An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

https://henrytapper.com/2010/01/09/an-employee-whose-job-was-to-be-sacked/

by hodder • 8 years ago

243 161 8 years ago

Not surprising that large companies would have 'stooge' employees in place for just this sort of thing. I have heard of it happening in at least one major store chain here many years ago.

Kind of reminiscent of one of the first episodes in the series 'Suits' where Louis Litt is interviewing a new junior employee for the firm, and he pulls in another junior mid-interview to dress him down and dismiss him in front of the new employee, just to put the fear of his authority and power into the newbie. The 'fired' employee then just goes back to the bull pen to await being called in for the next new recruit interview so he can walk past and be 'randomly' called in.

whoisjuan• 8 years ago

I also heard the story of a digital agency that rented a huge space, painted the walls with bright colors and hired a bunch of actors to pose as employees. The idea was to deceive and close a deal with a potential big client that insisted in visiting their offices.

shubb• 8 years ago

As a student I was hired as a temp for a 1 day contract. When I arrived they were just setting up the open plan office. We were asked to bring laptops and given stacks of paper and a phone, and told to work though the files, calling the numbers.

It was weird to recieve little training for what seemed to be an investigator type role.

Mid way though the day a bunch of suits arrived, toured the office, and went into a meeting. Later they left and we were told to go home.

Clearly we were faking something, maybe an inflated company sale or a bid for a contract.

The wierd thing was, the stacks of paper were real classified police files, with genuine contents (we were phoning people).

cyberferret2• 8 years ago

Uh, a good friend of mine did that a couple of years ago when he started a new design agency. He was going for a large government contract and they insisted on an in-house meeting as part of the pre-tender process.

He had a large office space already, in preparation for growth, but only 1 employee at that stage, so he got his high school aged daughter in, as well as some of her friends to sit in the empty desks and pretend to work. A couple of the PC's at the back facing away from the meeting room weren't even plugged in, and were just screens on the desk and keyboards attached to nothing.

It worked - he got the contract, and as a result, now has REAL employees at those stations, and in fact has to look at a bigger space to expand into.

notahacker2• 8 years ago

Back when his agency was a one man band, a friend pointed out that one advantage of a trendy shared workspace is that nobody ever asked how many of the people they saw in 'his' corner actually worked for him.

I've also met people who've earned temp "work" in China being nothing more than white faces in the background to make the company look international to visitors

hodl• 8 years ago

Sounds like Saatchi & Saatchi

tzs• 8 years ago

That reminds me of a 19th century con man I read about in the wonderful book "Bloodletters and Badmen: A Narrative Encyclopedia of American Criminals from the Pilgrims to the Present" [1].

He came to some big city posing as a successful businessman seeking investors for some new enterprise. He would give as a reference the president of a local bank located on the other side of town.

When the potential investors went to that bank to check out the reference, they found a busy, well equipped, and well furnished bank, full of well dressed obviously upper class clients conducting business. When they spoke to the President and other officers all they heard was praise for the honesty and business skills of the con man. The marks would then make a large investment.

When the con man left town with their money and they realized something was wrong, and then went to the bank to try to find out what was going on, they found an empty building with a "for lease" sign, and many of the people they had seen as customers and employees in the bank were now seen to be beggars, prostitutes, and such from the neighborhood that the con man had hired to play customers and employees.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Bloodletters-Badmen-Narrative-Encyclo...

DrScump• 8 years ago

This is, more or less, the premise of the film "The Sting":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sting

Maxious• 8 years ago

Villain du jour, Cambridge Analytica changed their name and rented a office in Cambridge filled with London based employees to win over the intellectual Steve Bannon

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistl...

divbit• 8 years ago

I wouldn't be suprised if entire countries raised similar 'scape-goat types as sort of 'bat-man' practice for rich aholes with nothing to do.

louisswiss• 8 years ago

The 'fired' employee in this case is actually a janitor, IIRC.

gaius3• 8 years ago

I once worked with a guy who would literally “do voices” on the phone to pretend to callers that he managed a whole team of people.

Jetroid• 8 years ago

I knew a guy who ran a business which designed and sold PCBs. He'd make up different names to stamp on PCBs. Designed by Joe Bloggs, Code by Derek Smarts, Layout by Jamie Simple, etc. He wanted the business to seem bigger than it actually was.

epx• 8 years ago

I had a boss that used to scold me in front of others to show that he was tough and impartial. It took two or three times to see the pattern (he expected me to see by myself). Too good I didn't overreact...

tyingq3• 8 years ago

Urgh. That's such a basic leadership thing (scold in private) that it just infruiates me that someone wouldn't get that.

Hopefully your boss figured that out or was moved out of a leadership position.

It's roughly the equivalent of a developer that writes shit code with concurrency issues, basic code smells, etc...that would be drummed out in short order. For some reason, we don't hold leaders to the same standard.

sametmax2• 8 years ago

Well, they are leaders. They define the standard.

jacob019• 8 years ago

It's shocking how many people with poor leadership skills end up in positions of power.

hermitdev• 8 years ago

The company I work for, until this month, primarily employed contractors for all development work. When asked why a commonly used utility nearly always segfaulted at exit, response was: it's normal, just ignore it. Part of the reason they are no longer employed by us.

trhway• 8 years ago

Urgh. That's such a basic leadership thing (scold in private) that it just infruiates me that someone wouldn't get that.

Reminded :) Russian military officer training - when you tear a new one to your subordinate, you have to do it in front of his peers, and that is the most important part of the process. The course was taught by a colonel with PhD in psychology.

dictum• 8 years ago

A pipe-smoking ficticious entry.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry

gberger2• 8 years ago

I don't see the connection?

notahacker2• 8 years ago

I imagine that in companies imposing the requirement that managers periodically purge the "bottom" x% of their workforce, "to be sacked" accurately describes the real purpose of many of the new roles hired for.

Consultant324528• 8 years ago

This reminds me of the jobs in China where you can get paid literally walk around being white. For example, being a white guy who cuts the ribbon of a factory opening and walks around shaking hands can make $1k/wk.

http://www.chinawhisper.com/the-5-weirdest-but-best-jobs-for...

monocasa• 8 years ago

Apparently that's going to be a lot harder as the Party starts looking a lot closer at foreign work visas over the next few years.

Consultant324528• 8 years ago

Maybe we should revisit our immigration policy that punishes China for having "too many" immigrants to the US and also our University policies which racially discriminate against the Chinese for being over-represented. If this trade/economic war is going to keep heating up, we might as well try to steal as many of their best and brightest as possible.

duxup• 8 years ago

Considering it is mostly just for photo ops (my understanding is that is what they're mostly used for), it probabbly doesn't get much attention. They could pay the dude cash and get the same thing.

simonh• 8 years ago

It’s already happening. I have a friend in China and like many ex pats he had several jobs - teaching at a college, tutoring English at home and some IT consulting.

He’s back in the UK now, last summer several of his ex pat friends and colleagues were busted by investigators parachuted in from Beijing. They were detained, their visas were revoked and given a week to get out of the country. Fortunately he was in Beijing when it happened and got Chinese colleagues to clear out his stuff and any paperwork from the college, but he had to roll up all his gigs.

DoreenMichele2• 8 years ago

This works as long as he doesn't get fired twice in front of the same customer.

AdmiralAsshat• 8 years ago

We gave him a second chance and he ruined the customer's merchandise again!?! Fire him for good, this time!

squiggleblaz• 8 years ago

The point is to discourage the customer from complaining because of the harsh treatment the customer will receive. Therefore yes, if it comes to that, it has failed.

Moru• 8 years ago

Some people complain just so they can watch the boss chew out some employee. That's satisfaction for being badly treated/buying something that was faulty.

peterburkimsher• 8 years ago

What if you want to fire him for real?

sametmax2• 8 years ago

That's the beginning of the excellent book "au bonheur des ogres", where you learn that the hero's karma is to be a scapegoat. It's his job. It's his relationships.

Also when a bomb explodes, of course, all evidences point toward him even though is the very definition of innocence.

Wonderful work from the great Daniel Pennac, which can stand on it's own, but has follow up tomes that are just as nice.

And I just looked it up, it's been translated to english.

The title, is, well, "The scapegoat".

chepaslaaa• 8 years ago

Daniel Pennac certainly stands among the many great french writers.

mlok• 8 years ago

I loved the book, and that part has stuck through the years. (amongst other remarkable parts of this book) Now I wonder if Pennac had heard about this story and if he was inspired by it.

It always made me think of L'Arrache-Coeur by Boris Vian, where we can find "La Gloïre", this old man whose job was to literally swallow the shame of everybody else.

wolfspider• 8 years ago

Yes, while working a telemarketing job for quick cash secretly I encountered just this sort of thing. I had spent all of my graduation gift money meant for my first apartment right after high school and had to take a night shift somewhere. I found this telemarketing place and they had a dead simple test they used for prospective hires. My friends told me they would hire anyone no matter what. Surprisingly, someone failed the test and left angrily. Later I found out that they hired someone specifically to stage this event night after night. The reason was because if a group of people witnesses somebody fail it makes them feel they need to hold onto the opportunity. I saw this work time and time again- every single person who showed up for the job took that job and didn't question it. They also did this because they cashed every last check of every employee that left and there were a lot of those. It was grueling and I would even leave on a bike and ride through the woods to get there just so my family wouldn't notice. Made my money back and then some then quit all in time for college. You see, I learned that fake employees are just a part of growing up and growing wiser.

jacobush• 8 years ago

And you made your money back! You really took responsibility for your mistakes. Great Scott I need to get my act together. :)

jstanley6• 8 years ago

Sorry if this should be obvious, I've read it 3 times and still don't understand this bit:

They also did this because they cashed every last check of every employee that left and there were a lot of those.

"They also did this" - Who also did what? The candidates accepted the job? The company hired the fake guy to get sacked?

And who cashed whose checks? Did they cash them before or after they left? And why does that mean the first set of people did the first thing?

PMan74• 8 years ago

This is also confusing.

Made my money back and then some

Made what money back?

My guess is that this is some sort of a shady company where 1. Employees pay something for e.g. training ("check of every employee") 2. Employees make it back over time on commission 3. If an employee quits early the employee's check is cashed by the company. ("they cashed every last check of every employee that left")

A guess however, difficult to understand what is doing on.

hdctambien• 8 years ago

The company kept the "last check" of the employees who quit (probably by no-showing which is why they didn't pick up their last check) so the company got a few hours of free labor from each employee.

"They did this" means they had the actor convince the applicants to take the job. The more employees they hire, the more free hours they get (since the quitters don't pick up their last check)

discoursism• 8 years ago

No less an authority than Danny Baker . . . the comedy writer, born in '57? Or else who? How would he know about this?

exelius• 8 years ago

I think that’s the authors way of saying the story is unverifiable in any way.

potta_coffee• 8 years ago

Sometimes it feels like I also have this job. Except for some reason, my employers only sack me once, and for real.

bradknowles• 8 years ago

Isn't that kind of what a Chief Compliance Officer is there for?

So that if something goes so badly wrong that the CEO would otherwise be the one put in jail, in this case the CCO goes instead?

SteveGerencser• 8 years ago

Many years ago I delivered pizza while in college. When it was time to move on my manager and I decided to have some fun. For the last three days I was there I delivered to every terrible customer we had, then had a little fun at their expense. Like the guy that routinely refused to tip a single penny and said 10 pennies make a dime. I handed him a dime and told him now he didn't have to wait for 9 more pizzas.

It was terrible, but fun at the same time. Every call back to the store was greeted with an "Oh that's terrible", "we've had a few other complaints about him" and "I promise he won't be here tomorrow".

ajeet_dhaliwal• 8 years ago

Every employee who has given their notice should be used for this purpose!

jstanley6• 8 years ago

I understand that it's a bit impolite not to tip, but surely it's much more impolite to hold a grudge against someone for not tipping.

If you want more money, put your prices up.

wccrawford• 8 years ago

I think there's a difference between not-tipping and telling the employee you're not going to tip them, especially by some stupid "10 pennies make a dime!" saying, as if the employee wasn't smart enough to know that or save money.

rkangel• 8 years ago

I'm guessing you're not american? Their attitudes towards tips are different than, for example, those in continental Europe.

The way I understand it, service staff are criminally underpaid (by our standards). This is workable because they make up for the income using tips, which works because tips are larger (I'm not sure which way around cause and effect is here).

This means that when someone in the UK might withhold a tip due to bad service we're just removing a bonus, whereas in the US we're effectively removing their pay for serving us. Not tipping is a much stronger action.

To respond to your 'prices' comment directly - the person delivering the pizza doesn't get to set the prices. They have to take the job that they can in a service industry that pays peanuts on the basis that people will earn tips. And the business doesn't have any incentive to do anything about it - they get to pay people less and therefore keep margins high and/or charge lower prices to compete.

pc862• 8 years ago

Please explain how raising the price of a large pizza increases money in the driver's pocket.

emodendroket15• 8 years ago

Yeah, why doesn't the pizza driver just independently change the prices Domino's charges for pizza?

It's not just "a bit impolite" to not tip service staff in an American context; it's a grave insult that most people would only do in response to service they thought was shockingly below adequacy -- and likely they wouldn't even patronize the business again after doing so.

cafard• 8 years ago

I can't say I held a grudge, but I found it very funny in my pizza delivery days when somebody would tip a penny. Pulling the dime trick would have made me go out as a hero to my fellow drivers.

ars• 8 years ago

Is there some reason this worker can't actually also work? Presumably in the backroom, where customers will never see him.

godelski2• 8 years ago

Ticketmaster the employee

There's actually a good Freakanomics episode on this[1]. How tickets are undervalued and part of Ticketmaster's value is that they take blame for the high prices.

[1] http://freakonomics.com/podcast/live-event-ticket-market-scr...

cornholio2• 8 years ago

Thank you, this led me to an excelent piece of research by one of the economists invited, Eric Budish, on market design and how current continuous trade architectures of most financial markets strongly favor the negative aspects of HFT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvNJID_7iHI

KozmoNau77• 8 years ago

There are a lot of assumptions in that piece, especially regarding the motives of artists and the fan/idol relationship.

It is absolutely not a normal type market, and it shouldn't be treated like one. The way forward is not to inflate ticket prices, ensuring only the richest fans can afford to go to concerts, and screwing over the ordinary people.

The way forward is to make it illegal to resell tickets at higher than face value. That was implemented some years ago here, and scalping is a minor issue now. Fans are generally very good at self-policing and reporting price-gouging scalpers. Ticket prices did increase slightly over time, but certainly not on the level of $50 becoming $500, as posited in the article.

They do touch on that, but I don't think the solution is to completely stop resale. Just limit it to face value or less.

If artists were only interested in short-term profit, they would jack up the prices and only sell to their richest fans. But most of them look at the long perspective, the fact that there's a lot more to be gained in the long run by having a loyal fanbase that doesn't feel exploited.

For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.

If events get sold out, the onus is on the organizers and artists to either book additional shows, or come back again in 6 months or a year, possibly at a bigger venue.

If someone is a true fan, they'll be bummed about missing out, but also adamant to not miss out next time. And they certainly don't fly across the Atlantic for a Broadway show without having somehow secured a ticket beforehand. That's just silly.

jdmichal5• 8 years ago

For the fans who were complaining that they couldn't get tickets for low-seating high-interest events, well that's just too bad. You had the same chance as everyone else. I've sat in ticket queues (offline and online), I've furiously refreshed ticket pages for events with room for less than 100 people just to be sure to get a ticket, 5+ months in advance. I really like the system we have here, where a big wallet is not some kind of guarantee that you'll get a ticket.

These same arguments are / were used in favor of unpaid internships. Except, of course, that it takes a certain level of financial freedom or support to do things like wait in lines for concert tickets. Just because your paying time instead of money in these queues, does not mean that it doesn't carry a cost.

evandijk70• 8 years ago

Isn't a better system to just hold a lottery? Yes, maybe now you have fans with dedication, but it just feels like an enormous waste of time for everyone to be online refreshing a page for an hour when it will boil down to luck anyway who will get a ticket

Can_Not2• 8 years ago

Why not a blind auction? Have everyone who wants a ticket choose any value above $10 (including $10). The highest 10,000 (presumed seat capacity) priced bids get their tickets. If there is a tie at the end, sort by first come, first serve, excluding excessive bulk orders.

vortico2• 8 years ago

Why don't they have a normal employee play the "be fired" role? Unless he gets fired 8 times a day, I don't see why he's idle...

megablast• 8 years ago

It is a bit embarrassing when they keep shopping and see the guy that was fired working in the store, or see them the next day or the next week. They might just catch on.

vortico2• 8 years ago

Ah, I was imagining a sales warehouse, where the customers typically only talk to the sales employees by phone.

banned1• 8 years ago

I worked at a startup where we had a floor of empty offices. We sometimes would paid people to walk around the office floor and sit in offices when major customers wanted to come and visit. When the customer was in the boss' office discussing the deal, one of the "employees" would always stick his head in the office and say "Hey, I needed to ask you a question. Should I come back?" and the boss would be like "yeah, why don't you come back in an hour after I am done with John here."

oaiey• 8 years ago

Does anyone remember P.L.E.A.S.E.

mcphage• 8 years ago

I do!

Provide

Legal

Exculpation

And

Sign

Everything

racl101• 8 years ago

Now that's funny.

jtwaleson• 8 years ago

From the title I expected a procedure to test if management & HR will act on unacceptable behavior. The story makes more sense, but could still be a good idea, seeing as how many underperformers and bad apples there are in some companies.

m1sta_• 8 years ago

I thought this might be about a company testing whether it was any good at getting rid of bad employees.

golergka• 8 years ago

I'm pretty sure I saw Friends episode with almost exactly the same premise.

jaclaz• 8 years ago

Yep: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0583611/

"In order for her kitchen staff to acknowledge her authority, Monica hires Joey so she can fire him in front of them."

seekler• 8 years ago

This job exists today and it is called CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) or other variants :D

gaius3• 8 years ago

You need to be highly qualified for that job

royroyroys• 8 years ago

OP is jokingly referring to the FB/Cambridge Analytica scandal

philbarr• 8 years ago

Full Stack DevOps Blockchain-enabled Machine Learning Data Scientist Engineer

bryanrasmussen• 8 years ago

what happens the next time lady ponsonby waffles has a complaint?

VLM• 8 years ago

That's why in the real world you fake fire the next guy going to lunch, so his reward for being yelled at a bit and fired was an extra long lunch hour.

Also when I worked retail back when high school kids held the minimum wage jobs, annual retail turnover often exceeded 100%, so if lady waffles is having multiple problems in a couple months, your store has a problem far beyond angry waffles.

The American version at the store I worked at both as a labor drone and eventually as a night shift manager while in school, was to send coworkers to the office to be yelled at. The store was urban and near the bar district so at night, customers were generally drunk and guilty until proven innocent. Drunk people usually don't want to draw attention to themselves, mostly, so we had few complaints.

Its a mid to high skilled workplace thing to assume employees are yelled at. For manual labor work, the cost of replacement, either of the job or the employee, is very low, and most firing offenses had legal involvement (stealing cash or product from the store, for example) so discipline never went much beyond asking someone "WTF?".

clueless123• 8 years ago

If I made a penny for every time I accepted blame for a managers dumb mess-up..... (As an over paid IT contractor)

Oh! now that I think about it.. guess who always gets called back by those managers for new projects! :)

dmckeon• 8 years ago

Sounds a bit like: "Send this jerk the bedbug letter!" https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-bedbug-letter/

An employee whose job was to be sacked (2010)

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