the horrified new hires, the gift exchange revolt, and other times you pushed back as a group at work

by Alison Green on September 19, 2024

Last week we talked about times when banding together as a group and speaking up at work resulted in change. Here are eight stories you shared.

1. The coordinated survey

I work in a regional office of a global company. Every year, global HR sends out a staff survey, and I noticed that the leadership likes to pick one little complaint that popped up in the survey and address it and make a big celebration about the improvement. So every year when the annual survey comes out, I round up as many staff members as I can and we agree on the one thing we are going to complain about, so it can’t be ignored.

One year we all complained about the terrible health insurance, so the leadership started offering a better health insurance option. The next year, we complained about paltry salary raises that don’t even match typical cost-of-living increases, and the leadership gave us all better raises. Most recently, we all complained about the lack of paid parental leave, and the leadership came up with a parental leave package that we were all pretty happy with.

If the leadership has noticed that the complaints are remarkably similar between different staff members, they haven’t pointed it out.

2. The Christmas gift exchange revolt

Christmas/holiday gift exchange revolt! Our fearless leader loved Christmas (small group, everyone celebrated Christmas) and the culture in the office had been for everyone to get everyone (eight people) a small gift, exchange as a group, everyone watch everyone open, etc.

Two years ago, six of us banded together privately to work out that Person 1 would ask for the Christmas plans during the October meeting, #2 would suggest drawing names, #3 and #4 would chime in that they love that idea, #5 would suggest how to do it, #1, 2, 3 & 4 would all back that idea, and #6 would be like, “Great! Are we all good with that?”

Fearless Leader tried to protest but #1-6 kind of steamrolled the conversation. It was fantastic and a well coordinated attack!

3. The bad manager

My department got a new manager, and she was awful. She made five people cry within her first four months. She joked about having to regularly apologize to other managers around the building. She was accusatory, she openly mistrusted her staff, and she was badly mismanaging some of our most successful projects.

Two assistants left because they didn’t get paid enough to deal with her. We encouraged them to be honest in their exit interviews, but both were early-career and really didn’t want to burn any bridges. A few of the veteran staffers went to HR individually, but they didn’t seem to get very far. Mostly, HR insisted that any displeasure with the new manager was just because the old manager was so well-liked and respected.

Finally, our staff started banding together. We talked out exactly what we wanted to say to upper management, we went to HR in groups of two where it made sense, and we all followed through on requesting meetings with HR right after any incidents with the manager. One person left during this time, and she was very honest and direct in her exit interview.

Eventually, management started observing our manager more closely, and surprise surprise, they didn’t like what they saw. She was given the option to leave voluntarily, or be fired. She left without saying a single word to any of the staff she’d managed for well over a year.

I think this worked because the department was very organized, high functioning, professional, and friendly before the issue. We all really, genuinely enjoyed working together, we trusted each other, and we were willing to organize to heal our department. For upper management’s part, while I think they fumbled and missed the early warning signs, they handled the aftermath particularly well. They individually met with each staff member afterward, apologized for allowing the situation to go on for too long, and laid out how they were going to ensure a good pick with the next hire. The culture rebounded better than I would have expected.

4. The professors

I work for a college. Our health insurance costs recently went up by 50%, while also offering less coverage. The president tried to announce this as “austerity measures, but it’s not that bad, and we all have to chip in” and then brush past it.

The math professor raised his hand to give the exact dollar figure that the increase would represent for anyone with a kid. Then the accounting professor raised her hand to point out that we met our budget this year. Then the sociology professor raised his hand to mention that health insurance costs had recently decreased in our area. Then the anthropology professor raised his hand to ask how this fit with the school’s stated mission to support working parents. Then the media studies professor emailed the entire room a link to price comparison across different health insurance providers. Then, then, then.

The 20-minute meeting let out 90 minutes later. It’s been six weeks, and the president just emailed all faculty to announce we were changing health insurance providers and to expect a 75% reduction in monthly costs. Sometimes I love PhDilibusters.

5. The new hires

Almost a year ago, I started at my current job, fully remote, great on paper. I got a few minor flags during the interviews with the CEO and project manager but I let it go. I had an orientation type thing with two other new hires for different departments and for a marketing firm I was shocked at how over-complicated their processes were. I could tell the other new-hires were just as confused as I was. The project management software, which I’d been using for years, was an overcomplicated mess and I have no idea how anyone got their work done.

Within a week, I was blown away by how horribly the staff spoke each other, how accusatory and mean they all were, and also overworked since the procedures were needlessly complicated. I got the inkling that the project manager fostered a lot of this and was one of those people who created a complicated system so they had an actual job to do, that job being making a mess and then fixing it themselves.

The culture was awful. As a former onboarding trainer myself, I’d never speak to a new employee or trainee the way I was spoken to by management or my coworkers. For example, I had to mute myself as there was construction going on outside my window, my coworker yelled at me for muting myself and said I wasn’t paying attention. I unmuted myself and then they yelled at me for the noise and not taking work seriously. They had a policy that all work calls were recorded, so I recorded it and kept it, along with MANY others like it. It was one of the most toxic environments I’d ever started in.

The other new-hires and I met in on a personal Zoom call after hours and decided to talk to the CEO. We collected screen shots and video calls from our first ten days and asked to meet with the VP and CEO. They were appalled, especially with how department heads, the project manager, and especially HR spoke to us. That was a Friday on a holiday weekend. The next workday the CEO, VP, and two other silent partners had a staff call where they apologized for not being as present as they should be but also said the attitude and tone of the company has to change. It helped that me and another new hire who are experts they desperately needed were both were willing to leave with nothing else lined up.

Magically, the project board got organized and intuitive, people started saying please and thank you, and we don’t record every thought and idea we have as a gotcha. We have a new HR person. We’ve had four new hires since and their onboarding is smooth, organized, and most importantly, welcoming.

6. The training

I was a teacher. New admin decided to schedule mandatory “teacher training” for a week late in the summer but before the school year started. This was to be a week long off-site that required most people to stay in college dorms and eat cafeteria food so we could attend useless lectures – and now it was going to be smack during our precious summer vacation.

Folks pushed back HARD. So the admin said if folks had proof of travel plans that conflicted with that time, they’d be excused. Everyone went and bought $13 bus tickets to a town just across the border that … isn’t exactly a vacation destination, hence the tickets being $13. But we all had the tickets for the dates of the training, so everyone was excused. They canceled the training. (None of us actually took the bus trip. $13 was worth it to get out of that nonsense.)

7. The pay equality

At every single place I’ve worked, people have asked for pay transparency and leadership has always declined. Well, one day I was in a meeting with everyone who had the same title as me, and someone asked if we would all feel comfortable sharing our salaries with each other. An anonymous poll revealed that everyone was fine with it. So we all around, round robin style, and shared our salaries with each other.

It is the first and last time anything in my life has happened like that. It also revealed that women were grossly underpaid, and we took that to leadership. The women in the team were given hefty market adjustments that brought their compensation on the same level of the men, along with apologies and some flimsy excuse about for why it happened.

Had just one woman gone to leadership and asked if they were paid fairly, I don’t know that any change would have come from that. But when the whole group went and said “WTF” (the men in the group were also outraged and demanded more equal pay), then there was change.

8. The pay adjustment

My manager called me on my day off to let me know my team was transitioning from hourly to salary. I did the math and realized that with the amount of overtime I worked I would be losing about $7K in income a year. When I came back to the office, I talked to my manager about it and told her I wasn’t happy. She said the overtime had been taken into account by HR when creating our offers and there wasn’t much to be done. I said, “Well, I’m still not happy, so what is our next step?” And then I was quiet. She agreed to get me a meeting with the higher ups. From there, I went to my team and asked them if they had the same experience. They had almost all decided to accept the change but when I pointed out my large income discrepancy (and I was the most junior team member working the least overtime), they ran their own numbers and then everyone was mad lol. I asked for their permission to speak for them at my upcoming meeting and they agreed.

Meeting day came and I was given a lot of BS about how they ran the numbers and they accounted for overtime and I just needed to sign the paperwork and get past my feelings. I stopped them mid-sentence and said, “I hate to interrupt but I just wanted to check and see if we should reschedule this for a time when the whole team can be present, because nobody is happy.” They paused and said no one but me was complaining. I told them I had discussed it with the team and everyone was unhappy and asked again if they wanted to reschedule the meeting, and then I was quiet. At this point my manager stepped in and said she never found me to be unreasonable and that my attention to detail was great so if I ran numbers and found an error, then something was off.

Upper management ended up going back to HR and discovered that everyone’s overtime had been calculated at .5 instead of 1.5 and the HR person who did it just didn’t realize because of how our payroll system listed everything out (suuuure).

My entire team ended up with salaries that were $7-15K higher than originally proposed for the transition. It was a great experience in team bonding and taught me a lot about being calm but vocal and the power of remaining silent at key times. If it hadn’t been for this blog and Alison’s advice, I don’t know that I would have had the guts to do it.

You may also like:
{ 138 comments }

{ 138 comments… read them below }

  1. Dadjokesareforeveryone*

    These are all fantastic, though I really loved numbers 1 and 4 as examples of planned and unplanned coordinating/backing each other up.

    2. Yadah*

      I love #1 as well because I feel like it’s something that the upper management team appreciates too since they take action on the suggestions – instead of having to sort through a mishmash of complaints and ideas to figure out what most people will value, the team comes together to agree on their priorities, reducing the guesswork.

  2. Blarg*

    This is maybe my favorite ever reader story roundup. Bravo to each and everyone of you! Thanks for the inspiration.

    1. Boof*

      Mine too!!! I’m tempted to organize my own group pushback lol (not something that’s easy to fix, but holy wow one “nice to have” though not critical aspect of work is getting so bad it’s impossible do do anything)

    3. Momma Bear*

      I love this list, too. My favorites were the coordinated meetings and the last one who used silence as a tool. Make THEM answer the question, not you. Well done, all.

  3. cxxxb*

    #3 is inspirational. I have a very new bad manager who makes me cry regularly. I have going to HR. Others have. Nothing has changed. I think it’s time we go to HR together.

    1. ferrina*

      #3 is lucky. I’ve had a terrible manager that the whole team pushed back against, and absolutely nothing happened. The administration claimed they’d look into it, and nothing. We all just eventually left.

      (though at another company someone was pushed out because he did something so horrible that the entire rest of the company refused to speak to him, even for work-related things, so eventually the CEO had to either fire him or the rest of the company)

      1. essie*

        I’m the writer for #3, and I totally agree. A big part of this was luck, in that we had competent upper management (even if it did take them a year, they ultimately made the right call) and halfway decent HR.
        But I would say that the most important part of this was the pre-established culture in the department. We were all dedicated professionals. We worked well together, we were honest with each other, and we had a very positive and respectful culture overall. The culture at my current org is not the same, and I could never see it working here. So I think a *really* important point is that the group needs to be totally in sync for something like this to work. If most people are only lukewarm, or don’t totally trust each other, the approach will inevitably seem uncredible and fractured.

        1. ferrina*

          He SAed a direct report. The CEO heard about it and ignored it because the offender “said he’s very sorry and says it won’t happen again”. The person who was assaulted left the company. When the rest of the company learned what happened, everyone refused to speak to or acknowledge the offender, even on business related things. The offender was finally fired after that.

    2. essie*

      That one was mine! I’m so sorry you’re in a bad manager situation. Here are a few tips that might help:
      – Plan out what you’re going to say (including precise language) ahead of time. This will help you stick to the facts, and avoid getting too much into opinions/feelings.
      – Don’t soften your language. Avoid being accusatory, but also, it’s imperative to be clear and honest.
      – Ensure that HR is getting a clear picture. What I mean is: when we met with HR, we noticed that sometimes, we’d present a specific issue, and they’d try to blame it on something besides the manager. There were numerous times when someone would have to say “No, actually, that was directly because of Manager. We had no problem with X.”
      – While this might sound odd, don’t make HR the enemy. Approaching it collaboratively, like “We’re having a serious issue and we know HR will help us find solutions,” will make your tone sound much more credible.
      – Really, really try to avoid venting/gossiping around the organization. This totally destroys credibility with HR.
      I hope that helps! As I mentioned, it took over a year for this to work, and in the meantime, we were pretty miserable. I was very well compensated and I loved my position, and if I’d found a comparable job, I would have left. So definitely keep that in mind: you may prevail as a group, but if you can find a better opportunity, that may be the more sanity-protecting route to go.

    1. Breacheese*

      Originally the manager was having each person buy a gift for each of the 8 people on the team. They convinced her to have each person draw the name of another person on the team so that each employee only had to buy one gift!

    3. MsM*

      Instead of having to buy individual presents for everyone in the office, they now get to just draw one person’s name.

    4. Kyrielle*

      They went from “everyone gets a gift to everyone else” to “secret santa” where you get a gift for one other person.

    5. Boof*

      I believe they only had to get ONE person a gift (The one whose name they drew) instead of EVERYONE a gift – so 1/8 the cost, presumably

    6. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

      Draw one name for the gift exchange instead of getting eight people each a gift.

    7. Debydo*

      Instead of 8 people buying 8 gifts each they each bought 1 gift. Think Secret Santa instead of mass gift exchange.

    8. Medium Sized Manager*

      I’m so happy you asked because I read this 3 times and could not figure out what happened. Thanks to everybody who answered!

      1. Aldvs*

        I also think they won from the pointpoint of “everyone watch everyone open.” Instead of having to “oohhh and ahhhh” and probably comment on 64 presents–which sounds time-consuming and exhausting, they only have to do that for 8 presents. That’s a win for me!

    9. Correct*

      Thanks for asking. I couldn’t tell if something was missing from the story or if I was having a stroke or something.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      That one is my favorite too. I hope they will band together this year to ask for more vacation time or Summer Fridays or something like that.

    2. Pay no attention...*

      It’s the first time I’ve heard of company surveys actually working to change anything …that was like collective bargaining a union contract through surveys!

      IME there’s always a troll in the staff that ruins it for everyone, “What we really want is a foosball table!” and then The Brass throws the whole thing out because obviously no one is taking it seriously or understands business needs.

  6. Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender*

    #5 is especially impressive given that culture is a hard thing to change, and to deal with it as new hires, Bravo!

    1. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

      One company I joined also had very confusing onboarding. As I’d worked for the company previously, I knew I’d be required to do a “six sigma project”* to improve something for work and I proposed a checklist for new workers to use during onboarding. It was rejected because it wasn’t directly related to my job responsibility and HR refused to fund it. Very disappointing for me and it was another 4 years before my manager assigned me a project to work on and I completed it.

      * this company’s adaptation of “six sigma process improvement” was not nearly as rigorous as the standard “Six Sigma Process” started at Motorola in the 1980s. Follow up to prove the cost/productivity improvement over time was typically dropped.

  7. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    As an HR Director, I have been on the other side of a group getting together to try to get something they wanted. However, it did not go as well as the stories here, as what they were pushing for was only beneficial to a very small group of employees, and was actually detrimental to everyone else in the company. They even submitted a signed petition, and tried to enlist people from other departments to get what they wanted! Sadly for them, once Management explained how what this small group wanted would only benefit a handful of people, and how it would be harmful to other departments, no one else wanted to support their efforts. This petition died a quiet death, and the ringleaders found themselves personas non grata with the majority of their coworkers.

      1. Slow Gin Lizz*

        I’m reminded of those interns who wanted the dress code changed….not that the change wasn’t feasible, but that they organized to try to change something that didn’t even truly affect them terribly.

  9. Jessica*

    Higher ed here. One of the things that chronically enrages me (and is far from unique to my institution) is that we’re an R1 research university, we have faculty who are world experts on this and that, their conclusions are supported by research and evidence–but when their expertise touches any area of our institutional functioning, do we take their advice? Of course not.

    This story was so absolutely magnificent. I am going to savor it over and over. A true classic.

    1. bamcheeks*

      This has actually happened in the UK academic pension dispute. The employers said we’ve run some very complicated calculations, very VERY complicated, you wouldn’t understand them and they go to school in Canada, but the net result is that the pension fund isn’t sustainable and you’re all going to have less money. Then there were rebuttals that started, “I’m literally Professor of Pension Analysis and Very Hard Sums at London School of Economics and…”

      2. Strive to Excel*

        “We’ve run some very complicated calculations” I guarantee that there isn’t an HR person under the sun who understands pension math better than an advanced statistics and analysis professor. Pension calculations – as in “you are guaranteed X payout for Y period of time on retirement” – are actuarial, not financial, and an absolute nightmare to calculate from scratch.

        Good on your professors.

        1. MassMatt*

          When I was laid off, I was offered a buyout of my pension plan. I was in finance, though not in pension/actuarial analysis, and the number seemed off. They tried the “It’s complicated, this is what was calculated” argument, but the calculation was straightforward:

          Age (so, DOB)
          # years of service (so, dates of hire and separation)
          Final year’s salary.

          I asked for the dates and salary. They had my wrong DOH, by 18 months–so losing two years of service), wrong Date of separation, only by a few weeks, but costing me ANOTHER year of service), AND my salary was low, by several thousand dollars. They did have my correct DOB, so that’s 1 out of 4 data points. Every error was oddly in their favor. Hmmm.
          Altogether this was a difference of over $23,000.

          It can pay to look under the hood!

          1. Thankfully no longer a manager*

            I didn’t know how to look under the hood, but I decided the buyout being suggested was not as much as I could potentially receive as a pension. After 9 years of employment the buyout was $15k. I’m hedging my bets I will receive more than $15k in pension throughout my retirement years.

      3. noncommittally anonymous*

        Yep, my University was going to bring in an expensive outside consultant to assess cybersecurity needs. Someone pointed out that they have one of the best Cybersecurity PhD programs in the country – have they TALKED to those faculty, who might have ideas?

        No, no they had not.

        1. pandop*

          Refreshingly we have the opposite at the moment, as we are looking at sustainable energy sources for the university, and *actually talking to people in the relevant departments*
          I nearly fell off my chair in the staff meeting where I heard about that (thankfully it was on teams)

      5. froodle*

        “you wouldn’t understand them and they go to school in Canada”

        I want you to know that this line caught me so delightfully off guard that I honked out loud like a very amused goose.

    2. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

      Higher ed here as well. I was just flabbergasted by the coordinated approach. Here there is a lot of complaining, but nobody provides evidence

      1. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

        LOL, this. The coordination of and evidence provided in that rebuttal is what made it work. I am not confident that the faculty at my higher ed institution could manage that without getting completely derailed.

      2. TheMonaOgg*

        I was also amazed by the coordination – I have a family member who works in tertiary education and her colleagues are so much at one another’s throats in competition with constant rounds of cuts and the culture of publish or perish that I would be amazed and surprised by this degree of collaboration.

      3. Jenesis*

        #4 was my favorite! Interdisciplinary collaboration FTW!

        OP didn’t say whether they all had it planned out ahead or not, but the dramatist in me wants to believe each of the professors worked completely independently and were heartwarmingly surprised by the show of solidarity at the meeting.

        1. NotBatman*

          OP4 here — as far as I know it wasn’t planned. It was just a lot of fast-thinking pissed-off people with laptops. And once the second prof raised their hand with the “according to my expertise…” we all got which way the wind was blowing and started quickly coming up with our own.

      4. Rock Prof*

        While there are moments of chaos and everything, the institutions I’ve been faculty would tout following robert’s rules of order which would always lead to some amazing coordinated and premeditated ‘discussions’ and motions, seconds, etc. I was in on it a couple times, and it was always so funny to behold because it never seemed natural but it followed the rules we were supposed to follow.

    3. dulcinea47*

      Are you a public university? I am. We have to do what the state says even when everyone who actually works there knows better.

    4. blackcat*

      THIS IS MY LIFE.

      I actually previously worked at an institution where leadership did in fact listen to experts within the institution.

      Then I went to a new one. Sweet summer child I was, I went to a feedback session about an initiative squarely in my expertise. I offered feedback, grounded in a whole lot of research.

      I am now persona non grata with the deans.

      Whoops.

  10. It's Eusocial not Mesocial*

    #2: Years ago I was tasked with organizing the office holiday party. In addition to the party our Big Boss wanted to do a Yankee swap as well. We had done these in the past and they were terrible – people arguing about specifics of the rules, and more importantly the unspoken rule that You Don’t Take Good Gifts From Senior Leadership.

    Also a lot of us are already busy in the holiday season and getting one more gift, even $10 or whatever, is yet another thing we need to do in an already stressful season.

    So I went around the office and did an informal poll and no surprise, NOBODY wanted a Yankee swap. So I reported this to our Big Boss and he grumpily accepted the decision of the masses.

    My Plan B, if he insisted on having it, would have been to say it needed to be opt-in then covertly go around and suggest that we all opt out and leave him as the one person involved.

    1. Lily C*

      Our HR recently tried to rope me into a holiday party planning group (to which I said absolutely not), and one of the initial suggestions was to make it more “interactive” by holding a firm-wide secret Santa. I pointed out that a) not everyone in the office is Christian or celebrates Christmas and b) even with a price limit it’ll be pretty awkward if our recently hired barely 20 year old mail clerk pulls the name of the senior partner and has to come up with an appropriate gift for a guy who regularly has his very expensive wine and fine art purchases delivered to the office. I can’t even imagine a successful Yankee swap or White Elephant, given the disparity in income and tastes across everyone in the firm.

      1. newfiscalyear*

        I worked at a place that did the name-draw gift exchange, but the gift had to be a toy for that person’s inner child. After all the gifts were opened and everyone had a giggle, the toys were then donated to a charitable place. It was fun, granted our tight knit office was full of creative folks.

      2. Spiders Everywhere*

        We had them at my job and they never went well – my experience was invariably sitting stuck with whatever random gag gift I opened watching people swap the same few bottles of alcohol and gifts that were obviously over the spending cap back and forth the whole time. I don’t remember ever ending up with something I didn’t immediately re-gift or stuff in the back of the closet forever.

        1. Reluctant Mezzo*

          At a Christmas party with my husband’s fellow teachers there was a floor show involving a bucket of Corona (led by the Drama teacher, why was there any doubt?) which was worth all the rest of the fuss of that particular present swap.

  11. Skitters*

    Some say, in the past this was called “Collective bargaining”. I’d sure love to see it make a comeback.

    1. Good Lord Ratty*

      I was going to say… Some of this is getting close to reinventing the [organized labour] wheel. (Which is not a bad thing at all! But we should realize that that’s essentially what’s happening here.)

    2. Pay no attention...*

      I had that same thought. #1 is collective bargaining through annual survey… a bit inefficient time-wise, but apparently effective.

    3. Meat Oatmeal*

      Absolutely. Unionize your workplace! My coworkers and I unionized about five years ago, and it took a lot of effort but it was life-changing.

  12. a trans person*

    I love these, but I also can’t really imagining continuing to work at a place like #s 3,5,7,8. All of those are the sort of broken trust in management that makes me leave a job ASAP.

    #5 in particular, I would have participated in the meeting with upper leadership but I would have quit during the meeting, not stuck around to watch things get better. I’m glad they *did* get better, but I wouldn’t be able to trust ANYONE at that workplace and it would drive me absolutely up the wall if I stayed.

    1. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Yeah, I kind of agree. I just left a job because of a terrible manager; even though she was not my manager, she was making my amazing manager’s life hellish (and other coworkers’ lives too). (Both are still there, btw.) I think it’s worth sticking around if there are a lot of good things about the job, though. And I think most of these companies proved that they were willing to listen to employees and fix the issues if they could, which actually goes a long way in restoring trust.

      I guess one would need to apply the Sheelzebub principle (hat tip Captain Awkward): if you know things absolutely *won’t* change, how long are you willing to stick around anyway? A year? Five years? The rest of your working life? I have a lot less patience and tolerance than other people, IME, so my answer tends to be “a year or less,” but others can deal better than I can and might stick it out five or 10 years. YMMV.

      1. a trans person*

        Yeah, but when I’ve been there for *ten days* as in #5? I’m happy the CEO and VP turned things around, but my distrust absolutely would extend to them — what happened before I was hired, and why did it take 3 of us new hires to tell them things are bad? Sheelzebub Principle is maybe valid for some of the longer-term efforts, but for brand new hires, even that is too strong IMO.

    2. essie*

      I was the writer of #3, and I would have absolutely left if I’d found a job with comparable compensation, responsibilities, opportunities, etc. This particular job was about 3 minutes from my house, paid very well, offered fantastic benefits, generous education/training/tuition reimbursement, and happened to be a *very* niche role that I really loved. Plus, the rest of the organization was amazing; this one manager truly did not fit with the overall culture. That being said, if I had found a comparable position, I would have left with no hesitation.

  13. Protest planning*

    As I was leaving the office yesterday I learned of another department’s coordinated protest effort scheduled for today. I’m dying to know how it goes to see if it can be replicated in my team.

  14. A Simple Narwhal*

    Oh man there are some real winners on here. The coordinated Santa strike? The surreptitious survey overhaul? The PhDilibuster? *chef’s kiss

    1. Jean (not my real name)*

      I lost 20 hours of my life to a PhDilibuster from a specific department.

      A graduation requirement of x number of credits in [basketweaving] or [basketweaving related] classes were adopted. In order to have a class marked as fulfilling the [basketweaving] requirement, the faculty committee agreed that proposals explaining the relationship of the course to [basketweaving] had to be created, submitted to a faculty committee, and approved. As you can imagine, these proposals didn’t end up being done very fast. In many cases it took several years.

      3 years later, the academic standing committee looked, horrified, at the number of supposed-to-be-graduating seniors who did not have enough certified [basketweaving] classes on their transcripts, partly because at the time they were selecting classes, there were very few such classes to choose from. (In a number of cases, the students *had* taken [basketweaving] but before it was so designated.) Process required every exemption to have a separate hearing. The committee proposed that a one-semester exemption be made so that these students could graduate without every one of them having to go through a hearing.

      The Basketweaving professors rebelled. Most of the other professors used the on campus daycare that closed at 6 pm. Meetings started at 4. Through 2 regular and 1.5 emergency meetings, basketweaving professors maintained debate until enough of the others had to leave to go home that quorum was lost.

      Eventually, after approximately 20 hours of debate, the committee gave in and did individual hearings.

      The rest of the faculty, however, got their revenge. They adopted a rule that contributions to discussion could only be 1, 5 minutes per person unless otherwise approved by vote– and made Basketweaving Ringleader the timekeeper.

  15. Quinalla*

    I love them all but #8 especially. I have used math to push back about things either individually or with a group in the past. I love math and took a look of math (engineer) in my schooling, so don’t try to get anything past me when I can run the numbers myself LOL.

    1. GreenDoor*

      #8 had to feel particularly good, being the most junior one on the team to not only figure this out but to be the group advocate.

  16. Sneaky Squirrel*

    #8 – Upper management ended up going back to HR and discovered that everyone’s overtime had been calculated at .5 instead of 1.5 and the HR person who did it just didn’t realize because of how our payroll system listed everything out (suuuure).

    ^ As an HR person who calculates payroll and benefits data regularly for different reasons, I could 100% see this actually being the case. A lot of HR data is processed manually by someone using calculators or excel spreadsheets to figure out the answers. Good on the LW for doing the math and pushing back when something seemed off. This is why transparency is needed, why cross-checks should be a regular part of any process, and why all staff should pay attention to their paystubs.

    1. Strive to Excel*

      I commented on the OG noting that the way a lot of payroll systems do math would make this error possible…if you didn’t also have the W2s available showing how much take-home pay people got.

      It’s also a good lesson in the gut check and *why* having people understand the math they’re doing, not just plugging it into a calculator, is so important. If all you can do is plug numbers into a calculator you won’t have the sense of “that looks weird and off” that you do if you know roughly what you’d expect to get.

      1. Harried HR*

        FYI – W2’s show Taxable Income not Net (Take Home)

        Example
        Gross Salary – $ 80,000.00
        Pre Tax Deds – $ 5,000.00
        Taxable – $ 75,000.00 (Shown on W2)

        Gross Salary – $ 80,000.00
        Taxes – $ 2,500.00
        Pre Tax Deds – $ 5,000.00
        Post Tax Ded – $ 2,000.00
        Net – $ 70,5000.00

    2. MsM*

      Ditto. But I can also see management not doing their due diligence on double-checking the figures because they were happy with the number provided.

    3. Trout 'Waver*

      I too can see HR screwing up the most basic of math. But if the numbers had come out higher than expected, HR absolutely would have investigated further.

  17. 1-800-BrownCow*

    As a woman in a male-dominant field, I love #7! I suspect that I’m underpaid compared to my equals (all men) at work, however I’ve brought up transparency in sharing salary a couple times and no one else was willing to share. One guy even laughed and said “Why would I tell anyone here what I make?” I suspect no one else wanted to be transparent because sharing was most likely only going to benefit me and no one else in the department.

    1. Meat Oatmeal*

      I’m so sorry your colleagues haven’t have your back.

      Maybe you’ve already done this, but just in case:

      It might be worth approaching your colleagues individually and making your case for why they should tell you their salaries. Not the guy who laughed at the idea (I’m no fan of that guy). Start with the friendliest ones, and if they don’t want to say a number, maybe they’ll say a range. Maybe they’ll be more forthcoming if you tell them your salary.

      It sucks that you’re in this position. I hope you can find fairness.

      P.S. If you ever get a job in a unionized workplace or unionize your current workplace, union leadership should be able to get the employer to disclose union members’ salaries so the union can look for inequities.

  18. T. A. R. DiGrade*

    A few years ago, people were going into fits at the temerity of a bunch of interns who dared to ask for a simple change in their company’s micromanaging dress code. Why was that abhorrent when AAM routinely encourages employees to do exactly what those interns were doing – get together to make a case for a company policy change?

    1. Sar*

      Substance matters. Interns do not have the standing of employees, and the reasons behind their objections to the dress code reflected their immaturity (as did their method of protest. A petition? At work?).

    2. Strive to Excel*

      A couple of things.
      1. It’s a bad idea to speak “for the group” if you haven’t actually checked around and make sure the whole group wants to put their workplace capital behind it. For something like a dress code, “the group” is going to be the whole company, not just your intern cohort.

      2. If you’re the newest person in the office and want something small in your workday to change (which dress code is; as irritating as it can be, it’s not actually a big ask to wear office shoes instead of open toe sandals), making a huge to-do about it is going to seem unnecessarily out of touch.

      3. They went straight to an extreme option instead of trying any of the more reasonable options, such as asking another coworker “how strongly enforced is this dress code”.

      4. Interns in particular are expected to come to the workplace to learn about how the workplace runs, so making a big stink about a workplace norm is going to be a bad look unless the “norm” is something very egregious. IE, a group of interns pushing back en masse against a manager who was harassing them would be one thing. They still might get fired as a coverup but the AAM community would be a lot more sympathetic. A group of interns complaining en masse about a workplace norm (especially in a formal professional field, which I believe they were in), is going to make them appear as being unwilling to listen and learn.

      1. Sparkles McFadden*

        Yes, all of this. Since the interns were fired (except for the one who didn’t sign the petition), this may have been a “last straw” situation, or management decided to match the interns’ nuclear option with a nuclear option of their own.

    3. Ferret*

      The details actually matter. As does the fact that one of the reasons the interns cited for the policy being unfair was that one person was violating it by wearing casual shoes… without realising that was an accommodation for her prosthetic leg

      1. Ellis Bell*

        This is a conversation I have had to have regularly with A Level students (17 and 18 year olds) and I’ve always wondered why that cohort, and not the younger kids I teach: “It’s not fair that Other Student is wearing trainers, and not getting punished, so I should get advance permission to wear trainers too!” when 1) they had no idea if Other Student had permission, or was in trouble or 2) had no idea of Other Student’s situation, like if they had a foot injury or if their family was being evicted at the same time their school shoes went to shoe heaven. Younger kids will just wear the wrong shoes without any debate and take their punishment for it on the chin.

    4. Office Plant Queen*

      Because what they were upset about was having to wear business attire for all of about 3 months. If I remember correctly, the dress code wasn’t particularly onerous or micromanaged, just somewhat formal. And they kept asking repeatedly after being told no.

      I think it would’ve been different if, say, they were expected to have high end Italian leather shoes (that you can’t expect an intern to afford) or the women would be written up for having their makeup even slightly smudged. Or if they weren’t temporary employees and they waited long enough to build political capital before bringing it up, ideally with reasons other than/in addition to “I want to wear comfy shoes” – like that other companies in the industry wear business casual and that the formality was turning off good candidates

    5. Pay no attention...*

      If I recall, they didn’t just make their case one time, they kept escalating a petty issue until it took up all of their time and impacted their work — even after their managers had told them the decision was final. Shoes is a really small hill to die on, rather than for instance pay equality, and demonstrates their lack of maturity.

  20. CorporateCatLady*

    This just happened to us this week, and I feel it fits the “banding together” narrative. I work at a small organization tat was recently bought y a very large publicly held company. It has been painful and stressful for all the usual reasons. As part of the acquisition, we will be moving to their office soon, so our boss told us that everything in our current office was up for grabs, we just needed to decide amongst us how to divide it. There’s nothing fancy in the office: a few desk chairs, an old TV, mismatched silverware in the kitchen…We get along pretty well, so we created a shared doc with a list of what everyone wanted and negotiated amongst ourselves if two people wanted the same item. Well… our new global CFO and COO person came in this week and decide they wanted in too (despite having been “our” leaders for al of 2 months and having set foot in our office a handful of times). They just added their names to next to the things they wanted (even if they were already “claimed” by one of us) and decided that if 2 people wanted the same thing, there would be a raffle. We banned together and added all of our names to ALL of the things. So that means that if CFO and worker# 1 wanted to old tv, they both had a 50% chance of winning it; now its worker #1, worker #2, worker #3, worker# 4 and CFO competing for the same tv. Together we have an 80% chance of winning, and we did, for the most part. And then whoever won, just gave it to the person that had originally requested it. We did lose a few precious items like a desk lamp with no light bulb to the newcomers, but he whole process brought us closer…(we try to find joy where we can)

    2. Jaunty Banana Hat I*

      Nicely done!

      And this reminds me of the post earlier today where the person was asking about how to be a gracious senior leader–don’t do what this CFO and COO did!

    3. ampersand*

      Love this! It reminds me of the Depression-era penny auctions that took place in the US. When the bank auctioned off people’s farms, neighbors would bid on them (and win) and give the farm back to the family it belonged to.

    4. Frieda*

      A colleague and I claimed and divided up some vintage furniture from a lounge area at work (so old, cool, but well-used) that had been replaced and was headed for the trash. Each of us took home what we wanted. (My haul: two MCM leather chairs, great bones, but garage-sale condition.) One piece, a cool blue leather chaise longue, did unfortunately get taken to the dumpster when my colleague couldn’t make it back to work in time to rescue it. We checked before all the divvying up even began with the business manager, Bob, who said basically “Yes, take the trash furniture, please.”

      Anyway, our boss’s boss heard about it later and said *she’d* had to pay money for something *very similar* and implied that we should have paid for the (decades-old, used) furniture. She implied that $100 might cover it. I just said sunnily that we’d asked Bob beforehand and were told it was ours for the taking, isn’t that fun.

      She easily made 4x what either of us did. I cannot emphasize enough how unlikely it is that her home is decorated with used furniture from her workplace or that she would have considered for half a second that she should pay for that privilege if it is.

  21. Majnoona*

    Back when I was a graduate student we had foot events and at the end the grad students divied up the leftover food. worked fine. Got a new Very Important chair (he hated bowling alone) who decided he would have grad students *bid* on the leftover food (was that even legal? What was he going to do with the money). Mass revolt. No one bid on the food. He gave up and we went back to dividing it up among ourselves.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      It’s peculiar to the teaching profession that you’re paid throughout the summer, but you’re only expected to do “work from home” style tasks like preparing lessons, seating plans, reading up on student’s needs and educational plans, marking papers and completing training. No one really keeps tabs on your work output or sets hours for you, as long as you show up prepared for the new school year in September. You typically do a lot of work in the summer and the only thing that makes it bearable is setting your own hours and priorities. Doing in person training would go down like a lead balloon with every teacher I’ve ever met, even if they’re technically getting paid.

      1. KateM*

        We just had sign-ups for mandatory first aid training, one of days during autumn break. We get 8 weeks of vacation but the rest of year we are expected to be able to come in even if it is a break time for students. Possibly to come in and work in our classrooms if we have such.

      2. Kristen*

        In our state, teachers are paid for the 9-10 months of teaching and not for the summer break, unless you’re doing summer school teaching or have some other actual work responsibility. You can opt to receive paychecks through the summer, and if you decide to do that, they reduce your paychecks throughout the school year to accommodate continued paychecks in the summer. You’re ultimately getting paid the same total amount per year, they just break it up for you if you don’t want to budget and save for the summer.

      4. Imtheone*

        Where I worked, teachers had a nine month salary but could opt to have it paid out over 12 months. So, although we received paychecks in the summer, we were not paid for those months.

        One year, because of some changes to the curriculum, the district announced an additional mandatory week for teachers at the end of the school year, unpaid. People pushed back, and the compromise was two or three days of paid teacher work days instead of the full week, unpaid.

        If you’re in education, you won’t be surprised that the trainings were pretty worthless. I had tickets to join my husband in another city, so I only went to one day of the training.

        1. Imtheone*

          Also, in regards to how unions would be beneficial, I live in a right to work state—which means collective bargaining is illegal for public employees.

  23. Timothy*

    Many of these are in a similar vein — employees banding together to show management just how bad their working situation is. It’s the kind of situation where a union would really be beneficial.

    1. Laser99*

      Yeah, that one really disturbed me as well. “Let’s just try it out, maybe they won’t notice they’re being exploited” is not a company I would want anything to do with, how could you ever trust them again?

  25. Ardis Paramount*

    Alison, of all your posts about “Tell us about a time when” (and they’re all extremely fun to read)…THIS one has the potential to do some real good. Thank you for the reminder about organizing.

  26. JPalmer*

    #8 is a great example of using silence to speak for you.

    By saying “I’m still not happy.” and then being silent forces the other party to make statements and act. LW demonstrated this again with the meeting rescheduling.

    Also there’s a lesson here for management of whenever you make changes, you have to have rock solid demonstration that things are valid. They were just trying to steamroll through a thing which would’ve had huge consequences for their staff. Like that was a major potential turnover event. This is assuming a generous interpretation that they just made an honest mistake and weren’t trying to pull a fast one.

  27. JO*

    #1: “If the leadership has noticed that the complaints are remarkably similar between different staff members, they haven’t pointed it out.”

    i wouldn’t point it out either. employees will feel a high degree of satisfaction for banding together and getting what they want and the company knows exactly which one topic to address to keep everyone happy.

  28. fine-tipped pen aficionado*

    HR really not covering itself in glory in these. Love these stories; thanks everyone for sharing! My sympathies for all the HR folks who have to share a profession with these wilted-lettuce-for-brains types.

  31. Q*

    #4: you have so perfectly described why seeing smart professors band together like that in the theatre of a faculty meeting to effect change is one of my favorite parts of being in academia. They did an amazing job.

  32. Demidad*

    Last Christmas one of our more outgoing colleagues decided that they wanted us all to do a Secret Santa, but most of us are grumpy, old, slightly autistic engineers and the thought of having to do EXTRA Christmas shopping at short notice was annoying, not joyful.

    So we did our own economically-efficient, low-stress Secret Santa, where we all stood in a circle, swapped $10 notes for about thirty seconds, shook hands, wished each other Merry Christmas and got on with our days. No waste wrapping paper, no “junk people don’t need or want”, no arguments about someone spending too much or too littlel – it’s the environmentally sound way to do it.

  33. Isabel Archer*

    #7’s outcome was wonderful, but how they had to get there made me sick to my stomach. Clearly the employer was well aware of the discrepancies, HAD THE MONEY TO PAY EVERYONE THE SAME RATE, but just decided to suck instead until forced to be decent human beings.

  36. I don't mean to be rude, I'm just good at it*

    I sympathize with #6. I was asked every summer to gain a computer certification the was crucial to the new curriculum that I was going to teach.
    I pushed back because I already had full Office 98 certification and getting Office 2000 certification was not going inhibit my students learning (one example).
    Suddenly I saw the retirement light at the end of the tunnel and retirement is based on your highest 3 earning years. Every extra curricular activity, weekend activity and summer was attended and my retirement is nice.

  37. Sara without an H*

    #6 kind of warmed the cockles of my cynical old heart. A $13 bus ticket would, indeed, be a cheap way out of an unnecessary training session.

  38. Should be sleeping, can't stop reading*

    I wonder if anyone mentioned to the bus company what they were doing… or if the bus company has been wondering all this time why the $13 route became briefly popular in ticket sales but without any actual increase in the number of riders!

  40. UpstateDownstate*

    Re: 1. The coordinated survey….this sounds exactly like a mid-level auction house a friend used to work at to a T! She used to go on and on about all of the same issues and slowly over time things did improve. She has since left but I’m glad it worked out for you and your coworkers and that you all banded together.

  42. ijustworkhere*

    I am someone who speaks into our organization’s response to surveys. I actually love the coordinated survey story. It’s hard to get our executive team focused when there are several items that appear to be of equal importance to the employees, and so they wind up messing around and doing a half baked job.

    They get a fire lit when one or two things are screaming out for attention! I might actually drop a few hints around here making this suggestion when we have our next survey.

  43. StormySue*

    I swear #3 is about my department; I had an almost-identical experience a few years ago. If it’s one of my coworkers, hey guys! Thanks for your work ousting KB! If it is a coincidence, sorry someone else had to deal with an ex-manager as bad as mine was!

  44. StormySue*

    My old job had an informal employee of the month type-thing: you didn’t win anything but it came with a lot of internal recognition. I noticed that no one in my department ever won despite the fact that it was the biggest, simply because we very rarely participated. Whatever, we didn’t NEED praise. But then, one month, there was a huge messy issue that one employee spent the majority of their time and energy working fixing. They did an amazing job but didn’t get a ton of attention outside our department. So, when the call for nominations went out, I coordinated with my coworkers and together we all nominated this overlooked employee. They won by a landslide.

  45. Goldenrod*

    “Upper management ended up going back to HR and discovered that everyone’s overtime had been calculated at .5 instead of 1.5 and the HR person who did it just didn’t realize because of how our payroll system listed everything out (suuuure).”

    LW #8, you are a flat out genius!!

  47. I wear my sunglasses at night*

    So did number 6 not have a teachers union or something? Or a really crappy one??? Because that’s kind of the only way I really see a situation happening where a school administrator would try to ”force” a training session on teachers who don’t want to go. So hopefully the teachers in number 6 spent the subsequent school year unionizing.

Comments are closed.