There is this young dude at my shop who works with an older woman. Their relationship is like a grandmother - grandson one. Thus I was shocked to hear during a meeting with our bosses that this guy recommended that the older woman be fired.
I have observed other coworkers regularly BACK-STAB their ‘friends’. Is it an American thing? Where I come from, when you don’t like someone you let it show. But I noticed that an American will laugh with you one minute and stab you the next.
^ That story is disappointing, for sure.
I’ve seen it happen before, it’s happened to me, etc. I like to get close to my co-workers but not that close, unless there’s some distance apart i.e. we work on different sector teams, different divisions, etc. I tend to be very frank and honest with people, usually to my benefit among friends and family, but sometimes to my detriment in a professional setting since you don’t know how people will use that information.
Therefore, I tend to keep more of my feelings to myself while in the workplace, and just remind myself that as long as I’ve agreed to be on someone’s payroll, I should enjoy the opportunity for what it is and make the most of it. If there’s something so untenable about my situation, I apply extra energy towards improving my situation (usually by way of a job search) rather than airing my feelings out to co-workers.
Should the old woman be fired?
Crackers! I trust them as far as I can throw them
Do crackers without the salted tops fly a little farther due to decreased wind resistance, or does the salt on salted top crackers create kind of a dimple effect and make them fly farther? Any difference between store brands and the brand name crackers?
I wish all first posts were this interesting and not questions about which set of books to buy, so good job on that.
I think it’s an American thing. I work with a lot of Europeans and I’ve asked about this before and the general concensus is that Americans are more welcoming and friendly on the surface than many countries, but a little more two faced and resistant to building actual relationships with depth. For instance, one coworker from Germany said as an example that he had a couples dinner with an acquantaince and at the end the couple said, “We had a great time, lets do this again”, but when he would call back they would never follow through on booking. He said in Germany (and Europe in general) that is very unlikely to happen and people are less sociable and welcoming at first, but then more likely to say what they mean and follow through on relationships once you cross that threshold. In general, I’ve found the US corporate environment to be excessively two faced, particularly the times I’ve worked in NYC. Pretty spineless bunch (mixed with some good apples of course).
However, the US is a big country and the experience will differ by area. Rural areas are much more open about these things and loyal. While I was in NJ working for Johnson & Johnson, I was talking to a coworker from Egypt who had worked in York, PA near where I grew up (rural area). He would always talk about how harsh the people there seemed at first because they were super open and would just tell you what they thought. But he also said that once he got used to that, they were the most loyal group of coworkers / friends he had. He ended up moving back there several years later.
These are anecdotes, but I feel they’re pretty representative, don’t know if that’s helpful at all.
You need to be careful who you trust at work. You never know who has the white or black hat on.
Once bitten, twice shy. Most of the zips you work with will opt to backstab for a NPV of .01.
Respect.
CFAvsMBA, am I going crazy or have I seen you write that before somewhere else?
haha yea within the last couple days
Oh no he di’int!
It’s in my “Bonus Bounce” thread. Held true here so I copied and pasted.
Respect.
US coworkers are a real piece of work…
Talk behind your back and complain to your manager about ‘your’ lack of productivity; meanwhile come to you for help with ‘their’ work when they realize they are too dumb to do it on their own.
When you play the game of Aeron chairs, you either win or you get fired.
Yeah agree with BS. This is generally an american thing (I say generally because there are some cool/straight up american folks). In general, americans come across as very friendly and welcoming in the workplace, but be aware that they can back stab you at a moments notice. I have always hated the “hi how are you” in the morning. Nobody gives a rats ass how I am in the morning - they are just saying it to be nice. I have learned to just say “I am good” and be done with it. I don’t reply with “hi how are you” because I know I will get a generic response back. In other cultures (such as germany for example), people are less friendly on the surface (which can be interpreted by americans as cold), but have much deeper connections with coworkers/friends. If you don’t like someone, you don’t ask them “how are you”?
I’m like my man Black Swan. I keep it PC at work. For all my coworkers know, I work, exercise, attend church, read books, and tip a beer or two now and again. If only they knew about my daily happy hours that turned into a full out debauchery…
No sense in letting your true colors out at work. Like my man Biggie said, “keep your family and business completely separated. Money and blood don’t mix like two d!cks and no b!tch find yourself in serious sht.”
Pleasure by day, diarehea by night.
CFAvMBA is the only one that understands my plight.
Will this Jabroni or wont this jabroni?
Is he or is he not my uncle Toni.
Shakespeare.
This happens all the time, I feel that it is much more pronounced in corp. finance because you have too many wolves and not enough sheep…
American corporate culture is rather like this, but Americans are no so much this way outside of the business world. It’s especially bad in the corporate business world, though.
This is partly because MBA education basically tells excutives that their job is to supposed to maximize shareholder value, which means firing you if the NPV of doing that is $0.01. So as people work their way up, it starts to become important to make sure that other people get fired instead of them. Elites basically look at it as if it were a football/rugby gaime… you know what the rules are, what you’re allowed to do, and that people will get hurt, so they don’t feel they are truly screwing anyone, because those are the rules of the environment. After the game, everyone goes home and says stuff like “man, it sucks that you got fired and have to live on the street with your family. Well, see you next weekend at the bar.”
Western Europeans seem to me to be less this way, where there is more of a sense of communal obligation probably left over from times when the Catholic church tried to get nobles to feel guilty about raping the peasantry.
^ MBA education also tells future executives that only 10% of the group can get an A no matter how well everyone performs.