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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/sep/13/new-zealand-man-copywriter-clown-redundancy
An Auckland advertising copywriter brought a clown to his redundancy meeting, as first reported in the New Zealand Herald on Friday. New Zealand legally requires employers to allow workers the option of bringing a support person to serious disciplinary meetings, usually relating to an employee's prospective dismissal.
After FCB New Zealand lost a significant client and began layoffs, Josh Thompson, who had reportedly been with the company for five months, received an ominous email from his bosses that read: "Bad news. We're having a meeting to discuss your role."
Faced with the task of securing an appropriate support person for the potentially tense meeting, Thompson, a comedian who performs under the name Joshua Jack, said: "I thought it's best to bring in a professional, and so I paid $200 and hired a clown."
The clown, who Thompson refers to as "Joe", crafted balloon animals throughout the meeting, including a poodle. His antics were squeaky, and Thompson's bosses had to request he quieten down several times.
"It's further understood," reported the Herald, "that the clown mimed crying when the redundancy paperwork was handed over."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Tuesday September 17 2019, @11:01PM (2 children)
Boss wanted a feature complete demo by a certain date, the demo didn't have to work, just had to have all the tick boxes checked. I protested, this was a lousy way to do things. But I got a $1k bonus if memory serves for doing my part. Boss wanted the project done by a certain date, I said yea, not gonna happen no matter how many hours we put in, maybe 3 months later we'd have a usable demo if we busted our asses. Got dinged for a bad attitude. Boss thought unit tests were a Bad Idea (tm) and a Waste of Time (tm), got told in a status meeting that if I did them I'd get fired.
The "Team Lead" was a blowhard who told the boss what she wanted to hear. He'd come in around 3 PM, immediately go to lunch. Meanwhile I'd come in at 7 AM, find his checkins broke all my unit tests. I was smart enough to run a private VCS, so I'd just revert his shit and continue on.
One day boss scheduled a meeting for why we were behind schedule (hint: her golden boy kept breaking everyone elses code and not showing up for work until the rest of us went home for the day). 2-3 days before this meeting we'd all noticed everyone had performance reviews scheduled, except me. Yep, day of the "why are we behind" meeting boss fired me. At the exit interview, for the first and last time I unloaded. Told the HR woman exactly what was going on, and gave my predictions for what was going to happen.
HR woman changed my fired status to laid off so I could get unemployment.
Bonus #1: Every damned one of my predictions came true, and the project never completed. The boss went out on maternity leave and was asked to not come back when it was over. And golden boy was fired when boss went.
Bonus #2: Did I mention I kept a private Version Control System? Yeah, the company used Microsoft Visual SourceSafe, which sucked in every way you can think of and several more you couldn't think of. But they only kept their newer software under VSS. Bear with me, this gets really good :)
About 2 weeks after I got fired/laid off a co-worker, who had been at the company for 10-15 years, asked if I knew where a certain PC was. 5-10 years ago they had hired a DSP consultant to do a bunch of DSP work (the company made systems that both relied on phone DTMF and voice encoding).
As I was the DSP/Linux expert they gave me a tower that had their DSP code on it. I didn't need it, never hooked it up to a keyboard/monitor, and left it under my desk. Turns out the day I got fired/laid off IT came in and, um, reformatted all the PCs in my cube.
Yep, there was no backup of that DSP software that rumor said cost them a cool $250k to create, and was the bread and butter of their products.
Don't take this as me slagging on female managers, anything but. I've worked for several female managers with no issue. The coin toss just said this episode was a female. On the other hand, "golden boy" was an eagle scout a good 10 years younger than me.
Ahh, WTF, they're still in business [indyme.com]
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday September 18 2019, @11:54AM
HR is there for the company not you... it wasn't to get you unemployment, but "F... he's pissed off and during the denial of UE benefits process all this internal bad stuff which I also know is true will go public and its cheaper to buy his silence (aside from posting on SN)"
Of course UE varies by state and country. Although not unusual for companies to purchase silence this way.
I worked for one place that reorganized and they gave me almost a years severance with a non-disparagement clause. Ironically I had nothing to complain about; so they cancelled some product I worked on at a place I liked working at, what do I care other than I like great big piles of cash when I started working three weeks later for someone else? Just saying you should have pushed for a non-disparagement clause in a severance contract... There are very few things I miss about W-2 employment and delicious severance contracts are one. I've never heard of a 1099 contractor getting sweet severance like that. 'Hey HR lady, given what both you and I know, where's my severance contract with a non-disparagement clause?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 18 2019, @04:08PM
I don't believe your story. In a company that fuckt up the Helpdesk is too busy playing WoW together to notice idle PCs around the office.