Hey RSlash, to answer your question at the end of the video: I'm someone whose been in the banking and finance industry for 15 years. I've been on both sides of "cutbacks". Companies that make poor business decisions and cost the company hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars just release employees to make up for the loss. Instead of the incompetent executives who made the decisions us peons lose them instead.
I worked for a title insurance company. My job was to proofread the final copy of the policy before sending it out and make sure everything our clients asked for was covered. There was a change in software to automate part of the process, and most of the macros did something completely different from what everyone was used to. No one (except my boss, who couldn't do anything) listened to me when I raised the issue that those inputting the codes for the policies were using the old codes instead of the new ones. The exceptions and exemptions that limited our company's liability became unenforceable. The day after I sent a message to the agent in charge of our high liability ($2 mil plus) and commercial policies ($30 mil to $2 bil) saying our company would be totally screwed if anyone tried to make a claim I was told not to change how anything was written up and follow instructions exactly. Malicious compliance ensued, and when I was let go in the next round of cut backs and lay offs, I asked if I could have a "sample" policy to deliver to the agent in person to illustrate what I believed the problem was I was told no. Two years later, my job site was completely closed up with no signs of any kind (ie: no notice for new location) and I wonder how much money they lost trying to save money.
In the spirit of the trash compactor and lawn mower stories, I have my own story: my mom lost two of her fingers by attempting to reach over a power saw she didn’t turn off to grab something. According to her it was a sort of autopilot thing and she later bought an emergency shutoff for the saw 😬
Oh and I have another one! My late grandpa worked on a farm for most of his life and when he was young he lost his thumb by getting his arm sucked into a combine. He would’ve lost his entire arm, or perhaps even his life, but he knew how dangerous it was and pulled as hard as he could and only ended up losing a thumb.
My husband and I have a friend who decided that "Stumpy the Fireworks guy on the side of the road" (not real name) was. great person to buy cheap fireworks from, light them (at home) THEN throw it. Guess who is now also called "Stumpy"?
My late Father once lost his thumb, up to the first knuckle, due to an accident with his jointer/planer. Luckily my Uncle was there with him, and rushed him to the ER.
*Last Story:* A lot of companies _aren't_ staying afloat because of stupid decisions by management. Look at every Silicon Valley tech company and even Adidas. Their books are so red they're bleeding.
Yeah, they're not. A few jobs I've lost over the years were at these "too big to fail" corporations that are either currently closing locations or no longer even exist because they were just hemorrhaging money.
OP: **Yells at idiot to get out of the trash compactor** Mr Idiot: "You shouldn't yell at me! Get me your manager now!" Manager: **Scolds Idiot for endangering himself** Mr Idiot: **Confused Sobbing**
That lawnmower story reminded me of one. When I was a teenager I came home to find my father had gotten injured. Apparently while he was mowing the lawn he decided to see if the blade on his riding mower was still going by sticking his fingers up under the deck while it was running. The first words out of my mouth were “Are you an idiot?” He was lucky to not have anything severed, just the tips of his fingers nearly removed but they were stitched back down.
He ...what? What was his logic? Could he not hear the blade spinning or the motor running or the vibrations from both?! Like, I'd be checking him into the hospital for insanity or mental illness if he pulled something that unbelievable idiotic unless he was currently on drugs or something
Don't think its like that. Its more like those managers does not felt attached the company, so he/she only thinks with a "Not on my backyard" mindset. What other department was impacting, he doesnt care
The thing about machinery, is that it does not care who you think you are. Karen, Kevin, Sally, Simon whoever. If a machine is in function, it will complete its function, whether you are in the way or not.
I feel so sorry for people who can’t opt out. Some areas are wall to wall HOA and it’s impossible to find a home outside them. I’ll be damned if someone else can tell me what color I can paint my front door! (I mean, it’s white, but it COULD be purple.)
i live in a country where the only resemblance to HOAs are a couple residents collecting security and maintenance fees. all this bs about HOA bylaw or bypass or bysexual whatever makes me wonder why so many people want to move to the US lol 🥲
@@tacomaui2732 Not every housing division has HOAs. There's a few newly built divisions around here and there's signs that state "NO HOA" but they also cost $400,000 to $750,000 -_- people moving in and screwing up our cheap living/peacefulness out in the countryside.
Story 2: it sounds like common sense, but it’s a rule written in a LOT blood. Mostly related to employees skipping safety steps to save revenue under threat of retaliation from management, but also just plain old idiocy.
Probably dropped something inside that wasn't meant to be trash, and was fishing around for it. I did that a couple times in the cardboard compactor at a retail store I used to work at. For our machine though, there was a safety key you had to insert and turn to unlock the compactor operation buttons. Without that key turned AND a safety door being shut, nothing powered would move. So I just stuck the key in my pants pocket before I went in, and it was always fine.
One time at work I fucked up and set the pricing gun down in the semi-empty cardboard recycling box for a second. It ended up covered in cardboard, and I forgot about it like a big dummie. (Dummy? Dumby?) The next morning when my coworker dumped it in the cardboard compactor, he heard a big “THUNK”. So he had to use one of the apparel poles in our store to fish the pricing gun back out. This was a long winded way to suggest that perhaps he threw something in there that he needed back out and was much too stupid to get it out a better way.
Story 3: What sort of weirdo would plant cameras on their house just to watch their neighbors and not their own property anyway? OP placed cameras to keep their own house safe, but I guess Karen didn't like this. I wonder why.
The compactor thing, it's definitely a safety issue that caused the idiot to be fired. Even here in unionized Denmark, with our plethora of worker protections, not following safety instructions are an immediate dismissible offense in many companies.
I’m a lawn mower mechanic, please do not put your hands under your mower, if you get something stuck in it, pull of your spark plug wire and tip the mower on the exhaust side of the mower, that will make it safe to work on. If you don’t feel safe doing that, take it to your local mechanic, we are happy to help you. Most wolnt even charge you cause of how easy it is.
At my job, if you get caught crawling into the compactor it’s automatically termination. It sucks tho because when it gets jammed a separate company has come unclog it
6:13 On a somewhat related note, NEVER TRY TO FIX A GARAGE DOOR SPRING YOURSELF. Unless you do it for a living. Those things are under so much tension that it could go off like an explosion.
I legit grew up thinking it was common to be missing parts of your fingers, cuz both my dad and my grandfather (mom's side) had lost parts of theirs before I was even born. My dad drove a Zamboni when he was younger and had an incident similar to the mower story, and my grandfather was a carpenter who ran afoul of a saw blade. He ALSO lost most of the use of his other (dominant iirc) hand because a jack failed and their HOUSE fell on it. Kept right on working in his barn/workshop until they moved like 12-ish years ago, and then he started doing stuff like playing guitar and paper tole art. He's slowed down a bit now, cuz he's about 92 years old, but those hands have never stopped making things.
I wonder the same thing at my own job. I work at a warehouse scheduling things and there's one company, they ship a lot of potatoes, that doesn't seem to keep track of when their own appointments are. They're constantly emailing to request when their appointments are for. I just can't believe a company is that clueless. I have a lot of stories of terrible companies making terrible decisions.
I did factory work and when I got safety lock training they said after unplugging to wait at least 30 seconds and hit the power to make sure it was fully powered down because some machines may have residual power.
Safety stuff, worked in a quarry, day 1 they told me about a guy who was gonna "just remove a rock" from 1 of the conveyor belts from 1 of the crushers, while it was running, he used a shovel with an O end, he had hand through it, shovel got stuck on moving belt, hand still in shovel, arm RIPPED off at his shoulder. All cause he didt wanna stop the machine for some min.
6:38 My mom once kicked the mower blade to dislodge something and nearly lost a toe in the process. Pretty serious gash, but she's a retired doctor and I have first aid training so between the two of us, a bottle of whisky, and some thread, we got her stitched up and back in action pretty quick. Life's a bit different when you're a hundred miles from civilization. 14:45 These stories are in the minority, because people don't post to Reddit about how their manager perfectly budgeted the quarter and they had zero waste. People only post when shit goes sideways, so that's naturally all you hear.
"how do these big companies stay afloat" a: theres a lot of money flowing through them and b: they dont take a look at the sheer amount of billionaire businesses that just happen to go bankrupt, in other words they cheat the system
for the last story: Methinks OPs boss wasn't liked by the people in charge of the flight tickets. Their budget is improved, but the boss's budget got slammed
Omg I would love to see if that HOA Karen had gotten on to op's property and did something in revenge and the cameras caught it. I'd love to see the court battle on that.
Last story - Operational expenses affect the 'taxes' that any business may end up paying. So if a business has an operational expense for the fiscal year of 2.5mil, and a Gross profit of 3.1mil, they only pay taxes on 600k because those operational costs have become a tax deduction. This is why many of the big companies can get away with throwing money around like they do on expenses. Its also why places like Amazon do their free delivery, it costs them, therefore is taken off the bottom line tax bill. Must like on your own personal tax. Here in Australia for example with personal taxes, and using this as just one example: If you take your uniform to a laundromat you can get reimbursed the cost of using the machines as a deduction. Even if you wash non-work clothes with your uniform. If you wash at home you only get 50 cents back if you had non-work clothes in with the uniform, otherwise its just a $1. All that soon adds up when it comes to such. You can claim travel expenses, including flights, accommodation and to and from the airport outside of public transport hours, if your company doesnt cover the costs and its related to work. Much the same as that guy had the company bare the costs of. TBH, depending on which country you live in depends on what you can claim. I myself back when I worked as a lowly console operator within a gas station would claim back anything a 1/6th of what tax was being taken from my paycheck for the fiscal year.
On the lawnmower story, whilst taking a machinery class we looked at lawnmowers. One of the first things they said 'never touch the blades unless you are going to remove them to sharpen them and only do so once you have checked the rotation with anything but your fingers' they themselves then showed their own missing finger tip.
These businesses are probably still afloat because these stories are quite rare. No-one posts "My company laid off half its workers, saved £5 billion per year" onto r/malicious compliance.
We have cardboard bailors at my job, basically a trash compactor for boxes and things like that. Every single person who joins HAS to take a safety class on how to operate it and only a handful of people are allowed to actually open it up and take out the cubes. We have two of those machines and I hate using both, they're loud and terrifying simply because there's no safety door to stop someone from putting a limb or something more important in it while it's crushing
I've got the same but there's no safety class. Ours has a door that slides down and you push the door up to activate it, then hydraulics push the cardboard down but it's old and there's alot of creaking and groaning going on. What's annoying is that it doesn't always lift all that way back up so your wasting abit of time closing the door and pushing the manual up button.
I have the opposite of a ‘Sally’ - a boss who depends on my utterly for all data while also completely dismissive of how much time and knowledge it requires to gather and convert into usable information.
The answer to RSlash's question of how large businesses don't go bankrupt due to corporate waste is simple. Extortionate corporate profit margins. It is the same reason CEOs get away with making a salary hundreds of times larger than their average skilled worker.
I work at a place where safety is important. I dealt with people with no common sense in my line of work that I have to project my voice at them to like pay attention (its an escalator and it the noise volume is loud). The amount of people get upset at me or my co workers about safety is astounding.
I worked and lived for a company in NJ. We did all kinds of retail resets and build outs (remodeling & new store set ups) all over the country. One time we were working in Hollywood, CA. I lived alone in NJ and I asked my supervisor if I could just stay the weekend in Cali instead of flying home. I was told I had to fly home because of costs. Motel 6 in Hollywood less than $100.00 a night weekend rate vs $300.00 round trip flight from LAX to Newark and back. Yes, fly home because of costs. As far as I know they are still business.
i knew a guy who claimed he onced worked for a company that needed him to fly home during a holiday period he could fly on friday for big money or normal rates on sunday but they would have to pay for hotel for 2 nights aswell he did the maths and worked out it would save the company about 50% of the big money flight's cost. Apprently 'travel' and 'hotels' were seperate budgets and the hotel guy was refusing to allow the 'cost'.
As someone who was a supervisor in a retail backroom with a compactor, the number of times i had to tell people to get out of the compactor was ridiculous.
As an ER surgeon, you'd all be AMAZED about the times people disregard their training, the safety classes, the safety stickers and signs on machinery, or even go further and actually remove the safety buttons/covers/mechanisms that certain things like table saws have in order to prevent accidents. People are stupid and tend to do this in order to "work faster than they would". Unluckily for them that velocity tends to come with a price. Sometimes that price is getting stitches in your hand or foot, sometimes it's a lost hand or a plastic surgery to your face after you fall over a circular saw with no protection...
The lawn mower story reminds me of a man I met about a month ago during my paramedic duty. It was snowing heavily and he was using a snow blower to clear his driveway. Suddenly he noticed that the machine had stopped moving. He suspected that the rotating blade was stuck. When he looked, he realized that the rotating blade was not stuck, but was broken at the bottom on both sides because the snow was too thick. He removed the blade and sent his 11-year-old son to get him a new blade. Meanwhile, he removed the snow from under the snow blower with his hand. Now you should know that a snow blower has not only one rotating blade, but two. The second blade is in the back of the blower to throw the snow out of the machine. This blade was not broken... It was not moving either.... until the man removed the snow. We drove the man to the hospital with his index and middle finger in a plastic bag.
I'm not gonna lie, I've done something similar to the lawn mower/compactor posts. My apartment had been flooded by Hurricane Florence & I was displaced for an entire year, staying with my Grandma. One of the chores I did was gathering all of the trash, putting it into the burn barrel & burning it. On one occasion I had already set the fire when I noticed that there was a can of hairspray, or something like it, in the barrel WITH THE BURNING GARBAGE!!!! Apparently, Gigi absent-mindedly threw it into her bathroom trash can & I didn't notice it when gathering the trash. You'd think my 1st reaction would be to run, duck & cover, right? Wrong. My dumb*ss thought " OH CRAP!!!!! I NEED TO GET THIS THING OUT OF THE BARREL BEFORE IT EXPLODES!!!!" I used a long stick to try & remove it. I failed & the damn thing blew up, turning the metal pieces of the can into shrapnel projectiles & damaging the barrel in the process. I swear I saw a piece of metal fly past the right side of my head. God MUST have been looking out for me that day. 😨😨😰😰😅😅
Similar story about heavy machinery being dangerous: A janitor was cleaning a machine used to compact meat. He climbed up a ladder to clean the inside but didn't turn it off first and fell inside. The staff noticed the meat had a weird smell as it came out of the machine but by the time they turned it off it was too late. Never try to clean or move machinery while it's still on or powered.
Regarding the question how large corporations stay afloat if they waste so much money is simple: Most companies don’t waste so much money (or at least not that often), but if they don’t, the stories about them wouldn’t get to the subreddit. This is something statisticians know as Non-representative sample.
I wish I'd done malicious compliance/revenge at a place I was unjustly fired from. I found out they were using the wrong software license key for Windows. One they had stopped paying for (volume license key, were supposed to be using the oem). I was the deskside tech imaging all these computers, ran out of license seats, reported it to my (incompetent idiot) boss and we had to reimage every single one (older versions of Windows wouldn't let you switch from a volume key to an oem key, especially since the volume key was enterprise and the oem was professional) but a bunch of machines had already shipped. Idiot boss took credit for fixing my "mistake" (using the key he had provided for me in an email) and got me fired. I wish I'd called Microsoft to report them, there were maybe 500 computers in the field with in essence a stolen license on them. Missed opportunity.
You can still report it to MS, who will lock down that key within hours, and the computers will simply stop working, showing with the background being plain blue, and a hard logo about key being invalid, along with a reboot every hour, then thirty, then ten minutes. Results in a lot of unhappy customers screaming about this on the phone, and slagging the supplier on SM as well.
In a meeting room with corporations: Rslash - How are you all not Bankrupt yet?! Corporations - Luck, Sheer Fucking Luck. Corporate drone- And most of us are doing illegal things in the shadows, sooo…. *shrugs shoulders* 🤷♂️
Story. Way back when I worked at a pizza delivery place, we made our pizza dough fresh. (So we make dough, let rest overnight so it's good to go the next morning) for some reason, our mixer didn't have a guard on it. A quick note about these mixers. They are industrial strength and will pulverize anything put in there... So one night, the mixer is going strong, I am standing about 5 feet from the mixer with my back turned recording the numbers and I hear the sickening sound of bones breaking. I hit the emergency stop button as I turn and I see an idiot with his arm twisted around the mixer... He had stuck his arm into it, his arm got caught and the mixer kept on chugging breaking his hand, wrist and arm... The idiot was fired that day for "Not adhering to safety protocols." I do know he took the company to court, and while I don't know the outcome, the mixer now has a guard on it. (I quit that job long ago, but still get pizza there on occasion)
The big problem with getting the HOA fined or paying big lawyer fees is that OP and other members are footing the bill with their dues, not the actual HOA board. Best is getting that entire HOA board kicked out.
For a clogged lawn mower or snow blower, always pull the spark plug wire before sticking your hand in it. It literally just pops off and back on, no tools required and guarantees it wont start. Turning the blade has the same effect as pulling the cord, you're turning the engine over. My uncle did the same thing with a snow blower a few years back, now he only has 2 fingers and nubs on his left hand. If it's electric, the same applies. Throw it in the garbage where it belongs, buy a gasoline one and pull the plug wire for maintenance.
As a person who works for a large school district, I can assure you that we have some stupid middle managers also. I'm so glad I only have a little over a year to have to put up with this! (BTW- the teachers and kids at my school are AWESOME!)
I think it was about 2 years ago that a homeless man died in a garbage truck in my area. He'd been sleeping in a large garbage bin (like the ones behind restaurants) to escape the cold (I'm in Canada). Well, a garbage truck came by and picked up the bin. A second after one of the drivers hit the "compact" button, they heard screaming from the back. They weren't able to figure out how to stop it and the homeless man died.
I've just learned... if you are moving to a HOA home, don't sign to be part of the HOA. *They'll use your own money against you over imaginary rules and laws.*
Last story: The answer to your question, rSlash, is that their profit margins are simply so high that these big companies can afford to lose thousands of dollars on dumb decisions. To make it worse, the people who cause these problems are good at shifting the blame so they're not the ones who get reprimanded. High level managers are getting 7-figure bonuses by causing stress to lower-level managers in different department. Eventually the companies get too big and inefficient and they do collapse or break into smaller companies, but again it's the low level employees who suffer. The upper level just strips the cash and moves on to their next job.
I refuse to identify "common sense" as "common sense" any more. I strictly refer to it as logic, because I'm done letting idiots get away with not being able to put 2 and 2 together in some of the most simple things ever and not catch any flack for it.
People in middle management exists solely to justify their own jobs. Get an unwanted and unnecessary change to SOP? Middle manager has to put SOME change they implemented to justify his salary. Change in the structure of a team that is working well? Same. Institute an unworkable rule for staffing? They don't have to find, train, or cover staffing problems themselves! If middle management just lets things operate smoothly without making waves then why does anyone need them? The best thing on one of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy was when one planet gathered all of its middle management and sent them to colonize a new planet, knowing that they would all die for a lack of useful skills.
Petition to change the phrase "common sense". It should be like in an RPG and have different tiers. Common Sense is, well, common. Then we have Uncommon Sense, Rare Sense, Legendary Sense and Mythic or Heroic Sense
That last story sounds like another malicious compliance. Someone was told to lower the travel budget by any means, they went "sure thing boss," and just shifted costs to the operations budget.🤣
Trash compactor story: NEVER put any body part under a functional machine capable of dismemberment. My uncle once stuck his hand in the blades of a mower to repair it & ended up with a third of his finger sliced off & unable to be reattached. He told me he was thankful he only lost part of a finger instead of his entire hand. But I also don't know what he was expecting when he made me aware of his nub with a "pull my finger" joke.
I have heard that some companies and businesses, because of how damn confusing and complicated tax law is, that it's just easier and cheaper to operate the way they are until they get a fine or notice that they aren't doing things right, fix it and just wait for it to happen again instead of actively making sure everything is correct and proper so there are no fees. I have no clue how some companies stay afloat tbh
"How are these companies not going bankrupt?" Short answer-Too big to fail? Long answer-Most of these companies have made their money over the course of many years, especially when we're talking major corporations that have been around for literal decades. Yes, on the small scales these decisions would be devastating, but on larger ones, they're just small dent in a big operation. Granted, this isn't 100% the case and there's always some degree of variance, but in the grand scheme of things, the losses are actually relatively minor and likely just one-off events. If it were a consistent occurrence, then we should be seeing more companies going bankrupt due to general incompetence of the higher-ups. This is just a broad strokes observation, mind you. Nobody said that CEOs and Managers were, for lack of a better term, smart... There's also more things at play to keep companies from going bankrupt ("LET'S GET THE GOVERNMENT TO BAIL US OUT!" type stuff).
Hey rslash love listening to you read reddit stories while I work/drive/ or just gaming. Could you do stories about Kevin again you used to read those stories but it's been maybe over a year since you've read them
As to r/slash's last point. I'm a contractor analyst that works in the financial sector. I've worked with a rather large bank that wasted close to 300k in fees because they couldn't be bothered to flip a switch and give my team access to their systems. We sat for 2 weeks doing nothing and billing them for doing nothing. That bank went bankrupt and I never wondered why.
If you think that's the dumbest compactor story, my store manager made a rule no tossing wood pallets in the compactor after my dept manager tossed one in and it bounced out from the force and beaned him in the head. Well, my new assistant store manager decided he would put the pallet in anyway. It got stuck. He goes in his car, brings a fucking electric buzz saw, and climbs inside with the power on to cut it smaller. He asked me and 1 other part time employee to "spot" him. It was the dumbest shit ever
I want to know why that guy was climbing into the compactor like that? Also they have those pictures of hands and feet being shredded on any kind of heavy piece of equipment or cutting tools duh.
damn when you are SO ignorant that your fire someone smarter than you because you don’t understand how their work is important….. then she goes home and throws out her blood pressure meds cause she doesn’t understand how they lower her blood pressure, and stops eating vitamins cause she doesn’t know what they do, and stops using brakes on her car cause she doesn’t understand the mechanics behind them
"How do these giant corporations stay afloat?" Because they're giant corporations. After a certain size, you don't have to be good at your job to be profitable. They succeed by virtue of mass and inertia (and squeezing out smaller competitors through unfair practices).
"How are these companies not all going bankrupt?" rSlash, how much did you spend on a soda the last time you went for fast-food? $1/$2/$3? A large soda costs a fast-food company like McD's or TBell *pennies* and most of that cost is in the cup, not the soda itself. The food pricing is the same. For a place like McDonald's; all the fixings for 50 sandwiches costs... ~maybe $4-$5~ but a single McChicken's still gotta cost $2.99. But that's fast-food, what about other businesses? Ever buy an HDMI cable? I used to work for an electronics retailer, and the employee discount was that you could get anything in the store for 10% above the base cost for the store to purchase and stock the item. 20ft, gold-plated, MONSTER™️ HDMI cable cost the customer $100, but with the employee discount it was only $1.10. The store made a $99 profit off every cable sold. And that's par for the course for pretty much everything you buy at any retail store. These companies aren't going out of business because *they're ripping us off!*
So, regarding the compactor story, I wouldn't have it myself in that position, but if I WERE to be in that position, I'd be thanking that person for perhaps saving my damn life rather than admonish her.
If it involves rotating metal, hydraulics, pressures above 5 psi, heat or chemicals/materials other than hose water just don't stick your hands or body parts in it at all. Especially if pressurised, energized, or if any energy of any kind is still stored in the thing. And if you cant tell if these conditions are present or not find someone more qualified than you to teach you.
Trash compactor story: OP was 1000000% justified in yelling at that absolute idiotic moron. I used to work at a hardware store and they were adamant that we NEVER get in the trash compactor or the cardboard bailing machine, under ANY circumstances. This company took safety extremely seriously, so anyone who didn’t comply was terminated immediately as well. I had never seen anyone terminated for this, but had heard stories, so I know they were serious. Beyond that, why would someone be so damn stupid? Like wow. Just wow.
The big corporation thing wasting money is real. My brother works for a company that does so well, they never really had to be accurate with pricing their multimillion dollar machines or caring about wasting material. He says they throw out tens of thoundands worth of material because nobody ever cared enough to do accurate calculations. 😅
Part of the reason inflation is so high is all these middle managers spending 1000$ to save 80$. Corporations are so fractured they don't realize how inefficient and wasteful they are.
The problem in the last story is simple bureaucracy. Each little fiefdom in a bureaucracy is only concerned with it's own matters, in this case it's budget. There is no concern for actually increasing the overall cost to the company as long as that cost attaches to someone elses budget.
I do understand the HOA a little. Cameras that look into other people’s properties is something that can be misused so badly and can make neighbours feel unsafe, spied upon etc. it’s not really enough to just trust that the owners won’t look, or will always keep a filter on.
in programming "coding" these Sally cases happen often, some engineer builds a huge portion of the program, gets fired on no one knows how the fundamentals run.
