this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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Microblog Memes

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago

"Simple Sabotage Field Manual" by United States. Office of Strategic Services is a historical publication written during the early 1940s, amid World War II. This manual acts as a guide for ordinary civilians to conduct simple acts of sabotage against enemy operations without the need for specialized training or equipment. Its main topic revolves around promoting small, accessible forms of resistance that could collectively disrupt the enemy's war effort.

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

[–] ZombiFrancis 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

When I worked in the private sector every mistake was percieved as malicious intent by management.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

That's a sign of toxic management that almost always indicates incompetence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

just compliment their tie while you're doing it. their egos can't focus on two things at a time. Especially when there is a compliment boost in the room.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

When I was in the Army, deployed to Afghanistan, a bunch of junior soldiers (E-4 and below) came in from the field and wanted to get paid. They needed to wait in line at my little office inside of a hardened building. They were talking amongst themselves in the hall while they waited their turn. There were probably 50 of them. A master sergeant (E-7) came in and started yelling at the soldiers telling them to behave like soldiers and get next to the wall and wait quietly without talking. All the soldiers snapped to attention and went silent in a tight single file line against the wall. This dickhead master sergeant then walked past all of the soldiers who had been waiting in line, walked up to the front counter of my office and submitted some paperwork to have his housing allowance changed back in the states because his dependents had moved. I didn't have the rank to argue with him so I smiled and gave him the most polite customer service you could expect from a military finance office. As soon as he left, I put his paperwork directly into the paper shredder (a crime). My fellow finance soldiers saw me do it and laughed. Fuck him for using his rank to cut in line. A non-commissioned officer should put the junior soldiers first and never use their rank to get special privileges. His paperwork got lost. It happens.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This is why I wouldn’t have passed army training. I’m not about to let someone take the piss cause they have a higher rank than me, without me challenging that. Right is right at end of the day and this cunt would be told as much before I got fired.

I want to be clear I am not calling you out for what you did, just adding what I believe I would have done. I lost so many jobs on this hill too.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 day ago

This is why the stormtroopers all miss

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

....or leak a signal chat

[–] [email protected] 239 points 2 days ago (4 children)

The CIA wrote a manual on how to do this. It's a bit old and parts of it are outdate for some times of work, but a lot of it is still useful.

  • Misunderstand orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders
  • Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products
  • Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done (some might say normal businesses do this as a matter of course...)
  • Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible
[–] WoodScientist 19 points 1 day ago

This is also the perfect manual for how to cosplay as energy vampire Colin Robinson.

[–] [email protected] 97 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Shit, 80% of the people I work with must have read that manual then. That’s a near daily occurrence.

[–] anomnom 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Every web project manager I’ve ever had apparently lived by this manual.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Good for them

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 days ago

I'm pretty sure this is our company policy

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

"What about the droid attack on the wookies?"

[–] Saledovil 2 points 1 day ago

What about the flamethrower attack on the Geonosians?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Very early in my career I realized how much a business (or any organization) depends on heroes to survive crises. You can make up as many procedures as you want, but when shit starts hitting fans the people who save your organizational ass are the ones who skip their mandatory breaks, come in all weekend during the crunch, and figure out what to do when there's no procedure. The best way to sabotage MAGAcism in a crisis is work as slowly as you can get away with, and follow procedures exactly no matter how poorly they fit the situation.

[–] jubilationtcornpone 51 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Bikeshed the shit out of everything.

Nazi Germany might have killed less Jews if they spent an excessive amount of time in meetings about which tile to use in the gas chambers.

Edit: "As per mine previous telegram, zee Führer does not vant to spend zee time and money to create a swastika mosaic in zee gas chambers vhen vee are already EIGHT MONTHS BEHIND SCHEDULE!! Please review zee color options vee discussed at our last meeting and let me know how you could like to proceed as soon as possible.

Most sincerely,

Colonel Wilhelm Klink"

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Wilhelm Klink was the British top agent Nimrod. He and Schultz were fully aware about Hogan's operation and in fact made sure they would not only not be interfered with, but facilitated.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 day ago

Here's the thing: my dad does tiling on a regular basis and he says it's ceramic or it's nothing. Especially when you're working with a caustic gas.

The problem is the grout. You want a grout that isn't going to fall apart after several uses. The color plays an important role on the binding so we really need to commission a study on how much of a mixture we need.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

I wonder if their recent history might be why Germany is so bureaucratic nowadays.

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[–] jballs 53 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I know a federal government employee who spent over half a day writing their "5 things you did last week" email. It seemed like a very important task coming from high up in the administration, so they wanted to take the time to make sure it was done right.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The problem is, if they’re in one of the positions the fascists wanted to remove, they likely want that work disrupted; so you’re accomplishing their goal that way.

[–] jballs 1 points 1 day ago

Fortunately they are in a role that the fascists are trying desperately to keep. So it's kind of funny.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 2 days ago (3 children)

can't wait to be accused of being a collaborator just because i've been peter principled into a position i don't understand

[–] ayyy 30 points 1 day ago

That’s the neat thing about dictatorships, your behavior is completely irrelevant to how you are treated. If they want to end you, they don’t need a justification.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago

The Peter Principle is a concept where people get promoted up to their highest level of incompetence.

If you're good at your job, you get promoted. If you keep being good, you keep getting promoted. But eventually you land in a position that you're not good at.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The Peter principal is the idea that anyone good at their job will keep getting promoted until they are no longer any good at the job they were promoted to. The idea is that anyone who has been in any position for any significant amount of time must be terrible at it otherwise they would have gotten promoted to a different position already.

Personally I think it definitely applies to some people but I don't believe it's the universal rule people make it out to be.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

In my experience it most efficiently explains lower and middle managers who were internal promotions from the ranks of non-supervisory or regular staff.

In some jobs, like academia, you will run out of regular promotions and will just end up plateauing, especially in salary. The only way out of this is to become a manager of some sorts: department head, assistant manager, section head, project manager, etc. or to do a lateral transfer to a different job where you can renegotiate salary, benefits, and job description. Or in the case of true academics, supplement income with book tours, speaking fees, consulting, etc.

Some of the worst managers I’ve encountered were people who had been doing their jobs for about a decade and needed that “promotion” to management to get a raise or move away from a job they physically or emotionally couldn’t do anymore.

But bad managers are a bell curve with MBAs and career management types on one end and “Bob, who finally got that promotion” on the other.

[–] throwawayacc0430 3 points 1 day ago

They can't fire you, because it would mean they have to fire hegseth with his "flawless opsec"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Strike sabotage slowdown.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

While technically true, you're neglecting that a lot of these agencies employ quotas and performance awards and other metrics to track and promote the more hustler-mindset goons while dumping the less enthusiastic. That's been at the heart of the DOGE campaign - finding and removing anyone who might potentially obstruct the administration's agenda in any agency suspected of hosting opposition bureaucrats.

The purges guarantee the admin can bring in loyalists, more dedicated to the optics of the administration than the role of the office. The performance metrics produce a high rate of false positives in investigations, arrests, and prosecutions. But that's not a bug in this system, its a feature. The "oops I'm bad at my job" strategy of internal disruption isn't a bad one on its face, but it is also not one higher ups aren't fully aware of (and often unjustifiably paranoid about). When the fascist regime begins to fail and starts searching for scapegoats, some of the first they pounce on are the incompetent or unenthusiastic agents on the inside.

That's a big reason why mid-level bureaucrats best serve the system by exiting it entirely. Simply leaving an empty desk does more to clog the gears than doing a mediocre job in the role. And you're not around to take the heat when a Trump AG feels the need to arrest a judge or prosecute a prosecutor for failing to torment local residents fast enough.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

There's been quotas and monitoring at every single one of my jobs, and all they do is alienate the talented staff and leaves the loyal morons & the money-driven behind.

The last two firms I worked at are still desperately begging me to come back, three years after I resigned, because the ship is rapidly sinking since their AI replacement strategy did not plan out.

I just resigned my latest position, and I'm gonna take a week or two to get back into making art and music, and then I'm going to take my talent and energy to the organizations fighting back against fascism.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Man if they offered me like 4x my current pay, I'd go back, but if it's been 3 years I would probably be 3 years less efficient than they expected.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There was a time when I would have accepted to go back for 3x the pay, or just go back and slack my ass off until I got fired, laughing my way to the bank.

But what changed for me is that I realized they are a bunch of self-serving liars-- and if they screwed me over once, they will totally do it again.

I would be stupid to put myself into that position and be stressed out the whole time trying to anticipate when they are going to pull the rug from underneath me again.

Instead, I rather move on to a new job, meet some new people, get paid to watch training videos which are often interesting and valuable (and if they are not, I just play Balatro on my phone while I half listen to them).

I also almost always get a pay raise when I move on to a new job, but not always. Moving from public accounting to state government accounting was a significant pay cut for me, but now I am going to get much better benefits, work less hours, my coworkers I've met so far are awesome, and the work I am going to do actually helps protect my state and my community. I know I'm going to be much happier in this new role and I value that more than I value money. And if I'm not, I'll just bounce and find something else.

And I know we often think that's easy to say when you don't have kids to feed, and while it is true that I do not, I would much rather explain to my kids that we will all have to learn how to plant a veggie garden together and make do with less before I teach them to accept being abused and exploited for the extra money.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

A LOT of russian and NK soldiers are doing this right now on the field with Ukraine. NONE of them want to be fighting Ukraine. Many defect. Especially at the beginning. Problem is sometimes they are returned as they are seen as "captives" in Ukraine according to Russia just to be returned to the front of the line. Which sucks hard.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In the face of fascism we’re all underpaid idiots

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