What are some of the dumber things that you’ve seen at work?
Just looking for some good stories by the seasoned vets here.
You mean something other than “my boss”, right?
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Okay, there are lots of different levels here.
If you want some good stories about some dumbass moves from people, … well, I’ve got my real name (and/or face) attached to this, so…
…here’s something stupid I did!
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It’s always fun when you send an unprofessional IM to a work colleague and they happen to be sharing their screen during a C-suite presentation.
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I’ve posted dumb auditor stories before.
Another dumb one that sticks out was my boss explaining that we didn’t want to fill an opening for a part-time intern with anyone from any of the local colleges/universities because we wanted people who went to good colleges.
Uh… this is a part-time internship. We pretty much have to stay local. Also, why did you take this job if you can’t work with people who went to the local colleges?
Also, I pulled out Boss’s resume after this conversation and Boss’s degree was from a perfectly average school that was not any more prestigious than the schools we were discussing.
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UGHHHH been there, done that 
well, then, he knows the quality of those students! Giving 'em the old Groucho Marx treatment.
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True. Boss also commented that we didn’t want anyone with an Actuarial Science degree because it’s a worthless degree. Boss knows because Boss has one.
Also, Boss really wanted someone from either Waterloo or Georgia State. For an in-person part-time internship located nowhere close to either school. So geographically that makes no sense.
And… Boss wants someone from Waterloo / Georgia State because they have good AS programs. But Boss specifically doesn’t want an AS major. So Boss wants someone who went to a good AS school but didn’t participate in the AS program.
That’s about as logical as hiring a math major from Juilliard to sing at your wedding because Juilliard has a good music program.
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New CEO doesn’t like that the company is unprofitable this year and ordered every employee in a 50-mile radius into the office 3x/week, even if hired remotely.
Thankfully that’s via a friend at their company. They are senior management and completely out of the loop on the reasoning but think the company is trying to force employees to quit without firing them. They are now seeking a different company.
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Julliard has a math program?
Actually they probably don’t, but the point is that it’s the dumz to advocate for hiring a non-AS major from a top AS school.
This sounds like one of those if I struggled then everyone struggles power moves 
“Relocating” an employee used to be a popular way to get rid of someone
Seems it still may be, but en masse so they don’t have to deal with remote employees.
Doing so is sometimes not without consequence.
One of my underwriting colleagues was asked by our mutual boss to complete a rush task (in minutes, not days), he did, and he wrote an email with the results. The boss forwarded the email to the company president.
The company president decided his first task was to correct the writer’s grammar and spelling.
Really? Isn’t a company president’s time a little more valuable than this?
(I won’t publicly disclose the name of the underwriter, but if you are a former colleague of mine and are curious, send me a private message.)
In 1997 a customer service representative at a large well-known company had heard of the actuarial career path and wanted to head that way and they were given the opportunity to watch me do my work for an hour or so. I was out of graduate school and only my first year into the job myself, but I knew enough to be dangerous.
They told me they had received a award for being in top 15 out of 300 CSR’s, the top 0.5%.
I told them that was the top 5%, not the top 0.5%
They weren’t sure and agreed to disagree. I didn’t say anything else and wished them well.
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i changed your memory some
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New life product, fy comm greater than premium.
Just wait, it gets better. 2 big producers write big policies on themselves, so big they need exception, and reinsurance exceptions. I say, just write them a check for a quarter mill, because that’s what this is about. Marketing says oh no, these guys sell a lot, we have to make them happy. We issue the crap, and yes, 1 year later both mysteriously lapse. The worst of it i had to change my valuation extract to handle the extra digits!
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That’s not stupid. That’s the perfect crime. They found a way to print money
I’ve always wondered how differently my life would have been if I talked to the NYL annuity salesman instead of their actuary at the job fair
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