Unity - “hold my beer”
This was the main example I had in my head when making this post.
Yeah it’s even worse that he was doing it at an event that’s very focused on being inclusive and accepting of everyone. It shouldn’t even be a situation where you need to read the room. It should be a given.
Former CEO gathers 20-30 of us in the board room, talks about the difficult economy, proceeds to fire everyone.
The silence was deafening.
The meeting ends, he stands at the door expecting us to shake his hand as we leave.
Not a single person shook his hand.
Back in the day I worked in a restaurant that closed down, and the owner tried to steal all of our last two weeks’ pay.
It had been announced ahead of time that the place was going to close at the end of the month, and we were actually a very popular place, so the last two weeks were completely sold out, crazy busy, and there should have been lots of tips. After we closed, they kept dragging out the date we could get out last paychecks, then finally just tried saying, “there won’t be any last paychecks.”
All of us employees got together with a lawyer and they sent a letter saying that they needed to give us our last paychecks or we would file a class action lawsuit for all the tips they’d been stealing out of the tip pool. He then relented and agreed to pay us our last checks, but refused to mail them. When I went to pick up the check, dude really had the balls to try to shake my hand and say, “Hey Turtle Joe, how’s the summer going? Take any vacations or anything?”
I left him hanging and said, “No I’ve been out of work for months now. I’m not here to talk to you, I just need my check.”
P.S. we sued him for wage theft anyway and ended up taking him for almost $200k.
Former, you say?
Yeah, a real incompetent sociopath.
At least he didn’t publicly share what his bonus was going to be for improving the bottom line.
Never forget that the year Lehman Brothers “collapsed” it paid the CEO 700 million dollars for one years worth of work.
One time the company big boss did a speech telling us how we could all learn a thing or two from his protégé, and clapped him on the shoulder.
If big boss had spent more time in the office, he’d have known that Mr Protégé spent most of his working hours playing ping-pong with Big Boss’s trophy-wife.
You could argue that he wasn’t wrong.
So ping-pong is an euphemism for sex? Or was he literally playing ping-pong?
Yeah, but with his balls
Oooh the agony
Oh the shame
To make his privates public for a game
I just remembered the pattycake scene in Roger Rabbit.
Working in a European country, went to someone’s leaving party, to celebrate their career after 35+ years in the job. The manager is new, and flies in for the event specially. The whole room is speaking in their local language, the person’s whole extended family is there.
The manager gets up and starts to make a speech, using a lot of English idioms. The speech started out with “35 years?! You get less for murder!”. As a native English speaker, I thought that was actually pretty funny. The guys entire family - not so much.
Honestly, I don’t think this one is necessarily bad. In fact this is relatively light compared to the others here.
I mean… He meant to tell a joke, a good one for those who understand.
Not sure if he was meant to give speech, tho
That’s a cracker. Going to remember that one
As an autistic person with ADHD I am going to leave this one alone. 😬
Lol same. Just me all the time…
Joke way to tell people, “As an autistic/ADHD person, if you want me to be able to read the room you better write it down. Preferably with bold text an bright colors.”
As an ADHD person I have so many stories.
But I can’t remember a goddamn one of them.
Lady at work told our office one day at lunch that her chihuahua died because it poked its head thru the fence and the neighbours rottweiler bit its head clean off. I could not stop laughing for the rest of the day. Even now its hard not to laugh. I know Im disgusting for thinking it funny, I love animals and would never hurt one, but it was the way she said it, “clean off, i went to take him away from the fence and his collar fell off, his head was completely gone. Neighbours dog at it.”
You know what they say: it’s how you tell em.
I know in real life it must have been gory and tragic, and I would normally never laugh about someone losing a pet, but the first mental image that comes to mind for me is cartoony and ridiculous so I’m with you on this one
Something about that story loops around from horrible into laughter. Its just so horrible the brain’s error handling is like “I dunno try laughing about it”
Holy shit haha!
I don’t know the specifics and I love animals as well, but I think as a porcelain rat dog™️ owner with a rottweiler neighbour, you should anticipate some risk and act accordingly. Big dogs killing the shit out of rat sized dogs by little more than a growl is very common after all.
No, that’s funny. You were right
I just read that as a chihuahua walked into the cafe :0
“Don’t you all have phones!?”
I was going to mention this one.
Thing is, the guy wasn’t wrong. Everyone in that room most certainly had a phone capable of playing the game.
But Blizzard was teasing Diablo 4 all but without actually saying it. I feel that a simple black screen, a voice over, and a flaming “IV” would have been all that was needed since they obviously was balls deep in development of it at the time.
And Blizzcon is a PC gaming centric event and we all know how PC gamers feel about mobile games. He didn’t just read the room wrong, he was in the wrong room entirely. The mobile game should have been announced as a Twitter post
In comparison Bethesda was smart about announcing Fallout Shelter by talking about Fallout 4 first, then going “oh btw some of us been doing this phone game on the side…”
Plus it was developed by a shitty mobile game apps company that was known for ripping off assets from other games. Sure, Blizzard licensed the assets to them, but the problem wasn’t really the stealing of the assets itself, it was that only shitty fly by the night companies are ripping off assets to put into a game that hopes to trick people into spending money on microtransactions before they realize how bad the game was.
I was an interpreter for this event, and I was the one covering this part of the panel. As an ex-Blizz fan, this moment is seared in my memory for many reasons. The shame of having to interpret this not the least.
?
Nobody should be downvoting you. Not everyone pays attention to, iunno, that crapfest that is/was E3 or the like
Fair question. It was a dick move from Blizzard when they were called out for not releasing their next Diablo game in anything but mobile. When the crowd booed, the game dev was all, “Do you guys not have phones?”
Oh, wow.
Yup, I was there as well. The bride moment of dead silence followed by booing after they announced it will forever be etched into my brain. To be fair though, poor Wyatt was set up and was never going to land that pitch in that setting.
Probably this guy on the TV programme Take Me Out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzyvLf0V3qs
I’m a physical therapist. I started as a physical therapist assistant. Way back in PTA school, our instructors brought in three people with spinal cord injuries for us to learn from. They talked about their experiences, showed us how they transfer, and one showed us his modified pickup truck that had hand controls and a crane to put his wheelchair in the back.
One of our classmates named Nancy had a habit of putting her foot in her mouth. She had absolutely zero filter. Our class guests were taking questions and one person asked about dating, in a respectful manner. Hearing about challenges related to normal stuff like that helps us to answer questions if we have a patient with a new spinal cord injury. One of the people said they had been with their gf for a few months and was talking about how they chose date activities and stuff. Pretty innocuous, nothing super personal.
Nancy makes a joke along the lines of “I’m surprised anyone would want to date someone like you,” kind of chuckling as she said it. The guest speakers seemed to take it in stride but man everyone in the class was looking around clearly horrified.
Plant manager sending out a site wide email saying that we’re doing awesome, and we’re desperately hiring so refer all your friends. One month after layoffs were announced, and those to be layed off still had a month to go.
I don’t know where you’re from, but some countries/areas have laws against fire and rehire, it’s a disgusting practice.
seen it happen before but what they do is ‘abolish’ the role, and introduce a new role with a new name, oddly similar job description (they change it enough to count as a new role) and rehire people on contract where the previous roles were permanent
Give you one guess… you won’t need it.
Something something “at will employement”? Gotta love most US states…
I worked at Cabela’s when it was bought out by Bass Pro. The sale went into effect mid-September, and in October they announced that all Cabela’s locations would be open on Thanksgiving for the first time ever and that ALL employees were required to be at work
On Thanksgiving day, when the employees who had their family time stripped away last minute were on the edge of revolt, the billionaire owner of Bass Pro made us print out and distribute an email he sent to all managers.
It was pictures of him and his family enjoying their Thanksgiving at his estate and a letter from him expressing how important it was to share the day with family and friends.
Please tell me there was a mass resignation after that email was sent.
The employees weren’t volunteers. They still had bills to pay.
And that’s why billionaires are bad. In the case of Bass Pro (probably owned by one person), one man directly controls the lives of tens of thousands of employees and there’s no recourse. He buys competing companies and crushes more lives, and makes people watch videos of his fishing trips.
And he literally thinks people love him for it. He sees himself as a benevolent provider.
That’s so disgusting, I’m sorry you had to put up with that shithead
I guess it depends on what someone means by “reading the room”. I’ve been given the impression people expect the room to read the same universally, as if there was anything inherently perceivable about the situation. It’s not for a lack of trying, but I’m always graded low on that skill, often by the same people who think I phrase something as being hostile just because of my wording when I never imply that. If I feel a certain way, I say so, and I don’t dishonor people because they’re not in the mood to feel the mood I feel.
That said, me walking around a flock of five dozen geese at a park and getting attacked by all of them because I didn’t understand they hated my presence takes the cake.
I mean… you know that your tone implies your feelings, right?
Kind of. I know it does to other people, but I don’t always feel or see the tone change they say they see. There are times there aren’t even changes and people still say they perceive something. I wonder if it’s a cultural thing, even if only partially, as I am not the same culturally as most others I see.
Probably just means you’re on the spectrum. Most people intuitively understand tonality.
I’m not the other user, but I can firmly say mine doesn’t. People sometimes think I’m arguing with them when I’m actually agreeing with them because I speak with a bit of a monotone. It takes constant conscious effort not to do and makes me feel burned out and dishonest when I try. Apparently it’s an autistic trait and is far from the only reason I suspect I’m autistic.
often by the same people who think I phrase something as being hostile just because of my wording when I never imply that.
I get what you’re saying here. I’ve been told in the past that I’m always angry and I know I sometimes speak with a condescending tone when I don’t mean to. I get frustrated with people not taking a second to think about what they say a lot. Especially when they ask questions, a lot of times if they think for a second they should be able to reason the answer themselves. But I know I have a problem with tone and communication and it’s something I’ve been working on myself for years through therapy and conditioning and I’ve gotten a lot better.
If I feel a certain way, I say so
Well there’s your problem right there
How is that a bad thing? I thought clear communication was good.
Not always. In fact, I’d go so far as to say not even most of the time.
If someone NEEDS to hear something, clear communication is good (ie, “what you said felt very hurtful to me”). But if saying exactly how you feel couldn’t bring about any benefit to the situation, it’s usually best to keep your mouth shut (ie, “I think those sandwiches you love are disgusting”). You need to consider how other people will react to what you say before you say it.
There are also many cases where someone needs to hear something, but it may still make them feel bad. In that case you need to be cautious about how you phrase it. (ie, instead of saying “Your boyfriend is a piece of shit”, you wait for an appropriate time and then say “sometimes it concerns me when I hear about how he treats you.”)
I was thinking the same same thing about that guys comment. Reminds me of that one saying that goes something like ‘if your day is full of assholes then it’s probably you whose the asshole’.
Fyre Fest 2. Yes it’s a thing. They claim tickets sold out, but I don’t believe it for a second.
Not a personal experience, but this room was pretty poorly read:
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2023/09/12/berkeley-eviction-moratorium-landlords-plan-party
CEO decided to lay off a huge portion of the company. Then he had the nerve to have an all-hands saying that the company’s financials were great and that they were on track to make $X billion in revenue in some years. Most off the laid off people were still in the fucking call.
My employer told us all the rumours were true. Layoffs were happening. They called it “difficult conversations” instead of firings.
About 1/5th of a team of 1000 people.
Apparently they hadn’t decided who yet.
Meanwhile we just received the biggest bonus in the companies history due to historic profits.
Then the CEO told investors that they expect a big pickup early next year and will need to hire a bunch of people to handle the demand.
So they are firing a bunch of people for 6 months to hit financial targets in the back half of the year before hiring people again.
Everyone that is to be fired is still waiting to find out who will be axed.
