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Some of my favourites, might’ve been mentioned here:
Wisdom has been chasing you, but you’ve always been faster.
You have a unique way of contributing to the discussion without adding anything.
From a Professor of analytical chemistry I had for 3 years to someone who failed the class and had to do an extra exam and failed it as well
“Mit dem was du nicht weißt, können drei andere durchfallen”
Which roughly translates to
“With what you don’t know, three others can fail as well”
Context: I was Head of Department and one of the young officers aboard ship was not quite the brightest and unfortunately did not quite realize this. The young gentleman was attempting to supervise a working party of sailors under the eye of my Chief of Department and was making a royal mess of things. Before I could step in, the Chief took him aside and whispered a few things to him. The young gentleman left soon after.
I asked the chief what he said and the response was, “The young Sir makes excellent coffee. I told him that he should go enjoy a mug in the wardroom.”
Ever since then, when describing young officers that do not quite measure up, it’s always been “they make excellent coffee”.
Backhanded compliments like that can be fun.
I worked for a community college for a few years, and we had pretty high turnover in our department, and they had a rather strict ‘no rehire’ policy for people having worked there (so new people could come in and learn too), and it was always funny overhearing my manager explain that for everyone, but the positives he gave after were night and day. For good techs he’d tout their actual abilities, but for the trogs, they’d get something like good attendance or always on time. The sorts of answers that are technically true and a positive quality, but the person on the other end hears ‘this dude sucks and this is the best I can say about him’.
I remember a friend of mine told me that the goto backhanded compliment gay men have for women is “she’s really pretty,” as in, “I can’t think of other redeeming qualities she has” lol
Chris Hadfield, astronaut, says in his book that in space everyone is either a +1, a 0 or a -1.
Everyone should strive to be a +1, but mostly being a 0 is fine. Being a -1 is pretty terrible, a whole other person is needed just to get back to a stable state. Which is basically what the message above is getting at.
Isnt this basically every employee rating scale for their yearly evals?
Most ive seen are usually something like “below/meets/exceeds expectations” and 85% of the company gets meets. Theyre the 0 and a lot of meets are very good employees. Then you have those who basically do 2 peoples jobs in half the time. They Just get it, and the get shit done even if it wasn’t their job. Then there’s those -1 who need so much help they bring down those around them or take so much attention others cant complete their work
Yeah, but employee rating scales are often tied to a lot of other office politicking that makes them largely irrelevant to actual performance, in my experience.
My favourite is Fritz Zwicky’s “spherical bastard” - someone who’s a bastard whichever way you look at them
Some guys aren’t good at the work but are great moral support on the job. Some suck at the work and they don’t improve the vibe, they gotta go.
Morale guys are huge. I remember watching the Mets a season or two ago, they had Jesse Winker, okay but replaceable on the field, but absolutely a morale boost.
Back when I was in the Marines, we had guys who were just funny. Mediocre Marines, didn’t really pull their weight, but they got away with it because they could lighten the mood when we were all about ready to snap. To me, that’s important. That being said, they were also competent enough to not get themselves or others killed, which is probably the only thing more important than being funny. If you are incompetent you get to stay home.
Yup, gotta be good enough that they won’t turn the breaker on while you’re splicing the lights.
You can be a dick or you can suck, but you can’t do both.
I agree as far as workers are concerned. Bosses are almost always both.
In game dev I’m convinced every team needs a hype person. Doesn’t matter if they suck at actual game dev but it’s invaluable having a positive emotional influence on everyone
I’m in engineeeing and i had a guy who made rounds every morning. Stopped by everyones desk to talk. Got to know everyone on a personal level. He really broke down walls and made awkward engineers comfortable to talk, which only promoted better team work. Hes taken a new job still in the company and i know people still connect with him and use him as a resource.
He was a damn good engineer too, but i miss that about him the most.
I used to work with a guy that’d make everyone laugh, and estimate tasks like he’d never get shit done.
He wasn’t the fastest developer, but his quality was alright. I’m pretty confident everyone else however got more shit done, simply because it was a lot nicer and calmer to work those projects.
Any large project needs the moral boosters, for smaller projects it’s a little more complicated
It’s such a help. I especially appreciate when people have whimsy. There’s very little of it on job sites.
Some suck at the work and they don’t improve the vibe, they gotta go.
Basically all my past managers.
Wenn du mit anpackst ist wie wenn zwei loslassen
“When you lend a hand, it’s like two people letting go.”
Google translate
It’s referring to lifting something with multiple people
Jaja Wurst!
Veled is csak kevesebben vagyunk
Mein leiben!
And yet they keep Terry around anyway.
～(つˆ0ˆ)つ｡☆
I think every good job site has at least one “mascot” employee they only keep around for comic relief.
This is one that you might hear early in a career, get good out of spite, and drop on an incompetent newbie of your own shortly before retiring. An insult handed down through generations of reformed shitty tradespeople.
Oh damn. I might integrate this into my lexicon.
