The ones we get are highly repetitive and keep “catching out” 20%+ of employees. But we have no way of knowing how mss as my are just ducking with the Information Security folks.
But given the number of people who have put their credit card numbers into websites at the request of our CEO who is planning a surprise event for his Executive Assistant, I suspect we really have a significant population that is staggeringly credulous.
I’m sure I’ve ranted about this before, but here we go again. I get very annoyed when people ask me to do something, then ask someone else to do it while I’m working on it. Like I don’t have a million other things I could be doing. Also, I have special tools to do this thing. If anyone breaks it, I will not help them replace it, and they will have to pay around $400 to replace it.
I’m hosting a conference starting next week. I put off creating any personalized things until this last Monday, hoping that would mean the registration list was final. I created accounts, and sent out a bunch of personalized emails on Monday.
That appears to be the prompt for a bunch of people to ask if somebody can come in their place. Yeah, I guess so, I’m not going to force people to swallow a non-refundable registration fee, but it does mean that in each case I have to go back, and remove the old person, and add the new person. It isn’t too difficult, but it’s an hour+ of my day I’m not doing something else to get ready.
75% of the requests came from the same department, in the same university, in one European capitol. What is going on there?
Bonus rant:
What the fuck is up with US visas? We’ve had people cancel because they still don’t have their visa, when they started the application process in October. They’re not being denied, just black holed. Silence.
I’m in a meeting that I want to end early so I have time to get lunch before my next meeting. But every time we’re done with the agenda and the meeting should be ending, someone has to keep talking, so the meeting ends at the usual time. Are these aliens in human suits? I don’t understand why people do this.
Might spread this out over several posts in this thread.
I work building services for an office tower. Basically, I see all the submitted requests about temperature, burned-out lights, plumbing issues and so on, from a building filled with bankers and lawyers. Most of our tenants have “facilites managers” who don’t actually fix anything, but their job is largely just to pass on complaints via a work order app. So some of the typical stuff I get is like:
“Can you please adjust the temperature?”
(I phone them) “Is it too hot or too cold?” “I don’t know, can you just send someone up?” Like seriously, that’s the first thing homo sapiens got as a species, being able to sense temperature.
“Can you send someone up to check this washroom?”
(I phone them) “Is there something I can relay to the plumber? Is it a plugged toilet, leaking faucet, bunged-up flushometer, stall door sticking?” “Oh, I don’t know, I was just asked to get someone to fix it.”
I know some of the facilities guys have dingbat lawyers above them making dopey requests, but it still winds up crossing my desk. We had one firm that kept complaining about a specific toilet not flushing. Our plumber went up repeatedly, tested it twenty or more times per visit, and everything checked out. He brought the facilities guy in and demonstrated that the toilet was working flawlessly. Half an hour later, I get the call “He’s says it’s still not working for him, I’m sorry but I have to submit the work order again.”
The other fun toilet issue is when a tenant is so germ-phobic that they’ll layer two inches of paper towels onto the toilet seat when using the john, knock it all into the bowl before they flush, then complain that their toilet is always getting plugged. “Yeah, and our plumber extracts a wad of paper towel the size of a teenaged raccoon from the line twice a week, any ideas how that gets in there?”
I’ve been here a long time…I could rant about specific calls until the heat death of the universe arrives…
Perhaps for the last item, you could provide those thin paper “ass gaskets” as i like to call them.
If you’ve ever been able to get one of those to stay in place to fulfill it’s purpose, you’re a better shitter than I.
We had the same issue where I worked, where one of the toilets always backed up. It was narrowed down to one particular engineer from India who admitted to be very afraid of catching HIV (or AIDS) or some such, caught in the act of placing layers of brown paper towels on the toilet seat and then trying to flush them. The problem stopped with a little education about how diseases propagate, plus a sign stating “DO NOT FLUSH PAPER TOWELS”.
They’ve rolled out a new purchasing system at work that does not work. My job often involves buying things. I cannot do that right now. I am deeply frustrated. I have a VERY IMPORTANT purchase order I need to put in very soon. AHHHH
I understand that my company operates in a different time zone to my clients. But do my clients understand my company operates in a different time zone?
Just got a meeting request for 19:30 (local time). And I have to attend.
It is online, but… this is the time I am putting the kids to bed, or at least trying. It is well out of working hours.
My calendar is set to show both time zones, so I wont schedule a meeting at 06:30 (their time) by mistake.
This should not have taken two weeks. All I want is the T1 transceiver card in slot 20 of a TL-1000 wired to port 1/5/26 of the TA5K. This is a simple wiring job that any network tech should know how to do. I understand that the CLR has gobblety-gook for the DSX assignment on the TL-1000 side, but because I’m at a desk in Nashville and not in the switch sie in Oklahoma, I cannot provide what it should be. The field tech will need to look at the box and see if it is labelled, If it is not, the they will have to trace it out, which sucks but it’s got to be done.
For the last two weeks, the FT has been sending me pictures of all sorts of unrelated equipment in his effort at tracing out the wiring. Today he sent me a photo of the front of the TL-1000, and guess what is labelled right there in a nice, easy to read tag?
I understand out company shitcanned a lot of our more experienced FTs and allowed even more to retire (They’ve work hard for decades; they deserve it.), but would it have been too much to ask for us to train their replacements? So much institutional knowledge has gone poof.
A Big Name Consulting Firm has been running a project to make us more efficient and effective.
They asked us to rename the Weekly Touchbase meeting to Weekly Sync meeting.
Nothing else changed about the meeting. Nothing.
I disagree. Now rather than touching base with each other, you are all syncing with each other. A world of difference.
And it rhymes with Weekly Sink, which may be apropos.
Weekly Stink?
People who don’t pay attention in meetings and repeat things that have already been said annoy me, like sand in my underwear.
I also hate people who talk too much so other people don’t get a chance to say anything, and keep repeating things they’ve already said before. These meetings are tiring because we frequently get new people, and they make the same suggestions people have made before, and I have to explain again why we can’t do that.
Yeah, sometimes I feel like I have to raise my hand like I’m in third grade. Sure we go around the ‘table’ and everyone can say their piece, but sometimes you can’t comment on anything someone else says.
The worst where personnel board meetings. The person would look at whatever notes they had made about there department, look at the table and mumble the notes. I guess they are really shy or something. For god sake, there are 15 people here, project, speak up.
I’ll do that and people will still control the conversation and the managers let them so the message is: Be polite and get left behind.
It went wrong the exact way I said it would go wrong if you didn’t follow my directions, but you didn’t read my directions? Or pay attention in the meeting when I said the same thing?
Dad mode: I didn’t say those things just to hear myself talk (and I know I write long, boring posts here), but that long email and follow up conversation were full of useful information that you needed to do your job. Now things didn’t work for you, and I can’t fix it after the fact, because it’s too late. Which was also predicted in that email…