Sir, if you needed that money for something else, how would you be able to pay us? That’s beside the fact that if you were able to pay us, why didn’t you do that in the first place?
CG is angry at me. I noticed our new web site doesn’t link to some of our primary internal customer’s sites like our old one did. GC is the one doing the layout of the new site, so I tried to convince him we needed to do this. Nothing but excuses and angry outright refusals to do it. So I went to our boss, who told him to do it and got the same bitter feedback. So bossman required CG to contact those departments about whether or not they wanted us to continue to link to their pages. CG didn’t speak to me the rest of the day and stomped off at the end of his shift without a word.
We get this “logic” often. Usually it’s in regards to drivers licenses: “If you give me my license back, I can find a job” well, you didn’t make much effort to find a job when you DID have your license, soo…
Similar to the logic I’d overhear at the T-Mo store.
“I ain’t paying my bill until you turn my phone back on.”
As one of the guys wisely said, in the face of this;
“We turned your phone OFF because you weren’t paying us. Do you think we’re stupid?”
The man has been very argumentative lately and even more lecture-y than normal. Last Friday he kept trying to go on and on about some political thing, oblivious to my whole no-fucks-or-shits-given attitude about it. Honestly, I don’t even remember what he was on about. Other than that he was listing secondary causes of something being the primary causes. When I got annoyed at his doing this in the entrance to my cube and stated the primary cause, he had to blow it off and argue his point even harder, because he absolutely HAS to be right. :smack:
Today when I told our boss that CG has been very argumentative lately, he said that he’s been that way with him too. Does not bode well for him.
I’m teaching a course to a group of protoconsultants; pretty nice deal, it’s a ton of official courses, three certs, and for anybody who gets one or more certs, a 6-month paid internship at a local company, all for less than two of those courses would normally cost. The material has all these items which make no sense under Spanish laws, with no explanations of where might they be applicable. One of them was sending somebody’s salary “to several parties”; thanks to these boards, I was able to give a rl example of cases where it could happen. So far, every time there was something which made the students (specially those with finance backgrounds) exclaim “but this makes no sense!” I’ve been able to give an American example.
All the material is organized and explained as if the situation the writer had in mind that day was the only possible one, which doesn’t help since they never describe those specifics. They say “you are a Purchasing Manager, you have to create a Purchase Order”, but they never explain that depending on the company there may be previous steps (asking for offers, comparing offers, evaluating suppliers on a purely financial basis or considering other criteria)… I’ve met my share of certified consultants who treated the examples from the course as THE way of doing things (people who were good at memorizing, but with the logic ability of a buttered snail); the way the material is supposed to be presented doesn’t work.
No, I’m not presenting it that way, why do you ask? Reading the teacher’s manual would certainly be an easy way to make a buck, but these will eventually be my colleagues - I want thinking ones!
I’ve been working a temp job doing outbound “welcome” calls for a local health care provider, mostly in the evenings from 4-8 pm, for about two months. No gripes about the job or my supervisor, and I don’t currently have any cow-orkers among my co-workers. I’ve been liking it a lot. When an email came around that we should decorate our cubes for Halloween, I asked my supe if I could bring in lights. “Sure!” she said, “Just don’t leave them on overnight or IT will disappear them”. OK, no problem there for me. I brought in a string of ghost lights and an extension cord to plug in to the existing power strip under the desk, and some Command hangers to hold them up. I had them up for over a week and they were awesome! Until today. Today, I came in from my two days off to find my extension cord pulled out of the power strip and tied into a knot on top of a rude note: “We don’t allow ANY extension cords!!!” The cord grommet had not been replaced either. And the note wasn’t signed, only initialed (I’m pretty sure I know who it was, but I’m not saying who to anyone there.). :mad: I took my lights down, and removed the hangers. As we were getting ready to leave, my supe indicates the rolled lights I’m carrying, and asks, “What is going on there?” I then told her about the note. She was pissed. She said she is going to address it. But I’m not putting them back up.
That’s wise - as a temp, I usually try not to make any waves in situations like that. You inadvertently stepped on someone’s toes in his petty fiefdom. :rolleyes:
I need help. I need a way to control an out of control Program manager.
So far in 6 weeks she’s escalated to my boss 5 times. Not a single one of those times was valid and although he’s not disappointed in my job performance I get the sense that he’d like me to keep her off his back and he is getting a little frustrated with my inability to do so.
Today she sent me a request that I know is going to end up on his desk. She has an external vendor coming in tomorrow morning to do some testing and she wants ID’s and access to all the project systems. The problem is she hasn’t provided nearly enough information to even start the process and the process for external contractor ID’s requires a couple levels of authorization and then the service level from our help desk is 4 days. Basically ID requests are the last thing on their list of priorities (and correctly so). Oh and if it’s a contractor who has never worked for us then there is a process in front of that process to have HR issue them a contractor employee ID.
I sent her all the forms with the information I have (first name and the servers she needs to access only) completed with the expected timeline and a recommendation that this vendor have a project tester with her for the day to log her in where required.
The part that pisses me off is that the email string with this tester goes back a week. If she had simply requested the access once she’d identified the tester there would be no stress for any of us.
Document, and then can you go to your boss privately, Moon my girl? Is it your job to keep her off his back?
I’m not here to gripe. Good things are happening - we are finally firing the person who has been causing all the trouble. However, it is happening today, probably in 20 minutes, and I am anxiously awaiting the drama.
Probably not but I have a reputation as the easy employee. They give me the crazy projects and I make them smooth. I’m just frustrated because all of my sure fire tactics are not working on this woman.
I keep in touch with her multiple times a day (for a tiny supposed to be 10% of my time project) but she just can’t communicate anything unless it’s on fire.
I had to institute a special rule just for her - she’s not allowed to talk to my resources unless I’m present. They were going to band together and kill her otherwise.
Luckily she’s a contractor and I suspect not long for this world.
Yeah, I’ve been that employee too. Remember a couple of things: RELAX - life is short, and it only goes around once, and you are not in fact responsible for anyone’s behavior but your own. Talk to your boss if you need to but you can’t change this woman and shouldn’t try, for your own mental health.
ETA: They just called her in for the firing. I am a little nervous. I just want it over with. I know there will be drama, she is a drama llama.
Agreed, and maybe you need to get a little less easy, Moonlitherial. There are legitimate boundaries with what you do, obviously, and this project manager doesn’t seem to think there are, and blames you when she runs head-on into one. That’s not your fault, and I think you might need to change your thinking to realize it also isn’t your problem. It’s her problem, and the problem of the person who hired her and isn’t reining her in.
ETA: Also, this might be time for a sit-down talk with your boss about getting some direction on how to deal with this woman. You’re trying to do the job and follow the rules, she doesn’t want to follow the rules, your boss doesn’t want you NOT following the rules - what does he suggest?
Unbelievably there was NO drama! I couldn’t believe it! This is a woman who, when told she couldn’t have a new computer until next year because of budgetary reasons, pitched a huge fit and shouted “I might just die in a BUS accident TOMORROW!”
I feel led on.
In other news, I continue to hate clients. If you want helpful responses, at the very least, I need a screenshot. “there’s an error message” is not specific enough. And don’t call me asking for advice on regulatory documents or internal processes. That’s very much a Not Something I Should Touch.
I always, always, always, always submitted my help desk tickets with a screenshot - there is a prescribed method to do it through our Intranet. And without fail, they always needed to ask me what was going on. One day I asked them: “Didn’t you see my screen shot?” And they said,
“We can’t see the screenshots through the submission method.”
AAARGH! So what was the point? So, Mister, I did try to send screenshots. I even write down the exact error message with the error code!
This woman who was fired today: she is the epitome of what an only child is supposed to act like. Now I am an only child, too, but I don’t act like her. She always expects everyone to take up the slack for her, and never takes ownership of anything, and then comes back and nitpicks your work. And she is incredibly negative. And lots of drama of course. So I have no idea how today went so calm. But since it did, I can tel you about another dramatic incident if that helps. But I am going home, so I’ll do it in a bit.
But it really bugs me when they have designed the system so that the error message is NOT able to be selected to copy-paste into the message. I once refused to approve a system for install into production because of this problem. The developers got very upset with me for holding it up over such a ‘trivial’ reason, but I didn’t care.
I took my lights down, and removed the hangers. As we were getting ready to leave, my supe indicates the rolled lights I’m carrying, and asks, “What is going on there?” I then told her about the note. She was pissed. She said she is going to address it. But I’m not putting them back up.