“I wired it exactly like the diagram said, but it still doesn’t work.”*
(pulls choke out; pumps chain lube button twice; pulls starting cord)
*I had this printed on the back of a company T-shirt.
You have a new hire starting at 8:00am on Monday. It is now 5:00pm, on Friday, and you’re notifying the IT department now. You’ve known about the new hire for a month, but you’re notifying the IT department now.
What’s that? No, of course I don’t have anything better to do with my weekend than image a computer, install the position-specific software that’s not on the image, create the the domain, e-mail, and various other accounts, and configure the permissions on all those accounts.
What’s that? He also has a PDA that needs to be set up with Goodlink? That’s awesome.
:mad:
This! Especially because all there is only 2 tiers of workers here. Management and everyone else (I’m part of the latter). Oh, and management all have the same last name.
[Milton]
If they take my stapler, I’m going to set the building on fire.
[/Milton]
Sadly, that happens three or four times a year here. Fortunately, unless the office is next to the CEO, we can tell them to p*ss off and we’ll get to it Monday. And the operations manager will back us up on it.
What will eventually make me get all stabby on someone. Getting a high call in the middle of the night because a workstation doesn’t work and all the luser needs to do is take three steps to the left or right to be in front of an identically configured computer. “But this is the one I always use!”
The next person I hear in a QA who says they’re going to call the customer back… and doesn’t.
I love call recording.
Gum. My boss is the nastiest gum-chewer. I shut my door so I can’t hear it, so she comes in my office and stands right next to me and smacks her gum in my ear. She does many other intensely annoying things (I started writing up a list of the Top 10 Ways My Boss Drives Me Crazy, and it’s much longer than 10 now), but that’s the one that makes me want to rev up the chainsaw.
Teams who want to implement huge changes as “bug fixes”, and who only notify me after the fact. That’s not going to fuck over the docs, not at all.
One of these days I’ll send off a request for some of Skald’s flying monkeys, I swear. (It’s that or the Mossberg, and evil overlords never do their own work.)
I’m sorry, but Evil Overlord’s clearly do “do their own work.”
(emphasis mine)
Clearly there are some jobs which require an Evil Overlord’s personal “touch” as it were.
For me its when a coworker starts discussing some kind of problem they’re having (like, say the brakes going out on their car) and another coworker immediately jumps into the conversation and somehow manages to blame the root cause on “liberals.”
Nuts! I need to reread the List of Evil Overlordisms, it seems. I sit corrected.
Fine, bring me my Mossberg, but I’m putting my minions on cleanup after. 
Aw, c’mon! My previous project was for the IT department of a megacompany - and my boss notified the People Who Set Up Computers Section on the day after I’d joined.
He’d only known about it for three weeks and he’d been pouting when I refused to drop my previous job and move from Spain to Switzerland in 3 days.
Time for PWSCUS to give someone a new computer: four weeks. They always have to go through the whole process of creating a purchase requisition, having it approved (3 signatures), turning it into a purchase order, getting it approved (same 3 signatures), getting the new leased computer and then finally setting it up.
I’m thinking I’ll start asking my prospective clients what kind of QA system do they follow for their IT QA. These last two have systems where everybody needs to fill up these big questionnaries and alll QA does is make sure that all the t’s are crossed and all the i’s are dotted. Whether the i’s and t’s and the rest of the letters actually make any sense is irrelevant. Also, the QA processes are set up in such a way that urgent things take about one week… takes deep breaths
There is MOULD on your CLAIM FORM.
HOW did you GROW MOULD on your CLAIM FORM?! 
Mouldy, muddy, otherwise-unnamed-substance-spilt-on-claim-forms. Next time I get one, I’m taking note of the address, going to their house and setting fire to their FACE. We have to touch the claim forms to get the information out of them. They’re not automatically filled in by robots. WHY ARE THERE FLUIDS ON THE CLAIM FORM?
The next time a client calls at 5:00PM, in reference to a 7:30AM next day catering, and says their numbers have increased by 20(will that be a problem?) I’m going to take my rolling pin to their skull. No, on second thought, their kneecaps. The client’s head is obviously too soft for the rolling pin to hurt it much.
The next time those bloody kids come through and start pushing all of the noisy buttons on every single toy on the toy aisles in the store in which I work, I will have to severely hurt one of them as an example to the others.
Also, parents who see their children doing something bratty/obnoxious/dangerous and instead of coming over to yank them up and drag them off for a beating, like good parents should, instead stand there and yell their child’s name over and over again for fifteen minutes.
This is how it goes…
Mommy spots Junior pouring detergent in the floor. BTW, he’s been doing it for the past five minutes, but she’s too absorbed in trying to figure out which color of nail polish will help her land that special man.
“Junior! Stop that! Junior! Junior! Junior! Junior, I said stop that right now! JUNIOR! JUNIOR! JUNIOR! JUNIOR! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME, PUT THAT DOWN NOW AND COME ON! JUNIOR! JUNIOR! JUNIOR!..” and so on for the next 14 minutes, 30 seconds. Or until Junior gets bored with pouring detergent in the floor. Or until I reload.
The kid knows Mommy’s too lazy or brain addled to walk the five feet over to where he is to discipline him, yet somehow she’s still shocked he doesn’t immediately stop what he’s doing?
The only problem I have is a moral dilemma: Should I kill the parent, as they are obviously responsible for the whole mess, or should I kill the kid, as they are patently evil?
And you whippersnappers stay off my lawn, too.
Why not both? The kid’s already spoiled, and the mother might breed again.
Small (and rather late) disclaimer for my OP. The company I have to phone is a new company that does the job of several smaller older ones. All also in the US. None of them had that message. On the rare occasions you had to call you’d get “Joe speaking”
And the rare phonecalls were usually to set something up for the first time. Once it was set up it just… worked… forever.
And they were always a pleasure to talk to.
Happy days !
.