This is supertiny, but the project I’m starting on Monday was supposed to be “for three months”. It’s 7 weeks across 3 months. Either the agents or yours truly need a new dictionary. Methinks the next job will be with a different agency.
My company has an extremely long and difficult capital approvals project. Most of the time, for most people in the company, this isn’t a problem because they both don’t need to have capital projects approved and they have someone local to complain at when it takes a long time for projects to happen, usually me.
For me, though, it is a big problem. I’ve had a big (for me) project in the works for nearly two years. This project will upgrade some safety equipment. The current equipment isn’t broken now but there are no guarrantees we can fix it the next time it breaks. We almost couldn’t fix it the last time it broke. Before my old boss retired, we went back and forth on the scope of this project and how we wanted to sell it. I’ve had this investment application written and re-written and re-worked and re-revised a gajillion times.
But, finally, we submitted it for approval… only to have the approval system break entirely. So I go back and forth with the accounting people who “own” this system to get it fixed and, after two months, it finally gets approved. And with only seconds to spare on some preferred pricing I was able to secure.
So I put in the PO requisition, send an email to all the concerned parties to approve it ASAP, letting them know I got competitive bids and the time sensitive nature of this requisition… It’s been a week and they still haven’t approved it yet.
GGRRAAHHHHHHHH :mad:
Every year, we get yelled at for not spending enough money. Every year, I try to explain why it is difficult to spend money here. No one seems to get it.
Rant one: Dear coworker, please shut up. For the love of all that is good, shut the ever loving fuck right up. I’ve been here 3 hours and I don’t think you’ve taken a breath. And why me? Why am I the lucky recipient of your pointless blather? I do not care that you canned 30 quarts of corn. I do not care where you worked yesterday. I. Do. Not. Care. At one point, I just got up and walked away from her… she followed. She talks to a client (which I can hear clearly, being in the cube next to her) and she then feels the need to come over and rehash the call.
Rant two: I now specialize in a legal process for our area. In order to begin this legal process, I have to review each case with an attorney. At first, I was taking the referrals to whatever attorney was consult for the day. I was then approached by one attorney, requesting I work one-on-one with her, as she’s their topic expert. Fine. Monday morning I gave her 15 referrals. That’s quite a bit, but she would have them ready for me this morning. Nope. I should have reminded her yesterday. Why should I have done that? It’s a 2" stack of dead tree - you can’t miss them. Then we had to do our weekly go around as to why I am not in office every day. Seriously, at least once a week I have to remind her I am only in office a small percentage of the time. I’ll work with you, if you work with me.
I once worked with a woman who literally followed me into the bathroom at the end of the day when she knew I was going home in order for her to ask me a question that could have waited until the next day. And instead of just asking me the question, which only needed a simple yes or no answer, she insisted on giving me 15 minutes of background information, none of which I needed to know (or knew already) and which wouldn’t have affected the answer in any case.
Lucky for us, she was a contractor and we got rid of her after a month. Not so lucky, the HR people hadn’t looked at the contract carefully enough and were forced to “take her back” for an additional two months because they hadn’t included some usually standard clause about being able to terminate early if she didn’t work out well. Lucky for the engineers (who *refused *to work with her) and the other writers, they put her to doing random secretarial stuff in the HR department until the contract ended.
I’m a legal secretary. I get this, too. No matter how many times I remind an attorney of something they need to attend to (verbally and by putting a robot reminder on their Outlook calendar), they’ll still blow it off if they want to. And then try to blame me for not reminding them enough.
I love this thread because I always think “Ok, my job’s not TOO bad. At least I don’t have to…”
Today I can end this with “…work with lawyers!”
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Agile/Scrum is the devil. In theory it should be great, but NOBODY actually does it right in practice.
On our network is this one program which is the root for pretty much all other programs. This one program has been down four times this month, once for four fucking days! Just went down again an hour ago.
Hey, IT, this is obviously a very important program. Why can’t you keep it working?
ETA: we’re one of the few Federal agencies still on a production system and with awards for performing over what is required. No work = no credit for those hours = suffering performance across the board.
I’m just so fucking done with this project.
I am doing an installation of safety equipment on warehouse racks. The racks are in use because we are a business that is still running, still making product and still shipping it. We don’t work in an industry that does real shutdowns and, even then, we wouldn’t be able to just empty all the racks out because our product is flammable and can’t be stored just anywhere.
So I talk to the warehouse manager and supervisors and they tell me weekends and nights only. I go to my contractor and they agree. The first weekend, the contractor sends complete idiots. They get practically nothing done.
I complain to my contractor and we agree to try both Saturday and Sunday to see if we can get more done. (Note: We run 24/5 and when the plant isn’t running, contractors need a company employee in the building with them. That employee is me.) So we skipped a weekend due to planning issues and the following weeked we try to do 12s both days. The contractor sends new people but they, again, are idiots and barely get anything done. The lifts “break” and they go home early on Sunday.
The following weekend, the contractor apologizes profusely and asks me to have more space cleared out so that he can really impress me or something. I say no and that they can do what is prepared. We don’t have space to store all the stuff we are moving anyway so we all just have to deal. The weekend comes and they sent in their A team. These guys finish in 2 hours what the other crews finished all weekend. They run out of work in 6 hours and we are unable to keep up. The A team was unwilling to wait so they left then while I started working on getting them on overnights when we would have more people to support them.
Finally, overnights are agreed to and they send yet a different crew to work from 6 pm to 2 am. The first night, I stay late to get them started and leave. I come in to find not much was done but I was hopeful that this would be better. The next three nights were the same, with some re-work having to be done as they didn’t get it right the first time. I’m not entirely happy but progress is (sort of) being made.
The next week (this week) comes and they don’t show up on Friday. They get some work done on Tuesday and again do things wrong. Yesterday, they show up and pull down their wrong stuff, leave a fire line unsupported, get in a shouting match with my maintenance guy, one of them gets sick and then they all leave early. I got to find out about this this morning when I came in 10 hours ago.
Now, I’m sitting at my desk, having been yelled at by THEM (the contractor) for being unreasonable, for not having things prepped the way they would like and for the drama of last night. I try to smooth things over but I have honestly had it. If these guys don’t show up next week, I will not shed a single tear.
Like I said before, I am so fucking done with this project.
Why did I suddenly get the impression you are a woman?
One of my favorite coworkers moved out of state last year but recently came back. There were a few policy changes she needed updating on and prices have changed but she got back into the swing of things very quickly and 99% of the time she is a joy to have around. But tonight I was NOT pleased. I’m a registered veterinary technician who works at the front desk. This means I can intercept ~75% of the phone calls and emails that come in so the other techs and doctors have less to deal with and the people calling in with questions can get an answer right away. Overall, it’s been great! I’m scheduled out at 5 on Thursdays because of a standing weekly appointment with our counselor. Today, the doc gave me a stack of about 10 clients to call with updates, estimates, results, etc. So while I was working on that, the old / new gal was up front by herself. However it’s NOT that hard at the end of the day on Thursday - the doc leaves at 2 so there’s time to get things done. BUT today, instead of answering the phone when it rang, she just let it go to voicemail and deep cleaned the reception area. That’s all well and good, but I’m not supposed to leave until all of the messages are answered. So when I was done with my calls for the doc at about five after, there were eight voicemails that needed to be called back. And of course the phone just keeps on ringing as well. So I ended up getting out of there about 5:45 instead of 5. Thankfully, we didn’t have an appointment tonight otherwise I would have been late. And I don’t think the paperwork for morning check ins was prepped either! At least, she’s the one who will have to deal with that in the morning because I’m not in until 9.
I mentioned this to the front desk supervisor and she said she had NO idea that the other lady was ignoring calls while she was cleaning! So hopefully that was discussed after I left. Going forward, I CANNOT stay past 5.
Wow, how’d ya guess? I am a lady. But I’m also not a stereotypical lady in that I’m tall, muscular and just generally large. While I’ve had contractors and coworker disrespect me, I don’t think I get as much as other women in my field.
It got worse this morning. I left work about two hours into their shift (they are working the off shift and I can’t work the day and night shift.) When I left, things were tense but working. This morning, I found that, not only did they not finish work that we had prepared, one of the two workers disappeared for four hours last night.
I have already sent the email to my boss suggesting that we be done with these jerks.
I completely understand that my company is trying to be eco-friendly, and as part of the efforts, in order to save paper, all of our printers are programmed to print “double-sided” as default.
But, the majority of documents printed are meant to signed and then scanned / faxed to third-party recipients.
It’s not an obvious option, and people usually forget to change it. So, more often than not, a co-worker goes to the printer, sees that their multi-page document is basically non-transmittable, and they go back to their computer, select “single side only,” and print it again.
This “cost-saving” plan means that we’re wasting up to 50% more paper than we would otherwise, but due to the size of the company, I don’t see this policy changing any time soon.
“I try to smooth things over …”
Hey, I’m a smoother-over’er, and I’d feel terrible if I got yelled at. And I’m a guy…
A guy who just chopped down a tree with a Sawz-All, I’ll have you know. In a flannel shirt and steel-toe work boots, with a non-artisanal beer in my back pocket.
Why would they not take your password, even after you changed it?! Ridiculous!
A software bug. I saw a case where you could enter a password of any length, but the program only used the first 15 characters to log in. That info was buried deep in the documentation - there was no way regular users would know that. If your old pw was LongestPassword and your new one LongestPassword123 the new password checker would flag them as different and save the long password. But the sign in code only passed the first 15 characters to the password checker code so your password never matched, and you could never log in.
“I hate computers,” says everyone I know who works with computers.
After they yelled at you for being unreasonable for expecting contractors to work?
To echo another poster, I hate forced socialization at work - whether it’s Christmas/holiday parties, “social” lunches, etc. I go to work to work, not to socialize. These things are pointless. And, contrary to some people’s belief, co-workers are NOT your friends.
So, to all the managers that have forced me to go to Christmas/holiday parties, lunches, etc. over the years - you can happily go fuck yourselves.