If only

[Undertoad]

Realdoll management: when even a warm body doesn't matter.

n.b. some managers talk about head count as "warm bodies", especially in situations where politics requires large numbers of consultants on site even if they won't be particularly productive. "Let's put 10 more warm bodies in Houston, that project is billed at $3M this month and they expect it to be fully staffed."

[Undertoad]

g, it sounds like you are an excellent manager to create the right environment where real work is respected and put in when the rubber meets the road. It's the personal signals that you send that create it, huh.

[glatt]

Thanks. To be fair, though, I'm in middle management. My bosses kind of set the tone around here, giving me a lot of flexibility in how I do my job. tw is probably right about that 85% figure. We are lucky to have good leadership at my firm. We win awards and stuff for being a good place to work, and we also win awards for doing good work. It's nice here.

[BobT]

Originally Posted by glatt

I understand what you are saying and that there may be an understanding where you work that getting a certain job done will result in an hourly charge of a set amount, but at my firm, we are very serious that you don't pad the bill. If you didn't spend the time working on a case, you better not bill the client for it. That's just wrong, especially when you consider that our hourly rates are extremely high. Getting caught falsifying time records is something that will get you fired very quickly here.

i am not suggesting that you "pad" a bill, but any person that is working for 4 straight hours on a project will spend a certain amount of time daydreaming, getting a glass of water, using the restroom, or checking their personal email. what i suggest is that at the end of 4 hours the project was done, and that the resulting work product was such that a 4 hour fee was justly due.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by BobT

a lot easier to spot 6 employees goofing off at the water cooler than 15 surfing the web. at least at the water cooler they feel more conspicuous....and are!

spoken like someone who's never met a proxy server...

I'm just sayin...

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Now I admit to being a problem child. Under manager "A" I was the smartest, most productive employee who worked extremely hard to improve the organization. Under manager "B" I spread wide dissatisfaction and eventually left. Manager "A" was considerate, respectful, gave me space, and recognized the work I did... and so I quickly became the top person. Manager "B" used the carrot-and-stick approach, except without the carrot, and within months I pretty much gave up on doing a lot of good work.

My God. You worked for that fucker too? :instinctively reaches for pistole:

Crap. There goes a year of therapy down the drain...

[footfootfoot]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

sorry, no time to read this thread.....too busy working!

O Yeah.

[footfootfoot]

hmmm apropos of nothing, I swear.
a certain dwellar, who shall be nameless, dies and goes to saint peter who looks at the big book (the akashic record, if you must know) and asks the dwellar's name.

"hmmm." comes the reply.

"spelling?" St. Pete queries.

"hmmm."

"Age?" taxes The saint.

"hmmm."

"WHAT?" demands the dwellar.

"Well, you say you are 60, but according to your billing records, you are 108."

[John Adams]

Originally Posted by BigV

spoken like someone who's never met a proxy server...

I'm just sayin...

Give me the name of the employee (in my company) and I can tell you everything they have done including every command they have entered on a piece of equipment, time they logged in, logged out etc. Upper management chooses not to "see" certain things. The employees have no idea we are collecting all this data.

[BobT]

what kind of company do you work for?

[9th Engineer]

Is it a concious decision not to let the employees know, or just something that never comes up in conversation?

[Shawnee123]

Originally Posted by John Adams--founder of freedom

Give me the name of the employee (in my company) and I can tell you everything they have done including every command they have entered on a piece of equipment, time they logged in, logged out etc. Upper management chooses not to "see" certain things. The employees have no idea we are collecting all this data.

Hmm...where is the "freedom" in this, oh founder?

[morethanpretty]

i used to be a student aid. I ran outta things to do (I couldn't clean his office or else he would lose all of his stuff), I would either play on the net, sleep, bitch at my training student aid (she is Stupid!--capital "S" because she is the embodiment of the word), or (rarely) work on homework. I had this teach for 3 outta my 7 classes. The principal claim I lived in that office. Although I goofed off alot my teach loved/loves me and tell me how much he misses my work now that I grad. I did more than just my job (keep records of our fundraiser) I re-organized it, re-made it, and popularized it. Sadly it will probably be gone next year b/c he cannot find another student to keep it up and he doesn't have time to. In addition to my work with the fundraiser I kept tournament records, helped organize them and his class lessons/grades/attendance and all of his $ records. And lots of "little" jobs.
In my current job I goof off alot but at the same time I am normally working. I like to reorganize our stuff, and the management will always ask me to do the extra b/c they know I'll do it well. I normally work 6-8hrs at a time and I might take one "break". I hate taking breaks tho unless I'm hungry and when my coworkers aren't working I'm severly pissed b/c the burden then falls on me.

[morethanpretty]

Just felt I needed to brag about myself...I'm done for now.

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

I was a poor girl who went to college without a single PENNY from my parents and got more 'real world experience' in that time than you have likely had in your entire union-protected life. You say you have hours and sometimes DAYS without anything to do on the job - and you consider that 'hard work'? Try keeping up with an ER nurse for a single shift. He/she doesn't get hours off to surf, he/she gets neither lunch nor dinner on a 12 hour shift when the ambulances keep rolling in. And if you're going to say, he/she chose the job, so did you. Quit raging at your convenient scapegoat. If you don't like your life, learn another skill, broaden your options, do something about it. If you really like your situation, lose the chip on the shoulder.

I am a poor girl without a penny, but I haven't been able to get help for college (so far). The problem is I need my father's financial information to fill out the FAFSA and he would not give it to me until it was too late to apply for that year. And no one, I repeat, NO ONE, would even consider me for loans unless I had already done the FAFSA.

When I finally did get it done, I wasn't eligible for grants (so far I don't know about the loans... but I should be able to get them *crosses fingers*) because me and my dad made too much together. But I think under $25,000 each per year is not nearly enough to pay for college on my own. And I haven't gotten financial aid in anything from my dad since I got a job when I was 16. I am definitely open to suggestions as to where to get loans and similar things, seeing as how I haven't been able to find any helpful ones yet. I have also applied for scholarships, and no luck there as of yet. But I keep trying.

I'm not trying to pick on you, but just because you were able to get loans and stuff doesn't mean that everyone else can. There is a large population of students that make just enough that they don’t get help, but not quite enough to pay for college all on their own. That is whey there are loans, but again, so far I haven’t been able to get them because of my father.

I have only been able to go to college part time because it was all out of pocket and that was all I could afford. Just recently I got tuition reimbursement through my job, but that only covers about 50% of all of the expenses I incur when I go to school.

I will admit that college can be a lot harder than working at a regular job. Things also work differently. At college, you can work and study constantly and still have room for improvement. The difference is that at a job sometimes there is only so much you can do. That doesn't make those employees left with nothing to do less than you. It just means they are doing something different and they don't have to work as hard, and many times can't. But that doesn’t mean they are “slacking” and need to be fired.

9th, you say that all those who goof off at work should be fired because they could be getting so much done. But that isn’t always the case. You are in a completely different field (i.e. school) then the workforce so you can’t say that what you do is the same. I think it is much more difficult then working a regular job and that is because you need to apply yourself constantly to be where you want to be. I just want you to see that most jobs don’t work that way. And again, that doesn’t make them less than you. Not everyone can be a bioengineer. There are many other jobs that need workers to do them, and many of those jobs will have some free time in between the tasks that must be completed. Just my 2 cents.

Edit: I should add that I work full time so I am no longer pennyless, but I don't have any extra money after bills to pay for college.