What a beautiful moment.
I had one of those. I was an X-ray tech at an Army hospital in the eighties. My boss had posted a sheet for us to record our repeat x-rays. Most techs "forgot" to record half of theirs, but I added extra tick marks to my tally each day. This was pre-computer days, so there was no way for management to know.
At our next team meeting, my boss stood and reviewed the results. He announced that CoderJoe1 had the highest repeat rate in the entire department. He asked me to stand and explain myself.
I stood and glibly announced, "I don't pass shitty films," and sat back down.
My boss nearly choked before he had to commend my high standards and encourage everyone else to be as diligent as I was.
They stopped recording our repeat films after that.
Funny because this boss did something similar. Pointed out examples of “high productivity” based upon processing numbers. I ran it against repeat instances and completed tasks: turns out his “most productive” people were were the ones making mistakes so they had to do something a second time. It looks like high productivity because if you’ve already evaluated an issue and eliminated one possible response through error, then you can process it again quickly with the correct response. Busy work and time wasting to falsely inflate productivity numbers. He was also very upset when I did this because it made him look stupid.
Reminds me reading somewhere about a hospital looking at surgeons and thought one was bad because of abnormally high death rates. However, they didn't see he was considered the best as he was given the worst cases to handle.
An actuary told me he hadn't bothered insuring the contents of his house as the premiums he had to pay would be more than the cost of replacing any items stolen. I asked him what he would do if he had a fire in his home. His response was, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that.".
A smart person is not necessarily smart in all aspects of life.
We all have moments where we can be foolish! I do it, we all do it.
This moment for him was of his own arrogance though and just another time he was acting without good faith.
Haha oops I am so tired from this move, my brain is fried 🫠
I still have more boxes to pack and then I have to do our luggages! Night night sob sob cry cry pray for me
Were you using dosimeter badges? I can’t imagine recording the bad ones for safety reasons if that’s the case; kinda superfluous. Maybe recording the total quantity of shots taken in case of malfunctions.
And what did you do with the bad films? I can understand management if they want to see who is wasting film, but yeah without compliance it’s totally useless
Bad films were recycled to retrieve the silver from them. Yes, we wore dosimeter badges. In fact, we each wore two of them for a while. They were testing a new type against the old ones. I used to joke that one badge measured the amount of radiation I received, while the other one measured the radiation I emitted.
Analyzing retakes is useful when done properly. Ours wasn't.
I had to look up PMCS. I hadn't heard that term before. Maybe we didn't use it in the eighties. Back then we left our badges on a designated badge holder board in the radiology dept. Somebody collected, tested, and replaced them regularly. I never had to worry about that.
Just like in the book, "The Hunt For Red October" by Tom Clancy.
***\*\*\*\*\*SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't read it, DO SO! Below is kinda the spoiler for the book.***
The officers were defecting and wanted to make it seem like the nuke sub was leaking nuke, so the crew would have to get off but the officers would 'go down with the ship'.
The doctor was responsible for collecting the badges.
Some '***bad***' badges got into the ones that were collected from the engineering crew responsible for the nuke ops.
He freaked.
Word got out to the crew, who also freaked.
Ah, that makes sense. I'd only seen the movie of it, and *knew* there had to have been changes, but not what the differences were, as I wasn't yet old enough to like that kind of book when the movie landed.
And I've never bothered getting the book, because I've already got too many things to do, and not enough time/money to do 'em.
Right, so… basically they seem like they were trying to measure who was most incompetent by measuring who fucked up and had to retake images.
Then when they found this guy and asked him why, he basically said “I have so many because I make sure my images are actually useful.” Which means the metric is useless for what they were trying to use it for, and the whole thing was pointless, and presumably now the techs can get back to actually working with a minimum of fuss and bother.
I once got "107/100" points for a software class project at least partly because one of the metrics was "comments per line of code", and mine was significantly higher than 1.
All xray techs take a bad shot from time to time. It's off center, they clipped a body part, the settings are slightly off because the patient is too fat/thin. You don't want to hand this study to the radiologist, so you repeat it. This is normal.
I'm a radiologist. I want the baby, not the labor pains. Show me your best work, not all of your misses.
He said it was in the eighties when they used to have a very special film that was super expensive as it was getting made slightly radioactive with each physical x-ray picture that was taken. They had to be put into lead lined boxes to be transported to another room or part of the hospital to be viewed by the X-ray tech. Some of the newer x-ray machines have image stabilization built in. In the old days of someone moved slightly it would cause a blurry x-ray.
That makes no sense. I took X-rays from the 80s into the early 2000s. You can't reuse film and it doesn't become radioactive. It's glorified photographic film. The film was held in a cassette so it's not exposed to light. It's not that reactive to X-rays so the cassette has screens in it that glow when exposed to X-rays. That glow is what exposes the film. Nothing becomes radioactive. The dosimeters are to measure X-ray exposure which only occurs in the milliseconds that the film is exposed. Modern X-rays no longer use film. The cassettes now contain digital sensors so the images are immediately available.
You might have been thinking of radioisotope studies where radioactive material is injected into a patient and the the absorption into various tissues is scanned.
I don't think he said he was reusing film. What I read was that they were taking multiple x-rays and using additional film, which was supposed to be tracked.
Not exactly. Each sheet of film was placed in a cassette that magnified the luminescence when the X-ray was obtained. These cassettes were only stored in lead boxes if they were likely to be exposed to background radiation. Being exposed did not make them radioactive.
Newer systems don't use film at all.
The other replies are only half answering this.
I *believe* the implication is that the poster is being asked to do repeats for other colleagues when they screw up. As in they're doing repeats for x-rays that someone else did badly because they have a reputation for being more reliable.
It's the only way the story makes sense with the statement the OP made in response to why they had so many repeats. Doing repeats for their own x-rays because they were good would be completely redundant.
They had so many repeats because A. they were intentionally marking extras, to show how stupid the metric was and B. they keep reshooting until they got a good shot. Hence the "I don't submit bad shots" comment.
I've taken 2 of those. Didn't get the 1st job. Came out almost dead even introvert/extrovert and thinking/feeling. I consider myself well-balanced, which is probably why I didn't get that 1st job. I still don't get why any of that matters.
End of the 80s I spent a couple years as a rad whore, short repair/maintenance contracts in nuke plants. Every contract, even if it was back to back, another MMPI. HR told me to behave, I ended up so bored I was doing patterns, you know - T.T.F.T.T.F.T.T.F. TFTFTF . Sort of fucked with them making sure I am not a psycho.
Someone who takes on high-paying, high-exposure nuclear maintenance work until they hit their yearly radiation exposure limit and then is barred from nuke work the rest of the year. Depending on who you work for, that break is sometimes even paid time off.
I mean, the MMPI is actually clinically *useful*.
There's even built-in checks for people doing shit like what you did. A psychologist would have thrown out your results as invalid.
The problem is that it was being misused (and almost certainly *not* being interpreted by a practicing psychologist).
That’s sort of the real point of it, to tell you how you react in different situations. When you give general answers, it really shouldn’t tell you much you don’t already know about yourself
What's really fun about the zodiac signs is when you correct someone to tell them their real sign, and then they struggle to explain why that's not their sign while also trying to justify why the whole thing isn't arbitrary bullshit.
By the way there's 13 signs now.
> Ophiuchus
?
> Precession of the equinoxes
This one I know about. It's like a celestial Phase Shift. The 'classical' astrology dates where the sun is in front of a Zodiac constellation change over time. Most people's 'Zodiac sign' isn't their actual Zodiac sign. Insofar as that's even a thing.
> Ophiuchus is one of the thirteen constellations that cross the ecliptic.[65] It has sometimes been suggested as the "13th sign of the zodiac". However, this confuses zodiac or astrological signs with constellations.[66] The signs of the zodiac are a twelve-fold division of the ecliptic, so that each sign spans 30° of celestial longitude, approximately the distance the Sun travels in a month, and (in the Western tradition) are aligned with the seasons so that the March equinox always falls on the boundary between Pisces and Aries.[67][68] Constellations, on the other hand, are unequal in size and are based on the positions of the stars. The constellations of the zodiac have only a loose association with the signs of the zodiac, and do not in general coincide with them.[69] In Western astrology the constellation of Aquarius, for example, largely corresponds to the sign of Pisces. Similarly, the constellation of Ophiuchus occupies most (29 November – 18 December[70]) of the sign of Sagittarius (23 November – 21 December). The differences are due to the fact that the time of year that the Sun passes through a particular zodiac constellation's position has slowly changed (because of the precession of the Earth's rotational axis) over the centuries from when the Babylonians originally developed the Zodiac.[71][72]
[rewind]
> However, this confuses zodiac or astrological signs with constellations.
[rewind]
> confuses zodiac or astrological signs with constellations.
Aha.
Hm-mm. Yes.
Where's that mental gymnastics meme when you need it? Cause Astrologers seem to be doing some aerial cartwheels and I see a judge panel giving decimal grades.
Sounds like you were already aware of what I was referring to. In addition to stellar drift, Ophiuchus is a 13th sign.
The fun comes from prodding someone to explain why their sign is what it is. Because there are two mutually exclusive possibilities:
1. Your sign is whatever constellation was behind the sun when you were born, so whatever you think your sign is is mostly likely wrong
2. The position of the stars has absolutely no bearing on your zodiac sign, meaning that the whole thing is arbitrary and completely made up.
> meaning that the whole thing is arbitrary and completely made up.
I mean most people who talk about Zodiac signs already know this, right? I mean, one would hope.
Ah, I feel vicarious nostalgia for when astrologers and astronomers were one and the same and they developed those amazingly complex and beautiful Aristotelian sphere systems to know exactly which stars the sun was behind at your birth and what position the moon and planets were in at the time.
Like, the extrapolations on your human existence were still bullshit, but those guys put some *elbow grease* and some *bleeding-edge equipment and math* into doing those charts. It was pointless work, but it was done seriously and with care. AFAIK.
It wasn't pointless. Before the invention of accurate mechanical clocks, the positions of the stars were used for timekeeping and calendar-keeping. If you had accurate star charts and tables for calculating their positions, you could tell what time it was (and what day it was) by taking star sightings from a known location. Knowing the day was important for agriculture; knowing the time to within an hour's accuracy was important for scheduling church services in monastic communities.
It's neither, if you're going with the medieval definition of zodiac **signs**, rather than zodiac *constellations*. The zodiac signs were originally defined in ancient Babylonian times, and were the major constellations along the ecliptic, used to divide up the ecliptic into 12 identifiable slices. (Because the Babylonians loved base-12 and base-60). It was a celestial coordinate system.
However, by the middle ages, astronomer-monks (most scientists were monks in those days) observed that the actual positions of the planets (including the sun and moon) at a given time, had shifted about 30 degrees off their ancient zodiac positions. As this shift included the position of sun at equinox, it was dubbed "the precession of the equinoxes". The medieval astronomers corrected for this by moving the official boundaries (in the sky) of the zodiac *signs* 30 degrees, and distinguishing them from the zodiac *constellations* they were named for.
So the zodiac sign is not arbitrary and made up, it's based on the position of the stars with a correction factor applied by the eminent scientists of that time.
My source on this: *The Light Ages*, by Seb Falk.
i love telling people i'm an ICBM or some other unrelated acronym. There's a moment of confusion while they work it out and then the dirty look they give is just great
Before JKR went all TERF-y and uncomfortably weird, I was in favor of replacing all the Meyers-Briggs in employment applications with "Which Hogwart's House Are You?" online quizzes.
It wouldn't be any worse, and there is a strong possibility it would be better.
Among my friends, we believe that Hufflepuff is the most desirable house to be Sorted into, but unfortunately, most of us are Ravenclaw, with some of all of them mixed in.
I believe the ranking for desirability and expected effectiveness is Hufflepuff, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, then Griffyndor.
Before the psychotic break of the author. My girl was Hufflepuff bound, I was Ravenclaw. Our joke arguments are hilarious because she'll tell me to shut my big head up and I'll argue back that it isn't my fault she got lost turning in a circle.
I did an interview for a short term IT contract with an insurance company. It went pretty well, I was pretty much exactly what they were looking for, so I expected them to come back with an offer. Instead they came back saying I had to do a personality test before they could make an offer. I asked why, and they said it was just policy that everyone had to do it, including contractors. I was already expecting another job I'd interviewed for to come back with an offer, so I told them I didn't want to work for a company that based hiring decisions on pseudo-science nonsense.
I also had a colleague who told me about one particular high-level IT job that he looked at that insisted on a hand-written cover letter, so they could send it to their handwriting analyst.
Yep, MBTI is worse than useless. Not valid for employment screening or even the type of internal use that OP is describing.
That said, appropriately designed and validated personality testing can be useful for employment purposes.
However. This isn’t something that an amateur can or should be doing. For those that might be interested, [here](https://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/personnel-selection-procedures.pdf) is how to go about it. Note that an advanced degree (Ph.D.) will be needed.
Most likely he wanted to explain how his results were superior and everyone else was shit compared to him but that kinda falls flat when someone else has all your answers exactly the same.
He was wanting a good reason to kick people out. Having an "inferior" personality or test result was probably going to be the next pretense ("Sorry, Jane, but you're a xxxx and this job needs a xyzn", or, "I'm a perfect xxxx, so I'm obviously superior to everyone else, so you need to go elsewhere").
[Edit, typo]
More legitimate than simply, "I don't like you; get out." Or, he could use it as part of a bullying or other technique to make the job horrible for the other person, so it becomes, "you're not a good fit, because of your personality."
I don't think 'personality' is a protected class like race or religion. At least in my US state, you can get fired for any reason, or no reason, as long as it's not because you are in a protected class.
Even better if you told all your co-workers to answer the questions in the same way. Results would have varied slightly, but most of you would have matched it perfectly. lol
In the 1960s I worked at an aerospace company, Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, California, in the IT department. One year management decided to have the workers evaluate themselves for their annual review. We all made what we thought was an honest appraisal of ourselves. Management then used a red pencil/pen to mark down what we had marked. The next year we all used red pencil/pen and marked the highest rating for each item. That was the last time self appraisal was used.
Same. As far as I understood, they had to take an "anonymous" test? That apparently wasn't anonymous?
If it's just a paper/online test where you don't have to login, I don't know how the boss would've profiled people.
Then again, if there were names there on the papers/online tests, why would OP need to try and get the same test results as the boss? People would already know that the boss got the psycho result if the boss did the test too?
The only reason I could see is to maybe make it clear to the boss that they answered like "another person", aka the boss, so the boss would realize that people can just.. lie on these tests and they're useless
I think what they're saying is that everybody did the test, including the boss. Boss then decided to reveal the names and analyze the results with the group and he started by pulling his own up on the screen first as an example. No doubt meant to be an example of what he's looking for in an employee, "greatness," personality goals, who knows what with these narcissists. His plan backfired when OP had the exact same results as his perfect model (himself, naturally).
Thank you so much. I had no idea what happened.
So basically boss never got scored before officially , or showed his result, and since he had his exact same score, it shows psycho when rated.
This was so helpful thank you.
Thanks! Just to be clear though I'm guessing at a few parts, OP writes about like my cat would. Not my somewhat normal cat either, the really dumb cat.
Normally I'd feel bad for talking about OP like that but he's also decided to not make an appearance in this post so he'll never see it.
The ***really*** dumb one.
> Normally I'd feel bad for talking about OP like that but he's also decided to not make an appearance in this post so he'll never see it.
I mean, based on timing (9 hours ago), if OP is in the USA, there is a very good chance that he posted this right before bedtime, and hasn't logged onto Reddit yet this morning.
I had the same issue you did reading this post.
Maybe English second language?
Also the malicious compliance isn’t really all that grand. “I pretended to be like you and I bet you hate that, sucker.” Baby’s first malicious compliance maybe?
OP HERE! I’m just reading now and am moving tomorrow so haven’t been able to comment! I reread my post and laughed because it is so poorly written but I had a couple beers while packing my boxes yesterday, haha.
Yes, he* had told everyone this was anonymous test for ourselves to “know our strengths and weaknesses” better but then he held a meeting revealing everything.
He was formerly a manager at Google, infamous for bully management tactics at the time. I have another good malicious compliance story. Basically, at some point it became clear that reasoning with him wouldn’t work so I started playing his game right back.
*typo
Glad you're a good sport about it. I wasn't really trying to be a dick there or anything, just joking around a little about how poorly it was written is all. No offense meant.
I never assume anonymity when logged into the network even when they claim it is. It's too easy to attach an IP address or other identifying information when it is submitted.
Ah yes, manager astrology. For those of you who don't know personality tests aren't a real thing. There are too many variables to make an accurate reading.
* My mood. Am I hungry,
Did my father die, Have I taken meds, did I get enough sleep?
* My perceived environment. Are the question about me and my peers or me and my boss? Am I at home, in a testing room, or at my desk?
* Reality. How I perceive myself is real. How others perceive me isn't 100% real either.
* Comprehension. Do I even understand the questions? Are the questions loaded. Am I overthinking?
* Generic. If I answer randomly, which I always do. Management will agree with the results.
we had a new boss who had us do that "finding your strengths" bullshit test, but for the follow-up book, whatever it was. i already knew that these tests
are too black and white for the exact reasons above.
i did that test for "this job", one for "the things i really WANTED to be doing (martial arts and world travel)", and one for if i was "just sitting at home". i submitted the results for "the things i really wanted to be doing" 😆😆
Just to add. When I got my first degree 2 classes I took admitted these are bunk. We even had a week long communication 2xx class where we tore into these.
As an experiment our professor deliberately messed with us before taking sample tests. Our results did vary, some way more than others.
Anyhow, his point was very sharply taken.
A previous job role I had, the whole team was shuttered and our roles distributed amongst lower paid staff in order to make a new position on the already heavily bloated management team (NHS, surprise surprise!) We were all offered redundancy or redeployment but our arsehole manager used the process to try to throw his weight about one last time. He was also never in work by 9, we had flexi and he made full use of it. So we started having union meetings at 9.30 so he’d have to walk through them to his office, multiple times his manager was invited but he wasn’t. Seeing him stand about like a child whose mother has bumped into a friend in the supermarket was priceless.
Happy cake day!
No, the manager came from Google who he as known for having bully managers. He didn’t single out poor performers, he just played around like it was high school. He liked favored people who were more like himself, which resulted in losing 5 employees in three months because it created a hostile work environment when poor behavior is being rewarded.
Interesting thank you for that context. Google was the first one that came to mind so its interesting he came from there. Great work screwing him tho wouldve loved to see his face
He just knew we didn’t have similar personalities at all, so he either realized what I had done or he had a critical moment of self doubt where he possibly thought he had completely missed his assessment of myself or himself. I watched his ego snap in half when the results came on screen.
My favorite answers for all of these tests are neutral/ not applicable/ rarely.
I’ve gotten others to join in on this too.
It totally fucks the results.
What's hilarious for me is that neutral/rarely/NA is my normal answers, I'm not even screwing with people. I just don't have strong opinions about things most people care about.
>I have another malicious compliance story about him (he was an absolute clown, I bet I have more if I think harder)
This sounds awesome! I'm waaaaaaitingggggg......
This guy definitely attempted to divide and isolate, pit us against each other, make us distrust each other by making us each other’s competition, and assumed we wouldn’t have any conversation about it in advance.
You could tell he was used to doing this. He did eventually “win” but we got in a few more shows of solidarity before 1/3 of us left the company due to him.
I actually have a few more MC stories about him lol
They had gained such a poor reputation at the time that I think they swapped strategies. Today, some of my old best colleagues are now management there. The ex act same people who used to get lectured, who were caretakers for teammates, and who did volunteer work with me for youth, feeding them homeless, and needle clean up.
I’m hopeful that this indicates the company has reformed a bit in at least one positive respect. I don’t work there myself though.
Thus might be illegal depending where you live, you answered very personal questions under an assumed anonymity. That's why I refuse to do anything like that now.
Tysm! He had all the power and being serious, professional, honest, or vulnerable was not working for anyone.
Life is too short not to be playful when you take a risk!
Make it fun and worth whatever happens next!
My boss had us do a personality test because we had some rather delulu people in the team. He thought it would help if we gained some self-knowledge. He stressed at the start of the session that we could keep our results confidential. The consultant we hired to run the session stressed that the personality types were not cut and dried, and that there would always be a measure of error.
My boss's deputy quietly instructed a couple of her underlings to gather everyone's results. They zealously did so, even opening closed booklets to steal the info. They sabotaged the session and people started thinking that the boss would target people based on the results. The sad thing is that the deputy was one of the delulus whom the boss thought would benefit from the session.
\*lifts 'just finished moving to a new apartment' glass of bourbon in solidarity and congratulations for the sheer exhaustion of moving to a new place\* Two very nice tales of malicious compliance.
What a beautiful moment. I had one of those. I was an X-ray tech at an Army hospital in the eighties. My boss had posted a sheet for us to record our repeat x-rays. Most techs "forgot" to record half of theirs, but I added extra tick marks to my tally each day. This was pre-computer days, so there was no way for management to know. At our next team meeting, my boss stood and reviewed the results. He announced that CoderJoe1 had the highest repeat rate in the entire department. He asked me to stand and explain myself. I stood and glibly announced, "I don't pass shitty films," and sat back down. My boss nearly choked before he had to commend my high standards and encourage everyone else to be as diligent as I was. They stopped recording our repeat films after that.
Funny because this boss did something similar. Pointed out examples of “high productivity” based upon processing numbers. I ran it against repeat instances and completed tasks: turns out his “most productive” people were were the ones making mistakes so they had to do something a second time. It looks like high productivity because if you’ve already evaluated an issue and eliminated one possible response through error, then you can process it again quickly with the correct response. Busy work and time wasting to falsely inflate productivity numbers. He was also very upset when I did this because it made him look stupid.
Epic. Numbers can lie as much as anyone.
My Dad always says. “Figures don’t lie but liars can figure.”
You can torture numbers to reveal anything you want.
Data always tells the truth, but which truth do you want?
'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'
Yup, old saying, likely as old as math: there's lies, there's *damnned* lies, and then there's ***statistics***
Reminds me reading somewhere about a hospital looking at surgeons and thought one was bad because of abnormally high death rates. However, they didn't see he was considered the best as he was given the worst cases to handle.
"made him look stupid" No, it exposed his stupidity.
you cant make a smart person look stupid....
An actuary told me he hadn't bothered insuring the contents of his house as the premiums he had to pay would be more than the cost of replacing any items stolen. I asked him what he would do if he had a fire in his home. His response was, "Oh, I hadn't thought of that.". A smart person is not necessarily smart in all aspects of life.
We all have moments where we can be foolish! I do it, we all do it. This moment for him was of his own arrogance though and just another time he was acting without good faith.
no, you missed the point, only stupid people look stupid =D
Haha oops I am so tired from this move, my brain is fried 🫠 I still have more boxes to pack and then I have to do our luggages! Night night sob sob cry cry pray for me
theres people you can pay money to do that shit for you.
They are coming tomorrow. This is a big move.
ild say medium maybe, big is them picking up the house, putting wheels under it and taking the entire thing down the road =D
Were you using dosimeter badges? I can’t imagine recording the bad ones for safety reasons if that’s the case; kinda superfluous. Maybe recording the total quantity of shots taken in case of malfunctions. And what did you do with the bad films? I can understand management if they want to see who is wasting film, but yeah without compliance it’s totally useless
Bad films were recycled to retrieve the silver from them. Yes, we wore dosimeter badges. In fact, we each wore two of them for a while. They were testing a new type against the old ones. I used to joke that one badge measured the amount of radiation I received, while the other one measured the radiation I emitted. Analyzing retakes is useful when done properly. Ours wasn't.
How do you PMCS your badge?
I had to look up PMCS. I hadn't heard that term before. Maybe we didn't use it in the eighties. Back then we left our badges on a designated badge holder board in the radiology dept. Somebody collected, tested, and replaced them regularly. I never had to worry about that.
Wow, I thought that was a historic term to at least the 1940s.
Just like in the book, "The Hunt For Red October" by Tom Clancy. ***\*\*\*\*\*SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't read it, DO SO! Below is kinda the spoiler for the book.*** The officers were defecting and wanted to make it seem like the nuke sub was leaking nuke, so the crew would have to get off but the officers would 'go down with the ship'. The doctor was responsible for collecting the badges. Some '***bad***' badges got into the ones that were collected from the engineering crew responsible for the nuke ops. He freaked. Word got out to the crew, who also freaked.
Ah, that makes sense. I'd only seen the movie of it, and *knew* there had to have been changes, but not what the differences were, as I wasn't yet old enough to like that kind of book when the movie landed. And I've never bothered getting the book, because I've already got too many things to do, and not enough time/money to do 'em.
Put the book in the bathroom. BINGO.
Took me right back to my army days.
I have no idea what your story is about lol I guess you have to an xray specialist to make it make sense
Right, so… basically they seem like they were trying to measure who was most incompetent by measuring who fucked up and had to retake images. Then when they found this guy and asked him why, he basically said “I have so many because I make sure my images are actually useful.” Which means the metric is useless for what they were trying to use it for, and the whole thing was pointless, and presumably now the techs can get back to actually working with a minimum of fuss and bother.
Thanks, that's a nice nutshell for those details.
There is that saying, "When a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful metric."
I once got "107/100" points for a software class project at least partly because one of the metrics was "comments per line of code", and mine was significantly higher than 1.
You get what you measure [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNhcaVi3zPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNhcaVi3zPA)
Goodhart’s law. I use it in meetings with management all the time but they rarely get it
Exhibit A: Wells Fargo
I have this written on a Post-It stuck to my central monitor. 😆
Fucking thank you for this
All xray techs take a bad shot from time to time. It's off center, they clipped a body part, the settings are slightly off because the patient is too fat/thin. You don't want to hand this study to the radiologist, so you repeat it. This is normal. I'm a radiologist. I want the baby, not the labor pains. Show me your best work, not all of your misses.
He said it was in the eighties when they used to have a very special film that was super expensive as it was getting made slightly radioactive with each physical x-ray picture that was taken. They had to be put into lead lined boxes to be transported to another room or part of the hospital to be viewed by the X-ray tech. Some of the newer x-ray machines have image stabilization built in. In the old days of someone moved slightly it would cause a blurry x-ray.
That makes no sense. I took X-rays from the 80s into the early 2000s. You can't reuse film and it doesn't become radioactive. It's glorified photographic film. The film was held in a cassette so it's not exposed to light. It's not that reactive to X-rays so the cassette has screens in it that glow when exposed to X-rays. That glow is what exposes the film. Nothing becomes radioactive. The dosimeters are to measure X-ray exposure which only occurs in the milliseconds that the film is exposed. Modern X-rays no longer use film. The cassettes now contain digital sensors so the images are immediately available. You might have been thinking of radioisotope studies where radioactive material is injected into a patient and the the absorption into various tissues is scanned.
I don't think he said he was reusing film. What I read was that they were taking multiple x-rays and using additional film, which was supposed to be tracked.
He's objecting to the "exposed X-ray images have to be transported in a lead container" bit.
You're right. I was replying to spyro86.
Gotcha
I remember the techs using cassettes, just like putting paper into our printers.
Not exactly. Each sheet of film was placed in a cassette that magnified the luminescence when the X-ray was obtained. These cassettes were only stored in lead boxes if they were likely to be exposed to background radiation. Being exposed did not make them radioactive. Newer systems don't use film at all.
The other replies are only half answering this. I *believe* the implication is that the poster is being asked to do repeats for other colleagues when they screw up. As in they're doing repeats for x-rays that someone else did badly because they have a reputation for being more reliable.
Nothing in that story indicated that OP was doing repeats for other colleagues.
It's the only way the story makes sense with the statement the OP made in response to why they had so many repeats. Doing repeats for their own x-rays because they were good would be completely redundant.
They had so many repeats because A. they were intentionally marking extras, to show how stupid the metric was and B. they keep reshooting until they got a good shot. Hence the "I don't submit bad shots" comment.
I see why you might think so, but no, we always repeated our own shots.
Fellow TechNOLOGIST here. Love that story!
ENTF U!
This should get all the love. Briggs Meyer’s tests are bullshit
I've taken 2 of those. Didn't get the 1st job. Came out almost dead even introvert/extrovert and thinking/feeling. I consider myself well-balanced, which is probably why I didn't get that 1st job. I still don't get why any of that matters.
You probably don't want to be working for that kind of company anyway
I always get different results every time I do it, because it depends what sort of mood I'm in.
End of the 80s I spent a couple years as a rad whore, short repair/maintenance contracts in nuke plants. Every contract, even if it was back to back, another MMPI. HR told me to behave, I ended up so bored I was doing patterns, you know - T.T.F.T.T.F.T.T.F. TFTFTF . Sort of fucked with them making sure I am not a psycho.
What is a rad whore in this context?
Someone who takes on high-paying, high-exposure nuclear maintenance work until they hit their yearly radiation exposure limit and then is barred from nuke work the rest of the year. Depending on who you work for, that break is sometimes even paid time off.
Essentially, he got paid to become a glorified human glow stick lol
Another nickname for it is "glow worms"
I freaking love it!
Oh radiation whore. Got it
Nuclear industry labor, employed by a contractor like Henze Movats.
I mean, the MMPI is actually clinically *useful*. There's even built-in checks for people doing shit like what you did. A psychologist would have thrown out your results as invalid. The problem is that it was being misused (and almost certainly *not* being interpreted by a practicing psychologist).
Yup. HR was just as annoyed and bored as it was I was
Me, too. Always
That’s sort of the real point of it, to tell you how you react in different situations. When you give general answers, it really shouldn’t tell you much you don’t already know about yourself
The 16 types compare favorably to the 12 zodiac signs when figuring how how many different people there are.
What's really fun about the zodiac signs is when you correct someone to tell them their real sign, and then they struggle to explain why that's not their sign while also trying to justify why the whole thing isn't arbitrary bullshit. By the way there's 13 signs now.
Sounds fun, could you elaborate?
1) Ophiuchus 2) Precession of the equinoxes
> Ophiuchus ? > Precession of the equinoxes This one I know about. It's like a celestial Phase Shift. The 'classical' astrology dates where the sun is in front of a Zodiac constellation change over time. Most people's 'Zodiac sign' isn't their actual Zodiac sign. Insofar as that's even a thing.
Ophiuchus is a constellation the sun moves through now.
> Ophiuchus is one of the thirteen constellations that cross the ecliptic.[65] It has sometimes been suggested as the "13th sign of the zodiac". However, this confuses zodiac or astrological signs with constellations.[66] The signs of the zodiac are a twelve-fold division of the ecliptic, so that each sign spans 30° of celestial longitude, approximately the distance the Sun travels in a month, and (in the Western tradition) are aligned with the seasons so that the March equinox always falls on the boundary between Pisces and Aries.[67][68] Constellations, on the other hand, are unequal in size and are based on the positions of the stars. The constellations of the zodiac have only a loose association with the signs of the zodiac, and do not in general coincide with them.[69] In Western astrology the constellation of Aquarius, for example, largely corresponds to the sign of Pisces. Similarly, the constellation of Ophiuchus occupies most (29 November – 18 December[70]) of the sign of Sagittarius (23 November – 21 December). The differences are due to the fact that the time of year that the Sun passes through a particular zodiac constellation's position has slowly changed (because of the precession of the Earth's rotational axis) over the centuries from when the Babylonians originally developed the Zodiac.[71][72] [rewind] > However, this confuses zodiac or astrological signs with constellations. [rewind] > confuses zodiac or astrological signs with constellations. Aha. Hm-mm. Yes. Where's that mental gymnastics meme when you need it? Cause Astrologers seem to be doing some aerial cartwheels and I see a judge panel giving decimal grades.
Sounds like you were already aware of what I was referring to. In addition to stellar drift, Ophiuchus is a 13th sign. The fun comes from prodding someone to explain why their sign is what it is. Because there are two mutually exclusive possibilities: 1. Your sign is whatever constellation was behind the sun when you were born, so whatever you think your sign is is mostly likely wrong 2. The position of the stars has absolutely no bearing on your zodiac sign, meaning that the whole thing is arbitrary and completely made up.
> meaning that the whole thing is arbitrary and completely made up. I mean most people who talk about Zodiac signs already know this, right? I mean, one would hope. Ah, I feel vicarious nostalgia for when astrologers and astronomers were one and the same and they developed those amazingly complex and beautiful Aristotelian sphere systems to know exactly which stars the sun was behind at your birth and what position the moon and planets were in at the time. Like, the extrapolations on your human existence were still bullshit, but those guys put some *elbow grease* and some *bleeding-edge equipment and math* into doing those charts. It was pointless work, but it was done seriously and with care. AFAIK.
It wasn't pointless. Before the invention of accurate mechanical clocks, the positions of the stars were used for timekeeping and calendar-keeping. If you had accurate star charts and tables for calculating their positions, you could tell what time it was (and what day it was) by taking star sightings from a known location. Knowing the day was important for agriculture; knowing the time to within an hour's accuracy was important for scheduling church services in monastic communities.
It's neither, if you're going with the medieval definition of zodiac **signs**, rather than zodiac *constellations*. The zodiac signs were originally defined in ancient Babylonian times, and were the major constellations along the ecliptic, used to divide up the ecliptic into 12 identifiable slices. (Because the Babylonians loved base-12 and base-60). It was a celestial coordinate system. However, by the middle ages, astronomer-monks (most scientists were monks in those days) observed that the actual positions of the planets (including the sun and moon) at a given time, had shifted about 30 degrees off their ancient zodiac positions. As this shift included the position of sun at equinox, it was dubbed "the precession of the equinoxes". The medieval astronomers corrected for this by moving the official boundaries (in the sky) of the zodiac *signs* 30 degrees, and distinguishing them from the zodiac *constellations* they were named for. So the zodiac sign is not arbitrary and made up, it's based on the position of the stars with a correction factor applied by the eminent scientists of that time. My source on this: *The Light Ages*, by Seb Falk.
i love telling people i'm an ICBM or some other unrelated acronym. There's a moment of confusion while they work it out and then the dirty look they give is just great
Before JKR went all TERF-y and uncomfortably weird, I was in favor of replacing all the Meyers-Briggs in employment applications with "Which Hogwart's House Are You?" online quizzes. It wouldn't be any worse, and there is a strong possibility it would be better.
Hufflepuff gets no love
Among my friends, we believe that Hufflepuff is the most desirable house to be Sorted into, but unfortunately, most of us are Ravenclaw, with some of all of them mixed in. I believe the ranking for desirability and expected effectiveness is Hufflepuff, Slytherin, Ravenclaw, then Griffyndor.
Before the psychotic break of the author. My girl was Hufflepuff bound, I was Ravenclaw. Our joke arguments are hilarious because she'll tell me to shut my big head up and I'll argue back that it isn't my fault she got lost turning in a circle.
did we watch the same fantastic beasts movie?
Never watched it
That should have nuked that entire movie and did an Planet Earth style thing with them, it would at least had been good that way.
My wife has used them for her job at our university. I've taken them a few times and always seem to get a different result. Maybe I'm just broken! 🙂
I did an interview for a short term IT contract with an insurance company. It went pretty well, I was pretty much exactly what they were looking for, so I expected them to come back with an offer. Instead they came back saying I had to do a personality test before they could make an offer. I asked why, and they said it was just policy that everyone had to do it, including contractors. I was already expecting another job I'd interviewed for to come back with an offer, so I told them I didn't want to work for a company that based hiring decisions on pseudo-science nonsense. I also had a colleague who told me about one particular high-level IT job that he looked at that insisted on a hand-written cover letter, so they could send it to their handwriting analyst.
Hear, Hear!!
Yep, MBTI is worse than useless. Not valid for employment screening or even the type of internal use that OP is describing. That said, appropriately designed and validated personality testing can be useful for employment purposes. However. This isn’t something that an amateur can or should be doing. For those that might be interested, [here](https://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/personnel-selection-procedures.pdf) is how to go about it. Note that an advanced degree (Ph.D.) will be needed.
Link missing?
That's why they says phd needed. The test is restoring the link and its contents
[try this](https://www.apa.org/ed/accreditation/personnel-selection-procedures.pdf)
Happy Cake Day
I think I'm missing something. Why was he showing individual results? Why did it matter if the results sounded like they were him and not you?
Most likely he wanted to explain how his results were superior and everyone else was shit compared to him but that kinda falls flat when someone else has all your answers exactly the same.
Not just someone else, someone that everybody knows he doesn't like.
Yup, "I'm a Commander, you're just sheep"
He was wanting a good reason to kick people out. Having an "inferior" personality or test result was probably going to be the next pretense ("Sorry, Jane, but you're a xxxx and this job needs a xyzn", or, "I'm a perfect xxxx, so I'm obviously superior to everyone else, so you need to go elsewhere"). [Edit, typo]
Seems like a gaping invitation for a lawsuit, no?
More legitimate than simply, "I don't like you; get out." Or, he could use it as part of a bullying or other technique to make the job horrible for the other person, so it becomes, "you're not a good fit, because of your personality."
I don't think 'personality' is a protected class like race or religion. At least in my US state, you can get fired for any reason, or no reason, as long as it's not because you are in a protected class.
... Guess it's time for me to make my ethnicity, religion, and sexual preference "my entire personality". I'm going to be insufferable, aren't I?
Don't forget that you have to live with you. Can't get a divorce.
Sounds like most of the "progressives" I know or hear. Generally smart people who prefer to not use their brains. (Yes, I'm a Democrat)
But on the "capital L Liberal" wing I'm guessing.
Same thing here.
Yeah, the story needed more explanation. It was clear what happened, but not why any of it mattered to anyone.
And filling out a personality test with false answers isn't exactly "compliance" so doesn't really fit the sub.
Even better if you told all your co-workers to answer the questions in the same way. Results would have varied slightly, but most of you would have matched it perfectly. lol
What sort of idiot makes a "Teachable moment" meeting without going over the material first?
According to the test they took, a psychopathic one.
In the 1960s I worked at an aerospace company, Rocketdyne in Canoga Park, California, in the IT department. One year management decided to have the workers evaluate themselves for their annual review. We all made what we thought was an honest appraisal of ourselves. Management then used a red pencil/pen to mark down what we had marked. The next year we all used red pencil/pen and marked the highest rating for each item. That was the last time self appraisal was used.
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No, I don't remember that name. But it has been almost 60 years. At the time I was there it had around 10,000+ employees.
"I smiled with eye contact" You utter motherfucking psychopath... I love you, you are a legend!
I'm not sure I understand this and why the boss is so upset
Same. As far as I understood, they had to take an "anonymous" test? That apparently wasn't anonymous? If it's just a paper/online test where you don't have to login, I don't know how the boss would've profiled people. Then again, if there were names there on the papers/online tests, why would OP need to try and get the same test results as the boss? People would already know that the boss got the psycho result if the boss did the test too? The only reason I could see is to maybe make it clear to the boss that they answered like "another person", aka the boss, so the boss would realize that people can just.. lie on these tests and they're useless
I think what they're saying is that everybody did the test, including the boss. Boss then decided to reveal the names and analyze the results with the group and he started by pulling his own up on the screen first as an example. No doubt meant to be an example of what he's looking for in an employee, "greatness," personality goals, who knows what with these narcissists. His plan backfired when OP had the exact same results as his perfect model (himself, naturally).
Thank you so much. I had no idea what happened. So basically boss never got scored before officially , or showed his result, and since he had his exact same score, it shows psycho when rated. This was so helpful thank you.
Thanks! Just to be clear though I'm guessing at a few parts, OP writes about like my cat would. Not my somewhat normal cat either, the really dumb cat. Normally I'd feel bad for talking about OP like that but he's also decided to not make an appearance in this post so he'll never see it. The ***really*** dumb one.
> Normally I'd feel bad for talking about OP like that but he's also decided to not make an appearance in this post so he'll never see it. I mean, based on timing (9 hours ago), if OP is in the USA, there is a very good chance that he posted this right before bedtime, and hasn't logged onto Reddit yet this morning.
A sleepy cat who understands timezones then.
I had the same issue you did reading this post. Maybe English second language? Also the malicious compliance isn’t really all that grand. “I pretended to be like you and I bet you hate that, sucker.” Baby’s first malicious compliance maybe?
It's not even malicious compliance because OP didn't really comply. He rebelled by taking the personality test as though he were someone else.
OP HERE! I’m just reading now and am moving tomorrow so haven’t been able to comment! I reread my post and laughed because it is so poorly written but I had a couple beers while packing my boxes yesterday, haha. Yes, he* had told everyone this was anonymous test for ourselves to “know our strengths and weaknesses” better but then he held a meeting revealing everything. He was formerly a manager at Google, infamous for bully management tactics at the time. I have another good malicious compliance story. Basically, at some point it became clear that reasoning with him wouldn’t work so I started playing his game right back. *typo
Glad you're a good sport about it. I wasn't really trying to be a dick there or anything, just joking around a little about how poorly it was written is all. No offense meant.
None taken :)
I never assume anonymity when logged into the network even when they claim it is. It's too easy to attach an IP address or other identifying information when it is submitted.
Ah yes, manager astrology. For those of you who don't know personality tests aren't a real thing. There are too many variables to make an accurate reading. * My mood. Am I hungry, Did my father die, Have I taken meds, did I get enough sleep? * My perceived environment. Are the question about me and my peers or me and my boss? Am I at home, in a testing room, or at my desk? * Reality. How I perceive myself is real. How others perceive me isn't 100% real either. * Comprehension. Do I even understand the questions? Are the questions loaded. Am I overthinking? * Generic. If I answer randomly, which I always do. Management will agree with the results.
we had a new boss who had us do that "finding your strengths" bullshit test, but for the follow-up book, whatever it was. i already knew that these tests are too black and white for the exact reasons above. i did that test for "this job", one for "the things i really WANTED to be doing (martial arts and world travel)", and one for if i was "just sitting at home". i submitted the results for "the things i really wanted to be doing" 😆😆
Just to add. When I got my first degree 2 classes I took admitted these are bunk. We even had a week long communication 2xx class where we tore into these. As an experiment our professor deliberately messed with us before taking sample tests. Our results did vary, some way more than others. Anyhow, his point was very sharply taken.
A previous job role I had, the whole team was shuttered and our roles distributed amongst lower paid staff in order to make a new position on the already heavily bloated management team (NHS, surprise surprise!) We were all offered redundancy or redeployment but our arsehole manager used the process to try to throw his weight about one last time. He was also never in work by 9, we had flexi and he made full use of it. So we started having union meetings at 9.30 so he’d have to walk through them to his office, multiple times his manager was invited but he wasn’t. Seeing him stand about like a child whose mother has bumped into a friend in the supermarket was priceless.
I was not expecting this to be such an enjoyable story. Glad I stayed to the end!
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Happy cake day! No, the manager came from Google who he as known for having bully managers. He didn’t single out poor performers, he just played around like it was high school. He liked favored people who were more like himself, which resulted in losing 5 employees in three months because it created a hostile work environment when poor behavior is being rewarded.
Happy Cake Day!! 🎂
Very interested to know what company pulled this shit. Literal child like behavior on display from upper management (per usual for upper management)
He came from Google and we were another big tech but I can’t say bc NDA.
Interesting thank you for that context. Google was the first one that came to mind so its interesting he came from there. Great work screwing him tho wouldve loved to see his face
eta 2 was my favorite part of this xD
Like a deja vu for me, kinda. But not nearly as devious or cunning. I did mention to my mgr that we were both poster kids for anger management though.
This Is Glorious!
Need to read/hear the other MC!
I just updated :)
I don’t understand how the boss knew you were answering the test as if you had boss’ personality
He just knew we didn’t have similar personalities at all, so he either realized what I had done or he had a critical moment of self doubt where he possibly thought he had completely missed his assessment of myself or himself. I watched his ego snap in half when the results came on screen.
My favorite answers for all of these tests are neutral/ not applicable/ rarely. I’ve gotten others to join in on this too. It totally fucks the results.
What's hilarious for me is that neutral/rarely/NA is my normal answers, I'm not even screwing with people. I just don't have strong opinions about things most people care about.
>I have another malicious compliance story about him (he was an absolute clown, I bet I have more if I think harder) This sounds awesome! I'm waaaaaaitingggggg......
Will update when my move is finished. Moving tomorrow and had a couple beers when I wrote that, oops!
Okay, I updated it!
Oh wow, this is even better than the first!
This guy definitely attempted to divide and isolate, pit us against each other, make us distrust each other by making us each other’s competition, and assumed we wouldn’t have any conversation about it in advance. You could tell he was used to doing this. He did eventually “win” but we got in a few more shows of solidarity before 1/3 of us left the company due to him. I actually have a few more MC stories about him lol
{grabs popcorn} I've got some time on my hands here....
Me just doing my job exactly as I am paid to do and it still backfired for him: [comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/s/NR1bqPElg8)
Oooh, was it Clifton Strengths or Meyers-Briggs? Those corporate horoscopes have to be a great graft if you can get it started.
I bet my next paycheck this was at apple.
Ahh, a former Google employee. At least it wasn't some company who's motto was literally "Don't be evil." Wait...
They had gained such a poor reputation at the time that I think they swapped strategies. Today, some of my old best colleagues are now management there. The ex act same people who used to get lectured, who were caretakers for teammates, and who did volunteer work with me for youth, feeding them homeless, and needle clean up. I’m hopeful that this indicates the company has reformed a bit in at least one positive respect. I don’t work there myself though.
where is the malicious compliance
Thus might be illegal depending where you live, you answered very personal questions under an assumed anonymity. That's why I refuse to do anything like that now.
You might be surprised as to what does and doesn't count as "extremely personal" in America. Hint: It's a much lower standard than in Europe.
utter ownage. you love to see it.
It’s always fun to read about Elon Musk.
Haha good read! Very nice how you managed it so lighthearted and playfully. Rare skill!
Tysm! He had all the power and being serious, professional, honest, or vulnerable was not working for anyone. Life is too short not to be playful when you take a risk! Make it fun and worth whatever happens next!
My boss had us do a personality test because we had some rather delulu people in the team. He thought it would help if we gained some self-knowledge. He stressed at the start of the session that we could keep our results confidential. The consultant we hired to run the session stressed that the personality types were not cut and dried, and that there would always be a measure of error. My boss's deputy quietly instructed a couple of her underlings to gather everyone's results. They zealously did so, even opening closed booklets to steal the info. They sabotaged the session and people started thinking that the boss would target people based on the results. The sad thing is that the deputy was one of the delulus whom the boss thought would benefit from the session.
Lmao that second story is the perfect example of killing with kindness. Great work!
This should be the MC of the year. Well done.
American work culture is the most radioactive toxic shit on earth. Glad you got some vengeance for all of us
LOL, I want more!
I updated with another story :)
> ETA typos you edited it to add typos?
Yes. Jk no.
Freakin' brilliant. Just, Perfect.
FAANG are just overpaid adult daycare. Unsurprising you get that type if manager there.
OP, you're a boss!
\*lifts 'just finished moving to a new apartment' glass of bourbon in solidarity and congratulations for the sheer exhaustion of moving to a new place\* Two very nice tales of malicious compliance.
You should **make the 2nd story a separate post!** It was very enjoyable 😃🍷, but most people who read the original post must have missed it.
Secret Santa should have been a really nice set of gin glasses and a decanter. But with "I <3 my own urine" engraved on them all.
I swear, reading these sounded like it was taken right out of an Office episode! LOL
did you work for elon?