The office crazies strike again

The BBQ Pit
1

More work insanity

MOVING DAY

We are moving a bunch of people around our floor. This is something coming out of the recent reorg, and someone had the brilliant idea of shuffling folks around. Maybe it will be a good thing in the long run, maybe it won’t, but short term it’s insantiy and chaos. For your entertainment, I submit the Most Popular Questions About Moving In This Office:

1) Can I change my moving day?

No. This is basically a big shell game and every shell has to move at its appointed time, no sooner and no later, If we alter the sequence we’ll rip a hole in reality, the world will end, the sun will nova, and more importantly, if we delay your moving date the person who is supposed to move into your cube Wednesday will have to camp in the hallway for a day, which will annoy the Fire Code Nazi from Facilities.

2) Who will pack my stuff?

You will, sweeheart. We have 40 people to move, do you SERIOUSLY think three administrative assistants would even be able to pack and move that many people in six days? Even if we could, we won’t - pack your own damn shit.

3) But XYZ is getting HER stuff packed for her!

XYZ is an executive, AND she has legit medical problems, AND she packed 90% of her shit herself, the only bit left will be taken care of by her assisstant. When YOU are an executive-level person with an assigned assistant and legit medical issues you, too, will be allowed to turn over 10% of your packing to someone else. Meanwhile, you’re just one step above peon class - here’s your boxes, start packin’

4) But, but - what about my pictures of my family and other personal stuff?

Either pack it or take it home for a couple days.

5) But I won’t be in the office on moving day!

GOOD. Please stay home - we will have trained gorillas from Facilities shoving all the boxes back and forth. The move will happen whether or not you’re here, so if you opt not to be here it won’t upset anyone.

6) Who’s going to unpack my stuff?

You’re shitting me, right? Who the fuck do you think? See #2.
RETURN OF THE PSYCHO JOB CANDIDATE

Every once in awhile reality reminds one why job interviews and candidate screening exists. All names and crap have been altered to protect the psychotic and my job.

We had this job candidate interview for an open position back in December. Now, while this lady made a decent impression on the Big Boss, she treated those who would be her peers as her inferiors, and anyone below her perceived station as toilet paper. Of course, these sorts just expect everyone else to be the same way and would no doubt be shocked to know that management also asks the peons how they were treated by job seekers. Basically, she was a complete suck-up to management.

She also had an immense sense of entitlement, interviewing for a position much higher than she was qualified for, under the impression that she somehow deserved the job.

She was also a helpless little thing. She arrived in Chicago in the middle of winter with a coat suited to maybe 40 degrees F at the coldest. Yes, she was from further south but not THAT far south, they get snow where she lives. Oh, boo-hoo I am sooooo cold you people are sooooo mean to me! Hey, asshole, you were told before you came to expect cold and snow. Standard procedure when we fly someone in for a job interview from somewhere else. And she needed help and hand holding just to get across the fucking street to her hotel - I mean that LITERALLY, someone had to hold her hand and help her across the street - Og knows how she made it from O’Hare to our offices on her own.

THEN we had the problem with her going home. We couldn’t get her out of Chicago fast enough. Really. Fast enough for either her or us. Mothers Nature’s fault this time. She’s on her cell phone, HYSTERICAL, “Oh, my flight’s been cancelled! Omigod! How am I going to get HOME??? I have GOT to get HOME can’t you get me on a plane going back home???”

Guess which night this was - that’s right, the night we got 10 inches of snow during rush hour. Lady, we just had an airplane slide off a runway and wind up in the intersection of 55th and Central on top of two cars - who the fuck in their right mind would want to fly on a night like that? Don’t you get it, you fucking bitch - IT’S NOT SAFE TO TRAVEL - PERIOD!.

Oh, boo-hoo you’re just not trying hard enough I HAVE TO GET HOME you DON’T UNDERSTAND —

:rolleyes: Lady, there ain’t a single goddamned airplane leaving this city tonight - get a hotel room and resign yourself to flying out tomorrow. WHAT a fucking idiot.

Then there was the happy horseshit about finding her a hotel. I swear to god, this woman is helpless. She couldn’t get a fucking hotel room for herself, but we found her a place to stay, although personally I wouldn’t have been at all upset if she wound up on a cot in the basement of O’Hare with several thousand of her newest friends. But maybe the airport was afraid she’d provoke a violent response with her weeping “oh, poor me!” bullshit.

Anyhow, we got her home, we even checked to make sure she got to her home, and you’d think that would be the end of it, right? Right?

No.

NOW she keeps contacting us. She told upper managment how rudely was treated and how no one would help her and we forced her to stay an extra night in Chicago because no one would find her her a flight out. No one checked to make sure she got home safely after that Big, Dangerous Snowstorm (we did. We actually have PROOF we did so!) She bitched we shortchanged her on her expenses (NEXT time, bitch, give us ALL the fucking receipts! And company policy - we don’t reimburse for booze or in-room movies). Oh, and we STOLE her transcripts and we’re SO MEAN because we won’t give them back. (Maybe the bitch left them at her hotel. Or ate them. Or something) And, oh yes, we’re not allowed to copy her dissertation (she had the gall to lecture us on copyright law - and no worry about the copying. Her dissertation sucked, too, it’s not worth preserving for posterity) a we have to tell how many copies were made, who got them, and how they were disposed of if we don’t return them IMMEDIATELY to her…

What. A. Fucking. Tool.

Well, I’m glad THAT one didn’t made it through the screening process! Also relieved she lives hundreds of miles away and is incapable of making her own travel arrangements, thereby greatly reducing the chance she’ll attempt to visit us in person.

2

Wild. We have a new hire who can’t be trained because she doesn’t want anyone to sit next to her. She has “space issues.”

3

adds “space issues” to list of things to ask about next time I do interviewing.

4

Yeah, those bazillion hotels all around O’Hare with shuttles running constantly to and from the airport are so hard to find. That big Hilton right there at O’Hare is especially hard to find. :rolleyes:

Broomstick maybe when springs gets here she’ll show up one morning ready to go to work. I could see her doing that. Oh wait, she can’t figure out how to make travel arrangements. No worries, she’ll just call you up so you can make the arrangements for her to show up to work. Of course that means you’ll have to find her an apartment or house, furnish it, arrange all her transportation, meals, etc. for as long as she works there but, you can handle it.

5

Broomstick, don’t keep us in suspsense. Did you hire her?

6

Just think of it - the Pittings would practically write themselves! Don’t you want a high-paced, action-packed work environment?

7

If you had said “west” rather than “south” I’d suspect that you’d been visited by a supervisor I once had. The day after this individual became eligible for medical benefits, she announced to the entire department (and Og knows who else) via email that she would not be available the next week because she was having her butt liposuctioned. Her rationale: “because I deserve it.”

8

Was she referring to the area between her ears?

9

Holy mother of Og, she’s not in any kind of construction, is she? She’ll fit right in with our executives here. All of them. All men.

It is to cry.

10

MOVING DAY

Who’s going to install my computer? I have to get work done! When are you going to open a trouble ticket so my computer can be moved? IT said I’d have to wait for a tech to be sent over! Wah!

Gee. You’d think we might have planned ahead and had someone from IT on hand to assist in moving 35 users and their computers? Guess what? We did. Looks like he’s busy getting your group’s file server set up, so even if your computer was running, it wouldn’t connect to anything. Why don’t you go shopping or something and come back in two hours?

or…

You were telling me not two weeks ago how you installed your own DSL and home network and put a new video card in your kid’s computer so he could play games, and you can’t plug in a LAN cable here?

Aren’t re-orgs and re-stacks fun?

11

:eek:
:eek:

Broomstick, my dear, your next assignment in the old aircraft world is to learn to fly a P-51, as well as load the magazines on the machine guns. When you do your cross-country solo, Google up that dingbat’s home address…

Well, it’s fun to dream about it, at least.

12

When I worked for a moving company, once I was packing this woman’s house and she followed me around all day, in a fret, because “Oh, I have such IMPORTANT things stored on her computer, it simply MUST be packed properly, are you sure that’s the best way to pack it? it MUST get there in one piece, ALL my important documents are on there …”

Yeah, lady, you’re the only person who’s got important stuff stored on your computer. :rolleyes: Everyone else’s, we just toss in the back of the truck wrapped in a bit of newspaper and packing tape.

13

We’re going through a move here on Monday and as usual I plan to pack my stuff up last minute. At least I’ll have my own office, I’m currently sharing the former second conference room. My supervisor, who started after me is currently out in the crowded cube farm. I have a strong suspicion we’ll run out of space again by the end of the year if we can ever find the people we’re trying to hire.

We just had an interviewee last week. I only had a chance to ask 3 questions. She talked non-stop about completlely irrelevantly topics including extreme bad-mouthing of her former employer (Coast Guard) and her apathy for Cuban drug-running. Another interviewer got to hear about former roomates she had that refused to shave. Female, not male. In the course of the interview she made it abundantly clear she had no intention of relocating to Houston and intends to move back in with her parents in Florida. We were interviewing in Houston for Houston.

14

These two awesome pilots would have flown her home come hell or high sleet.

15

Lemme guess - “self-starter” and “capable of working withour direction” weren’t among her qualifications.

This person obviously doesn’t know what the fileserver is for. Storing important business documents locally is a really shitty idea. Kinda obviates the back-up process. And what if you get crushed by a cement truck on the way to work? How’s anybody supposed to pick up the strings?

16

Idiots.

Last week I sat in as secretary for this organization’s planning retreat. One board member lent me his laptop so I could take minutes (he assured me that once it was connected to a network I would be able to retrieve the files.) I saved the critical file on a floppy, on the desktop, and in two other places on the C: drive.

When I tried to retrieve it from the floppy it said “This disk is not formatted.”

When I tried to retrieve it from the desktop, it said “File not found.”

The laptop provider reports that he went through hell trying to get the minutes off the laptop again; the floppy drive was fried and there was no way to connect the thing to a network.

Why do people not test these things before it becomes important?

And he had the nerve to lecture ME on making backups! Dude, the only reason you have any record from this weekend retreat, AT ALL, is because I made so many bleeding backups!

17

Yeek. We’re playing the musical offices thing over here too, so we’re doubling up until such time as the numero uno shell can get out of our space-to-be. I hear ya on the “DUDE. SHELL GAME. STOP IT.”

Also, that job candidate is… whoa. I’m not sure I could imagine a helpless little thing like her in any job. :eek: I don’t remember what Broomstick does, but I seem to recall it involving unwritten requirements such as, yes, ‘self-starting’ and ‘works well without direction’. We shan’t even get into things like ‘good with ambiguity’…

18

Yeah, there are just some people who simply can’t work with a computer. I used to work with a guy like that. Pretty damned good engineer - give him a t-square and a triangle anf the guy could churn out the most beautifully executed designs and drawings. Sit him behind the monitor and a mouse with a copy of AutoCAD and you actually see his eyes fill with stupid. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t work the machine and software effectively, he seemed to completely forget even basic engineering principles - it was as if he believed by using the computer he could simply forget the laws of physics. His battle with the machine just took over his thought processes so completely there was no brain capacity left for anything else.

19

Indeed. Those sorts of things are for the peasentry to take care of while she is attended to by her servan— er, subordinates.

I am a coordinator for a group of medical researchers who perform meta-analysis in the evaluation of new medical technolgoy.

Basically, my job is to take care of the mundane things so the scientists can be off doing science - I write various communications, unjam copiers, keep everyone supplied with pens, pencils, and quadrille pads, call the building manager when the ceiling leaks, make travel arrangements, and fill out government-mandated expense reports of such complexity that they baffle our resident doctorate-level statistician and math whiz. Among many other things. The scientists much prefer it when the office runs smoothly without them having to get involved, so yes, “self-starting” and “works well without direction” starts on the very bottom in this place of employment.

That alone makes Psycho Job Candidate unsuitable. And while we tolerate some eccentricity, there are limits. Believing oneself to be royalty exceeds those limits.

20

Had she ever hears of backing data up. Put it on a CD {or several CDs}and keep track of it yourself. I used to have folks come in so mad that their computer was down and they couldn’t get to their importent info. Somehow it was our fault because we sold the computer. Hey, I understand the feeling. I’ve hurled a few explatives when my computer went down. I don’t blame others for it.