Employees Say the Darndest Things

One of the many overflowing fountains of entertainment in our office is a selection of highly amusing open-ended employee survey responses. With a database of over 12 million individual responses, we’ve been able to accumulate quite an eclectic collection. Heck, we’ve even dedicated an entire section on our company’s internal wiki to housing our favorites. Here is what we have heard some employees say, grouped into three categories: candor, passive aggression, and irreverence.

Candor

Some say honesty can be brutal—I agree, and I like to add that it can also be hilarious. Here are some classic candid comments in response to the survey question, “What would you like to see changed at company?”

“I really wish that John would invest in hair plugs.”
“The group in charge of _______ is no better than a barn full of roosters. At the end of the day all we have to show is a lot of noise, a bunch of sh*t, and no eggs.”
“The hard workers work till everything is done, picking up the slack that the lazy people don’t do. Why didn’t morning people do all of their job? Why didn’t night people do this either? Supervisors need to punch a time clock. Most of them don’t work a 40 hr. week. Get rid of negative people.” (The irony in that one is almost painful.)

Passive Aggression

Let’s be honest—employee surveys are great tools for employees to vent pent-up frustrations to HR and company management, in the completely justifiable expectation that action will be taken. A time comes when some comments are no longer constructive, though.

“Get rid of one employee that is causing most of our trouble and he needs to cut his hair.”
“Get rid of some employees who need to be gotten rid of.”
“Smoking. Move the freaking ‘smoker’s pole’ out where the designated smoking area is. Not next to the building and the entrance. Why go all the way out to the smoking area if you can stand next to the doors? I guess I’ll just start peeing in a bottle next to my desk and leave it there, since that would be easier. Sure, I could go to the bathroom, but if I have a bottle next to my desk, that’s easier. Please, please fix the smoking problem.”

Irreverence

Despite our best efforts, some employees may simply distrust the survey process (i.e. they may not be confident in its anonymity). Still other employees simply don’t care, or they just want to have fun (or be done taking the survey). Here’s what they have to say in response to, “What would you recommend to make company a great place to work?”