Since she’ll never be finished smoking, you could do her a favour and free her time up to smoke all day, every day. 
My employer is about to lose a really good engineer with a skillset that’s really rare in our company. We’re losing him because management forced him out of his engineering role, which he really enjoyed, to a project management role that he hated.
The thing that really kills me is that we’ve had four different people managing this exact project who’ve left the company in the past year . Three of the four were engineers who ended up leaving for jobs where they actually get to be engineers. Fortunately, they’ve finally got a really project manager in charge of this particular project, but I’m not at all convinced that the company has learned the lesson: don’t force technical people into non-technical roles that they don’t want.
Oh. I see the problem, then.
He’s in love with you.
Engineering, management - it’s basically the same thing, isn’t it?
Just channelling your employer - please don’t throw things!
I’m only two weeks into a new job and have no substantive complaints, but I just have to say: it is so fucking hot in there. It’s 60 degrees outside and they’ve got the heat on at (at least) 80 degrees. Oh, except for the first few days I worked, when it was 75 degrees outside and 80 degrees inside.
I’m going to have the windows open all winter, I just know it.
Combined with “Sorry I was 2 states away, left last night. Never got the voicemail until I got home as it was my prearranged vacation day/s. Here, have a souvenir shot glass.”
bonus points if it’s actually a jelly glass.
I’m a teacher. There are NO teaching jobs in SoCal. So, I’m working as a substitute teacher, and I’m glad to get the work. In fact, I lucked out and was offered a “long term” position as a teacher had a terrible injury over the summer and an even worse reaction to a medication and needed extended recovery time. The upside? After nine days at regular wages, I get a small raise, and I get to make my bones with a high school principal.
Except it was offered less than two weeks before the school year began. And the teacher’s room had been moved. His grown sons had packed up all his stuff and moved it to the new room, but nothing was unpacked, and the previous teacher had cleaned NOTHING. Also, it’s a new class for the teacher, so he doesn’t have a syllabus, curriculum, or any lesson plans.
So, I spend about forty hours of free work setting up the classroom - it’s before the school year, and there’s no summer school, so I’m not missing any regular sub jobs. I clean a room that was used as a ceramics lab the previous five years, and everything is covered in fine silica dust. I’m wearing an N95 respirator at least half the time. And each day I’m there, the term of the job gets longer.
First, it was just a couple of weeks. Hmm. Actually, it turns out he needs surgery. How do I feel about six weeks. Well, recovery is going to take a while, physical therapy and all that. I could be there until Thanksgiving. Hey, it turns out, he’s got disability insurance, and his doctor is adamant he do the full recuperation period. So . . . I’ve got the job for an entire semester.
Which is great. Stable work at a slightly better than regular pay rate.
Except.
Instead of being the person who comes in and teaches to a prepared lesson plan with all my resources laid out for me and an assistant principal who will drag obnoxious students out by their hair, I am now the person who is completely responsible for curriculum, lesson plans, supply buying, grading, classroom management, IEPs, follow ups with assistant principals, counselors, school nurse, and parents, AND I’m the person who is NOT the teacher many of the students were looking forward to studying under.
For $10 a day more than what a regular sub gets paid.
With no access to the teacher’s side of the high school website. With no official school phone extension. With no school email or regular district login. With no medical benefits, no sick days, and no option to spread the money I earn across the months, avoiding the loss of half a month’s pay after Christmas Break. With no union backing, because it’s not a contracted position and wouldn’t be unless the teacher I’m subbing for died, and I ended up being hired on to replace him for the entire year.
And yet, I’m still better off than most teachers without a full-time, contracted position.
Is it weird that I really want to know how this turns out? I found this incredibly funny, almost certainly because I don’t have to be the one to deal with this guy. I’m sorry, I mean I fail to be the one to deal with this guy.
They tried giving us one of those, once; the Big Project was winding down, and TPTB had decreed that we needed help finding our way into new jobs(1). The Cheery Presenter Dude asked Dee whether she had any plans. “Oh, yes!” “So what is it?” “I’m going to get a job at either This, This or Thisother location, all of which are close enough from my house to bycicle there in the good weather.” “Uh… but that isn’t a plan…” Chorus of some 80 people: “Oh yes, it is!”
Then he asked me whether I had a plan. I said, not really. “Well then, let’s build one! Do you have a goal?” “Yes.” “So what is it?” “I want to be happy.”
He must have had a strong heart, cos he didn’t leave on a stretcher…
1: one of the things they told us was to start looking for new positions ASAP, then they were Extremely Surprised when one of the two team managers gave in notice as our boss: he’d been offered and accepted a position as Operations Manager in one of our factories; since this factory was the only one within its Business, that was a VP-level position, so it’s not like anybody could say he “wasn’t thinking big”. When he pointed out that HR had told us to start looking for a new ship ASAP, they replied “but we didn’t mean you and we didn’t mean already!” “Well, so sorry then, but I’m starting on the new position next week.”
I had a similar situation about 10 years ago. Our company was looking at product A and product B, both made in Japan. We liked A better so we started work on importing it from that company. Then we hit a snag. The instruction manual was a very bad joke of poor translation. It was beyond laughable. It made “All your base” look sensible by comparison.
But no biggie. We just make our own instructions and have them insert them in place of their instruction. We had done it plenty of times and in fact almost all of our products had instructions written by our tech writers since they did a better job than most Japanese instruction writers and we could standardize the format. So we send an email stating our preference for this and how to proceed.
The reply came back “please use the instructions we provide, thank you”.
I was flabbergasted, and wrote back saying the instructions were unacceptable and that it would cause problems for our users, etc, etc. But again came the reply “please use these instructions” with a few more words trying to change the subject or poo-poo the problems with them.
Now, we could always go with what they asked and change the instructions in our house, but that would mean opening hundreds of boxes to change out the instructions. This would mean a lot of time and money wasted over something very stupid. We had done that sort of thing before (needed when some manufacturers didn’t provide any instructions) but we preferred not to, and this complication meant product B was looking much better.
On my next to last email on the subject I was bbc’ing my supervisor and was getting aggressive about it: “Why do you insist on packing these poorly written instructions instead when you are risking the whole deal over these? We can certainly go elsewhere for a similar item”
The reply came back: “Our CEO’s son wrote the English instructions.” There were a few words about it being a ‘situation’. I forwarded the email to my supervisor and walked to his office. By the time I got there he was facepalming.
In so many words he said “give them one more chance, and say whatever you need to. We don’t need these guys for anything else”. He then handed me a card with Company A’s CEO’s email and said to cc him as well.
I went back and wrote a ‘Please tell your CEO to swallow his pride. The instructions are written so badly that there is a danger that product might be damaged or destroyed by the user. We will not risk our reputation because your CEO’s pride in his son’s very poor translation abilities’ (I am paraphrasing - it has been 10 years).
I openly cc’ed my boss and their CEO.
After a longer delay they agreed to insert our instructions.
A couple years later I found out that the instructions had been done by the CEO, not the CEO’s son.
That’s a great story, Mr. Miskatonic. I can’t even imagine the conversations happening at the Japanese company!
Uh … sounds like this is your fault for making it so difficult for them to choose a password that they can remember.
He’s reading that as “this question” not “every question.” Some people are just not great at taking hints. I don’t think he’s being obtuse on purpose- it’s not that far fetched to default to the person who trained you (and who you are comfortable with, knows your level, knows your weaknesses, etc.) for training-type questions as opposed to, you know, the person who didn’t train you.
You can solve this all with one email. “Dear XXXX, It was a pleasure to train with you on Project 2000. I was really impressed with how quickly you picked up the widget entry system, and I am certain you’ll be successful in this position. As you know, I am now fully occupied with Project 3000, and no longer have any connection with project 2000. In the future, you should send all Project 2000 related questions to your supervisor, Bridget McMullan. Unfortunately, I simply don’t have time to answer Project 2000 related questions, but Bridget knows the system in and out and will be there to answer any questions you might have. Please, don’t hesitate to contact her- she’s there to provide the support you need and is expecting you to have some questions for her as you learn the ropes. I expect this will be our last work-related email in a while, but I look forward to seeing you in the lunch room! Tootles!”
Hey, admin. When I transferred ownership of this database and access groups from one of my people and me to you and the person you support, because he was taking over this client, he was still an employee of this company. I understand that he’s been given notice that he’s part of this round of layoffs since then, but guess what? The database is still your fucking responsibility. Don’t email me back saying “Gee since Person X is leaving, I don’t think this is my responsibility.” Tough shit, sister–you get to deal with it now. And don’t fucking boo-hoo to me over a single database–I had a ton of these to shuffle around when one of my people was laid off a couple of years ago. I’m happy to give you a walkthrough if you don’t understand how to do it, but don’t try to just shove the whole thing back on me.
And if he responds with an email that begins: But I’ve already carved your initials in my arm!, run.
Minor gripe.
An email just came out about “Holiday events.” Its primary item is a “Holiday Tree decorating contest” (capitalization in the original). I only know of one commonly observed December holiday that involved a decorated evergreen tree, and it isn’t on my calendar.
But that’s only part of the gripe. The rest is: Each participating department will be doing a tree, there will be an announced theme, there will be voting, and each department has to make a ballot box. This point is emphasized in the email. They’re trying to, OMOg, generate workplace team synergy through externally directed subject matter. This office is engineers; we’d much rather work.
As we are in a satellite office I will suggest we not participate. I certainly won’t take part. My winter holiday involves burning things, not cutting down trees.
Hey, you know what’s awesome? When you use my office for a big client meeting and then don’t give me a bunch of important information. Like an accurate headcount. Like what kind of lunch catering you *actually *want, versus what you told me. Like what kind of A/V needs you *actually *have, versus what you told me.
So you consider tree decoration to be explicitly Christian? I don’t. I’m a Hindu and an atheist, and I consider such trees to be secular holiday symbols. So long as there is no cross or nativity scene, I’m golden.
Correct, in fact the tree was oginally a pagan symbol.
Frosty, Santa, Trees, Rudolph, etc are all purely secular.