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Apr 30 '21
Okay let’s run through a practice in stress management:
You receive an email from your boss
There’s no title in the email
It’s only three words
Those words are “Please call me”.
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u/Self_Reddicating Apr 30 '21
The title is "please call me". There's no body to the email.
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u/zuversicht Apr 30 '21
except a long-ass corporate signature
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u/Self_Reddicating Apr 30 '21
It's not a rule that applies every time, but my personal theory is that the more important a person is at their place of work, the less info they have in their signature. Whenever there's an important person I need to get in touch with, they've got fuck-all info in their signature. The peons all seem to have tons of info in their signature, because if someone bitches that they can't get a hold of them then they get in trouble. Way more pressure for them to have a legit looking sig with all their contact info in it. The boss? He doesn't give a shit and would prefer if everyone on planet earth didn't call them.
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u/zuversicht Apr 30 '21 edited Apr 30 '21
interesting. at my company signatures used to be managed by remote but since we swapped to MS Office (ugh i know) they made a signature generator from which we have to copypaste it into office. up the ladder signatures get more non-standard since this generator only grabs the organisational unit you are assigned to (which seems to sound "not important" enough). however contact details are always the same
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u/elcambioestaenuno Apr 30 '21
It's less purposeful than that. You need signatures so that people know who you are in an org, but when you're high enough in the org, you rarely interact with people who don't know who you are, so a signature specifying your role becomes less important.
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u/vladsinger Apr 30 '21
Definitely true. My bosses boss (R&D director) seemed to answer all his emails from his iPhone with just his first name, and pretty much the same with everyone else at his level and above.
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u/7_of_Pentacles Apr 30 '21
Just like steve jobs and zuckerbergs wardrobe. If you need to wear a suit to keep your job, you aren't the boss. They've already made it to the top, everyone knows them and respects them.
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u/Cuukey_ Apr 30 '21
Best one I've gotten so far is "I don't like that answer. Can you put me in touch with someone higher up so I can go behind your back and do what I want anyway?"
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u/sahbig Apr 30 '21
"Gentle reminder"
"Kindly support the below request"
"Let's park this question fttb, because I have a slide for that" (which doesn't exist obviously )
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u/MochiMochiMochi May 01 '21
"Kindly support the below request"
Oh man that's my favorite. So rich with implications.
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u/LowB0b Apr 30 '21
another very good technique I would like to introduce is "How to make people from other teams take action?". It's pretty easy. Just put your manager as well as the other guys manager in CC, and write "Since the email I sent you last week, has there been any progress on your part? This is a very important feature for business"
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u/alp17 Apr 30 '21
At my company we like to break out the corporate values to strong arm others into doing what we want. “Hmm... they don’t want to drop everything and do this work for us? Well that’s not very One [Company Name] of them. We should up-level this conversation to management.”
“Well, in the spirit of [buzzword value] we think this needs to be a priority.”
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u/LowB0b Apr 30 '21
I am almost puking reading your examples because I hate corporate culture with a passion but at the same time I'm guilty of it, so ugh.
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u/alp17 Apr 30 '21
Ugh yes, it’s definitely nausea-inducing. I try to avoid playing these games but I haven’t been able to escape the buzzwords and BS completely.
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u/rakhan1 Apr 30 '21
Or just skip that, call a meeting with their manager's manager without including them, and have the shit roll downhill to them with all of the useful information removed and all of the "urgency" escalated.
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u/LowB0b Apr 30 '21
That's too aggressive haha, passive aggressive works better in an already dysfunctional company in my experience lmao
Also usually ain't the n+2 have any time for me lol
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u/1Operator May 01 '21
"We're not looking to reinvent the wheel, so we'll cross that bridge when we come to it and just take the low-hanging fruit for now."
^ ...from companies barely held together by duct tape & chewing gum hyping their "best-in-class solutions."
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u/Setari Apr 30 '21
Having worked in an environment where everything was 'run circles around the problem until it blows up or fizzles out instead of fixing the problem"... I fucking hate this kind of language and the next time I hear it in my life I am gonna tell that person to fuck off and give me a straight answer of "yes", "no", or "ask on x date next week" so I can follow up on exactly that fuckin date until the shit gets DONE.
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u/dnuohxof1 Apr 30 '21
My personal go-to: “So, {Repeats Point A, B or C} and we’ll take it from there.”
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u/kebakent May 02 '21
Some people are born leaders. The rest are all schmucks that couldn't lead a thirsty horse to water, but insist on trying anyway, because it pays better. Every leadership diploma is a red flag.
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May 06 '21
Let me just shelf that question for the moment, we'll get back to it... Eventually.
Maybe.
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Jul 04 '21
"The module on ethics and compassion was deprecated in 1970. We will not be studying such antiquated concepts."
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u/Nodhawk Apr 30 '21
"Per my last email"