Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
7562

I do that when I can, on weekends or after hours when she starts in on the BlackBerry buzzing, but during working hours she amps up the yanging to 20 and starts in on my fellow cubicle drones, thereby making them hate me. “Where is das Glas?” “Why isn’t he at her desk?” “What is her personal cell number?” They have my back in this situation but I don’t want to lose their good will.

The people I really feel sorry for are her future underlings. She is going to an elected position she has held before, the voters know what she is like and they turfed her from the position after two years. Yet they re-elected her :smack:.

One week. I can do this.

7563

Stay strong! That is one of my least favourite things a manager can do to me - micromanage me. I’ve been a temp for about 18 years now, and I’m 47 years old - I know what I’m doing, trust me. Check on me regularly, sure - I don’t want to waste my time if I’m doing something wrong, either, but otherwise, wind me up and let me go.

7564

Someone put fish in the microwave. >.<

7565

This is a “I don’t have a work place rant,” for lack of a better term.

I am so conflicted right now. I have been out of work, but keeping my head above water, for the last 6 months. I have a line on a job outside of the corporate world where I spent the last two decades … two decades that made me absolutely miserable, by the way. It would be working at a restaurant, where I might have a chance of actually turning down a different path and getting out of that corporate hamster wheel that has caused me to become the type of person I really don’t want to be anymore. I’m nervous as hell at the prospect, but at the same time, I’m excited to try something new.

Cut to today, and I get a call from a corporate recruiter for an interview with a life insurance company. I have no idea what it would pay yet, but from what I gleaned from the recruiter, I can’t imagine being happy in that position for a second – cold calling, explaining insurance terms to union reps, all the fun stuff that I couldn’t give less of a shit about.

What the hell does one do when one has an interview for a job he doesn’t want, but should probably take to fight off starvation?

The only shining light I have on my horizon after a year of abject hell is that I may be able to sell my house at an obscene profit to a commercial real estate venture within the year. And I have no idea what to do.

Sorry to go all Live Journal on everyone, but I didn’t really want to post this on my Facebook page for fear that I would be shooting myself in the foot – although, right now, I have my finger on the trigger, barrel pointed squarely at my big toe, and I’m aching to taste gun powder.

Thanks for letting me vent – like you had a choice.

7566

When we issue laptops to users we always admonish them to back up all work files to the network regularly. If it’s stolen or the hard drive crashes hard enough we won’t be able to recover that file you’ve spent 200 hours creating.

We also remind them any time we get a call to work on something in their office, no matter if it’s printer, monitor, or the laptop. “You are backing up your files, right?” They may get tired of hearing it, but they’ll never have a credible claim that they were never told.

Last week one of our analysts had a drive crash. I replaced the drive and reloaded all the programs they need to do their thing.

Here’s a cut & paste of the IM conversation I had this morning. Named have been changed to protect the terminally clueless.

-------------8<-----------------------------
Tuesday, March 25, 2014

11:18 AM Clueless Twit where is the stuff from my hard drive saved on my new computer

11:19 AM Projammer The old hard drive? That one was dead and never came back up after you dropped it off.

11:19 AM Clueless Twit oh no
you werent able to recover anything

11:20 AM Projammer I’ll try it in the docking station one more time, but it wasn’t looking good last time I tried.

11:21 AM Clueless Twit Thanks so much…please let me know as soon as you know something

11:31 AM Projammer Looks like it might work one more time. I’m copying the documents to your new laptop now. The time estimate is 2 hours.

11:34 AM Projammer Allow me to strongly recommend that you copy all files that are critical to your network drive. If the hard drive dies or the laptop is stolen those files will be lost with no hope of recovery.

11:37 AM Clueless Twit i had them on my flash drive and it crashed too…I have since gotten another flash drive and will copy them as soon as I get them back

11:38 AM Projammer Copy them to the network. Flash drives can be lost or damaged even easier than hard drives

11:38 AM Clueless Twit ok
-------------8<-----------------------------

I’m the one that delivered her laptop in the first place and I know I’ve reminded her twice since then to back up her data.

The copy has finished and there were about two dozen files that couldn’t be read. Oh well, hope they weren’t important. Any one want to give odds that if I check in a month that anything she copies to the network today will be the most recent backup on her network drive?

7567

Just wanted to step in and mention how much I love this! :slight_smile:

Your CT sounds like one of my distant cousins who calls me every now and then to ask lots of computer questions. I once asked her when she last backed up her files…she responded, “Why would I do that?”

7568

My Annoying Coworker burned fish in the microwave. The stench was so thick you could have cut it with a knife. It was so bad it made me physically ill. However, since this coworker is the Golden Child in my department, the burned fish wasn’t nearly as bad as burned popcorn. :rolleyes:

7569

I started yesterday with a two hour meeting with my manager arguing about how I don’t want to create a plan for how I’m going to “grow”. Two hours. Two hours that could’ve been spent doing actual work, not to mention the time I wasted afterwards because I was so upset.

These past two years have been fucking hell, mainly because of management. If I’m not doing something right or not handling something right, let me know and I’ll work to address it. My manager keeps telling me about how he wishes he had 100 employees like me in the department. So why can’t he leave me the fuck alone? He threw out that I’ve “really grown over the last six years” (I’ve been with the company for eleven years, but who’s counting?) in trying to convince me that I need to create this arbitrary plan for growth. I asked him, “Okay, so what was the plan that I discussed with management for that growth?” Hint: there wasn’t any goddamn plan. “I don’t know about before you were on my team, but I’ve been doing things to push you towards growth, I just didn’t discuss it with you.” Well good job, fuckhole, whatever you’ve been doing has succeeded in taking someone who you claim is a valued worker and made her wish she could just fucking quit every day she comes to work because the environment that you created is so miserable. I feel so jaded and bitter.

7570

Co-worker X:

One of these days, someone pushing a heavily laden cart is going to run into you and claim they didn’t see you.

And the rest of us will break into a rousing chorus of “He had it coming” from the musical Chicago.

(Worst habit: standing just off the sales floor and obsessing over his cell phone.)
Co-worker Y:

Have you heard of using a piece of paper and a pencil to write down your schedule? Or putting it into your cell phone? (I’ve seen people use the calendar function, and people just take a picture). There’s nothing horribly wrong with what he’s doing, but there’s something odd about me seeing him on more of his days off than not because he can’t remember when he comes in next.

In fairness, I bet he’s got 3 or 4 different times to come in over the course of a week . . . even though most of his shifts end at the same time.

And to the world at large:

If it is snowing out, and it was yesterday, it is too soon for Summer. Too bad it doesn’t work that way in retail.

7571

Le Sigh

“Hey boss, you’ve been a bit of a jerk lately and you’re starting to be a micromanager.”

(long winded explanation of why he’s not a micromanager but needs to keep being one, followed by surprised denial of any jerkish actions)

“Well, twice in two months you snapped at me for not doing something I not only had done, but we had discussed multiple times”
“I don’t remember that!”
“And yesterday my co-worker came to me complaining that you sent him a nastygram, you were completely wrong, and when you were called on it by someone else, you blew it off without any kind of apology”
(confused look, no response)

Yeah, not liking the direction this is moving…

7572

You could have created the plan in far less than 2 hours. I’m sure you didn’t know going in how long the meeting was going to run, but what kind of place do you work that you can blatantly refuse to do something your manager tells you to do?

7573

I made it! I made it to the end of the thread!

Um…gripe to follow, I guess. I’m out sick today.

7574

It’s a call center. I honestly can’t think of even a fake plan, and even if I did, there’s no time during the day to even work on it. Even if I took his example of “I’m going to become an expert in XYZ,” I spend all my time just trying to keep up with the productivity model they have in place. Any time I spend on this plan would bring my productivity down. Other members of my team feel the same way. Not sure if they created a fake plan, but at least one said that she told our manager that she’d be happy to do it if they give us the time (you can guess how far that got, despite the fact that he’ll keep me in a meeting for two hours). I’ve been able to say no so far because it was just for our team, but now it’s being rolled out to the entire department. Not something my coworkers are happy about, either. I’d much rather work on this type of thing on my own, and if my manager feels that my work isn’t adequate, then we can talk about that.

7575

Also, my manager keeps telling me that my call evaluations are the highest in the department, that I’m also one of the people who take the most calls, how much knowledge I have, etc. so it’s not like he’s saying there’s a problem with the quality of my work. We just had a department reorganization as well, so everyone’s still getting settled after that. If he could fucking lay off and let me find some stability again, that’d be awesome.

7576

My team lead works at your company? Man, that chick gets around!

7577

New low today:

Micromanaging manager: “What time does coworker A arrive here?”
Me: “He left on flight x at 0800 and will arrive at 1039.”
Micromanaging manager: “What time does coworker B arrive?”
Me: “She’s on the same flight as coworker A.”
Micromanaging manager: “Yes, yes - but what time does she arrive?”

Head? Meet desk. DH said I should have told her that all the seats on the plane arrive at the same time.

Three more working days.

7578

Not a team lead, she’s my kitchen manager!

7579

When I litigated, I had the boss from hell. He is the type of person who gives lawyers the reputation that they have. Lazy, unorganized, and shady as can be.

One of my favorite stories was when he had me draft a response to a Motion for Summary Judgment. He prided himself on his “efficiency”, in that he had templates for a lot of his documents, as most firms / businesses do. We typically made the motions, instead of replied to them, so when he asked me to draft the reply, I asked if there was a template, or if I should draft it from scratch. He told me that there was a template for it on the server, and that he had drafted it himself. “How?”, you ask?

First, he took the initial MSJ and then did a “find and replace” for the word “Plaintiff.” He then replaced all the occurrences of the word “Plaintiff” with the word “Defendant.” Next, he did another “find and replace”, this time switching the words, where all the instances of the word “Defendant” were replaced by the word “Plaintiff.”

Anyone else see the problem here?

I later found out that he did the same thing with the name of the county we were in, which wouldn’t have been an issue if the name of our initial (pre-find and replace) county wasn’t the same as the name of the city where our firm was located, meaning our signature line for the firm listed it as “Address, ‘foreign county’, state, zip code.”

Yes, he’d filed numerous responses w/ this template and it never dawned on him to proofread the documents. And the sad thing is, this is one of 40 or so stories I documented of my experiences at the firm. I compiled them all into one big email and occasionally, I’ll look back at it, just to remember how lucky I am to have my current job.

7580

Today she called me to ask me when a patient should be scheduled. (“Ask the doctor when he’s available; I don’t know his schedule.” “Oh, OK.”) And when a particular document would be approved. (“Look at the approval website periodically until it says it’s approved.”) I just… ugh.

7581

Not job-related, but I ran into a similar problem with an eBook on my Kindle. The book was part of a series of novels, wherein one of the main characters is named “Quinton”. Apparently, some editor/proofreader wanted to make sure that Quinton was capitalized properly, and via search & replace managed to capitalize every single word in the book that started with the letter “Q”. Given that it’s not uncommon for “ordinary” words to be capitalized in fantasy/supernatural fiction, because there is some significance to the word (the series of novels in question, for example, capitalizes “the Gray”), every time I read something like “the Quiet”, I instinctively assigned some importance to the word,only to find it unwarranted.

I did have an e-mail conversation with the author, and it turned out she was aware of the problem and was trying (with little success) to get it fixed.