There was serious inquiry about finger printing and polygraphing people over the Shermdool prank in Hudson. Remember, they can terminate whoever they want, but theyll never get the Shermdool Schemer
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That story just sounds like some dork decided to bully three coworkers who were already dealing with difficult circumstances and incompetent leadership didn't know how to react.
Only visiting this page because I heard from a former colleague that you're going through layoffs. Glad I don't work for a company with such a lame culture, hope those of you who were let go know there are better companies out there that don't treat their employees this way.
Laying off minorities and marginalized people? Can you please show us some data to support your that?
Why were only minorities and marginalized people laid off this round?
Keep guessing, you'll get the right person eventually!
Shut up, Scott. You're only one that cares or that ever cared. We all know at least half of this is lies. And NO ONE believes Brent would ever say " im mad butt hurt". Go grab your Jergens and keep reminiscing.
A prank was pulled on 3 individuals at the Hudson NH site. Note cards were left at all of our desks, telling them they had been assigned a morale project and had "joined the mythical land of shermdool". Morale had been low, and everyone had such little faith in management. They took the note cards at face value (and made lots of jokes about it while working on it).
They spent about an hour creating details for this village. One person was the historian, one the census taker, and one the mayor. After about an hour of creating this village, the engineering manager came over to see what was going on. The parties explained to the engineering manager that they had received the notecards that were left on their desk, and were diligently working on creating "Shermdool", just like he had asked them to do.
The engineering manager had no idea what was going on and he got MAD. After a brief discussion, it was determined that the engineering manager took this as a direct dig at management, and he was royally pi---d that 3 of his engineers could possibly think that he would leave 3 silly notecard on their desks. I cannot stress enough that the 3 people that were pranked (and the rest of the site after the 3 people told everyone what happened) all genuinely believed that management would try something like that to improve morale. The individuals involved had been boisterous in their displeasure with company morale, and figured that management would either do something stupid like shermdool, or give the site a pizza party xD
VERY swiftly (over the course of about a week, maybe 2 weeks), the walls came down about shermdool being a prank. It spiraled into HR interviews, and interviews with VP. HR rep told me personally that VP had asked in a "very serious manner" if we had a budget to bring in forensic analysts, polygraphs, and finger print testing. HR swiftly shot that idea down, but the fact that VP wanted to get criminal investigators involved because "im mad butt hurt" really shows the level of incompetence. And you wonder why engineers believed the note cards!
VP decided to interview all parties separately. After getting whatever story he could from the 3 individuals, he would promptly and aggressively tell all parties that he thought it was 100% made up by the victims of the prank to make management look bad, and said that he "seriously considered terminating the 3 of them" for being involved. As far as I know, 2 of them laughed in his face, and one told him he had "no ground to do so", and he could "f--- himself".
Naturally, news of this prank spread like wildfire. Everyone was made aware, because frankly, IT WAS A GOOD PRANK! When word started spreading that management was taking it seriously, everyone kept the rumor going. All in all by my estimates, a simple prank that wasted 3 engineers a combined 3 hours turned into 3 HR interview, at least 3 VP interviews, a joke that everyone at Hudson and their families knows about, and the general understanding that if you mention "Shermdool" in the wrong audience, you will be fired on the spot, because management decided that it was an attack against their authority. I no longer work at OnHD, but to my understanding its still a huge joke there, and I've now spread the joke to my next job.
Total time wasted: at least 40 engineering hours, 20 HR hours, and 20 VP hours. Id say rough napkin math, this prank cost OnHD roughly $10k in lost salary, and it cost the VP ALL of his credibility.
Please do tell us all about this Shermdool prank. Sounds interesting.