So, 2 people got fired at my work today

[Psykoma]

I don't know where the accountants you know were trained, I went through accounting degree at McGill university, and am currently about 3/4 of the way through professional accounting designation program, and since our very first class it's been pounded into our heads that qualitative have to be weighed proportionally against quantitative results.

Well your credentials notwithstanding, "qualitative results have to be weighed proportionally against quantitative results" sounds just vague enough to me that it seems like a cop-out that has so much room for interpretation it might as well have not been said at all.

Um, yeah.
Non-financial figures do have an excessive amount of interpretation, that's the whole controversy around non-financial figures - there is no objective way to measure them.

The best accountants are doing, and the best that can be expected of any person, is to consider the non-financial factors and use as a basis the company code of values, ethics and conduct to determine their relative value.

The problem isn't quite with accountants, the problem is with
A. There being no objective way to value non-financial factors
B. Accountants being human
C. Human nature meaning each person values and interprets things differently.

 

[Rawne1980]

I'll be honest, I know relatively fuck all about how business like to work.

I've only ever had 2 "proper" jobs, the army and what I do now as a personal trainer, the only job outside of that was helping a friend out at his gym.

I didn't see many people get kicked out of the army but when they did it was very valid reasons and I can't say I was sorry to see them go (nobody wants a fuck up watching their back). And now I work for myself and, as much as I might want to when I annoy myself, I can't sack myself.

But nobody wants to be out of a job at this time of year.

 

[Strazdas]

and they were the ones who did the least work and were assholes to everyone else

Full time workers can be the absolute bane to temps. One practice I find infuriating is when they pull temps off of their assigned tasks to help them with some trivial matter they could have done themselves, you either help them and get in trouble for not meeting your own quotas or you refuse and get in trouble for not being a "team player".

or help them and get your own quotas and the guy at the top notices you. cha

I hope you're joking, either that or you've never done temp work before. Temp quotas are specifically designed to be pretty much exactly what you can possibly achieve if you spend every minute of the work day on a single task. And that's if you're fortunate, if not it will always be deliberately just a little bit more than you can do so the supervisor can constantly get on your case and guilt you into working during your breaks. As for being noticed by the top, temps are completely invisible to the executive level.

im on temp job at the moment and and writing this message from work.
Its just that i know my way around excel better than they think.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

Damn, that's tough.
It's a pity that a hard worker had to be fired, but I guess if your boss had no choice then he must've had to do it.

 

[Killclaw Kilrathi]

and they were the ones who did the least work and were assholes to everyone else

Full time workers can be the absolute bane to temps. One practice I find infuriating is when they pull temps off of their assigned tasks to help them with some trivial matter they could have done themselves, you either help them and get in trouble for not meeting your own quotas or you refuse and get in trouble for not being a "team player".

or help them and get your own quotas and the guy at the top notices you. cha

I hope you're joking, either that or you've never done temp work before. Temp quotas are specifically designed to be pretty much exactly what you can possibly achieve if you spend every minute of the work day on a single task. And that's if you're fortunate, if not it will always be deliberately just a little bit more than you can do so the supervisor can constantly get on your case and guilt you into working during your breaks. As for being noticed by the top, temps are completely invisible to the executive level.

im on temp job at the moment and and writing this message from work.
Its just that i know my way around excel better than they think.

Ah, I have to concede a point here. Yeah, the one caveat is that full timers, for some unfathomable reason, seem to know absolutely nothing about Excel, even though almost every office I've worked in involved it as their main software tool. I can't begin to count the number of times I've done some simple sorting or formula on a spreadsheet, only to be regarded as some kind of MS Office messiah.

In that case, enjoy!

 

[surg3n]

Sorry but do we live in Victorian England or something?
Old Scrooge McHR Manager refuses to give the cold and hungry workers any lard samwiches or coal?

Business is business, and dare I say it - firing is sometimes easy when the manager has been doing their job. If someone isn't meeting expectations then get rid, because it's the rest of the workforce that suffer, not the manager. Isn't anyone here sick to death of carrying a lazy employee, or a lazy manager for that matter. We all have our crosses to bare.

We recently lost 12% of our workforce due to cutbacks, my assistant was one of them - now I have more work to do for the same money - after carrying this person for 8 years, so who is better off?, should I feel sorry for the people who got sacked, or feel sorry for the people who have more work to do, the people who do good enough work not to be sacked.

Frankly I don't care what time of year it is, if your no good at your job, are lazy, have a bad attitude, then go work on a production line somewhere, save the decent jobs for decent workers who actually appreciate it and are able to step up to the plate and make some git redundant. I sometimes get involved when terminating employees, and not once has it been a tough decision. One guy sat all night watching football and youtube videos instead of working, he also medicated himself to get through the working day, took 3 hour long naps, and even went to the gym after clocking in. No problem at all getting rid of him. Another guy was being paid about £20,000 PA, but was costing the company £60,000 in scrap product, the previous PA manager gave him the job because sh was friends with his mom, she even let him cheat on an interview test that a fricken monkey could do. No loss, no sleepless nights.

If people around you are being sacked, then keep your head down and try not to have an opinion - no matter how it looks there tends to be solid reasons for getting rid of one person over another, there could be countless factors that your not aware of. Often, people are simply paid more than they are worth - they wrangle a decent pay rise when the company is growing, and after the company has grown they sit back on their assess and coast until retirement.

People might not understand how I can help with sackings without remorse or guilt - well I'm in IT, any evidence I provide is set in stone, it can't be argued with, I'd never falsify information or anything remotely like that, I just highlight what people are stupid enough to do to themselves.