The Community Candy Jar thread reminded me of my days as an Admin Asst. I hated that job. Those jobs, more accurately - I filled that role dozens of times.
The typing and phones were usually OK, no big deal. Shoot, I genuinely liked writing proposals, creating presentations, editing photos and managing databases. Working with various software was a blast, I could make Excel crank out all kinds of statistics.
But that whole “mommy to the group” part - UGH! Cards on birthdays and lunches for the office and being the one with the band-aids. Which I never was. Needle and thread – people always thought I was supposed to have some on hand, in case of emergencies. Hell no. Just do like I do, grab a stapler.
Many times I’d start my new temp assignment at 8:00 and by 8:15 the copier was jammed and I was summoned. Yes, me and my Magic Ovaries were right there, ready to grapple with an expensive piece of equipment I’d never seen before and apparently no one else could operate.
One company president would stand there watching as I put paper in the copier (and no, he wasn’t doing it for the view). Never mind that I was busy cranking out documents on both computers and covering the phones. I’d have to stop because Mr. My Dick Is Too Big For Me To Bend Over couldn’t refill the copier on his own.
Gah! I know if I ever see any of those people in the grocery store, they’ll still talk down to me because in their mind, I will always be The Admin.
In my experience, most people in “management” seem to be on a constant power trip. I currently have one manager who walks up four flights of stairs with one piece of paper in her hand, and then asks me to make one copy of it for her. She’s already walked past the room with three photocopiers in it, and is less than 50 metres from the copier in the corridor outside our office. And yet she wants me to copy that piece of paper for her.
Yesterday was potentially the best one though - she gave me a printout of an email she’d been sent, with a website address on it for a college that wants us to consider accreditation for their degree programmes. She asked me to look at the website and see what was on it. Errr…and what exactly am I supposed to look for? It’s a nice site, it’s got pretty pictures and some text…
Mostly, I just want to say to these people - get off your lardy arse and do the little jobs yourself, you’re not incapable, you’re either lazy or incompetent or so far up your own backside you’ve not seen daylight for years.
I appreciate that your bosses are rather silly and indeed inefficient. You have my sympathy.
But at least your bosses know what the equipment does.
Now in my day (and this is absolutely true), we had some real dozy wazzocks. :rolleyes:
Travel with me to the mid 70’s…
Computers were in their early days as far as business was concerned. I had access to one at University - a mainframe where you put your job in on punched cards and got it back the next day!
I had taught myself COBOL from a book and could write programs. But due to indolence and poor school advice, I dropped out of University.
My first job was at a local council. They told me I would work with the computer on mileage claims. It sounded perfect. Computers could take all the boring calculation out of the process and keep track of the records for the auditors too. No more calculations by hand and cabinets stuffed full of paper. I could even update the program for them.
Or so you would think.
My job was to take the computer printout of claims - and check it by hand. :smack:
Really.
I stuck it as long as I could, but even when I explained what a waste of time my job was and that I could program the computer, they weren’t interested.
My rant is very tiny but one of these days I’m going to have to scream at my boss about it. And when I start screaming, I give no guarantee that I’ll stop. But yet, it’s such a small thing: when I do statistical reports designed to demonstrate how busy our office is, she never believes the percentages I present. WTF? Say I tell her 14% of all Graduate students have been to our office. Well, that seems high to her. Or low. I’ll tell her, look - there are 50 graduate students. We saw 7. Now, what’s 10…
And she stops me right there! to calculate in pencil on the back of an envelope, with the long division and subtraction and everything.
Last time I went out to my desk, told her loudly to “come here” and showed her on an online calculator and my own calculator that I was right.
My rant is a small and petty one, but it bugs me nonetheless.
Birthdays are a big deal here. A card will make the rounds, and a “surprise” cake party will happen at around 2:00. These events have become so popular that even the obscure people who don’t work in the office get a card and cake.
And every year, the office decides that all those parties have gotten way out of hand, and we need to cut back on them. Without fail, like clockwork, you can set your calander by it, this decision is made at the beginning of November. Guess whose birthday falls on 11/1? Yep. I’ve had 5 birthdays while here, and have gotten exactly one card and two cakes. One cake was presented (for two of us) about 3 weeks late, at 11am, and we were told “Grab a slice and get out, we have a meeting in here.” Invariably, the decision to start up with the festivities resumes in December.
Not this year. I’m finding out exactly when the November birthdays are, and taking care of things myself. Hey, we have to look out for each other, right?
My personal irritations are the small host of people in my office who assume that because I am an assistant, I am their assistant.
This is not, in fact, the case.
I work at a large law firm as a senior partner’s assistant. I have one boss. There are close to a thousand other attorneys at the firm who are not my boss. If asked politely, and if my workload permits, I may (at my own discretion) do small favors for any of them. This is in the nature of a personal favor from me to them. Nowhere in my job description does it state I am obliged to do so - in fact, the description for my position very clearly states that I am not to do so, unless there is literally nothing else I could be doing and I am certain my boss will not require anything of me while I do a personal favor for another attorney. This is because my boss does not share well with others and will go absolutely fucking ballistic if he sees me doing work for persons other than himself. It’s also because every attorney is assigned an assistant of their very own whose job it actually is to assist that attorney. It’s bad form to pester someone else’s assistant for shit you could just as easily have your own assistant do. It’s particulary bad form to pester a partner’s assistant - largely because partner’s assistants are hella busy and do things beyond just answering the phone and making copies that are more important to the firm than making sure Johnny Newbie Lawyer gets two photocopies of an email he wrote to another fresh new associate.
Several times a year, generally when we get the annual influx of new associates, some yahoo first-year associate will walk by my office, see a pair of breasts sitting at an assitant’s desk and dump a shitload of grunt work on my desk with a rudely phrased command to see to it. Somehow these guys never seem to think to ask politely. Hell, they don’t even bother to introduce themselves. (To be fair, I get an equal number of harried-looking fresh-out-of-law-school newbie attorneys who ask politely and sort of desperately if I can help them out - them, I’ll help. They were polite. And frequently have a legitimate reason they can’t have their own assistant do whatever it is. I’m not a heartless bitch - I just don’t feel the need to pander to rudeness :P)
They are inevitably pissed as hell when they come back several hours later to find their pile o’ grunt work mysteriously absent and be informed I have thrown it away. (Okay, I generally don’t throw it away. I do, however, dump it haphazardly in a copier paper box and hide it so it’s not immediately obvious where it is. I’ll give it back to them - the worse for wear - if they ask politely. If they don’t, tough cookies - I’m not their bitch and they don’t get to treat me as such.) Usually they threaten to “have me fired”.
I’ve taken up informing them that a) I do not work for them, therefore they cannot fire me, but b) if they wish to attempt to arrange my discharge, they are free to speak with my boss (a senior partner - none of them have even enough clout at the firm to arrange a meeting with a senior partner, much less dictate his staffing choices). I point out his office, just to be helpful. I’ve only had one who was dumb enough to actually try it. My boss had him fired. (The jackass was so pissed at me, he burst uninvited into my boss’ office after being informed my boss was in conference. My boss was meeting with a major client in preparation for a meeting with the IRS and the newbie just started ranting. My boss was not amused. The client thought it was funny as hell - he came out to ask me what it was all about while my boss reamed the newbie.)
Yes - as a (corporate) travel industry professional, I CAN get great deals when I travel.
No - you may not partake of them.
Yes - I’ve booked vacations/cruises/honeymoons before.
No - I will not book yours.
and, finally, no I will not “keep an eye out for good fares” during spring break, Christmas or Thanksgiving. Keeping everyone’s travel in order and planning meetings is a full-time job for me. You want low fares?.. Buy your tickets six months ago.
One rant I have concerns not in-work (usually), but people I meet outside of work. When they ask me what I do, I tell them I am a computer programmer. They then go off on how much they hate (or love) us IT guys. Hello, I’m a programmer! I have nothing to do with IT! In fact, I’m often at odds with IT. I try explaining this, and people just don’t seem to get it. They often look at me as if I’m speaking Chinese, and then ask me how long I’ve been in IT. Um, how about since never?
So, we have a meeting for Big Boss Man to bitch about “inefficiency in the office” and how projects are taking longer than they should (although project completion has actually begun to surpass sales which means we’re dangerously close to having people with nothing to do).
“Well, one of our big problems is lack of communications from sales. They drop a PO on my lap without any details of what needs to be done where and how. A map as to where everything goes would be a big help”, says I, “For example, I went into BlahBlah job with almost no information.”
Boss sez, “I had maps. All you had to do is ask for them.”
What. The. Fuck?
I don’t need to ask our payroll guy for my check. It somehow shows up on my desk twice a month without my needing to ask for it. I pass on information I feel is worthwhile without someone needing to ask for it first.
Function Points. I desire Og to smite whomever developed the idea of Function Points.
And they laid my best friend off three weeks ago, along with some other programmers, so they could continue sending our jobs overseas to Indian contractors.
In high-tech we have all been forced to “do more with less” for the last 15 years. Yes, there was a boom in the late 90s, but since then it has sucked.
Administrative help is almost unheard of and we all do our own photocopying, travel arrangements, expense reports, faxing, etc. I actually don’t mind any of this. What I do mind is the constant churn of layoffs and insecurity.
I have been personally laid off twice in an 18 month period. Most of the folks with whom I began my career 20+ years ago have also been laid off at least once, and in some cases 3 or 4 times.
What’s really dissatisfying is knowing that CEOs and CFOs are bringing in huge dollar amounts in salary and stock while the proletariats are treated as disposable commodities.
Anyway, the place I’m at now seems very stable and isn’t public. So we have no shareholders to keep satisfied, as they say.
Not much of a rant, but working like this for years has been really stressful.
It pisses me off when female customers come into my bar and start dancing for the patrons. If you want a job, audition! If not, get the fuck out!
And it is management’s fault they keep doing it because they won’t say shit to anyone for anything. They need to grow a pair, and a spine too, while they are at it. We could use a serious housecleaning around there.
Other than that I can’t complain. I work for a pretty ok place. It is, after all, a goldmine.
Much more of a self-pitting, but it’s work-related, so off we go:
Every other Thursday, I run a LiveMeeting training class for our main product. Any new users to our web site can log in and I give them a basic overview of how to use the key areas of our site.
About two months ago, I get a request from one of our customer companies – “Can you do an in-depth training on this one particular section of the site?” Hmmm…well, that’s the newest section, and I don’t know jack shit about it other then the brief overview I give in my usual training, but what the hell. Ok, we’ll schedule two of these trainings for in a couple months time. In the meantime, I’ll learn all the ins and outs of this section.
Last Thursday arrives – Damnit! I put it off and put it off and never actually got around to learning how to use that section! Now I have just two hours to try and cram in all the knowledge I can! Damn you, SDMB! I was busy playing Mafia when I should’ve been…wait, what’s that on my calendar? Why, this week is my usual training class? The specialized training isn’t until next week?? Oh joy of joys, I’m saved! Now I have a full week I can dedicate to learning this particular section!
Now it’s Thursday…the Thursday. The training class is in an hour and 45 minutes. Guess what I didn’t do a fucking thing about all week?
Man, I hate being such a procrastinator sometimes.
I hear ya, folks! I work at a college, and I quite like the students and most of my co-workers. Every once in a while, though… Look, pal, you have 2 PhDs, a JD, and numerous publications to your credit, and you’re the one who can’t figure out how to work the copier. Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid!
On another note, I work in a field (study abroad/international education) where safety, risk management and liability are big issues. I meet regularly with professional organizations, the college’s legal counsel and other professionals in the field to keep up with this stuff. Our office has specific policies and procedures in place for a reason. Professors, listen to me when I tell you that you need to do something a certain way. I don’t tell you how to teach a psychology course; you don’t tell me how to do my job.
I work at a University and my boss is very responsible with money and careful with our office’s budget. That means nothing fancy for us, no pay scales in our office out of line with our jobs, no bonuses, no trips or retreats or office parties or anything like that. Generally speaking, I am proud of her approach, especially in a time when we’re getting our funding slashed left and right by the state. First of all, her job is in the budget area, so it’s completely appropriate for her to be a little tightfisted. Moreover, this is a public school and I think that’s what is expected of the place by the public. Granted, public dollars make up an increasingly small part of our overall budget, but I still think we best serve the state when we don’t spend money profligately.
But Jesus Fucking Christ, we see a lot of budget stuff from other offices, and it is so fucking galling at times to see how some other departments operate, what they spend on their travel budgets, how they distribute bonuses and merit raises to people whose lack of quality in their work we know intimately well. We also see their budget requests and read their plaintive cries about how hard the current budget crunch is for them and their precious operations.
I’m not saying its across the university, and the waste is small compared to the amount resources that are spent responsibly, and spent on academic resources and instruction, but it still chaps my ass regularly.
As a tech as a cheap-ass electronics remerchant chain:
When your repair and return policies are so draconian as to occasionally incite actual violence against store employees, rethinking those policies would be the smart thing to do. Being a lowly technician, this is not a quality that I have the clout to accuse you of.
From my retail time at a large electronics department store chain:
In order to advance to a better, commissioned position in the computer department, you require that I show you, through sales numbers, that I can sell. But in my department, we are not commissioned. There are no “sales numbers.”
By all means, tell me you’ll evaluate my performance to see if I would do well in the computer department and then promptly forget I exist. Also, ignore the fact that half the computer department comes over to me with their customers so I can answer questions that they can’t. This obviously has no bearing on whether or not I’d have any idea what I’m doing.
Feel free to tell me to organize my department in the best way I see fit, and then go and planogram everything in the exact opposite way. Alphabetical makes much more sense for video games than sorting by genre, because people love looking through every damn game in every damn genre to find what they’re looking for. Ditto for the music and DVD sections. Sheer brilliance.
The best loss prevention manager you could possibly hire for an entire region is one who has never worked on the sales floor and watched how loss actually occurs. This will allow him to suggest such wonderful shrinkage-preventing measures as stuffing every DVD with another security tag when thieves remove the DVD from its packaging to steal it anyway, and that brilliant clown horn you had us install that was supposed to be honked every time a staff member passed it, thus alerting potential thieves that staff is nearby, and not, as one might foolishly expect, an amusingly dressed man with a seltzer bottle and a squirting flower on his lapel. Oh, and the hourly cycle counts? Genius. Now we get to feel the impotence of not being able to do anything about the thefts after the fact much more frequently. Oh, and the “red zone” within which one employee was to stay at all times, patrolling incessantly? Just awesome. Gives staff a better vantage by which to watch thieves take things to other departments with better concealing cover and less attentive staff behind which to steal them. The receipt checker at the checkout was a great afterthought, too. It’s important to catch those thieves who keep their booty right out in the open.
Thank you for shuffling managers after the big buyout from an American company, and then finding that my job, which I had previously been doing to great satisfaction, three raises, and several glowing, unsolicited reviews from customers, was suddenly inadequate to the standards that you said wouldn’t change when we got bought out. No, seriously – thank you. I am now making nearly double what you dorks paid me. You rock.
From my last job:
I am best when working with customers because I know my shit, I’m damn good and damn fast at what I do. Plus, I work my ass off. That’s how I got the promotion that came with an $8k raise. At least, so I thought, but I found I must defer to your flawless logic in moving me into the shipping/receiving area. Your divine plan is obviously not for one such as me to know, but I’m sure it makes perfect, sublime sense in the larger picture.
Yeah, so previous managers fucked the store up large. It couldn’t possibly be because you hired them from the Van prorgam – an outside sales and promotion position – to be store managers, despite the fact that they had no management experience, could it? Again, your infinite wisdom exceeds my feeble grasp, so I must prostrate myself before it.
So you spent a packet and a half buying out another huge group of companies to become World’sBiggestMegaAwesomeToolCompany Inc. There is an influx of new product (and therefore work) that about doubles our current load. Once again, your obviously superior foresight and knowledge of the big picture dwarfs my own, so I would not deign to question your decision to reduce staff by four people. Including me, the one who’s been there since a week before opening day, is the best at the job, and the fastest and most efficient. But thank you, too, for doing it. I’m making still more at my new job than I made with you, and the work is infinitely easier and is staffed by people who know a thing or who and run a tight ship while managing to be pretty laid back. Which, I’m sure, you regard as just wrong. You’re the wise ones, though.
At my current job:
Actually, I really have no complaints about my co-workers here. They’re all great and the job is fun. But you guys next door – the tool and die makers. You lot, you’re fine, exept for you, the old guy with the gray ponytail and the mess of tattoos. I know it’s hot out. That doesn’t mean I want to see your bony, wrinkly old skin flaps blowing in the breeze. Put a damn shirt on!
If you have a policy of sending a card to workers who have had family pass away, make sure you do it for ALL your employees. And when you make me get the cards and pass them around to everyone to sign, it’s really uncool to forget to send me one when I’m the bereaved.
This is the second time today I’ve read something work-related here and thought Holy shit! :eek: Y’all are making me want to give my boss a big hug and my admin assistant a kiss on the lips.
