Weird/Stupid Work Practices

allanb49 · 30-06-2010 09:50AM #1

Ok have had a few "odd" managers/practices in my time and decided to see what other jobs are like or is it just my luck,

- One company if you where robbed/being robbed you weren't to call the police you had to inform the security team in england who would phone your district manager who would contact the shop to see if you needed to call the police.

- A big irish book chain the manager would not allow you to wear socks that where navy.

- Same manager would ask you while in the middle of one job to do another then give out to you 5 minutes later for not doing the original job

- A chain in Ireland that for some reason has/had the same security code for all its shops :pac:

So anyone got any to top them?

SV · 30-06-2010 09:53AM

Similar to your being robbed one..in another job.

If there is a fire, the fire brigade is not to be called.
Rather our supervisor who will determine whether the fire brigade needs to be called and then consult another member of the management and THEN they may call the fire brigade.

I asked, what if they're not around and it's pretty bloody obvious the fire brigade is needed.."We stick to protocol around here"
I lol'd and hoped for no fires.

Banned Account · 30-06-2010 09:55AM

Nope, they're pretty amazing tbh.

Dravokivich · 30-06-2010 10:04AM

allanb49 wrote: »

- A chain in Ireland that for some reason has/had the same security code for all its shops :pac:

Right... so when do we meet up and which 1 do we hit first?

Mike 1972 · 30-06-2010 10:10AM

Ive encountered hundreds down through the years.

The majority of them resulting from the mentality that inventory (stock) must be minimised at all costs regardless of the problems, inefficiencies and sheer idiocy resulting from a basically good idea being taken to its most ludicrous extremes.

allanb49 wrote: »

A chain in Ireland that for some reason has/had the same security code for all its shops

A place I worked in onetime insisted on having passwords on computers which didnt really need them (I dont think anyone is going to fraudulently book out broken parts) and changing them every 28 days.

This pi$$€d off everyone no end as they kept forgetting their passwords (and ended up asking around for other peoples passwords and using theirs) but I came up with a simple but ingenious solution

My password was sh1t which every 28 days I alternated with shyte

Onetime my boss asked for my password (having forgotten his own) and wasnt terribly amused (probably just because he hadnt thought of it first)

AnonoBoy · 30-06-2010 10:51AM

In my last job we weren't allowed lick our fingers inbetween serving customers.

Stupid brothel management. :mad:

funk-you · 30-06-2010 10:58AM

AnonoBoy wrote: »

In my last job we weren't allowed lick our fingers inbetween serving customers.

Stupid brothel management. :mad:

Thats just nasty...

I've worked in places in the past that would take two weeks for approval to change a faulty hot-swap disk thats in a RAID5 then call you in at 3am to do it. /Nerd.

-Funk

Gillo · 30-06-2010 11:08AM

Not an actual policey, but a few years ago I was shredding a load of old paperwork- there was loads to get through. Anyway on of the parttimes came into the room where I was doing it and started chatting away.
Five minutes later I had him convinced that the origional documents had to be shredded but before doing that we needed to photocopy them in case we ever needed to refer to them again.
The poor guy figured it was a stupic idea and keeping asking why not just keep the origional's instead to which I just kept telling him "security, they have to be destroyed", by the end of the conversation he was really confused, he knew it didn't make sense but figured it might be a good idea somehow.

allanb49 · 30-06-2010 11:08AM

O yeah book shop again,

Doing the stock take for the books, magazines and stationairy during opening hours and then complaining that the figures didn't match up when doing random rechecks....

easyeason3 · 30-06-2010 11:10AM

In one job we were rationed to three pieces of toilet tissue for each toilet break in order to cut back.

Most of us were in dread going in on a Monday morning after living off cider & taco fries for the best part of the weekend

yoyo · 30-06-2010 11:10AM

Websense, Gmail and loads of other sites blocked

I wouldnt mind but I don't have a work email here (summer job) and having access to a email account would be slightly useful as its IT based! :P

Nick

Mike 1972 · 30-06-2010 11:16AM

easyeason3 wrote: »

In one job we were rationed to three pieces of toilet tissue

You should send them a copy of this

AnonoBoy · 30-06-2010 11:31AM

funk-you wrote: »

Thats just nasty...

I know, they wouldn't let us do anything fun in that place.

mick_jt · 30-06-2010 12:49PM

In the Dáil we are only allowed to claim €15,000 in expenses without giving receipts or else €25,000 with receipts on top of our huge salaries. How stupid is that? I mean we should be getting more from the taxpayer there are some lucky people out there who have no jobs and we are made live like peasants. This country is mad, mad I tell ya!!!

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 30-06-2010 12:58PM

Gillo wrote: »

Not an actual policey, but a few years ago I was shredding a load of old paperwork- there was loads to get through. Anyway on of the parttimes came into the room where I was doing it and started chatting away.
Five minutes later I had him convinced that the origional documents had to be shredded but before doing that we needed to photocopy them in case we ever needed to refer to them again.
The poor guy figured it was a stupic idea and keeping asking why not just keep the origional's instead to which I just kept telling him "security, they have to be destroyed", by the end of the conversation he was really confused, he knew it didn't make sense but figured it might be a good idea somehow.

I'd say that, at the end of the conversation, he thought you were a complete idiot for actaully thinking it made sense and going along with it!!

mikemac · 30-06-2010 02:03PM

We had a lotto syndicate, everyone involved from lowly plebs like me to my mighty assistant manager who scares me realy

Management found out and grasped what would happen if we won and we all walked. The whole department would shut down and so would every other department as we're frontline.
So we got a stern email from HR and it was shut down.

And then restarted a few weeks later and we never sent emails, you walk around the office to get the money.
HR found out again and there was a meeting and we got another bollicking.

Realy, it's our own money, we buy the tickets at lunch but it's more then frowned upon by the top brass here

kylith · 30-06-2010 02:09PM

I used to work in a sandwich place that insisted that all fillings be taken out of sandwiches not sold at the end of the day and re-used the next day. Basically your sandwich could have been mauled by 4 different people twice a day for a week.

I've also worked in a place where the boss wouldn't let us put through credit cards until a certain date, then used to go mad that there was no money coming in.

MitchKoobski · 30-06-2010 02:16PM

In the event of fire, make your way to the nearest fire exit.

But don't wait around to make sure all the customers are out.
Don't walk past the paint aisle cos that **** will explode.
Make sure you clock in, cos that how our roll call will work. If you're not clocked in, you werent in the building.
Aaaaaand when you do leave the building, the meeting area will be across the carpark.
Standing next to the Tesco petrol station.

To summarise, in the event of a row of warehouses going on fire, leave as quick as you can, save your own ass and then stand next to the highly flammable petrol station (Tesco Ardkeen carpark in Waterford.)

Duggy747 · 30-06-2010 02:27PM

Working in the soul-sucking vortex that was Lidl was an odd place. German mentality in the Irish workforce - It just doesn't work. Everybody, including the managers, were completely expendable. They could have you replaced in a day.

You're expected to scan 35 items a minute on the till, any less than 30 and you're out. Sounds a lot easier than done, especially when you can only go as fast as the customer can unload their trolley.

You're expected to know all codes for fruit & veg, you weren't allowed to look at the sheet beside you for reference as that "wastes valuable time"

You could get fired if you didn't show up for work on your day off. This happened to countless amounts of people I worked with who were rung up to come in on their only day off in the week.

Kicking a football in the warehouse got a manager sacked, he was a sound guy to work with too! :mad:

I was asked by a the dickhead, brown-nosing, replacement manager to sort out all the rotten fruit and veg..............the smell and filth was unbearable..............THEN he comes into the warehouse and complains at the state of my uniform while I'm knee-deep in smelly mush and threatens to have me sacked!! :eek: Looking back I dunno why I didn't chuck the rotten peppers in my hand into his fùckin' face.

You had less than 15 minutes to unload a pathetically overstacked pallet. You needed skill to unwrap the shrink wrap or else the whole lot came crashing down on top of you or a customer.

All pallets had to be perfectly alligned in a straight line, the Germans expected this sort of ridiculious efficeny with the awful pallet trucks they gave us.

Someone lost their job for not stacking carrots correctly. :pac:

You were only allowed a half an hour break on a 12 hour shift.

There's no light switches in the kitchen, only sensors. So when you're eating your lunch the light will turn off after 2 minutes and you have to stand up to activate the sensor again!

The kitchen consists of fine Lidl products such as a kettle and a microwave..............both of which would constantly break and Lidl would refuse to give us replacements. A microwave exploded once and it took them nearly 2 months to give us another kettle.

A customer asked me a question about a product, I explained what it was and then the manager came up to me and gave me a bollicking: "Don't fùckin' waste time on them"

I only kept that job because it put me through college. Awful, awful place to work in. The people you work with are usually sound but the company will suck any bit of joy out of everyone.

Dudess · 30-06-2010 02:29PM

Duggy747 wrote: »

Someone lost their job for not stacking carrots correctly. :pac:

LOL, if horrible...

And I heard Lidl was all right to work for.

easyeason3 · 30-06-2010 02:32PM

Dudess wrote: »

LOL, if horrible...

And I heard Lidl was all right to work for.

Duggy don't lie.

Funnily enough of often thought that the staff in Lidl were the most likely people to arrive to work with a shotgun. Now I know why.

Duggy747 · 30-06-2010 02:35PM

Dudess wrote: »

LOL, if horrible...

And I heard Lidl was all right to work for.

The pay might be high (I was on €11) but, fùck me, it really almost felt like it wasn't worth it.

This was years ago and since I left apparantley Lidl have gotten their act together. I was working with them the time Lidl employees started selling stories to the papers about shoddy treatment.

kylith · 30-06-2010 02:42PM

Well, that explains like the woman on the checkout fires my stuff through like it's on fire. It's a pain in the arse if you're trying to pack as you go.

pablomakaveli · 30-06-2010 02:46PM

When i worked in the train station every time a train came in i was supposed to ring the guys in charge of the signals and stuff to inform them that the train was complete which basically means that there are no carriages missing.

I was told that this was so that they'd know a carriage had'nt detached somewhere up the line and been left behind. This was kind of pointless because 1: The guys in the signalhouse could see the train and 2: a missing carriage would'nt be something the driver and guard would miss.

starbelgrade · 30-06-2010 02:47PM

I used to work in a place where, if you rolled in a little late (say 10am) with a faint whiff of booze off you from the night before, the boss was far from pleased, especially, for some odd reason, if you popped out at 10.30am to get a breakfast roll & a cofffee.

I mean, FFS, how else are you expected to sober up without a proper breakfast?

30-06-2010 02:54PM

kylith wrote: »

Well, that explains like the woman on the checkout fires my stuff through like it's on fire. It's a pain in the arse if you're trying to pack as you go.

You don't pack as you go in lidl, you feck everything into the trolley then use the packing counters...

phill106 · 30-06-2010 02:56PM

bluewolf wrote: »

You don't pack as you go in lidl, you feck everything into the trolley then use the packing counters...

Correction, thats what the sign in lidl says customers do

kylith · 30-06-2010 03:09PM

bluewolf wrote: »

You don't pack as you go in lidl, you feck everything into the trolley then use the packing counters...

If you've a wheely trolley to bring stuff home in it saves time to put it on the belt in order of least breakable to most breakable and pack as you go. After a while you get pretty good at Shopping Tetris.

Otherwise you have to pack the trolley, unpack it onto the belt, pack it again, then unpack it at the shelf and pack your bags. PITH.

Uriel. · 30-06-2010 03:15PM

Duggy747 wrote: »

A microwave exploded once and it took them nearly 2 months to give us another kettle.

Hmmm... to be honest if the microwave exploded in my job I would probably ask them for a replacement microwave rather than a second kettle.

Boskowski · 30-06-2010 03:20PM

We have to dress properly Mon-Thu but we can wear jeans/t-shirts on a Friday. We have no customer contact, only on the phone.

We also have an office abraod which we also only communicate electronically with. When there is a bank holiday in that country we are also allowed to wear jeans.

We must sound so much crisper on the phone when we're not wearing jeans...:pac:

me_right_one · 30-06-2010 03:25PM

allanb49 wrote: »

Ok have had a few "odd" managers/practices in my time and decided to see what other jobs are like or is it just my luck,

- One company if you where robbed/being robbed you weren't to call the police you had to inform the security team in england who would phone your district manager who would contact the shop to see if you needed to call the police.

- A big irish book chain the manager would not allow you to wear socks that where navy.

- Same manager would ask you while in the middle of one job to do another then give out to you 5 minutes later for not doing the original job

- A chain in Ireland that for some reason has/had the same security code for all its shops :pac:

So anyone got any to top them?

I feel your pain

Weird/Stupid Work Practices

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