Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
2482

Today in The Big Weekly Meeting, I did what my boss has been bugging me to do for weeks, and piped up with details about our company Facebook activity (which I’m in charge of). He thinks I need to “raise my visibility” as a tech person to the head of the company, who is his boss. Apparently she (boss’s boss) thinks my job should be moved from the Tech group (where I am blissfully happy) to Marketing (where I would have to slit my wrists). I announced that a particular post we did last week had broken all our records for user engagement, comments, all that nice Facebook stuff. Happy murmurs from around the large conference table; everyone is pleased that our customers liked the post. Yay! Except boss’s boss. She starts grilling me on what the numbers mean. OK, so how many Facebook fans do we have? How many people saw the post in question? What fraction is that of our total user base? I think fast. Well, um, let’s see, maybe around 0.05%? Maybe as much as 0.1%? She starts making dismissive noises, and actually says something like “We shouldn’t get too excited about this” because it’s such an insignificant fraction. I babble some stuff about brand evangelists and depth of engagement, and how Facebook is really better thought of as part of customer service than as marketing, plus it’s free… She counters by telling my boss to set up a separate meeting with her and him and me about How “We” Should Present Numbers in Appropriate Context In This Company From Now On.

Now I’m worried she’s considering moving my position from tech right past marketing to the dumpster.

2483

Beats moving to marketing. :wink:

2484

Hmmn. you may have a point there. Not that there’s anything wrong with marketing! Some very very fine people got their start in marketing. Such as, erm, my boss’s boss.

2485

SG never fails to deliver. Apparently, my boss questioned SG as to why he was just checking sports scores all morning and SG said he didn’t have any shredding and his hip was hurting, so he didn’t want to do anything else.

SG forgot that boss is already stressed out by her MIL having health issues and is pretty out of patience with him anyhow. She sent SG to HR and told him to have one of the HR people call her as soon as he got there. I understand it took him 40 minutes to make the 5 minute drive but SG tried to say that HR was very busy and he had waited for them.

The HR lady heard him and chewed him out, saying that nobody had been there until he walked in. HR lady told my boss that she would send her an email saying when SG had showed up and then did so.

SG is now trying to use his sore hip to get out of doing anything, so its now up to HR find something that SG can do.

I understand reasonable accomadations, but there comes a point when we can’t pay someone to just sit around and play online. I know that SG could scan documents, if he would stop playing his “I’m too old to learn how to use computers” game. If he can manage to find his sports scores, he can manage to feed paper into a scanner.

When my boss started to scold me because I told her everything was taken care of, I had her log onto my computer and reprint the pull lists for him. She was able to see that he had plenty to do, he had “lost” everything but the first page. Boss said she wasn’t planning on calling him back from HR. She was going to let them deal with him for the day. SG can be very charming, he knows a lot of people, but getting caught lieing about how HR made him sit around wasting time for half an hour will not make the HR people happy with him.

Its very possible that I’ll have an early Christmas present if this keeps up :slight_smile:

Edited to add that SG also complained that I locked my desk and didn’t give him a key. What if he needs to get into my desk? There are things he needs there…like snacks, spare change and handlotion.

2486

I don’t wanna know why he needs hand lotion.

2487

Someone unplugged my goddamned -20C freezer again. I only found this out when I walked into the room with samples that needs freezing and found its thermometer reading +11C.

cue my head exploding

The last time this happened, I put tape flags on the plug, with big red letters saying “Do NOT unplug; this is a -20 freezer.” I was pissed, as this was discovered first thing in the morning, with a study subject on the way in, 3 vials of experimental drug spoiled by thawing, and my day’s schedule ruined. I had a fuckload of apologizing to do for something not my fault. Meanwhile the manager in charge of the tech area shrugged. This was about a year ago. Fortunately, this time I only had no-longer-frozen ice packs in there.

Today, I told one of the docs who goes to bat for me. Today happened to be Grand Rounds so everyone was there, and said doc told the tale of woe and Not Reading Directions. The residents (probably rightly) blamed some company reps who had demoed a product in there the day prior and needed somewhere to plug in their surely pricey machine. The technician manager and the department admin agreed with the doctor that it would be fine for me to keep the freezer in my office since it was research money that paid for it anyway.

So, I immediately ran down the hall and grabbed it, leaving a note as to its whereabouts. (No one paid attention to its presence before, but they might to its absence.) Two other docs saw me in the hall on the way back and helped me wrangle it into the office suite.

Uh, so I guess this is a gripe that ended OK - but it shouldn’t have happened at all, much less twice! I think it helped that it happened a second time and that now I also have a medication fridge in my area, so there’s precedence for my having equipment like that.

2488

I have a job interview Friday morning. It’s just a phone interview, and I really dislike those, but maybe it’s a step in the right direction. I’ve spent the better part of the last year trying to find a different job, pretty much ever since I found out about the system conversion.

I gotta do something, the stress level is not good for me. I’m sure my lack of sleep, stomach cramps and headaches are coming from all the crap I have to deal with on a daily basis.

Wish me luck!

2489

crosses fingers and legs for Doc

2490

Good luck!

My final is today. I’m going back to lock myself in the basement and read a little more and a couple more practice problems. Hopefully it’s sunk in enough to let me pass. sighs

2491

And that doesn’t really belong in this thread… Well it does only because I took the day off work so I can pass because otherwise work won’t reimburse me (extra incentive beyond not taking it again), and its one of the things that’s been stressing me out on top of feeling like what the hell am I doing, why didn’t I stick with logistics and taking those classes instead of going into accounting?

Oh yeah, cuz I thought it would be less boring and make me more money, at least in this company.

2492

NiceSweetCoworker came back from running errands on her lunchbreak appalled (and rightly so) that a local radio station is already playing Christmas music. “They were playing ‘Walking In A Winter Wonderland!’” she tells us.

Guess what’s stuck in my head now …

2493

Thank you for sharing. :mad:

2494

Quick - think of Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It” - it’s the mother of all earworms.

2495

Maybe he’s checking sports scores on nakednewsdotcom…
OOPS! Sorry, I misread that as I wanna know why…, etc.

2496

Or on that theme, you could think of the alternate lyrics for Winter Wonderland.

Winter Wonderland is my favorite Christmas song, so I love to sing it all winter anyway.

2497

NO. Just NO. NO. Cut that shit out right now.

2498

Whenever this gets stuck in my head now, it’s just the piece in Weird Al’s “Polka Face” medley, for some reason. :frowning:

2499

One of the stations here started playing Christmas music November 1st. I am officially already tired of Christmas. We also don’t have a hockey game on Christmas this year, so I have nothing to do.

2500

Sorry for the earworm, everyone. (Misery loves company.) Hee hee. :smiley: If it makes you feel better, re-reading the responses got it stuck right back again.

Today’s gripe? I get in late

(spoilered for the sex-squeamish)

Mr. Horseshoe woke up just as I was getting dressed to leave, and rolled over sporting a *massive *boner. I will admit, being late was partly my fault. Partly because every geriatric half-blind 85-year-old was in front of me, plus I hit every red light possible. Wouldn’t mind a fresh pair of panties, though.

and the first fucking email I sit down to is someone throwing me AND Nicesweetcoworker under the bus. Or, trying to, anyway.

The email:
“I’ve emailed purplehorseshoe on the 7th and received a response that she had forwarded the email*. I have not heard anything since then.”

  • A team of us updates these websites, and we each handle different aspects. Do. Not. Contact. Us. Directly. We have a central email address - contact us via that. How fucking hard is this concept? You’ve been told this, many, many times. Jeebus.

My response:
"Attached is a PDF of the response you received on the 7th from Nicesweetcoworker, requesting your office to blahblahblah … "

The ball has been in your court all this time, and you try to act like you haven’t even heard from us, let along handled the blahblahblah stuff you were supposed to do? Fuck you. Fuck you, and thank you, email trail.

Also, grandboss? Bad enough that you’re taking pictures on your cell phone of the Google image vehicle being in front of you while you’re on the highway. Sending it to us, while *still *driving on said highway? Really? It couldn’t wait till you got in? Yeah, yeah, it’s the Google picture car. You’re still piloting a half-ton of steel at highway speeds.

Coworker (laughing nervously): She’s going to kill herself one of these days.
Me (muttering darkly): I don’t care about that. It’s that she’s going to take someone WITH HER that bothers me more.

Man, I loved Christmas music when I was a little kid. Boy did that get beaten out of my skull over the subsequent years as I started having to do my own shopping. Now? Fuck Christmas music.

Me = grumpy this morning, esp. for someone who just got laid. Will try to improve mood. Off to make a cuppa tea.

2501

Well the phone interview must have gone well, they just called me back for an in-person interview on Wednesday! Woo-hoo! Thanks for the good thoughts, everyone. :slight_smile:

Dumbass branch manager messed up our payroll, so we won’t get paid until Monday. Good thing I didn’t go out and pay a bunch of bills…