- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or register to comment.
How is being a contractor relevant here? A normal employee could say exactly the same things
Independent contractors, by definition, control their own hours and method of work. If a company tries to control their work, the contractor is actually an employee. This matters because companies have to pay FICA taxes for W2 employees, but not for 1099 contractors. It’s a type of tax fraud called employee misclassification that the IRS has been cracking down on.
And get fired without pay. Contractors have some problems of their own, but their contract usually guarantees a certain amount of pay and if they’re any kind of smart, specific job duties.
I mean, only if you live a country that hates people and refuses to pass any laws about worker protection. If a dutch employer wants to fire you for “Not doing things that aren’t in your contract”, they’re going to have to a hard time.
Even in the USA I don’t think that companies can get away with that.
I have worked for US employers and they are generally aware that contracts are somewhat more enforced than worker rights.
That’s what I said. Contracts protect their named contractors. It’s the regular employees who would get fucked here.
Ah, I kinda meant that in places with proper employee protection, everyone has a contract.
If only everywhere were so fortunate.
Yeah and a normal employee can actually be fired. But independent contractors are usually on completely different contracts so unless the contract actually says they have to start at 9:00 a.m. they don’t have to do anything. Refusing to start at 9:00 a.m. is not a breach of contract like it would be for an employee.
I’m a contractor because the company that I contracted for is far too cheap to actually pay full-time staff, I tend to get in around 10am ish (although one time I started at 4:00 am because for some reason I had loads of energy and couldn’t sleep but then I finished it like 11am so I still did short hours).
As long as a contractor does the work there isn’t really much else they can complain about unless the employer puts other stuff into the contract. It sounds like in this case they didn’t.
In the US requiring a schedule is one of the factors that’s considered when determining if a contactor should be an employee. Other factors include if you’re telling them how to do the job, or who provides the equipment. You can get in trouble if you’re hiring people as contractors that should be employees.
The meek “please call me” was after the manager found out from upper management that they were far more replaceable then Caleb was.
Or it’s the manager seething with rage, wanting to vent that rage, but not being able to do it adequately via text message.
In my experience “please call me” is more often business speak for “you’ve really got a problem now” than a statement of weakness. Like they’ve got too much shit to say to you to fit in an email, and they maybe don’t want what they’re about to say to be written down
Yes. But then the “no” is a full sentence response. I love it.
In my experience it means managers want to discuss something without a paper trail.
No. It’s a way they try to cover their asses so it’s not in writing so it can’t come back to bite them when they inevitably do or say something illegal and he comes back with a lawsuit.
Exactly. If Caleb had it in writing that he was going to be paid regardless then the dude had some serious leverage.
Nah, “call me” always means “let’s make this a real-time social hierarchy game, because I’m good at exploiting verbal cues and expectations to shove people toward my desired goal.”
Yup those of us who are not good at bad faith conversations need to get good at recognizing when one is about to happen and insist on written.
“We need to take this conversation offline” is a near-universal precursor to ethical dispensation.
If you want an example, every online “debate” is a bad faith convo.
Oh so you’re calling me a liar??!
You sound defensive!
There’s also the “oh shit, I’ll get this fixed, but nothing I say can be in writing or I’m definitely getting fired” possibility.
Nah boss, I just apologized for my misunderstanding, I have no idea why $Insubordinate_Contractor is saying that I said he’d better come in or I’m going to blacklist him in the entire industry and ensure he never works again … I mean, why would I say that?! I don’t have that kind of power!
No, “call me” means “I’m going to say some things to you I don’t want to put in writing that could be used against me later.”
And also a way to move something to where there’s no proof of what was said.
The #1 reason in my experience. The only bosses who have ever said this to me are ones who were manipulative creeps where i made sure to keep a record (outside the company tools) of everything they ever said. It was never said to me like this, it was just standard operating procedure for that type.
I don’t know, call me skeptical or whatever, but this feels like one of those “and everyone clapped” kind of stories
It does seem probably fake, but being able to set boundaries and say no is definitely a major saving grace of freelance work, even if you have strong reasons to be professional about it.
There’s “saying no” and then there’s “You guys really oughta read the contracts you have us sign sometime. Pretty wild stuff in there.”
The burning of bridges on a current contract makes it seem fake, but it could also just be that the guy is fed up and already has something else lined up.
It’s better to stay polite and not be a snarky asshole, but if someone fundamentally misunderstands the nature of their professional relationship with you, they need to be corrected. Yeah you might lose business by answering disrespect with disrespect, but if someone is really pushy with trying to manipulate you into doing free work you didn’t agree to, it’s likely you won’t part on great terms anyway. Being honest and straightforward is more important, and good clients won’t take it personally being told in clear terms how it is.
deleted by creator
Willy Wonka didn’t market itself as a documentary.
deleted by creator
Ah, the Reddit experience. “Somebody did something cool, nobody ever does anything cool, time to put on my cynical curmudgeon cap and call it fake!”
Dude… you’re so butthurt about people assuming this is fake that you’re insulting them by calling them names.
I wonder what kind of person does that….
Hmmmmm…
It does, and it’s old, but it’s still a good story.
“You really need an attitude adjustment”… 😂
John Cena has entered the chat
“Please call me.”
“No.”
“Please call me”
Translation: I want to tear you a new one through a non-written medium so it doesn’t get recorded.
“No”
Translation: You have no power here.
I have an app that records all my calls. All of them. It’s uploaded to the cloud daily.
I did it because I know I’m not the only one listening to them. Or at the bare minimum parsing them. If csis or the NSA isn’t running all our calls through some kind of aj I’d be shocked. “Oh w|re not recording your calls don’t worry” they’d say slyly as every fucking utterance is tokenized and stored forever in some kind of creepy fuck you mainframe somewhere.
When I started looking through what Google collects on me I realized that this is just what they’re letting me see and there’s all kinds stuff I don’t get to see. And they "keep it for 3 months’ or some timeframe like that (riiiight).
If the time ever came where I needed any of that data (I’m extricating myself from Google slowly but surely but in the meantime) - they’ve proven they’re not trustworthy enough for me to be able to rely on them to get it.
Also I can do fuck you.
nothing to see here :)
How to not get hired again
What part of that interaction makes you think they’d want to work there after their contract expires?
The next job he wants to get contracted for the previous guy will say don’t hire him here’s another more polite person
I love this person so much. Good god I would pay hundreds of dollars for an intensely realistic VR game where I can just go absolutely apeshit on middle managers for hours every day.
I really wish these were true.
Why do so many of you Redditors think everything is fake? Like, really, where’s the evidence or even “tall tale” tone that makes this sound fake to you? Just because it’s not common? Do you only accept things that are rarer if you see them in photos or something?
Yeah that’s still no reason to act like a dick
You are talking about the manager, right? Then you are correct.
The guy who texted him was a dick to start off. He didn’t start of being an ass until the manager started getting uppity about a meeting that doesn’t even matter. I have a weekly stand up on Mondays, and honestly we could do without it.
Well he wasn’t a dick from the beginning, like you said, but he was unprofessional. Yeah dude, I was asleep, I basically never go to those… Could be worded in a different way.
Professionalism meaning anything other than honesty or not going out of your way to be rude is just performative ball fluffing. The absence of casualness is just a way to communicate to your superiors that their whims are soooper seeerius and impooorrrtant, and that they shouldn’t be questioned or challenged in any way that doesn’t give them an easy out that makes them feel like they’re in the driver’s seat.
For most of us, there’s no point in pretending we aren’t all a bunch of oversized chimpanzee children playing make believe. Just because some asshole has money and is playing in a big office upstairs doesn’t mean it isn’t just some bullshit game.
No, you can be professional and honest. Not mutually exclusive, or necessarily “ball fluffing”
“Unfortunately, a higher priority task was scheduled at the same time as the standup meeting. This is a recurrent daily task that cannot be postponed and therefore I will not be attending any standup meeting. What’s the task? Oh, its a restorative maintenance session for continued service availability assurance. What’s that mean? I’m sleeping, it means I’m sleeping.”
Ooo that’s the right lingo
They didn’t act like a dick until the employer started getting power trippy though, they didn’t say anything rude before that, just told them what the contract stated. The rudeness was definitely justified here after that though
Nah stand up meetings are unnecessary bullshit and a wet dream for managers and some team leads. Also I know multiple freelancers that all had stories about weird team leads that wanted to control them while literally not being their boss. They just crave the power over employees, they should just join some bdsm Scene and act out their fantasies there.
I do a stand up meeting for my graveyard shift as infrequently as possible. The day shift in my workplace has one every day.
My guys have more important things to do then listen to me update them on bullshit they are going to forget as soon as it goes in their ear.
This is how I know they are pointless, we would be wasting precious time getting work out on time while day shift obviously has too much time on their hands.
No reason for a manager to have 0 understanding of how employment works.
I worked with a woman when I worked for the federal government who was quite unpleasant. She left and went to work for a major contractor. I was on a call with her when several of her people didn’t show up for the call. She was raging and asked me where they were. I told her that I had no idea where her people were. She finally had had enough and demanded that I go find them and get them on the call. I said, “I’m not going to find YOUR people on your call with me, THE CLIENT. I don’t work for you anymore, Diane.” and hung up on her
Contractor or not, he sounds like a douche. I was a freelance contractor for 7 years and never talked to anyone like this
Considering that they feel entitled to his time i think it’s fair. They also try to threaten him into submission to their rules. Some people are so accustomed to powertrip that they are genuinely surprised when they can’t do It.
This is great for Internet high fives, but it is an overly hostile/argumentative attitude right out of the gate. Obviously I don’t have any context or backstory, so maybe he already tried the more appropriate way and he was just over it. But if this was the first interaction like this it’s a pretty wild response.
But there is an art to telling people to fuck off that’s still “no(fuck you)” and less "sucks for you"disrespectful but professional.
"I don’t attend the morning stand-ups because they are for employees and not contractors (like me). "
“You need to attend!”
“Of course! I’m happy to renegotiate my contract to include the employee morning meetings when it expires on the 18th next month. Until then, I have other obligations and I won’t be attending those stand-ups. Just a heads up, my current rate reflects my current obligations. If you want me to attend a morning meeting on a regular basis, my rate with go up. Let me know if you want me to send over an updated rate. I should be able to turn it around before the 18th of next month.”
When I do freelancing as a engineer, I had to be like this too.
Lots of startups hire freelancers, treat them like shit and assume you’re part of their 80 hour workweek teams. Those companies often also never survive for very long, where I’m still here.
Ha ha ha ha.
However, I guess in that position I would still be more cautious with wording. No need to burn bridges to make a point.
Yea this is just silly and shortsighted. Reputation is everything, and once word gets around that you’re a pretentious dick who doesn’t need to attend meetings because you can’t get out of bed, you’ll be hard-pressed to find the next contract.
If I work contract the meetings need to be in the contract. No way Im driving to location for a half hour meeting and then driving home.Either put it in contract or reimburse time, gas and wear otherwise I’m not attending
Depends. I do contract work, and I’m replaceable. I’m nice anyways, but I’m even nicer given my status. However, there are some people that are essentially irreplaceable, and they make more in a week than I make in a month. They’re all assholes, but the powers that be capitulate to their every whim. I’d love to get qualified for what they do and replace them, regardless of the pay benefits. How can you make over a hundred an hour and be such a petulant, whiney baby? If I was making that money, man, I’d be literally the nicest person. Like, who gives a shit? You make wheelbarrows full of cash, so… who cares about minor inconveniences? And I’m not talking about work issues, I mean they whine about the same damn contract paperwork everyone has to fill out. It takes 10 minutes. I’m not doing it for you, no one will, so just… do it? Baffling.
What kind of job are we talking about here that makes these so called “wheelbarrows of cash”?
Nuclear power.
People get paid lots of money because they get results that generate even more money. Those people are given that money based on a track record of success. That success comes from making demands, and being cut throat. There is a very slim chance you can be nice and successful. It sucks, but that’s why they are assholes, because that’s who survives in those environments. Look at c level execs or really driven managers and it’s all the same “success at any cost” mantra. Also 10 minutes of paperwork at $14 an hour is $2.50 to the company while that same 10 minutes to this “top earners” is $20, or over an hour of a minimum wagers time. That’s why I am against huddles in the first place, they are money pits.
More money === bigger asshole
Very few exceptions to that rule.
Depending on the work and the contract, it may be the company burning a bridge. Specialized labour can be both difficult and expensive to find.
A lot of contractors (good ones) know how to play the game. You can get away with a lot when the companies vertically integrated sales app that only they can fix goes belly up. Saw this before where an easily replaceable manager goes up against a long time contractor (ya know, with a contract) and leadership gets to decide how to resolve the situation…
I’ve been in similar situations. It boils down to “You hired contractors to do this work because you don’t have the skills internally.” I cancelled a customer’s quarterly release because they didn’t hand over their requirements doc by the due date (after 2 months of prodding). The customer got really nasty with me. Got a call from my own VP after a few hours. He started to chew me out for not “working with them”. I showed him the dozens of emails and several meetings I had with them being clear about their responsibilities and timelines. He just said “Oh… I’ll talk to them.” The call with the customer’s PM the next day was hilarious. After he had chewed me out in front of 100+ of his people, he had to fall on his sword and take responsibility for messing up their release since it was his responsibility to manage their requirements and get them to me.
I know nobody cares, but it feels good to get that story out!
I care. I like it. 😁
Where’s the Lemmy tech nightmare stories community when it’s needed.
Good read, I care
Nah, everyone here says experiences like yours are “fake”. The good ol’ Reddit cynicism.
Heh, people seem nice here, but I still have that PTSD from interacting on Reddit.
Good reminder to CYA.
There was a story posted on Reddit about 2 years ago, long as fuck but worth the read, about why you don’t piss off specialized contractors.
It doesn’t have a happy ending, but not for reasons you’d think.
I remember that one. It was a fantastic read…but IIRC it turned out to be fake.
Oh, that doesn’t matter. This screenshot of a chat posted to a social media platform is probably fake as well. It’s still fun to read and talk about it.
For sure.
I can.
I was stuck in a job I hated for over a decade, and not only that, I was the guy on the team doing the shit jobs no one else would do because many of the older, tenured people didn’t want to work weekend hours ever.
I remember the slight panic in my boss’s eyes when I put in my two weeks, but it wasn’t half as sweet as my former coworker’s panicking when they realized that they’d have to figure out how to do my job without my help. One even had the balls to say something to me about selfishness.
You see, they’d also declined my offer to train them on the functions I was involved in and the items I created.
Glorious.
The irony is that, for the job I have now (which I LOVE!) I spent the interview talking about the databases and resources I’d created in the former shit job, and that work got me hired. My new employers treat me like absolute gold.
Yeah culture is so important, you can work somewhere people are like whatever we used to do it by hand and nobody died, and then you move somewhere they realize the excel sheet you made saves them hours of time each day. It’s just sad so many people out there working at and owning businesses and they’re just not interested in pursuing best practices.
I always loved the “selfishness” take regarding jobs. It’s business not friendship.
You should be as loyal to your company as your company is to you.
As loyal as they have been to you in the past, or as loyal as you expect they might be in the future? Because, that’s the problem, things can turn on a dime.
A step further is anything an employer would do is fair game imo. Lie. Cheat. Deny that the sky is up. Their rules.
I love it when people expect loyalty’s benefits without paying loyalty’s price.
We do what I call a shotgun standup twice a week. But it is done async 99% of the time.
Every Tuesday and Thursday we have 30 minutes that conveniently coincides with opening of the coffee shop in the office (two of us are onsite, six remote) prior to which the team is intended to write three bullets in the meeting chat:
- Prio one yesterday - and outcome
- Prio one today
- Any blockers discovered for either of those
If nobody posts a blocker, then we get 30 minutes on the calendar where nobody from outside our team can schedule anything. And the onsite folks get the freshest coffee before everyone else gets down there.
If there is a blocker; the person who called it out and the most experienced person in dealing with that type of blocker will join the call, as will anyone interested in the outcome. Once the blocker is resolved, the solution is put into the same meeting chat.
We do what I call a shotgun standup twice a week.
I hope that’s not like a shotgun wedding. But anyway this sounds like a good idea more or less.
Even better if they scheduled it half an hour after the coffee shop opens.
Our stand-ups are always on and I think folks here forgot the idea of a stand up … Nobody stands and so it runs a full half hour. I guess the time isn’t as bad as it sounds because it is a massive system.
I understood most of those words, and still have very little idea of what is going on. Something to do with coffee?
I have no idea what a prio is, or a blocker in this context.
Haha, fair enough. I was just describing one way that ‘standups’ can be less annoying.
Prio = Priority. As in which task we were primarily working on. Blocker = Some lack of resources, skills, budget, policy, or infrastructure, that is blocking someone from completing a task.
“I was just informed you weren’t on the morning stand up call this morning” implies that this person wasn’t there either.
It’s a middle manager whose presence isn’t needed in daily stand-ups, as evidenced by the attempted micromanaging. We don’t invite those fuckers to stand-ups because they just talk about useless metrics the whole time.
You could have just stopped at “who’s presence isn’t needed.”. If they’ve got time to worry about standup attendance, then it’s extremely likely that all the useful parts of their job will fit into a short python script, and the company can save some money.
You seem to be contradicting yourself here. Yes, in most variations golf Agile, middle management should -‘not be in standups. This is the opposite of micromanaging
being absent from the standup is not micromanagement. Getting annoyed while texting a single employee who didn’t hit metrics for one day very much is.
They also may have just not checked to see if everyone was on the call, especially if that meeting has a bunch of people on it.
Then there is too many people on that meeting and its a waste of time.
Yeah any stand-up call that has more than like 4 or 5 people on it is automatically gonna be unproductive.
deleted by creator
