The Work Rant Thread - Post Your Own Toilin' Trouble

The BBQ Pit
21

Company: Real Estate
Job: Property Management

To All The Tenants: You call me when you need a repair. I pass that information on to the appropraite person. Do not call me back and start screaming and swearing at me because your whatever hasn’t been repaired. Especially when your toilet/sink/bathtub needs unstopping. When I ask “Well, what did you put down there,” don’t say “Nothing.” When we pull the stuff out, don’t insist it was there when you moved in six months ago, because your lease states you are responsible for all repairs caused by tenant neglect.

If I ask you was the repair done to your satisfaction and you tell me “yes,” don’t call up screaming two days later that it’s not fixed.

You signed a lease listing the people allowed to live in your apartment. Don’t be moving twenty other people in. It’s illegal, and our City really frowns on it.

Pay your rent on time in full. If you don’t, pay the late fees. Don’t ask me why we took you to court for not paying the rent. Don’t come to me on the court date and tell me you’re getting the rent money from your relative/Social Services next week. You are not staying here as a guest. When we have the sheriff here to evict you, you can call the police if you want. We all got a huge laugh when it happened before.

If we have rented to you in the past, and you’ve given us any problem, we will not rent to you now. That’s our policy. Take us to court if you want. You’ll lose.

Don’t expect me to do your typing, computer work and make your phone calls. That is not my job. If I’m not busy, and you ask nice and pay me, I might.

I don’t know when so-and-so will be in. I’ll give you the cell phone and/or home numbers if you want.

If the Police are looking for you, don’t hide in our office. I will call them. I will also call them if you come in here and make any sort of problem. The police know me, and they will take you away.

22

Job: Public Defender in a rural county in Georgia

To my clients:

  1. Yes, I am a real lawyer. I went to law shcool and passed the bar the first time and everything. I’ve been a public defender for 15 years, and it’s not because I’m not good enough to do anything else", it’s becasue I beleive in what I do, and most of the time I enjoy it.

  2. I don’t write the laws. I can’t help it that there is a mandatory 10 year minumum prison sentence with no parole on armed robbery. I believe you when you tell me that you wouldn’t have knocked over that 7-11 if you’d known, that’s not a defense. Don’t yell at me because the legislature did something that pisses you off. The fact aht I’m “paid by the state” has nothign to do with the potential penalties for any offense, or whether that offense is a felony or misdemeanor.

  3. I don’t live in my office. I actually go home at night (usually not until 7 or 8), and am sometimes actually IN COURT (gasp!). So if you wander into my office without an appointment and find me not in it and my “In Courtroom” sign on the door, the thing to do is call later and make an appointment, not call the chief judge and tell him that I “won’t ever talk” to you. On a related note, if you call and get my voicemail and don’t leave a message, guess what- I won’t call you back.

  4. Don’t tell me about the “legal advice” that the other inmates have been giving you. Sheesh, 3 years of my life and $10,000 in tuition pissed away on law school, and I could have just spent a couple of weekends in the county jail and known everything there is to know about the law.

  5. I don’t set the indigence standards. If I tell you that you don’t meet the financial qualifications for haing a court- appointed lawyer, you will have to hire one. That will not change if you write to the state Bar, complain to the judge, or call me names.

  6. I can’t be ready to try your case on Monday if you come into my office at 4:30 on Friday and tell me you need a lawyer. What I will do is go to court on Monday and explain to the judge that you did not request counsel until 4:30 on Friday and see if he’ll continue the case to let me get ready for it.

  7. I’m not going to lie to the judge, the prosecutor, or anyone else about your case. I’m not going to let you commit perjury. I’m not going to counsel you to do anything illegal, and I’m not going to tell your witnesses what to say. I won’t “do a better job” if you pay me under the table. I’m already doing the best job I can- besides, I can get disbarred for taking money from you, and frankly, you’re not worth it.

    Don’t get me wrong- I really love this job, but there are days where I think it would be the perfect job if it were’nt for the *&#^$@ clients.

23

Employer: Big Honkin’ Call Center that Hires Out to Other Companies
Title: Customer Service Representative for Pimple Cream Service

To my employers:
I appreciate that I got this job, but for Christ’s sake, some of your policies are incredibly stupid. We’re not (officially) allowed to read or amuse ourselves even during huge lags, and using the Internet is verboten. Look, you already monitor a billion other things about us. If our statistics are fine and we’re exceeding our production standards, why not? Why am I supposed to stare at my cubicle wall for the forty-five minute lag times on weekends? (I usually break this policy and read anyway, but I really wish I could surf the Internet. 10 hour dead shifts are agonizing.)

Also, some of your monitoring procedures are moronic. I know you want people to be productive and take a lot of calls, but working on accounts off the phone actually works against you. However, there are no consequences when a person decides not to do the sidework necessary to keep a customer happy, or even to keep them from cancelling their account. My stats are still pretty good, but I simply can’t maintain 99% activity time (on the phone or available for calls). Did you ever actually look at the people who are scoring that high? I have to clean up after them because they don’t follow up on their promises.

To our customers:
Some of you are great. Really. I love talking to people and I really do like my job. Because our company does try to be flexible with people and has a popular product, most people are not wholly unhappy with us. There is, however, a solid segment of 5 or 10 percent of you who are rude, semi-literate fuckwits.

When you call to cancel your account, I realize you may not know your account number. Heck, I don’t always keep track of all of my paperwork for everything I’ve ever bought. However, the correct answer when I ask if you have your account number, and you don’t, isn’t a sarcastic “Uh, NO” or a sigh and “Nope”. (Saying “Sorry, no, I’m at work” or “I’m afraid I don’t have any paperwork handy” is fine.) Look, I’m not asking because I like to, I’m asking because it’s the fastest way to locate your account. And, if you don’t have it, don’t get all miffed that it takes a while to find your account because you have had 4 different addresses in the last year and haven’t bothered to give us any of them, and don’t have your credit card number. It takes like 30 seconds more. You call a lot and are tired of this routine? Great. THEN WRITE DOWN YOUR ACCOUNT NUMBER.

Second, don’t lie to me. I can tell and I am not going to give you any more just because you are colossally rude about it. In fact, I give a lot more leeway to people who have made honest mistakes and who don’t blame other people for them, and who are nice to me. You haven’t received the last 3 packages, nor the 6 past-due notices for them, but magically – and without your address changing – you finally noticed the final notice before collections? And, oh, what a shame – it was sent out 8 months ago and you just found it. (Not received. “Found”.) I cannot magically make your problems go away. I will not remove your debt, and I actually can’t, because it’s gone to the collection agency. Yelling will not help you.

Canadian customers: Please do not get angry with me because your government charges you a customs fee for our product. If you do not accept the fee, don’t pay it. The product will go back to us and you’ll get a 100% refund – even including shipping charges. Don’t ask me to refund it or be sorry about it. For all customers, please realize I do not know everything about everything. Fortunately, as a former eBay seller I do know how the post office works, but I don’t know everything. There is no way for me to schedule a date every month for your package to arrive because the post office does not offer that service. I have no way of knowing if your package came on a certain date when you were away. I don’t know what speed you sent your urgent collections payment into us at, and I don’t know how long it takes for “the mail” to send a package back if you don’t know how you sent it.

Also, please don’t get mad when I can’t do what you want when you ask me to do the impossible. Don’t ask me to cancel or modify a shipment that’s already been sent. It’s not my fault you forgot to tell us your new address or because you really wanted to buy something else with that money. We do not offer overnight delivery. No amount of whining, screaming, threats, or personal insults will change this fact. It is currently 7pm; there is NO PHYSICAL WAY ON EARTH that, even if our company offered it, that I could get a package to you by tomorrow morning! Even overnight delivery doesn’t work that way! This isn’t for insulin, it’s for ZIT CREAM for gods’ sakes! Honestly, sometimes I think I’m selling crack by the sheer panic of people who realize that they can’t have it IMMEDIATELY.

(We do offer FedEx overnight delivery only for cases where we have royally fucked up somehow. It is expensive to do and we pay this expense. No matter how very, very important you – or your boss – is, I cannot sell this service to you. It is is huge pain in the ass for our warehouse and shippers to do, and even then we usually tack on a day or two for the order to be physically processed. It is simply not feasible for us to offer this as a regular service, as it would be incredibly expensive and resource-consuming. Our regular rush shipping already produces enough whining about the cost.

Some people abuse this service for royal pains in the ass. I will not do so as it only encourages such boorish behavior. I am a very nice person on the phone, but I will dig in my heels awfully quick if you decide that you have a right to be a huge asshole.)

Most of you are very nice people. I can understand getting frustrated. However, there is a limit. Screaming at me for 15 minutes because this “scam” actually expects you to pay for what you bought and abide by the policies that we distribute on all of our catalogs and are repeated during sales, then saying “I know this isn’t your fault” by means of a half-apology is not OK. If you know that, then don’t scream at me. Some things are simply beyond our control. I am sorry that you decided to call at the same time as everyone else (typically weekday evenings). Don’t go on for 5 minutes about how horrible the lag is – it only makes the problem worse! We do have dead times; as I said, the weekends are (oddly) very slow, probably because people don’t think we’re open. I know queues are frustrating – we hate being understaffed too, and we suffer a lot more because of that than any individual customer does – so please don’t expect me to send you free stuff, or break the rules for you, just because you had to wait a few minutes on hold. The customer service for our company is open 24 hours a day. Being a huge fuckwit about it only really compounds the problem, because it a) takes up more time to deal with fuckwits and b) causes people to find other jobs, which causes more understaffing. Please, don’t do it. (Sidebar: I realize some people complain in order to have problems heard. However, in my experience, virtually all of the nasty fuckwits decline when I offer to forward them to a supervisor or to send a note to the company and make a formal complaint. They just want to get it off their chest and don’t think about the person on the other end of the line.)

To our companions on the order-only line:
Do not transfer calls to me because the person has a hard time speaking English and the call will take you longer, or because they’re asking a few questions and answering them will raise your statistics. That is just incredibly insensitive, as well as bad for the company. Even worse, do not hang up on them! I have had elderly women who were apologetic because they were hard of hearing, and because you gave them such a hard time about it the first time that they were extremely thankful that I took the time to actually listen to them. Why do you upset these poor people? Honestly, isn’t being a little bit kind to somebody’s grandmother a wee bit more important than your precious call-time stats?

Do not lie to the customers. I know you do not have to deal with the consequences, but it is incredibly irritating. If somebody does not want to subscribe to the membership, do not sign them up anyway. (I know some people who claim that this happens are liars, but we get this complaint so consistently from people who are otherwise very nice and forthright that I know it occurs.) Do not tell them to just go ahead and place an order because customer service can cancel it for them at any time. We can’t. Once it’s placed, it ships and there is no way to stop it. The only option is a return.
I like my job, but these are just some irritatings. Heck, maybe I’ll reach some poor, misguided customer who thinks that being mean to me is a way to conduct business and reform them!

24

IrritaTIONS. Oy.

25

#1: it is not my fault your process sucks. The data is fine; it’s the sample that blows chunks. There’s nothing I can do about that, especially after the fact.

#2: stop making my buddy miserable. Yes, he’s a born whiner, but you don’t need to make it worse.

#3: It is not my job to work until 8 PM on your project. If you’re nice, I will stay till 7 or so to make sure everything gets done, and done right. If you act entitled to more than 9-5 of my time, I will leave at 5 exactly, and leave you without an excuse for having no results.

26

Employer: Midwestern state (I work with the developmentally disabled).
Job Title: Overworked, underpaid

This job can sometimes seem easy. There are patches of “down time” or “quiet time”. But the pay still sucks (only the benefits attract anyone). The pay sucks BAD, so we never have enough people—we are perpetually understaffed. And the state wants to know how they can attract more people, but they make it clear that raising pay is not an option. Well, what the hell do they expect? Morons.

I won’t even get into all the things that drive me crazy. I love working with our “clients” (the developmentally disabled). Well, usually I do. Sometimes, our “clients” are difficult to deal with. But I’d take their temper tantrums and loose bowels ANY day over some of my weird, anal-retentive, have-no-life-gossip and passive-aggressive coworkers.

And the supervisors are flakes. Completely disorganized. I’m sure some of this can be blamed on the state (being a government agency, nothing they do makes sense). I’m sure the supervisors are dealing with their own flakey superiors. But still, some of their antics are inexcusable.

And then there’s a special mini-rant for a coworker who has behaved especially moody lately, after an extraordinary display of ill-temper and selfishness last week. I have pretended that all is fine (merely because I dread any “confrontation” and bullshit like that) but I am tired of her sullen behavior lately—as if I did something to her. I didn’t. Give it a rest, I want to tell her. Perhaps she’s just embarassed about her disgraceful behavior (to be fair, I’ve always considered her a friend and I don’t usually see he behave in such a way) but still—enough is enough. Give the sullen act a rest.

As I am fond of saying, they don’t pay me enough to deal with this bullshit. They don’t pay me enough to care. I do care (must care) about the people we look after, but I shouldn’t have to deal with all the melodrama, flakey and disorganized superiors and coworkers. I try to distance myself from a lot of it (and I do, believe it or not) but some of it can’t help but rub off. Which is why I’m writing this damned post. I should be able to come home and not think about work at all (or only think of pleasant things) because they don’t PAY ME ENOUGH to deal with all their bullshit.

27

**Company: **Big chemical company
**Title[/]: Development engineer

Dear Co-worker,

I would really appreciate if you stopped repeating what the managers say every time they pause for breathing. Repeating what someone just said is not making you look smarter. It’s making you look like a brownnosed lobotomised ventriloquist doll. No, check that, it’s making you look like a great fast ball target for my ½ pound heavy coffemug…. No wait, it’s making you look like the anti-christ come down to just to piss me off at meetings that are usually mind numbingly boring as they are!

The first 10 meeting was actually funny. I tried to come up with your rephrasing before you spoke but as I mastered that to perfection the next 20 meeting I felt embarrassed to be working with you. Co-worker, after 60 meeting you can go to hell, you go to hell and you DIE!!!

Also Co-worker, saying things like “We should make cheap products instead of expensive” and “I think that our products should meet the demands of our customer” while looking at the boss and wagging your tail, is not making me like you any better. In fact, it makes me want to drop kick you scabby arse down a flight of stairs.

Co-worker, I’m not even going to go into your Macchiavellian personality as that would be like beating a dead horse that is already reduced to puss and maggots.

You sir, you suck ass in a the worst possible way…

wheew

28

…also I can’t not spell check. Which is annoying dontcha think?

29

Employer: Precision manufacturing
Occupation: Making Stuff out of Metal :wink:

To ALL mechanical engineers:
→ Metal is a physical thing, it has dimension, elasticity and springback.
The little lines on your computer screen do not (no, not even on AutoCAD 2002, heh)
→ Also, make a note: 1 degree is about .015" per inch…
a tolerance of 1 degree on a side 6" long is NOT going to yield a +/- .005" opening; not unless there’s no gravity, friction or imperfection in the material. yeah, but the computer said…
→ “electronic file” does NOT equal “print” : give us picture with numbers on it…we aren’t psychic.
–>And for the LAST GODDAMN TIME…
YOU CAN NOT FORM AN 1/8" OFFSET IN 16 GAGE MATERIAL!!!
(^^well not very easily or accurately :stuck_out_tongue: )

To employer:
→ Yes, we CAN make that, but I gaurantee you nor the customer want to pay for how long it will take.
→ Everyone is interested in saving money, even our customers, I’m pretty sure if you tell them moving a flange .020" will save them $5 per part (and us 100’s of hours of wasting our time), they would most of the time go ahead and change it.
→ Oh, and just because one guy said once it was “impossible to do” doesn’t mean “Don’t try”…there’s this American concept we call “INNOVATION”…read up on it, helped us win two world wars and become the biggest badass on the block…

To my Coworkers:
–>There’s these new things we have called a pen…used with paper, it can be utilised to leave information and even pictures to allow the person following you to have some idea of your count/sequence/problems/paperwork location/missing dimensions/evrything else you can think to write.
more info=better
→ Clean up after yourselves, your mom doesn’t work here…

sheesh

Ahhhhh, that felt good /grin

30

Employer: Tiny advertising agency
Title: Copywriter

To my boss: Spell my name correctly, please. It’s just one little letter out of a four-letter name that you consistently screw up. No biggie, you’re cool on all other counts.

To my co-workers: You’re all pretty good, but for Dao’s sake, if you have a problem, frickin’ tell me about it! Don’t just grumble to each other about it and expect me to telepathically divine your issues. You’ve been getting better about this, please keep it up.

To one co-worker in particular: You do some great design work and are great to work with (when you’re working), but stop being such a drama queen all the time. You constantly come in late, spend at least two hours making personal phone calls and telling everyone around you about all the personal crises in life, then go home at least two hours before anyone else, all the while ranting about how busy you are and how there’s so little time to get everything done. Every trip you take to the Singapore office magically sprouts a three-day stopover in Thailand at both ends because of some new crisis one of your boyfriends there is going through. Now personally, I can just roll my eyes and not care as long as the work is getting done, but it indicates a real disconnect from reality when you can rant about your poor overworked self to someone who’s been at her desk for 48 hours straight and sincerely believe in everything that you’re saying.

Furthermore, your ass is in some serious danger. The income from your projects has been steadily declining and will soon be at the point where you are costing us more money than you’re bringing in unless you start picking up a few more jobs. The VP has already had enough and is about to set you up with an impossible project so she can toss your butt when you fail. I’d rather not see that happen, but I can’t carry you.

To our clients: Your stereo does not ‘realize’ new functions. Your laptop does not ‘realize’ a bigger screen. You’ve got ‘realize’ written in this catalog 73 times and every single one of them is wrong. Realize this: you don’t have me working on this project just because I’m a native English speaker. You have me here because I have a deep enough knowledge in a broad enough range of subjects (inlcuding our respective languages), combined with good enough writing skills to take gibberish on any topic you can hand me and turn it into professional copy. I’ve also come up with some of the best-known brand names in Japan. That cute little Aibo you’ve got perched on your reception desk to impress the visitors with your engineering skills? He may be your kid, but he’s my godchild, and don’t you forget it. If I’ve changed something that you’ve written, there’s probably a good reason for it, and I’ll happily explain it to ease your doubts and fears. If you tell that it absolutely, positively has to be the way you wrote it or Timmy won’t get a new liver, then fine, I’ll explain why I disagree, but you can have it the way you want it. What I don’t want, however, is to play eight rounds of ping-pong where you keep replacing my work with something that’s just flat-out wrong because of some nonsense you misremembered from second-year junior-high English that you think sounds more impressive. It doesn’t. It sounds moronic. Stop it. It you must have it, just say so, but don’t keep saying “everything looks ok, we just made a few more changes,” then hand back a draft where everything I’ve written has been completely undone.

To one employee of one client in particular: About a month after I wrote this thread about you, I heard that you’d had a complete breakdown and that your doctor had ordered you to be confined to your home under heavy medication with absolutely no contact with your office. This made me smile. The less any of us have to deal with you, the better we’ll all work.

To the manager at another ad agency who hires us as subcontracters: You’re a nice guy (a perv, but a nice guy), but whenever I come out of a meeting with you, I think of the saying “if you spend your life trying to please idiots, you will eventually start thinking like one” and I worry about my future. The new cover copy you wrote looks like you flipped through a thesaurus and picked a bunch of words you don’t really know how to use. If you don’t understand any of it, maybe it looks impressive, but if you do, it looks ridiculous, and since our target market is educated professionals, the chances are good that a lot of the people we want to sell the product to will think the catalog was written by a moron who thinks he sounds smart.

Long, but cathartic.

31

Employer: SyphiliticDonkeyRaping Systems Ltd.
Occupation: Web Coding Gimp

Because morale has been rather low in the past year (what with the salaries not being paid on time, and the redundancies, and having to move the office back to a converted abattoir in the middle of nowhere), management, who now make up more that 20% of the entire head count, have introduced incentive schemes. To wit, share participation in the company (an investment prospect nearly as appealing as holiday timeshares in Iraq), and a performance-related bonus scheme. My first ever quarterly bonus has just been calculated. A spectacular £13. Before tax. I think I’ll put another acre on the grounds. I’m just burning with enthusiasm now.

This is because I’ve been stuck, mostly, on one low-paying (but, unfortunately, high-prestige) project for over three years now. One of the few good things about it is that the client uses more-or-less standard kit, all M$-based - I can just write these complicated web pages for Internet Explorer, I don’t have to worry about browser compatibility issues. I didn’t have to worry about browser compatibility issues: I’ve just today been told, “Oh, by the way, the next region to go live will be the US… x thousand offices… they all use AOL.”

I want to go home now.

32

Sublight: You named the Aibo? Very, very, ultimately cool, goodsir.

Have you, by any chance, any good ‘engrish’ samples? They’re very good for both venting and light entertainment.

33

Well, I had a thread about some of the Engrish I encountered last month.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=136391

I should add that, despite my ranting, I do really enjoy my job.

34

No work related rants as I am liberated and FREE…and earning zip in mula and my IRA is in the crapper and I have low social security contribution thingie right now, but damnnnnnnnn, I gotta tell you, reading everyone’s rants just makes me *happy * nay, *giddy * to be trapped at home with two kids under five and a useless shedding dog.
**Sublight ** BTW, outstanding original rant and follow up rant. jizzmonkey should be the name of a band.

And now I shall go back to eating inappropriate amounts of potato chips while surfing the boards…

35

Company: Big Optical Company, RGP Contact Lens Division
Job Title: Senior Customer Fulfillment Representative
What I really do: International customer service, Asia & Australia Markets; US & Canada call center; stockroom & shipping

To My Customers: If you get your lens order in by 2PM, we guarantee same day shipping. This does not apply to solution orders. Those come from a different warehouse and I have no control over what they do. Sometimes I feel lucky if I can get them to send anything at all. If you call after 2PM, I will try to get your order shipped the same day anyway, but I can’t promise anything, especially if you do this all the time. I understand that you are a different time zone, but you know where we are and you’ve been doing business with us long enough to remember that our cutoff is 1PM your local time. If you call at 1:59 with a huge order that is going to take me ten minutes to enter and forty minutes to pull, I will still guarantee you same day shipping, but I will not use my Pleasant Phone Voice next time you call. You’ll talk to the cranky bitch that works here when I’m not talking to customers.

To One Particular Customer: If you tell me what color underwear your sister wore to your great-nephew’s wedding, you can still talk to the Pleasant Phone Voice, but I want you to know that I’m really skeeved out. (Hint: It was on March 17th. Share my hell!)

To The Wrong Number Dialers: Yes, you really dialed the wrong number. No matter how many times you ask me if it’s the stereo manufacturer, the tire store, the copier repair center, or the cable company, that is not going to magically change me into the stereo manufacturer, the tire store, the copier repair center, or the cable company. I already told you that you have reached the contact lens company. It doesn’t matter if somebody gave you this number and said it was for something else. No, I don’t know the number you’re supposed to call. I’m sorry that you’re 80 years old and your prescription didn’t come in the mail. But you’re going to have to call somebody else, because I can’t help you.

To My Co-Workers: Do you see Guardian of the Cafeteria Menu in my job description? Don’t ask me every morning at 9:00 what the lunch is. And even when I just come back from lunch, don’t expect me to remember what the soup is. You’ve known for four and a half years that I don’t eat soup, and I don’t look at what I know I’m not going to eat anyway.

To One Particular Co-Worker: We all have the same job description in this department. I know, because I just revised all our job descriptions last month. Therefore, stop leaving me the things you don’t like to do. If it comes in on your stockroom day and you don’t put it away, when I come in the next day I’ll see it sitting there and leave it for you. If I enter orders after 2PM on your stockroom day, I will inform you. If I enter orders at 1:30 on your stockroom day, I expect you to check for them yourself. Not talking to me for two weeks isn’t going to change this. It just makes you look stupid. Also, your children are ugly.

To Our Human Resources Rep: I’d like to know why I can use my yearly fitness reimbursement to walk on a treadmill at a gym, but not for horseback riding lessons, which burns significantly more calories. Nowhere does it say that the benefit is only applicable to people who join the trendy women’s gym, although those seem to be the only people who are allowed to use it. Riding is an Olympic sport; treadmill-walking is not. Do you expect me to believe that you are a higher authority on athletic activity than the IOC?

To My Supervisor: I think it’s time to stop coddling the above co-worker. For one thing, I don’t appreciate that when I’m out, you do all my work, but when she’s out, I have to do her work plus my own. Not that she does much when she’s here, other than her kids’ homework and Internet jigsaw puzzles. Do you know how many times when she’s out, her field reps have called and asked me to do things she’s left undone for MONTHS? Also, your children are not ugly, but they still don’t do anything that my cats don’t do.

To My Employer: Despite the above ranting, I really do mostly like my job, I like the paycheck, and the benefits are pretty good when HR isn’t arbitrarily deciding who can use them. But why am I stuck with a title that sounds like a euphemism for an elderly prostitute?

I won’t even get into my part-time job, as an event security person at a sports arena. I only wish I’d been working at the Saddledome last night, when a streaker jumped over the glass, landed headfirst on the ice and knocked himself out. Pure genius.

~ Randi

36

Company: Giant Real Estate Developer
Position: Transaction Manager

Dear Secretary:

I understand that you have violent mood swings, and that you are on medication to control them. I also understand that you have certain complications which have recently caused you to change your medication. I know that your doctor is working on finding a pill that will make you sane. Please inform him that his efforts to date are a complete failure.

In addition to the above life-long condition, I cannot help but notice that you are undergoing menopause. Due to your essential wing-nut-ness, you are doing so in the most obnoxious, crabby, crazed way possible. While I sympathize, I cannot side with you against all the other employees in the building. No, the copier guy is not out to ruin your life. I don’t think the administrative assistant across the hall is giving you the evil eye. The property manager is not plotting against you. If any of these scenarios are true, you brought it on yourself by throwing a screaming, crying fit when the snack machine ran out of yogurt. You are a complete loon.

You should also stop asking me why you don’t get the professional recognition you feel you deserve. Concentrate on being grateful that nobody has called the SWAT team yet.

Dear Human Resources:

Since my secretary’s conditions are medical in nature, you have informed me that I am to take no action. None. Thanks a friggin’ lot, you spineless twerps. Given that restriction, if you ask me one more time why I can’t keep her behavior under control, I will beat you to death with a three-hole punch, then drive to your house and kick your dog.

37

Company: Score! Tutoring Center
Job title: Assistant Coach

To my co-workers: If you come in 15 minutes late, see the Director is in a meeting with some parents, don’t tell me “Please don’t tell the Director I was late.” You being late is beyond my control. If you were late, the Director WILL KNOW. They ARE psychic and already know you were late. I’m not going to be a vessel for your dirty secrets.

Do not ask me for a ride home after work because you are only a 16 year old girl who doesn’t have a car and your dad can’t pick you up because he’s on an alcohol binge. Do not give me batty eyes either, you will just scare me off. I am not going to put my self in a position where I am alone with a 16 year girl driving her to timbuktoo country Friday night at 9 PM. Nothing personal.

Please do not dump everything off on me. You can move the kid’s goal magnet, you’re standing right there. No point in prying me away from helping the 6 kids in my station when moving the damn magnet is your job anyway.

Please do not make snide remarks about what I have in store for closing the center. I don’t need to hear “Both some kid really unloaded his colon in the bathroom today. Have fun cleaning it up!” Cleaning up colon-cargo is not fun. Do not make light of it. Or so help me I WILL leave you a surprise to deal with when you have to clean up the bathroom.

to my supervisors: For a job that pays minimum wage, I think that I put a lot of pride into my work. I want you to know that. When you see that the notes I’m giving for parents are sub-par, do not simply assume I’m crappy at taking notes. You only seem to show up when I occasionally slip up or are not feeling 100%. Feel free to follow me around on most days when I am very enthusiastic and talking with parents about how great their kid did in tutoring that day.

If you see my face stuck in a grimace with tears running down my eyes, its not because I’m emotionally distraught. Its because the kid you are making me hover over (to supervise progress) STINKS and I am overwhelmed by the smell.

On that note, To the parents of our members: Your kid smells. I’m sorry. He is a great speller and can do long division, but he reeks to high heaven. I’m sure he came from a country where it is common custom to cram rotting shellfish in one’s armpits but we live in AMERICA so please dunk your kid in Glade scented oil or something before you come because the kid is making the whole center smell. Gah!

38

Employer: UK Secondary school infested with lissencephalic baboons, and then there’s the kids…
Position: Teacher in charge of truancy/attendance unit

When I began working for said zoo, it was agreed they would help me acquire my UK teaching credential (PGCE), and said my room would be state of the art as so much money was being put into this special project. One promise after the other of how absolutely wonderful this project was going to be…

They promised me the Earth, but all I’ve had up until now is mud!

To the Headmaster and Deputy Head Mistress: When I was hired, you promised to help me get my PGCE. The state where my degree was earned required an additional teaching degree, but I know what I’m doing. I have been teaching and tutoring since just before turning 17; at various levels from 5th grade to community college in many many subjects. Why, after 4 months after being hired, have you not even RUNG to begin the process??? EH? It may be cheaper for you to keep me as an unqualified teacher (5000 pounds a year cheaper in fact) but it matters a great deal to my family who is dependent upon my income, and my own frame of mind knowing I posess the proper UK qualifications and documentation. Had my degree come from a different state you would have had to hire me as a qualified teacher anyway, so please get with it!

To my project leader: Even as an ‘unqualified teacher’ in the UK, it would be of great benefit if you would have given me the necessary paperwork/information to even know what UK curriculum requires. Trust me, it differs ever so greatly from US curriculum. As this project is separate from the main school, I must MUST be made aware of where these students should be in relation to the mainstream students. What assignments are they required to do? What exams are they required to take? I don’t even have BOOKS for many of the lessons. I may not have a clue about French, but am willing to give it a go. Give me a bloody book!! When I come to you asking for help in obtaining coursework after my repeated attempts of leaving messages in boxes and going to rooms in search of teachers, please don’t roll your eyes and tell me you haven’t the time. You have more clout with these teachers than I do. They don’t know me from Adam so why should they give me the time of day, other than out of professional courtesy (something they obviously lack as shown from their actions thus far). This was something you offered to do anyway, so why back out now?? I cannot just make up something on the bus to work…

By ignoring this plea, you are ensuring the inevitable failure of my program. Why?

If this project is going to work, I also need supplies. Why must I beg change (40 pounds per day maximum) from the girls in the office when over 50,000 pounds has been allocated to my project? As this project has been in the works for some time, a heck of a lot more could have been done before I arrived… My class was supposed to be state of the art, what I was given was a trashed room that took over a week of MY time to clean all the rubbish out of. Had to go shopping every day for fabric to cover my bulletin boards, fabric to re-upholster each bloody chair rather than buy new ones, buy new huge cushions for our ‘chill zone’ as someone came into my room and just took them without asking. Even the basics such as a clock, chalk, pens, etc had to be purchased by me… as if I have the extra cash to be supplying my own classroom…

School started in September but my room was not even set up until nearly October. I could not get computers until my room had blinds - being in a high crime area we did not dare leave computers in full view. Now that blinds have finally come, the computers have not been fully set up. As we are apart from the main school, we need access to such things as the internet, and the school network systems. We can’t even get access to the library for books as we are apart from mainstream, so do not fit in with the normal ‘scheduling’ of access… What a pile of wank if you ask me.

My classroom is freezing. Why is there no (so little) heat? The radiator comes on indiscriminately and only for a very brief moment. My students can see their breath. My TA and Learning Mentor are wearing thermals, gloves and coats to keep warm. I’ve pilfered a small portable heater from a room upstairs, upon which my staff and students take turn sitting and standing around to get a modicum amount of heat… even the butch fellas crowd around it.

My office… Is it too much to ask that the door handle work? It is so battered it is ready to fall off, and it takes at least 3 minutes of wiggling to lock and unlock the bloody thing. I need a desk, a phone, and a filing cabinet. I had to get the PE fella to help me cart a desk from upstairs down to my office. It took the Caretaker/Site Manager nearly 2 months to get a phone in there, but no one has a clue what extension I am? The phone can dial out but can’t take incoming calls? WTH? This is supposed to be of use how?

The cafeteria ladies: When you smoke in the room next to my office, please shut your door so the smell does not overpower my office - parents and students come in regularly, they don’t want or need this. Please do not expect me to do cafeteria duty every day just because my room is next to the cafeteria. There is a rota for this and guess what… I am NOT on it. Moan to the HM or DHM, not me. I just got out of the hospital and am not up to breaking up fights between mobs of screeching girls, or swinging fellas like I did the other day…

To my Teaching Assistant: Get your sorry ass to work on time! You live closer to work than I do. I manage to get to work at least 1/2 hour early to prep for class. Your showing up 10 to 15 minutes after school has started just is not on. I need you there in case there are problems, or I need you to run an errand for me to get ready for class. Get over your gumps. You may not be at work to ‘make friends’ or anything, but working with such a sourpuss is downright depressing. Would it kill you to make conversation beyond ‘uh huh’ or a very short response? You have proven already you cannot be trusted (another pit worthy rant) but get a life already!

To my Learning Mentor: I understand you are coming from afar, and thus have taken another job closer to home, but you can still get to work on time as well, please. It is your responsibility to make sure my students are to school on time. This does notmean show up at 9, then take your time getting off campus and not returning until 10! How can I plan a lesson if I’m unsure when you will be getting back?

To my students: Fellas, please remove your ballcaps. This is one of my biggest pet peeves as a teacher. I want to be able to see your eyes and know you are actually awake and aware of what is happening. Keep up the great work. You aren’t as bad as everyone has made you out to be :slight_smile:

39

I’ve never posted before, but this is as good a time as any, I guess.

Company: Building Maintenance
Position: Administrative Assistant

To My Company:

Thanks so much for laying me off in the middle of a recession, you fuckers. Never mind that I saw plans for a major renovation of our office space pass through the department not two days before I was let go (and I even played architect to figure out how to fit the new equipment in the new fucking copyroom!), but apparently, my little measly salary was holding up the renovations. I didn’t have enough work? No shit. I haven’t had enough work to do for the entire year that I’ve worked for you. That’s not my fault. My boss knew that when she hired me. I’ve used the time to work on my writing–and guess what? That’s perfectly fine with the boss-lady! She needed me there to do what work she had, and I did it quite well. In the downtime, I worked on my play or surfed the net. If she needed something done, I put my play aside and did what she asked, as soon as she asked. I don’t think my little pittance of a salary really would have broken the bank, but apparently you did. I love frequenting temp agencies to look for a new job because no one will respond to my resumes. Yes, I love being laid off during the recession. Rot in hell, fuckers.

To My Ex-Boss:

You were a pleasure and a joy to work for. Thank you for making my year a nice one.

To My Ex-Coworkers:

Yes, I was surfing the internet. She said I could.

To my Roommate: I appreciate your offer to help me with bills as I’m laid off, but you’d feel bad taking money from me. Put yourself in my shoes.

To My Parents: No, I am not giving up on my dream of becoming a writer and moving back to Podunk. Sorry. I’ll collect unemployment.

To the Temp Agencies: I appreciate the fact that you’re looking for a job for me, but what part of “No Financial Companies” do you not understand? I realize that times are lean, but I have above-average computer skills and excellent people skills. When I tell you that I only want to be contacted for creative jobs, such as publishing and television, that doesn’t mean to call me every time you have an offer from Bitchslap Bank. I know they pay more, but I’ll have to kill myself after two weeks. And I feel bad saying “no” to you continuously because I’ve specified the above and you still call me with the financial jobs–it makes me look bad in your eyes. And yes, I know there are jobs available at the Big Mouse Company because I’ve interviewed for several, thanks to a friend in HR.

To Bush: Please, please fix the economy and I will stop bitching. I’ll also stop making fun of you to my Republican father.

Sincerely,
Avabeth

40

Company: Printing Company/Plant
Position: Customer Service Rep.

I work in a company were we print and produce for alot of Businesses/Schools/Politicians/Other Organizations.

Most of the time it is fine, but this political cycle has been the toughest since I have been working for this company.

Politicians - Figure out what you want and when you want it. We have other clients that have been doing work with us all year. Yeah, I know you have a primary or general election coming up and you want priority for your shit, but if you want your shit done you had better figure out what the fuck you want and quantity.
I can not read your mind. Remember there is other work in this company other than yours. I’ll be so glad when Nov. 5th is here and gone.

Salesmen - Although the pay is good, and some people like working Overtime. We do not have the hours (there are only so many hours in a day) or personnel (and we get tired, fed up and don’t want to be here anymore, in a word, we have lives) to get this work out. You are selling and bringing in work, but if the production can not get out then what point. Have realistic job due dates, or be pissed off when your job is not getting finished and delivered on time.

Clients - You need to proof your job, we are only human and believe it or not we do have other work in this company. Your job is important and we do like the income that you generate, but if you do not proof or you miss something, that is your fault. We print what you tell us, and what you pay for, nothing more or less.

Management - The people who work in this company are not stupid, they do a good job, let them know it. People like to get praised, and told they are valuable.

I like the work and the job, but you people are stressing me out.