If you are in the job market, be extremely careful if a recruiter or member of HR tries to promote “free lunch” as part of a company’s benefits package. This is a warning sign that you may be about to sign on with a workhorse.
It sounds wonderful at first! “Oh!” you think, “how cool! I won’t have to bring a lunch and/or go out to lunch every day, which will be hugely convenient, and I won’t have to spend money on lunch, which means I’ll have more spending money to waste on frivolous, depreciating liabilities!”
But what you may be missing ..read more
This is a followup article to part I.
The best part about corporate buzzwords is the smug look of self-satisfaction across the faces of the idiots who use them by the dozen. It’s as if every time a buzzword spews forth from their mouths they are so proud of themselves for being cool.
I have been in meetings lasting over two hours where literally nothing gets said or accomplished. Well, I should rephrase that. A lot gets said as far as actual words spoken, but no information is conveyed. And after the meeting, each side walks out with an air of smugness ..read more
Some coworkers and I compiled most of the words in this list while listening to people speak over the course of one month at one of my jobs. After about one month we were ready to kill ourselves so we had to stop.
When using these terms, it is important that you never use their actual English equivalent. For example, never say “talk” or “meet” when you could say “touch base” instead, because people might not understand you. I’m not kidding here. Sometimes it makes communicating difficult. I avoid talking like this whenever possible so as not to sound like a ..read more
Most people will not follow the advice in this article because it precludes living a flashy lifestyle, and most people would rather look like they’re rich than actually increase their net worth.
Please note this article assumes you are making at least $40,000 per year. It’s possible to retire with at least $1 million if you are making less, but doing so requires you to live even more frugally in the process.
Let’s assume you want to retire at or before 65 (preferrably before, because working sucks!). Also assume you don’t even start working until you are 25. So you’ve got 40 ..read more
There are few things worse than going to work while sick. Now don’t get me wrong, there are some people whose jobs are so important that they do need to go to work even when they are sick. But if your job title doesn’t begin with “President” and end with “of the United States of America,” or something of that caliber, you probably are not in that group of people.
People who come to work sick:
a) feel like crap, thus reduce the efficiency of their own work
b) spread germs, thus make other people sick, thus futher reduce the efficiency of the ..read more
Most people are bad with money, but for some reason, most people in the corporate world are even worse with money. I have never met so many people with upper five-figure and lower six-figure salaries who are drowning in debt as I did in the corporate world.
Corporate employees can’t seem to stop spending money. Maybe they need a new BMW to be seen in for 20 seconds in the morning as they park in the parking garage. Maybe they need the all-white $180 designer dress shirt that looks identical to other, cheaper brands. Or maybe they need to eat at ..read more
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Nothing pisses me off more than having to stay late and work unpaid overtime (especially when it’s the result of poor decisions by company leadership), but the one thing I’ve never figured out is why everyone in the world doesn’t share that same opinion.
When the frequent announcement was made that we “need to stay late” to finish some project (an announcement that usually came around 4:45pm when you were starting to think about getting ready to go home), you might think that there would be heard a collective groan mixed with varying levels of profanity, but you would be ..read more
Want an easy way to find out who all the idiots are at your company? Make the following announcement:
Next Monday is Hawaiian Shirt Day!!!
Anyone who gets excited is an idiot. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt doesn’t change anything about your job. It’s like if I told you I was going to punch you in the nose, and you got upset, but then I told you I was going to let you wear a Hawaiian shirt while I punched you in the nose. Would that change anything? Would it make getting punched in the nose fun?
Seriously.
Bookmark It
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As much as nearly every aspect of corporate life annoys me, there is one thing that never ceases to completely dumbfound me: no one in the corporate world, not even those in the upper echelons of management, knows how to use a toilet without making a complete mess.
At first I thought this might be an isolated event; I thought perhaps it’s just this particular bathroom on this particular floor near my desk. I thought I must have just had bad luck in that the bathroom nearest my desk is the messy one.
Nope!
I realized this was not the case the first ..read more
A while ago someone asked me what it was like to work in Systems Development at a large firm. I shared with them my experience:
Long hours. Long. My first job out of college, and my introduction to the corporate world, was in systems development. We regularly worked 50-60 hour weeks and sometimes mandatory weekends, but systems development and programming are always salaried positions so you will never get overtime pay. Employers hire programmers as overtime-exempt because they know how much you will end up working and don’t want to pay you overtime.
Imagine it’s 4:45pm and you’re ready to go home ..read more
You are here because corporate life sucks. You hate your job, you hate your work environment, and you probably hate your coworkers, too.
