Boss, I get that most of our “Night People” are young people who probably ran away home this holiday weekend. But it’s hard to get things back on an even keel when you keep moving people’s schedules around, always in the direction of “come in early”. We need a few Night or at least Afternoon people to run around finding toys and things for people.
Also, I’m not exactly enthused about coming in at 5 am tomorrow. Although it does make sense . . .
(Retail. Store is more Grocery than than type of Store that really has Blow-Out Black Friday Sales. But, we’ve got enough things on Black Friday sale prices, that yes, someone needs to come in and take down the signs, and hang the price tags for the remaining 4 day ad. Still, not enthused).
On the plus side, Boss agreed with me that I didn’t need to hang tags that are only good till tomorrow, as long as there was a sign nearby that listed the Black Friday Price.
You are seriously part-time (often work ten hours a week).
I am full-time.
This has been a more or less typical holiday week-- not enough employees, too many customers, some balls got dropped.
I do NOT NEED you to explain which balls got dropped (with occasional “it’s not your fault because they have you juggling all these other balls”).
You do your work, I’ll do mine.
[note to peanut gallery-- yes, part-time people can have information full timers don’t, especially if they were in the right place at the right time. In this case, though, . . . honestly, co-worker has a bad case of liking to hear himself talk, mixed with a desire to be more vital to the function of the store/department than would be good for us given how few hours he’s actually available. And my temper is short today, because I had to be there early, because of Black Friday related price changes.]
I’ve got a brand spankin’ new trainee this week. TPTB expect her to be halfway up to speed when they set said trainee solo next week. This is an impossibility given that 1) trainee has never done this type of work before, and 2) comparing her to me with 25+ years’ experience is extremely unfair IMO. I told trainee re #2 that I’m not expecting miracles because it’s all new, and yes, I thank god you’re a quick learner compared to others I’ve trained, but that doesn’t mean you’re the new savior.
My manager and assistant have taken a hands-off approach other than to ask trainee how everything’s going. On the one hand it says a lot about their trust in me. OTOH it also says a lot about passing off tasks neither of them want to do.
The store I’m working in has been getting several trainee managers and assistant for different branches lately, just for a few weeks, presumably so their future staff don’t get to see them messing up simple stuff while they’re learning. Fair enough, except… they keep sending idiots.
The guy at the moment appears to think the sun shines out of his arse, while utterly failing to show even basic common sense. A sensible answer to “Hey, can I just get thing needed to serve customer, that you’re standing right in front of, blocking access while ignoring said customer?” Is not a cheery “Oh, you get what you like!” While not moving.
Common sense would indicate that if “Bob” is in charge of me and you, you don’t get to tell me to stop doing what “Bob” asked me to do, and do what he asked you to do instead. Especially when “Bob” is standing right freaking there looking at you like you’re an idiot.
Oh, and this conversation, with me, a virtual stranger? Just… No.
“You have a housemate baffled look, what, are you a student or something?!”
“Uh, no? It’s really common round here to share, it’s so expensive. Though actually, technically, he’s my landlord, he owns the house”
“Oh. So are you sleeping with him then?”
What. The. Fuck.
I’m glad he fucks off to annoy and offend another branch soon. Poor sods working there though.
I work at a veterinary clinic and we recently hired two new people. The new receptionist and office manager (who has been there 2+ years) were discussing the schedule. We have VERY strict policies involving overtime - basically, you are supposed to watch your hours so you don’t get any. However, the person who makes the schedule put the new receptionist on for more than 40 hours in one week. In discussing this issue, the Office Manager comes out with this gem: “Oh, well it’s your responsibility to watch your hours and make sure you don’t go over.” I gave her my best WTF face and said “How does that make sense? Why not make it the responsibility of the schedule maker to, you know, NOT scheduled people for OT??” She didn’t like that very much. Now we are getting a reminder memo about how OT isn’t “acceptable” unless approved by the DVM.
Been there. I’ve been on major projects installing new computer systems for external companies where we performed “train the trainer” about 6 months before they got to use said new system. For those who may not be familiar with this concept, train the trainer means that we’ll train a laughable tiny fraction of your staff and then they can then train the rest of your staff. It’s a lovely concept that blithely ignores the fact that your “trainer” students are rarely experienced trainers, so if they do manage to pass on any information it’s close to a miracle. And then the 6 month lead time allows people plenty of time to forget that little bit of knowledge they were able to glean.
My workplace rant is this:
I’ve noticed a trend in the last decade of my career: I start a job with all the enthusiasm of a new hire, and then around the 2-year mark I have learned enough about the company to fully understand why it’s so screwed up. Case in point, the current gig. Although we do software development, we don’t have any understanding of project management. Well, actually, our IT department does have some process and organization. They’re fine.
But the product development team that I work on - all business analysts and other business folks, haven’t a clue. We write a lot of documentation, from designs to software requirements to end user documentation. But because there’s no concept of project management, our projects are very loosey goosey. There’s no ownership of tasks let alone a whole project. Bob tells Sally it’s her job to do $task. Sally disagrees, and whoever loses the argument gets to do $task. Sometimes Bob and Sally each think $task is theirs and then they fight over it. Sometimes Bob and Sally disagree strongly on what the best design is, but there’s no owner to call the shots. In this case, they take it to each of their managers and then THEY argue. Eventually consensus might be reached, but if not then the project languishes. Projects start because upper management promises our external customers something, and then they toss it into the air and assume that it will get done.
When I suggested a little project management might be helpful I heard “we don’t need nuna that, wut you need that fer, herp derp?”
I work in a small office. We have 1 real conference room. We have had an electronic sign-out system for it for probably the last 8-10 years.
Two weeks ago I was getting ready to do a webinar in our conference room when my boss rushed in and said “I have a meeting starting in a 1/2 hour and forgot to sign out the conference room!” I replied that I had a webinar in 15 minutes and I didn’t forget to sign out the conference room. He rushed out the door and made some other arrangement.
Yesterday he mentioned to me that he has a meeting at 2:00 today with a bunch of people coming in. I didn’t tell him that I already had the conference room booked for a meeting at that time. I figure I’ll let him run in and freak out again.
I’ve been on this job since mid-Sept, and it was closing in on late Oct before I got computer access and the necessary training. But it’s engineering drafting. I was an engineer for 26 years, plus I’ve had 2 temp jobs as a drafter since retiring, so I’m pretty good at making pretty pictures. And I work fast - it’s just the way I am.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to the boss asking for work because I was out of things to do. Most recently, last week, I told him I needed work. Nothing. Then a few things that needed to be revised came back, so I was partly busy again. Yesterday, I told him again and a couple of hours later, he gave me a list of drawings to do. I had them all finished by early this morning, but he was at a meeting, so I left him a note asking for more to do. Still waiting - I’m posting this during my lunch break.
I can’t just sit. I took this job because I want to work. I don’t appreciate waking before 5 and getting to the office before 6 just to twiddle my thumbs. Today especially, I could have used the extra sleep.
When I was in training, I heard some of the engineers complaining about the drafting backlog, so I figured I’d be busy. Yeah, right. I’ve pretty much decided to get my resume out there again. I’ve heard tell of one place that has a backlog and just lost a drafter - if they can match what I’m paid here, I’ll probably jump ship.
FCM, I’m in that situation right now, and it’s not likely to get much busier with the O&G business slowing down so much. But I’m not going to jump ship, the pay and benefits are too good. So I’ll sit here and get paid to read TheDope.
Fortunately, my bennies are thru my retirement, and while the pay is nice, it’s not my primary reason for working. I wanted to do something other than surf on line like I was doing at home… Anyway, my resume went out last night. We shall see. Meanwhile, I’ve been in the office for 90 minutes and I’ve had maybe 5 minutes worth of work to do so far.
Most people dread political discussions with relatives…I dread going to work and having to listen to a certain co-worker who likes to start his day by showing up in the office of one of the project engineers and loudly complaining about things that are wrong with America. I can hear him through two walls, a cube divider, and a set of decent ear buds. >.<
Another day, another Annoying Coworker story. We had a meeting today (one of many, so I got almost no real work done). I feel bad for my coworker who was running the meeting because we started the meeting talking about a part of this project that affects me, and we spent too much time on that, partly because Annoying Coworker and Whiny Coworker sidetracked the discussion into things we shouldn’t have even been talking about at that meeting. Annoying Coworker doesn’t like the way we’re doing something that she has absolutely nothing to do with, and she demanded that we do it a different way that would make my job harder, take more time, and make my products worse. Of course my supervisor respects her input much more than mine, so she’s probably going to want to start doing things that way, at which point I might say take this job and shove it. Whiny Coworker doesn’t like that a project isn’t being done the way he wants it done (which is mostly problematic because I’m the only one that actually ever does any work on that project, and I don’t have time to do it the way he wants it done).
Other small gripes: People who want to schedule a meeting, so I give them a nice selection of times that I have open, and they won’t pick a time, so I end up picking a time for them, and of course when the meeting time comes, they’re tied up doing something else so they can’t come to the meeting. Just pick a damn time. I’m tired of this. Also, people who don’t read emails, so I have to keep asking them to redo something even though all the information they needed was in the email. I don’t even want to go to work tomorrow. :([URL=“http://boards.straightdope.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/”]
A couple of years ago, a major tenant moved out of my office building, leaving 3/4 of it empty. The vacancy has since been filled up with many small businesses, including techie start-up kinds of businesses. The building demographic has skewed from stodgy older accountant types to young glued-to-cellphone, hacky sack-playing types.
My building has a four-story parking garage for the office workers. Our new younger demographic are crappy drivers and we’ve had a few accidents and near-accidents in the parking garage.
So building management has constructed lots of speed bumps in the garage. A good idea, you might say, but they’re horrible. There are far too many of them, they’re steep and abrupt rather than smooth, and they’re made of cheapo crumbly asphalt. The painted yellow stripes have worn off in just two weeks, and the asphalt is crumbling away and scattering gravel all over the garage.
Drivers of low-clearance sports cars are scraping when they go over the bumps. I drive a higher-clearance car with light truck tires, and I feel like I’m going offroad when I drive in our garage. Everyone’s complaining about getting paint chips from kicked-up gravel.
I’ve said that if she was put in charge of airline pre-flight checks, she would have the pilot personally walking the plane and checking off that each passenger was correctly buckled in. Then, in the middle of the flight, she’d notice that someone was unbuckled and call the pilot over the PA, for everyone to hear, and ask if he had checked that individual passenger or not.
She tried to tell me and my boss that I needed to do a specific process in a way that would take about 5 times longer, catch very few additional errors (of no consequence) and ensure that I’d never get the job done. Boss started to back her up. Then I pointed out that I was the only one who had ever done that process for the last several years and that neither she nor anyone else on the team had done it for almost a year before I picked it up. So if she wanted it done that way, then I expected that she would start handling it herself. Otherwise here’s my process and I’m doing it this way as long as I’m the only one doing it.
Doesn’t count; that’s the fault of using the browser instead of an independent interface for some application that needs to be validated. Most people at my company have at least two browsers, one for the validated application(s) and others for actually going on-line safely and efficiently.
I’d count that, since it sounds like Spice Weasel’s company (and mine!) won’t permit the installation of that second browser.
Honestly, I’d be happy just with an upgrade to IE11; we’re stuck with IE9, and more and more websites are (rightfully) refusing to work with such an old browser. Nothing mission-critical yet, though.