The Stupidest Company I Ever Worked For
I once worked for a "startup" company that was actually just unprofitable. When I was there they had been in business for 15 years, gone through many iterations of layoffs, and had enough sketchy business practices that Visa and MasterCard threatened to no longer do business with the startup. Not the business chose not to use Visa and MasterCard because of fees, but Visa no longer wanted to recognize the company as a real viable business, literally this is fraud and if you don't change xyz in 6 months we are out.
They sold job postings and had planned for years to move into the Canadian market. I was tasked with the job of starting market research into job postings in Canada. It took me all of five minutes to see Canada offered free job postings to businesses and helped unemployed individuals find skill level appropriate work, again for free, paid for by their tax dollars. Years they had planned to tackle this market for me to use Google and five minutes to find their plan fully non-viable. Why pay for something when your government does it better and for free without selling your contact information?
So knowing all this incorrect information really irritated me everyday walking into the office. Also my work husband telling me how many men would use the bathroom to poop and not wash their hands after. Sure that is disgusting, but I was especially horrified when he told me the man leaving the bathroom had just pooped and that guy walked straight to the community ice machine, stuck his fecal ridden hands into the bin, used the common ice scoop, and got himself a Nalgene bottle full of ice.
Work husband and I immediately came up with a plan and executed it. We printed off signs.
Well one guy, Rob, whose name is actually Rob because fuck you Rob, said it was racist because it said African Proverb. And clearly that meant a black person. I really lose his train of thought here. Any educated person knows Africa is made up of a variety of ethnicities but I wouldn't say the company employed many educated people to be fair. Then attributing a common quote to a black person was somehow racist? I didn't get it. So work husband went to HR and confessed to printing the signs and asked how was it racist. Blonde HR Bitch said it was assumed the sign presumed black people don't wash their hands. Which given a second of thought is far more racist than the presumption. 1) Not all people in Africa look the same or have the same skin color (again its a huge continent). 2) If anything the sign would be a black person reminding others, like the companies nearly entire white staff, to wash their hands. And truly the sign was directed at white people because it was those twats who weren't washing their hands.
So the company was beyond dead to me at that point. Some say spite is a motivator, I believe it is an Milky Way Proverb. While maybe not healthy its not exactly wrong either. So I dipped out of the company, but not before squealing on some of the illegal activities, like how they didn't protect data, getting my manager fired, and applying for a 'dream job' that my obnoxious co-worked wanted.
Oh yea I got that job, and it is actually fantastic. Double the pay too. The CEO was fired, the company is still struggling, and they still have a rating of unaccredited and 2 stars from the Better Business Bureau. Some people complain about their jobs a lot, and some places are actually just shitty. But when you're in a job you hate you have to be like the lion, sleep through the day then get a job at Disney World. - Pangea Proverb.
They sold job postings and had planned for years to move into the Canadian market. I was tasked with the job of starting market research into job postings in Canada. It took me all of five minutes to see Canada offered free job postings to businesses and helped unemployed individuals find skill level appropriate work, again for free, paid for by their tax dollars. Years they had planned to tackle this market for me to use Google and five minutes to find their plan fully non-viable. Why pay for something when your government does it better and for free without selling your contact information?
The company, like many companies spoke to diversity. Many people say they don't see color, but it was especially true here. There was no color. 250 employees and only maybe four could get away with the last three emoji hand colors.
And four is not an arbitrary ha-ha number. It is an actual educated estimate. My cracked out little team was made up of the type of family that goes to the same golf resort beach for one week per year with the same family and says things like "my son is actually very good at baseball." Which is just code for my sons gerrymandered district is very competitive against the other non-existent teams.
And four is not an arbitrary ha-ha number. It is an actual educated estimate. My cracked out little team was made up of the type of family that goes to the same golf resort beach for one week per year with the same family and says things like "my son is actually very good at baseball." Which is just code for my sons gerrymandered district is very competitive against the other non-existent teams.
Aside from the faux diversity and bad business practices we also dabbled in casual sexism. One particular toxic manager, Laura*, liked to sit in the laps of her much younger male subordinates, some of who were married and looked uncomfortable. It was cool though, she was drunk. Daily. At work. If that wasn't an issue she had at least one openly gay salesman under her, Greg*. When a new gay man joined the company, Mike*, she immediately shouted in the office to Greg "There is a new gay at the office, you two should hook up." This was offensive for two reasons. First just because both men like men doesn't mean they should be with each other and second Greg was a grungy hipster 5 and Mike was a solid Martha's Vineyard 8. Opposite attract but not that much. I wanted to shout "hey Laura you have a hole, why not pick a stick from the office to use?"
(*names changed so I don't get charged with slander despite the fact that "Laura" was awful)
But that is not the point. There was a giant painted on quote when you entered the office.
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. - African ProverbThat shit annoyed me so much. First of all African Proverb? Africa is not one tiny place where they have the same phrases. It's a massive continent with 54 different countries with unique industries and ecosystems and 1.2 billion people, most of whom have probably never seen a wild lion. You can't just slap African Proverb on a phrase. Additionally an actual African probably knows lions, like all cats are nocturnal. They predominately hunt at night because day time tends to be hot. Also animals have preservation habits. They're not trying to overheat in a desert where water is a precious resource. So it's really no surprise that this phrase was actually coined by a Wall Street broker who probably was trying to motivate his fellow collared twats to over work. Go to Disney World and look at the lions on the safari ride, those babies are passed out all day long. They're fed and they have air conditioned rocks. Lions hunt to survive, not to buy a Montblanc pen.
So knowing all this incorrect information really irritated me everyday walking into the office. Also my work husband telling me how many men would use the bathroom to poop and not wash their hands after. Sure that is disgusting, but I was especially horrified when he told me the man leaving the bathroom had just pooped and that guy walked straight to the community ice machine, stuck his fecal ridden hands into the bin, used the common ice scoop, and got himself a Nalgene bottle full of ice.
Work husband and I immediately came up with a plan and executed it. We printed off signs.
All employees must wash hands. - African ProverbWe giggled to ourselves and taped them in the bathrooms. Sad you have to tell adults to not be fucking gross but alas. All was fine for about an hour. Until the sign got reported to HR as racist. It's worth mentioning my work husband was one of the few non-white employees at the company. How the hell was that deemed racist we wondered?
Well one guy, Rob, whose name is actually Rob because fuck you Rob, said it was racist because it said African Proverb. And clearly that meant a black person. I really lose his train of thought here. Any educated person knows Africa is made up of a variety of ethnicities but I wouldn't say the company employed many educated people to be fair. Then attributing a common quote to a black person was somehow racist? I didn't get it. So work husband went to HR and confessed to printing the signs and asked how was it racist. Blonde HR Bitch said it was assumed the sign presumed black people don't wash their hands. Which given a second of thought is far more racist than the presumption. 1) Not all people in Africa look the same or have the same skin color (again its a huge continent). 2) If anything the sign would be a black person reminding others, like the companies nearly entire white staff, to wash their hands. And truly the sign was directed at white people because it was those twats who weren't washing their hands.
So the company was beyond dead to me at that point. Some say spite is a motivator, I believe it is an Milky Way Proverb. While maybe not healthy its not exactly wrong either. So I dipped out of the company, but not before squealing on some of the illegal activities, like how they didn't protect data, getting my manager fired, and applying for a 'dream job' that my obnoxious co-worked wanted.
Oh yea I got that job, and it is actually fantastic. Double the pay too. The CEO was fired, the company is still struggling, and they still have a rating of unaccredited and 2 stars from the Better Business Bureau. Some people complain about their jobs a lot, and some places are actually just shitty. But when you're in a job you hate you have to be like the lion, sleep through the day then get a job at Disney World. - Pangea Proverb.
Comments
Post a Comment