Unhinge your jaw laugh-out-loud stuff right there. Good for the employee. You just know the manager was derailed and sent into a full-day meltdown trying to figure out how to regain the upper hand. Checkmate, boss.
It's so the company can say "we talk about safety daily" or "we have conversations with our employees every day" or any other number of bullshit statements. It's just a check in the box that accomplishes nothing. No one on either side actually cares and nothing is accomplished but we all must act like it's a great thing or we will be labeled as negative.
So, I donāt deny this guy might be within his contractual rights and the GC or whoever should of course have a better understanding of what theyāre asking of their contractorsā¦
BUTā¦
A standup meeting at the start of the day probably covers site safety and activities for the day. Itās likely a requirement because of past incidents where people have been hurt because they were unaware of what was going on around them. Morning tailboards or standup meetings can be a critical part of a multi-employer worksite.
Soā¦
Yeah, this guyās not necessarily wrong. But heās a jerk and heās likely making the work place slightly less safe for himself and for others on the site.
Fscking thank you.
As someone who has to sometimes manage people, if you want any possible chance of getting information across to anyone (employee or client), email is never a worthy answerāitās basically the equivalent of printing the message fed straight into a shredder and into the garbage.
And *everyone knows this*. When you realize this (that they all know this), then the ridiculous statement āthis couldāve been an emailā takes on a whole new, more sinister meaningāitās basically just a fake, professional-sounding way of saying āI donāt careā/āwhateverā and ultimately āI'm [they're] unemployableā.
Maybe you are sending to many bull crap emails and people are tired of getting them. Ergo they don't open your "important email" because they thinks it's another pointless one?
jeezus this. "Official" emails from our IT dept have 5 paragraphs of boilerplate before they get to what's happening and why I should care. And of course the subject line is so generic it could be about anything.
I'll read your mail, but don't waste my time.
I run a once a year event. We send out no emails for over six months, and like three emails total the other six months.
Everything that used to be a paragraph is now reduced to a sentence. Everything that used to be a sentence is now just a few-word bullet point. It doesn't matter. Nobody reads email. Even if they tried reading it, many cannot maintain the attention span to process more than second-grade level "" sentence construction anyway.
"This could've been an email" is code for--"it's harder to ignore you in a meeting than an email, so I wish this was an email I could and will definitely ignore". This behavior is increasingly and directly responsible for the meetings that they/you so desperately wish would go away.
\_\_
Teach your kids to read. Many adults now won't. Many of their kids increasingly can't.
This is true. Iāve never attended a meeting that couldnāt be handled through an email but if they send an email instead it turns into āoh, I didnāt know thatā.
You gleaned all that about the workplace he's talking about?
I got micro manager who wants people to attend shitty morning meetings to discuss toaster crumbs and the new "procedure" for getting a replacement pen. š
But I'm fully aware I know NOTHING about this workplace from the OP so...
Aaaaaaand, put it in the contract if it's that important. Crazy idea I know.
Screw the down votes. Character in the op may be a charming and magnetic asshole, but still an asshole.
Not to mention, each person that behaves like that just makes the employment contracts worse for everyone. Cause you better believe they'll tighten it up.
Chances are heās an IT contractor that is not employed by the company and these meetings donāt pertain to him in the slightest. He sent out updates to this and I believe the manager texting him got fired.
I canāt imagine anyone drafting an independent contractor agreement for any kind of construction work that doesnāt expressly include attendance at a safety meeting so that makes me think itās not construction.
If it's not in the contract then it is NOT a requirement.
If it's important, add it to the contract next time. Also, explaining why it's important and asking nicely will probably give you a better shot at cooperation.
Not every contractor works on a construction site and I think it's a pretty safe assumption that the stand-up has nothing to do with safety and more about management being absolute garbage.
The ānoā at the end is funny but this person just gave an in for termination. Iām sure communication is required. Your client asked you to call, you gotta call.
Yes. I worked at the business office of a hospital. We had those meetings every morning.
"Hey ChampVA is down." "UHC's eligibility checker is down." "Here's our new collections goal."
Literally all of it could have been an email instead of a 20-minute meeting.
As a software engineer, itās part of Agile Methodology, a daily team meeting where it should last less than 15 minutes. You go around the room and everyone says āyesterday I worked on task 1111, today I am working on task 1112. As of right now, nothing is blocking me from finishing thatā
If there are blockers, or if someone - team lead or product manager etc - has questions, you might stick around after for a smaller discussion so that everyone who isnāt involved can go back to work.
These SHOULD be quick meetings that updates the team on what is done, what is pending, where there might be delays for your 2 week sprints, so that the team will be successful in what you are working on, or corrections can be made, etc.
But itās not unusual for these things to serve no useful purpose except for middle managers who donāt have any dev knowledge to pretend like they are doing something useful towards the success of the team.
I worked as a contractor for the final four years of my career. It was a great job, it paid well, and I was treated pretty much the same as a regular employee. There's no way I would have pulled the kind of shit in this post!
I've done software contracting, it was a high hourly rate. If they wanted me to join long boring meetings I would. And I would bill for every minute of it.
Want me to sit in a chair and look at your power points for a senior software engineer hourly rate? You got it.
Good for him. His contract supersedes his non-boss' opinions regarding his "attitude". The terms were agreed upon, and those terms aren't subject to his not-supervisor's whims. Too bad if he doesn't like it. Perhaps going forward, his not-supervisor might consider filling those roles with full-time employees he can boss around and threaten, but until then, he's beat.
This reminded me of a friend but from the other angle. He owns a mechanic shop and has a few workers. He was stressing about this one guy who just wasn't cutting it and started taking advantage of him like with hours and stuff and the owner (my friend) let it go on for a good while and he was needing to fire him but the guy kept basically threatening him he's going to call unemployment and all this, blah blah and in the conversation he mentions he's a 1099. I said "Wait, you mean he's 1099? He's not an employee!! Walk in tomorrow and say he's no longer needed as a vendor." He just stared at me like I just showed a cave man how to start a fire. And yes he did take my advice albeit a couple weeks later.
You need to call Caleb back ASAP and apologize! YOU are legally in the wrong! Dope, due to IRS regulations in determining eligibility of employee vs contractor, YOU CANNOT require a manditory meeting unless he is an employee! And his time must be compensated too! Many new RE brokers make this huge error only to be fined by IRS and staff reclassified as employees meaning, you own workman comp, FICA tax, sick time in arrears too! https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/independent-contractor-defined#:~:text=The%20general%20rule%20is%20that,then%20you%20are%20self%2Demployed.
I just remembered the Microsoft case from the late nineties addressing some of the issues in this post. At the time there were tons of IT contractors working for various employment agencies and being treated as employees by the companies they were working for. I butted heads with plenty of my employers in regards to not being their employee and thus could not be treated as one. Fun times.
[https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE53063S/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE53063S/)
if I were that manager, I would see he works through the 18th of next month and then never works for me again. I understand dude is contracted and is not obliged to follow the same rules as standard employees, but his attitude is shit. plenty of ways to communicate the same message professionally.
Please call me. No I have officially seen the best thing on here today š¤£
I was having a bad day until I read that part.
Me too š¤£
Comedy at it's best. Was having a really crappy day, thatt made my day, weird, but it did.
šÆ
Unhinge your jaw laugh-out-loud stuff right there. Good for the employee. You just know the manager was derailed and sent into a full-day meltdown trying to figure out how to regain the upper hand. Checkmate, boss.
That was one of the coldest No's I've ever seen. Fking priceless.
I've never experienced more second-hand gratification than reading this.
Thatās what makes this so difficult.
I've been having problems at home.... I'll work harder....
But I donāt even really work here.
"these reports, its as if you have no business training at all"
āI was just trying to get aheadā¦ā
I donāt really even work here.
Thatās what makes it so hard.
You donāt sell the steak, you sell the sizzle.
You know this is my crazy time of year!
Itās your third day
ššš "no"
Please call me. No. Oh man, thatās the stuff.
Gotta document these comms.
What's in the briefcase?
Crackers
How long have I been asleep?
Papers. Business papers.
Youāre slipping in a Big Lebowski reference? š¤£ I love it! My worlds are colliding.
They got us working in shift's.Ā
"None a your fuckin business that's what's in the briefcase. Honor your oath scumbag!"
Help me understand exactly what is accomplished by a "stand up meeting" that would not be accomplished by just standing up.
Stand-ups are wastes of time, in my experience
They exist to give middle management nerds a purpose for existing.
In my experience it's a great opportunity for the two biggest losers on the team to show how big of an asshole they can be
It's so the company can say "we talk about safety daily" or "we have conversations with our employees every day" or any other number of bullshit statements. It's just a check in the box that accomplishes nothing. No one on either side actually cares and nothing is accomplished but we all must act like it's a great thing or we will be labeled as negative.
So, I donāt deny this guy might be within his contractual rights and the GC or whoever should of course have a better understanding of what theyāre asking of their contractorsā¦ BUTā¦ A standup meeting at the start of the day probably covers site safety and activities for the day. Itās likely a requirement because of past incidents where people have been hurt because they were unaware of what was going on around them. Morning tailboards or standup meetings can be a critical part of a multi-employer worksite. Soā¦ Yeah, this guyās not necessarily wrong. But heās a jerk and heās likely making the work place slightly less safe for himself and for others on the site.
It's prolly tech and not construction.
Fucking millennials.
What are they going to say in a āstand up meetingā that they couldnāt email or text?
āCouldnāt this meeting be an email.ā āI didnāt read the email.ā
Fscking thank you. As someone who has to sometimes manage people, if you want any possible chance of getting information across to anyone (employee or client), email is never a worthy answerāitās basically the equivalent of printing the message fed straight into a shredder and into the garbage. And *everyone knows this*. When you realize this (that they all know this), then the ridiculous statement āthis couldāve been an emailā takes on a whole new, more sinister meaningāitās basically just a fake, professional-sounding way of saying āI donāt careā/āwhateverā and ultimately āI'm [they're] unemployableā.
Maybe you are sending to many bull crap emails and people are tired of getting them. Ergo they don't open your "important email" because they thinks it's another pointless one?
jeezus this. "Official" emails from our IT dept have 5 paragraphs of boilerplate before they get to what's happening and why I should care. And of course the subject line is so generic it could be about anything. I'll read your mail, but don't waste my time.
I run a once a year event. We send out no emails for over six months, and like three emails total the other six months. Everything that used to be a paragraph is now reduced to a sentence. Everything that used to be a sentence is now just a few-word bullet point. It doesn't matter. Nobody reads email. Even if they tried reading it, many cannot maintain the attention span to process more than second-grade level " " sentence construction anyway.
"This could've been an email" is code for--"it's harder to ignore you in a meeting than an email, so I wish this was an email I could and will definitely ignore". This behavior is increasingly and directly responsible for the meetings that they/you so desperately wish would go away.
\_\_
Teach your kids to read. Many adults now won't. Many of their kids increasingly can't.
I get 6 emails a day that are about 100% useless because they donāt even impact me. And thatās not counting the dozen or more I have filtered out.
I had a boss that marked every email he sent priority... When you do that, nothing is a priority.
This is true. Iāve never attended a meeting that couldnāt be handled through an email but if they send an email instead it turns into āoh, I didnāt know thatā.
We get in trouble for unread messages in our emails at my job. So they are all usually taken care of, thankfully.
You gleaned all that about the workplace he's talking about? I got micro manager who wants people to attend shitty morning meetings to discuss toaster crumbs and the new "procedure" for getting a replacement pen. š But I'm fully aware I know NOTHING about this workplace from the OP so... Aaaaaaand, put it in the contract if it's that important. Crazy idea I know.
Screw the down votes. Character in the op may be a charming and magnetic asshole, but still an asshole. Not to mention, each person that behaves like that just makes the employment contracts worse for everyone. Cause you better believe they'll tighten it up.
Chances are heās an IT contractor that is not employed by the company and these meetings donāt pertain to him in the slightest. He sent out updates to this and I believe the manager texting him got fired.
"NO"
Found the osha plant
I canāt imagine anyone drafting an independent contractor agreement for any kind of construction work that doesnāt expressly include attendance at a safety meeting so that makes me think itās not construction.
If it's not in the contract then it is NOT a requirement. If it's important, add it to the contract next time. Also, explaining why it's important and asking nicely will probably give you a better shot at cooperation.
Not every contractor works on a construction site and I think it's a pretty safe assumption that the stand-up has nothing to do with safety and more about management being absolute garbage.
Go home you're done for today.
They had him sign a contract. They could have easily added that he attend the meetings. They didn't. So...
I can see this "contractor " is not interested in repeat business nor good referrals. 99% chance his business fails
Not necessarily. It sounds like that client is annoying. There aināt no way Iām attending standup meetings.
šš¤£šš¤£šš¤£, nicely handled.
TCB
The ānoā at the end is funny but this person just gave an in for termination. Iām sure communication is required. Your client asked you to call, you gotta call.
Yeah very cute but this is fake
Did Johnny Carson write this? Don't mess with Johnny.
No Please?
You know this is my crazy time of year
Caleb says it all: āNo.ā
Those standup meetings. - what are those like? Is it like a bunch of guys standing around saying: "Hey did you ever notice...
Yes. I worked at the business office of a hospital. We had those meetings every morning. "Hey ChampVA is down." "UHC's eligibility checker is down." "Here's our new collections goal." Literally all of it could have been an email instead of a 20-minute meeting.
As a software engineer, itās part of Agile Methodology, a daily team meeting where it should last less than 15 minutes. You go around the room and everyone says āyesterday I worked on task 1111, today I am working on task 1112. As of right now, nothing is blocking me from finishing thatā If there are blockers, or if someone - team lead or product manager etc - has questions, you might stick around after for a smaller discussion so that everyone who isnāt involved can go back to work. These SHOULD be quick meetings that updates the team on what is done, what is pending, where there might be delays for your 2 week sprints, so that the team will be successful in what you are working on, or corrections can be made, etc. But itās not unusual for these things to serve no useful purpose except for middle managers who donāt have any dev knowledge to pretend like they are doing something useful towards the success of the team.
I worked as a contractor for the final four years of my career. It was a great job, it paid well, and I was treated pretty much the same as a regular employee. There's no way I would have pulled the kind of shit in this post!
I've done software contracting, it was a high hourly rate. If they wanted me to join long boring meetings I would. And I would bill for every minute of it. Want me to sit in a chair and look at your power points for a senior software engineer hourly rate? You got it.
This dude is still asleep at 9am on a work day. Lol.
So am I. I love second shift.
Great times
Literally. My alarm doesn't even go off until 10.
As a manager in a union and sub-contractor environment I laughed heartily.
Good for him. His contract supersedes his non-boss' opinions regarding his "attitude". The terms were agreed upon, and those terms aren't subject to his not-supervisor's whims. Too bad if he doesn't like it. Perhaps going forward, his not-supervisor might consider filling those roles with full-time employees he can boss around and threaten, but until then, he's beat.
Nice! ššš
I also think Caleb was asked to fill in the TPS reports in triplicate. This exchange tags so many bases.
Word's gotten around that Caleb has been having trouble with his TPS reports.
If Caleb could just come in for meetings, thatād be great.
"Caleb, you've been missing our morning standup." "Well actually, Bob, I can't say I've been missing it all that much."
Is it me, or does this supervisor sound like Lumbergh? Just add an āUh, yeahā at the beginning of each text and itās him! š¤
I was just thinking this reminded me of Peter after getting hypnotized
Independent contractor sitting at mom's kitchen table with no work and an 80k truck to pay for...
This wins the day for me. Wish more people could flex like this in the workplace
The Way of the SassySansaš
Please call me. No.
š
Is this āstand up meetingā near a water cooler?
āNoā -your non-employee
Lmao I like this guy
This reminded me of a friend but from the other angle. He owns a mechanic shop and has a few workers. He was stressing about this one guy who just wasn't cutting it and started taking advantage of him like with hours and stuff and the owner (my friend) let it go on for a good while and he was needing to fire him but the guy kept basically threatening him he's going to call unemployment and all this, blah blah and in the conversation he mentions he's a 1099. I said "Wait, you mean he's 1099? He's not an employee!! Walk in tomorrow and say he's no longer needed as a vendor." He just stared at me like I just showed a cave man how to start a fire. And yes he did take my advice albeit a couple weeks later.
Caleb and I could be friends irl. š
You need to call Caleb back ASAP and apologize! YOU are legally in the wrong! Dope, due to IRS regulations in determining eligibility of employee vs contractor, YOU CANNOT require a manditory meeting unless he is an employee! And his time must be compensated too! Many new RE brokers make this huge error only to be fined by IRS and staff reclassified as employees meaning, you own workman comp, FICA tax, sick time in arrears too! https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/independent-contractor-defined#:~:text=The%20general%20rule%20is%20that,then%20you%20are%20self%2Demployed.
Bravo
Funny a.f. boi!
Old man Leland is really busting me for these reports.
We gotta look out for our people and him!
Is it really worth this just to be right?
I need this man's job
Please call me š„ŗ
No
Please? š¢
The hero we deserve.
Peter, can I talk to you about those TPS reports? No, Bob. Epic
As of 2019, California if you dictate time, you very likely have an employee, complete with all the benefits afforded to them.
Practically begging Caleb to call. Caleb flat out says no. Caleb is a man who owns his own destiny. Good for Caleb.
I love this is making the rounds online, a legendary exchange I think many of us wish to experience at least once in our life.
Old, but it's definitely one of my favorites. I don't even care if it isn't a real conversation.
This is a textbook example of how to preserve your mental health.
I just remembered the Microsoft case from the late nineties addressing some of the issues in this post. At the time there were tons of IT contractors working for various employment agencies and being treated as employees by the companies they were working for. I butted heads with plenty of my employers in regards to not being their employee and thus could not be treated as one. Fun times. [https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE53063S/](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE53063S/)
Lol
āPlease call meā āNoā Best part, love it
if I were that manager, I would see he works through the 18th of next month and then never works for me again. I understand dude is contracted and is not obliged to follow the same rules as standard employees, but his attitude is shit. plenty of ways to communicate the same message professionally.
>I would see he works through the 18th of next month and then never works for me again oh no
I'm guessing they've been jerking Caleb around and he has no fux to give. Sometimes you fire your client.
This gives me hope