Hi, I?m not really capable of doing my job. You, my co-workers know this. But of course I must pretend it is not the case. And in order to not detract from my own self worth, I must also fool myself into thinking I make a contribution. So while the rest of you are doing the real work, I will make it my mission to diligently and carefully handle all the pointless minutia.
Take for example the big presentation our team is putting together for a new client. Have any of YOU considered how crucial the stapling process is? Obviously not. Therefore, I will devote myself to stapling each and every copy of the presentation with precision. Not only must each staple must go through every sheet, but the ends must CURL inwards so no papers may escape. Furthermore, the staples should go parallel to the long side of the paper, instead of the usual way in which less committed employees do it. This needs to be done correctly, so I?ll just stay at my desk and concentrate on this oh-so-important task while the rest of you actually write the presentation.
You are no doubt aware of the upcoming meeting for all of our field representatives. This event requires much preparation and extra work from us all. Lots of technical data and logistics to pore through. But are you aware that there is a raffle planned to break up the tension of the meeting? Furthermore, are you aware that when something is raffled, one must have a receptacle to hold all the tickets? Well I am certainly one to plan ahead, so leave this to me.
Not only will there be a bucket to hold the raffle tickets, but I will PERSONALLY decorate said bucket. It will bear the company name, painstakingly rendered by hand. But the wonder of this bucket doesn?t stop there, no. It will also have directions for conducting the raffle printed on the reverse side where the audience won?t see them! Of course, I will conduct EXTENSIVE research on the proper way to raffle a t-shirt and baseball cap. We must do things properly, and I?m stepping up to handle the job. This could take a while. Why don?t the rest of you plan the substance of the event while I handle the bucket situation, OK?
Anyone else have a character like this where they work?
I?m actually a highly skilled, competent worker. I?m also unemployed, and have been pounding the pavement for three weeks now without being called for an interview. Meanwhile, incompetent workers like you keep much needed jobs away from people like me. Why? Because let?s face it, folks. Management types don?t really value competent hard workers. They want people who can?t find their own rectal orfices with both hands and a flashlight, much less something really useful, like an apostrophe key, so they can be surrounded by people less intelligent themselves (no mean feat, that, given the I.Q. of your average manager).
Never mind, soon I?ll have my license, and be able to become self-employed, and won?t have to deal with competition with incompetent goons like you.
Actually, no, I haven’t worked with characters like this, but that’s because I haven’t really worked in an office environment. I have, however, worked with completely incompetent goons, slackers and total jerkoffs who went on to be promoted to management positions. I often wanted to check their breath to see if it smelled like… no I won’t say it.
But at least she makes sure all of our PowerPoint presentations that we use maybe once a year are scrupulously updated on a weekly basis, at LEAST!, no matter HOW much work may come in that could, theoretically, distract her from this important task. Whew!
The Irritating Person ™ at my work recently got me to print out a website with one of our internal policies on it. Not a bad idea, you might say, but the site is specially designed to be pretty much a page of links to different policies and documents etc. So he got me to print out these documents as well. Of course, some of those documents had links in them too, so I was to print out those ones too. Then I had to make a filing system to put them together. Document 1, document 1a, document 1a (i) etc. And of course a lot of these links were circular. Document 2 a (iii) might be document 1, and so on.
After all this had been done, hand-labelled and hand-numbered, and it had come back to me about 3 times with more requests, he sent it back to me one final time…with a request that I insert sheets of purple paper between each document, to make them easier to find.
This kind of person … we’ve got a whole bunch of them where I work, and they’ve been put in change of designing all the work processes that all the competent people have to follow.
You can probably imagine the kind of hell my job is becoming. The idea of quitting becomes ever more attractive.
Yes I work with someone very similar to this. Observe! the total, sick fetishization of the work process! Where the actual outcome is dwarfed in importance by the journey! Deadlines, they are merely arbitrary numbers founded in base desire! Welcome to the twilight zone which exists between anal retentiveness and ADD!
There’s a piece of electronic musical equipment called an arpeggiator, which basically steadily puts out the same beat - a machine which works constantly but whose output never really goes anywhere.
We have come to refer to this individual as “The Arpeggiator” (“The Pedge” for short).
Mach, old man, just be happy that the ignoramus is sticking to staples and raffles, rather than inserting himself into the middle of important work and screwing it all up.
Well, such people aren’t always problematic. It really depends on their position in the company. If said person is an intern or junior-level hire, it can actually be kind of nice to have such a person to delegate all the minor fuss to. What is really annoying is when said person is a supposed equal or management-type who should be doing real work. I guess this was implied above, but I figured it would help to clarify …
Go to… depends on your version of Word. Preferences or Options. Disable SmartQuotes. That’s the problem there.
Word likes to put the curly quotes at the beginning and end of a sentence, or curly apostrophes. Unfortunately, no other program in the world accepts Microsoft’s psychotic standard for that.
