• Friedrice The Great (unregistered) in reply to dgschrei
    dgschrei:
    anon:
    Well, I refer to my project manager as "the tie". In front of him. I guess he's got thicker skin than the cardboard-grunts then?

    Nah it's just that you are constantly referring to a phallic symbol that he is wearing around his neck. I'd call that a unique way of stroking the boss's ego.

    Historically, the tie derived from something worn by servants/slaves of rulers. So the modern tie just indicates that you're a slave - not that your ruler is a phallic symbol.

  • (cs) in reply to Friedrice The Great
    Friedrice The Great:
    Historically, the tie derived from something worn by servants/slaves of rulers.
    [citation needed] Wikipedia and Academia Cravatica disagree with you — unless you consider military officers to be servants/slaves. And the fashion was picked up directly from the soldiers by Louis XIV, so apparently he did not consider it an emblem of slavery.
  • Cheong (unregistered)

    I can't imagine that the words on a company's public website are not reviewed by legal department/team before publishing out. The VP of Sales is asking for trouble in the beginning.

  • j (unregistered)

    Those warehouse workers sound like a bunch of thin-skinned pansies. In fact, I can't help but wonder if any of this actually happened.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to faoileag
    faoileag:
    Lame. But there is a wtf:
    the article said:
    the company (which Jordan left some time later for unrelated reasons)
    If a VP of a company I worked for called the warehouse staff "meatbots" on a public website (and "About Us" is usually as public as it gets) I would start searching for other employment for exactly that reason.

    Why? Because if the VP survives the fallout, this is a sure sign that a) the company has a limited idea about what negative publicity in the age of the internet can mean in terms of revenue and b) obviously the prevalent opinion in management about the workforce is that they are exactly that: meatbots, not human beings. And I wouldn't want to work for such a company.

    Regarding negative publicity: a good example is "#HasJustineLandedYet" - where a private tweet led to the director of communictaions to be sacked.

    It wasn't a private tweet. It was a very public tweet, and a racist tweet at that.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Jeremy
    Jeremy:
    Valued Service:
    no laughing matter:
    Jeremy:
    I love the double standard that always goes on where "desk people" aren't allowed to think of the "worker bees" as any kind of lesser beings, but it's always ok for the "worker bees" to imply that the "desk people" don't have a "real job" because they don't have to lift things or stand.
    Fact 1: This is not about what a desk person is allowed or not allowed to think. This is about a public insult. Fact 2: It is rather unusual for a company to allow their "worker bees" to insult the "desk people" of the company on the company's website. Without consequences.

    So much about your "double standard"!

    1. Putting "Fact" in front of your points make them facts.
    2. White collar must post on public website to insult blue collar, and blue collar must insult white collar in person. There is no scenario where white collar insult blue collar in person, and therefore there is no double standard.

    Ha, well, I didn't mean in this exact scenario. Yes, obviously this situation was worth them getting upset about. (Although I'm not sure it warrants the lynch mob for the wrong guy.)

    I just mean in general there are a ton of "hard labor" type workers who are very open about their thinking that the "computer guys" don't "have real jobs".

    If you consider sitting at a desk all day a "real job," you've never had a real job.

    I sit behind a desk, and I would never presume to believe that anything I do is more difficult or more important than the people who, say, run out water and power lines, build our houses and skyscrapers, and clean up after us.

  • Jeremy (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Jeremy:
    Valued Service:
    no laughing matter:
    Jeremy:
    I love the double standard that always goes on where "desk people" aren't allowed to think of the "worker bees" as any kind of lesser beings, but it's always ok for the "worker bees" to imply that the "desk people" don't have a "real job" because they don't have to lift things or stand.
    Fact 1: This is not about what a desk person is allowed or not allowed to think. This is about a public insult. Fact 2: It is rather unusual for a company to allow their "worker bees" to insult the "desk people" of the company on the company's website. Without consequences.

    So much about your "double standard"!

    1. Putting "Fact" in front of your points make them facts.
    2. White collar must post on public website to insult blue collar, and blue collar must insult white collar in person. There is no scenario where white collar insult blue collar in person, and therefore there is no double standard.

    Ha, well, I didn't mean in this exact scenario. Yes, obviously this situation was worth them getting upset about. (Although I'm not sure it warrants the lynch mob for the wrong guy.)

    I just mean in general there are a ton of "hard labor" type workers who are very open about their thinking that the "computer guys" don't "have real jobs".

    If you consider sitting at a desk all day a "real job," you've never had a real job.

    I sit behind a desk, and I would never presume to believe that anything I do is more difficult or more important than the people who, say, run out water and power lines, build our houses and skyscrapers, and clean up after us.

    Anything that pays more is, almost by definition, "more important". Short of CEOs of big companies "breaking" the system in general the fewer people that could step in and do your job the more you're paid. So, yes, a lot of the "desk people" probably are, in that sense more special and important to the company. I don't think it has to get derogatory toward anyone but why it's "ok" to imply you only work for a living if you're carrying bags of cement around?

    Yes, a low level grunt probably "works harder" every day than someone who sits at a desk, and makes less for it...that's precisely why the job is comparatively shittier.

  • kingbeardo (unregistered)

    I don't understand the problem-- what else would one call the meatbots? However, the VP of sales should have been ashamed to admit that his company still pays sophonts to do the work of robots. Also notable, what the hell is "It didn't take much long after" supposed to mean? "Not much time passed beyond this incident before...", "Shortly...", and even "It didn't take long for..." would have been much preferred. Writers like this are why even basic NLP is difficult

  • (cs)

    Leadership defined:

    For a few months in the army I worked in the mess hall, clearing tables and washing dishes nonstop for 16 hours a day, with only a half hour break in the afternoon, if you washed the dishes really fast. My hands were permanently red, the front of my blouse was permanently wet and smelly, and I couldn't take it any more. Somehow, I managed to get out of the mess hall into a job working for a high-ranking Sergeant Major. This guy had years of experience. He was probably twenty years older than the kids in the unit. Even in the field, he was always immaculate, wearing a spotless, starched, pressed full dress uniform with impeccably polished shoes no matter how dusty and muddy the rest of the world was around him. You got the feeling that he slept in 300 threadcount Egyptian cotton sheets while we slept in dusty sleeping bags on the ground.

    His job consisted of two things: discipline and the physical infrastructure of the base. He was a bit of a terror to everyone in the battalion due to his role as the chief disciplinary officer. Most people only knew him from strutting around the base conducting inspections, screaming at the top of his lungs and demanding impossibly high standards of order and cleanliness in what was essentially a bunch of tents in the middle of the desert, alternately dust-choked or mud-choked, depending on the rain situation.

    Anyway, on the first day working for the Sergeant Major, I didn't know what to expect. I was sure it was going to be terrifying, but it had to be better than washing dishes and clearing tables all day long (and it's not like the guy in charge of the mess hall was such a sweetheart, either!)

    On the first day he took me to the officer's bathroom and told me I would be responsible for keeping it clean. "Here's how you clean a toilet," he said.

    And he got down on his knees in front of the porcelain bowl, in his pressed starched spotless dress uniform, and scrubbed the toilet with his bare hands.

    To a 19 year old who has to clean toilets, something which is almost by definition the worst possible job in the world, the sight of this high ranking, 38 year old, immaculate, manicured, pampered discipline officer cleaning a toilet completely reset my attitude. If he can clean a toilet, I can clean a toilet. There's nothing wrong with cleaning toilets. My loyalty and inspiration from that moment on were unflagging. That's leadership.

    The leader (higher-up) should be able perform lower functions, but be dedicated to more important things.

    (from "Show, Don't Tell" on Coding Horror, which currently isn't working too well right now)

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    Leadership defined:
    I agree.
    chubertdev:
    On the first day he took me to the officer's bathroom and told me I would be responsible for keeping it clean. "Here's how you clean a toilet," he said.

    And he got down on his knees in front of the porcelain bowl, in his pressed starched spotless dress uniform, and scrubbed the toilet with his bare hands.

    To a 19 year old who has to clean toilets, something which is almost by definition the worst possible job in the world, the sight of this high ranking, 38 year old, immaculate, manicured, pampered discipline officer cleaning a toilet completely reset my attitude. If he can clean a toilet, I can clean a toilet. There's nothing wrong with cleaning toilets. My loyalty and inspiration from that moment on were unflagging. That's leadership.

    (from "Show, Don't Tell" on Coding Horror, which currently isn't working too well right now)
    From Joel Spoelsky.

    http://joelonsoftware.com/articles/BestSoftwareWriting.html

    http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081201/how-hard-could-it-be-my-style-of-servant-leadership.html?partner=fogcreek

    ...

    and, laughably,

    http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=7ICrTOeNhbIC&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=%22Here's+how+you+clean+a+toilet,%22&source=bl&ots=c9jSK_Lyb4&sig=5iDknHeTZ9vQ05_u2i5wKwQcODk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=w_cYU-HaM8b2lAXXloCYDQ&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22Here's%20how%20you%20clean%20a%20toilet%2C%22&f=false

    Pages 122 and 123 of ... wait for it ... "Upended: How Following Jesus Remakes Your Words & World"

    Jedd Medefind, Erik Lokkesmoe, did you notice Joel Spoelsky was in the Israeli army? Did you notice the seargent major was in the Israeli army? I don't think they were following Jesus. In my line of business mistakes fingering keyboards remake my words into nonsense, but if following Jesus does that for you maybe you should change religions.

    Anyway, it wasn't from Coding Horror either.

  • Muphry (unregistered) in reply to Norman Diamond
    Norman Diamond:
    blah blah blah Joel Spoelsky.

    blah blah blah Joel Spoelsky blah blah blah

    In my line of business mistakes fingering keyboards remake my words into nonsense,

    Well in YOUR line of business it might come from refusing even to use the mouse that's sitting right in front of you to copy and paste his name correctly. No wonder Spolsky didn't hire you.

  • (cs)

    Leave Norman alone, he's just a meatbot!

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    Leave Norman alone, he's just a meatbot!
    Leave me alone?

    That's what my wife did. Sometimes.

    She even did 69 alone.

  • Geoff (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    Well, I refer to my project manager as "the tie". In front of him. I guess he's got thicker skin than the cardboard-grunts then?

    I don't that its as offensive. Its a reduction of a person to nothing more than there job role but it at least recognizes a role they probably at one point aspired to and or are still somewhat proud of. Not that there is anything wrong warehouse picker; but I don't think its something even many pickers dreamed about growing up. Where as if we go all the back to kindergarten career day there probably was a kid who said "when I grow up I am going to be business (man|woman)"

    Its also true that your typical suit or tie has choices they can change jobs and do something different, for some degrees of different. Don't like managing software projects any more, fine go get a job managing some other kind of project. Your typical meat bot, has fewer options; that are not going to be clearly objectively worse.

  • (cs) in reply to Norman Diamond
    Norman Diamond:
    chubertdev:
    Leave Norman alone, he's just a meatbot!
    Leave me alone?

    That's what my wife did. Sometimes.

    She even did 69 alone.

    Definitely not clicking that.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to chubertdev
    chubertdev:
    Norman Diamond:
    chubertdev:
    Leave Norman alone, he's just a meatbot!
    Leave me alone?

    That's what my wife did. Sometimes.

    She even did 69 alone.

    Definitely not clicking that.
    It's level 69 of Sokoban. The other levels are there too, and various sets designed by other creators. Some of them are pretty difficult.
  • Kasper (unregistered)
    Naturally, the VP of Sales is still there, with an even more impressive title.
    They put a "senior" in front of the title?
  • (cs)

    Calling BS on this story.

    No one reads the About Us page. Ever. Even if the meatbots did read that page they should have been fired anyway. After all their job is to pack and ship not sit on the interwebz all day.

  • Norman Diamond (unregistered) in reply to Norman Diamond
    Norman Diamond:
    chubertdev:
    Norman Diamond:
    chubertdev:
    Leave Norman alone, he's just a meatbot!
    Leave me alone?

    That's what my wife did. Sometimes.

    She even did 69 alone.

    Definitely not clicking that.
    It's level 69 of Sokoban. The other levels are there too, and various sets designed by other creators. Some of them are pretty difficult.
    She couldn't do 96 alone though. We did it together.

    (Just wait til we get to http://sokoban.info/?65. I couldn't do it so we'll need a 3-way with the designer. At least when he makes Rubik's cubes, bandaged cubies move together.)

  • Pat (unregistered)

    I like how no one commented on the problem of his drinking alcohol and getting drunk during work hours... How is that not a problem?! How is that an excuse?

    -Sorry! I was drunk when I pushed to production.. Woops!

  • (cs)

    They're lucky none of the loaders brought union cards. Then replacing the warehouse staff wouldn't have been an option.

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