New young woman (on an H1B Visa, not that it makes a difference, but is potentially cultural) comes into work more than half the time with THE most offensive and terrible breath, that comes over the cube wall like a cloud of death. I end up turning my fan to blow it all back at her.
I don’t work with her and we haven’t been introduced, so I don’t quite want to walk over and tell her to brush her damned teeth before coming to work.
Emailed her boss, very gently, and asked if he could speak to her. As I said, I can’t imagine what it’s like to sit with her or be stuck in a conference room with her.
My *very *elderly coworker’s elderly *and *severely infirm husband just got out of the hospital and has been placed into long-term care. She is currently planning wills, has POA for him, and is trying to get him off the title of their home. She wants to get him on Medicaid without sacrificing their joint assets; however, her attorney has informed her that they audit a 5-year history to prevent this. Her daughter doesn’t come around much, but provides a lot of moral support in these trying times. Her son is a paraplegic who lives with them and helps to the best of his ability (cooks, mows the lawn, argues with his mother like it’s his job).
I know these things because my cubicle neighbor averages more than half of every 6-hour shift on personal phone calls. One. after. afucking. nother. Her boss either doesn’t know (unlikely), doesn’t care (possible), or is too afraid to fire her because of the inevitable age-discrimination lawsuit (likely). She’s been “leaving next month” since I started this role 8 months ago.
Sometimes I can put on headphones and drown out the clatter. Most times, unfortunately, I can’t. She’s not a bad person, but she’s a very poor worker. I want to scream at her, "Quit this job and take care of your family already, because obviously you can’t do both!"
Jeez. I can’t imagine being an elderly woman dealing with a dying husband AND a paraplegic son. And I bet she can’t afford to give up her job – probably needs the money AND the time away from the house.
I’m sorry you have to overhear all her calls, but I can’t imagine a boss being scummy enough to fire someone in that situation.
A: (Copying B, C and D) I tried X and it didn’t work. How do I do this?
Me: You can’t do X that way. Do it this way, there’s a link in my signature line with a full explanation including 24 8x10 color glossies with a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what it is.
Four days later…
B (Replying to my email above. :smack:) I tried X and it didn’t work, how do I do this?
Me: You replied to my email where I told you exactly how to do that.
Not really a rant, but I hope this continuation of my little Theater of the Absurd will make someone giggle:
I’d already mentioned how Stupid Boss’ reaction to “Nava is leaving” was “return your computer! Naow!”
So, yesterday I get onsite, find out the doorcard doesn’t work; I suspect some genius has had me blocked from the system already. I get to our office and the Networks guy grins into his collar (strike two). Boot up, laptop can’t get into the network due to “userID issue” (strike three and home run). Since I know the Networks guy can’t reactivate me without Idiot Boss’ orders, I walk up to Idiot Boss, who is sitting next to Networks guy. “Oh HI! You must bring in your laptop!”
“Yes, I’ve got it here.[have you ever seen me with my macramé samples* and without my laptop?] In fact, it cannot connect to the network and my keycard isn’t working. Maybe I’ve been taken offsystem already?”
Idiot Boss: “Oh! Oh…”
Networks guy: “Should I reactivate her?”
Idiot Boss: “When will you be leaving? Will you be here on Friday? You must bring your laptop on Friday if you leave on Friday!”
“Yes, I will make sure to bring it, and yes, I’ll be here on Friday.”
Idiot Boss: “You must bring your laptop on Friday then!”
“Yessir.”
Networks guy mouths “done”, I thank him and Idiot Boss and head to my desk. As I leave, there is a parting shot of “remember to bring your laptop on Friday!”
Have they had a history of people forgetting to bring their laptop on their last day or something? I have no idea but yeah, maybe you guys should remind me to bring my laptop on Friday.
I just learned that this is a HUGE issue for my company. We have individual reps in all 50 states plus a few overseas, and a small handful of folks allowed to telework when the mood strikes (and would therefore potentially have their laptop at home). We average a high rate of workers not returning laptops and other equipment after their last day. And these are truly crappy laptops!
All I can say is they should be glad I’m not in HR, because I would hold their last check until they returned it in mint condition. No response in 6 months and we file theft charges.
You cannot legally do that. I’d just go to my state labor board and they’d tell you that if you don’t have my final paycheck to me within 24 hours of my request for it, you’ll be fined big $$$.
If I can’t get the effing job because the bloody foreigners running the motherfucking background test have problems with my name I’m going to need Doper help to work up a proper amount of cursing :mad: :mad: :mad: Who speaks Russian?
NO I don’t have a middle name, nor have I ever had one.
NO those four words are not my lastname, they’re my lastnameS.
And NO I don’t remember how every foreign institution I ever worked for or studied at mangled my damned name! It’s bad enough with the Spanish Government, who at least gets my lastnames right!
I think it’s more c) people are extremely lazy, hate going to the post office/UPS store, and have no real motivation to follow through on returning anything, since they know that we’re unlikely to pursue the issue.
B is absolutely true for some of the cases; the IT guy in charge of arranging for return of the laptops, blackberry phones, and other tech stuff for half of our state people could barely be bothered to do his on-site work, let alone muster up the energy to hound people hundreds of miles away to pack up and return company property. Thankfully he resigned a month ago (and while he left all the equipment as requested, he also left a hot mess of IT issues for his successor).
First, I admit that on the scale of ‘problems’ this doesn’t even rank. But I’m spending the morning being pissed off, so I figured I’d share it with you all.
My work place has been talking for quite a few months about significantly adjusting our salary grid, with the intent of paying everybody more, and to raise the starting salary to a ‘livable wage.’ Awesome!
Well, the method they came up with is something like this:
[ul]
[li]There will be a new starting salary $X[/li][li]Everyone making under $X will be raised to $X[/li][li]People making between $X and $X+10k will be getting a $4k raise[/li][li]People making between $X+10k and $X+20k will be getting a $2k raise[/li][li]People making over $X+30k don’t get a raise[/li][/ul]
. . . roughly.
Well, I have the privilege of making just under $X, and my big raise that we’ve been hearing about for months is a less-than-one-percent raise.
I wouldn’t be surprised, actually, if my raise was the smallest raise in the company (for those in the cohort who are getting raises).
(Yes, waaah, I got a raise, I should shut up. I’m still getting this primal ‘unfair! unfair!’ feeling in my gut.)
You’ve posted about this before, and I’ve always wondered how it works. Let’s say your name is Nava Jones Smith Wilson Brown.
I’m guessing your names come from various family lines, like your mother was Jane Jones Smith and your father David Wilson Brown? (Are some of the names hyphenated?) Or do all the names come from the same side, like your father David was a Jones Smith Wilson Brown too?
In a practical sense, is one of them somehow ‘primary’? I mean, if you met me at a party, would you say just “I’m Nava Jones” or “Nava Brown”, using the same one each time? Versus than the entire set? Or does it depend on context somehow? (I don’t know – social vs. business vs. religious vs. legal matters, maybe?)
(I’m afraid I somewhat sympathize with the other side on those hassles. Given the difficulties I’ve had entering last names that are simply two names hyphenated into a less than flexible medical database, I have NO idea how that would have been handled. Computer memory is no longer expensive, people! Why limit the field size so severely?)
We even share the problem of having a multiword baptismal name, hers being María del Pilar. It’s one name although multiple words and she evidently prefers to use “Pilar”, among its many possible abbreviations.
The first lastname is López de Ayala, from her father. The second is Arroyo, from her mother. The portuguese put the mother’s lastname first, which might be where the British (I understand it was specifically the Scottish) got the idea to start using the mother’s maiden name as a middle name.
She’ll use López de Ayala in any context in which she’s not required by law to use both (it’s only a requirement on supermegaofficial documents such as contracts, civil registry certificates or Spanish-government-issued ID). It is highly likely to be abbreviated to López, unless there is already a López around; in that case it could end up being Ayala instead. And if she worked in IT like I do she’d be up to here of asking “can I get a username of PLopez01 or PAyala01 rather than PLopezdeAyala? Please?”
So:
contract in Spain, Pilar López de Ayala Arroyo
contract in a country where people only use a lastname, Pilar López de Ayala
may indeed introduce herself as Pilar López, both because the name is a mouthful and because those structures trigger some really strange reactions; people tend to think it means you’re nobility as in “grande de España”, when actually all it means is that way back when there were so many people with the first part that the other two words got added.
may get first lastname or even both of them scrunched up into lopezdeayala or lopezdeayalaarroyo when flying. May also have received a plane ticket adressed to Ms. De (happened to me once). Highly unlikely to be able to use the autocheckin feature, if it requires reading the passport or other ID, due to that loss of spaces.
Huh. Very interesting! I hadn’t though of the possibility of a multiword name … I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that happening in English.
Though my last name is a single word, it’s a freaking LOOOONG one, with a non-intuitive for English speakers cluster of consonants, so I have some experience of hassles about my name. For a while I pretty much switched to using a drastically abbreviated version of my name (with simplified spelling) for day to day use, though my driver’s license and such had the true version.
Then I married a guy with a common one-syllable name.
