Rants: micro to middlin'

The BBQ Pit
201

Aangelica, you must update as events develop! Please!

Two very minor fashion-police comments on women I saw yesterday:

  1. Ladies, the thread belt loops on your dresses are not an accessory. They are there to keep the belt with the dress while the dress is in the store. Just as you would rip the plastic off your new lampshade or unstitch the pockets on your suitcoats (if you want to use them), you can – should IMO – snip off those loops. And while you’re at it: snip off the extra buttons sewn to the bottom of the hem of your shirts. (You too, menfolk.) They are there to make sure you get them; they weren’t intended to ride around on the shirt for the rest of its life.

  2. Black panties under white pants: No. Just, no.

202

Apparently your “use” is scum removal. Good for you. Good lord in heaven, what kind of person says that in an office situation (hell, in ANY situation?) Was he not happy with being gainfully employed and decided to have an assistant-assisted career suicide?

ETA: On posting, I saw your update. Yay!

My rant du jour - I woke up with a headache. C’mon, body, you don’t even know what kind of day this is going to be - how can you know as soon as I wake up that it’s time for a headache?

203

I pit my coworkers. Not my shift and the night shift, who are already stretched to the limit after the workload increased and some people quit. I pit the part-timers and lazy bitchy day shifters who can’t be bothered to come in and help us out when we’re short-staffed on second and third shifts. We’re a hospital. The work has to be done. Expecting 4 people to run the whole second shift, with our workload, is asking for trouble. We have 75% of the workload of the day shift, but about 25% of the staff. We’re understaffed and overstressed, and it’s not going to end well. Mistakes are bound to happen more under those conditions, and pushing your staff to the limits is going to result in more people leaving.

Management’s idea? Offer a bonus for people who take on an extra shift. Very few takers, because it’s basically peanuts. But what really burns me is that when nobody picks up, and we’re short and killing ourselves working, we don’t get any sort of compensation, not even a “thanks, we know things suck and you guys are doing a damn good job”. No, they’re now threatening to force extra shifts on us because nobody’s volunteering. Great. I feel so appreciated.

204

He had it comin’. If it hadn’t been me this morning, he’d have done something else equally brainless another morning and someone else would have run him up a flagpole as an example to others of his kind. For starters, his actual assistant informed me a few moments ago he was one more rude comment away from her issuing her own complaint. Evidently they had a little “chat” two days ago over his attitude and choice of language.

It happens like that sometimes. There always seems to be at least one fresh new associate who’s absolutely certain that graduating from law school and managing to be hired automatically makes him (or her, but it’s more frequently a guy - and almost always a short one. Go figure!) The Center Of The Universe and all others must cower before him and offer up unto him the groveling deference due to one of his might and glory. He was probably always a prick, but now he’s a prick and a lawyer! Rawr! Fear him! Generally, someone manages to civilize these sorts before they do anything tragically stupid, but every so often one of them doesn’t take to the civilizin’. It’s an interesting phenomenon, actually.

Usually, the civilizing comment is someone pointing out to them that junior associates at large law firms are basically disposable - sort of like pens or copier paper - and the ones who are attitude and/or discipline problems just aren’t worth keeping around. A lot of times it just hasn’t yet occurred to them that they are not Mommy’s Special Little Person anymore. For most of them, this is their first job ever, too - just to add to the fun. Once in a while, the knowledge that they’re a disposable commodity drives them to abuse the support staff. Somehow it never dawns on those sort that this is a Very Bad Idea.* Apparently, this morning’s asshole is still Mommy’s Special Little Person.
*Please note that support staff are responsible for making sure life goes smoothly. If your support staff hates your guts, an amazing number of things can go wrong in your life. For example, offices in my firm are assigned based in large part on senority and department. If you’re one of the associates in my boss’s department, you automatically get a single occupancy office on a better floor (because my boss prefers to keep his minions close). If I hate you, I might forget to call up Office Services and tell them you’ve joined the Tax Department. Also, a good many of the senior partners ask for their assistant’s insight on associates when it comes time for partnership voting and yearly evaluations (and the raises that go with them).

205

Sorry, have to disagree. On the rare occasions when these extra buttons get used, what better than to have them right there at the hem? No-one ever sees them otherwise, so what’s the harm leaving them there? As soon as I take them off, they will get lost or mixed up with a thousand other buttons. This is doubly true if the buttons are any color other than standard white.

My rant du jour: I guess I’m going to have to go back to decaf tea. My body apparently can’t take even the relatively modest amount of caffeine in regular tea and Diet Pepsi. This morning I feel like I’m having palpitations and an anxiety attack after just one soda. Rats! I don’t absolutely need caffeine, but I like it! I don’t drink, smoke, do drugs, or even overeat (very much, any more). Now this. Stupid body. Can’t take caffeine? Then what use are you, butch?
Roddy

206

Once again, I have to say:
Fuck you, RPI.

Today’s date: May 8th.
Date I had my application submitted to grad school: Jan 29th (according to YOUR online application process.)
Dates my two letters of recommendation were received: Feb 12th and Feb 20th.
Alright, the last one was a few days late (the application deadline was Feb. 15th.) So is THAT the reason I haven’t heard so much as a PEEP out of your admissions office almost three months later? All I can say is that’s it’s a good thing I didn’t apply to other schools, because odds are they would have demanded a response by now, while you’re content to sit there and do jack shit.

207

AC adapters.

Could we get them made so they don’t take up two or three positions on a power strip?

208

How clueless do you have to be at this point to not realize that support staff are the real wielders of the power to make your life miserable in offices? You want a nice hotel booked for your trip? I’m so sorry, all they had left was a fleabag two hours away from your conference. You want your expenses submitted so your re-imbursement makes it onto this paycheque? I’m sorry, didn’t I tell you that they had to be in by Thursday to make it for this cheque? Being rude to a receptionist when you come to a job interview is a good way to get a big, black X beside your name, regardless of whether you ace the interview or not. And yet there still seems to be an endless supply of Dickless Wonders who haven’t got the memo yet that the women in the office are not to be trifled with (let’s face it, most support positions are still women).

209

Wonderful. You decide that someone has slighted you, and so you go on a little power trip to “make them miserable” by not doing your job properly. That’s a good way to get fired.

210

(bolding mine)

Ahem. Or men. I know lots of men in support. However, I will concede that, in general, the women are potentially more dangerous, or more helpful, depending.

Ohhh, dear, why do I have the feeling that you’re next? Good luck with that. (Just kidding, but it does look like you just don’t get it - where admins have any kind of power, they can exercise it for your good or your ill, with no fear, because they generally have such wide discretion over these sorts of things, and also because they can put a cloud of plausible deniability over any subversive shafting that they do.)
Roddy

211

You know they make 6 inch extension cords that cost 5 dollars a piece. Cheaper to just buy the small gauge white or brown ones that are 6ft. They cost about 3 dollars. They look like crap, but who’s gonna know?

212

Yes, that is exactly what we have been talking about in this thread which prompted my post.

213

http://www.powersquid.com/ Power Squids are showing up in Target these days. Or Best Buy. They’re nice, as surge protectors go.

214

The gate to my yard doesn’t close properly. I don’t give a shit because the door to my house closes and locks fine, there isn’t anything in my yard worth stealing, and even if it DID close, you would still be able to walk in any time you want. You’d just have to (gasp!) turn the latch.

Bulgarians, however, have an absolute fetish about closing doors, and someone (I suspect my annoying alcoholic neighbor) has decided that my gate MUST be closed at all costs! First, my annoying neighbor (this is not a guess, he told me he did this) tied a shoelace to the gate and then tied the other end to the fence, holding the gate closed. I NEVER tied it back myself, but pretty much every time I came home, I’d find it retied up in a complicated knot that would take me five minutes to untie before I could walk into my fucking yard. Yes, I did eventually just cut the shoelace off. Which unfortunately led to…

An actual metal WIRE being twisted around the gate. Another wire was attached to the fence, and the ends of the two wires were twisted together. This was not a thing wire, but about the thickness of a metal hanger. I was on holiday last week and it was there when I came home. I untwisted it (not easy), only to find myself fucking LOCKED INTO MY YARD when I wanted to leave the next morning. I had to call a passerby to help me untwist the wire. I removed it. It reappeared overnight and I was locked inside the yard AGAIN. I removed it yet again.

Yesterday, nothing.

Today, I arrived home from work to find…MORE FUCKING WIRE TIED TO MY GATE. At least I wasn’t actually inside the house when he did it.

ATTENTION, GODDAMN NOSY NEIGHBORS. LEAVE MY GATE THE FUCK ALONE. IF I WANT TO BE LOCKED UP, I’LL JUST KILL YOU SO I CAN BE SENT TO PRISON.

215

No, actually, it’s more that I feel no compunction to be helpful to people who can’t be assed to be even marginally polite to me. I can be professional and competant without going out of my way to be helpful. “Doing my job properly” and “going out of my way to be helpful” aren’t anywhere close to the same thing.

Let me explain the system at my office: I work directly for two people (one of whom has precedence over the other when it comes to my services). If you are not one of those two people, you have no claim *at all * to my time or attention. If I do anything for you, it’s a personal favor. I do not do personal favors for assholes.

I, and most of the other support personnel I’ve ever worked with, quite often go above and beyond the specific requirements of our position to be helpful to others in the office. I routinely do favors for people that are outside the scope of my duties. If you’re a shithead though, I will not do anything for you I’m not specifically required to do. Additionally, since the prioritization of my duties is entirely at my own personal discretion, I will downgrade the priority on anything I am specifically required to do for you to rock bottom. I will still do it, and with my customary competance, efficiency and professionalism - but I’ll do it last.

However, even in cases where a support person does have to perform tasks on behalf of someone who’s obnoxious to them, there’s no requirement that they go above and beyond for the jackass. For example, at my current job, if you want reimbursement for expenses, you’re supposed to get the paperwork in before noon on Tuesday to get a check that week on Friday (reimbursement checks are only issued on Fridays - no, I don’t know why). Everyone who works here theoretically knows this - it’s in the Employee Handbook even. If you’re an asshole and my boss, I must complete and submit your request for reimbursement in a timely fashion. Well and good. If you give it to me at 11:30 on Tuesday and I leave it on your desk at 11:45 to be signed, I’ve done my job. If I hand it directly to you and remind you of the deadline, I’m going above and beyond. If you give it back to me at 12:30 (or on a Wednesday) and I go and cajole the ladies in accounting to cut the check even though you missed the deadline, that’s going above and beyond. If you’re an asshole, you don’t get above and beyond sort of service. You don’t get your assistant covering your ass with your boss because you’re taking a long lunch to run some personal errands. You don’t get them making dozens of phone calls to find the nicest available room for you at the convention you’re attending - you get the first available room they run across. You don’t get to be reminded of your wife’s upcoming birthday (or your upcoming wedding anniversary). You don’t get your assistant taking the blame for a fuck-up that *you * caused on themself to make you look better.

The vast majority of the support people I’ve worked with go a long ways out of their way to be helpful to the people they work with. They certainly go considerably beyond the specific requirements of their position. Not offering* extra * service isn’t even close to “not doing their job properly” to get back at someone who slighted them.

I’ll add - as an update - that I was slightly wrong about my little friend from yesterday. He did make it through lunch. They didn’t escort him out of the building until slightly after 3pm. His services are no longer required. They actually tried to just make him apologize and take a sensitivity training seminar and be on probation for 6 months, but he a) admitted it, b) was bragging about it to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen, and c) basically refused to apologize. When informed it was apologize or be fired, he came down to my office said “I have to apologize or be fired. I still think you’re a worthless bitch but I have to say I’m sorry so I’m sorry.” Since there was a member of the committee standing at my desk at the time (discussing an unrelated matter, actually), it didn’t go well for him. I blinked at him a few times and then actually made this hand gesture :smack: Actually, to be totally accurate, and you use far too many smilies in one post, I think I actually went like this: :eek: :dubious: :smack: :rolleyes: :smiley: . I know that’s what the partner at my desk did. The jackass clearly didn’t actually recognize the partner at my desk. I think he assumed she was another assistant. I mean really, dude. One ought to recogize the partners of the firm one works for - even when there are a whole pile of them. It’s not even like she was in a different area of practice - she was in his area of practice.

216

Oh man, that’s good stuff. :smiley:

217

I can’t believe anyone is that assholish and stupid. I mean, I can, but they usually end up as miserable shithole end-of-the-earth sole practitioners torturing a small number of equally ineffective and miserable staff. Did they try to have him piss-tested before he left? Because he’s bound to sue and I’d put five bucks on him being coked up to be acting like that.

218

Well said. As I said upthread, I’m not an assistant, but I sure am support staff, and this hits the nail right on the head. “Support Staff” does not equal “Servant.” We’re not Victorian scullery maids who can be ordered about by any passerby of a higher station with no recourse, and that’s what people like your little friend and (perhaps) Absolute just don’t quite understand. Our first duty is to the organization as a whole, and to complete our specified duties swiftly and competently, whether those specified duties relate to a specific supervisor or department or not. Beyond that, “personal favors” and special effort may be warranted, since it’s all theoretically for the greater good of the company, but there is a finite amount of time and creativity that can be applied, so jerks can fall to the back of the line for such!

219

Hey rain: Go somewhere else where they need rain. I hear California could use some.

To whoever put in our patio: Why the hell didn’t you put something under the stone blocks to keep the weeds down? It was looking like a jungle until I finally got a dry day last weekend to spray some Roundup on the weeds. And now, what with all the rain we’ve been having, there are yet more weeds…

But any two of those three would be acceptable? :slight_smile:

220

Actually, I’m fairly sure he was sober. It’s just that he’s also about 25-26, this is his Very First Job Evah (really, often with first-year associates, this is their very first paid position), and he has no idea how to comport himself. Additionally, he’s probably been Mommy’s Special Little Person his whole life. Probably been top of his classes since pre-school, and is hella used to being a) the biggest fish around and b) catered to. First-year associates at big firms are basically anyone’s bitch. Not to mention they’re pretty thoroughly interchangeable and reasonably disposable to boot. Sometimes the Come-To-Jesus moment when this is brought home to them unhinges their brains. Most first year associates are either unfazed by this revelation (having not been brought up to be spoiled privileged little wankers) or the adjust to the revelation in short order. Some of them (like my little friend) go into denial about it and get really, really abusive with the support staff - probably to make themselves feel better. Typically, the support staff doesn’t care for this and the complaints begin. Either the associate in question learns better manners or is let go. The Firm’s policy is that it’s easier to fire the associate than to deal with a hostile workplace environment suit from support staff who are sick of one junior associate with an attitude problem.

Usually the whole process takes around about six months to work out. It was just my fortune to get stuck with one who was determined to flare out early and dramatically :slight_smile: Which puts my career total of PITA Junior Associates bounced at two. There are ladies on the staff with PITA Junior Associate Bounce scores well into the double digits. Granted in one case that’s 16 over a forty-five year career here :slight_smile: