Heh heh.
There is a company around here called Flickingers, written in all caps. The kerning is amusingly tight
In comic books, where the captions were in all caps, they didn’t use the word FLICK.
Possible hack: if you have a colleague you trust, why don’t you stick your password post it at their desk and vice versa?
It takes seriously good reason* for me to trust my husband with passwords or similar, let alone co-workers I don’t know anywhere near as well. Considering that most places I’ve worked that even used such things have considered sharing that info a fireable offense, I’m not that trusting, thanks. 
- “Seriously good reason” is typically defined along the lines of “yes, he needs access to this too and setting him up with a separate one won’t suit the need”, such as our DoorDash or Amazon accounts, or passcodes for my phone or laptop, since it has happened he needs info off one of those when I’m not available to unlock it for him.
Sounds like you work with a rough crowd 
But good point about possible policies against this sort of thing
I have taped the first part of my password to the underside of my desk in case I forget it. The second part is easily remembered and not obviously associated with me. Think like 2g7YWQ!nt*j2o0Tabitha where Tabitha is my sister’s middle name.
The saga continues:
My PCP gave me a referral to the neurologist that Medtronic directed me to (a call to the neurologist’s scheduler revealed that the referral was necessary) last Thursday. On Saturday, they re-sent it electronically, tagged “Urgent,” so they could avoid a two-week wait for the scheduler to call me.
That Urgent referral hit their system this morning. When I called to learn this, I was told that I would be contacted in 3-5 business days 
. Fifteen minutes later, the PCP’s office called me to say that the neurologists in the movement disorder department are fully booked until July 2024. PCP is exploring going to a different facility, and the Medtronic rep confirms that his company is not locked into OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences University).
Another complication that might work in my favor, for a change: I have a pulse generator installed in each side of my chest. They were newly implanted with rechargeable batteries in June of 2022. For the last couple of months, whenever I palpate the one on the left, I get a mild electric shock in my right arm/hand and the right side of my face. When I spoke of this the the Medtronic rep, he agreed that this likely portends a problem with the pulse generator, and it does need to be evaluated. So that incentivizes Medtronic to find a way to fast-track this.
Still, TEN MONTHS? Fu-u-u-ck.
Somewhat simpler… In many offices there is a filing cabinet. Often, these cabinets are fixed to the wall with strong brackets to prevent them falling over and crushing someone.
Buy a birthday or christmas card with an annoying musical jingle that plays when you open it. Open it. Drop it in the crack behind the filing cabinet. These things last for months.
Bonus points if you can figure out how to affix it to the back of the drawer, so it only plays when the drawer is opened.
I am the Grants Manager of a medium nonprofit.
The first time I submitted this grant, my coworker, whom I shall call Cecilia, did not get me the information I requested until two hours before deadline. As a result, it was kind of a hasty grant, merely good, and good wasn’t good enough for that funder so we were rejected by 2 points.
We had an opportunity to meet in July over Zoom with the funder to review ways in which we could strengthen the application for the next round. During that meeting, which Cecilia managed to attend near the end, the funder said they would like to see an attachment with quotes for our requested equipment expenses. This would be Cecilia’s job.
On August the 17th, I sent Cecilia an email reminding her that I need quotes for all of the requested items, and that I need that information by August 27th for the grant due September 1.
No response.
On August the 26th I send a reminder email to Cecilia saying “Wednesday (28th) at the absolute latest.”
No response.
On August 30th I send a reminder to everyone on grants committee saying all requested materials MUST be sent to me by Friday noon or else they would not be submitted with the grant. Big bold letters.
No response.
Friday noon passes. No response.
I submit the grant without the requested quotes.
I am so tired of being patient with this woman. She is under a lot of stress and has had more than one job dumped on her due to people leaving our organization without a proper hand-off. She has ADHD. Well, so do I!
I can’t go to the CEO about it because she’s the one who promoted Cecilia and they are besties (which they did not disclose during CEO hiring process.) Every time I talk to Cecilia she’s so wound up and stressed, I end up trying to comfort her rather than explaining to her that she is seriously fucking up my ability to bring money into the organization.
I don’t know what to do. I’ve always had problems with people not getting things to me on time, but not to this extreme. Usually when I tell people way in advance of when I need something I get it late, but about when I actually need it. I’ve never had anyone completely fuck off and not get me anything and I’m absolutely dumbfounded. She almost fucked me over on the last grant, too. She’s also temporarily in the data reporting role and has been treating federal report deadlines like mere suggestions.
I’m really at my wit’s end. I don’t typically play office politics but the CEO is my number one support and I can’t afford to alienate her by bitching too much about her best friend. And I want to preserve the relationship I have with Cecilia, which is friendly and supportive, generally.
My only idea is to actually schedule this shit on her calendar. I know she looks at that daily.
I might not be the best person to give advice on this, because I’m very snarky, and I would probably email Cecelia and the CEO and point out that her not doing her job has lost you this grant.
I would say no to putting it on her calendar, because she’s an adult, and she needs to do her own job. You have your job, and you don’t need to be doing your job and other people’s jobs. The older I get, the less patience I have with people who don’t do work they should be doing, so their already overworked coworkers have to do that, too.
My question is, what is more important to you—good relationships with your coworkers, or bringing in money? I don’t think you can do both here, and it sounds like Cecelia’s going to end up causing some serious problems. Have you tried telling the CEO diplomatically that this is losing grants?
If you wrote in to askamanager.org with this problem, I think the advice might be to try to find out what the obstacles are to Cecelia getting you this information, and what needs to change so she can get this done. It might be a problem that has a solution. Or it might turn out that she’s doing other things when she should be working, or she’s really bad at time management. Does she not see your emails? Does she even read emails? Does she need a better system for managing emails? I actually used to have a coworker who didn’t read emails, and I’m not sure how he got away with that. If there’s not a solution and you want to stay in this job, then remind yourself that this is her fault, not yours, and you did all you could. I know that’s frustrating for you and you’re not getting the results you want after you put in so much hard work. Good luck with this, and I hope Cecelia gets what she deserves.
The same political crap happens where I work.
I have leared the hard way that personal relationships at work trump all else. So my solution is to not proactively say anything. But when someone asks me why such-n-such failed or is delayed, I will simply show them the documentation (emails, etc.) that shows what happened.
I’ve had the misfortune of working with a boss’s supposed “bestie” more than a couple of times. One common denominator with those besties was they believed only the top boss, their besty, could assign them tasks. Thus they always–and I mean 100%–blew off instructions from everyone else. Only thing that might work is a sit down with Cecilia with you and the boss during which the boss says to her your instructions are to be treated like his or she’s gone.
I’ve had some luck with general emails like “Look, we missed that grant because we didn’t have the parts in on time. And they LITERALLY SAID TO ADD QUOTES. And yet we failed to do that on the last submission. We ALL need to get things ready before the deadline from now on!”
eta: I might be deluding myself… maybe everyone thought “Oh, he’s dumping on Cecelia!”
(Well, everyone but Cecelia, who thought “Oh, an email. I should read that… eventually…”)
I’m don’t generally work on proposals as part of my job, but I have been involved in a number of proposal efforts over the years. The last couple I was involved with, the proposal lead scheduled daily Zoom meetings, no more than half an hour at the start of the day, to go over the schedule, get status updates, etc. It’s a great way to keep the entire proposal team on the same page. Everybody knows who is supposed to be working on what and when it needs to be done. Peer pressure can be a useful tool.
Latest news: My union steward told me over the phone that as a veteran, I’m entitled to be placed on administrative leave after fourteen days, so I felt a bit better about that.
On Friday, I managed to get a consult with a neurologist scheduled for November 28 (thanks to the efforts of my PCP’s front office, who contacted a different clinic). Knocking off eight months from the wait is nice, but still not ideal. Current plan is to contact every neurologist in Oregon (well, this corner) until I find one who can see me in September, then ask my PCP for a referral to them specifically. Today being a holiday, I still have to wait until tomorrow to make that attempt.
Back on the work front, I got awakened on Saturday morning by a phone call from my union steward, who admitted that he had overstated the requirement that I be placed on admin leave with pay (it’s an option, not a hard requirement, but we’ll still pursue getting it). He also told me that I can’t currently access any of my PTO hours. So, absent getting this situation resolved ASAP, my next source of money to my account is my Social Security check, being deposited on October 3.
On top of that, I got robbed at gunpoint yesterday (details in the September mini-rants thread. SPOILER ALERT: I’m fine).
Between work and my craptastic apartment complex, I’m about to have a meltdown. People at work think it’s okay to take over work that other people should be doing without even talking to the people who should be involved. Lots of big decisions have been made, and I keep finding out things that have been hidden. I don’t trust anybody, especially upper management. We’re hiring a new person who will be my supervisor (which has been delayed, so probably won’t happen until November at the earliest), and I’m terrified about that. I’ve had some really bad supervisors and I don’t want to go through that again. So today I finally completely ran out of patience. It’s good that I’m at home alone, because I’m very snappy. I feel like I really need to be medicated.
I’ve decided that the best thing for me to do now is to give up on everything and sit on the couch and eat thin mints.
Gah. Yes. There is a shit ton of moving pieces. I contacted one coworker who then called another. My call was just being considerate. “I plan on doing this, do you have any problems with it?” I gave them admin access to the 3rd party system so they could take a look at what I was talking about. They didn’t just take a look, they changed the setting at 9:30pm without clearing it with me.
There is a ton of work that has to be done first before this can even be considered. I’m in investigation mode. Looking for problems. They just flipped the switch with out contacting me. I was very PO’d.
this is more of a “shaking my head” than a actual rant. I am packing up my mothers apartment becasue of her passing. I would estimate that my mom had about 10 warm throws which is in addition to the 5 or 6 i already have myself. I doubt any of my family will want to take any as they arent really a sentimental thing. One of the departments at my job i work closely with wanted to do something nice for me due to my mom’s passing and bought me a nice fuzzy throw! along with a sleep mask and a card signed by most of them. It is really sweet of them and I thnked them profusely for thinking of me. But good grief, I am trying to get rid of stuff not accumulate more. I need to buy some cookies or something for them.