Which now has a Minion GIF in it.
It is one thing for a prank to do something to the UI of a product, like invert the colors or display Comic Sans. It is quite another when it alters the content of the very messages you are passing.
How would you know you sent one, or got pranked, if you used the normal send button? I'd be pissed in that scenario if it was work related. Bosses famously often lack senses of humour.
Speaking from experience of a job triggering a stress induced bout of trigeminal neuralgia that made me want to die. After two weeks of that I quit my job of five years and found a much lower stress one.
But it's another frankly repulsive thing for you to act superior and give such awful advice to those people.
Maybe you should experience what it's like. Try and give you a better idea of what it's like to be a few dollars away from being homeless. Have your children removed from your care because you cannot provide from them. Have your entire life thrown away if you lose your job.
Not everyone can just "find a new job". Why don't you come here in Greece and ask the majority of the population why they can't find a job?
The HN guidelines ask you specifically not to call names in comments, whether or not someone else says bad things. You called a lot of names; that's understandable on a subject that evokes strong emotion, but those also are the occasions where the guidelines most apply. Had you followed them and edited those bits out, your comments would have been more persuasive, and also more dignified.
This one OTOH I'm not sure what's wrong with it.
I sympathize with the emotion behind it, but when you weaponize it like that and direct it at somebody, you break the bonds of community here—which are so weak to begin with, that protecting them has to be everyone's priority.
Thanks for responding so nicely.
No, you quite clearly haven't, and it's insulting for everyone in that position that you would pretend you have.
As for your experience per your edit, I'm sorry you had such a high stress job and it's good to hear you got a better one, but that's not at all the situations I was talking about.
Have you been in a situation where you don't know how to pay the rent, will get kicked out if you don't and have no place to live if you get kicked out?
Have you been in jail for something meaningless and experienced employer after employer declining even having you in an interview because of the red flag?
Have you been part of an economy where the majority of the population cannot find a job because nobody is hiring, because nobody has money left?
If you had a job in any of those situations, you'd be damn glad to have it and you wouldn't be looking for a "fresh start" just because the conditions are not ideal.
You're assuming that someone who differs from you in opinion (not their view of the facts), is stupider than you, less experienced than you, and dishonest. That's not an argument, that's just peer pressure.
edit: and whoever flagged it, I'd love to know what kind of criteria they were using (flagged: not feeling my pain deeply enough?)
Being in a high stress job and being able to leave it to get a better one is not the same thing as being in a situation where you cannot lose your job lest you risk your children, your home etc.
And even without such an edit, it's ridiculously easy to tell he hasn't been in that situation. If you go around telling people "pah, they just need a fresh start, new job, new wife", you've not been in a situation where you understand this isn't always an option. Good for you, but you live in one hell of a bubble.
Not hard to see why something like this would create unintended consequences of an important nature: https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/715752594551869440
It's like people who explain away their assholish behaviour by saying "it was just a joke, lighten up".
This doesn't upset me. This doesn't upset you. This doesn't upset hundreds of thousands of people and as unfunny as this is, I'm sure many are laughing about it.
However, it can upset some people. Some people who would mistakenly click the button because, god forbid, they forgot not to use the internet at all on April 1st, and that mistake would appear in an extremely important conversation.
And that mistake would appear during career discussions. And that mistake would get someone not hired, or fired, or whatever.
You guys want to complain, talk about how they should "look harder", how they should "take responsibility" and "own up to their mistakes", how they should "be happy not to work somewhere people are so uptight"? Have some fucking empathy.
I'd wager the majority of HN is well off, or well off enough that they don't have to worry about the rent or their water bill. But I'd like to see some of the people here struggling to make ends meet. Maybe you won't be so sociopathic about the potential for serious harm.
This thread makes me sick.
I understand where you're coming from, and I understand how someone may have clicked it by accident. I am struggling to empathize with the recipient who would see this, and a follow-up email explaining it was a mistake, and let that affect them.
And no, there's no classism at play. It's purely and simply a lack of empathy. A lack of understanding of what it's like to be in a situation where losing your job may cost you your home, your children or even your life.
> I am struggling to empathize with the recipient who would see this
Then don't empathize with the recipient. Plenty of bosses are jerks. But empathize with the sender, who would lose a job they cared about and can't necessarily get a new one like they grow on trees.
Shouldn't you also ask for empathy in people who are upset by it? They seem to have the least empathy of everybody, if they are going to fire somebody over animated GIF.
I haven't seen any of those people here on HN. Not today, at least. So I can't actually tell them. Show me someone and I'll be glad to have a chat...
Unfortunately, people like that probably won't come to HN and leave comment - cool, I just fired someone over it! But they absolutely should get the blame.