Among the many charms of my workplace is the totally nonsensical sick leave policy. I have my semi-annual “the room is spinning” sinus infection, but since I haven’t been there a year yet I have no official sick pay. What I do get is one personal day for every two months of perfect attendance.
I’ve used the personal days I already earned earlier this year, and because of my anniversary date I won’t earn another day until next week. If I had called in sick today I would’ve lost that personal day. I can’t use it, because I haven’t earned it, but I can lose it before I earn it.
So I dragged my carcass in for two hours today. I carried Lysol, hid in the warehouse, and told everyone to keep their distance. I finished the project the boss needs for tomorrow then left. Thus preserving my “perfect attendance”.
I don’t think I’m contageous, the only person who will come in contact with the stuff I worked with today is the boss tomorrow.
I know I should’ve stayed home, but dammit, I need that personal day so I get paid for the day after Thanksgiving. The office is closed that day and we have to use our personal time or not get paid. purplehorseshoe, I wouldn’t ask either…
I’m tired of hearing my coworker’s political delusions. It’s bad enough in a normal work environment to discuss political vitriol amongst coworkers, but it’s even worse when you’re out on a boat and you have to live with these people for 28 days at a time.
Things I have to keep hearing on a daily basis:
[ul]
[li]Obama is a cock sucker[/li][li]America will no longer be a free country if Obama gets re-elected[/li][li]Hi, Opal! [Do we do this even for non-numbered lists, and lists that go past 2 items?][/li][li]Obama is the anti-Christ[/li][li]We don’t even know where he was born[/li][li]If Obama wins it will be because he cheated enough[/li][/ul]
Seriously… it’s just ridiculous. Keep your political opinions to yourselves if they are this offensive.
Sometimes my coworkers make me wonder whether I live in a country or in a gorilla pack.
This week I’m the only woman in the “on location” team, the other woman in the team is working from home and we have more High Level People than usual: it’s one regular coworker, four bosses (one of whom nobody is sure of even his title, but we know he is a boss) and me.
Conversations are along the lines of “Berlusconi, he da man! Dude bagged a 16yo, man! Only guys who say they don’t like him are envious (that’s what viagra is for, asshole - what, you got high blood pressure? sucks to be you!), only women who say they don’t like him are just ugly!” Me: “why thanks, I always appreciate a compliment.” Grandboss: “uh? [the rest of the group fails its collective perception roll by even more and goes on rapping on about how Berlusconi da man and Julio Iglesias used to be da man but now he’s henpecked]”
And yes, this is a bunch of middle-aged Spanish and Latin American guys trying to sound gangsta.
…Uh, maybe not the Anti-Christ but certainly some of the more obtuse demon underlings. Lowly surveyor that I was, I had to break it to an Architect that his prize design was going to be a bit difficult to construct due to the reluctance of water to flow uphill.
This office really likes to decorate for Halloween. Most of the decorations are cool, and I like them, but there’s one exception.
It’s a sheet-draped form about the size of a little kid, and it sports a pocket on the front of its “shroud”, filled with candy. If someone puts their hand in to get candy, motion sensors trigger the playing of a static-y recording: “Trick or treat! Teee heee teeee heeee giggle giggle giggle!”. The voice is supposed to be that of a kid but you can tell it’s a grown woman doing a cutesy kiddy voice.
It’s located about thirty feet behind me, and the God-cursed thing has been going off about every ten minutes All. Day. Long.
Do not bring your shrieking demonspawn into the workplace and then ignore them. If your kid screams in earshot of me again, I’m going to whirl around and backhand you or her (whoever’s closest).
Dude, you just got assigned to a private office!!! Show some enthusiasm about it and move out of your old office area already!!! I’ve been ready to move into your old office since last week…in fact, the phones have already been moved, which means I’ve spent part of the week working at a desk without a phone (which I really haven’t missed, to be honest).
Current office cell mate: You’re an asshat. I actually didn’t say anything negative about you when I went to our supervisor to request an office move – I chalked the whole thing up to a personality conflict. In addition to the keyboard hammering and the teeth-sucking, you seem to have taken up tabletop drumming. It’s a damn shame that I’m the one having to leave the office…I’ve been here much longer than you, after all…at least I get some slightly nicer furniture and a dry erase board out of the deal. Enjoy your tiny desk! (It’s my understanding that someone else has already called dibs on my old desk.)
New New Guy: Nodding and saying hello when we pass in the hall – which is practically expected at our workplace – may be a bit of a reach, but could you at least try for some eye contact when you pick something up from my desk? I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your unwillingness to acknowledge my presence is due to some kind of autism spectrum disorder.
I was stuck trying to get out of Chicago and back to work in the Philly area since Sunday. I know that we’ve had issues because of the hurricane, but do you REALLY mean to tell me that (1) this stack of bullshit on my desk is ALL “absolute highest priority” and (2) there was NO ONE ELSE who could have worked on this while I was out, or even now that I am back? This ALL needs to be done by me alone, and it all needs to be done “immediately?”
My husband was telling me about the architects that design the multi-million dollar buildings that his company builds - they don’t care about piddling little details like air ducts and electrical or plumbing, and how they don’t consider it their job to try to co-ordinate things like air ducts and electrical and plumbing and concrete columns and open air spaces - that’s for the low-level construction guys to figure out. Which they can do, no problem, but it all has to be signed off with change orders from the architects, and apparently architects don’t feel any need to respond to emails, even though multi-million dollar projects have extremely tight timelines and huge fines for missing them.
You could have stopped at, "Do not bring your shrieking demonspawn into the workplace " and I would have been on board. Kids and workplace don’t mix, unless your workplace is like a daycare or something.
This is one of the reasons I stay a temp - I really don’t have any responsibilities. I show up, I do some work, they pay me. They’re usually extremely grateful just that I keep showing up.
Yes, I realize that you are just trying to do your job and “enhance my possibilities of getting the position” (which in turn increases, which is the right word, the probability that you will receive a commision). But when I explain that it will be very difficult for my business contacts to respond to inquiries today because it happens to be a four-day weekend, the proper answer is “oh I didn’t know that”, or perhaps even “oh I didn’t know that, I will communicate it to the client”, not “I am merely attempting to enhance your possibilities of getting the position”.
I have a 10-pound dictionary here; big words do not impress me at all. You can wrap the dictionary in barbed wire and shove it up your posterior sphincter, no need to return it.
It’s bad enough that half the calls I get from agents try to fish for contact information from my end clients (if I had it, I still wouldn’t be giving it around) and even more Request and Require email and phone numbers (hell to the no) from my former managers, with the excuse of asking for references - they expect people to drop anything to answer them, whether those people are on holiday, in the middle of a go-live or in their deathbed.
Hey Grandboss? If you’re gonna cancel a meeting you called, could ya at least let the rest of us know? It’s bad enough that you’re in one closed-door meeting after another (there have been many layoffs and re-orgs lately) and I get that those meetings superceded this one, but would it kill you to send someone an IM and a “could you let everyone else know?”
So the second choice for my job accepted, then found a different job. Now the third choice is going to start in a couple of weeks. I don’t care. I really don’t. I did reprint a corrected copy of the procedure manual, and I have a copy of it. For my next job.
I love your updates these days - “The rat king has taken over the entire warehouse now and has several interns cocooned in it for later digestion - and I don’t care.”
The RatKing actually has taken over the entire U-store place. The boxes are out, and now only facilities folks go out there. Come to think of it, there are a couple of the facilities guys that I haven’t seen for a while, and winter is on the way…
Facilities is also using a different remote storage place of mine to store random stuff. Last time I was out there, there was an awing, a pallet jack, a bunch of pallets and a couple of chairs. This time last year, I would have been so outraged. Not only are they not supposed to use my areas for their stuff, they aren’t supposed to go into areas where boxes are stored without a Records Management person with them. Now I had trouble summoning up the energy to email a complaint to the head of facilities (and cc my boss).
One of the things we do is scan documents that are stored for longer than 10 years. The IT department upgraded half of the computers in the department, but forgot that each workstation needs the ability to scan. IT didn’t give us computers that can take the card needed to run the scanners and won’t be able to upgrade the new computers until the next fiscal year. Do I care? Not enough to call the head of IT and complain. I sent him an email that probably got deleted.
The BOS want to stop paying the service contract on the shredder. They want us to remember to oil the shredder often and to “use it gently”. We toss 40 boxes of paper down its maw everyday. My response to that was to go to Target, get a bunch of rainbow and unicorn stickers and put them on the shredder in case any of the BOS should happen to see it. That way they would know that we treat it kindly.
I’ve got a serious case of short-timer’s attitude, and you know what? I’m liking it
for thanking me, 
for the your/you’re error. Call it a wash?
