I'm curious what the most outrageous thing is to happen to you or that you experienced at 3M?
43 replies (most recent on top)
There was a time in 3M Knoxville where someone got caught having relations in the coat room by the entrance. Ended up being renamed the throat room
With that added degree of separation from actual products (other than lawsuit stuff), legal must be a very weird place to work. All politics and favoritism aside from word salads.
@299 You are right. 3M Legal is a mess. It also seems to me success in Legal depends on whether senior management likes you enough to make you part of their group of favorites.
referring to the current chief of staff of top attorney. Legal has more drama than u know… rife with conflicts of interest and favoritism.
Top attorneys chief of staff was probably fired and staff ended up reporting to top attorney.
Our top attorney’s chief of staff drunk at wonewok at 2am crying with her mean girl pals…
Knew a gal who was over-employed/job stacking. Just quit since 3M did RTO. She was making nearly $400k at the time of her departure. Saw the bank statements to prove it.
Stories from our British CEOs tenure time to mind. His taste for exotic .....Asian women is well known amongst ceratin people.
Used to fly to Japan frequently on some pretext or the other using corporate jet !
Look up 3Ms patent on preparing adrenochrome.
@196
They applied for that patent in 2015?
If only there was a vaccine for PFAS
@16x
https://patents.google.com/patent/US10130701B2/en
Patenting a "disease" is all the Science a 3mer needs to know!
@102 can we stop pretending we understand science if we're just going to repost scientifically inaccurate gibberish from whatever the modern day equivalent of Geocities is?
I'm tired of working alongside illiterates and the obtuse.
Please just shuffle off into whatever cave you intend to die in.
Surprised nobody mentioned Tireman hiring his son's consulting firm and throwing a temper tantrum over being asked about it in a town hall, plus Mikey justifying it saying there was a "firewall". What a clown show.
@114 who’s the SVP you are referring to? Seems they all do the same thing and it’s so gross and irritating, like they are better than everyone else.
@w1 I agree with everything you wrote. Our SVP has her “clique” and the members of this clique are treated well and left alone to do their jobs. The clique includes 3Mers who are from MN or nearby and have been at 3M almost all of their career. If you are new to 3M, not from the area, effective, successful and/or well liked by others outside the clique you will be micromanaged, belittled, abused and more.
https://vladtepesblog.com/2026/02/02/canada-shows-its-hand-by-hiding-its-hand-on-covid-mrna-injections-links-1-for-february-2-2026/
@vx
There's no army of lawyers; they contract that out too. Using the media might work, but you see how that did with PFAS and the forced covid jab. People shrug and switch the channel or scroll down or whatever they do to get their "news". The only time the "System" at 3M seems to work is when someone s##ually harasses someone or gets caught stalking someone.
@vx
You make a good point. Not just employees but senior management is also abused. The reasons may be you are not in your upper management clique, or people don’t like new things or change or feel threatened with that individual’s success. Many things that is not as common in other companies but just in this 3M.
@q6 I, too, have been through much abuse and discrimination while at 3M. I have also seen others mistreated by management, including senior management and have engaged a lawyer.
We all must remember there is strength in numbers. I agree 3M has the upper hand with its army of lawyers. But, I feel it is hard for anyone to ignore the toxic situation at 3M if a large number of people make their voices heard through the court system.
@g3
who sits in the ERC? Respectfully, do you think CTO doesn’t get to influence R&D VP appointment. And CTO is under total influence of SVP R&D. Both don’t understand technology or not pros in all markets . I rest my case.
Why you fools stick around is beyond me........
Suggestion - sueing when RIF'd is not likely to resolve in reasonable time. There is a current case that will be ongoing for 2 years before even going to trial. So hopefully you can negotiate a better-than-standard severance if that point comes. But sueing is likely to be a long process that one is not likely to win (maybe a settlement at best).
I would love to post some of the completely insane things I have had done to me and have seen done to others over the last 20 years. There are some absolutely unbelievable stories that only people who have been through it could even believe they are real or factual.
The reality is listing my experiences here would only give legal and HR a heads up on how to proceed. This site would also delete my comments (as it often does) as apparently it is being run by the same soulless bullies that run the Ethics Line.
To be clear there is not a single individual in HR, Consultants, Executive Leadership, or the Board that gives one flying flip about anyone or anything other than themselves.
So I will continue to document everything I can (at the advice of my lawyer) so when I am RIF'd out I will have options available.
@kb Austin has now become Smurfyville South. Somehow we are supposed to come back to collaborate but the smurf feels the need to build up an area that had held no resources and overall does not provide any strategic edge for the talent pipeline.
@j9 it's amazing how Austin went from being Maplewood South to being gutted and perhaps a few hundreds left in a rented building. The building design resembled a mid-20th century mental hospital and not a glass palace that it should have been.
It peaked with over 2000 employees until Brad showed up and started laying off in droves to get into good graces with Mcnerney. Big Mac hated the idea of a 2nd HQ since he was all into control. Austin was the vision of Lewis Lehr after he and the Minnesota guv had a falling out in the 1980s.
If the walls of Wonewok could talk, there would be a LOT of nervous 3M and customer execs out there. There's a reason that by the end they had to install some very robust security controls in the lodge bar area to keep the guests from breaking in after hours to steal the booze.
HR in the '90s and early '00s was deplorable. The hard working & dedicated employees there were overshadowed by the bad apples who fostered a toxic culture of deceit and mistrust. I'll never forget an HR director in Austin who would have his lunch in a prime, high traffic area in the cafe--making sure no one sat across from him & blocked his view--so he could lear at and rate the females as they walked by. Or an underling of his who tried to intimidate members of the video production team to give him privileged details on the Imation spin. To their credit they didn't budge, but all were eliminated in future rounds of JEP.
Ridiculous that we pretend to be a science-based company and yet we have all these science-deniers pretending like their own terrible lifestyle isn't the reason they're unhealthy.
@g1
I'm sorry your husband got injured from the jab. That was an awful brutal time... I refused and told my manager to fire me if he needed to. I know a few people that were injured from that time... disgusting what they did.
Maybe you and others don't understand how this stuff works.....The SVP actually DOES NOT ALWAYS get to select the VPs reporting to them. The selection of candidates is done by the Executive Resource Committee. Sometimes the SVP has a say in the final choice, but not always. Sometimes they are just told who is filling the position. In a recent case, I was told directly "...XYZ is not who I would have picked...."
So cronyism isn't always at play here (at least by the respective manager at whatever level)
that was more than a few years ago....more like 15-20. But yes, this was a well-known thing. But I don't believe the female director was married. The SVP and she had a long term relationship, I believe, continuing after the SVP retired. Aside from the potential cronyism, it was kind-of nice.
@e8
Funny your comment gets down votes while people are complaining about bullying. That was the ultimate bullying when people were forced to get that awful shot. My husband's reaction was so severe that his heart was permanently damaged. Fortunately for us he was close to retiring. Still, he can't enjoy life like he did.
A few years ago, a married female director had an affair with the Healthcare SVP (Vandy), who happens to go on a fishing trip with his friend, the Industrial SVP. A week later the industrial SVP gives this woman a big promotion hiring her as R&D VP to one of the divisions in his business. That must have been an awesome fishing trip.
@ek The person mentioned is a senior director reporting to the R&D VP of PSD and located in Indianapolis. You should be able to find him in Workday. He was technical manager when he signed the infamous memo that started the lawsuits.
@ew So very true! I submitted an Ethics and Compliance complaint against my manager. I was naive and thought I would get results. Instead, nothing was done and I am now paying the price for speaking out. My manager is well connected and I am not.
Too many horror stories about using the Ethics hotline to complain about an abusive boss only to have the "anonymous" employee somehow being OUTed and tormented to shut up or even leave the company.
The Stasi was gentler on East Germans than 3M HR and legal has been on employees who file complaints. Surprised no one brought this up during BBs most recent townhall.
Punishing managers who actually did their job and setting up people to create chaos. While surrounding themselves with their cronies, promoting them as long as they support that leader- not do anything that is ground breaking but rewarded managers who just maintained stuff without innovation.
The CTO bringing up his friend, the friend in turn bringing up his friends …. There is no healthy discussions in management probably just ‘ yes ‘ ‘ amen’
@e1 This is shocking! Initials please.
It's been widely reported Combat Arms (and later 3M) knew about the defect and kept selling anyway. $ > Ethics and Compliance
@dp Oh so you mean, when something is reported it isn't actioned... shocking. (sarcasm if you couldn't tell!)
learn the definition difference between nepotism and cronyism.
Might be his friend, but was a good choice.
The current CTO promoted his best friend to a cushy SVP position reporting directly to him.