Interesting Company Policies
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I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
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I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
Ethics hotline ?
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Ethics hotline ?
Christian Graus wrote:
Ethics hotline ?
You know... the number you call to get yourself into trouble for questioning the actions of your company and/or bosses? They exist at some places to give the employees a false sense of control in their lives at work. We have one, I called it once, they couldn't punish me because I called the government line not the company one, but they punished my team until I pulled the complaint. I learned my lesson well! Luckily, I have good bosses now and don't need the fake calling line. :)
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
I like (being sarcastic here folks) the policy that says that if you take a vacation day directly preceding or following a holiday, the holiday will be counted as vacation as well. Or filling out time cards on Thursday morning and having to estimate Thursday and Friday's work. Or not having a spot on the aformentioned timecard for company meetings. But the best policies (sarcasm here) are actually the ones that are unspoken. :) Like, we don't use foreign key relationships because you never know when the product has to be ported to a DB that doesn't support FK's. Or, we don't want our devs to do DB stuff, because the DB people know better what the devs need. Or, we'll add unit tests after we refactor the code. :laugh: Etc. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh Smith -
I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
At my last job the policies weren't odd, but they were not applied fairly. I got reprimanded for looking at CNN.com (non work related) and my boss spent half the day downloading illegal songs. Even if you tried to turn someone in, it would kick you in the butt. If you remember the Creepy Guy sent me an email and all it said was, "SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEER" Well, the number of each letter may be off, but you get the idea. Sent it to my boss, who sent it to HR who wrote me up because I had two unauthorized emails. Both to my husband. Yeah, I'm sure no one else has ever done that. The one thing at that company that I believe is illegal is they had a separate smoking policy for manufacturing versus non-manufacturing. Office workers could not smoke at all during working hours, but manufacturing could smoke during their breaks. I work for a large company now and we also have an ethics hotline/website. There are posters around about it as well so I don't know if ethics have been an issue in the past or if it's a newer thing that they are trying to promote.
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Ethics hotline ?
Christian Graus wrote:
Ethics hotline ?
When someone wants to report an ethics violation in a semi-anonymous manner, they can call the ethic hotline. By semi-anonymously I mean the only person who is supposed to know your name and that you reported an ethics violation is the company ethics coordinator. It’s so you can report your boss for being unethical without him knowing it. However, it typically doesn’t work that way.
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Christian Graus wrote:
Ethics hotline ?
You know... the number you call to get yourself into trouble for questioning the actions of your company and/or bosses? They exist at some places to give the employees a false sense of control in their lives at work. We have one, I called it once, they couldn't punish me because I called the government line not the company one, but they punished my team until I pulled the complaint. I learned my lesson well! Luckily, I have good bosses now and don't need the fake calling line. :)
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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I like (being sarcastic here folks) the policy that says that if you take a vacation day directly preceding or following a holiday, the holiday will be counted as vacation as well. Or filling out time cards on Thursday morning and having to estimate Thursday and Friday's work. Or not having a spot on the aformentioned timecard for company meetings. But the best policies (sarcasm here) are actually the ones that are unspoken. :) Like, we don't use foreign key relationships because you never know when the product has to be ported to a DB that doesn't support FK's. Or, we don't want our devs to do DB stuff, because the DB people know better what the devs need. Or, we'll add unit tests after we refactor the code. :laugh: Etc. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithMarc Clifton wrote:
I like (being sarcastic here folks) the policy that says that if you take a vacation day directly preceding or following a holiday, the holiday will be counted as vacation as well.
Or, for us, if you're sick on a day preceeding or following a holiday, the holiday counts as sick time. (another real policy that had to be revoked)
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At my last job the policies weren't odd, but they were not applied fairly. I got reprimanded for looking at CNN.com (non work related) and my boss spent half the day downloading illegal songs. Even if you tried to turn someone in, it would kick you in the butt. If you remember the Creepy Guy sent me an email and all it said was, "SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEER" Well, the number of each letter may be off, but you get the idea. Sent it to my boss, who sent it to HR who wrote me up because I had two unauthorized emails. Both to my husband. Yeah, I'm sure no one else has ever done that. The one thing at that company that I believe is illegal is they had a separate smoking policy for manufacturing versus non-manufacturing. Office workers could not smoke at all during working hours, but manufacturing could smoke during their breaks. I work for a large company now and we also have an ethics hotline/website. There are posters around about it as well so I don't know if ethics have been an issue in the past or if it's a newer thing that they are trying to promote.
leckey wrote:
I work for a large company now and we also have an ethics hotline/website. There are posters around about it as well so I don't know if ethics have been an issue in the past or if it's a newer thing that they are trying to promote.
This company has had many ethics problems in the past, mainly done by managers and executives. Thier answer was yearly ethics training for employees and some piece of crap swag to remind us to be ethical. We have the posters to. Plus our company changes all of our screen savers to company rah, rah pictures to keep us more ethical. (I change mine back)
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At my last job the policies weren't odd, but they were not applied fairly. I got reprimanded for looking at CNN.com (non work related) and my boss spent half the day downloading illegal songs. Even if you tried to turn someone in, it would kick you in the butt. If you remember the Creepy Guy sent me an email and all it said was, "SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEER" Well, the number of each letter may be off, but you get the idea. Sent it to my boss, who sent it to HR who wrote me up because I had two unauthorized emails. Both to my husband. Yeah, I'm sure no one else has ever done that. The one thing at that company that I believe is illegal is they had a separate smoking policy for manufacturing versus non-manufacturing. Office workers could not smoke at all during working hours, but manufacturing could smoke during their breaks. I work for a large company now and we also have an ethics hotline/website. There are posters around about it as well so I don't know if ethics have been an issue in the past or if it's a newer thing that they are trying to promote.
leckey wrote:
Sent it to my boss, who sent it to HR who wrote me up because I had two unauthorized emails. Both to my husband. Yeah, I'm sure no one else has ever done that.
But, did you call your husband a sinner ?
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I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
A company my wife worked for had (has?) the policy that you had to read your company email, but on your own time, and of course you couldn't read it from home, you had to be in the office, sitting at your desk, but you don't get paid to do it. I'm sure it didn't apply to anyone above peon.
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I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
Not really a policy, but a couple of weeks ago we had an ISO9001 audit, and our quality manager sent an email with an attached shortcut to our network drive with our procedures and work instructions on it, saying that if the auditors asked us if we knew where to find our procedures, to show them that shortcut, and if they asked any more questions, refer them to her... Our ethics line received a couple of calls about that one :)
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
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Christian Graus wrote:
Ethics hotline ?
When someone wants to report an ethics violation in a semi-anonymous manner, they can call the ethic hotline. By semi-anonymously I mean the only person who is supposed to know your name and that you reported an ethics violation is the company ethics coordinator. It’s so you can report your boss for being unethical without him knowing it. However, it typically doesn’t work that way.
Joe Q wrote:
When someone wants to report an ethics violation in a semi-anonymous manner
you can't have an anonymous report, semi or otherwise. You were there, someone else was there, that leaves two choices, one of which is the subject of the report, one is the person calling. No matter how well you safeguard the information, simply the act of reporting reduces the possible callers significantly. Once the content of the report is read, the information contained therein reduces the possibility even more, time, place, event, etc. Large or small companies, that usually means the person who gets reported can easily find out who reported them simply by the information contained in the report.
_________________________ Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau. Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
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I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
A couple of good ones here...
- Apparently, you can only speak to the HR department on your own time.
- Speaking privately to one of the directors, instead of addresing concerns to your direct chain of command, is a sure-fire way to have your career turn to shit overnight - regardless of what the conversation was about.
- You are not allowed to wear headphones to listen to music. You are also not allowed to attach "unauthorized" (ie. personal) speakers to your computer. You are, however, permitted to bring a boombox and use that for listening to music. So, I hook this ugly-ass, oversized boombox to my computer (using one of those cassette tape adapters) and play my MP3's on it, for everyone to hear. :doh:
And yes, this is a government institution... :sigh:
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Christian Graus wrote:
Ethics hotline ?
When someone wants to report an ethics violation in a semi-anonymous manner, they can call the ethic hotline. By semi-anonymously I mean the only person who is supposed to know your name and that you reported an ethics violation is the company ethics coordinator. It’s so you can report your boss for being unethical without him knowing it. However, it typically doesn’t work that way.
Joe Q wrote:
company ethics coordinator
??? really, your time policies are your worst problems...
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I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
We had an appraisal system at one place where you had to put in: 3 things the employee should start doing 3 things the employee should keep doing 3 things the employee should stop doing I.e. - three negative actions were required! Being ever so slightly stubborn I only put third category items in if they were justified. Elaine (slightly compliant fluffy tigress)
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Not really a policy, but a couple of weeks ago we had an ISO9001 audit, and our quality manager sent an email with an attached shortcut to our network drive with our procedures and work instructions on it, saying that if the auditors asked us if we knew where to find our procedures, to show them that shortcut, and if they asked any more questions, refer them to her... Our ethics line received a couple of calls about that one :)
Ryan
"Punctuality is only a virtue for those who aren't smart enough to think of good excuses for being late" John Nichol "Point Of Impact"
Having done IS9001 development this deserves a very out of date custard pie. Straight from a very cold fridge.
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I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
Over 15 and that policy is against federal law. Pre correction : U.S. Federal Law
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage
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At my last job the policies weren't odd, but they were not applied fairly. I got reprimanded for looking at CNN.com (non work related) and my boss spent half the day downloading illegal songs. Even if you tried to turn someone in, it would kick you in the butt. If you remember the Creepy Guy sent me an email and all it said was, "SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEER" Well, the number of each letter may be off, but you get the idea. Sent it to my boss, who sent it to HR who wrote me up because I had two unauthorized emails. Both to my husband. Yeah, I'm sure no one else has ever done that. The one thing at that company that I believe is illegal is they had a separate smoking policy for manufacturing versus non-manufacturing. Office workers could not smoke at all during working hours, but manufacturing could smoke during their breaks. I work for a large company now and we also have an ethics hotline/website. There are posters around about it as well so I don't know if ethics have been an issue in the past or if it's a newer thing that they are trying to promote.
I like java style curly braces{ //Its no secret } A while ago one of my work mates pointed out, quite kindly, how my braces didn't fit that mandatory style guide the company uses. He did this by typing the following code: (Typed from memory not exactly what was typed but close)
private Int64 Foo()
{
int SomeVariable = 0;
string someString = "45";
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.Append(someString + SomeVariable.ToString());
return Int32.Parse(sb.ToString());
}Needless to say I got to keep my braces.
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage
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I was just wondering what interesting company policies people had encountered at their work. (it's a slow afternoon here) For example, at one time the company I work for enacted a policy that said "all time shall be rounded to the 1/2 hour", personal time was to be rounded up and casual time was to be rounded down. What this meant was if you came in 45 minutes late, you recorded that as 1 hour late (personal time), and if you worked 45 min extra (casual time to make up for coming in late) you recorded it as 30 min casual time, so you still had to make up 30 min. Our ethics hotline was jammed with complaints about the policy and how it required us to mis-charge our time. The policy was quickly pulled. Joe Q
At one company they sent out an email stating you could no longer listen to music. (Apparently, they noticed a huge amount of traffic going through a port in the firewall. Someone had set up a Kazaa server somehow gotten some ports opened in the firewall.) That caused an uproar, so they modified the policy to be that you can only listen to music on private devices, such as MP3 and CD players. The next day, they modified the policy again to allow people to use their computers to listen to music but only as long as it was on a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. Some, including myself, pointed out that our music was legal and actually had the receipts and/or CDs to prove it. The company then said you could store music you legally own on your computer and listen to it, but you couldn't share it. Then someone pointed out that iTunes allows you to legally share your music collection. So they allowed iTunes. That was ambiguous, since most the music on iTunes were clearly just copied from personal CDs. Finally, they just said that if they found any copyrighted material on your computer that you didn't own or weren't licensed to use, you'd be fired. (In a related vein; at one company when people left, before IT came visiting I cleaned off their computers to ensure files were checked in or the checkins cancelled and to copy any test or experimental projects to source control. One guy was fired for coming to work drunk on more than one occasion. When I cleaned off his system, I found he had written about a dozen lines of code in the previous three months and had thousands of dollars of high end pirated software on his system, including a top-of-the-line sound editor. What's really strange is that he clearly hadn't been using most of it. Never could figure out what he was thinking.) -- modified at 21:01 Tuesday 14th November, 2006
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke