There's a great episode of The West Wing that, if I recall right, goes like this: Toby and Josh have their morning interrupted by a whistleblower who tells them some important information. They weigh their options with the White House Counsel, and it comes down that if they reveal the information, they're breaking one law, and if they don't, they're breaking another. Josh quips: "So you mean I could go to jail just for showing up to work today?" I had something similar happen to me today, where I am in danger of getting in trouble for just doing my job. This is one of my least favorite things about it. FOCUS: When have you gotten in trouble just for showing up, acting normally, or through no other fault of your own? How did you get out of it?
OCS. We were always wrong, all the time, no matter what we did, even if we were right. We got yelled at for doing exactly what we were supposed to be doing when we were told to do it, then forced to write essays about it during our sleep time...500 words, every other letter blue and capitalized, every letter red and lower case. If our entire company didn't get our tents setup for he night in 3 minutes or less and perfectly in symmetrical rows, we broke them down and started all over. If we reported in in the morning by not yelling loud enough, we got yelled at and had to play two sheets and a blanket...But then again, that was the name of the game.
If nothing else, working in a call center made me completely numb to being blamed for things that I have no control over, it would happen multiple times per day everyday. At first it was tough to cope with, which is why there are a few strategically placed 'swear it off' rooms for the real bad ones, but eventually you stop getting so flustered with people bitching at you. A couple gems: 1.) One guy fucking laid into me over his 401k investment performance, not only are the investments completely self directed but we can't even give investment advice, this was 100% his fault. He wasn't even complaining about the portfolio selection, he was just bitching at me about losing money and demand that the company compensate him to recoup the loss. 2.) Young girl fresh out of college signed up for the high deductible health plan to save a few bucks, doesn't invest a DIME in her HSA, has a $1,000 claim and calls up after being told to pay by the insurance company and doctor to see what can be done... She was bullshit that I wasn't willing to 'pull some strings' because she shouldn't have to pay that much for a medical procedure, which was less than the deductible for the plan that she's on... the plan that she chose to sign up for to save $15 a month instead of the $20 copay plan. Just an aside, if you are thinking about signing up for a HDHP through your company because you think you can't afford the HMO/PPO plan, let this be a lesson for you, you can't afford not to be in that plan. 3.) Lady was let go and went on severance with a pay increase because she was a big wheel, she calls in bitching about the fact that the taxes as a percentage of pay went up. I was just confused at first, I honestly didn't understand what she was arguing about until she said "I shouldn't be paying a higher tax rate just because I make more money." I was speechless, I then had to go on to explain that America is not on a flat tax system, this woman was over 40 and making about a half million per year in salary alone. She thought I was full of shit about the whole graded tax thing and said she was going to get her accountant on the horn and call back. She never called back
Last year I worked for one of the big banks doing refinance processing and underwriting, but it was in 'Centralized Fulfillment'. Because of the low rates, so many people were knocking down the door to refinance that customer service went down the shitter. The normal workload that someone was expected to handle was between 30 to 40 loans at any given time. We were doing about 100 each, for six months in a row. Due to the massive number of applications, upper management would set quotas that each team was expected to make. As the deadline approached at the end of the month, middle management would start harassing the teams - telling them to do whatever was necessary to make goal. This meant we would prioritize all of the easy loans (conventional, good credit, decent appraised value) and put everything else off until next month. This mean that some of the more difficult loans (non-conforming, low appraised value, issues with the title, borrowers that insisted on using snail-mail...) were put off for months at a time. With an interest rate being locked for only 90 days, and any extension costing an eighth of a percent per week of the loan amount beyond that day - people got anxious as time passed. Often, we would just soak the cost of the extension if that meant would could actually get the loan to close. Otherwise, we would make them pay the extension or we would deny the loan outright. As time passed and more and more of the easy loans were eliminated from the pipeline - all that was left was the pure, unadulterated shit. Every single one of these remaining borrowers wanted answers, and for us to absorb the extension costs, and to complain to upper management. There is an "Executive Complaint" number that we gave out when we couldn't calm them down, but it wasn't long before a memo came down from on top saying that it was now forbidden for anybody to give that number to a customer...because so many customers were actually using it. Recap: customers that are angry because they feel they have been ignored (which is true, we did ignore them), management that refuses to deal with these customers - insisting we take care of all problems on our own, and all of us cubicle monkeys on the phone all day without any actual power or authority to help anyone. TL;DR - fuck the entire home mortgage industry.
I got yelled at by a guest at our hotel because the city of Spokane has no Whole Foods or 24-Hour Fitness. You're in goddamn Spokane, what did you expect? I told him I'd speak to the city council about it at the earliest convenience.
At least once a month, I get a memo from my boss because someone has lost a file, and apparently that is my fault. I usually get out of it when he magically finds the file in a pile in his office. And before you say anything, this happens because he does not use electronic filing and every computer in the office is older than me.
I once had a guy abuse me because the Secret Service were monitoring him from the post office. I was hosting his website, in another state. He was in Australia - where the Secret Service very rarely monitor people. And when I looked it up on google maps, I couldn't find a post office within 100km of his house. <a class="postlink" href="http://wwww.frankrusso.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://wwww.frankrusso.com</a> - he's awesome.
When I was working as a tech in an out-patient clinic there was a power struggle going on between the therapists and office staff. When I was hired it was explained to me that my main focus was on the patients. If there were no patients or a therapist was one on one with a patient, I was to help out in the office with prescriptions and scheduling. Everything was cool until someone started feeling a little impotent and unimportant. The office started telling me that they come first and that the therapists were being too needy. The therapists responded by telling me to ignore them and stay with patients. Literally, 2 or 3 times a day someone would tell me to stop doing whatever I was doing at the moment to help them. They would act irritated when I told them X told me to stay up/back here. I wasn't necessarily in trouble, but it was frustrating as hell. I didn't care who my supervisor was or what my duties were; I just wanted to know exactly who/what they were so I could do my job in peace. Finally, after way too long and many heated words between office girls and therapists, the managing partner (who really sucked at managing people) stepped in and made it clear I was to stay with the therapists and patients. That experience, along with several others, was a good lesson in how NOT to run a clinic.
I'm a consultant. I've lost count of the times I've been paid to be a punching bag, so that clients could safely blame a non-involved third party in lieu of actually solving their problems. (Where "solving their problems" could mean taking any number of actions, all of which were judged politically unsound). I'd estimate it's a good half of our projects. And it's not all horsefeathers - sometimes it's quicker and easier to hire someone to recommend a pre-selected course of action, and blame them for that course of action, then to do what everyone knows needs to be done, but as your own initiative.* As the saying goes, if you can't provide a solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem. * "Quicker and easier", of course, for management. The shareholders would probably not be pleased to learn that management was using shareholder's money to avoid doing management's job. Hey look! It's our old friend, the principal-agent problem!