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The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business
An anonymous reader writes "Business 2.0's fourth annual review of the most shameful, dishonest, and just plain stupid moments of the past year. Yes, SCO is represented..."
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That's the dumbest moment in advertising? I thought that commercial was hilarious!!
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
IBM contracting out DOS to Microsoft...and letting Microsoft keep ownership.
If IBM had played hardball and demanded ownership, more than likely Gates would have caved. The world would be much different today, that's for sure.
No butterflys. The Rolling Stones wouldn't have sold out...ok, maybe that would still have happened.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
How about Apple's release of countless models of Macintosh systems in the mid-90s, all with unique proprietary hardware configurations, causing stores nationwide to drop support and driving Apple to the brink of bankruptcy? I'd bet half of the death predictions for Apple fell within that time period.
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And since when is it sexist to show women playing football? Sure, they were in lingere, but that just shows off the beauty of nature. What do people have against nature? Why are people so damn puritanical in this country?
Are we even allowed to have fun anymore?
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
Maybe in the future we can say that. Right now they're doing pretty well...depending on your point of view. As anyone that bought low low and sold high can tell you.
What?
Do you have the courage of your convictions? Go put a can of pop in the freezer, and let us know what happens.
Articles like this are cute and give us a chance to snicker at idiotic behaviour, but the worst business decisions of (pick a year) should really be looking at and even emphasising the deeply amoral and criminal behaviour of some companies. Consider Coca-Cola, in India: They're draining ground water, bottling and reselling it, and dumping the purification byproducts onto the desert they've created where fertile farmland once stood. A few years ago, Nike (and then everyone else) ran into issues with sweatshop labour, but we don't hear about these things anymore, and they're still going on!
Bottom line, I'd like to see a magazine doing an article on the REAL abuses of businesses, and not just their silly little dumb decisions.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
In their defense, you know that's what the line was until the editors got hold of it. But we know what it really is...
Who's up for a web site that catalogs this sort of behaviour, easy to search, for use during recruitment?
1) It's none of your business.
2) If the government were doing it, how would you feel?
3) The "second chance" is the key to our theories that people can be reformed.
4) Your proposed system would "convict" people outside of a court of law, possibly making their lives miserable with no justification other then hearsay.
5) Isn't this what references are supposed to be for?
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
Hate to pop in, but you guys dont seem to have used servers before. It DOES matter to put a server on carpet, for a few reasons.
1. Static electricity is a potential problem. You should have have carpet in a server room, or a workbench area. But this is a minor point.
2. Heat. This is a real problem. Many servers (including many of my older IBM servers) have planer boards in the bottom of the cases. For those of you in Rio Linda, the planer board is where the cpu and drm (voltage regulator) is mounted. This is the hottest portion of the server case by a long shot. These system exhaust the hot air at the bottom back and/or bottom of the base. This is why they have pedestals, to keep the bottom of the case raised slightly to aid airflow
Funny thing, if you HAVE to put this type of server flat on carpet, the smartest thing you can do is to put them upside down, so the tech that installed them was probably doing the best with what he had. No components inside the computer cares if it is upside down. Hard drives and fans work just fine upside down, and most fans work fine at 90 degrees as well. (old systems used to mount HDs this way, I don't personally recommend it for a 15k drive)
If you have any doubts as to what is stated herein, go take any old computer, lie it directly on the carpet with the normally hottest surface down (usually top or bottom, depending on airflow configuration) and let it lie there a few hours. Lift and feel. The carpet acts as an insulator, and WILL lead to premature failure. Remember, the average server has been running continuously for a couple years, not just a couple hours.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
The problem I have with this - as I expect most people do - is that it's a double standard. If my wife wants to contact me at work, that's verbotten. If there's an emergency at work after hours, the company expects to be able to count on my personal resources (phone, computer, time, etc.) because, well, because...
If the company has no loyalty to me, if they refuse to take my side, then I'll refuse to take theirs. On the other hand, if they have the common decency to allow reasonable use of company resources for personal reasons, then I'll be more than happy to allow them to make reasonable use of my personal resources for company reasons.
I'd say the key word here is reasonable. If the company is willing to be reasonable with me, I'm willing to be reasonable with them - and vice versa. The company often gets to define what's reasonable; in the above case, based on the company's attitude towards employee use of company resources, I think that a reasonable response to your boss calling you at home would be to slap them with a cease-and-desist order for harassment.
In any case, while I think the above was a good example of a pretty unreasonable policy (at least for a salaried employee), you're right - at least it was it writing.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Where does it say that? You apparently can read things I that I can't. If you can read into this that employees are not allowed to have emergencies, then I can read into it that emergencies are a different situation, and leeway is usually given. Then again, our definition of emergency may differ.
Or perhaps you're an idiot who has no idea that, generally speaking, fear is the worst way to motivate employees to do a good job.
Letting the personal bit go, have you ever had employees?. I have. I agree that fear, while it can be an excellent motivator, is not the way to motivate your employees.
This is not about fear. In fact, I would say that this is just the opposite. The greatest human fear is the unknown. This policy eliminates that fear. Here are the rules. Follow them, or be terminated. There is no inferred fear there. If this was the *only* policy that the company had, then yeah, it's a pretty piss poor motivator, and no one in their right mind would work there.
This is not about motivation. It's about expecting employees to follow the rules. Have you read what the latest virus/worms costs companies in lost time and other costs. Get your damned email at home. It's not your computer or network to play with. It's mine. It is there so you can do your job.
If I let you surf the net between calls, be happy I do. Maybe I will even let you check your hotmail account.
But don't think for a MINUTE I am going to let you use your work email account (which is what this memo is about) for personal reasons. I don't need the company mailboxes/servers full of spam and viruses and Nieman Marcus cookie recipies. It cost me money to run these servers and administer them. The more money it costs me, the less profitable our business is, and the less you are gonna wanna work here. Deal with it.
In regards to the phones, how is it irrelevant? If I am running a call center, I get and keep clients based upon my service levels. One of the first things a client looks at when choosing a customer for tech support is average speed of answer. (Been there, done that, trust me... its a big issue) If you are on the phone, not doing something work related, what am I paying you for? Use the phone in the break room when you are on your break. Asking employees not to use the phones for personal calls (when on the clock) is not the practice of some totalitarian regime. It's a good business descision.
Look at it this way. You work for XYZ technical services. You have computers in the break rooms, you have a great benefits package, you have phones in the break rooms. You get a full hour for lunch. We have a great cafeteria and good restaraunts nearby. You are allowed to surf the web between calls. You get excellent training, tuition reimbursement, and *real* certifications by company trainers that you can take with you when you leave. There are emergency contact numbers that your loved ones, or your childrens school administration can call to get ahold of you. You can even have your cell phone with you at your desk, you can get your text messages, but I ask that you not make or recieve calls while you are "logged in" to the phones to take calls from clients.
Suddenly, you get the above memo. Do you have a problem with it now?
We don't know what the conditions are like at the company that this memo was issued at. They could be like I just decribed.
I described it that way because that is very much like a company I used to work for. If I had any brains back in the mid 90's I would still be working for them. But I was stupid and followed a promise of better money, and faster certifications. I didn't realize how good I had it. That company had a policy very much like what this memo states. Not quite so harshly stated certainly, but it reads very much like the memo people recieved after being caught violating the personal use policy the *first* time
Oh, BTW, ask anyone who knows me. I have more personality than I know what to do with.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
As others pointed out, you are free to work for this jerkwad if you enjoy having these kinds of policies in place. But if you did, you sure as hell wouldn't be posting to /. during working hours, or you'd be out on your ass come 8:00 Christmas eve. Enjoy the unemployment queue.
There is a benefit to having clear, concise computer, telephone and security policies in place, but there are diplomatic ways to phrase such policies in an employee manual, not by way of a blunt (if not outright rude) email from a boss who sounds like Josef Stalin. If the boss addresses his clients/customers the same way he communicates with his employees, he won't be in business for very long.