Our team is going through something like that, Sailboat. Apparently, when there is no product owner, nobody cares about, or fixes, this kind of problem.
I know I haven’t posted here in a while but I’m in the last hour of my old job here and I just wanted to thank everyone again for giving me the courage to leave here. I think it means a lot that I really didn’t feel any sadness about leaving, just disappointment over the circumstances and regret for what my former co-workers are going to have to go through with the awful person coming on board next week. I did at the last moment manage to find enough projects to offload on him that he’ll be busy for the next couple of months or so (these projects would take the average person a couple days to finish, but he is not the average person).
It’ll be a while before I surface again in the new place. I hadn’t been to that city before the first interview there, so it will take me a while to get settled. But I will be back here when I am. Thanks again everyone.
Congrats Cognoscant! Are you going to run out the door yelling “FREEEEEEDOOOOOMMMM?” You totally should.
Today I ran across my new favorite bad name in the world. This is a real name that someone gave their child, never thinking that this child would have to go through the rest of her life with it. Highlight over the blank space between paragraphs to see it.
Angel-Baby Wildfire Fortune
That’s definitely one that failed the “Future Stripper or Future President” check.
Or you could play this song.
i
YAAAAAAAAAAAAY! 
Every week I download a file from an outside entity and put it in a shared folder on a server and every week it works fine. Except this week. This week I did the above and now I can’t access it. I just get the message that some mysterious program is using it. So I download it again and put a different name on it and put it out there and it works fine. It still won’t let me delete the other one, but I could at least get my work done. After it happened this morning I went to the help(less) desk and told them about it and have not heard a word since. I’ll probably have to go back again tomorrow if I still can’t access it.
Congratulations and best wishes for the new job/city!
Do you still have contacts/info sources at the old job so you (and by extension, your faithful readers) can indulge in some schadenfreude when Slimeball shows his (lack of) worth?
Uh. Thanks, I guess.
Shoot me a PM when it’s my turn to wear it…
My line after I got fired by a slimeball was “Free at last! Freeee at laaaaast! Thank God almighty ah’m free at last!” Did a pretty good M.L.King/J.E.Jones voice, and amused my suddenly-ex-coworkers.
SO happy for you, Cogs!
My company’s lawyers are all over it. I saw the security cam vids and the only thing my minion did wrong was to hit the guy in the mouth with his bare fist. The hitting part was totally justified, its the part where minion risked some serious damage by not moving his blow a couple of inches up or down that I need to address.
Back when I worked retail, I’d get sent to do stuff at stores before they opened. I had to answer the phone because it might be my boss, it might be tech support, or it might be the vet calling about a cat.
I was told to say “Thank you for calling XXX. I’m sorry, this store is closed, please call back during X to X hours.” I can’t even remember how many people cussed me out and demanded to ask why I was answering the phone if we were closed.
I can totally relate. At my last job (banquet cook at the local convention center) I actually spent the first 2.5 years (of 7.5 years total) as the dishwasher. I totally loved those times when, after a big event, all of the cooks had gone home, and all of the serving staff had gone home, and it was just me and great big pile of dishes for two or three hours.
That’s a recurring nightmare of mine (seriously) - endless dishes to wash. I actually was a dishwasher as my first real job - maybe it’s really stuck with me. 
So we shouldn’t sneak up behind you and whisper “Hobart”…
I ran a Hobie late at night during college. The dishes could get gross, but the “nobody around to tell you how to do your job” factor was priceless.
As was the opportunity for a hungry student (with no pride or sensibilities) to liberate some primo leftovers…
Working retail tech Kinda Sucks.
That was one of the things that really bothered me as a dishwasher - my God in heaven, the food waste. I recently came up with a plan where every restaurant is required to have a teenage boy or two on staff who would eat everything that came back into the kitchen.
New software application seems capable, but weirdly designed. Every section for input has a “save changes” button…but on SOME sections, that button is located very far from the input box…like you have to scroll up two screens to see it and hit “save.” On the rest, it’s right there beside the box.
When you are ABOUT TO send it to the reviewer and the approver, it says:
STATUS: REVIEWED
STATUS: APPROVED
Note that it has NOT been either reviewed or approved at that stage.
When you HAVE submitted it, it says:
SUBMIT TO APPROVER
even though it’s already been done.
I have to admit, it’s a “tense” situation.
I design signs. I really don’t like it when architects get involved between me and the customer ordering a sign because it only adds one more person into the mix to, well, get mixed up. They don’t add anything useful to the process and since all the ones I’ve had to deal with (with one exception, he was great) do not design signs themselves, they always come up with harebrained ideas.
I end up with bullshit where both the customer and the architect go and get the sign approved by the town, and they come back and tell me two different things. Really, now. How hard can this be. Did they approve it in black, or red? With the tagline or without? Come on, you were both there. It’s a simple thing. Oh, now one of you says the sign is supposed to be a different size? The other fellow didn’t mention it - which am I supposed to trust?
About 12 proofs later, finally, FINALLY, both the customer and their architect have finally agreed that I’ve given them the correct size, correct color, and correct lettering on their sign. The architect has added nothing material to the process aside from popping up intermittently to give me conflicting information, so, great. Great, guys. Without an architect muddling about, this would’ve been over in two proofs flat. Thanks for the waste of time.
ETA: Not even mentioning the architects that ask me to move something one nudge on the sign rendering on the building “because it looks a hair off”. Oh, come off it. That’s not even half an inch at full size. It doesn’t matter. The sign’s freakin’ ten feet long and nobody can notice the difference. Honestly, not even you. You’re just bullshitting that you can.
Heh - my husband worked with a construction management company for nine and a half years, and I think he’d consider a busload of dead architects a good start. They design things that are 10 times harder to build because, well, no one is sure why, they don’t respond to requests to clarify things when they’ve included conflicts and problems in their designs (which puts the construction management firm at risk for very large penalties for going over the time allotted), they extra-bill for their own mistakes, they design buildings with impractical materials just because - from what I’ve heard, they seem to have no clue about the actual building of the things they design.
Someone stole my coffee cup! But I found it again and washed it. It really wasn’t a big deal.
Oh yeah, and Insane Staring Woman is back in the lunchroom, so I’ve been eating lunch alone out of her field of vision.
Also, on the handwritten forms I’m supposed to type into the computer, I really wish people would write legibly, especially considering that French isn’t my first language. (Though maybe I’m a hypocrite here, because I have the second-worst handwriting in the whole world.)
Other than that, I don’t really have much to gripe about on the subject of work.
No Director Dipshit, you may not have my personal cell number to call me directly instead of going through the help desk. For so many reasons starting with the fact that you’re a whiny, needy, grade A ass.
And hell no Dr Dummköpfe, I will not come to your house and work on your personal computer equipment “for free”. I’m not sure what country you’re from, but I get the impression that wherever it is, technical support is synonymous with indentured servant. Suck it up buttercup, not happening here.