Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
2322

kaylasdad99, its well known that you are a very smart man!

My boss just called me. When I saw the number I was confused, then hopeful…maybe she is calling me because a homeless person set the U Store place on fire.

Nothing nearly as nice. Her MIL was in the hospital having a quad bypass. tl/dr story about MIL’s health problems. This won’t be problem free.

OK, I’ll do what I can to keep bosslady looking good for the duration. That’s my job afterall.

On Wednesday, I’m going to be standing in front of the rathouse and talking to the Board.

FML!!!

I so do not want to do this. I don’t want them to know me, I don’t want them to notice me, I don’t want to be on their radar at all. I had to stand up in front of them once before (over the researcher who openly carried his gun on his hip…that was another Robert story) and that was such a pain.

They tell me to do things and tell me the law and then look at me like I can pull an answer out of my hat. I do have an answer, but it will cost money.

Bosslady, I understand why you won’t be around for a while. I still hate you for this.

Researcher with gun story: There is a guy who comes to look at the old recordings. He’s also into cowboy action stunts and shooting. He dresses like a gambler, shiney boots, armbands and a pocket watch. He also wears a big six-shooter.

Open carry is legal in Arizona. Its our god given right, goshdarnit.

A law was passed that we couldn’t gasp carry our firearms into government buildings. What could possibly go wrong with someone carrying a gun into the courthouse?

People got upset over this because if we left our guns in our car, someone might steal the car and use the weapons to injure people and leave us open to lawsuits.

So, now, there are public gunsafes in all of the buildings the public might access but the warehouse. (yes, if you go to the library, if you look to the right, there are 4 gun lockers. Put your sidearm there, lock it and take the key.)

So…anyhow, I didn’t get a gun safe, but I did get a sign saying No Weapons. The researcher rang the bell and asked where to lock his gun away because he didn’t want to leave it in his car. I told him to just keep it because I didn’t have anywhere to lock it up.

Robert saw me helping the researcher and called HR to say that he felt threatened by the gun. Things got complicated, the taxpayer got involved and the law got changed so that people CAN carry their weapons into government buildings if there aren’t any gunsafes.

I never, ever want to go through that again.

2323

flatlined, for some reason I keep having flashbacks to that conversation the first time my then-boss told us to go and destroy stored samples and handwritten analytical results from 5 years prior.

My coworker from the other shift was completely freaked out, “but what if we destroy something we shouldn’t? But how do we know what to destroy?” Each sample was individually labeled and surrounded by samples of the same product and year (we never mixed two years in the same shelf); the analysis worksheets were stored in cardboard boxes labeled on every side, plus each page was individually dated.

When she whined “but what if there’s bugs!!!” the boss told her to just bring Misi over, Misi being the factory’s cat. Any bug who escaped Misi was simply lucky that she’d just eaten and was feeling too sleepy to be sadistic…

2324

6:30 a.m.

“Uh, this is so-and-so, I’m at the hospital with my dad. We think he’s having a heart attack.”

“Sorry to hear that. I’ll go ahead and replace your 8:00 a.m. shift.”

(Snarky voice) “Hmpf! Well, I HAVE to work!”

“I’m sorry but we need someone here and who knows how long you’ll be there.”

“Grumble grumble, mutter mutter!”

Look bitch, every other time you’ve called with your “my dad’s sick” excuse you’ve never ONCE called back or come in. From what I hear he does have health issues but I also know you have a drinking problem and you seem to trot out the sick father schtick whenever you fall off the wagon and end up with a hangover. Legitimate excuses or not, if you call off too many times your hours will be cut and you won’t be allowed to pick up. Matter of fact, you’re lucky you haven’t been fired. There is no point in scheduling you a bunch of hours if we know there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll call off. We do have a buisness to run and it’s difficult at best to call people in, especially for these early morning shifts (the assistant manager ended up coming in on his only day off to cover your shift this time). So can the fucking attitude. What do you expect us to do, let you come in whenever the fuck you feel like it? Don’t think so!

Oh yeah, when you do show up for work? Well, everyone is sick and tired of you constantly asking them to do things for you, especially when you’re not busy. We’re sick of doing your work for you.

Also: if someone is in your way and you need to get by, saying “Excuse me!” AS you literally shove past them is quite rude. Give people a chance to move out of the way. One of these days you’ll get an elbow to the face doing that shit.

2325

Wow, flatlined. Arizona is … something else. And that’s coming from somebody in Texas.

  • pats Misi *
2326

Sure, Wednesday is fine! It’s the Fridays before three-day weekends that are problems.

2327

Hands out transfer sheets. Holds up bag of home made white chocolate and macadamia cookies. One of my co workers bakes when she’s stressed. While I hate it that she is having personal problems…

I picked the kittens up at lunch. All black. I tried to take pics, but all I got was blobs. These ones went straight to a different foster home. I’m quite sure that I will have more kittehs in a few days.

Texas is very sane compaired to some of the stuff that happens out here.

I wants a warehouse cat! Not to put in the rathouse, that would be cruel. One that could be allowed to stroll around the main warehouse eating bugs or just hanging out with me while I’m tossing boxes around.

I went back out to label boxes again today. I totally proved my concern that my pain memory is only good for 4 days. It sucked. I’ve spent 4 mornings labeling boxes and have only gotten 129 of them done. I wish I hadn’t counted, the pile of “completed” transfer sheets looked a lot bigger than that.

I guess I’ll go back Thursday or Friday and do it again.

2328

Cruelty to rats doesn’t count.

2329

I’m sure she was thinking it would be cruel to the cat.

Cat’s normal prey size is mouse/vole/chipmunk/little birds. Rats can be way too big and dangerous.

Meant to add: what she needs to do is go down to the local dog shelter and borrow all their terrier types. That would get rid of the rats in a few hours, and probably be the high light of all the dog’s lives.

2330

A workplace rant that does not involve the Rats of Doom, cookies, or workplace kittens:

Just WHO did you people think you were fucking with? Did you forget the information I have that directly contradicts the information you’re claiming? Did you forget that there are paper trails for that information? Did you forget that I have that paper trail in my possession?

Look, you made a mistake. Just say “we made an error, oops!” and it’s all fixed. The more you try to justify your ridiculous statements, the more I am going to smack you down with the evidence that you are in error. You just look stupid.

Unrelated rant:
Student, you make one more public personal attack against me that I have to remove from the course’s discussion board forum area, or send me one more private email in which you engage in personal insults that are irrelevant to the issue at hand, and you will gain a new and detailed working knowledge of our Student Code of Conduct. I’ve been lenient so far due to the situation, but your lack of response to my suggestions that you act like an adult have fallen on deaf ears so far, and I have no patience left for your bullshit.

2331

I have the final chapter in my awful workplace saga. Six months after I quit and 4.5 months after I would have been laid off had I not quit, the company I worked for has been bought and only about half a dozen programmers are being kept on. My whole group, which had been hoping they’d be re-hired when the company was bought, are permanently out of jobs.

<nelson muntz>ha ha</nelson muntz>

2332

Sometimes a little schadenfreude goes a long way. :slight_smile:

2333

Three dead members in one day. Two grieving families, one greedy family. Guess which one I had a harder time dealing with? I so wish I was allowed to tell some of these people to do something anatomically impossible. Your dad had a couple hundred dollars in the account and you really think it’s necessary to threaten me with a lawyer? Just because you don’t want your step-mom to get the money when she’s the joint owner? Sorry, sweetie, you’re out of luck.

Oh and teller, do your own damn certificates. You know how to do them too. Quit leaving the notes for what the member wants to do with them on my desk. You notice the notes just got moved back to your area, right? I hear you bitching and whining about how bored you are, so do the certificates!

2334

Today Milquetoast the Executive Housekeeper earned herself a permanent place on my last raw nerve and it’s all related to the Lost & Found. First off, she hands me a slip of paper and asks me to call someone and tell them we don’t have the sweater she lost. Um, excuse me? Just when do you expect me to do this? I spend a lot of my down time restocking the front desk so second shift (which is much busier) doesn’t have to worry about it. Also, that phone you want me to call on? It rings all the time with incoming calls. I really can’t take the time to call someone about a fucking sweater when 95% of Florida and Southern Georgia is calling to reserve a room so they can watch the leaves change color. (:rolleyes:) *You *are the one in charge of the Lost & Found. *You *have a phone in your office. ***You ***call the lady about the sweater.

Then she comes to me with a purple graphing calculator and another L&F form and asks me to call a guy about shipping information. This I understand. Management doesn’t like credit card info to get out to too many people on staff and since people who lose stuff are now responsible for shipping costs, that part of the process has been shifted onto front desk staff. (We shift it back on management as much as we can for the aforementioned reasons.) Then she comes up to me with a bag with a Bible and notebook in it and asks one of the housekeepers if he wrote down the wrong room number on the slip. He did not. The items in the bag, which included the calculator, came from a room on a completely different floor on the opposite side of the building from the one listed on the L&F form. Milquetoast hands the bag to me and tells me to ask the guy if this is his stuff too. Okay, no. First of all, the only thing on the L&F form is “Texas Instruments calculator”. Secondly, the writing in the notebook is that of a teenage girl. Thirdly, and I looked up both rooms in question, neither one of these rooms had a child listed, just adults. An argument ensues. I tell her I’ll ask the guy just to shut her up and get her off my desk. I call the guy. I tell him we have a purple graphing calculator and is that the one he lost? No it is not. He has since bought a new calculator and no longer cares about having his old one sent back. I stuff the whole bag o’ crap back in Milquetoast’s box. She pulls it out later and asks why it’s there. It’s not his stuff, I tell her.

“Wow,” she replies. “What are the odds that we’d find two Texas Instruments calculators the same weekend?”

“Quite good since Texas Instruments is one of the largest calculator manufacturers in the world,” I reply.

Later, when Blind As a Bat comes in (the lady who refuses to wear her bifocals), we have our daily bitch session. I mention the sweater incident to her. BaaB puts the slip in her pocket and tells me we can gang up on Detailed AGM tomorrow and…“express our concerns” about how much of the L&F Milquetoast is not doing.

At least now I know I’m not the only one Milquetoast is pissing off. I know GM asked us to help her transition in to her new job, but she’s been there long enough to know what she can and can’t pass off to someone else. A mild rebellion is beginning.

2335

Days like today piss me right the hell off! One of my coworkers “needed” to take some time off today to go with a friend to a prenatal appointment. The drive to pick up said friend was about 45 minutes, and then the drive to the OB’s office was another 30 minutes. The appointment was at 2:00. So she left work at noon, and still wasn’t back when I left at 5:00!!! Since she just so happens to be the boss’s daughter, not a goddamn thing is going to happen or even be SAID on the matter. We might give her some shit for it where mommy can’t hear us, but we might as well save our breath because absolutely nothing will happen to her EVER. She’s late to work every day, late back from lunch damned near every day, and then “needs” to take off HOURS in the middle of the day at least once a month. And nobody ever tries to make sure the time off is covered by anyone else, mostly because we have like FIVE employees and we don’t have a warm body to fill the slot with.

I’m putting in one year and then looking for something else!!

2336

I think it might help a LITTLE if you stop thinking of her as “one of your coworkers,” and start thinking of her as a celebrity who has recurring cameo appearances at your workplace.

2337

No kitteh’s or cookies in this post, but there is one real big rat involved.

(Dr. G, that sucks. It would be hard to keep my mouth shut.)

Back in November, my antique work comp was replaced and I got windows 7. Hurray!

My antique Zebra label printer wouldn’t work with windows 7. Boo :frowning:

The MIS guy (who’s name starts with an R) told me that there was nothing he could do and that boss would need to buy me a DYMO printer.

(I am not allowed to download drivers, updates or anything on my work comp, btw. I once got scolded for downloading a pic for my wallpaper, I’m supposed to put in a work order and have an MIS person do it to be sure I don’t import a virus. Keep this in mind.)

So, there is a workaround. I can go to an empty workstation and print labels from there. This is inconvenient for me and for any minions who happen to be helping me out. Boss doesn’t want to spend money until the new fiscal year, so whatever.

Money flows into boss’s hands and she orders a DYMO for me. Low priority shipping, of course. After it gets here, it sits on MIS guy’s desk for over a month because he has to install it.

Finally, I have my label printer, HURRAY!!!

My antique inventory program doesn’t get along with the DYMO. Booooo!!!

MIS guy tells me that I’m the inventory program super user and if I can’t make it work, he certainly can’t. Hiss!!!

I do some research on DYMO printers and my inventory program (TRIM) and find out that they just do not get along. Complain to boss.

She puts in a work order for a printer consultation with MIS guy, her and me. I find out that Zebra has windows 98 drivers and wonder if that will allow windows 7 to run my good ol Zebra printer.

I send an email to Zebra tech support and ask. They reply that they can not answer that because my S400 is no longer supported, but suggest a website that has drivers for obsolute label printers. (I am in no way complaining about Zebra printers or their tech support. I print at least 300 labels a week, the S400 is a workhorse, chugs along without complaint. I also think it was nice that the tech support person offered up a suggestion.)

So, I go to the website and find a driver. Of course I am not allowed to download it myself.

During the consult, the MIS person told us (boss and me) that he couldn’t fix the DYMO/TRIM problem and that we should buy better printers because the DYMO printers (that he recommended) wouldn’t hold up to my sort of use anyhow.

I brought up the Zebra driver I had found. He told me that there were no drivers that would work, he had tried when he set up my comp. I asked him to look at the driver I had found and he told me to install it myself and that he would reformat my comp when I had broken it. Then he left.

Gobsmacked, I looked at bosslady. She told me that she had heard him say it and to just do it. I went to the website, downloaded the driver and was able to print labels 5 minutes later.

Lots of plus sides here, bosslady thinks I’m a genius. She can trade the DYMO to someone in the county for something and it won’t come out of my budget. Not to mention that she won’t have to buy label printers for the other work stations when they get upgraded. I don’t have to use 2 different work stations to do my job, and I won’t bother minions anymore. (not that I really minded telling SG that I needed that comp to actually do some work that much, but the ones who were trying to help me out shouldn’t have had to log out and stand around waiting)

On the minus side, fuckhead tech guy managed to get some revenge for getting tossed in the fountain. 11 months of messing around with a problem that was solved with one email and 10 minutes online. Yes, bosslady is going to talk to his boss about it, but nothing will happen.

2338

You have to use TRIM flatlined? Oh sweet holy jesus I feel your pain. Do I ever feel your pain. TRIM is what we have to use to manage our files, and it’s got to integrate with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It’s working for now.

Ish.

Bear in mind too that we have to scan the TRIM labels every time we send a file anywhere, but because the guys who run the back end of the TRIM database haven’t given us access to any of the reporting, that information disappears into a great big database and we have to manually log the file numbers and their destinations and the consignment numbers anyway.

FUCK TRIM

2339

Quoted for truth!!!

Have you ever had to call tech support? Now that HP has it, their tech support people are all very nice and friendly and do the best they can with a product they don’t know and have no idea how to use.

Its nice that we can export inventory reports to Excel, but one of the other MIS people had to write a little work around so that I could email the report in a usable form to people who don’t have TRIM.

I paid her off with dog treats, btw :slight_smile:

2340

I’ve never had to call support, thankfully. We’ve got in-house support who I presume liaise with HP or whoever is managing TRIM’s corporate support around these parts.

Thankfully I’m just a very remote end-user. I’ve got to run a report once a month at best when our admin person has a day off, and apart from that, scan the files into the system on the day that it’s my turn to do the outgoing mail.

But yeah. Two years ago we were told TRIM was coming in to make our file control easier, to make it easier to track files and find them and see who has them.

We’re still manually doing everything we did 2 years ago, except now we have to scan the TRIM barcodes on top of the rest of what we have to do. Doi.

2341

I am just a box tosser, I shouldn’t have to call tech support either. Like you, I should be able to depend on in-house support. (still mad at county tech guy, but happy to complain about TRIM)

The main reason I wanted the county to stop paying for the service contract was because the updates would totally jack things up. I almost said poopyhead words to one of the techs because an important thing had changed and he told me that it had always been that way.

When TRIM was owned by its makers, I could actually call someone who knew how it worked. Last time I called, I explained the problem to the tech support guy and started walking him through the steps. Half way through, he stopped me because he didn’t know that he could do such a thing.

And the Poweruser manual is bound backwards. I’m serious, I have to read it from back to front.