No Talking At eBay!

Posted by: dballing | July 15, 2003

No Talking At eBay!

As mentioned on FuckedCompany, this memo from eBay to its employees is pretty harsh:
Sent: Thursday, June 19, 2003 10:30 AM
To: DL-eBaySJC-all-R
Subject: eBay internal communication – Talking at desks- Please read
It has come to my attention that several employees are talking at their desks during scheduled work hours. I must convey the importance of NOT talking at your desk, or to your desk partner. Talking greatly decreases work productivity, and company morale.
If you need to talk to someone, please schedule a meeting room where you can talk, or use the break rooms. If you are caught talking at your desk, you will be escorted into a meeting room and questioned as to why you are talking, and if it is relevant to your job. If not, you may be subjected to disciplinary actions.
We want you to work hard at eBay, and enjoy your work. Please contact management if you have any questions.
Let me get this straight, they put people at the same desk (hence “desk partner”) and expect that they’re going to stare at each other for eight hours and not be friendly with each other? What the hell, man, I have a vision of Winston Smith‘s workplace now, with everyone wearing drab clothes and nobody speaking to each other.
Mark down one place you’ll never see me work, no matter how good the pay there might be.

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Responses

Obviously you are forgetting the vibrant and wonderful conversations we had at GTE…
My guess is this is for the grunts in the call center instead of middle management (even though it was addressed to “SJC-all”). Send it to all, but enforce at the peon level.
By: Brian on July 15, 2003
at 3:28 pm
is it just me or did they just kill morale by sending that thing out?
By: brandt on July 15, 2003
at 3:54 pm
Oh, yah, that will help…
“The beatings will continue until morale improves”..
By: kasia on July 15, 2003
at 4:10 pm
This would be a great place to work! The management inside Ebay at the peon level must be madeup of a bunch of wusses.
It’s pretty bad when upper management has to make up this stupid of a rule for something that should be easy to enforce with existing policies. Sounds like someone needs to smack around the first line managers.
By: Brian on July 15, 2003
at 4:49 pm
That just HAS to be fake. Nobody could seriously hope to ban talking. Could they?
By: Dan Isaacs on July 15, 2003
at 5:30 pm
“War is Peace”
“Freedom is Slavery”
“Ignorance is Strength”
By: O'Brien on July 15, 2003
at 6:21 pm
“War is Peace”
“Freedom is Slavery”
“Ignorance is Strength”
By: O'Brien on July 15, 2003
at 6:21 pm
That memo has to be a joke. No sane company would think to do something like that, without at least qualifying it with something like “excessive talking” or something. I can see wanting to stop people gabbing for hours at their desks, but putting a stop on talking period? Joke or something, gotta be.
By: Arcterex on July 15, 2003
at 7:41 pm
Wonderful working environments

I rarely complain about my company and my working environment because it is just plainly great (no, I’m not being paid or in any way forced into saying this, it is just my honest opinion, and yes, it does have it’s woes but then what doesn’t?) but just…
By: Nowhereland on July 16, 2003
at 9:00 am
I know a few managers in call centres who’ve done similar things. I’d be surprised if it was somewhere else in the organization… But not that surprised.
Sometimes it’s funny how far stuck up our own arses our heads can get. Policies have weird ways of evolving.
By: Jeremy C. Wright on July 16, 2003
at 11:31 pm
Why don’t you ALL pipe down and GET BACK TO WORK!!!
By: Meg Whitman on July 17, 2003
at 9:58 am

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