Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
5662

Really, I think the (ever-so-slightly) restricted breathing was due to having all of that venom injected right into my back. Plus I suspect it’s just irritating stuff - in an odd coincidence, both my husband and a good friend got stung in the lower lip by yellowjackets and ended up with a painfully over-swollen lip. (Ice packs and an antihistamine, BTW.)

That bad encounter was 20 years ago, in college. The house invasion was last year. We’re keeping an eye out for a second attempt at them moving in.

5663

#1 best way to take down wasps, safely and effectively without poison:

Get a plant sprayer bottle. The cheap ones. Fill it with water and a quick shot of Dawn, softsoap, any kind of liquid soap. Mix it up.

Spray them in the air or on a surface. It knocks them down and they are unable to fly. The really important part - they’re also disoriented and unable to send out signals to get the other wasps all riled up. Then just smoosh them.

I killed over 300 wasps in a single weekend in my old backyard using this method without suffering a single sting. (There was a basketball sized nest about 30 feet up my Silver Maple that I couldn’t get to).

And the soapy water gets all over anything? Big deal. It’s only soapy water. Not poison or chemicals. Might be a problem on files, but hey, just don’t go hog wild with the spraying. You’d be amazed how little it actually requires and how easily it knocks them down.

5664

Well, now that you’ve called off the wedding…

Seriously, Lucas “designed” the electrical “systems” of many British cars. And, the old joke goes, English refrigerators. Which explains why they drink warm beer.

“Whatever you did”? He was mad enough to call you the filthiest thing possible, and not tell you why? Or you forgot his reason?

5665

She wasn’t talking about Bill. She was referring to whatever she’d done to deserve the wasp invasion.

5666
  1. Get copy of CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.
  2. Get MSDS of dihydrogen monoxide.
  3. Wrap CRC in MSDS.
  4. Use to bang Chimera a couple of times (that thing is so heavy that doing it more often is dangerous for the person wielding it).
5667

First, in my family, we do like these as swatters. You can pop things right out of the air with 'em.

Secondly, oh, yes. I got stung once getting the dog’s frisbee out of the tree, three four times. I carefully walk back inside, and then get stung four more times as a bunch of them had crawled up my sleeves.

5668

That’s how rumours get started - “Hey, Nava’s banging Chimera!” :smiley:

5669

After that coworker who started in the same week three different rumors assigning me boyfriends, plus one about one of them being gay, anything is mild.

5670

Thank you so much for your outrage on my behalf! Its very appreciated, if unnecessary.

Morgyn is right, Bill and I were wondering what I did in my last life that was so bad that I would be constantly be dealing with vermin in this one and that was the worse he could come up with.

I talked to my minion today and he’s been wasp stung in the past and his reactions were perfectly normal for him. Some swelling, and some pain but he could have stayed at work. He said he would have protested louder and longer about being sent home if he didn’t understand my need for a dramatic accident/injury report.

We found 2 wasps today. One was dead and one was dazed and easy to smoosh. One of the building guys came by today and unscrewed all of the wall plates, looked in the holes with a flashlight and then sealed them with silicon caulking.

At least its not rats again.

5671

Dang, how did I miss this? WANTS!!!* Do they make the zap sound and light flash? If so, I’m going to order 3. My minion and I will each want one, and of course that is just the sort of gadget that Bill will want as well.

*The zapper, not wasps in my sleeves. OWIE about that.

5672

Sorry I’m a bit behind (down here in Australia it’s still May), but I just had to find an excuse for using a smiley hammering a computer.

Hammer Time

(anyone know how to insert the actual gif?)

5673

Can’t do it in these boards, We Be Serious.
The zappers similar to those that I’ve seen did the flash and zzZZZap! noise, flatlined.

5674

I was out of the office for a couple days last week. I came back and Snowflake wasn’t at her desk. No biggie, she takes random days off all the time. Next day, still no Snowflake. Day three, still no Snowflake so I ask one of my cube-mates where she was. She tells me Snowflake had to have “emergency” surgery and will be off the next three months. No one quite knows what the surgery was, she told the boss it was something to do with girl parts and he didn’t press the issue. She did have a doctor’s note.

Cube-mate goes on to tell me that she and Snowflake worked together in a different department a couple years ago, and Snowflake pulled the same stunt. Vaguely defined “emergency” surgery and three months leave right before her kids go on summer break.

This is right after we all busted our asses to get her caught up because she was so far behind!!! Boss has divided up her work among the rest of the department, and so far no one else has fallen behind. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when she comes back. I bet she’s so far behind!!! again in a matter of weeks.

I swear she must either be related to or have naked pictures of someone in the administratosphere.

5675

Some people just have such warped social skills that you wonder how they function in the world.

About a month and a half ago, my recruiter scheduled lunch with me because I had less than 4 months left on my contract and it’s time to get an updated resume and start looking at options. Clueless George is all put out because he hasn’t heard from his recruiter at all. So at the lunch, I ask about CG’s recruiter and find that she left the company. I suggest to my recruiter that he needs to pick up the ball with CG and have lunch with him too. I talk him up to the recruiter too - how well he’s doing, how I respect his skills, etc.

I get back and I tell CG that my recruiter will be calling him to have lunch. I talk him up for a solid 10 minutes, praising his abilities and skills and generally putting him over. Then I mention that the recruiter said he hasn’t heard a single bad word about either of us. :smack: Clueless George gets a very angry look on his face, says “Except for me. Someone apparently complained about me a while back”. I say “Seriously? Wasn’t that like a year ago? Why are you bringing that up now?” and he stomps off in anger and sulks for the rest of the day.

I mean seriously, who the fuck does that sort of thing? I did him a favor by asking my recruiter to call him and take care of him. I spoke well of him to the recruiter. I stood there and praised him to his face and told him how I respected him for a solid 10 minutes and his response is to bring up and get angry about something that happened a year earlier and was his own damned fault? What a kick in the teeth!

Fast forward to recently. I’m pushing to get them to keep us longer. CG is Donnie Downer at every turn. Every time I mention a tactic or an avenue of approach on it, he has to say it won’t work, or I’m wasting my time. Fuck it all, man! I’ve been through this crap several times before. I know how to play this game! The Administrative Assistant even talked to me about it today and said that she wanted us to stay (Her? The woman who has NEVER been nice to us wants us to stay???) and mentions that they haven’t had any of the sorts of problems with us that they had with the past contractors.

And oh crap, that sets off CG to being pissy again, about that previous event.

And then to top it off, I mention the tax issue that I wrote about in the June mini-rants thread, and he has to start pushing and pushing into ‘none of your fucking business’ territory and completely ignoring me straight out saying ‘I don’t want to discuss this’ and ‘I’m not going to argue this with you’ and even a straight out turn away, wave hand dismissively and say “ok, just stop” to the point where I had to snap at him over it.

Aaaannnddd… then back to his cube to sulk and not communicate for most of the day.

I dunno. Sometimes you just can’t win. At this point I want/need him to go find another job and be somewhere else. Either that or I do.

5676

The worse part about this is that now your recruiter thinks that you like working with CG and will try to assign you together.

There were no wasps today.

I still ordered the handheld zappers. If we don’t use them in the records room, we can use them to make a safe passage through the parking lot. Not to mention that I think they look fun and I can expense 2 of them.

5677

Thankfully not.

5678

So, the same co-worker that I ranted about upthread today was asked questions, went on a rant over the phone to our VP of Client Engagement about how untrained he was, then hung up from that call and ranted at me. I don’t know if it changed after he ranted to me, but the upshot was that he is sending an email to all the supervisory types stating that he is sick of being assigned a job without training or complete communication, and therefore he is giving that task back, and they can make (the other person who knows it well) work full-time and take care of it.

Overall, I was sympathetic to the struggle he’s been having. We do NOT have any sort of formalized training, and it does suck to be told to figure stuff out as you go…but I spent 1 year getting (sort of trained) and 1 year barely knowing anything and being the primary support person (I’ve now been here 5.5 years) and, that’s just the way the company works.

If you feel you’re not being trained for some aspect, then get off your ass and ASK someone to show you. Don’t wait for someone to send you a formal invitation to some sort of training session - go to another co-worker and schedule time to sit down with them to show you. Exhibit some sort of self-motivation instead of waiting for it to be spoon-fed you.

And then, when you feel you’re not getting what you ‘deserve’, don’t take a fucking 90 minute lunch, leaving me here to answer the phone by myself while you go out and sulk. We’re understaffed. If you want to take 30 minutes to leave your desk and wander off, that’s peachy (I should do that more often), but don’t ditch the rest of the team because you’re offended and pissy.

Yes, he has some valid reasons to be mad, but please handle it like a grown-up instead of whining.

5679

Oh, and around 3:30 he sent an email stating he wasn’t feeling well and walked out. Aaaarrrggghh!!! :mad:

5680

It sounds like he might not be long for your company. Did he dress nicely today, like he had an interview late in the afternoon? :slight_smile:

5681

Well, sending out that kind of email is essentially Career Suicide. Sending it out and then going home for the day is “I don’t really feel like working here anymore”, and believe me, EVERYONE in Management knows it.

I’ve never been formally trained for 80% of the stuff I’ve done on my jobs. If you want to succeed, you fucking pick it up on your own and do the best you can with it. If you need help, you ask for it.