Rants: micro to middlin'

The BBQ Pit
181

[QUOTE=Sigmagirl]
No! That was very helpful advice! I wasn’t trying to be unappreciative of your advice. I mean to say that if sending proof of us living at the same address will get them to let us use the same code for both our devices, we will gladly send it – but they just seem so greedy that I doubt it will. We’ve already registered them both with the little cards that came with them, so I don’t know what more they would want.

My aggravation is directed at Garmin, not at you, Omegaman.
[/QUOTE]

Well you just have faith. It would be best if you could speak to a live person about this. Something else I’ve learned in my business is if you treat a customer well, they might tell a few people. If you treat one like crap they’ll tell everyone they know. I’m fond of presenting that little gem to persons who give me bad service. And if they get a tude’ I make sure I pass it along to their boss. And as sure as the sun rises every day, unless your Donald Trump, everyone has a boss. :wink:

182

Thanks. Yes, we’re trying to contact a live person; no luck so far, but it hasn’t been even a whole day yet.

OTOH, I did call the gas company today to ask a question about my bill, and after wading through a series of exasperating voice mail trees, I got a customer service person who gave me a reasonable and non-BS answer! I almost dropped the phone. I think I thanked her four times.

March gas bill = $168
April gas bill = $4

Go figure.

183

Fuck you, brain, for fooling me into thinking that my favorite guitarist had just released a new song!! Fuck you in the ass for me not realizing I was dreaming, even AFTER I woke up!! Fuck you in the ass with a dick made of fiberglass and razor blades for pointing and laughing at me once my Google search didn’t turn anything up!!

Fuck you, brain.

184

[QUOTE=Omegaman]
You should be happy about that. Mine always peter out after a page or two. Well I’ve only started a few threads so what do I know. You know what else, while I’m in here I wanted to say I like your moniker. With that and some of your posts in the past it gives me visual of you that just makes me smile. thanks, Roddy .
[/QUOTE]
Wow! Thank you (this is a first for me).
{{{Roddy blushing}}}

185

[QUOTE=Roderick Femm]
Wow! Thank you (this is a first for me).
{{{Roddy blushing}}}
[/QUOTE]

Shit, me too. :wink:

186

[QUOTE=The Lovely Margo Lane]
Ooh- semi related: I’m not a receptionist. I’m not an A.A. I’m not a personal assistant or a secretary. I handle many communications-related tasks for my boss and my department as a whole, but answering the phone for him is not one of them. I have my own extension, but I don’t encourage anyone to call it*- I use the line for making calls OUT so I don’t clog up the office line, and I’ve encouraged the communications lady to reassign it since it is a waste of resources. Our phones suck, so I can’t transfer anybody, but I’m more than happy to look up the right extension for anyone who calls looking for someone in another department, and if it’s someone from “outside,” I encourage them to call me back if the new number I give them is wrong, so I can find somebody to help them. I do this because even though it’s not specifically my job, it is my job to step up and help the whole school run smoothly, not just my department.**

That said- GRRRRRRR! There is a person in another department who seems to get her jollies by calling MY DESK PHONE (see above) when she wants to talk to my boss. He has his own line, and I’ve explained multiple times that I can’t transfer her. I’m also not going to walk into his office and hand him my phone when he’s in the middle of another call or a conference. If you call him, he is a master of phone multitasking and will end his other call if it’s casual (man likes the phone) or switch over to you for a moment to find out what’s up. Or, wonder of wonders, if you call his extension, you can leave a voicemail that will actually get listened to in a timely manner.

It would be different if she would deign to talk to me at all- I can solve many of the problems that she calls about, but no- “can I speak to Bossy McNiceman?” and then when I say, “sorry, he’s speaking to someone- you can leave him a message at extension XYZ” or, if he isn’t busy (in which case I will just bring the phone to him) “Sure, and, for the future, his extension is XYZ- that’ll get you through right away” She just blows me off. And then does it again! Either she’s OCD and somehow got it in her head that my extension is the one to call to got Bossy McNiceman, or she’s playing some sort of power game with me, for no apparent gain (since we are in totally different spheres, and I’m a relative newb). The third, and perhaps most likely possibility is that I’m being used as a pawn in a complicated game of phone tag, which would explain why at least half the time when Boss calls her back (within 90 seconds, generally) she doesn’t answer.

A small annoyance, but it cropped up again last week after a long hiatus and it’s been nagging at me.

*I do most of my work via email, adn I give anyone who needs to get in touch with me my work cell. I can go weeks without checking the voicemail on my landline.

** what I mean is- I never say “that’s not my job.” I do my best to help out, especially since I have a handy-dandy list of misprints from the campus directory (compiled by my predecessor and added to by me) along with the correct extensions for the people I get the most requests for. For some reason many other departments don’t do this, so I suspect that there are people who just call us because they know we’ll help, not because they have a problem related to our area. Oh well.
[/QUOTE]

That would really piss me off. I say you play dumb. Next time she calls say “Oh! This isn’t Boss McNiceman, this is Margo Lane! You want extension XYZ.” And hang up.

Although depending on your office politics that might get you in trouble. But wouldn’t it be fun?

187

[QUOTE=Elysium]
That would really piss me off. I say you play dumb. Next time she calls say “Oh! This isn’t Boss McNiceman, this is Margo Lane! You want extension XYZ.” And hang up.

Although depending on your office politics that might get you in trouble. But wouldn’t it be fun?
[/QUOTE]
I was gonna suggest, if she recognizing the extension, letting it go into her voicemail.

188

Total strangers use pet names when talking to me. Darling, Sweetie, Hun, Sugar, Little Lady. This comes from men, women; the young, and old. And this happens constantly. At first it was confusing, but now I’m getting a little pissed. I am not a kitty cat or a teddy bear.

189

[QUOTE=Elysium]
That would really piss me off. I say you play dumb. Next time she calls say “Oh! This isn’t Boss McNiceman, this is Margo Lane! You want extension XYZ.” And hang up.

Although depending on your office politics that might get you in trouble. But wouldn’t it be fun?
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, but supposedly she’s legendary for her vindictiveness and has the ear of the top brass, so it’s just not worth bringing scrutiny, you know? Also I’m terrible at recognizing voices on the phone, so I never know it’s her until it’s too late, and there are people who innocently dial my number looking for the boss and I don’t want to be rude to them. Also, if it is an OCD thing, then it’s just cruel :stuck_out_tongue: .

5-4-Fighting: good idea, but I don’t even have caller ID on this phone! It’s just a consumer model cordless dealie. Generally I don’t care, because I only get maybe 6-7 calls a week on this line, but it sure would come in handy!

190

Web sites that play music or sound when you land on them.

Lists in which things starting with “The” are listed under T.

Ubiquitous misspellings:

Miniscule (Nope, minuscule)
Definately (aaarrrrrrgghhhhh!!!)
Loose (when lose was meant)

And I pit my own brain for forgetting the dozens of other things I keep reminding myself to put in the next minirant thread I see. (As well as the millions of critical things I forget every day.)

191

I pit myself for continually putting off doing things that need to be done, under the rationalization that “I’ve got plenty of time to take care of that”, and then later having to run around like the proverbial headless chicken trying to do ten things at once because they all need to be done now.

192

[QUOTE=commasense]

Lists in which things starting with “The” are listed under T.
[/QUOTE]
Reference works whose indexes unnecessarily make you flip through extra pages to find what you want, if you look up something that’s not phrased in a particular way.

If I need to find the section on “Giant Condyloma of Buschke-Lowenstein”, it doesn’t help if you list the term and instead of giving me the page number, say “See Condyloma of Buschke-Lowenstein, Giant”. Stop being afraid of offending the Style Editor and just give me the goddamn page number.

193

You, Mister Brand-Spanking-New Junior Associate. I do not work for you. While I am an assistant, I am not your assistant. My boss lives in that office over there and is a Senior Partner. What that means is that I am actually slightly higher up the org chart than you are. It also means that you are not allowed to give me instructions on how to go about doing my job. Nor are you allowed to order me to complete tasks for you. In fact, all you are entitled to do with regards to my professional services is to ask me politely for a personal favor, which I may or may not grant at my personal discretion.

Now that we’ve cleared up your rights with regards to my professional services, I should point out that being rude, abusive and/or personally offensive to me is not a good way to get me to actually grant personal favors to you. However this is a moot point, as I have elected to no longer so much as give you the right time after the last time I declined to do a favor for you (because I was up to my eyeballs in urgently required tasks and you asked for something completely trivial that you - or your own assistant - could have easily done yourself), you responded to my “I’m terribly sorry, I don’t have time to do that for you right now” with the phrase “What use are you then, bitch?”

Enjoy what little time remains in your once-promising career as a corporate attorney, Skippy. Referring to female staff members thusly is second only to “misappropriation of client funds” as a method to have yourself walked to the door by security post haste. As our interactions before this have been along similar, if less blatantly assholish, lines, you can be assured I was on the phone to the Powers That Be before you even rounded the corner after being kicked out of my office. I’m certain that your actual assistant will thank me. You aren’t any more gracious to her than you were to me. Enjoy unemployment. And best of luck finding a new job - you haven’t managed to be admitted to the bar yet, and no other firm is likely to touch you after being summarily dismissed for something like this. Granted, our hiring department won’t officially say why you were dismissed, but you’ve been here less than a year so it’s fairly clear something dramatic happened and the ladies in Hiring have a thriving inter-firm network of unofficial information distribution.

194

[QUOTE=Aangelica]
…you responded to my “I’m terribly sorry, I don’t have time to do that for you right now” with the phrase “What use are you then, bitch?”

[/QUOTE]

:eek:

Whaaat? Did you tell your boss? If someone talked to my assistant like that I’d have his ass, and I don’t even particularly like my assistant.

195

[QUOTE=Aangelica]
You, Mister Brand-Spanking-New Junior Associate…
[/QUOTE]

That’s horrendous! I’m glad you’re in a position to do something about it, though.

196

I pit my laziness which causes my protein-craving empty stomach.

Being too lazy to cook food, and not wanting to get frozen food or takeout yet again because they are bad for me, I have a handful or two of chips and some OJ then go to sleep with my stomach saying I need REAL food. Then I don’t have peanut butter to make peanut butter sandwiches for my work breakfast in the morning so I am hungry yet again until lunch (and nothing in the snack machine will fulfill my appetite for real food.)

197

[QUOTE=Aangelica]
“What use are you then, bitch?”

[/QUOTE]

This is hardly “minor!” This deserves its own thread. With updates!

198

[QUOTE=The Lovely Margo Lane]
That’s horrendous! I’m glad you’re in a position to do something about it, though.
[/QUOTE]

Eh, I work with corporate lawyers at a very large Wall Street firm. Quite a few of them give new meaning to the phrase “obnoxious shitbag”.

However, they’re corporate lawyers, and Young Mister Douchebag there was all the way over in the Forbidden Territory of Sexual Harassment/Hostile Workplace Environment and they know it - and know that *I * know it. He’ll undoubtedly be fired, but I’m cynical enough to know full well that he’s being fired not for being an asshole but for being a stupid asshole. I’m fairly certain that’s the farthest he’d stepped over the line of “even marginally acceptable professional behavior”, though. I know his actual assistant and he’d still be flinching if he’d been stupid enough to say something like that to her. She’s old enough to be his mother and has worked for the firm longer than he’s been alive and doesn’t put up with nonsense. I assume that he was suckered into his poor judgment based solely on my appearance - he wouldn’t be the first, although he might be the dumbest. I’m probably 20 years younger than the average for my position and look like the sort of person you can bully. He saw a young woman sitting at an assistant’s desk and assumed it was safe to treat her like shit because he’s an associate. Epic fail on his part.

Grossbottom, I didn’t bother to tell my boss. For starters, at 9:30 this morning when Young Mister Look-At-Me-I’m-A-Hardass was failing to watch his mouth, my boss wasn’t in yet :slight_smile: Also, he’s not the most efficient person to inform. The Firm Manager or the member of the Sexual Harassment Committee (why, yes, we do actually have one of those) of my choice would be the efficient choice. So I told both the Firm Manager and the only member of the SHC who was around this morning instead. My boss would just have to complain to them on my behalf, anyway. I can complain for myself :smiley: Just to be sure he’s good and sorry, though, I also complained to the senior partner he was doing grunt work for when he made his tragic error in judgment.

I’ll be damn surprised if he makes it to lunch :slight_smile:

199

[QUOTE=TheMerchandise]
This is hardly “minor!” This deserves its own thread. With updates!
[/QUOTE]

It’s minor :slight_smile: At the heart of it, it’s one inappropriate unflattering personal insult.

200

[QUOTE=Aangelica]
I’ll be damn surprised if he makes it to lunch :slight_smile:
[/QUOTE]

Dear Aangelica:

If I have ever offended you, either purposefully, accidentally, or in another hypothetical dimension, I heartily apologize and seek your forgiveness.

Sincerely,
Bayard
Seriously, the guy deserves it. Good on you for lowering the boom. Keep us posted on his imminent demise.