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?

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

In an old job I used to help clients create mission statements, vision statements and culture and values.

I stopped when I realised it was all just word soup. Even though the industry could be healthcare, tobacco, banking, booze or frozen pizza. The missions all blurred together. Sad really.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

No idea what the tobacco statements were like....I mean....where do you start with something like that??

Booze - our mission is to bring people together in an inclusive manner. Our booze is for everyone, because we believe in equality.

Frozen pizza - we believe in authenticity. Our mission is to save time in your day so you can spend more time with your family.

Haha....sitting in meetings like that must be amusing at times.

Yes to Wellness Workshops. What a bore.

I've recently taken to saving certain domestic tasks to do under the radar in very dull meetings. The main one is pairing socks, which if I position my webcam correctly, I can 100% get away with while smiling and nodding. Sometimes I also chop veg for dinner, but that can usually only be done in a big session where it feels okay to turn off your camera.

NC for this.

In a previous job (major retail chain): pulled a muscle and nearly ended up with frostbite after an awayday at a snowdrome was rounded off by 'team activities in the snow', including some sort of toboggan-dragging exercise that was genuinely dangerous.

A man had a heart attack at this event. That occurrence, and how people were forced to respond to it, was later spun by the departmental head as 'a marvellous example of people working together as a team.'

Another time we were made to take turns manning reception when the whole of HR went on an awayday and they were too stingy to get temps in. (Major 'household name' retail chain, btw.)

I left as soon as I could.

play bullshit bingo in every meeting while giving proper face and positivity. Now we have all the wellbeing nonsense of being asked how we are every 5 minutes and daily/weekly/monthly posts from the D&I Lead/Champion on what we must celebrate now. Meanwhile, the few of us who are doing the actual day job are being performance managed out for not being on every forum , group or committee.

I am so grateful to have a job where I don't have to do any of this nonsense. It's the thing I hate most about applying for jobs - having to pretend that this will be the most exciting important thing I've ever done in my life, instead of what I do to get the money to live the rest of my life.

@SummerHouse

My colleagues are either a) reaching out, or b) pushing back.

I am introducing c) the hokey cokey.

I wish I could do this @SummerHouse

I literally have to fake my whole working life. I spend 90% of my day repeating the mantra I.DO.NOT.GIVE.A.FUCK, SHUT.UP.

I have also started to actively dislike anybody who likes our job, I can’t help but think they must have very sad lives.

I used to work for a travel company that was like a cult. It was awful.

We had enforced quarterly nights out which I could cope with, but then they added monthly ones for our division.

Nominations to ‘get you to global’ big piss up in some faraway place that sounded like sheer hell (the event, not the place).

Loads of people promoted beyond their capabilities because they are ‘the right kind of person’.

My CFO hated me because I didn’t like all the ‘myth’ surrounding the company but couldn’t do much because I was one of the few accountants who could do my job.

Today I have:

• listened to someone I line manage about why it's so unfair that they are being asked to work the hours they're paid for, because their adult dc needs them to be available for a lift at short notice. I smiled and nodded.
• listened to a senior manager who is new to our organisation telling us in a 'discussion group' exactly what our organisation does it doesn't non stop for an hour without asking 1 single question or allowing 1 single suggestion or comment. I smiled and nodded.
• showed concern about urgently needing to update a resource that hasn't been touched for 20 years because nobody actually needs or uses it
• wrote a glowing positive report about how we didn't hit our targets but actually it was all a tremendous success

Looking back on the day I didn't express my real feelings about anything I did or said.

Get asked for advice on how to deal with something, give advice and my opinion only for it to be completely ignored, then have to pretend to be ‘collaborative and engaged’ in ‘solutionising’ when it all inevitably goes tits up.

My pet hate is the sports-themed presentations, as the top managers seems to enjoy F1/boat racing/golf etc all the communications are now littered with the sports slang, they even organise webinars with those sports persons, competitions to get a photo with them etc. I imagine 90% of empolyees have no interest in those sports and don't understand half of the references. I hope the next big boss would be obsessed with something less boring, like royal family or cats

@BathshebaKnickerStickers

I have to work out how many under 5 year olds we have in a primary school with an attached preschool. I have a spreadsheet and have to knock each child off on their 5th birthday. I then fill in the number for each day in order for my council to claim back the cost of 183ml of milk for them if they are with us for 3 hours. This takes a lot of skill and time and spreadsheets

You can do this with a few clicks on SIMS.

@Babysharkdoodoodood

Pretending to be nice to some utter scumbags. Sometimes I just stop pretending though, after explaining to a 30-something manchild that he's never getting his e-scooter back because you know, it's fucking illegal to ride it on the pavement and mow down old people and children, for the millionth time. Then they ask to speak to someone else because my attitude stinks. So I get one of the grouchy old officers from the back (who're counting down the minutes to retirement). Then they find out how nice I actually am in comparison

I am very supportive to real victims though.

I'm not all hard, bad and evil. Which is what I am apparently to the bloke I refused to release his car to after it was seized due to no insurance and an invalid license, and drink driving. Sigh.

@Babysharkdoodoodood please keep up the good work, those e-scooters are menaces. In fact if you can ramp up the impounding, we'd all be very grateful!

@BathshebaKnickerStickers

That should not take a long time in Excel (not sure about SIMS) - if you need assistance with a proper spreadsheet you can roll forward then I would be happy to assist.

=NETWORKDAYS formula should assist with calcs.

I work for a high street retail shop and find the way we are pressured for targets ridiculous. We have all the usual and expected targets like overall sales, average transaction values, in store orders etc but now we are pushing e-receipts and have to try to convince as many people as possible to take one! Customers can be so rude about it and despite us trying very politely to explain it’s JUST your receipt that you will get, it’s always the same response. We are tracked on our individual results and have to face management to explain our shortcomings if not achieving the company target 🙃 PLEASE give retail staff your email (even give a fake one and ask for a paper copy too - it really really helps us out!) I feel like for minimum wage, they expect too much. This is obviously only one issue!

Fake laughing at jokes I've heard a million times.

Every time I hear the word 'inclusive'. I had to do some inclusiveness training in my last job and it was a load of bollocks. Funnily enough I find it easy to not be a twat to people who are different to me. And any work surveys, they're anonymous, so the last one I did in my old job I took them to task about asking me if I 'identified' as female.

That SMT really value the staff and that there is any point in applying for an internal vacancy unless you're mates with SMT (and the vacancy was therefore created for you).

That we are the best school. We do well but are an absolute exam factory, no time for enjoyment of learning.

That we go to work for any other reason than to pay the bills.

That our results are amaze balls. You can prove anything with statistics.

@topcat2014

I start a new job at director level in 2 months, so am taking notes / tips!

Seems to be a theme of when management takes an interest and keep.people in the loop, half of staff are likely thinking of anything but the topics they are ment to be focused on.

That said, all the best for the position.

Isn't that what team building days are for? God I hate those. Bore me to sobs and the food is always crap. Then you still have to catch up with the work they've made you get behind on. At least with zoom meetings I can get on with a jigsaw on my ipad.

Trying to distill a very complex incident (that's going to cause many many issues and could have been completely avoided had the team responsible just done what they were told to do lots and lots of times) into 3 slides with minimal content because the board don't like being given too much detail.

It would be ever so easy if I could write what I wanted to write

Slide 1 - Cause = XXX team are arrogant twazzocks who would rather play with a new toy than fix the one they've broken.

Slide 2 - Current status = Travelling 100 miles an hour up shits creek and oops there goes the paddle

Slide 3 - Impact - If we're lucky we'll just lose a few clients, if we're not lucky have you considered updating your CV?

A friend of mine had meetings where they had to do jazz hands. I really can't top that.

Our Friday morning 15 minute stand-up meetings.
We have to discuss what we did this past week, what we'll be doing next week, and what are the bears blocking our path.
Manager then leans against the cupboard and waffles for 45 minutes whilst M and I struggle to stand still. And yes, M and I. There's only two of us and we share an office and an email box so pretty much know what the other one did all week anyway.

@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?

Yanbu It's all absolute pish. I'd love to say that out loud at our next meeting

Yes, I used to work in a university department that had this kind of trendy bullshit. The HOD would "power nap" and talked about a culture of us "feeding off" one another (!!!). There were so many bullshit meetings that there was no time to do the work, which fell further and further behind. Lots of bullshit about "risk assessments" and such,

One month a colleague and I added up the time wasted in meetings and then asked how we were supposed to do the actual work when so many hours were wasted. In the end we just attended the meetings, nodded, smiled and let the actual work drift. I was not going to use my weekends to make up the time we has wasted in boring meetings. I suspect everyone else hated them as much as I did.

I was often out of the department "in the library" and fortunately mobiles were not allowed to be on there. 1990s so no smart phones yet.