Yay for going back to work, flatlined! Don’t get caught picking boxes up, wearing pantyhose sucks!
Yesterday as I was leaving the credit union for the very last time (yay!), my replacement gave me a sad look and said “I’m not ready for you to leave. I’m scared!”
Honey, you’re not half as scared as you should be. Just wait until they start expecting you to pull miracles out of your ass. You wondered why I was grouchy and talked to myself? You’ll see…
Most of the stuff here at work sucks in one form or another … except for the adhesive used to hold the ends of an unused roll of (sucky 1-ply) toilet paper. But that adhesive, man, you wouldn’t believe how good it is. Why, you could glue a jet to a runway with it!
It should not take longer than it takes me to shit to start a roll of TP.
Thank you, you have it mostly right. Except that the Lair of the RatKing is an abandoned U-Store unit in the middle of nowhere. The only light is what comes in from the opened doors or the cracks between the bricks where the mortor fell out. Why would paper need a constant temp or the people who have to go out there need such things as lights or a place to pee?
Its much better to save that money to spend on new golf carts for the County owned golf course. Which is a totally different rant.
You are so right that pantyhose suck. That’s why I work in a warehouse! Are you taking anytime off before starting your new job? Some destressing, you time? Can you email your replacement and give her a link to this thread? We would happily welcome her and look forward to the stories about how your credit union is going up in flames now that you are gone.
Oh this part I remember - she’s going to work RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET, so she’ll have a perfect view of the flames for her reports to us 
I may or may not have mentioned my replacement in an unflattering way on here so I better pass on telling her about this thread. But I’m still friends with her on Facebook so I’m sure I’ll hear stories. I promise I’ll share! And yeah, I’ll see the flames. I already have the marshmallows, anyone wanna bring chocolate and graham crackers?
I’m off work until Monday, when I start at the new place. It’s a nice change to actually be able to enjoy my time off and not have to worry about coming back to a disaster. 
This is whining of the nth degree, but it’s driving me crazy.
Yesterday my boss told me to hand out the new employee handbooks. Not just put them in the mailboxes like I’ve done before, but hand them out. I have to get the back page signed and a signature on a form. I’m sure she did this so she doesn’t have to track down people to get the back page back. But I don’t know who the vast majority of these people are! Technically I don’t even work for this company (I’m a temp - I’ve been here a year and longer than some of the employees, but I hardly leave my cubical, and most of these people are in the manufacturing area) And they keep changing clothes! How am I supposed to track down the last handful of people I need? I put a note over the timeclock, but as everyone knows, people don’t read notes.
It’s not fair.
Delegation fail: Let me show you it. I roll my eyes at your boss for you. :rolleyes: Unless she specifically intended you to start meeting these people and learning their names for other reasons, this was an inefficient and inconsiderate thing for her to ask you to do, and I support this minirant.
Since I’ll be gone in a week, I doubt that it was meant as a learning experience. I expect it’s just that she’s really busy, what will the company shutting down for the week between Christmas and New Years. And now I’ve been given two more projects. I sat doing nothing for months and months, and now I’ve got a buttload to do in a week.
It’s typical really.
Dear Customers,
When something is shipped to you, either by us or one of our vendors, we supply you with a tracking number. It is up to you to make sure that you have your stuff when the carrier says they delivered it. If the information that they have associated with your tracking number says, “Left at front door”, we are assuming that is correct UNLESS YOU TELL US!!! Trying to start a trace after 1-2 weeks normally will not have a positive outcome. Also, if you send me an email asking for instructions on how to send something back, YOU NEED TO READ FOR COMPREHENSION!!! If I tell you your RMA number needs to be written on the outside of the box or it will be refused, I mean it. In these cases, it is not me who is on the receiving end of your return; I have zero control over that person. Also, if you want something delivered to your new address DON"T GIVE US THE OLD ONE as the shipping address.
I fucking hate Christmas sometimes.
Dear students:
The last day of classes was Monday. The last faculty day of the semester was Tuesday.
I posted your final grades to the course website on Monday, so you could see them and then contact me to 1) inform me that you would do ANYTHING, ANYTHING OH PLEASE ANYTHING for a better grade, 2) inform me that I had made an error in data entry (valid), or 3) not contact me because there was no issue.
I also had the pleasure of having two of you make the time to come to my office on Tuesday and tell me in person that I suck. Much appreciated.
I submitted final grades yesterday.
WHY ARE YOU STILL EMAILING ME TO BEG FOR EXTRA CREDIT?!?!
The semester is done. Over. Finis. Pining for the fjords. It is an EX-semester.
Go away so I can do something else for the next month. I’ve got a book to write, trips to make, conferences to attend, and somewhere in there, a Christmas to deal with.
Oh, can I tell my student begging story? I just remembered I had one!
I was a graduate student teaching freshman composition. I had one student who had just gotten out of the Marines. He was a couple of years older than the others in the class and had 95% of his shit together. One of my best students because he turned things in on time and actually took the time to understand the assignments. He was one of the few who was easily going to get an A. And then, right before the end of the semester, his brother attempted suicide and ended up in the hospital. Student wasn’t able to turn his final paper in on time and emailed me about it. I said, “Dude, you have other things to worry about. I’ll give you an incomplete and you can send me the paper next semester.”
Next semester comes. I am no longer teaching. Student emails me to tell me his hard drive crashed and he lost his final paper. “Well, make something up and send it to me and I’ll treat it like the last paper.” The silence was deafening.
Next semester after that comes. Student emails me freaking out because his incomplete turned into an F because he didn’t send me anything. Apparently he didn’t quite get the part where he had to send me something so I could give it to the department so they could change the incomplete before it turned to a failure and he’d have to retake the course. The department head was contacted and backed me up. The silence returned.
This all took place in 2006/7. Fast forward to 2009. I have graduated and moved across the state. Student finds me on Facebook. He messages me asking me to change his now 3-year-old grade so he can get some scholarship he’s applied for. Oh, how I laughed as I hit the delete button.
Try tights. They hold up better. Say you’re doing it because they keep your legs warmer in the winter.
Are the snakes IN the room? Can’t they bag or block the room so that the dead rats can’t get out where the snakes can reach them. Can’t you buy into a habitat bank as remediation against a theoretical take? (And what species of rattlesnake is endangered? That’s just for curiosity. In my area it’s giant garter snakes, Swainson’s hawks, and elderberry beetles.)
Someone said something about waiting for Spring and hibernating snakes. If they’re hibernating, they won’t be able to eat the dead rats. So if you do it now, with edible bait, you can clear out the rat bodies and the snakes will be safe when they wake up. Rats that die outside won’t be fresh enough for snakes to eat in the spring. Unless these are special scavenger snakes.
Not that seeing OSHA take on whoever’s administering NEPA won’t be a hoot.
Boy, I wish someone thought that I was all powerful.
Oh, for the love of Og.
Well, I have two people who I still haven’t gotten handbooks to. There was a note over the timeclock. They each have a note in their mailbox. I’m not sure what else I can do.
And now I have to fix a PowerPoint presentation. I find PowerPoint morally offensive (I exaggerate, but only slightly).
At very least it looks like they’ll probably bring me back next year to finish some things. I’m going to try to convince them to do directly through me (apparently that’s okay with the temp agency by this point) - it’ll save them money and then I don’t have to fax a timesheet over.
PowerPoint doesn’t kill people, people kill people.
(I actually love PowerPoint, but sitting through bad PowerPoint can be worse than sitting through bad community theater and is definitely more common.)
Oh, sweet Og.
Bad enough that I’m trying to come up to speed on a huge, complex application (even though I only have to worry about a small part of it right now for reasons below).
Bad enough that I have to figure out how to use another moderately complicated piece of software (Team Foundation Server, for those playing along at home, that sits on top of Visual Studio Team System, a <shudder> Microsoft product) to find out what I’m supposed to be working on, with minimal training in how to use it.
Bad enough that I’m trying to learn how to work in an Agile environment, with no training or background or experience, while working with teams that have been working Agile for several years and been using VSTS to do so for several years. [Agile being the reason I technically only have to worry about a small part of this application, except, you know, I don’t understand how that part fits in with the rest of it and how to get to the parts I need to look at.]
Bad enough that the majority of the members of these teams are in India, which means we have the time differential from hell to work around (hey, aren’t all the people on an Agile team supposed to be co-located? No?).
No, no. What’s bad (really, really bad) is that the teams I’m assigned to apparently haven’t understood the phrase “I am your documentation resource” to mean that I’m a member of their team. I actually saw an email today where the PM of one of those teams was asking why I wanted to be on their distribution lists (and getting ONTO them took several mails from me and my supervisor and someone higher up the chain).
NONE of these teams have invited me to any of their meetings, which means that I am not being kept up to date in changes to plans about what will and will not be worked on. These decisions aren’t being reflected in the distribution lists, either. The only reason I know changes are being made is because, this afternoon, I discovered that several of the “user stories” I thought I’d be working on (isn’t jargon delicious?) are today no longer showing up in the results of the search query they told me how to make, when they were yesterday.
Apparently, I’m supposed to run this damn query several times a day to keep up with what’s going on, because they bloody well can’t be bothered to see me as a team member who needs to be kept up to date. I don’t expect to be helping to make the decisions (I don’t want to, either), but damnit, I do need to know what they are.
And to top it all off, I, like every contractor at this company, am being furloughed for the last 2 weeks of the year. I’ve been working on this project for 2 weeks, and tomorrow is the last day for 2 weeks, so I’ve had 2 weeks to try to figure stuff out, and then I have to take 2 weeks off without pay (damnit!!!) and by the time I get back everything will probably be massively changed, plus I’ll have to get myself back in gear because you know that a break in momentum like this means you have to essentially start all over again.
I know that in a couple of months I’ll be working pretty well in this new-to-me Agile environment, and I’ll be comfortable working with VSTS, and the team in India will finally have integrated me into their work flow. But right now, all I can do is bounce my head off the desk because that feels better than the frustration I’ve been feeling trying to figure out what in hell is going on and how I’m supposed to get anything done.
I ripped the PM of that one team a new one in an email before I left work today. An email, I hasten to say, that I did not send. But it sure felt good. Tomorrow, I’ll reword it more temperately.
Maybe by the time I get back in January, they’ll have things straightened out to the point that I’ll at least be seen as a team member. Maybe I’ll even get the 3-day training that all the employees are getting in Agile, wouldn’t that be nice?
Maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.
Hey, my husband submitted not one but two papers two years late for courses where the professor was dead (different profs) in order to complete his last two courses and get his degree.
So, it does happen…
(Finding someone to submit them to was the hardest part.)
Yeah, but your husband actually *submitted *something. This guy wanted me to change his grade for nothing.
I’m home. I get to jump into the crazy on Monday. I finally logged into my work email and despite my auto message that I was not there and to use a different method to contact my boss, I’ve got some really upset lawyers.
How dare I take time off work and not reply within 5 minutes. The squalling that happened from one really made me laugh. My auto reply worked because I could see my “I am out of the office until December 20th, please contact bosslady at XXXX” message in his demanding replies. He sent 5 very demanding emails to my auto reply messages and then ended up threatening to contact my boss because I didn’t reply.:smack:
My second “boss” died on Wednesday. The director of my rescue group. I loved her so much, I “worked” for her for 10 years. She was very well known and everyone knew that I was one of her minions. The sympathy emails are appreciated, but each one was like a dagger to the heart. I certainly understand why Lynn closed the thread about her father’s death.
I don’t want to sound churlish, and I’m sure that Lynn isn’t, but its hard to be gracious when we are just barely holding ourselves together and then another person calls or emails with sympathy and we are trying to not think about it.
I’m crying n ow. off with me.
