• SomeCoder (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    SomeCoder:
    I usually fight back, HARD when confronted with someone like this. It's not the best idea, but it's just my natural reaction to someone that thinks fear is a motivator.
    If your natural reaction was to get your work done on time, this situation wouldn't come up in the first place.

    So you didn't read the main article, did you? Yeah, didn't think so.

  • woohoo (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    SomeCoder:
    I usually fight back, HARD when confronted with someone like this. It's not the best idea, but it's just my natural reaction to someone that thinks fear is a motivator.
    If your natural reaction was to get your work done on time, this situation wouldn't come up in the first place.

    Err... considering the context of the article, "reaction" should most obviously be replaced by a quite similar sounding word... ;o)

  • On and on and on and on and on and on and on (unregistered)

    I think you missed the point. What I said was that the ARTICLE needed a good editor, because the writing rambles all over the place before getting to the point. You mistakenly edited the COMMENT I left saying so. Actually, you edited it away.

    An easy enough mistake to make, I'm sure. You're forgiven.

  • Mathias (unregistered)

    I almost exploded, because I had to hold in what would have been roaring laughter in order to not wake up my girlfriend.

    Thanks for the story. I'm a little worried I might apply the glow job technique some day.

  • (cs) in reply to Cro
    Cro:
    Everyone would switch off completely... it was a total embarrassment... so I invented a game. Everybody took a sweepstake on the number of "um"'s that he'd say, before the meeting. I'd be offical judicator (you have to be careful as "er"'s and "and"'s don't count) and suddenly, we had an incredibly attentive set of staff in meetings! Despite everyone getting excited before and after meetings, the inevitable arguments as to the number of "um"'s he said - he never actually noticed.

    We did the same thing years ago in one of my university classes. Sure, he knew more about the subject than many of us would ever learn but he was a horrible public speaker. Just horrible. And a three hour lecture with all that going on was just brutal.

    On the other hand, talking with him one-on-one was quite pleasant and very informative. I think it was totally a "in front of groups" thing. You'd think universities would offer their profs courses on this kind of stuff.

  • T J (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent

    Is what I was thinking too. I didn't find this story funny and I presume their company carpark must have a constant CCTV system.

  • Argghhhhh (unregistered)

    How could you! You just made my daily meeting impossible to sit though with a straight face.

    Arghhhhh!

  • Brompot (unregistered) in reply to Charles400
    Charles400:
    Ohhhh... So that is why Ford always brings a towel to status meetings.

    Or why Murrays rants sounded like Vogon poetry.

  • (cs)

    Thank you, now I'll never be able to sit at meetings with a straight face again...

  • (cs)

    "You are in more dire need of a status than any white man in history."

    Robin Williams Good Morning, Vietnam

  • (cs) in reply to obediah
    obediah:
    I've seen a lot of posts I would consider off-topic ( and have been curmudgeoning up the comments about the dumbing down of thedailyWTF since before you joined ), but I don't remember anything worse than "it's funny to pretend like your boss is talking about sex".
    The WTF in this case is that this manager applied constant pressure to increase productivity while actually eroding his authority and his own productivity – it's tough to motivate someone when they need all their concentration to not burst into laughter as soon as you open your mouth. Apply to much pressure and something is going to give; if you're unlucky that thing is the respect they have for you.

    I think this is a good example of how bad managerial practices can horribly backfire. The juvenile joke is the equivalent to the dying server or corrupted production system in other stories – it's the final result of an applied malpractice.

  • Dan (unregistered)

    So if status is a BJ, what are some other word-pair swaps that would be good?

  • London Contractor Mart (unregistered) in reply to SomeCoder
    SomeCoder:
    Code Dependent:
    Another story about spineless wimps.

    "Murray, I don't respond to your favorite motivator--intimidation. You need to use something else. Lower your voice when you speak to me, and speak in tones that convey respect. Then you'll get your status."

    I don't know if it's spineless wimps really. What is the proper way to handle this situation?

    I usually fight back, HARD when confronted with someone like this. It's not the best idea, but it's just my natural reaction to someone that thinks fear is a motivator.

    I gotta say - I had a boss a bit like that once. He was a complete idiot, thought that by making threats to us things would get done quicker. He tried to cancel my flight from Oakland back home to the UK on my bithday, of the very same morning because the 'blow job'(status) was actually 25% ahead of where we should have been.

    I responded by calling him a 'stupid fat w4nker' (which isn't that rude in the states), and telling him 'I'm done for the day, off to the airport now'. Needless to say I thought afterwards - ooops! But did laugh my head off.

    He annoyed me sooo much, that on the Monday I was supposed to be on a plane back to the US I was actually at home, leisurely surfing the net looking for jobs where the boss wasn't a complete status giver.

    I got a much better job, and I think his reputation went down pretty bad for pissing off the companies 'favourite' developer! HA! Mission accomplished!

  • Amerrickangirl (unregistered)

    In college I had an Abnormal Psychology professor who happened to be from China. English was his third language (he spent ten years in France before coming to the US).

    Along with being a terrible teacher who basically read you the textbook word for word and used the same exams every semester (they had been copied so many times that they were speckled with hundreds of black dots and the font was blurry), Dr. Chu had a habit of saying "Is that so?" after nearly every sentence.

    This was a three hour lecture, and one night I decided to keep track of the "Is that so?"s. It came to something like 168.

    That was the only one of his lectures that was anything but painful.

  • (cs)

    This story reminds me of the famouse Bullshit bingo ( http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/bullshit/ )

  • Pat Russo (unregistered)

    The real WTF is that Murray actually thought something would get done in todays Bell Labs. Amazing how far that institution has fallen.

  • (cs) in reply to j6cubic
    j6cubic:
    The WTF in this case is that this manager applied constant pressure to increase productivity while actually eroding his authority and his own productivity – it's tough to motivate someone when they need all their concentration to not burst into laughter as soon as you open your mouth. Apply to much pressure and something is going to give; if you're unlucky that thing is the respect they have for you.

    Very well said. You clearly and concisely got the point across, and with all of the humor of the original post. I'd still much rather see some silly php or a database in the 12th normalized form than generic management advice, but at least it only took me a few seconds to realize I wasn't interested.

    I think this is a good example of how bad managerial practices can horribly backfire. The juvenile joke is the equivalent to the dying server or corrupted production system in other stories – it's the final result of an applied malpractice.

    I think this highlights why I hate this post so much. There is no code, design, testing, hardware, or even IT-specific meat on the WTF. At that point, the entertainment value of the post is based on the storytelling. While a short post with a clever twist can be a fun diversion, the worlds longest blow job joke wasn't.

    The fact that many people found this boring and many people found it funny ( surely it was the WTF that hit home, and not the bj joke ) shows

    1. thedailywtf has many*2 visitors ( congrats! )

    2. the inclusion of more types of content has really fractured the audience.

    #2 sucks for yet another list of reasons

    1. They have replaced the old content as much as added to it. We've went from 5 posts a week to 10, but from 5 development posts a week to 2. ( numbers are a psuedo-average of a guesstimation).

    2. The community has really changed ( opinion: deteriorated). It went from grumpy programmers that couldn't stand bad development, to people that worked near a computer and like to laugh at stupid things people do. That meant a shift from daily, heated arguments about the underpinnings of some programming language to a pornless version of 4chan or failblog.

  • Anormous (unregistered)

    Quick poll: how do you pronounce 'status'?

    Status (pronounced stat-us) Status (pronounced state-us)

    Which is it? Personally I go for 'state-us'.

  • Jobs (unregistered) in reply to Anormous
    Anormous:
    Quick poll: how do you pronounce 'status'?

    Status (pronounced stat-us) Status (pronounced state-us)

    Which is it? Personally I go for 'state-us'.

    I pronounce it "blow-job" AHA HA HAHA HAHAHA HA!!! Fellatio is funny.

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to obediah
    obediah:
    That meant a shift... to a pornless version of 4chan...
    Not really, otherwise the community here would consist entirely of 14 year old virgins with their hands down their pants.
    Anormous:
    Quick poll: how do you pronounce 'status'?
    Status (emphasis on the 'a').
  • (cs) in reply to obediah
    obediah:
    The community has really changed ( opinion: deteriorated). It went from grumpy programmers that couldn't stand bad development, to people that worked near a computer and like to laugh at stupid things people do.
    It's all the fault of that temporary name change to Worse Than Failure. That's when the people that work near computers started showing up.
  • Wickerman (unregistered)

    Reading the story again is awesome.

  • (cs) in reply to akatherder
    akatherder:
    I'm married so I'm status-exempt.

    That's what she said.

  • Doctor of Mediocrity (unregistered) in reply to obediah
    obediah:
    j6cubic:
    The WTF in this case is that this manager applied constant pressure to increase productivity while actually eroding his authority and his own productivity – it's tough to motivate someone when they need all their concentration to not burst into laughter as soon as you open your mouth. Apply to much pressure and something is going to give; if you're unlucky that thing is the respect they have for you.

    Very well said. You clearly and concisely got the point across, and with all of the humor of the original post. I'd still much rather see some silly php or a database in the 12th normalized form than generic management advice, but at least it only took me a few seconds to realize I wasn't interested.

    I think this is a good example of how bad managerial practices can horribly backfire. The juvenile joke is the equivalent to the dying server or corrupted production system in other stories – it's the final result of an applied malpractice.

    I think this highlights why I hate this post so much. There is no code, design, testing, hardware, or even IT-specific meat on the WTF. At that point, the entertainment value of the post is based on the storytelling. While a short post with a clever twist can be a fun diversion, the worlds longest blow job joke wasn't.

    The fact that many people found this boring and many people found it funny ( surely it was the WTF that hit home, and not the bj joke ) shows

    1. thedailywtf has many*2 visitors ( congrats! )

    2. the inclusion of more types of content has really fractured the audience.

    #2 sucks for yet another list of reasons

    1. They have replaced the old content as much as added to it. We've went from 5 posts a week to 10, but from 5 development posts a week to 2. ( numbers are a psuedo-average of a guesstimation).

    2. The community has really changed ( opinion: deteriorated). It went from grumpy programmers that couldn't stand bad development, to people that worked near a computer and like to laugh at stupid things people do. That meant a shift from daily, heated arguments about the underpinnings of some programming language to a pornless version of 4chan or failblog.

    I'm a not so grumpy programmer that LOVES reading about bad development AND other funny stuff. I'll take a 're-engineer the wheel' story as readily as a fart joke. Sorry to ruin your exclusive club :(

  • sino (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    xxx:
    Hehe. I laught all the way to kindergarten.
    What the hell kind of kindergarten do you go to that bj's are discussed/given/received?

    Sound like a priest run catholic school for young boys to me...

  • Andrey (unregistered)

    This has got to be the most juvenile article i've seen on this site....ever!

  • ballantine (unregistered) in reply to Yanman.be
    Yanman.be:
    Any girls want to give me a status?
    No. Obviously not.
  • pecus (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    obediah:
    That meant a shift... to a pornless version of 4chan...
    Not really, otherwise the community here would consist entirely of 14 year old virgins with their hands down their pants.

    Yes, thedailywtf differentiates itself by lack of images and a userbase consisting of balding 30+ obese virgins with their hands down their pants.

  • LEGO (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    xxx:
    Hehe. I laught all the way to kindergarten.
    What the hell kind of kindergarten do you go to that bj's are discussed/given/received?

    The one he teaches?

  • Bernie (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    You: You want a status? Murray: I think I'm entitled to a status Y: You want a Status? M: I want the Status! Y: You can't handle the status! Son, we live in a world that has walls. And those walls have to guarded by men who give status. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Murray? ... M: Did you give the status? Y: I gave the status you sent me to give M: Did you give the status? Y: You're goddamn right I did!!
    You: You want the sh*ts? Murray: I think I'm entitled to the sh*ts Y: You want the Sh*ts? M: I want the Sh*ts! Y: You can't handle the sh*ts! Son, we live in a world that has poo. And that poo has to guarded by men who have the sh*ts. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Murray? ... M: Did you give the sh*ts? Y: I gave the sh*ts you sent me to give M: Did you give the sh*ts? Y: You're goddamn right I did!!
  • Sean (unregistered)

    Jesus, that picture is the image of my old boss. I wonder if it's really him.

  • Allan (unregistered)

    I haven't laughed so hard all week, brilliant!

  • (cs) in reply to Doctor of Mediocrity
    Doctor of Mediocrity:
    obediah:
    *SNIP* Reasons why I think I'm so much smarter than everyone else, and why they should crawl out of their moronic gutters to raise themselves to my obviously genetically advanced level.

    I'm a not so grumpy programmer that LOVES reading about bad development AND other funny stuff. I'll take a 're-engineer the wheel' story as readily as a fart joke. Sorry to ruin your exclusive club :(

    I'm right there with ya, Doc. Hey, maybe we can have an exclusive club of our own and not invite Obediah.

  • Bob Holness (unregistered)

    This status is hard to swallow.

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