Fuckers

...or fucking idiots, depending on how generous I happen to feel like being.

Listen, people, how hard can it be to understand? If you abruptly fire -- oh, oop, sorry, lay off, wouldn't want the Unemployment folks to deny me benefits -- someone, with absolutely no warning, it is utterly stupid to expect that she is going to be thrilled with you afterward. You know that expression of polite agreement she wears on her face when you say how much you appreciate her coming out to "help out," when you tell her that she is "just awesome" and "amazing" and so on? She is making that face to avoid either screaming at you or laughing hysterically. Your credibility as people who care about her is pretty much shot at this point, so stop trying to fake it. She is working for you because you were a jerk and left her abruptly out of work and she needs money to fill that gaping hole in her financial plans, and because she cares about a few of her former co-workers (who are genuinely sorry about what happened to her), not because she's doing you a "favor" or acting out of any sense of friendship or loyalty with regards to yourselves. Do the smart thing and leave her the hell alone so she can do the work you're paying her to do, the work that would have been done cheaper and more effectively if you hadn't been in such a hurry to put the new regime in place.

Oh, and while you're at it, it's really cowardly to not tell any of the other staff or faculty what happened, and to use her temporary return as an excuse to pretend like she is "leaving soon" as if it were some sort of voluntary decision on her part instead of being honest and telling them that she'd already "left" and that it was entirely involuntary and unexpected by her. Furthermore, it is either an act of incredible stupidity or astonishingly bad taste or amazing cruelty to tempt her out of her temporary office with an offer of free food, without bothering to tell her that the food was for a party to celebrate the departure of another employee for a better-paying job.

Through your insensitivity, you've just guaranteed that there is no way in hell she's ever coming back after she gets her paycheck, it being poor and insufficient compensation for putting up with these truckloads of crap.

...on reflection, I think my original ungenerous assessment is the better one.

Oh, and here's a moment worthy of one of those evil Simpsons laughs -- the woman whom they hired to replace one of my immediate supervisors quit the day she was due to start because (a) there's a fuckload of things that have apparently been neglected since the dawn of the Ice Age, very necessary and important things, and (b) they'd promised her by inference that she was going to have an assistant (me), and neglected to tell her that I wasn't actually going to be there when she showed up.

So...

Ha-ha!

Comments

[musey_me]

Oh my - they do sound like completely incompetent and STUPID people. Just keep thinking to yourself about the fact that you are now pocketing more of the money.....

[Phantom Scribbler]

Wow, I think you ought to take all the "w" keys off their keyboards when you finish. Fucking idiots, indeed.

[Rana]

*eyeroll* I was holding it together until that food thing. Talk about shoving me over the edge. The worst part was the head idiot looking about and wanting to make sure everyone was there -- including me, who she specifically mentioned as someone she was waiting to show up (she didn't see me standing in the corner, trying to not be noticed) -- before launching into the "thanks for being so wonderful" speech to the other person.

GRRR. Hate. Hate. Hate. (Though I do honestly believe it was more stupidity than meanness involved.)

[russianviolets]

Rana, I don't know how you did not lose it right there. I was pretty well screwed to the ceiling just reading that. Unimaginable fuckers!!!!!

[Ron Sullivan]

I trust you charged them an arm and a leg and the gonads of the top honchoid and a roasted firstborn to be named later for doing this on a contract basis?

Oh. And there's a work-to-rule variant for contract workers too, of course: Do only what was explicitly named in the contract. Be sure that any omissions are such as will be noticed only after you get paid.

And if you really want to be nice to your former co-workers, fill one of them -- the most trusted -- in on what they can expect to find, and maybe even how to remedy it.

Why yes, I have been shat upon by the oleaginously ~caring~ sort of manager in my life. I hope some readers can benefit from my and your bits of l' esprit d' escalier.

Now shake the dust from your sandals and stroll onward into freelancedom, and congrats on that!

[Chris Clarke]

Why yes, I have been shat upon by the oleaginously ~caring~ sort of manager in my life.

I said I was sorry, Ron.

[Rana]

*snort*

Believe me, Ron, my contract and the promise of payment was all that was keeping me together at that moment.

I am going to be filling in one co-worker -- one of the people I was working with and the only one who really spoke up for me after I was gone -- but several of the newly realized problems are really huge, and have been lurking under the surface for years, unnoticed, like giant jagged rocks. To say I'm relieved that I'm not going to be part of the group tasked with fixing them is an understatement.

[Jill Smith]

Denial is a really, really powerful force.

I had an interview on Thursday - found out on Friday that the CEO is a major, major dirtbag. So much so, that Forbes magazine wrote an article about what a dirtbag he is. He manages to employ people who insist that he is just misunderstood. Hah.

Frustrated I am, to be sure.

[Rana]

You're well out of that, Jill!

I could work up a beautiful rant riffing off your comment and generalizing it out to citizens and voters and the people who take advantage of them...

... but it's a lovely day and I'm going outside to visit a garden and buy some silk instead. :)

[Jimbo]

I just can't believe what stupid idiots these people are. The mind truly boggles. What's the deal with waiting for you to show up and the party? Does head idiot have a death wish?

It just makes me feel so-o-o-o happy to hear that the woman they hired saw what was happening and pulled out because they are stupid idiots. Such poetic justice—and alas the world is greatly lacking in poetic justice these days.

jwb

[ianqui]

See! Like I said. Now you get to bitch about the employers. I hope that's at least satisfying.

[dale]

Sheesh! This is getting surreal.