A catless warehouse? That violates W-Space laws! Every warehouse I’ve ever seen has at least one cat! And they usually were female, often intact, so kittens were a common occurrence (the boys and any females going to homes would get fixed).
ETA: remember to keep copies of your manuals. Even if you’re neved in a similar place again, they’re writing samples and may be reusable with a bit of anonymization. It’s amazing how many things are done very similarly in very different places.
Gentlemen (and I use the term loosely):
When you call a place of business to conduct a business transaction and a female answers the phone, do not use any of the following terms to refer to her:
Honey (or any variation thereof)
Sweetie (or any variation thereof)
Doll
Kid
Dear
Darling
Doing so marks you as a cad and a bounder, I don’t care how old you are. You are conducting a business transaction, not trolling for a date. And if you are, in fact, trolling for a date, might I inform you why you are still single? It is because you refer to women using insulting terms in inappropriate situations.
No, I just put it badly. YOU haven’t changed companies, but the ownership of your company did. That’s enough for Revenue Canada.
I was still sitting in the exact same place doing the exact same work, but because of a takeover I was working for Company B instead of Company A, so they started all the EI and CPP all over again.
And just as I was planning to leave on my lovely Friday, I found out a member of my choir died from a stroke. That she suffered at rehearsal on Tuesday. She was 26.
Personally, I’d apply the above to both genders, but then, I’m still irritated about calling a place which was looking for a Chem E with my experience (seriously, the ad could have been written looking at my CV) and then been told by a slit-B-bearer “well, honey, the engineer has to call us in person”. The conversation went downhill from that point.
Dear Logistics people: if you decide to multiply the materials which Production uses, therefore multiplying Production’s Master Data and also requiring reviews of all pre-existing Production Master Data, an update of Quality’s Master Data, and the cancellation and re-generation of all outstanding Production Orders (because, you know, you couldn’t come up with the notion of at least reusing the old material codes, which with a bit of smarts could have saved me about 20% of the work I just did)…
kindly let the person in charge of doing all of the above know, oh, dunnow, before the day when we’re supposed to start reporting work on those now-cancelled Orders? Kthxthefuckbye!
If I’m auditing something and it doesn’t appear to have been completed, telling me that so-and-so worked on it and it is done - when there is exactly zero evidence that it was completed - then completely failing to answer any followup enquiries…
Fucking pisses me off.
Just wanted to give this a big “FUCK YEAH”, and also extend this to ANYONE in a business environment. Why is it so damn hard to address me by my name???
A who in the what now? 
I apply Judge Judy rules to work as well - if you can’t prove it, it didn’t happen. I live and die by the sticky note - I note everything: what I did, what I didn’t do, the results, any difficulties, the date, and my initials.
So, I clocked in at work last night, and received my assignment for the tour, cover side 2 of the APPS and both flats sorters. This is a running tour (as opposed to a maintenance tour), so it’s important that I keep the equipment RUNNING and processing mail.
About forty-five minutes into the shift, I get a call to fix a flat sorter. One of the three feeder consoles keeps jamming right at the entrance to the aperture for the FICS camera (takes a picture of the mailpiece, and decides whether to read the barcode and distribute it, or label the mailpiece and sent a picture of it to Salt Lake City for remote encoding. Not really important for the purposes of this gripe).
All the photoeyes are functioning properly. All of the belts, and motors operate properly, although there’s a little question about a clutch assembly. I determined that if I get all the belts running before I start feeding the mail, it’s more likely to successfully feed the entire stack. Then I notice that a large roller whose purpose is to keep taller mailpieces from flopping over as they pass in front of the aperture is NOT rolling. It’s not making contact with anything at all. This is not a good thing. I press my hand against the roller, and it TIPS OVER.
Oh, joy. The long pin that provides the swivel point for the roller has sheared off (because the lower part of the assembly is anchored with a return spring, it’s able to just sit on top of its stub). I don’t normally have to delve into the online service manual (running tour, remember? not that many catastrophic failures), but I roll up my sleeves and head over to the computer to see if I can hunt down the right part.
Well, the computer is always on, and there are usually several browser windows open, so at least I don’t have to boot it up, just open the handbook for the sorter, find the parts section, and then try to find the one drawing out of about six hundred that has this assembly. But what’s THIS? The top browser is ALREADY showing the exact subassembly that has the broken pin! There’s no stock number for the pin itself, but there is for the subassembly that contains the pin, so I might be able to replace that. Parts Issue doesn’t have one in stock, but there’s one thing left to try: the subassembly is part of a LARGER subassembly that we DO have on hand.
I picked up the part, fetched my tools, and had the assembly replaced and tested half an hour later.
But TOUR THREE dude, WTF? You KNEW that this part was broken! You KNEW what had to be replaced to restore full function! I don’t have a single problem with the fact that you didn’t feel you had time to complete the repair before your tour ended. But you didn’t even write anything about it in the log book! You didn’t call in a passdown! You could have saved me half an hour of troubleshooting (on a RUNNING tour), and saved the clerks half an hour of down time on the feeder console!
Seriously, WTF?
Dude, you’ve been here less than a month. Stop crop-dusting your own department…it’s bad form, you’re doing it wrong, and it’s fucking disgusting.
Co-worker: shut she hell up. Yes, it’s completely asinine to have somebody from my team spend some amount of time papering over a long-standing issue that has plagued our company basically since its inception, but not spend any effort towards actually fixing the problem. You’re completely right. I don’t make these decisions. The people who do make these decisions treat my area of expertise as a cost centre, not a as something that adds value to our product. Consequently they schedule as little work with in my area as they can get away with.
I don’t have any input at all into scheduling projects or resourcing, as evidenced by the fact that of the five people on my team, four of them (including myself!) are on loan to other teams for the foreseeable future. I don’t even get asked when these things happen. I just get told.
You know what’s especially galling? You’re on a first-name basis with the founders and C-level executives of this company, because you worked with them before this company even existed. You have what, 20 years of seniority over me? Didn’t you get promoted to Director last year? You have infinitely more pull in this company than I do. Why the hell are you bitching at me?
(I really am getting tired of telling people, “Yes, I am responsible for X*. Yes, X sucks. No, that is not going to change.” Every damned time they tried to argue with me as though that’s going to change anything.
I do like the vast majority of our attorneys. They’re usually bright, logical, consistent people.
However.
You email me, asking that I call. I do. Have to leave a voicemail. Two hours later you email again, asking me to call. I do. Have to leave a voicemail. I do so, stating please call me as my schedule is open. An hour later you call… asking me to swing by your office.
I’m not in office, can we handle the matter over the phone? Or set an appointment for later in the week when I plan to be in? Dither dither dither. You suppose you can handle it over the phone. However, you need time to review the case because you don’t know what’s going on.
Your initial email was in response to my email outlining the whole friggin’ case! So, you just opened the email and hit reply without scrolling down?
I wish this was a one off situation. It’s not. They still don’t grok the whole “we come in when we need to” versus eight hour face time just because you want us to wander over at your beck and call.
And the not reading bit? Also not uncommon. I explained the situation, she suggested a course of action. The same damn course of action I put at the end of my email.
Almost a half a day of back and forth emails and a twenty minute phone call that could have been handled with a “sounds good” response to my initial correspondence.
Caught in the middle-aarrgghh. One of my duties is to send out random questionaires to customers. RANDOM. I don’t work in any kind of customer service, so I have no ax to grind. Friend on the way to being ex-friend wants me to send 3 to customers from her old store, where she stepped down as manager, because they don’t like the new manager. Apparently they were her pet customers. Now I have to work with this new manager daily-I like him. She supposedly works in inventory now-and why the hell she wants to bushwhack the new manager, I have no idea. Worse, these customers of hers are charge account customers; we don’t send these questionaire to account customers as a matter of policy. I dumped the whold mess in my boss’s (and hers, and the other guy’s) lap. Waiting for the blowback to explode on me.
Please say that she did this with email.
But she’s an attorney - she’s important! She doesn’t have time for piddly shit like reading emails. 
“Insert tab A into slit B”. I refuse to up-value that entity by using a more honorable name.
Okay, our meeting room situation is a little challenging, I know that. We don’t have enough rooms to go around and I can’t complain too much as without our real estate challenges my precious remote work program wouldn’t exist but since we all have to live with this situation can we be a little bit logical please?
All the rooms are listed in Outlook with their capacity and the facilities that are included (white board, overhead projector etc). If you have 3 people who need to talk for 30 mins could you please book one of the available smaller rooms rather than take a chunk out of the 2 hours I need for a 12 person design session? Seriously there are other rooms available, I sent you an email with a list and you refused to move. Luckily my project is high visibility and high risk so I’m going to get what I need but it could have been much easier on both of us. Jackass.
I know with the status of the hotel I work at and the time of year it is (apparently leaves change color nowhere else in the world) that we will have an abundance of what we behind the desk refer to as “big black holes of need.” But today, I encountered one that I had honestly never encountered before. And trust me, I’ve seen a lot.
We’re currently having a bake sale to benefit an animal rescue in town. We have a basket at the desk that we employees donate cookies/brownies/what have you to. Our relief auditor made some oatmeal something or other cookies that one of the guests apparently loved. Said guest came up to me this morning *insisting * that I call up Relief Auditor and tell her to make these cookies so she (guest) can take them back to her friends in Minnesota. “Can’t you just text her and let her know?” Fuck no. She has to work tonight–all night–and she’s probably asleep right now. I am not calling her up to tell her some needy bitch wants her to bake some cookies for her. Relief Auditor ain’t your maid, bitch.
So no, I will not call Relief Auditor because I prefer to leave my ass unkicked by my co-workers. You, bag of need, will be several hundred miles away from me shortly. I have to see Relief Auditor three times a week for the forseeable future. My priorities are firmly in place.
<holding envelope to turbaned forehead> Guest did not offer to pay for those cookies, either, right?
More common to hear “slot” B…