We had an A/P manager who chewed her way through 3 entire staffs before management decided the problem was actually her. Two of them collectively quit in a group on one day! That was the most outrageous I think. How did it take FIFTEEN people quitting because of her management before they fired her?
Also one manager who came in shitface drunk and swinging when she got fired. That was the most dramatic.
Figured this out some time back. Firing a manager is an admission of failure by someone even higher.
Not always. Some people change once they get power, I’ve seen 2 supervisors go that way. Awesome co-workers, cunts to work under.
This is true and I’ve seen it. However, I still think that it’s possible someone above didn’t want to acknowledge that they were a bad read of character. That’s how it felt in the situation I saw firsthand anyway.
Also, not everyone that is good at a job has the personality to be in management. I’ve found myself in several management roles before I realized I absolutely hate being responsible for other peoples’ work and am just not cut out for it.
I use those people that I used to work with as a “what not to do” guide.
Sometimes I want to say to staff “You keep up shit like this and you wont have a job much longer” but I remember how fast people turned on that guy, so instead I have a sit down with them and say “I cant keep not reporting this stuff, its going to risk MY job. So I need you to lift your game because we’re friends and all but I’m not going to get fired to protect you and once I start reporting it up the chain, I cant fo anything to protect you”
This got me into a way bigger rabbit hole than I remembered… The person is not officially “fired” since you cannot fire a tenured, distinguished professor and a former department head, but I suspect she was persuaded to leave. The incident is quite wild, I was just a random undergrad hired to do lab tests so I only knew some details.
This is about Dr. Connie Weaver, professor emeritus and former department head at Purdue’s Department of Nutrition Sciences (her ORCiD). She was known for nutrition research where the institution recruits adolescents summer-camp style (similar to a clinical trial), and in 2017 she started to lead a multi-year (lasted one month before it was shut down) study on low-sodium diets in adolescents, Camp DASH. Supposed to be a gold-standard diet study… close to 10 million dollars of NIH money on the line too.
And then things went off the rail. The operation tried to cut a lot of corners: pretty much all of the employees were undergraduates who couldn’t find other things to do for the summer, training was minimal or nonexistent, and the employees-to-camper ratio was very, very low… oddly similar to the recent MrBeast incident where participation oversight seems to be very bad.
This then led to sexual harassment, abuse, etc… one poor girl’s nude was shared online, probably more cases of sexual assault, several adolescents got into serious fights with each other, and from what I’ve heard some of the undergrads who were on supervisory roles were also injured. Several lawsuits were filed, the university stepped in and stopped the study (I just remembered them stop scheduling me to work in July and was wondering what went wrong lol), the issue got elevated to the university president, and more lawsuits…
Obviously tenure means someone should be protected from being terminated at-will like most employment contracts. So the reason I have my suspicion is… Dr. Weaver became a professor emeritus not long after the incident, but is now somehow still publishing work while working from… San Diego State University? Doesn’t seem like someone who retired on their own will to me.
If you are interested in the full detail… here are some news articles on this incident. Exponent is Purdue’s student-run newspaper
Okay, this is fascinating … And makes me wonder how often this–what I will call “academic honorable discharge”–really occurs across institutions, well-known or not.
I haven’t delved into your sources yet, so this is my somewhat educated guess … Environmentally, this type of social breakdown makes sense with the lack of proper oversight, seasoned leadership, and organization appropriate to the study population. But did the low sodium diet itself serve any factor in the violence that occured in this botched study? Like, did kids being dietarily withheld a critical electrolyte affect the speed and intensity with which cracks in the camp structure split open?
Not trying to be too lighthearted here, but my guess in short: The kids went extra bonkers because of altered body and brain chemistry, with a lack of sodium (assuming the diet was initiated on Day 1) being a key aggressor in… making teen aggression more aggressive?
“academic honorable discharge”
I am aware of this happening in multiple cases involving scientific fraud… no idea how exactly this is being done though.
But did the low sodium diet itself serve any factor in the violence that occured in this botched study?
Not sure… but even without dietary interventions, there are a lot of simple explanations to how this could have gone wrong. This was a much larger study than the Camp Calcium series this PI did, a lot of the recruited kids are low income/from problematic households, with very little to no adult oversight, and there were very few activities for entertainment/enrichment… Also the dorm they lived in was technically separated by gender, but let’s just say that it is not difficult to get to the other gender dorm… So yeah.
Was it sponsored by the Dash low sodium seasoning?
Sex in the stock room. Caught by manager.
18, sex in the stock room, didn’t get caught.
Even had a handful of more standard dates afterwards, always with sex.
No negative outcome, fortunately. Except for the really damn cold stockroom floor, but that was her problem not mine…
Think we just lost interest, I moved onto another job, that was that.
There was a guy who was in tech support who talked to a customer about who was hot or not in the company. It was actually the customer who started the conversation, but the rep ran with it and used all kinds of unprofessional and disparaging language when describing his female co-workers.
That call happened to have a supervisor listening in, so he was fired immediately after he got off the call. The thing is found out who called in, and the women on the team had to assist him when he called for support.
Someone got really drunk and was in the bathroom willing to take all comers at a work function.
It was a shame, I liked working with them.
was in the bathroom willing to take all comers
Can’t tell if they wanted to participate in sex acts or have a brawl
It was a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.
Por que no los dos?
A guy on my team was absolutely convinced the external monitors he had were 1080p and not 1680*1050 resolution, and that everyone else using 1680*1050 were just wrong. He got into an argument with IT service desk over HDMI cables, which he wanted to prove himself correct (since everyone else were supposedly chumps for accepting the tyranny of having to use DVI cables for their monitors, thus forcing them to use the lower resolution). The argument escalated and well, he kind of just disappeared after that and never came back.
The IT service desk folks were already touchy about their HDMI cables since people were apparently stealing them for use in the meeting rooms.
Pity, I liked him but that was kind of unhinged. Besides, the monitors’ native res was definitely 1680*1050 lol.
Working on a boat. We got a new shipmate who had worked there on previous seasons, most of us didn’t know him but he was good friends with another member of the crew. The day he got in the two of them spent the night catching up and getting absolutely trashed. Night ended with new guy stumbling in to the cook’s cabin and pissing right on the cook while he was sleeping. New guy was fired that morning without having worked a single day.
Hopeful ship was at shore still at the time? Would suck to be fired while out at sea. Awkward ride back.
We were in Puerto Rico for our winter maintenance period, just starting to bring on crew for the sailing season. I’ve never worked on a boat where people drink underway and I don’t think I’d want to.
On boats you usually don’t get told you’re fired until you reach port.
A guy in our data center couldn’t figure out who owned a particular machine that he needed to work on. So his solution to figure it out was to let them come to him. He went and pulled out the network cable and waited. He was escorted out a little while later. The moral of the story is don’t go disabling production machines on purpose.
If you fear reprisal for a scream test then you need to make it look like an accident.
Honestly we do that when we ask and no one speaks up. Lovingly called the “scream test” as we wait to see who screams.
I guess it depends on where you work. This was a large datacenter for a very large health insurance company. They made it a point later that day to remind people that it was a fireable offense to mess with production machines like that on purpose. And evidently the service he disabled was critical enough that it didn’t take long for the hammer to come down. There were plenty of ways to find out who owned the machine, he just chose the easiest and got fired on the spot for it.
So it wasn’t accurate when you said he “couldn’t” figure it out.
Well I am not him, so I can’t tell you whether or not he actually “could” have figured it out. The options to figure it out did exist, but he chose not to use them giving it the appearance that he “couldn’t”. Are you this much fun at parties?
He couldn’t figure it out, a competent person could have without unplugging it.
Scream tests are a last resort though.
Sounds like it was a last resort if he “couldn’t figure out” whose machine it was.
I don’t understand how that is even possible.
Are there no logs? No documentation? Does everyone share an admin user with full rights?
I mean, there has to be a way to find out who accessed the machine last time.company a gets bought by company b. company b fires 50% of company a.
even a scream test won’t get you answers because nobody is around that could complain nor know where the docs are.
You’d be surprised. I had some security devices that I was actively using get shut down simply because some paperwork didn’t get filled out properly and the data center team claimed they had no documentation on them.
You’d be surprised with inheriting tech debt. Quite often there’s no documentation, the last person to log in to the system is an admin that quit 3 years ago, but it doesn’t much matter because that’s only for a direct console login which normal users don’t do when accessing the application. With tribal knowledge gone and no documentation, only when you pull the network for a bit do you discover that there was this one random script running on it that was responsible for loading up all the needed data in the current system, when 9 of the other 10 times those scripts were no longer needed.
In a perfect world you’d have documentation, architecture and data flow diagrams for everything, but “ain’t nobody got time for that” and it doesn’t happen.
Had that the other way around recently. A docker container failed to come back up after I had updated the host OS.
Was about ready to restore the snapshot, when I looked further back in the logs on a hunch.
Turns out that container hadn’t worked before the update either. The software’s developer is long gone, and no one could tell me what it was supposedly doing.
Yeah, I’ve done that before – after asking literally everyone in IT, plus our external consultants, and getting the go-ahead from my team lead and the head of IT.
Where I worked we had a very important time sensitive project. The server had to do a lot of calculations on a terrain dataset that covered the entire planet.
The server had a huge amount of RAM and each calculation block took about a week. It could not be saved until the end of the calculation and only that server had the RAM to do the work. So if it went down we could lose almost a weeks work.
Project was due in 6 months and calculation time was estimated to be about 5 1/2 months. So we couldn’t afford any interruptions.
We had bought a huge UPS meant for a whole server rack. For this one server. It could keep the server up for three days. That way even if wet lost power over the weekend it would keep going and we would have time to buy a generator.
One Friday afternoon the building losses power and I go check on the server room. Sure enough the big UPS with a sign saying only for project xyz has a bunch of other servers plugged into it.
I quickly unplug all but ours. I tell my boss and we go home at 5. Latter that day the power comes back on.
On Monday there are a ton of departments bitching that they came in an their servers were unplugged. Lots of people wanted me fired. My boss backed me and nothing happened but it was stressful.
I’d be super gluing those plastic toddler plug covers all over that thing.
fuck those other departments.
At a startup a long time ago, I was working on the weekend and brought my 3 year old with me. We had a customer coming in next week and this one machine was 5 days into a 7 day model build.
We had to go into that office to help someone with something unrelated. The little shit saw the blinking light and headed straight for the button.
On this computer (HP 710), it didn’t shut off until you released the button. He actually was just pressing it but got spooked when I tried to get to it.
The next day our CEO told the guys that built that app that it had to be made so it could recover from crashes and restart from where it left off.
Guy in my department strolls into my office and says, “Welp, this is probably my last day working here.” I asked him why he would say that. He sits down and shoves his phone across the desk toward me. I start reading and it’s an email from him to the CEO comaining that our boss is, in so many words, a complete fucking moron.
I finished reading and was just like, “Yeah, you shouldn’t have done that.” I mean, he wasn’t wrong. I agreed with basically everything in his email. He was also right about it being his last day working there because he was fired that afternoon.
What eventually happened to the boss?
Nothing. As far as I know he’s still there. That company was a raging dumpster fire.
This sounds a lot like a company I’ve worked at honestly.
Hmmmmm. Been thinking about starting a youtube channel. Maybe ballads to the CEO could be the theme. I wonder how long before it’s get called in by hr.
We had a guy that would email the CEO with audio or video of him singing or something. Good dude. Sold people eggs every week from his hens. Got fired for actual bullshit his lead should’ve been canned for.
An IT company I worked for many years ago went through a massive growing phase. One of the things that lead to this growth was the hiring of much more competent management, particularly in security and the data center.
Security actually started doing their jobs and started routinely doing network scans. They discovered two servers that were not located in the data center, which was a huge no no. The servers were running two porn websites off the company’s internet connection. He had been doing it for years and apparently was making many times his company salary from them.
The girl doing meth in her car.
Also the guy being arrested for having CP on his personal device and never coming back technically counts too, right?
I went to a temp agency one time and went through the enrollment/placement tests. I told them up front I was just looking for competitive offers to bring to my 5 year review to ask current employer to match. They were cool with it after i told them I would be back if employer doesnt match.
So I’m taking the test and was blown away at the test questions. I’m reading them outloud to the agents at their desks asking them which ones people actually respond honestly to. They start telling me hilarious stories of people theyve had fail the test.
They eventually told me they have had at least one person at some time answer every question with the very honest but very damning wrong answer. They said none of the people they told me about were even the assholes intentionally failing the test just to show proof they applied. They were people being waaaay too fuckin honest about their liberal drug use.
Some of the more memorable questions:
In the last 8hrs how many times have you smoked meth?
A. 0 times
B. 1-4 times
C. 5-10 times
D. 10 or more
Have you ever smoked crack cocaine while on the clock?
A. Yes
B. No
C. I don’t know
D. Maybe
Would you ever smoke crack while on the clock?
A. Yes
B. No
C. I don’t know
D. Maybe
How many alcohol beverages do you have on your lunch break?
A. 0 drinks
B. 1-4 drinks
C. 5-10 drinks
D. 10 or more drinks
How many alcohol beverages did you have today before this interview?
A. 0 drinks
B. 1-4 drinks
C. 5-10 drinks
D. 10 or more drinks
Describe your performance at work while high on alcohol or narcotics compared to your performance at work while not high on alcohol or narcotics.
A. Have never worked high on alcohol or narcotics.
B. I perform worse while working high on alcohol or narcotics than working not high on alcohol or narcotics.
C. I perform the same while working high on alcohol or narcotics than working not high on alcohol or narcotics.
D. I perform better while working high on alcohol or narcotics than working not high on alcohol or narcotics.
Edit for formatting and grammar.
Holy shit that’s amazing. honestly what surprised me most is that you were upfront about the competitive offer thing and tney were cool with it
Right?! Especially if it was an off-the-cuff agreement. But if I had a few minutes to think it over, I would buy that anyone serious enough to get verifiable competitive offers using a third party would be serious enough to come back for those better offers if the current employer doesn’t bite. (This is assuming you can’t arrange new employment without the temp agency’s involvement for whatever contractual reason. Not sure how they typically work.)
It’s rural town USA. The company I was pressing to match the competitive offer was actually my own family’s manufacturing corporation. The temp agency knew exactly who I was when they saw my last name. They had good fun joking about how they knew my family doesn’t pay their employees enough but having the owner’s son threatening to quit for better pay really solidified it as a good ole hardyharhar to them. I knew it. They knew it. Plus we have done a ton of business with them over the years filling entry level temp to perm positions, so the whole thing was really super laid back.
Eight HOURS?!
Not exactly crazy but just mysterious…this was at a software company I worked at many years ago. It was one of the developers in the team adjacent to ours who I worked with occasionally - nice enough person, really friendly and helpful, everyone seemed to get on with them really well and generally seemed like a pretty competent developer. Nothing to suggest any kind of gross misconduct was happening.
Anyway, we all went off to get lunch one day and came back to an email that this person no longer worked at the company, effective immediately. Never saw them again.
No idea what went down - but the culture at that place actually became pretty toxic after a while, which led to a few people (including me) quitting - so maybe they dodged a bullet.
2% yearly reductions most likely. Some shitty companies fire a small percent of their staff and hire new people - especially when someone has been there long and isn’t irreplaceable.
I used to unload trucks in an absolute madhouse.
The heat in the back of the transparent roofed trailers in summer was a nightmare so some of the lads would strip down to their boxers then pop their boots and high vis back on. We eventually got cameras installed pointing down the trailers and we’re suddenly required to be fully clothed at all times. Our shift lead took particular offense to this and flashed his cock at the camera whilst shouting obscenities. He didn’t come back to work the next day.
We had 4 guys sacked for not only opening customers parcels but for taking fireworks out of said parcel and taping them to Frisbees which they then threw to each other. One inevitably went off in one fella’s hand. He eventually managed to sue for unfair dismissal somehow.
Another guy was caught trying to sneak a slab of wine out to his car.
A… slab? Of wine?
Is that a whole pallet or something?
Ikr? How is wine measured in slabs…
In Australia the call a case (24 bottles) of beer a slab.
Maybe this is some kind of canned wine?
24 bottles but yeah.
Not my workplace exactly, but I used to hang out with this Kiwi who worked as a foreign English teacher in Korea in the same small Korean city as me. The foreigner community was fairly close-knit because there was only 50ish of us.
We all knew him. Everyone liked him. Fun guy. A little weird sometimes. He never told anyone his last name. The end of his pinkie finger was missing and if you asked him about it, he always said a shark bit it off.
One vacation about two years into his tenure, he decided to take a trip to Las Vegas. He never came back. I’m not 100% on the details past this point, but what I heard was they stopped him from entering the US because he was wanted in New Zealand on 37 counts of distributing child pornography. He was basically extradited back there and as far as I know went to prison. His trail disappears there.
This is one of my favorite stories. I only observed the events or was told firsthand by those involved. This is a true story.
Working in a crappy thrift store chain. Coworkers are cool as shit though. Befriend all the ones remotely close to my age. Customers are still terrible though. Especially the ones with the shitty kids that just terrorize the store while they absent-mindedly browse and shop.
One day this little shit is just running around the store and just making extra work for everybody for no good reason. Opening sealed bags of random toys. Etc.
After finally having enough of his bullshit, a coworker friend goes over to the kid and tells him, very sternly, he needs to go back to his mom. Little shit runs back and complains to his mom whom happens to be a total bitch; like when I hear the term “Karen” being used, she’s a textbook example of one.
Karen escalates, fast forward to outside the managers office, there stands Karen, my Friend, Manager and Little Shit.
While Karen is bitching to the Manager about how “Friend can’t talk to her kid like that” & “he’s not his father,” etc. The Little Shit looks at Friend and with a taunting edge stated: "You’re gonna get fired!" Without missing a beat Friend looks Little Shit in the eye and replies with a simple Fuck You. A 34 year old man saying that to some 10 year old brat? Hilarious. Everybody just fell silent with their jaw on the ground. Karen, Manager and Little Shit all silent for a moment. The rage building in Karen was written all across her face though. When she could finally utter words Manager started with "Friend, go home." “Okay!” He left with a great big smile on his face… he did get fired because of that though. He said it was worth it.
That’s a very bad decision as a manager, if I was another employee in that store I would take that to mean never control kids in the store, let the manager deal with that.
And if I was the friend I would have asked during that exchange with the manager present “So, I assume that means she’s paying for everything the kid broke before I asked him to stop, right?” Just to see the reactions.
She was a very bad manager and always quick to make the customer happy. I ended up leaving shortly after that incident.
