Turtles at Work

Prior to dropping the Raid parting gift to my clueless ex boss I had my scheduled exit interview with Human Resources. I have written about the HR department at my old company in many posts and their tendancy for the bizarre and idiotic continued in my exit interview.

I first met with the HR manager to go over the exit interview form. In a nutshell the exit interview form is completely for show. You see the HR department at my former company has zero employees with any type of HR certifications. What they do is take ideas they see in HR magazines and implement them half assed, like the exit interview. There is zero understanding of how they can apply the exit interview information to improve the company, identify poor mangers, etc. In any case, I completed the exit interview assessing such areas as company culture, my boss, etc. Since I am competent and logical I provided actual written examples that supported my ratings of the areas of was assessing. Upon completing the form I hand it in to the HR Manager, who seeing low ratings for many of the categories seems astonished. She then uttered "Wow, I guess we really didn't do so well." "That's an understatement" I replied. Why the hell does she think I'm leaving? People don't leave places they like for the most part, they leave because they hate their boss. or their compensation or the company culture.

After a few minutes of mindless discussion the HR Manager sends me over to the HR Director. It's like going from dumb to dumber. At my past company, and probably the company you work for, the higher the title the dumber the person. The HR Director is no exception and I took advantage of her incompetence to identify why I was basically given a final written warning and poor performance review after having reviews of exceeding expectations. It was after about 10 minutes of discussion that the HR Director mentioned "this company is about face time." Viola!!! There it was. The reason why I was basically blackballed. You see at the company I left it's not what you did it's how long you were in the office. My idiot boss sits on his fat ass for 12 hours a day eating cereal and playing solitaire and was revered, yet I put in 8-9 hours and get significant results and I'm a lepper. Amazing!

Aside from getting away from my idiotic boss I realized after the exit interview how lucky I really was to be leaving. You see my past company has all the wrong values and culture. They believe in rewarding people for what they did 10-15 years ago (my boss is a prime example), not for what they do now or can do in the future. They also believe that "face time" means hard work. Maybe I should forward my post to the HR Director on a day in the life of my(former) boss.

Posted by The Turtle King at Tuesday, February 19, 2008 2 comments    

Labels: career

It's been a month since my last real post and I must again apologize for the lag. I've been really busy at my new job and had to adjust to not dreading going to work everyday.

I'll catch you all up on my last days as a Turtle at my old company. I've written in previous posts about what I would do or like to do on my last day at my old company. Leading into my final days I had kept it low key, without really stirring the pot. Three days before my departure my idiot boss enters my office. He decides to throw a few shots my way. His comments were meant to make me re-think my leaving and even feel anxiety at the thought of starting a new job. I deflected his comments like the Turtle I am by blocking him out by thinking about the positives of me leaving.

After he left my office I started to boil a little. The part Wolf that I am began to emerge. "Who the hell does that fat ass think he is?" I asked myself. This guy has been a complete dickhead for the past year to me. He's given me a written warning without explanation, a shitty review and an even worse pay increase. He's taken shot after shot on me and I've had to take it because I really had no choice at the time. The wheels began to turn and my thoughts started to focus on my last day revenge. I couldn't do something idiotic or violent, even though the thought of taking a dump in his office crossed my mind. Instead I thought of something that I could do that I and rest of my co-workers could joke about.

On my last day I reported into work with my plan in place. With me I had brought a gift for my clueless boss. I had gift wrapped it in nice paper and included a nice little note. I waited til around 3:00pm in the afternoon and went into idiot's office. I handed him the gift.

"What's this" my boss asked.

"A little parting gift that I thought could help you out." I replied

My boss look bewildered and began to open the box.

"A can of Raid? What is this for?" he asked.

I quickly replied "Well, I figured you could use it. Since you've had a bug up your ass for over a year I thought you could use the Raid to kill it. You know me...team player just trying to help you out and save my former co-workers some stress. Later!" And I left his office, the building and never looked back.

I know you should never burn bridges but I figured why do I need a bridge, I'm looking ahead and never looking back!

Posted by The Turtle King at Friday, February 15, 2008 0 comments    

Labels: Bad Bosses

Fellow Turtles,

I have not abandoned you. I apologize for the lag in posting. With starting a new job, I've been a bit overwhelmed. I will be posted some new entries in the next few days that will bring me up to date. I have a great story to tell about how I said goodbye to my boss.

I may be a wolf..but I'm a Turtle at heart!!!

Turtle King.

Posted by The Turtle King at Tuesday, February 12, 2008 0 comments    

Labels: career