A Lesson Learned

Our accounting company suggested that we get a sign-off of the plan design of our 401-K from all of our employees. This seemed like an easy enough task... for someone who doesn't have an illogical employee base. I sent a letter and the form to all of our employees asking them to read the form, sign it and return it as DeltaHouse needed to have these form in order to do our audit. Needless to say, I had about 85% of the employee sign this without a problem... and the other 15% treated it like a government conspiracy to read every DeltaHouse employees' thoughts.

It took me about three weeks of begging, pleading and grovelling to get the last few stragglers.

A few weeks later, I was at a party and met a college professor of organizational communications. I told her about the my issue of the lack of 401-K sign-offs. She told me that the employees didn't accept it or understand because I (i.e. the internal source of the communication) was not credible because I tell the employee base things all the time. And that I might have had better success if I had someone from our accounting company or the 401-K company say the exact same thing that I did.

Taking this knowledge in, it made a lot of sense. I'm using this in the future. And I wanted to pass this on to my loyal readers.

Three Ridiculously Awkward Handshakes That You'll Probably Experience This Week

A handshake tells you a lot about a person. Their personality, whether or not they washed their hands, their level of desperation - even their health - can all be felt with the handshake. Here's are three strange handshakes that you'll probably experience this week...

The Dead Fish

What it is - This is being held out solely to meet the responsibility of shaking hands. Zero commitment to actually shaking the hand. No pressure. No grip. Just a hand.

What it says about you - I have zero personality. I don't want to be here. And I'm just doing this so you'll go away... preferably faster than if I did actually give a sh!t about the handshake.

What you're thinking when you get this handshake - Is this guy dead? Maybe he's dead? The guy just touched my hand. He didn't shake it, he touched it. What happens when someone else that has a handshake like that, shakes this guy's hand? Do they just stand there and touch hands? This is information I now need.

The Multi-pump

What it is - This person is not just shaking your hand, they are shaking you have over-and-over-and-over again. They may never let go. And they're shaking you so much, that you've spilled your coffee. And now you have to pee.

What it says about you - I haven't made a sale since George W. Bush was president. I'm three months behind in my mortgage payments. And I've been ducking the re-po guy by parking my car in different spots for the past six weeks. But I'm not letting that show, and I'm eager to make a sale.

What you're thinking when you get this handshake - The mint coming from this guy's breath is going to blind me. And I'm pretty sure that this guy isn't going leave my back pocket until I say, "OK, I'll buy from you."

The Hand-crush

What it is - This handshake might require reconstructive surgery. It leaves you checking to see if your hand is still there.

What it says about you - One of two things. 1) I hate that I'm meeting with you right now. And punching you in the face is out of the question, so this is my only recourse the physically harm you and express displeasure that way. 2) I just worked out.

What you're thinking when you get this handshake - Call 911! I think this guy broke three bones in my hand... FOUR!

** - I've executed the hand-crush after a sales rep sat in DeltaHouse's lobby FOR THREE HOURS. And wouldn't leave until I, personally, spoke to him. He tried to go multi-pump on me. The hand-crush stopped that.

** - I'm a firm-grip-one-pump-good-eye-contact guy.

How an Eleven-Day Employee Became a Total Pain in my Ass.

JoeDirt and being employed for eleven days

JoeDirt started working at DeltaHouse and stopped working less than two weeks later. We fired him.

Here’s my story. SuperHippie came in every other day for eleven days and went, “Where the hell is JoeDirt?” I’d check my voice mail and he had the following excuses in the eleven days…

• His father had a heart attack.
• His basement flooded.
• His wife got fired from her job.
• His father went back to the hospital.
• He had a court date.

SuperHippie, PlantGuy, and I decided that there was no way that a new employee could be this unlucky. This was going to be a trend. So we decided that eleven days of a guy who made it to four of the first nine days that he was supposed to work was plenty for us. He is becoming a lot more trouble than he’s worth. Not to mention that he made about half of the widgets that he said he could.

Thank you and good night.

Or for Wipeout fans (the ultimate stress-reliever show), good night, and big balls.

We canned him.

His side of the story. His dad had a heart attack. We’re bastards. And we knew about the court date. He can’t help if his basement flooded and if his wife got fired. But these are things that needed his attention.

Now, how much thought did I give to an employee that lasted about the length of a spring break road trip? Zero.

Then it was a month later.

I saw the letter on PainInTheAss’s desk, addressed to “Prezdent of DelltaHaus” from JoeDirt.

Here’s the exchange I had in my head…

MoralVHRG: “Let it go to TheBoss, he’ll read it, and toss it.”
EvilVHRG: “Let’s think self-preservation, he’s going to read it, and bug you about it. And might even give you sh!t about the way it went down.”
MoralVHRG: “The guy worked here for eleven days, who cares?”
EvilVHRG: “He will. Watch! Take the envelope and shred it, no one will know.”
MoralVHRG: “That’s illegal. You can’t do that.”
EvilVHRG: “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

TheBoss showed me the letter about three hours later.

JoeDirt explained his side of the story. I explained that he worked here for eleven days, and was covered under no laws.

JoeDirt invited TheBoss for lunch to discuss a position in the office that he saw was available. I openly wonder who’d pay for that lunch.

He points out that he felt that like we didn’t give him a fair shake. I point out that in nine working days, he couldn’t make it to five of them, and walked out on the job on one day (which was the one we decided would be his last day).

He points out that he thought the job was higher up on the chain. I point out that with the amount of grammatical errors he has in this letter you’ll never be able to understand an email he wrote if we gave him a supervisor job.

JoeDirt spelled my name way wrong in the letter and called me “PRHG”. I wondered why he didn’t just write this in crayon to TheBoss.

TheBoss wanted a full report, in an email, of what his employment entailed.

I delivered it. TheBoss read it and accepted it. I need the support of PlantGuy and SuperHippie in order to get it.

What frustrated me was TheBoss doubting me in favor of an employee who called me “PRHG” in the letter and worked at “DelltaHaus” for eleven days.

Then a few months later, the same letter showed up. Complete with being addressed to “Prezdent of DelltaHaus” from JoeDirt.

I shredded it.

Ghosts haunting DeltaHouse

Here's a look at what DeltaHouse is like now. We are at about 50% of the amount of employees that we were when we were rocking and rolling. We've been steadily letting people go. But when it happened nobody was super-shocked.

Until the last time. We finally cut muscle and bone. The cuts were shocking to most Deltas. And I supposed I'd be shocked too, if I did help plan it. My favorite is that one of the employees that was cut started their own blog. And every day they talk about how much they are shocked that they were cut. And how people are calling them to ask for guidance. And they even dropped my favorite line, "frankly, I don't know how DeltaHouse is going to survive without me." We are doing just fine.

But for others, they were cut, and they won't go away...

They pop-in just to visit. To get lunch with an old co-worker friend. To see how things are going.

I really don't get it. But so far this week at DeltaHouse there have been not one, not two, not three, but FOUR ghosts.

Ghosts, to my new readers, are people who have been fired, have quit, or have been laid off.

Now, if (please, oh please, WHEN) the day comes that I leave DeltaHouse, and move to the status of ghost, you can bet your last dollar that I'm NEVER returning the DeltaHouse. Ever. I don't care if I left something gold-plated, they can keep it.

But our ghosts were in the past few days. Just to hang out and see how things were going, visiting friends, and catching up.

I think they are looking for any new faces so they can be mad that we didn't hire them back.

But I can't kick them out (I mean yes, I could, but still). That would put me just short of Darth Vader on the bad guy list.

And I guess they are looking for the community or work that they work sorely missing since they were laid off (that's what many of them were). But I just can't see the logic.

An open letter to Mordac

Hi Mordac --

I call you Mordac because I've named you after the Dilbert character who serves as the preventer of information services. This only scratches the surface to describe what you do to our company.

First things first, I'm 95% sure that I know more about computers than you do. The HR guy at a company should be at your mercy, but I only manage to involve you when I can smell smoke coming from my computer because you might have a fire extinguisher.

Here is what the IT guy at a company is supposed to do.

• Make sure that computers at DeltaHouse take less than 35 minutes to boot up in the morning (FAIL, mine takes 42, which is why I never shut it down).
• Answer questions that the other people in the office in a nice and courteous manner (FAIL, which is why they ask me instead).
  
• Make sure that my computer gets backed up (CHECK, but doing this during a time when I might not be in the middle of a critical project would help).
• Not look constipated and confused all the time (FAIL, you look like you are either looking some bizarre genre of adult movie, or that you are trying to read the Korean instructions on how to assemble furniture).
• Get the management team computers flipped out every few years (FAIL, mine's three years old).
  

Here are things that you tend to do, and my suggestions of how to deal with it...

• Belittle anyone who has a computer problem who isn't TheBoss (pretend everyone is the boss).
• Offer business advice when not asked for it (you wouldn't be working at DeltaHouse if half the sh!t you spewed worked; shutting the f*ck up, would be my suggestion).
• Keep DeltaHouse at Windows 2000 and Office 2003 software (this is in addition to continue planning, but never actually launching the new intranet. How about getting the company out of the dark ages... and perhaps... even training for it).
• Call me out for doing my job (do me a favor and when you have a problem with the VHRG, ask me first instead of copying TheBoss and half the office because you misread something the handbook.)
  

By the way, all of us know that you spy on all the stuff that we send via email and look at online. And don't think I'm not going to mess with you over that one day. One well-placed, well-written email, and I know I can give you a heart attack.

Sincerely,
VHRG

I'm on Twitter now!

Hey Readers! Check out my tweets on twitter.com/VHRG. I'm post stuff that too short for a blog post, my all-time favorite links, and random thoughts. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Yes, I'll still post here, but I'll take a pass tonight.