I assume you forwarded this on to his manager without comment?
… or a comment like, “Could you please clarify to (temp) that emails of this sort should be going to you and not to me?”
Otherwise, you could reply to every single email from here on out that the temp sends you with, “Please contact (manager/supervisor) for these matters” and CC the manager/sup. The key is to set up a little template so you use the exact same wording each time. Eventually, he’ll figure out that that’s all he gets out of you, plus the manager gets to see how much he’s emailing you (and leaving the manager out of the loop).
I work in a small branch office of a larger company.
The support staff consists of me and one other lady.
The other lady manages to call in at least once a month because she’s having an emergency. These emergencies have a nearly-perfect correlation with her boss being out of the office.
Since her boss and my boss are not the same, normally I wouldn’t give a toss, but when she’s out, then I have to do all the support staff work myself - which means I do not get my own specialized work done.
She never takes PLANNED days off - you know, so that I would know in advance that I need to pack a lunch (for example) and would be able to take bathroom breaks. Or so that I could schedule important projects for days when I’m not going to be interrupted every 2 minutes by the phones or her boss needing something or the mailman or the FedEx dude or yadda yadda yadda. No. It’s always the same - I come in and there’s a message on my voicemail (never the MAIN voicemail, mind you - where records would be kept, but my PERSONAL voicemail) that says something like “Timmy fell down a well again!* I’m taking a vacation day.”
And yet she bitches that my scheduled shift includes a half-day on Fridays (largely because I work a 9 hour day Mon - Thursday without a lunch). SHE wants a half day on Friday. I want her to show up every day for work unless previously scheduled. Also, showing up on time would be a huge bonus too - as opposed to the 15 - 20 minutes late she is at least twice a week.
So far this year, I’ve had to cancel vacation plans (not out-of-town ones, thankfully - but scheduled days off during which I had intended to fat-ass it on my couch) three times because she called in unexpectedly KNOWING FULL WELL I had a scheduled vacation day. In those cases, she called me at home and left a message THERE that she was taking an emergency day off. She always apologizes, but after the second or third time it happened exactly the same way, I kind of started to doubt her sincerity there.
Therefore it is now mid-November and I have ONE HUNDRED hours of use-it-or-lose-it vacation time staring me in the face and a boss who’s going to be (rightfully) cranky as hell that I’ll be out of the office as much as I’m in it for the rest of the year. (7 weeks left in the year, a week of official holidays, two and a half weeks of vacation).
*Not really Timmy, but this year we’ve had husband with cancer, Kid A got drunk and wrapped his car around a tree, Kid A ODed on something and had to be rushed to the ICU, throwing up Kid B on a day when husband has chemo, stolen cars, Kid A’s psycho girlfriend having him arrested, Kid A’s psycho girlfriend and their baby-miscarriage dramas which somehow caused my co-worker to have to call in. I’d be more sympathetic if so goddamn many of these weren’t flat out failure to plan ahead and total unwillingness to delegate any task - no matter how minor - to any other member of her family. Yes, her husband has cancer - but he’s had cancer for several years and his treatments are on regularly scheduled dates and times - she also has two adult children, a mother, a sister, a brother and assorted other relatives who could be pressed into service in case of emergency - but she has to handle it all PERSONALLY. Her reasons are always GOOD ones, I’m just tired of having to be the who does her job all the damn time because she can’t seem to let anyone else cope with the minutia and can’t seem to make contingency plans - even though she demonstrably NEEDS some.
Not to step on a good rant – this lady sounds like a real piece of work – but I see a bit of doormat-ism on your part here. You scheduled a vacation day, take it! Let Mrs. Irresponsible take the heat for shit not getting done and maybe things will change.
Software Architect,
My job is to turn your incoherent blatherings into something our clients can actually read. When you learn the difference between Lose and Loose, you can attempt to call me out over my (correct) use of Whom vs. Who.
Until then, STFU. Or learn to write. English is (allegedly) your first language, but my guess is that the cavemen were more literate than you appear to be.
With sufficient email-fu, it seems to me that an email filter can generate exactly this sort of autoreply. Now if SecondJudith would just write the filter for us, we’ll all be happy.
My workplace gripes are all over many successive Mini Rants threads. At this point I’ve pretty much given up. I’m demoralized and demotivated. The only reason why I do a modicum of quality work is my own personal ethics and pride. My boss embarrassed me in front of our staff several times over the last week, and that pretty much finished it off. This makes me very sad, but what can you do.
Well, I was going to send you over to jobvent.com as a fun place for these kinds of stories, but I see that it’s been taken over by jobitorial.com, whatever that is.
That’s where the maintenance workers go to bitch.
No, wait. That’s janitorial.com.
I started to type something up, but got so angry and had so much to type that I decided I would just say: Dear Business Partners - I am starting to hate you, more than a little. This makes me sad and I’m thinking it is time we all pack it in.
You guys are making me appreciate my tiny little irritation. 
So, are you planning to quit, niblet_head? I had a boss (affectionately known as the Psycho Bitch From Hell) who called me stupid in front of customers one time; I decided then that no job is worth being treated like that.
HA ha!
Antigen, I feel your pain. I got out of the labbin’ game decades ago (I was an RT). So, if someone dies because a lab tech makes a mistake due to being over-worked and exhausted, do you figure they’ll throw the tech and the lab under the bus, or own up to the situation they’ve created? (I’ve got a pretty good idea what the answer is.)
Less doormatism and more “had the job less than a year, and am new to this city with a husband who hasn’t found a job yet” I’m afraid. So crappy-economy-paranoia 
The days off were cancelled at my boss’s request (not her boss, who is different - and my boss’s boss) because he needed someone at the office because he was at our corporate office (which is in a different state). He was really apologetic - and blaming the correct person - but he was also right. Someone did have to be there.
Since I’m currently scheduling the remainder of my vacation, my co-worker has been griping to me about how can I take all this time and won’t my boss be mad about it. I’m ignoring her.
It totally doesn’t help that she has a major case of the Chicken Littles and assumes that any even marginally untoward occurrence is going to result in someone being fired. I think she’s just mental, but I haven’t been here long enough to be certain yet. It’s nerve-wracking.
Maybe she’s just afraid that her poor track-record will result in HER getting fired. I could be wrong, but I think bosses notice someone who does what she does.
So your boss is mad at you for taking all your must use vacation time at once, because he insisted you cancel you scheduled vacation days earlier in the year at HIS request? All the while, Drama Queen calls you at home?
Yes, you have a mild case of doormatism combined with a case of crappy economy, but your boss has a cranial-rectal inversion he should get looked at. Unless they will convert your unused vacation time to cash? Thought not.
Yikes. I take it back. I didn’t know the whole story.
IMO, any boss who would yank your vacation time away at the last minute (presumably after having previously approved said time) is being an asshole. What if you’d just landed in Bora Bora when you co-worker had one of her “emergencies”? Somebody in charge needs to come up with a contingency plan. (And I hope you and hubby are both looking for new jobs!)
“Yeah, I tried to take some of my vacation time earlier in the year. For some reason it kept getting cancelled.” 
Aangelica: Two words… “Caller ID.”
Get it. Live it. Love it.
I am absolutely working toward a different future. I don’t want to just quit to go do the same crap. Although I will if it makes sense in the greater scheme, know what I mean? I’d love to leave instead because I’m moving on to something that means something to me. That’s my project today.
Yeah, I once had a boss standing in my office screaming at me. That was the one and only time I have left and never came back. He had clients coming in the next day, too. Sucks to be you, fuckwit.
Antigen - I was in a similar position at one point. We had a big push at work to “improve” every year - more tests per tech, more profit per test, even more tests per square foot of space. All fine and good, as far as it goes, but it leads to a mentality where the solution to overwork is to make people work harder and faster rather than get enough people to do the job. In the meantime, our workload had more than quintupled because our tests were getting more and more popular. After months and months of doing more work than any three other people put together, I finally realized that no one was going to recognize my dedication and give me what I needed, either help or remuneration. Sometimes the only way management will wake up and realize there’s a problem is if there’s, well, a problem. So I quit nearly killing myself every day trying to get out every last test there was, and let the work pile up more. I wasn’t slacking - I still did more than any two other people - but I began to do things like take my allowed breaks and go home on time. Sure enough, numbers started looking worse. It was still pretty bad when I left, but they’d at least finally hired a couple more people.
Most of the problems I have with my job would be instantly resolved if I were allowed to just up and punch people in the neck every once in a while. Not everyone, but some people around here could really use it.