Who here manages people?

[DC]

I manage 120 people. Those with teenagers/young adults have done a PATHETIC job raising your children. You should all be embarrassed of yourselves.

 

[Spunky Porkstacker]

I manage 120 people. Those with teenagers/young adults have done a PATHETIC job raising your children. You should all be embarrassed of yourselves.

Maybe hire better people.

 

[Dogstar]

I manage 120 people. Those with teenagers/young adults have done a PATHETIC job raising your children. You should all be embarrassed of yourselves.

Maybe hire better people.

I spent a year managing in a big box retail store and I can tell you that hiring better people has nothing to do with it. I used to think that Millennials were bad, but Gen Z's are 100x worse. They are a generation of pussies raised with a cell phone addiction and no consequences.

Based on my experience, the future "workforce" of this country is a mass of socially awkward, useless warm bodies with no work ethic or initiative. They balk at the thought of having to do physical labor and call off at the slightest hint of the sniffles or "boo-boo feelings".

If you're lucky, you'll occasionally get one that has a little common sense and/or an attention span that lasts more than five minutes on the high end, but those are few and far between.

Maybe it's just retail aspect. More like hopefully because I've never dealt with so many lazy, whiny, incompetent people. Seriously, if the Generation Z's that I've had to deal with are the future, this country is fucked.

 

[Penny Traitor]

I spent a year managing in a big box retail store and I can tell you that hiring better people has nothing to do with it. I used to think that Millennials were bad, but Gen Z's are 100x worse. They are a generation of pussies raised with a cell phone addiction and no consequences.

I was the night manager at this touristy gift shop type place for a couple of years back around the time cell phone use was just becoming more and more popular. Just having to deal with the staff sending texts back and forth was a headache...I cannot imagine trying to run that place on a staff loaded with the latest smartphone. I am sure they will get right to dusting that display for me after another two episodes of the third Breaking Bad marathon Julie ran this month because it is the slow tourist season.

 

[DC]

Maybe hire better people.

I spent a year managing in a big box retail store and I can tell you that hiring better people has nothing to do with it. I used to think that Millennials were bad, but Gen Z's are 100x worse. They are a generation of pussies raised with a cell phone addiction and no consequences.

Based on my experience, the future "workforce" of this country is a mass of socially awkward, useless warm bodies with no work ethic or initiative. They balk at the thought of having to do physical labor and call off at the slightest hint of the sniffles or "boo-boo feelings".

If you're lucky, you'll occasionally get one that has a little common sense and/or an attention span that lasts more than five minutes on the high end, but those are few and far between.

Maybe it's just retail aspect. More like hopefully because I've never dealt with so many lazy, whiny, incompetent people. Seriously, if the Generation Z's that I've had to deal with are the future, this country is fucked.

 

[Dogstar]

...I cannot imagine trying to run that place on a staff loaded with the latest smartphone.

The ridiculous part was that the company actually encouraged employees to carry their cell phones, with the intention that the employees use the store's app to help customers with information and the location of products. Right..........

Of course, the abuse was rampant and upper management knew it, but they never did anything about it. Short of showing up intoxicated, stealing, telling a customer to fuck off, or saying the word "union" out loud, it was almost impossible to get fired.

I was hired as a part-time seasonal worker and the talent pool was so watered down that within three months I was asked to manage the department full time. Unfortunately, I quickly found out that the job had little to do with managing the department or its employees. No, it was all about making the assistant store managers look good in the long chain of ass kissing your way to the top.

No thanks. The pay was shitty. The "flexible scheduling" meant YOU had to be flexible. The only holidays we got off were Christmas and Thanksgiving day and I rarely ever got a full weekend or even two days in a row off. I lost count of all the family/kid events that I missed.

Add to all that, the never ending supply of rude, stupid and entitled customers. Fuck retail...

 

[Spunky Porkstacker]

Oprah sucks

 

[Hawkeye OG]

I'll tell my other employee story....

This one was hired when I was Team Lead, and I inherited him when I became Manager.

He was an older gentleman in his early 60s who was hired following the previous debacle I posted about.

Once again desperate to fill the seat, my boss hired this guy who was a neighbor of our Product Director, and to a 90k+ salary which is very high for the position, even though the interview was pretty meh.

Now this isn't the same type of story.... this guy stuck around for like 3 years and I didn't become his Manager until like 18 months down the road.

I always figured we kept this guy around because he was a cheap button pusher.... so when I saw his salary I was shocked.

This was an employee that I gave the least important clients to, generally, and TBH he spent most of his work day like this:

1. Come in, eat breakfast and read Facebook.... do 5-10 mins of work
2. Talk to wife 2-4 times for 8-12 minutes each time
3. Go poop for 60-90 minutes, if any time left before lunch, read more Facebook
4. Go get lunch, 30-60 minutes
5. Come back, eat lunch, read Facebook, answer more wife calls... 30-60 minutes.
6. Do some work 30-60 minutes, sometimes a call with clients.
7. Do random shit like discuss buying a vacuum cleaner in a customer service chat, and then print out the chat log
8. More panicked calls from wife, more Facebook.
9. Answer or return phone calls from people you normally ignore/hang up on.
10. Get yelled at by me because you didn't do work he should have.
11. Rush to get work done before going home... or just don't do it.

By the end there was a 2-3 times a week convo we had, often in the afternoon that went:

Me: "Hey, did you run blah like I told you this morning/yesterday?"

Him: "No..."

Me: "Why not?"

Him: "I forgot"

He would have one thing to do in a day sometimes.... and just forget to do it.

So this goes on for 6-8 months and I'm working with my new boss towards putting him on a performance plan which likely will lead to his termination when my boss tells me they want a name from our team for layoffs.

Well he's up.... overpaid... under producing to near uselessness.... creates messes I have to cleanup... yeah he's getting laid off.

Now this was my 2nd time laying someone off, and the previous guy, if you can believe it, was even more useless than this guy... but he worked remote so the termination was remote where this one was face to face with HR on the phone.

Even though the employee needed to go, I still felt shitty about it... sorry I have empathy.

So I line it up with the HR girl... come in and dial her up in one of our empty offices, and then wait for him to arrive.

I pull him into the office and read the script they gave me, and the HR girl reads her script, and at the end you're supposed to immediately take them to gather their belongings and escort them out, taking their security badge and laptop.

We hang up with HR and he is shook up, and he asks if we can talk a bit and I say yes.

First question he asks is... "So... was this... I mean was it performance related??

I needed all my willpower to stifle laughing/raging at him... cmon man, ya think?

I've been on you about not getting your work done, cleaning up your messes, dealing with pissed off business customers who complain about you... for like 3 years... and I've been blatant about it to you every week if not every day for months.

But you have to stick to the script so I just tell him "No, these are company layoffs and you were chosen... blah blah" the whole Corporate spiel.

He asked again, the same basic question but differently and I told him the same thing.

And he stutters trying to figure out how to ask it again and I just tell him it is time to go... we need to gather up your things and walk out.

He just kinda deflated and followed me out of the office to his desk, where he begins to try to pack up his desk even though I told him to just grab his immediate belongings... cell phone, keys, etc and we will box up the rest and ship it... that was the Corporate policy at least.

He ignores me... kinda in a haze... and starts digging thru drawers and grabbing bags and throwing things into bags, and I gently try to prod him towards wrapping it up... but he's got all his drawers open and I realize every single one, including the big foot locker type drawer in the divider between his workspace and the next, are all filled to the brim with... stuff... bags... papers... ketchup packets... nick nacks... any item you've ever been able to take for free on the street.... he has just grabbed anything he's ever been able to grab downtown and piled it into these drawers.

He fills up two big plastic bags from Walgreens with just, junk... and I finally force him to call it and walk out.

As we're walking out past the kitchen area he decides he needs to fill up his water.... while he's doing that, some visiting people are mingling in the kitchen and start talking to me... they have no idea I'm walking out a fired employee.... most awkward fucking convo of my life, and now I see him go into the fridge.

He needs to get his frozen sausages.... and the mustard from the fridge.... we're about to go on a freezer/fridge hoarding expedition and I have to stop him again... he piles some food into one of the two bags and I force him to head towards the door... finally I get him there and say good bye and promise we will ship him his personal belongings from his desk, and he leaves.

I go back to my desk to decompress and let the other team members know he had been laid off... and I begin to comb thru his desk to find any personal belongings to ship to him and it is just this hoarder nest of shit no one needs.

One of my team members, mercifully, steps in and says he will clean out the desk and separate out stuff we need to send and when he completes the job he's found hundreds if not thousands of salt/pepper packets... and hundreds of condiment packets... thousands of printed copies of things you can and should just view digitally... hundreds of plastic bags... dozens of plasticware from fast food places... an assortment of a few dozen cables of different kinds.... VGA cables, ethernet cables, HDMI cables... we have a box of them in the back, idk why he hoarded them in his desk.

On his way home, in some major irony, he starts texting me about his work tasks that someone will need to make sure they do going forward...

The next day he texts me about more work tasks he's remembered need to be done... FTR I knew all his tasks... I had done them, I had assigned them, I had them re-assigned before he was home the day I fired him.

After that he stops texting me.... I think it is done with.

A week later he texts me... he is downtown for a job interview... he never got his nameplate from his work station nor the Almond Butter from the fridge... can he stop by and pick them up.

I've never rolled my fucking eyes so hard.... who the fuck wants to go back to a place that fired you... for shit like Almond Butter?

In conclusion... don't hire hoarders.

That was very depressing. Almost feel bad for the guy

 

[Spunky Porkstacker]

That was very depressing. Almost feel bad for the guy

We at least know the guy has plenty of condiments though.

 

[Hawkeye OG]

We at least know the guy has plenty of condiments though.

I think the moral of the story is, and this sounds really shitty, but shy away from hiring people who are 60+. In my experience, they cost a fortune, they may/may not have years in the field but usually lack knowledge on how to do routine shit (like send an email with an attachment, combine a PDF doc, type with two fingers, etc, etc), and are usually burnt out just looking to coast and a steady pay check.

 

[Omeletpants]

I think the moral of the story is, and this sounds really shitty, but shy away from hiring people who are 60+. In my experience, they cost a fortune, they may/may not have years in the field but usually lack knowledge on how to do routine shit (like send an email with an attachment, combine a PDF doc, type with two fingers, etc, etc), and are usually burnt out just looking to coast and a steady pay check.

You are an idiot. United Airlines is begging their age 60s legacy systems programmers not to retire because dumbfuck millenials cant program and maintain those systems

 

[Hawkeye OG]

You are an idiot. United Airlines is begging their age 60s legacy systems programmers not to retire because dumbfuck millenials cant program and maintain those systems

Honestly, the system sounds obsolete. Millenials could design a better more efficient one, but United Airlines is to cheap to pay for it. Idiot