CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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Giff
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Giff »

The industry I'm in doesn't have a lot of players and it just so happens that one of the newer ones is just down the road. It also was started by the guy who started this company. There has been a steady trickle of people who have left here, worked at another spot run by the CEO after the founder left), then showed up at the new competitor a year later after the non-competes expired. I don't necessarily begrudge them of that because we were a really small company bought out by a bigger multi-national company, so I get wanting to go back to something like that. But the way it's being done rubs me the wrong way. And I was shocked by how much when I saw someone from the other company searched me on LinkedIn and reflexively said out loud "oh fuck them".

Anyway, what really bothered me is a girl who I've worked with for 13 years just resigned. When she came in my office to tell me, my first question was "is your new job Tallman's (ex-CEO) company" and she just said yeah, but not the one I'm thinking of. So she'll be at our competitor on February 22, 2021 I imagine. Again, I would never do it, but I'm not going to begrudge someone for doing what they think is best for their career/life. But I found it in really bad taste that there were four employees of the competitor at the going away party organized by her now ex co-workers. That's shitty right?
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mister d
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by mister d »

Like ... you think its unethical competition?
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Shirley »

Yeah, I don't get that. If the founder started a new, similar company and employees think life would be better there, isn't that a good thing? It's not uncommon for serial founders to learn what didn't work at Company A and make it better at Company B. Hell, the company I'm at now is essentially the Company B in this scenario (although I wasn't part of Company A).
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by HaulCitgo »

If you haven't learned it already, they don't care about you. So...
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Steve of phpBB
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Steve of phpBB »

Giff wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 3:07 pm The industry I'm in doesn't have a lot of players and it just so happens that one of the newer ones is just down the road. It also was started by the guy who started this company. There has been a steady trickle of people who have left here, worked at another spot run by the CEO after the founder left), then showed up at the new competitor a year later after the non-competes expired. I don't necessarily begrudge them of that because we were a really small company bought out by a bigger multi-national company, so I get wanting to go back to something like that. But the way it's being done rubs me the wrong way. And I was shocked by how much when I saw someone from the other company searched me on LinkedIn and reflexively said out loud "oh fuck them".

Anyway, what really bothered me is a girl who I've worked with for 13 years just resigned. When she came in my office to tell me, my first question was "is your new job Tallman's (ex-CEO) company" and she just said yeah, but not the one I'm thinking of. So she'll be at our competitor on February 22, 2021 I imagine. Again, I would never do it, but I'm not going to begrudge someone for doing what they think is best for their career/life. But I found it in really bad taste that there were four employees of the competitor at the going away party organized by her now ex co-workers. That's shitty right?
Just to understand - your company threw her a going away party when she's leaving to join the competitor, and at the going away party there were four others who had already left to join the competitor?

Where was the party? At your office or a bar or whatever?
And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by GoodKarma »

When I was doing HR outsourcing work I used to work for a guy who would start a company; build it; sell it; stay on for ~6 months; quit then start up a new company and take all of his old customers back. He did it 3 or 4 times. I always found it hilarious that no one either secured or enforced non-competes.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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GoodKarma wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:05 pm When I was doing HR outsourcing work I used to work for a guy who would start a company; build it; sell it; stay on for ~6 months; quit then start up a new company and take all of his old customers back. He did it 3 or 4 times. I always found it hilarious that no one either secured or enforced non-competes.
Non-competes are almost entirely unenforceable. Several states recently passed laws making them unenforceable or illegal.
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Steve of phpBB
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Steve of phpBB »

The Sybian wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:09 pmNon-competes are almost entirely unenforceable.
For you coastal elites, maybe. Us God-fearing folk in the West love "freedom of contract." They are rarely struck down.
And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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Steve of phpBB wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:36 pm
The Sybian wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:09 pmNon-competes are almost entirely unenforceable.
For you coastal elites, maybe. Us God-fearing folk in the West love "freedom of contract." They are rarely struck down.
Really? Damn, that sucks. They are still very common, as people are scared off by the terms, even if they aren't enforceable.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Steve of phpBB »

The Sybian wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:45 pm
Steve of phpBB wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:36 pm
The Sybian wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 6:09 pmNon-competes are almost entirely unenforceable.
For you coastal elites, maybe. Us God-fearing folk in the West love "freedom of contract." They are rarely struck down.
Really? Damn, that sucks. They are still very common, as people are scared off by the terms, even if they aren't enforceable.
There's a case from a long time ago saying that they can't be enforced against regular folks who don't learn secret information and aren't responsible for their employers' good will. But it seems to be ignored all the time.
And his one problem is he didn’t go to Russia that night because he had extracurricular activities, and they froze to death.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by mister d »

How broad, especially at a private company, does "secret information" go? Seems like a decent umbrella term.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by rass »

A coworker somehow did a piss poor job of talking her way out of jury duty and got stuck on a murder trial over the past month. At the end of a meeting today she very quickly went over the details of the case. 5 individuals ambushed and stabbed to death some guy making a 2AM Chinese food run in retaliation for him threatening one of the group with a knife weeks earlier.

So why is this here and not the "jury duty" thread?

Because when she was done, another coworker piped up to ask "who wants to hear my sex crime stories from Essex County grand jury service?"

The fuck, man?!?
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by degenerasian »

rass wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 11:10 am A coworker somehow did a piss poor job of talking her way out of jury duty and got stuck on a murder trial over the past month. At the end of a meeting today she very quickly went over the details of the case. 5 individuals ambushed and stabbed to death some guy making a 2AM Chinese food run in retaliation for him threatening one of the group with a knife weeks earlier.

So why is this here and not the "jury duty" thread?

Because when she was done, another coworker piped up to ask "who wants to hear my sex crime stories from Essex County grand jury service?"

The fuck, man?!?
At what point did people leave the room or were people still interested? I would have been out of there after first coworker finished her story. Some people have to insert themselves into every story.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Giff »

degenerasian wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 11:12 am
rass wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 11:10 am A coworker somehow did a piss poor job of talking her way out of jury duty and got stuck on a murder trial over the past month. At the end of a meeting today she very quickly went over the details of the case. 5 individuals ambushed and stabbed to death some guy making a 2AM Chinese food run in retaliation for him threatening one of the group with a knife weeks earlier.

So why is this here and not the "jury duty" thread?

Because when she was done, another coworker piped up to ask "who wants to hear my sex crime stories from Essex County grand jury service?"

The fuck, man?!?
At what point did people leave the room or were people still interested? I would have been out of there after first coworker finished her story. Some people have to insert themselves into every story.
I have an employee who does that. I have a remote employee who was in from out of town, so we had a team lunch. During that lunch, he shared how he had found out his real dad who he thought was dead was actually not dead and they had just met for the first time. The first reaction other than "wow!" or "holy crap!" was from her "yeah, i didn't know my real dad for a while either. Met him and didn't like him."
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by The Sybian »

rass wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 11:10 am A coworker somehow did a piss poor job of talking her way out of jury duty and got stuck on a murder trial over the past month. At the end of a meeting today she very quickly went over the details of the case. 5 individuals ambushed and stabbed to death some guy making a 2AM Chinese food run in retaliation for him threatening one of the group with a knife weeks earlier.

So why is this here and not the "jury duty" thread?

Because when she was done, another coworker piped up to ask "who wants to hear my sex crime stories from Essex County grand jury service?"

The fuck, man?!?
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Giff »

Shirley wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:04 pm Yeah, I don't get that. If the founder started a new, similar company and employees think life would be better there, isn't that a good thing? It's not uncommon for serial founders to learn what didn't work at Company A and make it better at Company B. Hell, the company I'm at now is essentially the Company B in this scenario (although I wasn't part of Company A).
That wasn't my issue. While I personally wouldn't do that for my own reasons, I certainly understand why others would. The dancing around the non-competes is shady to me.

But what rubbed me the wrong way was employees from that competitor showing up at a going away party organized by my company.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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The Sybian wrote: Tue Feb 25, 2020 10:05 pmYou need to have your company hire me ... and ... Respect ... the Workplace ...ass. It'll be great!
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by HaulCitgo »

Giff wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 7:59 am
Shirley wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 5:04 pm Yeah, I don't get that. If the founder started a new, similar company and employees think life would be better there, isn't that a good thing? It's not uncommon for serial founders to learn what didn't work at Company A and make it better at Company B. Hell, the company I'm at now is essentially the Company B in this scenario (although I wasn't part of Company A).
That wasn't my issue. While I personally wouldn't do that for my own reasons, I certainly understand why others would. The dancing around the non-competes is shady to me.

But what rubbed me the wrong way was employees from that competitor showing up at a going away party organized by my company.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by degenerasian »

If its organized by your company who invited the non employees?
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by mister d »

HaulCitgo wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 9:48 am
Giff wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 7:59 amBut what rubbed me the wrong way was employees from that competitor showing up at a going away party organized by my company.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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I'm starting to hate it here (the board, not my job at the company I work for).
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by duff »

Giff wrote: Wed Feb 26, 2020 10:20 am I'm starting to hate it here (the board, not my job at the company I work for).
Are you OK? Maybe degen's parents can take you out to a nice dinner and maybe a comedy show.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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Going forward, fuck off is my response to that question.

So, fuck off.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by rass »

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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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Took me too long there.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Johnny Carwash »

On a call with a guy who has said "master baker" multiple times and I'm not sure it was as clearly distinguishable as he might have assumed.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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On a screen share today, I watched someone move text to a new page in Word by hitting the Enter key a bunch of times instead of using Page Break and it made me want to punch my monitor.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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Johnny Carwash wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 3:47 pm On a screen share today, I watched someone move text to a new page in Word by hitting the Enter key a bunch of times instead of using Page Break and it made me want to punch my monitor.
I don't think I would ever think to use page break.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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Are we sick of reading/hearing "the new normal" yet?

I caught myself overusing it on Monday and flagged it as a potentially REALLY overused term by week's end.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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A_B wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 3:48 pm
Johnny Carwash wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 3:47 pm On a screen share today, I watched someone move text to a new page in Word by hitting the Enter key a bunch of times instead of using Page Break and it made me want to punch my monitor.
I don't think I would ever think to use page break.
Wait, so if for example you were around halfway down a page, and the subsequent content needed to be on a new page, you'd just hit Enter like 50 times?
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by A_B »

Johnny Carwash wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 3:54 pm
A_B wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 3:48 pm
Johnny Carwash wrote: Tue Mar 31, 2020 3:47 pm On a screen share today, I watched someone move text to a new page in Word by hitting the Enter key a bunch of times instead of using Page Break and it made me want to punch my monitor.
I don't think I would ever think to use page break.
Wait, so if for example you were around halfway down a page, and the subsequent content needed to be on a new page, you'd just hit Enter like 50 times?
Yes, most likely, but it would probably be done in review. I don't write a whole lot of things in WOrd that would be broken out like that. But now you point it out that makes a lot of sense. Just never really thought to do that before.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Shirley »

My highlight of the day.

Totally Kafkaesque
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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Woke up to find our servers at work are down because of a ransomware attack, so 2020 remains undefeated with the suck.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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So we've managed to re-stage our entire system and now the entire company is doing QA so we can get everything restored. The only good news with this is that it is so well within my abilities relative to everyone else (since we can't really work ahead too far) that I can do it stoned.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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(Hope that didn't come off like a brag or a diss. Anything but. It's cool they're pitching in. But you guys in software...you know what I'm talking about right? We have marketing, sales and accounting people doing QA right now which should only ever happen in a stone cold emergency.)
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by phxgators »

brian wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2020 4:33 pm (Hope that didn't come off like a brag or a diss. Anything but. It's cool they're pitching in. But you guys in software...you know what I'm talking about right? We have marketing, sales and accounting people doing QA right now which should only ever happen in a stone cold emergency.)
Oh I hear you. I'd actually love for an all-hands-on-deck QA surge right now...
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by elflaco3 »

what's your take on UAT? necessary? useful? done by users or QA teams?
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

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elflaco3 wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:29 am what's your take on UAT? necessary? useful? done by users or QA teams?
Largely out of my purview at my current gig (even I seldom do QA), but from what I understand of it, probably only necessary for certain types of software and even then probably only for software used by large organizations. For a small to mid-sized company, it seems rather redundant.
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by Nonlinear FC »

Wow. On a Teams meeting and a co-worker's kid is literally banging on a pot while she's trying to report out.

Like, really? You can't tell the kid to do that in another room?
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Re: CUBE LIFE! Office Etiquette

Post by DaveInSeattle »

Nonlinear FC wrote: Fri May 01, 2020 9:37 am Wow. On a Teams meeting and a co-worker's kid is literally banging on a pot while she's trying to report out.

Like, really? You can't tell the kid to do that in another room?
Hah...I've gotten pretty used to seeing my co-workers kids during our 'stand-up' meetings. My project manager's kid was putting pokeman cards up in front of his camera last week. I don't see how people with young kids at home are getting anything done during all this.

I have a co-worker who has a cat who I swear sounds like a angry jungle cat during our meetings.
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