Holy hell, Nava. That first one’s a doozy!
I could never tell her this directly, but one of my co-workers has The Most Annoying Laugh Evar. I think it’s just me (it’s not one of those horse whinnies or anything Seinfeldian like that) but man, does it grate. Worse, she and one or two of the others often take their lunch in our break room. Which shares a wall with my office. A very, very thin wall.
Cake is a lie is related to Portal, or so I am told. Something about being offered cake to complete tasks, but the cake is a lie. You don’t REALLY get cake at all, just virtual cake, which you can’t eat.
My cousin had Portal cake at her wedding, so lots of geeks and portal cake? I got to hear AAAALLLL about it at the wedding (which I don’t mind because I’m kinda geeky too though less of the computer game variety).
Work rant: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP! Do the work you’re supposed to do and quit whining! I have so much to do I don’t need to do your stuff too and listen to you bitch about it!
Wings tonight, thank god. I need a beer.
It’s not that you, the player, don’t get the cake because it’s virtual, it’s that the character you’re playing won’t get the cake because the AI offering it as a reward is unreliable. Chell, the character you play, wakes in a testing facility. As you play her, a voice (GlaDOS) encourages you to solve a series of increasingly dangerous escape puzzles saying “Cake, and grief counseling, will be available at the conclusion of the test.”
How unreliable is GlaDOS? Well, besides the static that cuts through some of her instructions at critical points, she says things like:
and:
I wouldn’t want to give anything away. But it’s a bad idea to trust GlaDOS.
See, I’ve never played Portal so I didn’t know. Thanks for the clarification. 
Heh, workplace griping from Portal: http: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz2_NkyTv8E (skippable ad at beginning, some nsfw language)
But it’s cake!! And it’s free!!
Send it this way, I know some vultures around here who will eat pretty much anything that doesn’t move (and I’m pretty sure some that does).
I’ve only barely played it. I’ve listened to someone else playing it, though, and it’s a hoot and a half.
There’s some woman who’s in town for work. I hear her horrible whinny laugh every morning at breakfast. I’m still not convinced there’s not actually a horse over there, but one of the kitchen guys would tell me if there was.
Managers, I have had the same talk from all three of you over the last two days. If you want me to act more like Little Miss Perky, please remember you transferred her to the other hotel because she’s also a little whore. I know the brass is over the moon about her right now, but she’s still a whore and that’s going to backfire all over all of you once her incredibly possessive husband finds out she’s flirtin’ on the job. And he will find out–everyone knows about her.
It’s moments like those that will make it so much sweeter when I turn in my two weeks.
A few slices were still on the table this afternoon..granted, someone did place it in a container, but I still don’t trust it. (The last time I accepted free food from the break room, it had a hair in it. 
)
I work for five attorneys. When I set them up to go to seminars, I hand-write it in on their paper calendars and I also enter it on their Microsoft Outlook calendars, and set timers on the that computer appointment so it’ll pop up and remind them of it a couple of days before.
So why is it they walk by my desk and ask “When is that thing I’m going to next week and where is it at”?
Today’s request:
“Also, can we get an aerial map with the trees taken out ?”
Sigh. When I inquired further, I was told that they are a “layer” that can be removed.
Now, perhaps I am seriously missing something - but more likely I’m going to have to try to explain to my boss what a “picture” is.
Tell me, how hard did you have to bite you tongue to stop yourself from asking him (him?) if he had been born that stupid or if he’d been working on it his whole life.
He’s probably an avid CSI-watcher and believes that the computer wizardry performed on those shows can be done in Real Life, too. I suppose if you’re not familiar with what the state of the art is at the moment, it’s easy to lose the distinction between what’s real and what’s convenient for the purposes of the plot.
<thinks a bit>
Naw. That’s some grade-A stupid, right there.
Do you think that telling him you’re good, but you’re not Abby Sciuto or Tim McGee, and anyway you don’t have access to the fancy (and very expensive) software and hardware they use, would work?
From what I’ve learned about doing landscape designs on a computer program, trees are indeed a layer in that program. It sounds like they are getting a picture confused with that type of program. Or maybe they import a picture to a program like that, and trees become a layer.
teela, I can tell you why they still ask you - because they’ve been conditioned to be little babies about this. I do the emailing for my support group, and there are some people who refuse to put the meeting dates on their calendar, and prefer to just email and ask me. I try to train them not to do that.
Attorneys are total babies, in every respect. I’ve been dealing with a rash of attorneys as clients over the past couple weeks, mainly district and city prosecutors, and they have been the most high maintenance whiners I’ve ever had to deal with, with the exception of shudder private attorneys.
Some of them aren’t even our customers; we produce work for the police department, the police department hands the work to the DA, and the DA calls us up to yell about how a single instance of ‘bet’ was mistyped as ‘be’.
Looks at my list of things to not do at work.
Tossing lawyers off the loading dock is not allowed. Not even if he’s looking down my shirt while calling my minion an idiot.
One of my jobs is to scan legal files. I find all sorts of interesting stuff in the boxes. I think that the bowls with food were dropped into the box when someone was getting busted because she was eating at her desk. The 3-hole punch baffled me.
I once found a greeting card that said something like “the more you talk, the less energy your tongue has for the important stuff”. I passed it around and we all laughed. Then I searched and found out that Monty was married and had children while having romps with the lady who had given him the card.
I thought long and hard about it, then chose to shred the card. I should have taken it to my boss and the BOS.
That’s because the loading dock isn’t high enough, silly.
My mother reminded me of the worst time I had to travel for an interview, I thought I’d share (mind you, I’ve probably told the story before).
I was unemployed, with unemployment “pay” but a very low one. Got a proposal for a place “near Paris”, but they wanted to interview in person. The London-based agent said they’d pay for the trip. The sleeper train from Madrid to Paris reaches Paris in time for breakfast, leaves in the opposite direction at dinnertime, so I bought return tickets with no stay in between for the Thursday when they wanted me there. Then I was told this was not acceptable, I had to stay until Saturday at least because there was so many people who had to speak with me, so many things to prepare once I was in, because you see, once they make you travel in person it means you’re in unless something goes real, real wrong. The hiring company would take care of hotel bookings and pay for it. The cab was €70, more than half the cost of the train tickets.
The consultant team were all guys, but that isn’t a problem for me. The team leader asked me to whip up a demo in half an hour, I explained that’s nowhere near enough time for the kind of industry it was and the part I had to focus on, but I could prepare it for Friday. I give a couple of presentations, have some Q&A with the final client, totally floor them - and then this git says I don’t know how to do the job, that he’s checked and I’m “seriously lacking in some respects”, so I can’t get the job. I’m more confused about whether he really thinks I should have been able to whip up a demo in half an hour, than angry, but it’s still a complete waste of my time. Then I discover there are no hotel bookings :mad: Dude offers to take me down to Paris, since he has an apartment there rather than staying at a nearby hotel like his minions. I accept because well, the spider building her web in my wallet is feeling lonely.
At one point he asks what does my husband think about my travelling all over for work “oh, I’m not married, no kids either.” “Ah good, that’s the best kind of consultant, no family, no friends!” OK, d00d, maybe in whatever pithole you climbed out of “no spouse or kids” equals “no family”, but not where I come from, plus I hadn’t said anything about friends. When we were already in the highway he praised Spanish traditional cuisine, mentioning several favorites, and then asked me with an “I think I’m real suave but roaches have more style” smile why didn’t I come cook him dinner and breakfast, since I didn’t have a hotel.
I offered him a farmer’s breakfast of two fried eggs with chorizo, making it clear that he’d be providing both the huevos and the chorizo (maybe I should have mentioned blood sausage instead)… he claimed that wasn’t romantic at all, I said I thought it was absolutely romantic, at least as romantic as making someone travel to be insulted by a moron who can’t get any in the normal fashions. He dropped me off at the Bastille, I called the agent (who was a woman and had no trouble believing me) and set off in search of a hotel.
Between people making me come for in-person interviews when the job is already going to a friend of theirs, assholes like that one, the one abroad who only wanted to ask about my name’s structure, and this other one who made me come over (hotel night included) for a 27’ interview with a single person, I’m thinking I should add to my CV “if you require interviews in person, don’t waste our time: NO”. The ones abroad always say they’ll pay for the trip and always send me to a soundtrack of crickets chirping when I ask for the billing details.
The retirement party is Friday, and I’m going to miss it 
My OCD minion has been updating me twice daily and it appears the shop vac has gone missing. This is causing her great distress. I haven’t used it in a couple of years, so I don’t think it was taken on her watch. She can’t find the needle nose plyers either. Those were mine and were kept in my desk.
Head Minion told HR about our fork problem and it seems as though all of their forks have gone missing as well. They have spoons and knives, but no forks. I’m afraid to google fork fetish.
Looks like they don’t pay any attention to what’s in their email, so you might as well get some benefit out of it. Archive your extra stuff in their accounts; especially things you’d just as soon not show up on an inspection of your account…
Maybe we should, so we can see what Shreddy looks like… :-}