Dear co-workers:
If you don’t stop bitching about New Management writing people up for doing petty stuff they shouldn’t have been doing, I will slap you, and then I will get written up (or fired) and I will regret it, and so will you, most likely.
This was just sad. Bill and I were sitting in the truck, talking about stuff and my new minion got dropped off by his boyfriend. Not in front of the door, but out of sight from the windows so they could kiss goodbye. My minion saw us causally watching him go in the door. Bill and I finished our coffee, kissed each other and went to work.
About an hour later, my minion asked me if I was going to fire him. I always have a snappy answer, so I was all “Huh?”
Long story short, minion thought he was going to be fired because he was gay and kissed a guy in public (it wasn’t even a passionate kiss, just a peck on the lips). This really makes me sad.
I like my new job, I want to live here, but the culture is kinda strange at times.
That is sad.
Please share with us how you reassured him.
It was sad. And I’m not as good with people as I should be, so I just looked at him with a deer in the headlights look and then stammered something about how his sex life is none of my business and I don’t care as long as he shows up to work on time and does his job.
I do have a slight problem with his handwriting. I need him to use the label maker every time, instead of using a sharpy. That’s a much bigger problem to me than worrying about who he kisses.
Well at least you don’t have to worry about him hitting on you in drunken emails… 
At “times”? You’re in Texas now, the culture will always seem strange. 
Tell him that you kiss YOUR boyfriend goodbye when you have to part, so why shouldn’t he?
Call him into your office and tell him you disapprove of his heathen labeling practices, and that the One True Way is the labelmaker. 
Heh, yeah - he’d have to be too drunk to type, to proposition someone of the WRONG GENDER.
You coulda said “no, I’m not firing you for being gay, I’m firing you for being dumb enough to think I’d fire you for being gay”.
Sweet zombie Jeebus on a cracker. I live in, what, the 2nd biggest city in the state after the one you moved into, and that** would be absolutely un-fucking-forgivable in the places I’ve worked here. (** “That” being “fear of being fired for kissing your same-sex SO.”) Hell, a dude on my team is openly gay - mentioned picking up his fiance because “I don’t like **him **having to ride the trains,” which as far as I’m concerned counts as openly gay - and I can’t imagine anyone saying boo to that.
That said, Mama Zappa, the state overall (outside of the city slicker areas) is pretty damn homophobic - actually, every -phobic you can imagine - so that would be a really mean response. Works in San Francisco, I bet, but not 'round these parts.
Yet …
And, hell, everyone has a problem with my handwriting, and I know it. The only “C” grade I got in an otherwise A-plus-plus elementary school experience was in “handwriting.” 
Gimme a label maker and say “I can’t read your chicken scratch; use this” and I’ll be all over that shit.
I LOVE THIS. I am going to use it forevermore.
I think you probably did re-assure him - you saw, you know, and you aren’t making a big deal of it.
“Fired for being gay.” I can’t imagine how that could possibly make a difference in just about any job.
Yeah, that’s a problem. I spend hours yesterday entering data for a whole bunch of employees - they were supposed to PRINT their names so we could read it, but I was left with a handful of forms that I couldn’t assign to a person. :rolleyes:
Of course, the problem might not be his handwriting, but the fact that you need labels, not hand-writing - then the problem is him not listening to instructions. 
A new woman where I work has the World’s Worst Voice. She walks about a lot, and she’s loquacious, so one gets to hear it all day even though this is a big office.
She’s loud and her voice has a harsh, bitter, cackly quality. Even though she’s jolly and good-natured and laughs a good deal, her laugh sounds like an evil witch getting her jollies over tormenting a victim.
And she just sent me a LinkedIn request. She’s an attorney here, and I dare not ignore it so I’ll accept it just to be politically correct. Now I’ll go look at her contacts and see if she’s a member of the flying monkey society or something.
I pit the loss of institutional knowledge, and the way this kind of knowledge is not valued by upper management.
I’ve worked here for nearly 33 years, and I know how things work among all the departments that touch on mine. I am almost the only one left. When I retire, I really wonder how this place is going to avoid falling into chaos. (Not that I’m so special in and of myself, just that I’m the only one left who knows about things outside of my own work responsibility.)
Why have we lost so much institutional knowledge? Because, of course, it is more expensive to keep such people. And while my accumulated sick time is on the books as a negative asset, and my salary is of course an expense, my institutional knowledge is not on any books anywhere. It’s just something without which things don’t function, especially for rush jobs and out-of-the-ordinary emergencies.
I am lucky myself; my immediate boss knows my value, and her boss at least has some idea. Go higher than that, though, and fuggedaboutit.
Oh well. Soon it won’t be my worry any more.
Roddy
Dear payroll dept:
Thank you ever so fucking much for paying me for 6 vacation hours, out of the 39 I was supposed to get. That’ll certainly pay my bills for the next two weeks. :rolleyes:
God, I have fucking hated working for companies like that. Blinders to everything but short term costs. Fuck the future, fuck company experience, we only care about what this month’s numbers look like! Fire Jenkins, I have no idea what he does and I can’t be bothered to learn! It will look good on our books!
I used to speak out above my pay grade (a bad habit of mine all around) about the need to retain Business Knowledge and Experience. You get rid of everyone every couple of years, and you watch the new people make the same fucking mistakes over and over. They don’t learn from the past because not a one of them was there when that same mistake was made last time. It becomes a death spiral, as the upper management gets a bad attitude toward their people because of the rampant inefficiencies, errors and inexperience that their own goddamned stupid asses are fostering.
My place isn’t quite as bad as that. Unfortunately I work in an industry (newspapers) that has suffered enormous losses, with consequent reductions in staff, over the past 13 years. So some loss of experience has to be expected. But there doesn’t seem to be any particular effort to build that experience back up, and the people who still have it are at the bottom of the totem pole (because they are not sales, you see, so they aren’t bringing in revenue).
How does an executive justify a large-salaried non-sales employee to the home office? He has to know what they do and why it’s important. And mostly, he doesn’t.
Oh, and I used to speak out above my pay grade too. That’s why I’m not invited to meetings any more.
Roddy
I feel like I work with 12 olds…
A couple of years ago my company hired two new guys. These guys hit it off immediately and became best friends and now work together, or as I should say, stand around and talk shit about me behind my back all day long.
They really don’t get much work done and literally stand around talking about me half the day, but only behind my back. The only time they talk to my face is when they need my help, but everyone tells me what they’re saying. I’ve never heard any of their complaints that made sense, it’s always bullshit that they seem to make up out of thin air and leaves me thinking “how the hell could they possibly think that?”. The boss really hates both of them, but for some reason won’t do anything about them.
I made up my mind a long time ago that they’re just gnats. I don’t care about them or what they say about me. My co-workers actually get more upset about it than I do. I just ignore it for months on end until it gets out of hand and their BS rumors about me start spreading to other departments, then I tell them to shut up and go about my business for another few months.
Today was one of those days that I got to tell them to shut the fuck up.
One of them came to me and asked me to do something that was a really minor 20-second thing that they’re supposed to do themselves. I normally just do it but today I said, “I’m pretty busy, why don’t you guys just do it?”
I got a very sarcastic “Oh ok, no problem, we’ll do it for you. Hear that Bryan, Fubaya wants us to do his job for him!”
I said “Well, if you didn’t go around talking about me behind my back all the time, I might be more inclined to help.”
That must have struck a nerve because things got really strange after that. He pointed at me and shouted “Now you listen here fucker, I haven’t said a single word about you behind your back, whatsoever… (three second pause)… today.”
There was literally a three second pause before he added “today.” It was unbelievable.
He went on a tirade about a bunch of things, but none of them made any sense. What I finally figured out from the rest of the “conversation” is that the guy is really obsessed with everything I do for some reason, but doesn’t actually know what I do or how things work.
I don’t get it. What the fuck’s his problem?
He’s jealous, and afraid.
Or crazy.
ETA: Or all three.