Tundras live: Dumb Dad Jokes, Incorrect Opinions, and Relationship Advice.

apologies in advance...I'm remembering shit now.


At the beer distributor...Leadership decided to send the VP's to leadership training.

I think it was "Discover Leadership training" or something like that.

one of the owner's friends went & recommended it...the owner did not possess the ability to have organic thoughts.

well...I went and it was awesome.

I was a prime example of a close minded, educated, low patience accountant.

that class taught me a shit load about leadership & dealing with assholes.

it also taught me that I was WAY better/smarter than my cohorts.

the class was multiple days of all those mgt books you know...but in an applied manner.

good shit.

soon after all the VP's went thru the course...there was clearly a new mood.
Folks were tired of peoples bullshit
we could see it now.

After I got booted, 5 other good guys left.

see, the flaw was:
leadership/ownership was the problem.
they didn't fix the problem.
they fixed all the people that knew what the problem was.


Beer distributors make you think you can't find a better job....HAH!
I guess most suck-ass places do the same.

 

This.

and very few people know how to run a meeting.

 

At the beginning of our 3-day shift cycle, or tour, we have a captains meeting on Teams. The shift battalion chief runs it, and usually someone from the training division, and also the dep. chief of ops are on. Usually they are a waste of time but occaisonally there is important info given out, which usually right after the county BC meeting. Longest one I've ever been on was about 30 mins, the shortest about 10. Then there is the quarterly report out which runs about 3 hours. Thankfully, this is optional to attend and only suggested to watch...so far. The latest thing is the pointy heads decreed that they be called "captain's meetings" and not "tour meetings" and that all cameras had to be turned on. This last one was so everyone would be "engaged" in the meeting, meaning the uppers could see everyone's immediate reaction to some of the sheer stupidity they come up with from time to time. And yes, our department also has meetings about meetings that largely focus on how some at the shift/training admin level aren't getting done...mostly because these folks are tied up in meetings about meetings. I never know from one shift to the next if my district chief is even at work because of this. Guess its a good thing this ain't my first rodeo OR goat roping.

 

I had a previous employer who instituted "meeting free Fridays" so people could actually get work done. Hate to say it, life in corporate finance has a shit ton of meetings.

 

what about job interviews?

I want to hear some stories about folks you interviewed or when you interviewed for a job.

 

I think they have done studies where the typical attention span of a person is somewhere between 30 - 45 minutes. Meetings need to be relevant to the people attending and limited to less than an hour.

What I would call "administrative meetings" need to be scaled back and switched over to a group email since these are typically occurring to inform others of something. An email can be read, archived or whatever and is usually better as long as it gets read.

Don't even get me started on millions of useless or long ass emails that no one reads...

 

I support the sale Microsoft cloud products. Both of my teams are technical, and we have to meet with clients and sellers. I probably have two dozen meetings in a slow week. My direct reports have busy weeks sometimes where they're on with clients more than 8 hours in a day. We drink our own wine and we all work from home, so all of our meetings are via Teams.

 

I hate meetings that could have been an email - and there are a lot. And good emails are a skill more people need to learn. Short, to the point, and you can always follow up with more information if people are unclear. Very important for people who get a lot of email...

My company deletes everything over 2 years old.

 

A process that has been completely corrupted in the interest of (three letters) and ensures you cannot truly assess an individual’s ability to do the job. Resoundingly supported by the other side of HR that ensures you cannot move or fire someone for the shit performance you couldn’t screen for in the first place.

 

Not the interview itself but when I turned down a job offer from a small EPC firm to take my current job, the CEO of the firm phoned me so I could explain to him why I wasn't accepting the job they were offering.

 

I remember a business communication training I attended early on in my career. We went over a case study of the chief engineer for 3 Mile Island and the email he sent out to leadership during the nuclear melt-down. It was something like 3 pages long and at the very end, he mentioned the nuclear reactor was in melt-down. It always stuck with me and is something I keep in mind when writing emails.

Moral of the story, start every email with the most actionable item so the eyes go there first. Then if you insist, you can continue with the details that no one will read.

 

preach, brother.

 

I would get roped into participating on hiring committees, some in person and some with Zoom. Over the years, the selection process would continue to get more refined and difficult for the candidates, bordering on truly sadistic. I call it the ratchet effect.

We would put people through the ringer for any position. One person told me later -- you guys were mean. I think we developed a reputation for a place not to work and this contributed to a downward spiral in the organization, where we were hiring the wrong people for the wrong reasons. And then, the people in charge of hiring would leave, and the ratchet process would start all over again.

 

Oh yeah.

When I was in university, I interviewed for a job as an intern at a local brewery.

The two guys doing the interview were the most uptight people I've ever met. One of the other students said she cracked a joke to break the ice and they didn't even react.

You work in a brewery. Get over yourself.

 

We had a lot of standing meetings in my last job, as well as other meetings that would get scheduled. We would have meetings to talk about meetings, and the best way to have meetings, which was a good thing honestly. Many of our meetings were complicated with a lot of moving parts. Anyway, the meetings were something that we generally had figured out, but it took a long time to get to that point.

It was the people constantly trying to pop into my office, or find me, or wanting to meet with me, or sending me long emails or VMs. Towards the end we had people hired just to coordinate meetings. That was good, because then I only had to try to hide from one person.

 

And this was just the daytime meetings. I don’t want to talk about the night meetings.

 

My .02 re: meetings. They do serve an invaluable purpose and without them a business would be like a ship without a rudder. It comes down to who's in charge/what type of man owns it. And, yes, I said "man". I work for a privately-held, 3rd-generation company. One man owns it. We are the largest company of our type in the U.S. by a very significant margin over our competitors by a factor of 5. We are the 2nd largest in North America, just behind a Canadian outfit. For now. I am honored and proud to work under his leadership and guidance and exceed our clients demands consistently. I can say that without meetings, what we do and how we do it couldn't be done successfully. It takes the right man to run things.

 

And one last funny-not-funny thought about my meetings. The people who had a meeting scheduled, but would want a pre-meeting before the meeting, or would want another meeting ASAP after the scheduled meeting, followed by more meetings.

 

Absolutely. Meetings should be to the point and nothing more and have only the essential people there. If I'm doing a design review, the sales and accounting departments don't need to be a part of it. You get too many non essential people in meetings and thats where stupid questions start being asked and then they go off on tangents that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. When I led those meetings and all these "extra" people were added to them I was real good at shutting them down right away and basically telling them they are here only to listen.

 

My last job interview was in January 1986..
I'm still working there..

 

My dad and brother briefly worked for a construction company. It grew very quickly while they worked there and the owner was struggling with the realization that he wasn't able to personally oversee every single project they were working on and that trying to do so was dragging the company down.

 

I'd like to run this by y'all.
I know 'whoever' monitors our internet business; searches, browsing, shopping, etc.
I know that ads appear on my Facebook page for a specific item the next day when I buy it on Amazon.

But today I took a pic of my wife's sweater she had made for her office Christmas sweater day.
I then texted it to my daughter.
I never posted it online or uploaded it into a photo app.



5 minutes later this ad shows up on Facebook and it has never popped up before..


Coincidence or am I paranoid?

 

It's a real thing I believe. Camera permissions.

 

My company doesn't-require-but-strongly-suggests regular meetings between managers and direct reports individually. I have people who really need them - come to the meeting with a list of questions or problems, and I have people who send me an IM 5 minutes before the meeting: "you good? I'm good" - and that's that. I'm glad for both types; but one of my management hangups is that important things don't wait on a meeting, so I prefer that latter group.

 

Sure, that scenario has probably happened a million times over throughout history, and it will definitely continue to happen. My boss does have men in positions of responsibility that he delegates to, and they all do it exceptionally well, but every decision is his to ultimately make. I've never worked for a more caring, compassionate, savvy, hard-working and dedicated man in my life and I probably never will. Don't want to. Won't

 

I've told this story here before, but it's pretty funny.

About 5 years ago now I got a couple of ads for a widget that I'd discussed with my wife the previous evening as we were watching TV. I hadn't searched Google for it, and there wasn't any other reason for the ads except that someone somewhere knew I'd been talking about it. The phone sits next to me on the table as we sit and watch TV in the evenings, so it's very obvious someone is listening.

A few weeks later I got blasted with ads for anti-snoring devices.

 

Pretty sure apple helped prove that the Chinese spy app with short videos is ALWAYS listening and filming. I'm sure they're not alone.

 

A few years ago my wife and I were joking about how there are no secrets between us if we discuss them with our phones or even the internet connected tv around. To test the theory we discussed the joy of becoming pregnant again. Within days she was getting ads for maternity clothes and baby shit. IMHO, Snowden opened our eyes to a lot of what we gave up in regard privacy. It's no coincidence and ai only helps them advance the monitoring now.