I wasn’t the leader. But I was tempted to point out that one would want to choose “business call” as the expense report justification if using one’s pro card, as the breathy lady helpfully informed us “all credit cards accepted”.
Back when cardfile was a thing on Windows I had all my tech support contacts set up in it. One day I went to call support for one of the products I used and managed to call the 800-xxx from the voice line and the final 4 digits from the fax line. Turned out it was a breathless young lady wanting to talk about her “firm young body, all credit cards excepted”
Imagine my disappointment when I realized they hadn’t outsourced their tech support. 
Oh yeah… Work rant.
I miss cardfile.
I’m always amazed at how fucking clueless people can be on conference calls.
We had a CFO level call in the SuperMegaCorp I worked for with several hundred people on the line and every 30 seconds for about five minutes he and other managers are making increasingly angry statements about the person WASHING DISHES with their phone apparently right next to the sink.
How do you not notice that people are talking about you and the noise you’re making?
On another call we got to hear part of someone’s toilet business before a comment was made about being sure to mute all phones and it went silent.
Then there’s the “stop and play with the kids while I’m calling in from home” stuff.
Damn it, learn how to mute your lines.
Edit to add: Was also on two calls for SuperMegaCorp where we just gave up and closed down the line to open another one because they couldn’t get the noisemaker to stop.
Most modern CC apps allow the host to mute people (although with lots of people on a call, it can be hard to find the culprit). And I don’t know how long ago you worked for SuperMegaCorp
My current customer has decreed that site shared folders must now move to the cloud. Instead of folders, we will now have stuff organized by subject. Each factory’s shared drive is being migrated to a different chunk of white fluffy sky.
Oh… every file in each site will be accessible by everybody from that particular factory. My crystal ball predicts a raise in the amount of thumb drives found around the factories.
I work in a vet clinic. We have a computer on top of a rickety old desk in the back near the employee lockers that we use for entering visit notes. The “keyboard tray” is actually set up like a nesting table - completely separate from the desk top. The wheels are old and stick, and there’s a mat on the floor that they get stuck on some times. Monday, I was adjusting the keyboard tray for me to use, and my co-worker’s vape fell down. (I don’t know if it was on the desk or the filing cabinet next to it.) I told him about it as soon as I saw him, and explained what happened. I guess it was broken, and unable to be fixed (I really don’t know - he couldn’t get it to light.) So instead of being a grown up and either taking responsibility for leaving an expensive ($125) and fragile object on a rickety desk or kindly asking if I would be willing to help pay for a replacement, he started getting all huffy and passive aggressive.
Well, this was really expensive - like $125.
…
And it can’t be fixed.
…
ARE YOU GONNA FUCKING PAY FOR IT OR NOT???
I stopped, tilted my head, looked him straight in the eyes and said No.
So he did what he always does and threw a tantrum and stormed out of the building. He came back in, but if you were to hear his side of the story, I maliciously slammed it on the ground and stomped into a million pieces while laughing maniacally and refused to give him a dime. But if HE would have broken something of MINE he would have been flinging cash out of his pockets at me to cover the cost and begging for penance.
Our supervisor was trying to stay impartial and suggested that it would be nice if I at least offered to help cover the cost. So I said that if he had approached me like an adult and ASKED instead of demanding and cursing at me that I might have. But I don’t reward tantrums. And besides, he’s the one that left something delicate and expensive in an unsafe location.
He’s 24 and lost is part-time job due to … blowing up at a supervisor and cursing at them. (They did screw him over but that’s not an appropriate response.)
Holy crap, now my workplace complaint seems petty! I don’t even leave my ancient iPod sitting out on my own desk…I can’t imagine leaving something that pricey on a common surface. Back when vaping was permitted here, I do remember that our resident vapers tended to leave all of their gear and liquids neatly displayed in a prominent place on a desk or table. Was this guy trying to show off his latest purchase?
Anyway…a customer service rep has been worrying the hell out of me over a repaired part. It seems that the customer can’t find the serial number on the repaired item, and even though I’ve never seen this particular part in person (either before or after repair), I’m supposed to know exactly where the serial number is now located. I know where it’s supposed to be (and that surface was “faced” as part of the repair, meaning that the serial number was probably ground off), but beyond that, customer service needs to speak to the guy who actually witnessed this part being repaired. Apparently, customer service is incapable of either picking up the damn phone or selecting the appropriate email address from the contact list, because the guy keeps asking me about this elusive serial number. How many times do I have to tell him that I don’t know where it is either, because I’ve never seen the damn part!
I’m listening to a GoToMeeting right now. Or trying to. The audio SUCKS. I don’t know if it’s them or the speaker/microphone. I switched from computer audio to phone and it got no better.
BAH.
I wonder if you’ll see IT come up with the same solution our IT department implemented when we got locations in India and China: they were worried about people downloading proprietary information and selling it off for industrial espionage… so no one can download files to any external device. We can, though, upload any damn thing we want, without restriction. Like, viruses or malware. And can email any file we want, to anyone.
But no thumb drives, at least.
Are they able to print out the same information and then theoretically sell the print-outs? Are they able to upload information to cloud storage providers like DropBox and the like?
Yes on printing stuff out. DropBox specifically is blocked, but I’d bet other cloud storage is accessible. (the work firewall is… quirky. sometimes it blocks. sometimes you refresh it when you’re blocked, and it lets you through. so you can probably get through to cloud storage.)
Ah, fail-open policies. 
I just found out that Customer Service Guy won’t contact Quality Guy because he’s afraid of Quality Guy… specifically, he doesn’t like the way Quality Guy will sometimes raise his voice a bit when he’s excited about something. (It should be noted that Customer Service Guy’s supervisor goes into full screaming fits over every little thing on a daily basis… Quality Guy is nothing by comparison.)
Also, the serial number has been located. Yay.
Sounds like a royal asshat, but if you want to offer an olive branch, or even just a twig, my first guess would be that the coil is loose or broken. Not a major thing as they are one of the consumable parts and are usually designed to be easily replaced.
I’ve complained about this coworker before. He is a very intelligent and capable maintenance guy. He does really good work and is really helpful. But I can’t seem to do a single thing right by him. Everything I do is never quite right by him. And I try so hard to take his critism constructively, but then I’ll have just done some other thing wrong. Everything us engineers buy is just wrong and he has to make it work and he hates it. I can’t make him happy about anything.
So I asked for his help for a hot second to make sure I buy the right trolley for a beam he installed. I had done some research but I wasn’t sure it was right. He emailed me this morning with the same model of trolley I was looking at. I replied that it was the same one I was thinking of and that I found a supplier that can get it for us. When I saw him next, he chewed me out for making him waste his time, spending an hour doing research. Well, fuck. I guess I just can’t win.
I don’t mean to make out him out to be the villian. He’s stretch super thin. We are now down two maintance techs and he’s picking up a lot of the slack. But, damn.
And I know if I talk to my boss about it, he’ll tell me that, while the maintenance guy is wrong to be so mean all the time, I just need to grow thicker skin.
But you didn’t make him do research. He chose to do his own research. He could have given you a list of specs, or asked what had you found. Instead, he chose to go to bed with a diaperless baby, now he’s complaining he woke up wet.
I asked Spain if we can borrow that (is that a real idiom over there? It’s wonderful).
He ended up taking it in to be looked at and replaced it … with a $160 vape that he now keeps in his locker, approximately 3 feet from the problem desk.
Yep, we have one of these in the testing department where I work…he has nothing but pure disdain for the entire engineering department for some reason. (He’s also a misogynist pig, so I have to deal with that on top of the engineer-hating.) I’ve witnessed him intentionally starting an argument with the engineering manager just because he objected to the use of a mirrored image in an illustration in a test procedure. This procedure had been written in about 30 minutes for an emergency job; the mirroring did not affect the legibility of the text on the drawing, had no impact on correct interpretation/performance of the procedure, and simply resulted in the outline of the part looking a bit odd.
ETA: Historically, our largest vendor and our own draftsmen have taken certain “artistic liberties” with official drawings, many of which are still used in our procedures and documents today. This isn’t the first time the testing department has encountered a sketch that doesn’t look exactly like the part they’re supposed to be testing.
Well, I changed it a little. It’s public domain, you’re welcome to it.
El que con niños se acuesta, mojado se levanta - those who get into bed with children get out of bed wet.