• The_Caretaker@lemm.ee
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    10 hours ago

    When I was in the Army, deployed to Afghanistan, a bunch of junior soldiers (E-4 and below) came in from the field and wanted to get paid. They needed to wait in line at my little office inside of a hardened building. They were talking amongst themselves in the hall while they waited their turn. There were probably 50 of them. A master sergeant (E-7) came in and started yelling at the soldiers telling them to behave like soldiers and get next to the wall and wait quietly without talking. All the soldiers snapped to attention and went silent in a tight single file line against the wall. This dickhead master sergeant then walked past all of the soldiers who had been waiting in line, walked up to the front counter of my office and submitted some paperwork to have his housing allowance changed back in the states because his dependents had moved. I didn’t have the rank to argue with him so I smiled and gave him the most polite customer service you could expect from a military finance office. As soon as he left, I put his paperwork directly into the paper shredder (a crime). My fellow finance soldiers saw me do it and laughed. Fuck him for using his rank to cut in line. A non-commissioned officer should put the junior soldiers first and never use their rank to get special privileges. His paperwork got lost. It happens.

  • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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    16 hours ago

    Bikeshed the shit out of everything.

    Nazi Germany might have killed less Jews if they spent an excessive amount of time in meetings about which tile to use in the gas chambers.

    Edit: "As per mine previous telegram, zee Führer does not vant to spend zee time and money to create a swastika mosaic in zee gas chambers vhen vee are already EIGHT MONTHS BEHIND SCHEDULE!! Please review zee color options vee discussed at our last meeting and let me know how you could like to proceed as soon as possible.

    Most sincerely,

    Colonel Wilhelm Klink"

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      16 hours ago

      Here’s the thing: my dad does tiling on a regular basis and he says it’s ceramic or it’s nothing. Especially when you’re working with a caustic gas.

      The problem is the grout. You want a grout that isn’t going to fall apart after several uses. The color plays an important role on the binding so we really need to commission a study on how much of a mixture we need.

    • darvocet@infosec.pub
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      17 hours ago

      Ugh, Adolph asked me to get the whole cabinet together in the warroom at 5. It seems he is not happy with the alpine white. Sounds like we are going to be here all night.

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
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    21 hours ago

    The CIA wrote a manual on how to do this. It’s a bit old and parts of it are outdate for some times of work, but a lot of it is still useful.

    • Misunderstand orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders
    • Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products
    • Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done (some might say normal businesses do this as a matter of course…)
    • Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible
  • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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    19 hours ago

    I know a federal government employee who spent over half a day writing their “5 things you did last week” email. It seemed like a very important task coming from high up in the administration, so they wanted to take the time to make sure it was done right.

  • lime!@feddit.nu
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    20 hours ago

    can’t wait to be accused of being a collaborator just because i’ve been peter principled into a position i don’t understand

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      18 hours ago

      That’s the neat thing about dictatorships, your behavior is completely irrelevant to how you are treated. If they want to end you, they don’t need a justification.

      • mzesumzira@leminal.space
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        18 hours ago

        The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to “a level of respective incompetence”: employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

      • Stovetop@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        The Peter Principle is a concept where people get promoted up to their highest level of incompetence.

        If you’re good at your job, you get promoted. If you keep being good, you keep getting promoted. But eventually you land in a position that you’re not good at.

      • MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world
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        18 hours ago

        The Peter principal is the idea that anyone good at their job will keep getting promoted until they are no longer any good at the job they were promoted to. The idea is that anyone who has been in any position for any significant amount of time must be terrible at it otherwise they would have gotten promoted to a different position already.

        Personally I think it definitely applies to some people but I don’t believe it’s the universal rule people make it out to be.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    While technically true, you’re neglecting that a lot of these agencies employ quotas and performance awards and other metrics to track and promote the more hustler-mindset goons while dumping the less enthusiastic. That’s been at the heart of the DOGE campaign - finding and removing anyone who might potentially obstruct the administration’s agenda in any agency suspected of hosting opposition bureaucrats.

    The purges guarantee the admin can bring in loyalists, more dedicated to the optics of the administration than the role of the office. The performance metrics produce a high rate of false positives in investigations, arrests, and prosecutions. But that’s not a bug in this system, its a feature. The “oops I’m bad at my job” strategy of internal disruption isn’t a bad one on its face, but it is also not one higher ups aren’t fully aware of (and often unjustifiably paranoid about). When the fascist regime begins to fail and starts searching for scapegoats, some of the first they pounce on are the incompetent or unenthusiastic agents on the inside.

    That’s a big reason why mid-level bureaucrats best serve the system by exiting it entirely. Simply leaving an empty desk does more to clog the gears than doing a mediocre job in the role. And you’re not around to take the heat when a Trump AG feels the need to arrest a judge or prosecute a prosecutor for failing to torment local residents fast enough.

    • quetzaldilla@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      There’s been quotas and monitoring at every single one of my jobs, and all they do is alienate the talented staff and leaves the loyal morons & the money-driven behind.

      The last two firms I worked at are still desperately begging me to come back, three years after I resigned, because the ship is rapidly sinking since their AI replacement strategy did not plan out.

      I just resigned my latest position, and I’m gonna take a week or two to get back into making art and music, and then I’m going to take my talent and energy to the organizations fighting back against fascism.

      • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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        19 hours ago

        Man if they offered me like 4x my current pay, I’d go back, but if it’s been 3 years I would probably be 3 years less efficient than they expected.

        • quetzaldilla@lemmy.world
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          17 hours ago

          There was a time when I would have accepted to go back for 3x the pay, or just go back and slack my ass off until I got fired, laughing my way to the bank.

          But what changed for me is that I realized they are a bunch of self-serving liars-- and if they screwed me over once, they will totally do it again.

          I would be stupid to put myself into that position and be stressed out the whole time trying to anticipate when they are going to pull the rug from underneath me again.

          Instead, I rather move on to a new job, meet some new people, get paid to watch training videos which are often interesting and valuable (and if they are not, I just play Balatro on my phone while I half listen to them).

          I also almost always get a pay raise when I move on to a new job, but not always. Moving from public accounting to state government accounting was a significant pay cut for me, but now I am going to get much better benefits, work less hours, my coworkers I’ve met so far are awesome, and the work I am going to do actually helps protect my state and my community. I know I’m going to be much happier in this new role and I value that more than I value money. And if I’m not, I’ll just bounce and find something else.

          And I know we often think that’s easy to say when you don’t have kids to feed, and while it is true that I do not, I would much rather explain to my kids that we will all have to learn how to plant a veggie garden together and make do with less before I teach them to accept being abused and exploited for the extra money.

  • stinky@redlemmy.com
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    15 hours ago

    context: today is may 1st and we were all supposed to strike today.

    that’s why context is important, OP. please don’t assume everyone knows what you know. the information in our heads is different from the information in your head. it’s called theory of mind and most people develop it in early childhood. idiot.

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      20 hours ago

      you know a meme is just anything that gets shared, duplicated, replicated, or repeated, right? calling things memes is a meme. society is a meme. civilization is a meme. Dee’s Nuts being overly salted is a meme

      • unknown1234_5@kbin.earth
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        19 hours ago

        I know that, but since internet meme became I thing it has gained a second definition as a type of joke, which is the meaning intended in the names of meme communities. there are places for politics (including political memes) and this is not one of them.

        • L3ft_F13ld!@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          19 hours ago

          Whether this fits your definition of a meme or not, this is the kind of thing that needs to be shared as widely as possible.

          The world needs this kind of support from as many people as possible right now.

          • unknown1234_5@kbin.earth
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            17 hours ago

            is it really so much to ask to discuss politics on communities that are meant for it? I know it may be hard to understand but some people don’t want to spend every waking moment sorting through other people’s political views (whether they agree or not). let the areas that are for funny shit only be only funny shit, there are places for political statements and this isn’t one of them. honestly at least make the political thing a meme if you’re going to put it in a meme community this post was just a statement.

        • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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          19 hours ago

          as long as there’s no rule against politics (and there isn’t) i don’t think i can bring myself to agree with this stance

      • unknown1234_5@kbin.earth
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        20 hours ago

        there are politics communities for political stuff, it meme communities are meant for funny stuff.

        • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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          19 hours ago

          It’s a screen cap from a micro blog in a micro blog comm.

          And just because you don’t find it funny doesn’t mean it isn’t.

          • unknown1234_5@kbin.earth
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            17 hours ago

            it’s not a meme at all, it’s just a statement. it has to be a microblog meme, not just a microblog.

            • HikingVet@lemmy.ca
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              17 hours ago

              Huh, well everyone else here seems to think you’re wrong.

              And this hits a number of things that makes it a meme as others pointed out.

              Have your opinion. You’ve voiced your opinion. I promise to forget all about this exchange if you understand that people are disagreeing with you and are allowed to. Otherwise one of us is going to end up blocking the other after we waste each other’s time.