Bribery schmibery. Make them pay for their stupidity
Brought to you by this week's dumb required corporate training.
Brought to you by this week's dumb required corporate training.
When I worked IT, our honeywell rep used to swing by at random and bring the entire building doughnuts. And I'm not talking gas station doughnuts, I'm talking doughnuts from the best bakery in the state (which happened to be local). Perhaps, not surprisingly we used a lot of honeywell stuff. It isn't hard to bribe IT guys.
Honestly, their comercial ones are getting that way too. Like who the hell needs a touchscreen on an industrial thermal printer; thats just one more thing to easily break in an industrial environment. And god forbid you want a replacement touch screen because a new one is half the cost of a new printer.
it's because implementing an existing touch screen module and then telling a bunch of code monkeys in a 3rd world country to write a barely functional UI for it is actively cheaper than engineering, sourcing, assembling and testing keypads with physical buttons or even a membrane keyboard these days
using a touch screen also means they can put the same mass produced PCB into 40 different products instead of needing a custom button pattern for each. just tell the code monkeys to update the UI. there's a lot of economic arguments for the use of touch screens, but it sure doesn't make the field worker's lives any easier.
And there is a lot of fake stuff when looking for their products as well.
Took me multiple tries to get some genuine? ptm7950, or at least one that actually works.
Took way too long for me to remember that they did more than make thermostats when reading your comment.
Like, I know they do, but I pass my Honeywell thermostat multiple times daily so my brain immediately got confused as to why an IT team needed to regularly buy thermostats to the point a salesman was involved.
Colleague messages me: I need your help with something, are you available?
Me: What is it? I'll fit it in somewhere
Colleague: I've got choclate cookies
Me: I'll be right over
An anti-virus company's rep comes by every couple of months, always bringing stuff that we distribute randomly.
I have a water bottle, bag, notebook (paper, not computer kind), and backpack already :)
My HP rep would buy me lunch every now and then and me and him would always talk about how bad their printers are.
It's pretty annoying that I have to go through training every year at work telling me I'm not allowed to bribe politicians considering that
A. That's pretty fucking common sense
B. I have no interest in bribing anyone
C. I never encounter politicians or anyone at work except for my immediate team
I get the same training even as a low level grunt.
I kinda get it though, easier to just say 'everyone take this' than try and determine who does and doesn't work with people outside the company (and in some contacts I've had with my same job title, I did send and receive messages to other companies via bug reports)
When I worked for the federal government, we had to take yearly training on how not to accept bribes/gifts.
Like...if anyone was serious about bribing my agency to get their way...and they decided that I, of all people, was the one to bribe...well they deserve to lose the value of the bribe just based on utter stupidity alone.
That kind of thing lets naive people continue with the belief that antisocial behavior comes from a lack of empathy/understanding.
Man, I've seen so many people fired for taking bribes and kickbacks from vendors. Not even large amounts, just more than the limit and then not disclosing it to the ethics and compliance board. Such a stupid way to sabotage your own career.
bribe
limits
Uhh.... whut
E: sorry Steve but we pride ourselves on only taking a little bit of bribery, and your level this year was 'moderate'. We can't have people going around here like that, we have to stay on the down-low.
Kind of, yeah. Like a vendor can buy you lunch as long as the total amount per annum is less than a certain amount and if it goes over that you just have to disclose it so E&C can make sure that this doesn't impact decision-making. There is an allowance for a certain level of glad-handing so I don't get fired because Cisco came by and gave me a branded t-shirt.
We even had limits like this when I was a postman.
If someone gave me a card at Xmas with some lottery scratch tickets or a gift card it was fine as long as the value was under $50. A coworker got in trouble at my facility about it because a nice old guy on his run gave him a thrashed and neglected early 90s dirtbike missing a bunch of parts because he wanted it gone and couldnt be bothered selling it and they had talked bikes before. The guy told his son he gave it to the postman and the son got it in his head that the postman must have pressured him into it but because he didnt declare it the postman got into a bunch of shit. The process exists to protect everyone involved.
I think of it like:
The limit is relatively low so that you don't have to flood HR with reports because a supplier gave you a branded pen or a contractor paid for a burger while you were out fixing stuff.
They're probably referring to minor gifts random people might offer you out of gratitude sometime, say if you do customer service and went out of your way for them. A bottle of normal priced wine, some chocolates perhaps, a gift card for a lunch at xyz. Some giveaway merch they have tons of.
A bottle of normal priced wine, some chocolates perhaps, a gift card for a lunch at xyz.
These are all pretty sus and might be things I'd report.
These policy limits are intended to allow things like swag at a convention or if you're in a meeting and they have lunch catered.
Even then, it'd need to be a token wedding gift or something similarly eventful. A birthday isn't enough. For those things, even within the limits, I'd want pretty justifiable context. At least if you're working for/in US government.
A $15 box of chocolates from my new contractor who just won the bid just isn't worth dealing with as an issue.
I know that for FDA or BSI we can't offer anything at all. We can't even let them use our building water to drink, they must bring there own water.
One time we worked with the FDA to help expose some new auditors to a real audit(we were not really being audited but told to treat it like a real audit). One of the new auditors didn't bring anything to drink, assuming there would be water provided. Nope, the senior auditor made them sit there all morning being thirsty and when we broke for lunch the new auditor went across the street to CVS and bought a bottle of water. I felt kind of bad for them. But every other day they arrived with a big bottle of water :-D
I work in government and we're not allowed to accept gifts over $50, but I really prefer no one give me anything. Any time someone has, it's been a thank you for work that's already done, but I don't want there to ever be any question about it. Plus, when you're a younger woman (so not so much these days, but early career), people question if the gifter was angling for something else, which is awkward.
loudly proclaiming "I'm lesbian, Brian. Penises are icky. Get your head out of the gutter, ugh."
Make them awkward once, and they won't make you awkward ever again.
Even that wouldn't always work. This woman found out I was working on my birthday (I always do, but I guess that's s big deal to some), so she came back with cake, a bottle of prosecco, and flowers. My mom was like, "Was she trying to date you??" That woman was one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen in real life, I fucking WISH she was trying to date me. I am not that lucky. It's only the men my dad's age that are trying to hook up.
Sadly, no. She was just a really nice person. It's ok though, it's probably better to not date people that make you feel like a bridge troll in comparison.
Sadly, no
And you know because you asked her?
How long ago was this again? Sorry I’m old and too lazy to go back and read your earlier comment.