem :)

It's a massive waste of resources to have an engineer that costs the company hundreds of dollars an hour putting windows in doors. That's absolutely insane. Tell your boss, let the perfectly competent facilities people who are paid to take care of it take care of it.

Sorry, I get it. I thought you were saying the solution and problem were silly. You weren't - it's the approach to solving the problem. Be the guy that solves problems. This so very much.

I don't know where you are but check your building codes. Vision panels in doors are a requirement in my jurisdiction. If they are required where you are and the building is still in defects liability you may be able to get the contractor to replace them with the correct doors for free or at least put you on to the person who specified them so you can chase this up.

It not doors - its lots of corridors and corners that everyone somehow takes the same track on somehow. When you look around it there is nothing strange seeming. When you work there its a series of near misses, which is funny until there are 2 knocked out colleagues on the floor and blood all over the place. One became quite combative as well.

I worked in a place with tight corridors. They had mirrors installed so you could see if someone was coming.

Ask every sales person ever.

It's not totally surprising when you can quantify how much money you just saved/made the company.

There are better ways to handle such things though.

> There are better ways to handle such things though.

Like what?

Asking for a raise or promotion?

Raise or promotion implies you do it on a regular basis, and once you get that raise or promotion you're expected to do this level of work all the time.

Sounds like a "Better off Ted" episode. Amazing. I can't believe anyone who hadn't actually been working has the gall to complain when they get kicked out.