14
leanrob
6y

I fucking hate morning people like the one in the story below!

Before we begin story time I want to acknowledge some things.

This is largely a case of a person having a lack of awareness and giving in to their base instincts (which are wrong).

People all tend to think that everyone else is like them (most children below a certain age cannot make this distinction and many adults never learn it either).

To take it a step further, anyone who isn't just like them is Lazy/Bad/An Asshole/etc.

FUCK THOSE PEOPLE

Now it's story time...

---------

I worked for a startup. We used a modified SCRUM, and we had standups every day @ 10 AM, the other team had then at 11:30 AM.

We get a new product owner. He is a morning person. But basically, he is a day-trader so he wakes up at 5 AM to trade and is in the office by 8 AM every day.

The problem is, he uses this as a reason to leave every day at 3 PM when EVERY other member of the team is there until at least 5 PM.

So he says one day (when I am not there) that we are moving our standups to 8:30 AM...

"Because he wants to make more use of the time and wants to get more done!"

So the next day a bunch of us miss this standup, the second day I was there in time but instead of going to the standup I sent them a picture of myself sitting in a coffee shop across the street with a message saying...

"I will be holding a meeting today at 10 AM, I expect EVERYONE to be there. If anyone on our team is absent then we will sit there and that absent person will be responsible for the time we waste waiting for them."

10 AM rolls around and the Product Owner is nowhere to be seen. The team starts complaining about the early standup and I tell them that this meeting is for me to take care of it. I tell them to sit silently and let me handle it.

We all message the PO saying the same thing...
"Come to the meeting, You are wasting our time!!!"

So he shows up at 10:20 AM and it begins.

(Now I'm going to do this as a conversation)

PO: "So I assume this is about the standup?..."

ME: "Feel free to ramble on as long as you want, you have already wasted 20 minutes of our time so we will sit here quietly and wait for you to decide you are ready to stop wasting our time with your ramblings. That's fine."

<PO then shuts up in disbelief>

ME: "So are you finished?"

PO: ...

ME: "I'm expecting an answer PO!"

PO: Yes, for now.

ME: I am moving our standups to 5 PM, end of discussion.

PO: Becuase your too lazy to be here by 8 AM?

<I expected this>

ME: No because I'm an asshole who expect everyone to conform to my schedule.

PO: ..., Well, I am not here at 5 PM.

ME: Sounds like your too "lazy" be here at 5 PM, eh?

PO: I have other things I do then.

ME: Ah, now the truth comes out. You care more about your life than our business. That's unacceptable! I personally don't care what you want to do. The fact is that we are working here and every day we end up having PO questions that need to and can't be answered because you are not here.

PO: <To the team> The standup is still at 8:30 AM.

ME: <To the team> The standup is at 5 PM. End of story. And from now on whenever we have questions before 5 for PO and he is not here we will be recording it and putting it in his report.

Then I walk away.

That day we held a standup at 5 PM. He wasn't there. He held a standup at 8:30 AM and he didn't even show up. He stayed home a video in. He then arrived in the office and said...

PO: Since no one was in the standup today we will be moving it back to 10 AM.

ME: Since PO has seen the selfishness of his ways, We will be moving the standup from 5 PM back to 10 AM.

FUCK THOSE PEOPLE

Comments
  • 5
    Seems like an asshole.
  • 1
    @AlexDeLarge Thanks buddy.

    I was actually pretty proud of the way it was handled.

    My first reaction was to tell him to go fuck himself. But that would have likely just failed haha
  • 1
    @leanrob Just to clarify something.

    I don’t hate morning people. Just assholes who want everyone to conform to their schedule.

    If you wanna get up at 5 AM and do stuff that’s all cool with me.

    I certainly will be up at 2 AM being productive while you sleep and we will all live happily ever after.
  • 1
    @leanrob You're lucky your team backed you up, my guys would have just sheepishly said yes to any PO's whim 😢

    Good work 🤙
  • 1
    @LordPeeve In the end, the major factor was that it is hard to beat someone who gives less fucks than you.

    That was the mistake of the PO. He had just been let go from his last job and didn’t want to lose this one.

    I, on the other hand, had 0 fucks to give. As a competent developer in a major city I knew my talents would be picked up somewhere else and that the dev team would not want to lose those skills.

    The worst case scenario of them firing a competent developer was a survivable outcome for me.
  • 1
    @leanrob good rationale 😀

    i think i know why your PO lost his previous job... looks like he's doomed to repeat his own mistake over and over 🙄

    You deserve 100++ and many laptop stickers for standing up to this a-hole and doing it not just for yourself but for the team as well 🤙
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