Agreed. I’ve met people who were among the best in their profession, but couldn’t teach/train at all. It takes some special skills to teach.
Yesterday, I had to rewrite this sentence left behind by my former coworker. This is what he considered to be good technical writing.
“Press the battery down in its receptacle until it reaches the full extent of its travel.”
I’m not sorry he’s gone. There is far too much of this shit in the documents he worked on. It’ll take me years to fix it all, if I even have the opportunity to revise those old documents.
Oh God - don’t talk to me about documents! We have to service equipment that was built over twenty years ago. The test and assembly procedures are AWFUL! We have to rewrite them all the time. Stoopit stoopit people…
And in the continuing saga, I am getting a promotion! Which basically means doing what I currently do but with more pay. Which I like. In this case the squeaky wheel got the cheese. Or something.
You wouldn’t have that problem if I’d written the procedures, I promise.
In our building we have a mad stuffer. And I shit you not (pun intended) this fucking clown has clogged a toilet with wads of paper tower, numerous other times vast wads of toilet paper (once (and I’m not exaggerating) I saw what looked like the equivalent of an entire household roll’s worth of toilet paper. Now I know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that most of the people in my building (about 4000) are very, very smart people, yet some ass-wipe (pun intended) keeps doing this.
I’ve been mostly out of the office for the last two years but I was in twice last week and, lo and behold, there it was - another clogged with paper toilet bowl.
I’m trying to help a coworker with something. It should be really simple, but she’s so computer illiterate, she doesn’t even know what a menu is. 
I’m usually good at helping people with these kinds of things, but I don’t even know where to start with her. I would suggest having a Teams meeting so she can share her screen, but that’s more stress than I need this afternoon.
We’ve had a slew of new hires lately, so I’m assuming that one of them is responsible for treating the restroom like it’s attached to a gas station. I went in there today to find an unflushed toilet, gobs of toilet paper in the toilet, and a strip of TP on one side of the toilet seat.
I haven’t encountered one of these in years! I’ll light a candle for you.
I’ll take a guess at what may be happening with the clogged toilets. Momma told them to never put their ass on a public toilet seat, so they cover the seat with toilet paper, sit and do their buisness. The problem is they finish, wipe their ass with a huge wad of paper, and leave. No flush, not all the paper even in the toilet.
My cite, I worked in a middle school and this happened almost daily.
We had rhe same thing at work in the 1990s, and finally narrowed it down to a contractor from India who covered the seat with paper towels before he could sit down, then try to flush them. He admitted to it, saying it was because of AIDS (as it was known at the time). It took a bunch of education, about disease transmission, but more importantly about plumbing, to get him to stop.
She asked me to show her how to do it, so this is happening tomorrow. 
I don’t know how she survives in this world.
Please come back and post a blow-by-blow account! (Not to imply you’ll be beating her about the head and shoulders…)
Did you survive the encounter? 
Today is the birthday of the lady two offices down from mine. A parade of people has been showing up since 8:05 AM with gifts, and she has had to howl and scream over each one. Several of the gifts were scratch-offs, and from her bellowing it seems that she’s won $20 so far.
Also, apparently I’m on The List from corporate to receive one of the pathetic, card deck-sized boxes that passes for a computer at this company. >:( (Seriously, these things start to drag if you open more than two tabs in Edge.) I’m perfectly content with the mini-tower I have now, and I don’t look forward to having to explain to IT yet again that yes, I really am an engineer, and I really do need AutoCAD and Acrobat Pro on my computer to do my fucking job.
I’m a technical writer, not an engineer, and I had to convince my boss that yes, I really DO need 32 gig of RAM, not the standard 16, because I commonly have 8 or 10 memory intensive programs open at any one time just to do my job. I could probably make do with 16, but it would slow down processing and reaction time to an unacceptable (to me) level.
So, two days ago (I’ve had back to back shifts or I would have unloaded earlier) this cracky old White guy (it’s always a White guy with this shit) goes to buy alcohol at the self-serve. Of course, this flags the station and the attendant comes over and asks to see his ID. Turns out he took a Sharpie to the bar code on the back of his driver’s license because he doesn’t want Big Government, or, apparently, the grocery store, “getting my information”.
Two points here:
First, our system does not extract anything from that bar code other than your birthdate. Really. Truly. Because part of my job is to help with the bookkeeping I actually do have access to the raw data for each and every transaction. Really, it only saves your birthdate. That is it. Nothing more.
Second, recently, one of our cashiers failed a sting for selling alcohol to someone underage. In addition to that person losing her job on the spot, being issued a court date on the spot, and facing a $5,000 fine and up to 120 days in jail, and oh yes, our company being fined and having to go to court to defend their liquor license, the State of Indiana is now insisting we card EVERYONE, without exception, and the company has now mandated that, in order to prove we are carding everyone and NOT selling alcohol to underage people, we scan EVERY ID that is scannable (if it’s not scannable we have to make sure the ubiquitous video camera overhead can get a shot of the relevant document).
So, Mr. Cranky White Guy, it doesn’t matter what reeking corner of social media you got your latest conspiracy theory from, but if you don’t show us a valid ID we can’t legally sell you liquor. By taking a Sharpie to your driver’s license you have altered a government document and rendered your ID invalid for purposes of purchasing liquor. Bitch and scream all you want, you can’t buy booze here with an altered ID. Fuck you. Fuck your conspiracy bullshit. Fuck your verbal abuse. Fuck you for making a goddamned scene. Fuck you for threatening to sue us (yeah, good luck with that).
But hey, thanks for saying you’ll never come back. Good riddance. Oh, and fuck you again.
He doesn’t want the government to be able to access the data on his government issued ID, right? I’ve never been able to understand that disconnect.
I would’ve been tempted to mess with him:
“Uh, oh. Sir, I just noticed something. Who gave you this ID? Was it… the government? So, how did they get your name and address? And your birthdate? Did you fill out a form and voluntarily give it to them? Sorry, sir, but YOU yourself gave access to that information. You can’t take it back with a Sharpie.”
I think you need to say that by filling out that paperwork, they created joinder with the state.
We are three weeks into our back to the office (but we are not allowed to use the phrase “back to the office”).
They are spending gobs over money on stuff that is completely useless. Moving all the desk phones to our new locations. Never mind that most of us have not used our desk phones since long before COVID.
Yesterday and today they brought in food for 500 people, but because we are only in the office 2-3 days a week there are maybe 200 people in on any given day. Hundreds of sandwiches, pastries, etc are being shoved into trash bins now.
We have new spiffier chairs (at least brightly colored chairs) but requests by employees to have a large (21 inch) monitor both at home and in the office are being denied as “wasteful”
It was disappointingly uneventful. She shared her screen! I was amazed! I showed her how to insert an image into Publisher, and I think she’ll remember how to do it. So all’s we’ll that ends well. I’m sure I’ll get more fun emails from her soon, and I’ll share them all here. 