Whiners at work

The BBQ Pit
1

If I paint people with two extremely broad brushes :wink: I would say that many people fall into two distinct spectrums: Those that are charismatic whose presence is enjoyable, and those who suck away any sense of enjoyment and happiness out of work.

Not everyone falls under these extremes, but I would say most coworkers are either pleasant to be around or unpleasant to be around. Some are also kind of neutral (Generally means I haven’t been around them enough to decide one way or another). Some of the worst coworkers, though, are the whiners.

I consider whining highly unprofessional. While most of my co-workers at my tutoring job are great to be around, there are a few whose frequent whining gets rather annoying. They lower morale (either by depressing people or annoying them) and frequently demonstrate a lack of tact that I find alarming. At my job, we generally are scheduled to work 3 hour shifts. THREE HOURS. For most normal human beings, having to work a mere three hours means that by the time you realize “Hey, I’m tired/hungry/grumpy/etc” you are already done with your shift and free to go. Even busy days aren’t bad, because the added workload makes it feel like time is going by faster (at least for me, anyway). But some coworkers seem to think that having to work a 3 hour shift is simply too much and an excessive abuse on the fragile high school/college student’s body and mind :rolleyes: Many of my co-workers are joining the workforce for the first time at my job, so its understandable there will be some acclimation for some people. But come on, you’re only working for THREE HOURS at a time. The first real job I ever worked had me working ten hour shifts, six days a week for two months. Going to work for three hours every other day is a friggin walk in the park compared to that, so it blows my mind that these people could have the nerve to complain. What the hell did they expect they were going to have to do when they applied for this job, doing NOTHING?! :mad:

Unfortunately, this type of behavior isn’t limited to us lowly peons, either. Since managers get promoted quickly at this company, we often have managers that get transferred away, only to be replaced by newly hired managers. I have had to put up with not one, but two different managers who complained to us that their job was beneath them, and that they didn’t spent four years at UC Berkeley to work at a company that has them spend a certain percentage of their time writing encouraging letters to each and every member of the tutoring center. I’m guessing that they thought their degree would earn them a ticket to being top dog in the place, or that they wouldn’t have to work their way up :rolleyes: EVERY manager there has a Bachelor’s degree, but I guess some people don’t understand that there’s no shortcuts in life. This type of behavior makes me particularly livid because they decide to dump their frustration on us part-timers, who don’t even have the luxury of being in a full-time position in a very stable company, built on a system of meritocacy rather than toadying.

I am able to enjoy my job in spite of these people, its the fact that they open their mouth that infuriates me.

2

Having to read this thread has caused me pain and suffering.

You’ll be hearing from my lawyer.

3

At my job, I get 2 15 minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch break.

A few cow-orkers who apparently had nothing at all to do, decided it was their business to log (in great detail) the comings and goings of their fellow cow-orkers. When they went on break, how long they took, whether or not they clocked in and out correctly, and so forth.

The constant whining finally pissed off the department manager (who rarely gets pissed off) to a point where she had to lecture us on minding our own business and acting like adults.

Now, thanks to those nosy, whining fuckers, we all all have to clock in and out for our 30 minute lunch break (before, this was only necessary if you left the strip shopping center where our office is located).

I don’t take morning or afternoon breaks. I would combine them with my lunch break so that I could get a full hour. This was okay with my supervisor.

Now I have to watch a fucking clock so that I don’t go over the 30 minutes. We have to make up any time over 30 minutes.

So, fuck you, you fucking whining fuckers.

4

Tell them to start their own business and set their own hours…hehe.<evil grin>

5

This person sounds like a terrible manager. Why on earth would it be beneath you to encourage your employees?

6

Maybe their managers aren’t encouraging them?

7

I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe in witchcraft. I don’t believe in lepruchans. I don’t believe in space aliens.

But I do believe in vampires. They don’t suck out your lifeblood, but they suck out your spirit. And they do this by whining. They are most often found at the workplace. Not over the top venting, ranting, or ragging. Everyone does this, and it’s healthy and even fun from time to time. It’s the people that are always on low level simmer “This job sucks”, every minute of every day. No matter how good a day you’re having, these miserable fuckers tend to throw a wet blanket on it. They may think they’e commiserating, but all they’re actually doing is spreading misery like bad seed.

I’ve worked with a lot of people like this, and have found only one solution – get away from them. Find another project to work on, spend your breaks with someone else, whatever. Just put some distance and get out of earshot of their bloodsucking whining. Yuck.

8

Sadly, the business model for “Useless Sacks of Shit R’ Us” has been implemented already. I’ve seen it referred to as PennDOT, and Philadelphia City government.

9

What tdn said. Nobody minds the occasional gripe, especially if done in a joking manner. At least, nobody should, in my book. But the people who grumble nonstop are depressing to be around, no doubt. I used to work with a woman who, whenever our manager would ask her to do something, she’d literally whine, saying,…“uuhhhhhh, oh, all right!”. She was laid off some time ago.

10

There are two types pf people: those who divide people into two types and those who don’t.

11

I used to be a whiner. It’s just how my family interacts, and a lot of my friends related to each other in the same way. You express why you think your life sucks, and get sympathy. In return, you listen to everyone else complaining about this that an the other thing, and you give them your sympathy. Everybody feels all accepted and appreciated and comforted and stuff.

I matured a bit, got some new friends, and finally figured out that I was a total bummer to be around, and stopped whining for the most part. Though I do still enjoy a good bitch session when life gets to be a Bit Much, I think I am a much more positive person now. Talking to my family can sometimes be a real drag, because I can see how focusing on the negative is holding them back from being as happy as they could be.

I guess my point (inasmuch as there is one) is not to take it personally. They aren’t necessarily trying to dump on you or bring you down. They’re actually trying to bond with you, in their own sad, dysfunctional way.

12

In nearly every job I’ve ever had, I’ve always been too busy, you know, actually doing my job to pay attention to the comings and goings of my coworkers. I have, however been on the receiving end of coworkers who were obsessed with my own comings and goings. The would keep track of every trip to the bathroom, and how long I was there. If I left my workstation to ask a coworker a job-related question (I was an order checker in a music store warehouse shipping room where the people who worked at the front counter couldn’t be bothered to make sure instruments were put back in their own cases after being checked out by customers, so I spent a lot of time trying to track down instruments so I could, you know, make sure we shipped the instrument that was actually ordered, with the serial number on the instrument matching the one on the order sheet, etc.) and would bitch to my supervisor about how much time I spent away from my station. They would also bitch that they were being more “productive” than I was because they “checked” a lot more orders than I did.

So, I started keeping a corner-of-the-eye watch on these two.

They stayed at their work stations, to be sure. They read magazines that they kept hidden under their desks. One of them drew nudes. They frequently stopped work to socialize (their stations were right next to each other). They boosted their numbers by grabbing up all the small, easily handled orders while leaving the larger, heavier items, and coincidentally, the ones with serial numbers that needed to be checked, for me (which I didn’t mind, because frankly, checking boxes of saxophone reeds and violin strings is boring as hell). Also, when the mistakes came back, counts would reveal that they made five times as many mistakes in a day as I would in a week. One day they bitched that they had each checked something like 180 orders while I had checked only 30. Supervisor got wise, and went back through the orders. One of my 30 orders was a fifteen box 300- item order destined for a school orchestra in Japan. See, the lady in charge of the foriegn orders department would come and pull me off the line to check her orders because she wanted someone to do it who would, you know, actually check them accurately. I also routinely checked four and five box orders which contained several serial-numbered items (horns, flutes, etc.) Somehow, in their eyes, two saxophones, a trumpet and a couple of clarinets, all of which needed to be removed from their cases and inspected, plus a dozen boxes of assorted reeds, ligatures, and mouthpieces, spread out over a half-dozen boxes equated to one small box containing a single package of saxophone reeds.

They also subjected me to a lot of verbal harassment, and one of them falsely reported to my supervisor that I had sprayed Lysol into her eyes, and demanded that I be fired. Before I even knew about the alleged incident, word had spread through the entire shipping room and there was a line at the door of people telling him that no, I hadn’t sprayed Lysol into anyone’s eyes, that I just quietly did my job while these two harassed me, oh, and by the way, anyone who happened to walk past their station was also subject to a variety of personal insults. One girl pointed out to the supervisor (probably unnecessarily, Hank was a pretty sharp guy) that if the girl had actually been sprayed in the eyes with Lysol, her first action would have been to run to the bathroom and try to flush her eyes out, not to go to the boss and demand someone be fired.

I finally asked to be transferred to packing to get away from these two. It was there that I discovered how they kept their productivity numbers up. I found a two box order, and one of them had marked on the ticket that all items were present and correct. Except that only one box came across my table. The other was still in the warehouse, waiting for the repair guys to do some playability tests.

They were gone a week later after one too many complaints from other coworkers about harassment. They would get called into the office, lectured, warned, written up, then come out and turn up the heat, all the while blaming me for their workplace woes.

Some people are just stupid.

13

Yes, yes, yes!
I work with one of these and he hasn’t stopped bitching for the last 12 years. He’s chipped away any sense of pleasure the job used to hold for me and replaced it with icy dread. He’s jealous and unhappy and wants everyone around him to be just as miserable. All day long it’s moan, whine, carp, pout… and I’m trapped with him as long as I keep this job.

Now I want to cry.

14

Oh, yeah. I work with one person who is constantly saying how horrible “this place” is. Of course, he came to work there almost immediately out of college and has been there ever since. He has no perspective. Everything from management to how poorly designed the floor number indicator on the elevator is. Nitpicks. I could feel sorry for some schmo who has to put in a 10-hour day on a boring assembly line in a stinky factory. NOT for a guy who gets to park his butt in a reasonably comfortable chair in a clean, air-conditioned office in front of a computer figuring out how to do some interesting technical thing and getting paid good money for doing it.

Another place I worked was a well-endowed charitable foundation. They literally had free lunch. And fully-employer-funded family health care. Not to mention free coffee and soft drinks all day. But were folks happy? Not all of them. Some had the nerve to complain about how there were only 3 choices of soda. Go figure. I had just ended 10 years of being home with my young children. I was darn grateful that in addition to all of the above, somebody would actually construct a sandwich for me, or give me a nice burger or salad. Beats a can of Spaghetti-O’s or a PBJ or baloney sandwich.

15

Yeah, some people just seem to have a major problem with the world, don’t they?

I had one employee under my supervision that had some health issues. I noticed her offline for awhile and walked over. She looked terrible. I said “I noticed you’re offline, are you okay?” She shook her head. I asked her what was wrong. She said she wasn’t feeling well. She indicated her insulin kit and said she was crashing. I asked, “Can I do anything to help you?” She handed me some money and croaked out that she wanted a soda. I asked her, “any kind? Mountain Dew okay?” (that’s the favorite around here). She nodded. I quickly made my way down to the cafeteria and bought it for her, and returned with her soda and change. I told her to take some time and gave her my extension so if she needed more help that she wouldn’t have to get up, and that I was giving her permission to take time away from her job until she felt better. She only nodded.

A few days later it got around to me that she was telling people I had come over to her while she was getting her own soda and yelled at her to get back to work. WTF? I helped her and went out of my way to help! It was just inexplicable.

As a supervisor I’ve had a lot of the “I’m-bad-at-my-job-but-I’ll-blame-someone-else” routine, and have been accused of things and even had people try to get me fired to cover up themselves. Fortunately my management takes it in stride – we have a lot of turnover, unfortunately, and there are always some nutters out there. But that was the only time someone seemed to whine for no reason.

These employees always end up quitting or getting fired (and for unrelated reasons) briefly thereafter so I don’t really have any long-term pains in my side.

16

I shared an office with an ultra-negative person during grad school. Every five minutes, he’d complain about how the school was out to get him. Or, it would be a rant against the stupid crabs he was studying. Or, he would complain about the “jerkwad” professor who was giving him a hard time. Or, he would complain about being tired.

He made for a fun companion during conferences.

He drove all of us crazy during lunch. If you bought a bottle of water, he’d tell you you were being ripped off…it’s just “hose” water (I’m sure it is, but it’s a hell of a lot better-tasting than the brown stuff that comes out of my pipes!) If he caught you eating red meat, he’d tell you about his own personal boycott against the beef industry (Mad Cows scare him). It got to the point where I didn’t like eating around him.

I’m not the most cheery person in the world, but a broken record is annoying no matter what it’s playing. Whenever I hear myself complaining, I try to balance it out with some positive.

17

Reminds me of a bitch I had to deal with when I was working in a copy room. She came to me one afternoon acting like Miss High-n-Mighty, bragging about how much she does while implying that I did jack shit. Funny how I was the one who was continually praised for being accurate - none of my work had missing pages nor anything cut off.

18

I worked one place where we had a “whiner” and a “Chicken Little” (The sky is falling! The sky is falling!). Individually they were tolerable, but together they would go into a feedback loop. The conversation could go from “I’ve broken my pencil” to “My God, we’re going to be fired and sold as sex slaves to a band of rabid Highland Gorillas!” in about 2 minutes.

19

I had to stop doing this with people I fired. The gorillas started complaining about all the bitchin’ and whinin’ the sex slaves were doing. Now the only alternative is to box em up and store em in a closet and I’m running out of space here!