I reported the multinational company CTO for not being able to keep his hands off me (I’m a guy btw) and a load of other employees. That report came on top of other reports of abuse, fraud, and briberies.
Mind you, this company wa so about protecting whistleblowers that I had to sign a contract about it. VPs were outraged and vowed to protect me.
I made the report, week later called into an emergency meeting with the CTO and head of HR is there too and I’m fired. I sued, won, and in that time learned that the CTO was fired the next day because, amongst things, he fired me. Even so, they didn’t cancel my firing, didn’t rehire me, because now I was toxic.
Never trust anyone in big companies. Never trust their contracts, never trust their words.
Yeah the fact that they didn’t reverse course shows that the toxicity ran from the top. CTO wasn’t the only bad egg. I’d bet that legal got their hands on it and figured that making it right would be admitting to doing wrong.
It sounded like there were other sexual assailants in the company, and they were worried that you would out them.
But was HR fired?
Yes but they immediately re-hired themselves
At 100k above asking price too.
No, CTO was fired
Yeah to them it doesn’t matter if even they thought it was wrong you were fired. As soon as you went to lawyers you became their enemy. That’s just how a lot of these scummy big corporations work.
My GF is a pool cleaner and once got written up for sending a customer a picture of dead pigeons that were in their yard.
The customer called the office screaming that she sent the pictures “to be mean.”
Turns out these people had pest control out on their property to “remove” all the frogs because the frogs were “keeping them awake at night”, and the birds took the bait instead.
Yes, these folks were filthy rich and entitled.
What does “written up” mean?
Because our write ups are just incident reports. Like, if a shitty Karen went nuclear on a staff member, we do create a incident report. But anybody reading this will absolutely go, “fucking Karen strikes again” and it absolutely won’t reflect badly on the employee.
Usually it means a mark on your work record, pretty much like getting an F on a paper or something.
There is no such thing a work record, a company record maybe, but beyond that balls.
Just paperwork so the whales in the office feel like they do something.
It means nothing when you live in a “at will” employment jurisdiction.
In the past, (or in a union contract) employers had to prove they had “just cause” to fire you. This would be documentation of cause.
I was originally hired as an Emergency Medical Technician by a hospital. After a few years the local Fire Department took over EMS. The only thing that changed is that the taxpayers had to pay to have our ambulances repainted and we all got new uniforms.
One day while driving my partner and I get flagged down; the man’s truck had caught fire. We could see visible flames between the cab and the box. My partner grabbed the fire extinguisher on the console and I ran around to the back and got the fire extinguisher from the rear compartment. We doused the flames before the engine arrived. We made our report on the radio and went back to the station to restock.
We were later told that the fire extinguishers should only be used if our vehicle was on fire, and not for civilians.
So, we were supposed to sit in Fire uniforms, in a Fire vehicle, and not put out a fire.
I’d demand that in writing.
We didn’t get written up or lose pay, so it was a wash.
But yes, it would have been funny to do that.
Missed the opportunity to watch them get chewed out by the fire department leadership.
Don’t get me started.
I can go for hours about how messed up the Fire Dept management is.
When Fire took over EMS exactly one Fire Chief took the time to do some EMS ride alongs. The rest of the brass ignored and/or sabotaged EMS in order to get rid of the oldtimers so they could be replaced by lower paid newbies.
Fire Chiefs would have either sided with the EMS bosses, or, more likely, petitioned the city for more money to train EMS in how to use the extinguishers properly.
Could it have been some sort of liability thing? Like the nurses at my old work weren’t allowed to do any sort of first aid stuff to colleagues unless they were the official attendants. It’s like a not your job, you’ll get sued if anything goes wrong kind of thing.
As EMTs we were expected to go into dangerous situations all the time. Nobody mentioned liability. I think they were just annoyed to have to replace the equipment.
I didn’t stop to greet some customers as I walked in with a cane for the third week in a row due to nerve damage.
I wasn’t on the clock, we didn’t have a uniform, no name tag, nobody would even know I work there until I put my shit on after I clock in.
By that time I had made it a habit of recording every interaction with management, so I just pulled out my phone, hit the record button, and asked “so to be clear, are you officially reprimanding me for NOT doing work off the clock?” and that immediately shut him up.
Managers get awfully pensive when they have recording devices capturing them.
Depending on where you live, you might be better off not scaring your employers with a visible recording device.
Why not let the law figure out what your bosses were asking for? In the US, attorneys will take these cases for free and be paid only if you are.
Just chiming in to say all of Canada is one party consent.
I found this out when Christian Selig (the Apollo app for Reddit developer) announced he had audio showing Reddit lied to him.
I was so happy to see he had the foresight to do that.
Was reddit 100% in the wrong on that (if anybody listened to the audio? I think it was shared as a part of Christian’s lengthy post)?
I got in trouble for telling a senior manager that he was wrong on a technical issue. He sought expert advice on a control system but when the answer came back it didn’t fit his conception of reality and he didn’t want to hear it.
Turns out being good at management and being good at solving technical problems are skill sets that very rarely coincide in one person.
Worked for a small business which did electronics repair, and which had recently picked up e-waste recycling. Our boss, the owner, was known for getting baked out of his mind and imagining things which he needed to tell his staff, and would think the next day that he had actually told that thing to his staff. Just to give you an idea of the kind of guy the owner is, we had two company-wide group texts for the 11 people on payroll. One had everyone, and the other had everyone except the owner. The owner never knew about that one, and honestly that arrangement was a necessity to keep turnover low and by extension the business from running aground.
Anyway, my coworker is talking to a customer at the counter, who is dropping off an old television to be recycled. The customers leave, and the owner walks in.
Owner: “Wait, is this a plasma? We can’t take this!”
Coworker: “why not?”
Owner: “We can’t do plasmas! We’ve never done plasmas!” sees the stack of plasma screen televisions “What the fuck?! Who accepted these?”
Me: “Dude, you’ve never mentioned that we can’t do anything with plasmas before.”
Owner: “Yeah! It was in the class on e-waste recycling.”
Coworker: “You were the only one who took that because you didn’t want to fly anyone else to Vegas for a four day conference.”
At this point I think the owner started to realize he hadn’t actually disseminated anything other than the logistical aspects of the e-waste business to the employees.
Owner: “So, what, no one knows what we actually accept for e-waste?”
Me: “I don’t think so, man.”
The owner looks at me with obvious anger and with that look that says he’s about to blame me for something.
Owner: “So, what y’all want a fucking list or something?”
Coworker: “Yeah, that would be great, actually.”
The owner turned red, looked about ready to angry-cry, and walked out. Went home and got baked. I don’t think he ever actually put a list together. The e-waste thing fell through a few months later after I left because the warehouse he was renting and illegally living out of was like a quarter the size needed, and there wasn’t any money left for processing equipment. He franchised a corporate brand like a year later.
Fuck you, Matt, you goddamn moron.
I like how the company-wide group text tidbit had nothing to do with the rest of the story.
Reminded me of watching the extended cut of LoTR, where some scenes were just fluff.
I told the CEO that not having a disaster recovery plan was a bad idea. He did not like that. Got written up the next morning. They wouldn’t even tell me exactly why I was being written up. Only that I had “not done what I was supposed to” which was apparently to sit there in silence.
Got fired from that job a few years later. My bosses boss called me at home because he didn’t have the decency to do it to my face. In that moment I panicked a little but by the next day it was like a weight had been lifted. That place was a complete shit show.
So did they ever need that disaster recovery plan that didn’t exist?
…Imagine the schadenfreude if the answer was “yes”.
I didn’t give maximum effort according to my pa, when an outside contractor who was giving kickbacks to my supervisor, tried to sell our company a circa 2000 used phone system.
You work for your dad?
Died 38 yrs ago, so you probably couldn’t have given a more wrong answer.
I got in trouble at work because I sent an email to my manager about some new servers that were being installed, but didn’t appear we had access to the management console. I let her know the entire team will need access so we could properly support the machines. I was pulled into a conversation… How dare I presume my direct manager who only managed my team, have any idea what we do!
(Lost all respect for her that exact moment)
I always go alphabetically by surname, if i think the recipients care about the order. Still a hassle, but at least i don’t have to decide who has a higher seniority.
“Huh, that’s not the order I typed them, Outlook must have re ordered them when I sent it”.
Feed them bullshit.
My favourite strategy is just to act as if you have no idea who the CTO is. Really put some off their stride.
So where I work we just merged with a larger company. People throw around names all the time and I have no idea who any of them are. I don’t even know the CEOs name. Also I don’t care. They don’t know my name either
I like to sometimes purposely flip the order so it’s ordered as least senior 1st just to fuck with people and see if anyone calls me out on it.
Wait you mean people actually pay attention to the order?
People get cc’d into emails depending on the order I remember they exist.
Yeah same
This has never been an unstruction from a superior, but I just realized instinctively do go by superiority. Like, I’ve never gotten in trouble or known someone to get in trouble over it, but just did it that way so as not to offend without realizing people might actually be offended otherwise.
Weird.
Similar to this, but I put people lower in order than their seniority if they’ve pissed me off.
That is (hopefully was) a think in some very strict japanese companies. Also, when people had to stamp thing, they would angle their stamps to be “bowing” to the superiors who stamped first. I hope all those traditions are dead
Also, when people had to stamp thing, they would angle their stamps to be “bowing” to the superiors who stamped first
The funniest thing is that you can also rotate the stamp slightly counterclockwise to indicate “I’m approving this proposal because it would be inconcievable to dissent from the group’s thoughts, but I think you’re all making a mistake by approving it” - and how much you rotate the stamp counterclockwise indicates how stupid you think the proposal is.
how much you rotate the stamp counterclockwise indicates how stupid you think the proposal is.
I disagree so much I’ve rotated 360 degrees.
I got in hot water for mentioning during a meeting that requiring us to schedule our sick days is how companies get around ADA rules.
Wait there are companies that require you to schedule your sick days? What on earth …
Weirdest would be that the CEO of the company I worked at then had one single runin with me in my entire tenure at that company and found that my facial expression wasn’t to his liking.
I’m autistic and by that alone have little facial expression, add the meds I take for anxiety and depression and it results in that I have no facial expression at all.
So it pretty much came down to him not liking my resting face.
Tried to fire me for no reason, couldn’t, because I’m in a protected class.
Managed to do so anyway by bullying me to no end until I accepted being fired.
Worst reason to be fired would be that I worked 48 hours straight on a weekend to implement vast network and server overhauls to then be fired for not being at work on monday morning.
I had the full clear from my boss and his boss and was not supposed to come in on monday unless something went bad with the upgrade (it didn’t).
Simply not being there when my bosses boss wanted me to be there was all it took.
Both of those sound very illegal and you should probably have spoken to a lawyer. I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to stay at those jobs anyway but you could’ve at least gotten a nice payout.
In the first case, I accepted being fired because it was attached to being paid out for 6 months and as you expected, I wasn’t looking to stay anyway. I had another job lined up already as I started to look for one right after he tried to fire me the first time, which HR halted as it was an obvious violation of my nations version of the peoples with disabilities act. I made bank of that idiot.
The second one, I wasn’t actually fired because of the obvious legal ramifications. And contrary to the first situations boss, the one there didn’t find this inability to fire me enough of a personal insult to make it his mission of getting rid of me.
I worked 48 hours straight on a weekend
Never do this. Always go home. Max out your overtime and go home. You will never be fired for not working 48 hours (unless you’re in the military or on a train or something).
If they want you to do that, they don’t have anyone else to take your place. Do the job at a normal pace and don’t let them rush you.
I decided to do it that way. Nobody pressured me, nobody asked me to do it.
For me it was the most logical way to get the job done without interruptions to my network and systems in the least amount of time.
If I had spread it out, I would literally have to have done twice the work taking more than twice the time working multiple weekends.
Fuck that.
The thing is that it doesn’t matter that there are interruptions in the network.
It isn’t your job to make sure there aren’t.
If you are unable to get the upgrade done in the normal 8 or so hours a day (during the weekend) because there is too much work, that means management should have put more people on the project. If something goes wrong, it isn’t your fault, it is theirs.
Don’t break your back bending over for a company, that wouldn’t do the same for you.
If I had spread it out, I would literally have to have done twice the work taking more than twice the time working multiple weekends.
You wouldn’t have had to do anything but work normal hours. Ask for the resources to do your job, more people, etc. If you don’t get it, then the work doesn’t get done. Literally go home. You are hired to work a certain amount of time, not to do the impossible.
Lol, sure thing boss.
I rarely ever let an employer tell me how to do my job when I worked for companies directly, so sorry if I’m not going to accept some internet rando telling me how to do my job now, 15 years after starting to exclusively doing contract work.
It’s because I delivered results in difficult and impossible scenarios, I’ve been able to work for myself for the past 15 years, doing contract work explicitly because I can do the difficult and impossible, often alone. I wouldn’t have been able to get to that if I didn’t build a reputation as being capable of doing that.
This has allowed me to these days only work about 3-6 months out of the year and dedicate my time to my wife and personal projects the rest of the year.
I actually had a 2 year period where I did what you suggest and did the 9to5 thing doing just what the job required and that’s that.
It dumped me into a black hole of boredom and depression.
I found out I work best by going balls to the walls for predetermined periods of time and then going into full chill mode doing either nothing or personal projects once done.
Not everyone is best served with the same work (or any other facet of life) cadence.
You had boredom and depression from… working less? And asking for resources? Ok man, whatever.
Hrm, weird that that is the take away from what I said when I made it rather clear I work less now than I ever did before.
I had boredom and depression from having to be at work while not being able to do anything at any sort of pace I wanted.
If I have to be at work, I rather be busy, because being at work is what’s horrible for me.
So I eventually fixed that by not having to be at work for anything but the time required to do the work.
At home, I can be idle by watching a 200 episode show in the span of a few weeks without any feelings of boredom or depression.
Sitting around at work doing barely anything of interest, yeah, that 100% causes boredom and depression.
I’m with you, friend. If I’m working, I prefer to just work until it’s done or I feel I need a break. For me, starting a job, it takes a couple hours to define the problem, a couple to investigate and prioritise tasks, then to start looking into solutions, and suddenly it’s time to stop. Then there’s all the time commuting, taking breaks, etc.
I prefer to just get in, get in the zone, knock out a slab of work and get a job done. It takes a few extra hours on a work day, so be it, it was going to be a work day anyway. By doing that, it gives me a day off? Yes please.
I had a really insecure young manager who was almost half my age. Guy was a chickenshit. One day, while he was out, we reorganized our desks so that we’d not have our backs to the hallway. Instead, we turned our desks 180 degrees so that our backs were to the wall. He came around and said “well, this layout is not in accordance with the open office rules”. I paused for a second, looked at him and replied “Oh really? No shit! How cute…” And proceeded to ignore him solemnly.
He didn’t do shit. Was eventually let go for complete incompetence and negative reviews from every single one of his employees.
lol. Ok boss, please list for us the design framework we should follow.
