Not a rant. But since this is the thread in which I last was grumbling about my job . . .
Had Chinese for lunch, got this fortune:
You are soon going to change your present line of work.
Handed it to my Boss-- who wanted to know what I was changing to.
I told her I didn’t know, but I wanted her to be the first to know.
We had a good chuckle over it.
DH works in a startup that uses high-powered lasers, and rather than the traditional “in bed” added to fortune cookies, we add “with a laser.”
You are soon going to change your present line of work, with a laser.
Sounds ominous!
I like it! I think my adaptation to the traditional fortune cookie saying is going to be, “With a high-powered automatic weapon.” 
I was tempted to just bring them and have them sit in the conference room with me, but managed to find childcare.
What’s sad and funny at the same time is that the offsite I had accomplished absolutely nothing. We had the same conversations we’d been having for the last six months. Again, only we were all stuck in a conference room this time. Leaving sort of reminded me of History of the World, where all the senators leave, muttering “bullshit, bullshit, bullshit” under their collective breath. It was about the same thing. Then I got back to find my daughter had told everyone (teachers included) I’d left the country.
We’re getting a new computer system at work. I’ve been through enough software conversions with previous jobs to be deathly afraid of this one. Especially because we’re supposed to roll it out in two weeks and our training up until now has consisted of a couple screenshots. This oughta be fun…
I found out Snowflake is supposedly coming back in two weeks as well. Only one of my co-workers has seen or heard from her since the end of May when she mysteriously vanished. Their kids go to the same daycare, but normal co-worker says Snowflake just about runs in the other direction when she sees her.
I’m supposed to be training two new temps today. Neither of them has 1) a badge to get in & out of the building, or 2) a motherfucking COMPUTER yet.
We knew they were being brought in for *weeks *now. How the bloody hell have they not been set up with something so basic?
As a temp myself, this tends to be SOP for wherever I am sent. We’re used to it. 
I’ve been temping for 15 years - this happens all the time. I had one job where I had to wait for someone to leave their desk so I could use their computer. My second last temp job, I didn’t have a security badge for three months. Fortunately I have a car, so I could wait in my car for someone to show up and let me in - in Calgary, in December, in some seriously cold temperatures.
ETA: Hah - I didn’t see your post before I posted, Missy.
I haven’t temped in years, but that first day or two was always nothing but sitting around because they’d called you in but had no idea what to do with you.
Gee, I would love to work, but in order to do so, I must be able to pull cases in the electronic files. Unfortunately, no one can do so. I’ve put off so much stuff to send that tomorrow will be hell (IF it’s fixed by then).
Our IT claims it’s the state. The state says “uhh…wha?”
Feh.
One of my jobs had procedures which required the computer, badge and even the desk for the new person to be requested once they’d joined.
Any training was also requested once they had joined.
Bringing your own computer to work with was forbidden.
Printing documents was forbidden.
If a person was being replaced, having the leaver pass the computer to the replacement was forbidden.
We got laptops and were required to take them home, but logging in from home required special permission, which was granted only for specific times: you might be able to log in on Saturday between 4pm and 6pm to perform a specific task, and if any of the steps before yours had been a bit slow, tought titty, you got kicked out.
It wasn’t my favorite job, but it sure makes a great bad example!
Yes, this is common in such situations.
One job I started as a consultant, my boss was in meetings so much of the time that he gave me his computer & password to use! But it annoyed me by constantly chiming when emails arrived (company policy was that managers got copied on everything any of his staff sent). So I modified it to not do that (which took some tricks in that email system). But when I turned the system back to him, I forgot I had done that, until a few hours later. When I came and told him I would change it back for him, he refused – he had also found the constant chimes distracting. But IT support had told him it couldn’t be changed.
A couple days later, I got summoned to the office of a Senior VP. Nervously, I went there – only to be asked if I could modify his email to mute the constant chiming, And “you needn’t mention this to the IT staff, OK”. Over the next week, about a dozen more managers quietly asked me to do this for their email accounts.
As a new consultant, I met a lot of managers on a friendly basis. That sure helped later whenever I needed to work with their departments.
So, remember that testing that I was “asked” to do while I was on vacation, because Manager and Manager’s Boss failed to make appropriate arrangements for coverage? It didn’t get completed on time, OBVIOUSLY, because … yeah. ANYWAY. When I went back to work today, I had 203 emails, and AT LEAST 70 of them were related to the testing. Most of them read approximately as follows: “I know you’re out of the office without access to email and voice mail [emphasis mine because it is COPIED AND PASTED DIRECTLY FROM MY OUT OF OFFICE MESSAGE], but can you let me know if anyone is available to complete this testing? We really need to get this done by EOB on Wednesday 8/14.” As far as I can tell from the last email that was sent to me late on Friday, nobody else was looped into the conversation. The system release that was supposed to go in over the weekend didn’t, because my department didn’t sign off on the system changes.
Now – my out of office message listed FIVE specific people that could be contacted in my absence, INCLUDING MY MANAGER’S BOSS. Our email client sends out of office messages to EVERYONE, EVERY TIME they email someone with their out of office turned on. If anyone is cc:'ed or bcc:'ed, they get the message too. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? Nobody bothered to ACTUALLY READ THE DAMN THING? Not ONE of the eleventy people who emailed me or was copied on the email chain? NOBODY?
I work with goddamned morons. Needless to say, you can guess what “urgent action items” are at the bottom of my list of things to follow up on this week. Go ahead and guess how many fucks I give. Lather, rinse, repeat.
At a guess… about 70 fucks. Or maybe 70 times 70.
Zero. I give zero fucks. They can bite me, for serious.
How was your vacation?
I hope it was relaxing on your brain even if not on your liver. Were you able to find a store to provide libations?
Exactly! The axiom may be a little trite, but lack of planning on their part did not constitute an emergency on yours. Fuck 'em.
I hope you had a great vacation!
I had a good enough vacation. It wasn’t perfect (are they ever?) but it beat the hell out of NOT being on vacation. The weather was weird – extremely hot and humid for the first few days, then overcast and quite cool after that. It went from over 90°F to under 70°F really quickly, with nothing in between. And the ocean water was colder than I expected – about 68°F, which is WAY too cold for me. (I mean, the water is warmer than that in NJ right now.) I had really hoped to park my toes in the sand and bask in the sun like a lizard until I looked like an 1980s Bain de Soleil model, but I did at least get a little photosynthesizing done.
AND. I was not at work, the kids (my daughter plus my niece and nephews) had a great time, and I had ample access to fruity-tooty wine coolers at the grocery store. I rode a bike for the first time in literally 20-some years – haven’t ridden a bike since I got my driver’s license. Managed to not crash into anything or kill myself, which is impressive, because I enjoyed the ever-loving shit out of those wine coolers. (Seagram’s Escapes “Jamaica Me Happy” is my favorite, if you’re keeping score at home, but I drank 'em all.)
AND ALSO. I turned on the computer exactly twice, and both times were to offload all the pictures from the camera. (Photoset here, but this one is my favorite from the whole trip.) Didn’t check any emails, not even personal ones, didn’t take or return any phone calls. Ate seafood and BBQ every chance I got, finished THREE WHOLE BOOKS for pleasure that were not required reading for a class, sat through all or part of Spy Kids at least 8 times … yeah, you can see why I give zero fucks about work problems. Why would I interrupt my extremely non-busy vacation non-schedule for that bullshit?
I don’t know what is wrong with people, seriously.
[I guess this is not exactly a gripe. Sorry. I promise to have PLENTY of complaints soon enough. The proverbial shit will be hitting the proverbial fan over the not-completed testing any minute now.]
Don’t worry about it. We’ve been at this thread for close to three years now, and we’re all due for a vacation from IT.
Which your post just kinda vicariously gave us. Thanks!
Welcome to North Carolina. Our weather makes no sense. She says as the entire Blue Ridge slides down the hill from the endless rain. But at least we ain’t got humidity up here!
My rant is that today is my last day of vacation and I have to go back to work tomorrow. 