New and Unimproved Workplace Rants

The BBQ Pit
1241

Part of my job is data entry. There are two ways to do this: a Windows program that is easy to use but is slowly becoming unstable and a web app that is very stable but more cumbersome. I pointed out that part of the Windows program started giving errors yesterday only to be told to use the web app instead but the software developers have been notified of the problem. This does not fill me with confidence.

As stated, the web app is cumbersome; it slows me down so I don’t get quite as much done as with the Windows program. When the web app was implemented, there was one code that hardly anyone could get to work. The developers said to use a different code until they could fix it, only they didn’t fix it and everyone impacted by the problem is still using the other code. I pointed this out to the guy who told me to use the web app today and he tried to pass this off as working as intended.

Sorry, guy, the second code was virtually never used until the web app wouldn’t accept the first one and the devs gave up on fixing it. I wanted to tell him, “You know I’m right. Just admit it” but decided to not push the issue.

1242

OMFG, yes we’re moving files off of Google Drive to a more secure server. No, you didn’t need to copy them to a thumb drive and then DELETE the Drive files - WEEKS before any changes are being made. Can we access the thumb drive now? Of course not! All those files are gone now. Some of them with years worth of data. Great job dumbass.

1243

This supposedly new system was installed on our computers and it crashes everyday :smack:

1244

I’d be happy to fill out that form that you just snottily told me I need to fill out. Is it in the new wiki, the old wiki, the division sharepoint, the team sharepoint, the intranet, TFS, the project Confluence install, the CA knowledgebase, or MS Teams?

1245

I just had someone ask me to convert and send a Google Spreadsheet as an Excel attachment to her email because she can’t figure out how to do it herself. How does someone that dumb have a job at all?? I didn’t do it. Replied to the request with directions. Maybe I should tell her I don’t know how to attach a file.

1246

Why do you ask? Do you need to know which cover sheet to attach?

1247

The cover sheet is on the old file server that’s sitting the closet at one of the branch offices, where it’s always been. What the fuck is wrong with you?

1248

Today I was chatting (via IM) with a coworker about how a project team that we’re both on contains some bad actors doing mean-girls-high-school crappy behavior and generating nasty internal politics. They’ve been doing weird stuff like making their own decisions in a closed room and then acting like the rest of us are refusing to get on board instead of simply being left out, and then using coded language to coerce compliance. For example, when normally we would say something like “we agreed on $X”, they started saying things like “we democratically agreed to $X”. The bizarre part of it is that this is coming from peers/bottom level workers like myself. Usually that kind of stuff comes from managers.

And then my coworker blew my mind by telling me it was even worse than all that… her manager has been making racist remarks to her (coworker is Indian) and another coworker (also Indian) behind closed doors with no witnesses. On multiple occasions. Holy fuck, that is NOT acceptable in a professional and multicultural environment. After picking my jaw up off the floor, I told her to document it and have coworker document. That shit needs to go to HR, stat. I also said that if she felt uncomfortable taking to HR in case the manager retaliates, to give me her documentation and I will take it to HR and tell them that my source is confidential under fear of retaliation. I suspect that HR will do the needful, especially if it comes from me, a white woman.

1249

Generally speaking, I prefer working in small businesses, with no complicated hierarchy or weird rules sent down from on high, but it does have some massive potential downsides. Currently, the owner manager (a high drama individual at the best of times) of the cafe I’m working in appears to be splitting up with his wife, who is the co-owner.

In the last week, he’s had at least a minor meltdown at me every day, (from spending 10 minutes telling me how much he hates his life and wishes he’d never been boooooorn to just vanishing without a word for half an hour). The basic summary of his complaints is that the job has taken over his life, and now it’s ruined his family life as well. This may well be true, but it is sort of ignoring the fact that they are choices he has made, the business is not actually some living all consuming entity that has chosen this.

On Tuesday his friend is coming in as a business partner to take over half the running on the place.
On Wednesday the problem suddenly was that the place was too small, and he was going to find bigger premises (not sure how that one was supposed to help).
Today told me he’s selling up, giving up on his wife and moving back to Turkey, where he’s from, with kids sans wife (uh, yeah, sure, because his wife wouldn’t argue with that at all and neither would the courts).
Oh, and he’s saying he’s going to fire the chef, his only long term employee, who is currently off sick, because he’s off sick. He apparently already did this once a year or so ago, and rehired him two weeks later because he couldn’t find a half-decent replacement prepared to put up with him.

I have no clue how he expects me to respond to any of these comments, or why the hell he keeps venting them at me (aside from anything else, even his extremely biased accounts are making me think his wife has a bloody good point). He doesn’t seem to be venting at the other waitress, though he did reduce her to tears yesterday by pointlessly being a jerk at her. He’s also turned down any ideas I’ve come up with to allow him to spend a full day with the kids, which he’s been ranting about not being able to do for two weeks. I even offered to come in free to cash up on Sunday so he could actually get a full day away* to spend with the kids or the wife or at a sodding strip club if that’d make him feel better, but nope. He’d rather just whine, and generally create an atmosphere that, in the words of one of the regular customers, you could cut with a knife.

The obvious solution is to look for another job, but I’m supposed to be moving away in another 3 months to become a student, so I doubt I’d be able to find anything suitable.
Besides, it all could be absolutely fine again in another week, he’s just that sort of person.

*I wouldn’t normally be this stupidly generous, but, though I don’t want to work for free, I’m not going to be there much longer so it can’t become a habit, and I’d much rather give up an hour of my day than work another week with an unexploded jerk.

1250

I’d let his wife know he mentioned taking the kids to Turkey. She needs to be on her guard about that kind of crap.

1251

I don’t really have a way to contact her. He did announce a timescale, and that bit wasn’t going to happen 'til next year, after he’d gone over and sorted out a place for them to live…

I mean, hes being a dumbass, but I don’t think he’d just grab them and try skip the country. They’re not little, they’re about 10 and 12, and I don’t think they’d happily go along with it either.

Plus, like I said, he’s basically changing his mind every day, and if I did get in touch with his wife to try and warn her, just the threat may well ruin any chance of this all blowing over, which I think it could still do.

1252

I make a living installing SAP (“implementing”, we call it). Production uses a structure called a “recipe”, which combines operational information (the instructions for the workers) with costing information (I don’t need to explain this one, do I?).

The current client is two parts: the Mothership has banned all talk of preparing master data until three weeks ago, now they want it loaded yesterday. Costing structures for production are not defined. The instructions for the workers are not defined (the Little Ship did not have such things in an electronic format, the Mothership scared the crap out of them by yelling “everything has to be in-system”, turns out they have a very strange definition of “everything”).

Question from the supposed Production expert from the Mothership: “why are the recipes not loaded yet?”

Uh… because we still don’t know if we’re making imbecile au jus or barbecued idiot.

1253

You have my sympathies. When I was a teenager, I worked in a mall food court, where the husband and wife were co-managers.

I only worked there for 6 months, but they were going through some major marital issues at the time, and they’d often disappear to the back to have their fights, leaving two / three employees (my best friend and myself, and a late-term pregnant twenty-something) at the counter.

I’ll never forget the Saturday where they were having a very loud fight in the office (where customers could hear it), and the pregnant woman went into premature labor. We were told my the couple to “deal with it” because they were busy.

So, my best friend drove her to the hospital, while I worked both sides of the “restaurant.” (It was a hybrid of two chains.)

I quit shortly after.

1254

Was the baby okay? Also, boy or girl?

1255

Implementing SAP? Now I REALLY feel sorry for you. I was trained as a superuser about a decade ago when an old company upgraded to SAP. Current company is going to AX, almost 2 years in, and just hit another delay. Best case scenario is another 15 months.

Today’s rant is brought to you by a mismanaged paint system, more specifically the wash booths and the haphazard upgrading done over the years. Automatic systems are overridden on a daily basis, leading to improper pH and concentration levels. Basic maintenance is avoided, leading to nozzles being misaligned or missing. A valve, for which I haven’t found a use, is dumping city water into the purified water pipes. Basically, a massive shitshow.

Given my previous work experience, I requested to look in to improving it during my goal-setting session with Boss. Two months ago, Grandboss gives the project of fixing the terrible paint system to another engineer, who promptly shat the bed. The entire cocked-up thing was dropped on my desk a couple weeks ago and promptly dropped in the trash - my experience with this particular co-worker is that his plans and solutions are mediocre at best, but generally a clusterfuck.

In a meeting yesterday to get a sense of what exactly the Grandbosses are expecting - I’ve found it easier to lock down goalposts this way - there was a desire expressed to move to a 5-stage wash from the current 3-stage. A sarcastic question of “Why not 7 stages?” got me the response “We can do that?”. No, no we cannot. We have sandwiched our paint line between fabrication and assembly, tied the conveyor into a Gordian knot, and left zero room for expansion. The only solution would be to rebuild the oven into the overhead space in fabrication and developing some wacky zigzag wash system, which will run to the ludicrous level of cost, and probably bring the owners down to figure out how much LSD we’ve been doing in the office.

The rest of the day was spent on the phone with an old boss, getting his contacts that built his 7-stage wash. My idea is to run the conveyor through the office, and the first part to run through being an engraved sheet of steel reading “Fuck this noise, I quit”.

1256

Well, bollocks. The chef handed in his notice yesterday.

This is not a complete surprise- he has an shit ton of health issues right now even without the extra stress from working with a guy in meltdown, but it’s going to make the situation even worse from my perspective. For a start, he’s by far the most sensible person there (and I’m including myself in that), and he’s worked with the boss for years, and is excellent at calming his weirder excesses, plus he’s a seriously nice guy that I really enjoy working with.

Aside from that, the big problem is that the boss is talking about not actually replacing him with another chef, but just doing all the cooking himself. He’s… OK… as a cook, but he’s pretty much just picked it up from watching, and he cuts corners, he’s erratic, not at all creative, and he clearly doesn’t even like doing it. He (mostly) enjoys being front of house, which no-one else can really do right, in his view.

The boss is also somewhat delusional about how good a cook he is. Standards (cooking and hygiene) are going to drop, and he’s not going to understand why he starts losing customers. It will probably somehow be the fault of whoever’s front of house. He currently cooks a few days a week, with half the prep done for him the day before, on the quiet days of the week. Several of the regulars check who’s in the kitchen, and, if he’s in, just order a soup. Some have even told me they do this. He is unaware of that fact.

If he actually does manage to find a decent chef that’s willing to put up with him, it’ll be OK. But, well, I’m not holding my breath.

The chef’s there for one more month, I am supposed to be there for 3. Not long enough to get another job, but longer than I think I can take working there if it’s as bad as I suspect it’ll be. Assuming the place manages to stay open that long. Ugh.

1257

Last week was not good, work-wise. My supervisor has asked me to take on a regular task that will affect my life outside of work. Also, it’s something I really, really hate doing, and on top of that, it’s frivolous and unnecessary. I want to say no, but I’m afraid that it would mean I would never get a promotion. I don’t think there’s really much of a chance that I’ll ever get a promotion. I think my co-worker that was hired much more recently who’s paid more will get a promotion in the next year, but I don’t really think there’s any chance that I’ll ever get promoted. :frowning:

In the past six months, I’ve been asked to do another task that affects my life outside of work. I said yes to that. I didn’t really feel like I had a choice. My supervisor has lots of ideas for things she wants to do, but we don’t have enough staff to do everything. I have my area of expertise, and I’m afraid that I will be doing less and less of that, and more things that aren’t in my area of expertise. I’ll have to turn down projects that would be more interesting and challenging, and where I might be able to learn some new skills. This sucks.

1258

It’s nice that you got to spend the weekend with your grandkid. We get it; you think he’s the cutest thing ever. But is it really necessary to repeat one of his little phrases seven times (I counted) in a single conversation? Seriously, if I have to hear “aw done gwendiddy” one more fucking time this morning I’m going to start screaming.

1259

Aw done gwendiddy!

Couldn’t resist.

So, what is it in non-toddler English? “I done get ready”? Oh, wait, don’t tell me that last word is supposed to be ‘grand daddy’… that means the old coot is repeating a cutesy term of endearment for himself. That triples the annoyment.

1260

I think it was supposed to be “all done, grand daddy”. I’m not sure at this point if “gwendiddy” is just toddler speak, or if the child is being encouraged to call this person “grendaddy” / “grendiddy”.