Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
6422

This is the third one in about a year - everyone just seems to be at that stage in their life. Hell, if I were looking to raise kids I wouldn’t be hitching my boat to a dying business (newspapers). As for the rest of it, well, my boss has her little favorites and boy doesn’t everyone know who they are (I am not among them).

To digs, they reserved 2 hours but most of the activities (games, eating) were done in one hour, so for most of us it was just lunch.

So, it’s over and it wasn’t as bad as I was afraid of. I hope I remember, next time my boss does something like this extortionate gift collecting, to say something at the time instead of stewing about it afterwards.
Roddy

6423

Fake bonhommy is the bane of my work life*. My nights off are Monday-for-Tuesday and Tuesday-for-Wednesday. They used to schedule their “pot-lucks” for Tuesday-for-Wednesdays. And that was just fine with me. I didn’t have to feel like an anti-social non-team-player for my refusal to participate.

Now they routinely do them on Wednesday-for-Thrusday. Which drives me crazy, because I KNOW they want me to pay the $10.00 fee, and I just don’t want to do it. It takes me three days to spend $10 on lunch; that’s just ridiculous. And on top of that, they ALWAYS call me over to the area where the food is being served and offer to let me fill a plate. NO! I don’t care if nobody would think it made me look like a freeloader, I would THINK it would make people think it made me look like a freeloader.

*Well, ONE of the banes of my work life. There are also: people on the shift preceding mine who don’t think it’s necessary to do a mail search on the APPS between runs; the people who bind bundles of periodicals for sorting with kite string or rubber bands (broken bundles of magazines can leave prodigious piles underneath the destacker section of the machine); the smart-ass guy who transferred in from Long Beach, and apparently thinks it’s hilarious to get into stupid little arguments over the walkie-talkies.

6424

I begrudge no one for having a life outside of work (hell, I’ve been known to have one myself from time to time, way back in the stone ages before I started grad school), but you know, it’s probably not all that appropriate to tell one’s boss that you cannot work on a major, all-hands-on-deck project because you’re “waiting for the lady from the bakery to call [you] back about all the stuff that [you] need for the gender-reveal party over the weekend.”

Especially not in so many words. In front of a vice president.

6425

Dear company G, thank you for taking in interns from my school, for a hourly wage that is eye-opening. This time, you sent over a new interviewer, and just maybe the third time was the charm. However, once again, the silence has been deafening. Two of my classmates were high-fiving each other about getting second interviews, and while they are OK guys, both might be able to find their collective way out of a paper bag if the opening was down. These two gentlemen were griping about bombing yesterdays test, the one I got 90 on. Good luck with them, I fear you will need it.

And your company’s lack of communication skills? All I can say is thanks for popping what little self-esteem I have left, like a over-ripe Sebaceous cyst.

6426

So, the men’s bathroom on our lab floor is finally being redone. It’s the only men’s room shared by our lab and the lab on the floor below – 60+ people, over three shifts (most on days). It’s old: probably 60s vintage. It’s nasty: my co-workers are apparently poo-flinging monkeys with prehensile rectums. Who use way too much toilet paper and have never heard of a courtesy flush.

Anyway. Turns out the floor tiles were asbestos (wtf?), so that was a crisis and delay. Then they didn’t want to replace the rickety vanity, 'cept they had to, 'cause it was rotting. Then, oops, turns out the urine-soaked drywall needs to be replaced, because of all the mold. So they’re replacing the bottom of the drywall. Sure, the toilet seats are breaking, but no need to replace those, apparently. (my suggestion that they be sandblasted so they’re fit for actually sitting on was rejected, alas).

They ripped up the tiles over the weekend, and tore out the vanity. And in the three days since… patched and mudded the drywall. The absolute worst do-it-yourselfers could’ve been finished by now, but it’ll be next week before we have a functional bathroom again. So we have to dash off to another building’s overcrowded bathroom, or to the lockerroom’s overcrowded bathroom for another week. This is absurd.

At least I don’t drink coffee. The company supplies free coffee, and although I could see the inevitable coming, apparently none of the coffee-drinkers could. There’s a regular parade every 15-30 minutes of the coffee guys who need to pee. Next week. sigh Also: everything has been ripped out. But the bathroom still reeks of urine.

6427

Aw, Daisy’s trying to ramp up the petty passive-aggressive behavior now. It’s so cute. Just last night he left the shuttle log in the van overnight*, did not let anyone know the van was running on fumes**, and pulled half of the log sheets for the candy store off the clipboard. As a bonus, he also left a snippy little note on the sheets he removed complaining that there are too many pages on the clipboard and they keep falling off when he hangs it up.

It’s funny that he thinks doing this extremely petty, miniscule shit is irritating me. It’s not. I actually find it amusing. I’ll find it even more amusing when he’s not working here anymore. I doubt he’ll make it to the slow season in a couple of months when TPTB will cut his hours down to essentially nothing.

*because it’s so hard to carry a clipboard all the way back into the building from the parking lot. Those things get pretty heavy, you know.
**which Maintenance T found out as he was getting ready to take a full load of people downtown.

6428

Why do they always try to make me feel bad when I don’t want to indulge in their sweet treats? At least once a week someone is bringing in cookies or cupcakes or something, and then they wonder why they are all fat. I don’t want to indulge at all. They come and ask me specifically, which is fine, and I smile pleasantly, and say, “No thanks!”

But then comes the guilt. “Awwww, you party pooper! There’s always one! I’m buying! It’s OK!”

You may be buying but I am trying to watch my diet! I don’t want a whole gigantic cupcake or a cookie. If I want one, I will go and buy one myself, and incorporate it into my diet plan. And really, everyone should be on a “diet plan” - the word has been ruined to make it seem like you are always trying to lose weight, but after 20, you pretty much have to watch what you eat.

6429

We have now entered what one of my colleagues refers to as "Winter Eating Fest’'. Some days there will just be a box of donuts in the break room; other days, people will show up with enough food to feed half the building. It wouldn’t be such big deal if it wasn’t for the constant stream of people practically demanding that I get a plate of food. The morning of the Halloween breakfast was particularly uncomfortable; I don’t understand why people feel the need to act shocked when I explain that my idea of breakfast does not include sausage biscuits, casseroles, sticky pastry things, or any of the other disturbingly greasy or overly sweetened things laid out on the table. If that’s what you want for breakfast, I certainly won’t stop you… my body just does not tolerate that kind of food first thing in the morning.

6430

Any place I’ve worked at, food that showed up in the break room disappeared like magic. No one was trying to get anyone else to eat it, because that would mean less for them! I’m sorry you guys have strangely interfering people in your workplaces.

6431

Here’s the thing. I like delicious foods as much as anybody. But I try, I try so hard, that when it comes to work, I stick to a strict diet. I can have more fun stuff on the weekends! I actually made a resolution: barring birthdays, I would not eat anything that anyone brought into the office. (Avoiding birthdays is rude and there’s only a few of us.) I wouldn’t make a big deal about it, but they don’t let you live! They don’t let you just quietly not eat them. Here’s how it went down:

I hear my boss (who is skinny!) at the back of the office, saying she is going to a pastry shop later today (work-related) and she would bring back some cupcakes or cookies for everyone. I hear her stopping by every office asking what they want (there’s only six of us). She finally gets to mine, and in a sing-song voice, “What would you like, Miiiiiiiiiiiiika?” I smile politely and say “Nothing for me, thank you!”
Then comes the “awww, what a party pooper!” schtick. I hold firm.
So she goes out later and gets them. As she leaves, she tells me again that she’s getting some and “Are you suuuuuuuuuuuure?”
Then she comes back with them. “Mika! I have cuuuuupcaaaakes!”
Then an hour later, she eats one. “Mika, there’s PEANUT BUTTER, and there’s STRAWBERRY” (both flavors she knows I like).

That’s four times I’ve been bugged about these cupcakes I don’t want!

I finally got her back, a little. After the latest one, I waited until she was in the middle of eating it, and deadpanned, “You don’t need to worry about me. I licked every one of them.” Of course she knew it was a joke but that second of shock was satisfying.

6432

So take a plateful, push the food around on the plate, and leave it sitting on your desk. Then if anyone says anything, just say “no more for me, thanks – I’ve already had all my diet can take”. You can even do that with an empty plate.

6433

I’m sorry, but no-one should have to go through that (not to mention the waste of food). People everywhere need to learn to
TAKE
FUCKING
NO
FOR
AN
ANSWER

Roddy

6434

Little bit of tension in the workplace here.

Back in early August, one of my co-workers (H) harassed a subordinate (V) so badly that V filed an official grievance with HR. Now normally HR wants to do nothing to do with these things, but with four witnesses to the harassment plus a charge of contract violation HR upheld the grievance. So now all they had to do was figure out what the punishment was going to be for H. Simple.

But nothing is simple here, apparently. HR decided that they didn’t know how to handle this, so they bumped it up to Title IX. The Title IX guy started an investigation, everything handled in secret, and by September had decided…nothing. Well he might have decided something, but nobody was willing to talk about it on record. In lieu of Title IX deciding anything useful, HR told H that it might not be a bad idea to refrain from contact with V. That was difficult seeing H is V’s boss but in practice it meant that H was to stay away from the office from 1 to 5, when V was in the office. So essentially H’s “punishment” was to get paid full-time for working half-time.

Later that month our VP called a meeting with our department to fill us in on everything that was going on. H was not at the meeting. Some of us assumed she’d been let go. Instead, the VP accused us all of “rumormongering” about the situation, that the CEO had heard about it, and we all better stop, and he was going to bring in a consultant to get to the bottom of all this. The consultant interviewed us and we all pretty much told her the same thing; H is a troublemaker, she’s harassed other employees before, and she is likely the source of the rumormongering herself.

So a couple of weeks ago the consultant, H, V, the VP, an HR rep, and all the rest of us sat down to a meeting to what we had been told would be an airing of grievances about the situation. I suppose if “airing of grievances” means “a two-hour PowerPoint presentation about work ethic and leadership skills” we were correctly informed. After the presentation and the rest of us left V pretty much lost it, screaming at the HR rep about being let down and unfairly defending someone who had a history of harassment, and about the quite real problem of having to not only work for someone who’d been convicted of harassing her but also not being allowed to talk to that person. Since then V has been talking darkly about lawsuits and media releases. H, on the other hand, is merrily taking business trips with the CEO and generally acting as if she’s just got out scot-free.

If you’re still with me, we’re about to enter the Twilight Zone (as if things hadn’t gotten crazy enough already). Last week I e-mailed the consultant asking if there were any plans for “small focus groups” which she had hinted at after the presentation. To my surprise the consultant actually called me. She was pretty open about the fact that negotiations were going on about H and V but “things weren’t progressing as fast as she would like” (well gee, it’s only been three months now, what’s another delay?). But then she spent the rest of the call trying to…convince me to stay with my company. Really. She spent over 15 minutes saying things like “everyone says you bring a lot to the office” and “you could really move the office and the company forward if you just hold out here a bit longer”. I was flattered but totally baffled. I mean, why bother trying to convince an employee to stay when they haven’t said they’re going anywhere? And then to drive the point home, she called me out of the blue this week and spent another 20 minutes trying to convince me not to leave! As far as I know she has not even spoken to anyone else other than the VP, let alone tried to convince anyone to stay in this crazed environment.

All I can figure is that the consultant thinks H should get canned or at least get reassigned somewhere else, and the VP and HR are fighting it and the consultant knows she’s fighting a losing battle. So she’s probably thinking “if I can get Cognoscant to stay, maybe that will convince other people not to leave.” Or something. I really have no idea what’s going to happen if that scenario goes down. To be honest because of this and other incidents my loyalty in the company (which used to be quite high) has disappeared and I’ll probably end up leaving anyway. But I just wonder what kind of game the consultant is playing. Considering what’s happened up until now, it’s anyone’s guess.

6435

Now, I like my job. I like everyone at work. I like the cleaning guy. He seems like a nice guy. I just wish that he’d wash himself as often as he washes the floor. Today I could tell he’d been in a room recently because the floor was clean and there was a lingering smell of BO. P.U.!

6436

Ye Gods, what an awful start to my day.

Sometime during the night my alarm clock decided that one DST change wasn’t enough and did it again. I know because it was accurate when I went to bed last night. So I crawl out of bed at what I’m thinking is my usual odd-month ungodly hour and get ready for work. As I’m walking out the door, the high school kids are walking past. I think “wait, they’re usually leaving an hour later.” So I look at the time on my phone. Oh shit. Sure enough, it’s an hour later than I thought and I’m going to be late for work.

Just get to my desk and sign into my computer when the phone rings. Mr. Pissypants demands to know why something was denied. My computer isn’t up far enough to bring anything up, so I apologize and say it will be a minute, I just got in because my alarm clock did the DST thing again. Asshole snarks “And I suppose your dog ate your homework too!”. I tell him he filed his request with the wrong group on the wrong form, he needs to fill out this other form with us, and offer to send it. Asshole knows the form, he just didn’t want to do it. Sweet Leaping Jesus, it’s one of the easiest and fastest things to request, but dumbfuck insists on going through the slowest and most difficult system that is just going to reject his request because they don’t handle that sort of thing. :smack: He hangs up all bent out of shape and we never did get the proper form from him today.

While I’m doing this, my co-worker comes in and is instantly set upon by our team lead about some urgent issue. Turns out the one stick-up-her-ass teammate we have got all drama queen about something that happened FOUR FUCKING MONTHS AGO, that I started working on because it was an urgent issue that needed correcting right then and there, and which she was completely informed of and part of the discussion at that time. But because my immediate co-worker’s fingerprints were on it last, he became the target of her ire.

So I ended up having a discussion with both my team lead and my manager about her unprofessional and confrontational attitude, making sure they knew that I was at least 50% responsible for what happened, that I started it and why, and that she was completely aware of it at the time it occurred.

Manager tries to excuse her behavior saying that she’s like that because some of the people before us didn’t do their jobs. I remind him that we are not those people.

On the lighter side, I go to the taco place across the street for lunch. They know me well enough that they don’t need to ask what I want on my food. Four people in front of me, this American woman of Indian descent (no accent) stops the guy who only handles the cheese and veggies, claims she is allergic to chicken and beef and demands he change his gloves. :rolleyes: (Yeah, I get it, you’re a vegan. But 1> He doesn’t handle the meat, and 2> Don’t claim ‘allergies’.)

I get up to him, smile and say “Excuse me, but I’m allergic to vegetables. Can you change your gloves?” Made him laugh, at least.

6437

That would certainly make the casseroles go away faster…

My workplace is normally like that…I once put a block of cheese on a break room table at 8:05 AM, and it was gone by 9:15. I think that’s part of the issue…people are used to seeing small amounts of food disappear quickly, and are somewhat disturbed when large amounts of food don’t disappear as fast. (There used to be one guy who would go back four or five times for heaping plates of food at company functions; he rage-quit a few months ago though.)

6438

Holy shit, kids!
I came to vent about how project X has been on the table for a year now, and with 2 weeks to go, NOW they want to come in and change the rules?
And then I read about your sucky day, and now I’m so amused by your suckage stories that I forgot how mad I was.
THANK YOU.
Tomorrow I may change my mind.

6439

That’s why I love The Pit. I’ve often wanted to break into someone’s frustrations with “Hey, keep ranting-- the more your job sucks, the easier it is to put up with mine.”

6440

That really is weird - I think she’s going on about you not quitting for a reason, but I can’t think what it is. Maybe she thinks you should quit, and doesn’t really know why you haven’t. :slight_smile:

6441

Or the consultant sidelights as a recruiter (maybe even for that consulting firm) and is actually feeling out how open you would be to an offer.