Crazy work experiences

macaroonie · Post by **macaroonie** » Wed, 02 Jul 2014 9:28 pm

What are some of your craziest work experiences? And what did you do about it?

Post by **PNGMK** » Wed, 02 Jul 2014 11:51 pm

A farmer threw rocks at me when I worked on his farm. I left.

Sergei82 · Post by **Sergei82** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 10:06 am

Whatever crazy experience I had, I adapted or changed job.

ecureilx · Post by **ecureilx** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 10:22 am

PNGMK wrote:A farmer threw rocks at me when I worked on his farm. I left.

did he have eye problem ??

mine, working for a small boss in SG, one day boss brilliantly decided that since there is only 3 people, it makes no sense to continue medical insurance

Instead he will add a 25 $ allowance to the monthly pay .. when I gave him a deer-in-headlight look, he brightly replied .. "see, if you don't fall sick, you are getting an amount of 300$ a year extra money to spend .. good what.. "

And same boss, when I was contemplating a training for a American security solution, and planned to attend the training in Seattle, spritely walked over, took me for lunch and proposed that I pay for all the expense, cost and all, and in return, he will give me massive sales commission of 2% for each sale ..

the solution was retailing at 60K SGD, and I knew the commission basis was worked on Gross profit, not on sale price, i.e. 30K - 600$ per sale . ... and an estimated more than 100 potential customers .. 3,000,000 profit for the boss in return for me to get 60,000 commission ..

Yah right ... my US visa was rejected, and that was the best news I heard then .. than spending MY MONEY to make my boss rich ..

PS: said boss is in line for some government award for good governance ..

AngMoG · Post by **AngMoG** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 10:35 am

I remember one, working for a small company in SG run by an Aussie. At some point, because (for some reason) he wanted everyone to be in the office by 9 sharp (including the sales people!!), he started a daily meeting at 9am, where somebody had to give a motivational or informational presentation. You can only imagine what BS presentation that were....

I repeated mine 3x in a row when it was my turn, about "meetingitis" - i.e., only hold meetings when it's appropriate and only invite those that can actively contribute to it. The message did not get across.

Well, I only stayed another 2-3 months there, but those meetings made me dread going to work every morning. I should also note that those late 3x or more in a month would get a S$50 salary deduction - which I am not sure if it is even legal.

He also employed his (dumb-as-bread, pretty, 15y younger) gf in various positions, in which she inevitably effed things up - marketing, HR, sales, you name it. That gf also was a backstabber (unsurprisingly), so you could only swear under your breath if you had to work with her.

Unsurprisingly, that company has not done too well in the past couple of years... to the point where one failed business venture later, they had to move to a less-central, half-the-size office.

JR8 · Post by **JR8** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 11:04 am

I was working on a science expedition in the Bolivian Amazon. One night we were in a little nightclub in the city of Santa Cruz, and I got chatting to a decidedly foxy young lady named Sandra. I was working her hard, and trying as hard as a polite young man might to get her back to my hotel. Meanwhile, she opened her purse and handed me a 10,000 peso note folded tightly into a 1"*0.5" 'wrap' of pure coke, that had her number written on it. ...

[I'm going to leave it there, but in the 'Unexpected perks or work' that was probably about as unexpected and exotic as it got]...

ecureilx · Post by **ecureilx** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 12:14 pm

JR8 wrote:I was working on a science expedition in the Bolivian Amazon. One night we were in a little nightclub in the city of Santa Cruz, and I got chatting to a decidedly foxy young lady named Sandra. I was working her hard, and trying as hard as a polite young man might to get her back to my hotel. Meanwhile, she opened her purse and handed me a 10,000 peso note folded tightly into a 1"*0.5" 'wrap' of pure coke, that had her number written on it. ...

[I'm going to leave it there, but in the 'Unexpected perks or work' that was probably about as unexpected and exotic as it got]...

how was that in USD ??

JR8 · Post by **JR8** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 12:42 pm

ecureilx wrote: how was that in USD ??

Inflation at the time was around 600% and rising. New (higher denomination) banknotes were being launched approximately bi-weekly or monthly. When we arrived P100k was the biggest note, rapidly followed by 1/2mm, 1mm, and 5mm. Those couldn't get printed fast enough so morphed into some form of 'currency certificate' IIRC. 1US$ was about Peso 300k when we got there, and P5-6mm when we left. The exchange rate was the first headline on the news every night. The country was in a State of Emergency.

So by the time we left P10,000* was ... maybe 0.2 of one US Cent ? It made playing cards a hell of a lot of fun... the PILES upon piles of money (worth like $1, but man it looked amazing!) !!

*http://www.banknotebank.com/note/941495

p.s. I might have said before. When I left and went home, I took my pile of small banknotes with me. It was as thick as a house-brick, about 7-8cm, maybe 250 bank-notes, from P500, up to P100k. Great for playing cards with, and also quite surreal for those who hadn't witnessed it's use at first hand. Then some time later back home I got burgled by junkies and that 'donkey-choker' was amongst the stuff stolen. Despite being worth no more than a few dollars that p'd me off, as it was such a curiosity. Still to this day though, I can raise a smile at that house-breaker, who must have thought he'd hit the ultimate Klondike, .... 3" of banknotes and ALL THOSE ZEROES!! .... hehehe.... No wonder he took a dump on the floor before leaving...

Steve1960 · Post by **Steve1960** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 2:39 pm

I worked for a very well known UK electronics company back in the 80's owned by a very well known guy who these days is a bit of a TV celebrity.

We had problems, big problems with the hard disc drives and controllers. There were thousands of these things being returned to the manufacturer for repair and the situation was damaging the companies already poor reputation.

I attended a meeting with this guy and all his direct reports to discuss the situation. The guy was not happy and spat out questions and statements like blasts from a shotgun with a whole load of expletives. I was only in my 20's and the guy scared the cr*p out of me.

At one point in the meeting he looked at my boss with venom in his eyes and said 'Simon you haven't got a fu*$%ing clue where all these hard drives are have you?'

As it happens I had every drive and controller logged and every returns authorisation number. In my timid little voice I said 'Alan I have that information and can give it to you in 30 minutes'.

A few days later the CFO appeared at my desk and gave me 2 free tickets for the FA Cup Final that year which was especially nice as the owner of the company also happened to own my team at the time Tottenham

UK ex pat's no prizes for guessing the name of the company I have given too many clues

beppi · Post by **beppi** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 3:11 pm

I was at one point put in charge of a production line in dire straits - they had up to 50% of shipped products returned for malfunction!
I analysed the situation and concluded that one of the reasons was the production line's final test, which did not actually test anything (all products always passed, even the malfunctioning customer returns).
So I wanted to build a tester that actually does its work. My proposal, presented to the management, was detailed, technically feasible and not too expensive.
They asked only one question: "What will this tester do to our production yield?" I gave an honest answer (i.e. that the yield will NOT stay at nearly 100%, as was currently the case) and within seconds my request was rejected, because yield, not customer satisfaction or financial performance, was their key performance indicator (KPI).
I left the company soon afterwards - and the product line was discontinued later.

ecureilx · Post by **ecureilx** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 3:29 pm

Steve1960 wrote:I worked for a very well known UK electronics company back in the 80's owned by a very well known guy who these days is a bit of a TV celebrity...

UK ex pat's no prizes for guessing the name of the company I have given too many clues

Not a UK Expat but I guess .. the gentleman was knighted right ??

Steve1960 · Post by **Steve1960** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 3:32 pm

JR8 · Post by **JR8** » Thu, 03 Jul 2014 5:36 pm

Steve1960 wrote:Yep

Britain's Trump, the classic 'working-class boy made good'.

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Crazy work experiences

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