The corporate idea of "fun" is usually a million miles from a rational human being's idea of fun. Personally I'd regard any web site that emphasised "fun" as a major red flag against applying for a job there.

[I remember the time a US corporation tried introducing its corporate song book to the UK subsidiary I worked at.]

Not to mention that their website figures the words Six Sigma multiple times - one basic entry in my Bullshit Bingo card.

Then there's the fact that they apparently have a rating for managers lifted directly from Judo : yellow belt, green belt, etc. First time I've heard of such a notion, but they'll happily explain it to you (for a fee, undoubtedly, even if it's just your phone number).

The Belts are a standard part of the Six Sigma philosophy.

Like most management trends it has a justifiable basis but becomes a box ticking exercise to "look good".

There's only two ways a company (and governments) changes their ways:

- Losing lots of money publicly.

- Bad press.

A 3,000 loss isn't going to do anything to motivate changes. That's a Friday night bar tab to this lot.

You're right that (the threat of) publicity is often the only way companies will end up doing the right thing, but Cubik is not off the hook yet as far as financial compensation goes in this case.

"Cubik was ordered to pay Mr T €3,000, with further damages to be determined at a later date."

Too bad this case wasn't in the US, though. Dreading the company dinners after the pandemic - always seem to be one or more coworkers who get drunk and insist on driving home themselves. HR Handbook says managers must step in at that point and call a taxi, but I've yet to see that happen. One wonders why these events are even organized when even management admits that certain people are likely closet alcoholics.

In my case years ago it was the manager who insisted on driving home. Nowadays, I'd either take his keys, or call the police.

"That's a Friday night bar tab to this lot."

This was a French company. 3000 currency units is more like a Tuesday lunchtime than a Friday night.

IMHO, the only "Mandatory Fun" that should be allowed is "Weird Al" Yankovic's 2014 album of that name.

Upvote and this ==> for the Weird Al reference. A great album, well worth the Grammy, but I'm really sad it's probably his last.

I’d forgotten about that rubbish, for over a decade, until this article brought it all back into terrifying focus.

Sick Sigma. Agghhh!!!!

"Personally I'd regard any web site that emphasised "fun" as a major red flag "

Wasn't that one of the major attributes that Twitter, Google, Facebook etc al advertised when recruiting ? Fun, cool environment..

And then we had all those viral videos of people showing us their typical days... I can't find the originals I think that they were Tik Tok vids.

[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0lgRPaLC1U

What I don't understand about this guy though is why did he remain for 4 years ? He's a techie in Paris, it's not like there are a lack of jobs, hell companies are crying out for good employees.

If you read Cubiks website it doesn't actually appear to be that unusual or strange. Half way down their landing page we see the title "Apprendre en s’amusant : fun & pro, telle est notre devise !"

If you go to work for one of these "dynamic cadres" companies then I can understand that you would be expected to participate in the "events".. It's part and parcel of those environments, they need them to be that way in order to sell.. It's like working in the fashion industry or hollywood and being surprised to see people doing lines of coke.

Translation : Learn whilst having fun, Fun & Pro, this is our motto..

It's just another small line of marketing blurb, it's one line amongst several pages, that no one ever believes.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0lgRPaLC1U

Worked for a place where "We provide FREE team working events"

The FREE part was giving up your FREE time after work or at weekends NEVER EVER during work day, told me I was missing out, told them I really wasn't.

They weren't even free: the stupid pointy-haired boss we ended up being lumbered with blew the entire departmental budget on this sort of crap and various other vanity projects so there was nothing left to spend on stuff we needed. And no, I didn't attend the FREE team working events because absolutely the last thing I want is to go karting with someone with the social skills of a coked-up trustafarian when I just need to GTFO of London and relax (and purge myself of black bogies).

...that tries to make me party with them!!

...appears to come perilously close to employer sanctioned [mandated?] sexual harassment.

I predict more legal troubles in that organisation's future.

// engineer

// not a "mandatory fun" type of guy

But these are not typical IT Engineers, they are those "Six Sigma" full of shit hyped up on Coke/Bonuses/Crap ISO Methodology type of Engineers that would be better working as Door to Door Insurance Sales rather than actual engineers..

Very few actual engineers can support these guys being on the premises, they usually provide endless powerpoint slides about how they are going to radically improve your business, with cheesy smiles and expensive overheads. At they end of the day they just move some chairs around, create a couple of new titles/roles and it's BAU for all concerned.

And this guy must have known this before taking on the job.

Many moons ago I worked for a 'large' UK multinational and they sent a team of people to our site to teach us about the 'standard operating framework' they were rolling out as part of 'excellence in delivery' (we had a different E word for it...). Lots of new middle management positions with impressive titles were created.

I swear that one of the people was on speed the ENTIRE TIME! They could not stop moving, would not sit down and could not explain anything in a coherent manor. They also had NO documentation. About a week after the team left we'd gone back to BAU.

Said multinational has now been sold off and broken up.

It is so easy to tell when a ladder climbing middle manager wannabe has been reading management for dummies books. 5S, kaizen, catchball... An operations manager decided to 5S the workshop that included binning all the tooling and test jigs for some old products. This would have been fine if the company had actually EOL'd those products and stopped supporting them. I snagged the tools and jigs for some of the products I'd designed and stashed them away before they could go in the bin. Not long after I get a call from ops, 'do you have a test jig for xxxx as a customer has sent in a broken one and we promised a repair?'....

> do you have a test jig for xxxx

Which you had passed on to your brother as an interesting piece of modern industrial kitsch, but he has very reasonable hourly equipment hire rates.

I read absolutely nothing in the judgement or the complaint that mentions "sexual harrasement"..

At worst the following was cited which makes no mention at all of anything sexual:

"par des pratiques prônées par les associés liant promiscuité, brimades et incitation à divers excès et dérapages."

Can you clarify exactly how you managed to reach your conclusion ?

Read it again.

The world is moving towards a very sorry place to live in where even the wrong look can get you in trouble.. No wonder people are losing their social skills, they are becoming frightened to death of making a wrong movement.. This in itself will ensure the reduction of the population.

The more I think about the phrase "good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times." the more I believe that it is true..

In a world where everyone is offended or triggered by such events, who will defend us in times of real problems ?

I agree with you in the general sense but not in this specific case.

Being "strong" ≠ being a twat.

If they insisted on "having fun", I think trashing the boss office and setting his car on fire could well be my idea of "enforced fun".

— Hey boss, if you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined.

Something strange in this case all the same, this guy was promoted to the status of Directeur in 2014. It's extremely rare that one would invite a Directeur to one of those evenings.

Wasn't his boss aware of this culture ? It's hard to believe that during 4 years he had never wanted to participate or had never refused to participate durinhg all this time and still managed to get promoted... Why would the company promote such a person who was obviously the odd man out.

Talking without the benefit of knowledge here, but…

> Why would the company promote such a person who was obviously the odd man out.

Because he was good at his job?

I was promoted multiple times and had my arse saved a couple of times by someone who absolutely hated my guts. Taught me a lot about fairness, I owe that man a lot.

It is great to see the parade of moral warriors passing by.

How much the views of many got clouded by the US suburbia way of thinking.

US suburbia is what it is, France is what it is.

Maybe French can be them selves, and if one doesn't like what is going on during a company party, one can always leave with an excuse ?.

Which bit about "promiscuity" is non-sexual?

Which bit of "promiscuité" is harrassement ?

It's not because something is sexual in nature that harrasement is involved.

If someone tells you a sexy joke, is that harrassement ?

> If someone tells you a sexy joke, is that harrassement ?

It certainly can be, especially at work or a work-related function.

If the "joker" had been warned once already, it definitely is. If the joke is at the expense of another colleague, it definitely is.

Ah, the "work hard, party hard" type of company.

Reminds me of the gaming company I naively interviewed for a few years ago. I was unaware that "gaming" actually means "gambling", and since they work exclusively for other brands there was nothing on their website to suggest the true nature of their business. Anyway, before the interview proper started I was subjected to an enthusiastic managerial type explaining why they were the best place to work. Since I'm either a massive cynic or perhaps just well attuned to bullsh*t, I translated his pep-talk as "it's a crap place to work, but we get pissed up every evening".

Having a satisfactory social life already, and a loathing of gambling after one of my family members lost everything through an addiction to betting shops, I politely turned down the subsequent job offer. A few months later, the company were all over the news after several of their executives were arrested while transiting through a US airport. Turns out they'd fallen afoul of the US laws about gambling and foreign companies. A dubious law from what I understand, but given the level of arrogance and smugness I encountered at the interview with them I did feel a bit of schadenfreude.

Once I interviewed for a then American, what I naively considered a "respectable" IT consulting company (which by now might be based in Japan). In the first interview, the HR manager slobbering over their frequent staff parties, inviting me to their Halloween party, and hitting on me were already three sufficient reasons not to join them.

A really interesting decision for me, as I'm in France, working for the branch pf a US company that is increasing its mandatory fun requirements (and mandatory volunteering and not-mandatory-except-for-some-but-very-strongly-encouraged giving to charities through the company).

Some manager's wheeze to get their ESG ratings up on your dollar/euro? Lay down carefully & walk away!

One of the 'rules' about these work events is that you're supposed to forget what people tell you when they're drunk - whether it's about their personal or their work life.

Probably an easy thing to do when you're drunk yourself, but quite impossible when you either don't drink or drink responsibly.

I consider myself fortunate in never having come across that sort of company, although I know they exist.

There's rule in UI/UX design and that is "Don't impose joy" I'd apply that everywhere else too.

Yikes - the idea that anyone ever had to say that once, let alone make it a rule! What kind of people even think that they can "impose joy"?

Then again, I've never been blessed with anyone explicitly talking about "UX" when I've been writing UIs; although one requirement was "must be fully functional whilst user is wearing gloves" and if they really, really enjoyed wearing their work gloves (and who am I to judge)...

The management were probably trying to motivate their staff into believing that the company was a great place to work, and their co-workers were wonderful people who were 'fun guys to be with'. It demonstrates an immaturity sadly prevalent in young, enthusiastic owner/managers. The company is their 'baby' and they want to feel that every employee has the same emotional attachment to its success, and will sacrifice as much as they will to get the job done.

So when you get told there is a company weekend of events at an expensive country hotel (karting, quizzing, treasure hunts etc.) with evening meal, overnight stay all paid for by the company (the first time I paid over £5 for a single shot G&T) you think gosh! Then you discover that the office staff do not get private health care, and have fewer days paid holiday, but were invited to the event, and you think WTF? (Which would you prefer: a weekend away or annual private health care for you and family?)

I once had an interview for a job at the now defunct GEC Computers. The interviewers claimed they did not pay over the odds, expected people to work unpaid overtime and wouldn't pay extra for my (relevant) PhD, because it was such a wonderful place to work. I had to decline their 'offer'. I just wonder how these people think they come across.

It's a sign of severe depression and loneliness when managers use a company as a some sort of way for providing paid for friends.

I am surprised workers don't feel being abused by this behaviour, because in reality they become nothing more but escorts.

If people go to pub for a drink with their work colleagues, that is an extreme red flag.

Many years ago I interviewed for this "trendy" and "vibrant" start up that "works hard" and "play hard" and holds regular "socials"...

They rejected me because as they said I wasn't a cultural fit.

I said I don't drink and I am not really looking to do clubbing after work as I have my own life and things to take care of.

Ladies from marketing department turned from flirty to disappointed in a split second and I think that sealed my fate.