<div class="bbWrapper">Disclaimer: shooting up companies is bad mmkay. Don't shoot up companies. It's bad. Mmkay? No sane person should ever think to shoot up a company, or see that as anything but evil. Mmmmkay.<br />
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Louis CK has a comedy bit about the first use of WiFi in a plane. It goes something like: air hostesses announce there is WiFi, guy starts using it, it stops working, he says "this sucks", and Louis CK points out how unreasonable that is, because it's something that didn't even exist in the world an hour ago, and also the guy is flying through the air like a bird, etc.<br />
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But this is bullshit and false, and we all know it. Giving something valuable, and then suddenly snatching it away mid-use with a stoney face and refusal to discuss it, is a legitimate cause for anger. For anyone. It's <b>extremely</b> prickish behaviour. <br />
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It's like giving a lollipop to a baby, and then just after it tastes it and starts to enjoy it, you snatch it away and throw it in a bin. Now of course, it wouldn't be fair or reasonable or right or good if someone then struck that person in the face with a baseball bat, but most people would be lying if they said they didn't feel at least a <i>tinge </i>of "justice has been served" as they witnessed that. <br />
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The people who run these companies <i>do</i> act with a sense of "what they gonna do?". They do just take sudden actions without warning (blitzkrieg method) without concern for the little guys beneath them. We all know about the profoundly disrespectful corporate American way of firing someone (as shown in Margin Call). Companies will just smash people's lives, and respond to the inevitable reaction by installing someone between them and the victim, who's job it is to just talk until the other person gives up. No reasoning, no opportunity for negotiating another deal, just put a human stone wall between you and the victim until they're exhausted.<br />
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Now of course, most people just take it. After all, the company is well within it's rights to do it. Its primary goal is shareholder value, so fair enough. Nothing illegal about it. But every now and then you'll end up being the final straw on the back of someone with nothing left to lose... Which of course, isn't to say if you get victimized, it's a good thing. Absolutely not. But the fact these people will exist from time to time, might make other people at least pause a second before they issue their next blitzkrieg policy.<br />
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The solution is generally, just don't be dick. If you're going to make some changes, you ease them in. You give forewarnings. You phase things in, you graduate things, you give opportunities for dialog, you give advice on what people have to do to reach new thresholds or criteria, and so on. They won't be happy, but they'll unhappily understand better. They'll be more prepared to take bad news, and they'll handle it better, instead of potentially snapping and doing something foolish.<br />
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Because next time you decide to be a dick, and throw out a big sudden capricious dick move, there's no guarantee there isn't someone who's a bag of a hundred dicks on the receiving end, just waiting to rupture, and it ends up raining on <i>you</i>.</div>