What nonsense do you have to do/fake enthusiasm for in your job?

[Whatapalavaa]

I'll go first. Performance manage based on utter nonsense criteria that I don't really care about but have to pretend to be oh so serious about. Pretend to care about our mission statement and our organisational culture. Yawn. I sit in meetings wondering if anyone else is seriously buying this crap or rather putting on a good act like me. Anyone else?

We have fortnightly on line all staff briefings with the CEO and COO. Staff can write comments/ questions. For most of last year, these were generally positive, well done team X etc etc but last couple have been just full of moans and whinges. Initially everyone put their names , now all anonymous. It’s always the progession of these things. I think it might get ditched soon

Agile means no unnecessary meetings travel or policies

We have one summer get together with a presentation and a Christmas party.

Come work for me :) !

I worked for Boots years ago and they were introducing Clinical Governance. I had to sit through many, many presentations about what it is and why it is important but not a single one about how to actually carry it out.
As far as I could tell, we carried on as normal but made sure to mention it in appraisals or when the area manager visited.

Hybrid working

Manager “we are moving to hybrid working which means you can work two days in the office and three at home. Don’t go into the office unless it’s essential. You can work in any room that has a docking station. You are responsible for your laptop etc etc.”

Me “ why are we doing this?”

Manager “it’s to promote a team culture”

Me “ but I won’t be working with my team if we no longer have an office and we can work in any work
space”

Manager “ I’m sure you can catch up on Teams”

Me “just like we use Teams WFH?”

Manager “ exactly, we’ve got the technology- we should all use it”

The Yr6 versus teachers rounders match!

I am hopeless at sport, can't hit the ball yet have to go to endless practises and pretend to be mega excited about it. Eugh.

Agile - as evidenced by the various responses here it has myriad unconnected meanings so has become just another stupid word parroted by everyone and understood by no one.

I have worked in several places where there was a lot of talk about 'shared values' and embodying these. One was a boring temp job which I only took because I was desperate for money. By the end I couldnt even summon up a pained smile when my over-enthusiastic manager tried to motivate us but reminding us of it all.

@sashagabadon

We have fortnightly on line all staff briefings with the CEO and COO. Staff can write comments/ questions. For most of last year, these were generally positive, well done team X etc etc but last couple have been just full of moans and whinges. Initially everyone put their names , now all anonymous. It’s always the progession of these things. I think it might get ditched soon

This reminded me of a yearly review meeting presented by the senior leadership team. We had a fancy app that you could post questions on and they would display on a big screen. The idea was that you could vote for the questions you liked and the top rated ones would be answered. The highest ranking question was “why are peas so expensive in the canteen?” It still makes me smile.

@GoodVibesHere

Team meetings, several times a week, to 'catch up' on who's doing what, how our workloads are looking, what issues we might be facing. These were set up partly for 'wellbeing' purposes to make sure nobody feels isolated.

Jeez, if we just get on and DO our work rather than giving each other constant updates and a run-down of our plans, we'd get much more done. Sometimes I've barely had time to get my teeth into any tasks since the last team meeting, they come round so quickly. Let me get on with the damn tasks!

I do appreciate that these meetings would get annoying but I realised the other day that in over a year of WFH in a job that can’t properly be done from home no one has asked how I’m doing, if I’m OK ( I’m not), how the job is going, how the people I work for are finding it… nothing…

@Alannawhorideslikeaman

We had an online 'postbox' which got published every week where you were supposed to send any concerns you had about processes etc at work, or feedback on any initiatives going. It was all anonymous. Unsurprisingly it quickly filled with a lot of concerns, some negative feedback and was generally a bit of a ranting facility. I mean who didn't see that coming so after about a month, area managers were going around to team managers essentially forcing us to submit positive comments and feedback to "readdress the balance" and stop it becoming a ln outlet to moaning. "I don't care if it's true, I just want it to be positive" was area manager's comment.

It only lasted about 3 months in total before they scrapped the idea.

We have actual boxes to put any comments in. One was filled with pennies over about 5 months and a note at the bottom "the MD obviously needs this more than us because we still dont have a payrise". Then a team leader came in and emptied it and pocketed it. The other boxes are scattered around the site and never have anything in. We know that if we have a great idea it will be used but never attributed to us and complaints get binned. We have "mental health trained " staff we can go to if we feel the need, one is only contactable by email, one is the office gossip so whatever is said would be round the whole business by lunchtime, another is part time and virtually never answers phone, one is a total prick and more likely to try to bed you than listen to you, one speaks almost no English, we are 98%English speakers.
And if after that you really think you should still talk to one, you have to make up the time. Can you imagine opening up to one of these dickheads and maybe crying etc, then having to make up the hour or so. Ffs not very nice is it.

Mainly the bizzare excitement about meeting in person. I mean I would get that entirely in a lot of workplaces after the last year but here is the thing. My role always has been WFH as has the majority of the company. The people who apply are traditionally grumpy as fuck , like noone but their learners (and even then roughly about 60% of them at any given time ).

We inherently have a dynamic if wanting not to engage with the outside world. It is a job known in most of industries as having a high level of knowledge and the corresponding low level of liking human beings.

Yet without fail I am expected to be excited and happy about seeing my team in the flesh. I'm not and they are not and none of us want winkling out of our pits like snails from a shell and nor is there absolutely any need for it at all. We will always be WFH with occasion learner visits. There is less than no business need for our physical presence nor has it ever been expected there is a need.

But apparently We liiikkkkkeeee each other no we don't and want to be together absolutely we don't

Ha! These are great. After my undergrad degree I was delighted to get a job temping for this Very Important Company. Goodness me what a disappointment! The corporate mumbo-jumbo made my head ache. I recall phoning my mum after my first Monday morning conference utterly bewildered that grown adults were handed out laminated diagrams on "time management". Everything was so convoluted and they took it all so seriously (well clearly judging by this thread many were pretending!) the Managing Director was the worst, I struggled to maintain respect for a man who got excited about such inane, time wasting (ironically) nonsense.

I'm an optimist but I realised I could never share this level of enthusiasm for a job that really didn't matter in the grand scheme of life so I declined their offer of a permanent contract and hightailed it back to uni to do something marginally worthwhile!

@NiceCardigan:

This reminded me of a yearly review meeting presented by the senior leadership team. We had a fancy app that you could post questions on and they would display on a big screen. The idea was that you could vote for the questions you liked and the top rated ones would be answered. The highest ranking question was “why are peas so expensive in the canteen?” It still makes me smile.

Knowing you have a bunch of irreverent subversives as your colleagues goes a long way to make life more tolerable at work. We have something similar and everyone downvotes those kind of questions into negative scores.

@MsFogi

Values, blah blah blah, diversity, blah blah blah, mission statement, blah blah blah, inclusivity, blah blah blah and repeat - it seems that if you are able to constantly talk enthusiastically about this stuff to the people below you and bully them into accepting it, look like you actually believe the crap that some committee has put together you will climb the greasy pole; regardless of how crap you are at your job, whether or not you "live the values", how much shit you talk when not parroting the mission statement (ideally with a snazzy power point) and however obvious it is that you are only interested in diversity as long as it doesn't impact your place on the board/upper management etc. I wish companies would just let everyone get on with their jobs, stop spending inordinate amounts of time virtue signalling and ditch the mission statements. If they did that they could probably sack the top 10% of the workforce and see no impact on the performance of the company and those left behind would be much more enthusiastic because they are no longer having the soul sucked out of them listening to and smiling at bollocks-speak every day.

100% Why do they not realise this? 🤷🏼‍♀️

The endless target setting that they try and get you to extend because, I quote 'It will be good for your personal development'
No it won't Hilary , you don't know me , you wont remember my name in 10 minutes, you just want me to do more work for the same money
So you can tick your fucking useless box of bollocks

We had a ludicrous initiative where the CFO bought breakfast for 5/6 people from the finance division once a month and it was supposed to be a way of asking questions of senior management, fostering cross team relationships etc. We had to register our interest by email.

1. The first session involved a load of transactional staff members off-loading grievances about the poor pay and conditions.

1. People didn’t want to go. Because he was a cunt. A senior FC said that they were going to just assign people. I told her no one want to eat with him and if I were allocated I wouldn’t go.

It stopped very fast.

Anyone still using Six Sigma ? Lean Six Sigma ? Black Belt ? I dont know if it's still implemented but a company I was involved with tried to make it work and nearly ground to.a halt chasing every minor defect and assessing every work practice .

Fucking 'Lunch & Learn'.

It's my lunch hour and I want to eat my sarnie in peace, not listen to some corporate drivel while I try not to get mayonnaise down my top in front of the whole department.

I'm old and I've been doing this shizzle for years. If I wanted to learn about that subject, I probably would have done by now.

Oh God, We used to do 'Brown bag lunches'. Which meant not lunching at the excellent canteen but bring in a sandwich while listening to each department on a rotation give a power point about their purpose.

I'd forgotten that horror. It was compulsory to attend, no matter how much they oretended it was not.

Same company - they decided that as a perk that if the work was done then you could leave early on fridays. This WAS a perk as we were operating acorss multiple timezones frokm our office so it was normal to still be working when the US office came online at 3 pm our time until Midnight and beyond so we could be analogous with them. Taking 2 hours extra for the weekend kind of made it bearable.

Except we got a new MD who decided in his wisdom that if everyone was 'leaving early' on Fridays it emant he could schedule in so-called professional development then. Not proper professional development either, but each department was given ateam building project to unlease onto the other departments. Fuck me I hated that. Epecially the days when i was still dealing with our Atlanta office until 2 in the morning, then starting again on UK time before 9 am and was being told that leaving 3 pm Friday was a perk the firm did not have to give and it would not look good to not be there listening to whatever shit they ahd decided we needed to listen to for ticks inn our own personell sheets.

I have come here to confess and seek forgiveness. Today I said, on a teams meeting, we be to "incentivise" the workforce. Even as I said it I looked mighty sheepish and despised myself for uttering such shit. Who says this? Is it even a word?

It's as much a word as 'diarise'.

Don't worry - people will take no notice and only be glad that it wasn't them that said it.

@haggis973

Shelf stacker in a supermarket when Walmart took over. The weekly chant we had to enthusiastically shout out at the checkout huddle despite the introduction of 24 hour opening and in front of several bemused customers:

Give me an A (A)
Give me an S (S)
Give me a D (D)
Give me an A (A)

What have you got? (asda)

Who's number one? (The Customer)

Followed by the pocket tap 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

This has made my night! It's like The Office!

@ginandbearit

Anyone still using Six Sigma ? Lean Six Sigma ? Black Belt ? I dont know if it's still implemented but a company I was involved with tried to make it work and nearly ground to.a halt chasing every minor defect and assessing every work practice .

We are paying a fortune for a six sigma expert to come in.

I have had several meetings with him and he is planning changes whilst not understand the business. He keeps telling me how things work. But they don't work the way that he says.

And the director implementing the changes says he is too busy for the next 2 years.

So we have an expensive consultant, trying to make changes that are emailing things worse.

I am sick of hearing 'black belt' as though I need to be awe. I have done CI before as my job. I am not impressed.

No one is impressed by kick boxing Black belt. Not in the slightest

haggis973

Shelf stacker in a supermarket when Walmart took over. The weekly chant we had to enthusiastically shout out at the checkout huddle despite the introduction of 24 hour opening and in front of several bemused customers:

Give me an A (A)
Give me an S (S)
Give me a D (D)
Give me an A (A)

What have you got? (asda)

Who's number one? (The Customer)

Followed by the pocket tap 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I worked for Walmart in the uk. This is absolutely true and they made us do it at asda head office on induction day. Then made us make an advert for a product where we all had to sing or speak.

Its was fucking awful.

@elfycat

*HaveringWavering Wed 30-Jun-21 20:40:33 ^LEMtheoriginal

KPIs and targets, selling loyalty schemes and having our performance assessed on how much money we generate.

I. COULD. NOT. GIVE. LESS. FUCKS^

FEWER.*

Fewer or less fucks?

It can be both. If you are looking at the number of them as in - Behold the field in which I grow my fucks. Lay thine eyes upon it and see that it is barren - then it is a question of number of fucks, and would be fewer.

But if we are discussing the levels in a 'fuck bucket' then we are talking about volume of fucks, and then we would need to use the term less.

I guess the important thing about knowing the amount of fucks is to know if your metaphor is numbers or volume and work with the correct units for your specific metaphor. If in doubt? Use either and give no fucks to that either.