Hey, Usually-Cool Manager: you know perfectly well I generally wander out for my lunch hour somewhere in the 1-ish to 3-ish range. I’ve worked for you for a couple of years, and that’s always when I go out. If you’re gonna send around a meeting invite for 2 p.m., I would appreciate more than a coupla hours’ notice. I had plans for my lunch break, yanno?
kthxbye
Oh go fuck yourself part-time employer. You ask me to work all Labor Day weekend last minute. When I have the temerity to ask if you’re going to offer holiday pay you assholes tell me Labor Day isn’t a holiday.
Fuck you. I hope the ghost of Samuel Gompers comes back and shits on your head.
The housekeeping department at work is slowly going to hell in a handbasket because of idiot and overbearing decisions made by the GM and no explanations given to the two people who really deserved it.
Okay, that requires some explanation.
The former exec housekeeper was offered and accepted a promotion to GM of a sister property when their GM threw his hands up in the air. Our GM posted an ad online for a new executive housekeeper, but never ever mentioned that he wasn’t even considering promoting the current assistant executive or the room inspector. Both of those ladies, hoping for a promotion, then had their hopes dashed when our new, milquetoast exec was hired. Much bad feelings ensued, resulting in the assistant exec being fired and the inspector visibly biting her tongue whenever she’s around upper management. Now there’s an ad online for the assistant exec housekeeper and it looks like GM is pulling the same stuff he pulled with the exec position.
Milquetoast is trying hard, I can tell. It is a new job and it’s a bigger hotel than she’s worked at before. However, more and more often she’s coming across as just plain dumb. Yesterday, for example, when she was the only housekeeping manager working, she decided to spend two hours rehanging a drape. Meanwhile I’m waiting for some rooms to get ready to put all the people who want to check in early into. I know there have to be some ready, but Milquetoast is too busy wasting time to check them. She also says things on the radio to me that she should probably keep to herself. (Example: Today a man asked me if the housekeeper had finished cleaning his room so he and his wife could go back in. I called Milquetoast to find out. She replied, “They have a DND (do not disturb sign) on the door.” Man: 
Me: “He’s right here and he wants to know if his room is done.” :smack:) She has yet to figure out that when** I** call asking about a guest room, nine times out of ten, the guest is standing right in front of me so watch what you say.
Meanwhile, among the housekeepers themselves, certain irritating personalities that had been kept in line are now beginning to come out. Sometimes these personalities are taking it out on me, which drags me into drama I neither need nor want to be dragged into. People with seniority are getting their hours cut in favor of recent hires, which is not the way it’s been done here ever in any department at any of the hotels in the company. Muttering is beginning and tempers are rising. I’m watching this all come to a slow boil and it’s not good. There was a housekeeping meltdown a few months after I started this job and it was not a pleasant thing to experience. Someone needs to remind GM and Milquetoast that the two groups of people you never want to piss off in a company are the secretaries and the custodians. Those are the two groups who can make your life a living hell easier than anyone, even the managers.
Meanwhile I’m polishing my resume. I will not be here for another housekeeping meltdown. (I would be classified as “secretary” in this context. I’m also the one that the managers have come to lean on quite a bit in getting their minutiae taken care of. The wisdom of the end of the previous paragraph: witness it.)
Witnessed.
I’m totally loving the support, folks 
I didn’t kill the lawyer and SG because the legal clerk was in good clothes and already having a very bad day. Blood splatter on her business outfit would have sent her into a chocolate frenzy and we don’t have a vending machine.
I did get to say NO! to a lawyer today. It was fun, I enjoyed it. A trial recently finished that involved a sweatlodge and several deaths. The defendent hired his own lawyer. Now that the trial is over, the lawyer wanted to turn his 70 boxes of paperwork over to the Public Defender, who would have sent them to me to be kept forever.
The Public Defender’s office called me, I called the Attorney’s office and they said that I don’t have to keep them. I called the lawyers secretary and told her that I wouldn’t take the boxes. She sounded rather worried about relaying the message. I told her to just have him call me.
About 10 minutes later the lawyer called and threatening and yelling happened. I had put the phone on speaker when I saw the number, so just turned the volume down and read Great Debates while I was waiting for him to shut up long enough for me to talk.
When he finally did shut up, after demanding that I tell him what he was supposed to do with all those boxes that needed to be kept forever, I told him to have them microfilmed and shred the paper, then I gave him the number for the County and State microfilm departments.
I took great pleasure in his gasps of rage that his multi-million dollar legal firm would have to actually pay to have it done.
2 lawyers in a week. Good things come in 3’s, so I’ll probably have another one to share tomorrow. Blood and gore might happen, I’m a little tired of lawyers.
Not much of a rant, there, flatlined, but I enjoyed the hell out of your story anyway.
Co-worker who was late for “stomach issues this morning,” you have my sympathy, truly, you do, but at least I have the decency to call it what it is: you’re hung over. 'Sokay. Drink some more water. Stop trying to blame it on the “appetizers” you ate last night.
I laughed at this. But I’m a horrible person.
As someone who has recurring “stomach issues,” especially in the morning… give the dude the benefit of the doubt. It’s really shitty to be sick and have people rolling their eyes at you because they assume they know better than you why you’re sick (or “sick,” as in the case when I had a string of episodes that happened to line up with the end of other vacation time).
We went live today on the new system… shoot me now please…
None of the electronic deposit splits came through properly, so I got to hunt all of them down and fix them in the back office. I don’t know what else is wrong yet, because that took me all day. Tomorrow I have to deal with actual customers. Customers suck on a good day. I could rant more but my head is pounding and my stomach is in knots.
Good luck, Dr. G.
How can you be a terrible person, SFG, and then turn around and make me feel bad for anonymously griping about someone nobody here even knows?
I don’t know, making you feel guilty when all you wanted to do was have a nice rant sounds pretty terrible of me!
Oh, I think I read about that on the BBC! Was it this one? The guy sounded seriously bonkers.
My work has been going OK, somewhat shockingly. The coworker who annoyed me most (I haven’t talked about her here, but let’s just say she embodies any argument against open-plan offices) has left this week, and I’ve been picking up her slack and being very obviously competent in front of my manager, who sent me an approving email at the end of the day today and asked if I’d like to have a go at training our new hire who starts next week. I’ve never managed anyone before, but I think (hope) this is a sign my manager thinks I’m ready to get my foot on the ladder - and I’m pleased as I thought I’d have to wait a year or two to start doing that.
I’m sure management carries a whole different pile of gripes that I have yet to discover…
purplehorseshoe I know it wasn’t a rant on my end. I had fun Who wants to bet that I have my own Pit thread on some lawyer forum?
Shot From Guns Just to reinforce our horribleness…It happened in Sedona, the woo woo capital of the world. People paid up to $9,000 for a weekend that included a 24-36 hour fast before going weak and dehydrated into an oversized “sweat lodge”. I put the quotes there because the Native Americans got up in arms about white people using their traditions improperly.
I think the eye rolling strained my eyes as I was following the case.
SecondJudith Oh great. I just love it when our local stupidity goes international. In our defense, Ray was from out of state and many of the paying idiots were as well.
Yesterday’s lawyer passed the buck to someone else who called my boss’s boss. Who called me and when I told her what our attorney’s said, told me that I wasn’t to talk to them again. I’m to just transfer the call to the attorney’s office. That’s a shame, I was looking forward to shutting down more self important jerks. My backbone is reinforced with legal authority, they cannot intimidate me or make me back down.
For the record, I don’t think all lawyers are jerks. There are some nice ones. I have had a couple of nice ones show up with their court orders. They politely asked what they needed to do, I brought them into my office and offered them a seat while I made the phone calls needed to get permission (and find out if its read only or if they can have copies) and box numbers for them. They usually have the file in their hands in less than 10 minutes.
Its just like any other profession, 1% of the population causes 99% of the problems.
Now, back to lawyer bashing, because its my week for it.
The boxes are about as heavy as a case of copy paper. 40 lbs more or less. I had to deliver a heavy one to one of our attorney’s office. I carried the box into his office and asked where he wanted it because it was heavy. He said “I’ll take it, sweetheart” Strike one. Then he reached out and put his desk soft hands over mine, strike two, and said something like they shouldn’t have sent a woman to deliver it. Strike three.
I said “Here you go, honey.” and let go of the box. I got as much pleasure out of the look on his face as I did watching him stagger and almost drop the box when he got the full weight.
Seriously?
You work in a warehouse full of boxes. Many with no expiration dates.
Fold. Spindle. Mutilate. File.
He wouldn’t be found for decades. If ever.
First day live sucked as badly as I thought it would. Only one printer would register with the new operating system. That means only one teller window could be used. Fine, so long as we kept the lobby closed and just ran the drive-thru as we had planned. But no… Boss sees line in drive-thru and panics. “We gotta open the lobby!!!1!!1!! There’s five cars in line!!!1!”
So we open the lobby. Now instead of a line at the drive-up, there’s one car in the drive-up and fifteen people standing around in the lobby. Still only one teller station available. Sigh.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
wheezes and wipes eyes.
HAHAHAHA!!!
Pure gold, thank you! 
Dr. Girlfriend, you have my sincere sympathy. I can’t think of anything worse than seeing a preventable train wreck.
I do: not being able to say “I did tell you so”. To me that’s the difference between “right, you morons, let’s start fixing this now” and Cassandra Syndrome.
General Practitioner means family doctor or Primary Care Physician.
It does not mean Diazepam home delivery service.
You do that? Sign me up doc, I’d love some 'pam at home! 
My gripe is the same as every week. I don’t care about my work, so it’s very hard to get motivated to get up and out the door, especially when it’s all windy and dark and cold out there.
We opened a new location at the end of August. Our job is pretty specialized and takes some time to learn completely. As early as May the lead for my group has tried convincing the higher ups to hire the people for us to train. “Ed,” one of our (fully trained) guys applied for a transfer to the new place and never heard anything.
In late July a manager announced, “Great news, we’re giving Ed the spot!”
Team leader: “Ed took a transfer to a different department three weeks ago.”
M:
TL: “He hadn’t heard a word from you guys and they offered.”
M::mad:
TL:“I warned you he couldn’t wait indefinitely.”
So they finally hire someone, but decide there’s no need to train them until two weeks before opening. After all, they don’t want to pay them any longer than they have to.
Except in order to do this training they’ve dragged our leader to the new location for nearly five weeks (before and after open). Everyone else has had to pick up overtime to cover the gaps in the schedule. As a team we’ve been averaging 25 hr overtime at time and a half ($16 minimum) for five weeks. Plus they have to pay leader to drive an hour each way (close to $20/hr), plus mileage.
Sooo… we’ve rearranged our schedules and stressed out so the department head can save *negative *$160 per week. Brafuckingvo.
Soooo, howzabout getting me some Demerol, then? I shouldn’t have to go out and get it myself, you know!