Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
8062

Boss:

Don’t refer to a female co-worker in her fifties as “the girl who works with that stuff” please. Especially if you wouldn’t call a similar male co-worker “the boy”.

Other co-worker:

If we are not BOTH on the clock, I don’t have to deal with you. Please stay out of our work area unless you are on the clock.

Also, I was cranky today-- mostly it was for reasons that aren’t your fault, although there were a few things you did that didn’t help. So no, I didn’t feel like wishing you a happy belated birthday. And the way you dealt with that “failure” didn’t win you any brownie points in my book.

8063

Dear co-worker: I know your assigned attorney is a pain to deal with. He’s disorganized, demanding, and unreasonable at times. But he’s also one of the two named partners in the firm. If his signature is on the paychecks, we peons have to put up with him.

But really, you would have a better time keeping up with your workload with a slight change in your hours. I know we have flexible hours here, but working from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with an hour and 15 minute lunch break, along with lots of chatting breaks, really doesn’t get the work done.

And today you didn’t come in, and you didn’t call or email. Which meant that Demanding Partner needed someone to deal with the file that you started working on yesterday, which absolutely had to go to the client today. And that “someone” was, as always, me. Thanks a lot. I really need to stop being good at my job, it only gets me more work.

You finally texted one of the other secretaries, around 1:00 p.m., saying you had a migraine and asking her to make sure one of Demanding Partner’s appearances tomorrow got covered. I’m the calendaring secretary, and I’d already handled it for DP. You could have called or emailed, or even texted me, but no, you text the one person who has nothing to do with covering appearances. And that’s how we knew you weren’t dead. (About 8 years ago, an employee left early one day and didn’t call or show for two more days. Turned out she’d been found unconscious in her car the day she left early, and pronounced dead at the hospital. We found out because our HR person tried to file a missing persons report on her, when she couldn’t be reached or located. So, yeah, it’s kind of important that you call or email when you’re out sick).

And please, sweetie, remember that you’re Facebook friends with about half the office. When I found out you hadn’t called in I checked your Facebook page. Posting photos of yourself holding a beer and hanging with friends all the previous evening, and then posting at about 1:00 a.m. that you’re watching a movie? Not smart.

8064

A year and a half ago we were contractors and had to cover the days around the holidays so the employees could take off.

Last year we were employees, but the existing employees had already scheduled to take off all of the days around the holidays. Including both people in the other office being off BOTH weeks around Christmas and New Years. So guess who had to work them?

So this year we ask that this not happen again, and a meeting was scheduled months in advance for this week to discuss it. Our boss claimed he was on-board with not allowing it in the interest of fairness.

Unfortunately, I missed the meeting due to a medical emergency.

Guess who is off every fucking possible day around the holidays AGAIN this year including BOTH weeks of Christmas and New Years. :smack: And who does that leave to work those days AGAIN? (And why did my boss turn into a defensive asshole when I complained about this turn of events?)

8065

I feel for you Chimera, the first several years at this company my coworker took off all f the available days around Christmas. The first year she said that since she worked 3 months alone (I started in July) she was not able to take off any of her vacation time, so they gave her an entire week around Christmas and rolled over her other week into the next year both things expressly aganst policy. the second year she claimed the same thing, she just wasn’t able to take off any of her time and was again allowed to take off a whole week at Christmas, no rolling over time however. the third year I scheduled the 2 days before Christmas 6 months in advance. She went to the boss in December and tried AGAIN to say she just couldn’t take any time off and needed to take it around Christmas. When she found out that I had already taken 2 of the days, she threw a huge fit and told everyone how awful I was and then proceded to to contact HR to say she need to take family medical leave becasue she has to take care of her invalid mother. So they gave her 2 weeks off then. The 4th year she had a stress related illness that took her off form work all of October and November and she was supposed to return in Mid-December but got her doctor to extend her time off to return January 2. She was all set to take it again my 5th Christmas here but her position was eliminated in late December. Guess who had to cover her job as well as my own during all of that, yep that would be me.

8066

Well, I note “Pulled same stunt 4 years in a row, went for 5th year, job ‘eliminated’”.

Don’t think it will happen with this person. Particularly annoying since she’s our boss’s golden child, even though she can’t seem to manage to do some of the basic tasks our team handles and constantly foists them off on other people. The best I think we can hope for is that her delusional self-image aids in her getting a different (more important :rolleyes:) job and out of our hair.

Edit: Eh, that’s probably a bit cruel, but my entire body hurts right now so not in really good mood.)

8067

I’ve been slacking off on working out lately, and should go do laps tonight, but meh.

Why is this work-related? Because I just got a call about a brewing crisis, and now will have to be in email/phone contact tonight. Cell phone + pool = bad idea, so no swimming for me.

Working out would’ve been much less annoying! Damn ironic comeuppance universe…

8068

To me, the art of making a salad is like flower arranging. It requires a lot of skill to take plants, arrange them into attractive displays which are an art in themselves. And just like flower arrangements, there is absolutely no way I will eat a salad. Thirty-eight years I have been sucking air, and as yet, no salad has ever passed my lips. I’m Scottish, the only way we eat vegetables is to use them as a garnish on a pizza, dipped in batter then fried. (yes, we do deep fry pizzas. Hadrian built his wall to stop the Scots marching south and batter frying his Calzone)

Wait, this is the workplace griping thread. What has salad got to do with Shredder Guy and co?

Well ever since the chef had his Healthy Living award renewed, he seems determined to get me to eat a salad. They look pretty enough, in their presentation boxes. Bright colours of red green and yellow (peppers?) on a bed of green stuff (lettuce?) and some red balls which I assume to be a tomato or three. I just don’t like the idea of eating green stuff. My Mum told me that if something is green then it is festering. Either that or it is grass, and that is what you feed to cows to make beef. I get the salad hard sell every lunchtime.

So my dear friend from the canteen. You will never win in your quest. Now please stop bothering me and leave me to my deep fried bacon roll.

8069

Deep fried bacon roll? I call shenanigans!

(But then I come from the town of battered deep fried lorne sausage, so I shoulsnt be so cynical…)

8070

One of my new coworkers (new hire, my boss didn’t like him but she was overriden by her boss) is one of those people who will say something deeply offensive on purpose and then if you take offense it’s your fault because you’re too sensitive and can’t take a joke haha. He also asks questions, continues talking and eventually says “oh, but you haven’t answered my question!” As another coworker put it “you didn’t let me. May I now?”

Drives like shit too: stares at things outside the window as they pass by, sets up the cellphone’s handsfree with the car already moving, has taken the opposite-direction lane several times, thinks traffic lights are decoration…

Not as bad as the “just asking questions” types who really don’t seem to comprehend some of the most basic rules of human interactions, but I have a feeling he’s not going to make my list of favorite coworkers.

8071

So, I’m working on updating a document. I did most of the work yesterday. Apparently my supervisor crept into my office last night after I went home and left a different version of the document, because half of the work I did yesterday is wrong. Did she bother to tell me this? No, of course not. I only figured it out because I double-checked everything before I passed it along to the rest of the department, and then I realized that substantial parts of it are different than they were yesterday. Nice. :mad: I am filled with grrrrr right now.

8072

I strongly dislike working Sunday mornings. Sunday morning should be church time. I get that many of our customers like shopping after church, and therefore we need people, I just don’t get why it has to be me all the time.

(in fairness, I haven’t complained about this to the person I believe to be making up my schedule these days because of reasons, so she probably doesn’t know it’s making me cranky. But I’m not happy with this week’s schedule. My portion isn’t horrid, but we are missing a team member gone on vacation, and I have a feeling we are going to be behind all week long. And we get a new person, but only one day, and that day I’ve requested off, because dammit ,if I can’t have the times I want not quite badly enough to request them off, I’ll request off some time I won’t feel guilty about and go do interesting stuff. )

8073

You had me at Bacon.

8074

I’m intrigued about the deep-fried pizza.

8075

Agreed. I hate having to work Sunday mornings, but my boss makes me. I suppose I should have thought about that one before I started training as a Minister… :wink: I have been at employers where you can get time off for seemingly the most trivial things, even going to the shops, but if you want to do the church thing, depending on the boss, things can be awkward.

I applied for a job recently with a bank and the shift pattern was five days out of seven. Well at every stage of the recruitment process I asked if it was possible to opt out of working Sundays. If it wasn’t, I would have been happy enough to say thanks and walk away. Two interviews, multiple telephone contacts and a testing day, all of them said “someone will get back to you.” Nobody seemed able to make a decision. So I was offered a start date of Monday 30th March.

Friday 27th a letter arrived with a contract, almost identical to the one that I signed, except that the start date was moved to 12th May. I phoned HR, asked if this was a typo, and was told that, because I couldn’t work Sundays, my start date was being put back to May. Note that the Hours of work part of the contract stated that I still was expected to work Sundays. And of course, “somebody should have been in contact to explain this.” This is the point that in terms of ever working there, I burned my bridges. In fact I called in an air strike on the bridge leaving my prospects of ever working there looking like the cratered remains of the Bielefeld Viaduct.

Of course, I have a contract with a start date of 30th March. And I had no other plans for Monday morning…

To be continued…

8076

I may have allowed some poetic license in my choice of lunch… I think it was a bridie that day.

Take a frozen pizza, like that which is available in any supermarket, and either fling it into the fat and fry, or dip in batter and fry to give the crunchy pizza. Serve with chips.

We will deep fry anything.

8077

How not to have a good day at work:

be the only person in your department not being written up for some reason.

Co-worker #1 got written up for leaving the place a mess-- I wouldn’t have thought it rose to the level of needing to be written up, but I’ll grant you that stuff was done or not done which could have made my life easier when I opened. And since my boss and my manager both thought it was worth a write up, he got written up.

Co-worker #2 called in, because she couldn’t get a sitter. Manager intends to keep scheduling her on days she won’t want to work, with the intent of firing her when she gets written up enough times.

On the one hand, I won’t miss #2, because her neediness with respect to the schedule is a pain in my butt. On the other hand, ARGHH! firing her this way is a massive pain in the rest of our butts until such time as she’s actually gone.

8078

Continued…

So there I was, expecting to start on Monday, but the rug had been pulled out from under my feet. Well I had nothing better to do that morning, and knowing that the office in question was only five minutes drive away, I decided to see what would have happened if I had turned up for work at 9am as expected. I wanted to know how far induction I would have got through. I had an appointment after lunch, but I was interested to see if I could last until 12.

I parked in their car park, and followed a group of staff towards the building. Their staff door relied on you waving your pass in front of a sensor and the door would unlock. The security failing was that, as good British people, we always hold the door for the person behind us. I was tempted to just follow a group of people into the building, then go and sit in their canteen. I had a rough idea of the layout of the building. Instead, I turned right and went to the real reception.

Joining a queue of people waiting to be signed in that day, the group of new starts were shepherded to the front of the queue where we gave our names, and were checked against a list. I smiled at the receptionist, gave my name, and she looked at the list. Of course I wasn’t there, but she looked at my contract, checked the list again, then looked at another bit of paper. Then looked at me. Then looked at the bit of paper. Then looked at me. She asked if I would go and wait with all the other new starts on the other side of reception where someone would come and see me.

The bit of paper was an email, probably giving instructions on what to do if I actually turned up. In the process of burning my bridges the other day, I asked what would happen if I turned up. I was told I wouldn’t be insured. Insured for what, I don’t know.

So after a few minutes wait, a member of staff came over and said that Anabel from HR would be down to see me.

Anabel from HR.

Anabel worked at the other end of the country in head office. Anabel was the person I spent nearly an hour on the phone to expressing my displeasure the other day.

Well as it happened, I didn’t get to meet Anabel. I did meet Anabel’s boss, and we had a very pleasant discussion where I expressed my concern that a company of this ones stature should demonstrate a lack of ownership when it came to staffing issues. I told him that there were many people who may have been left in a very serious financial position, either through resigning from their old job, or through stopping their unemployment benefits, if they were told the working day before they were due to start a new job that the start date had been moved. He apologised, told me that this was going to be looked into, and we parted on good terms. But not before I had handed over a letter addressed to local HR, and CC the group head of HR and the CEO, expressing my concerns, and resigning from the jobs that I may or may not have been offered.

If this is typical of the shambolic way they recruit staff, I am glad I don’t work there.

8079

Whoa, do we work in the same place?

8080

More of a “WTF?” than a gripe:

The retirement home where I work just finished undergoing its annual state inspection.

Given that all employees in a place like this are “mandated reporters”, i.e., if we suspect that a resident is being abused, neglected, or exploited, we’re required to report it. So in every department there is a sign explaining this, and providing a telephone number to call if we have something to report. One of the inspectors showed me the sign in the kitchen, and said she was giving us a new one because the phone number on our sign was 15 years out of date :eek:

My WTF here is that our building is less than 10 years old. How did we get a sign with a number that was already 5 years out of date when this place opened for business? And how the hell did none of the inspectors in the previous 9 years notice this oversight? I mentioned this to our office manager, and she blamed the fact that our corporate headquarters is in another state, and they just send whatever signs/forms without regard to the difference in laws/details from one state to the next. :smack:

These inspectors also started pointing out some plumbing and dish-storage issues in the kitchen. The specific plumbing issue had to do with the fact that the two sinks in the dishwashing area with garbage disposer units have drain pipes that go directly into a wall instead of emptying into an “open air” floor drain. Now, having been in foodservice for 31 years, I understand why most dish/prep sinks have open-air drains. In the event that sewage somehow backs up into the kitchen drain pipes, it will only get as far as the floor - it won’t come bubbling up into your dishwashing and food-prep sinks.

But emptying a disposer into an open-air drain would just make a horrible mess. Not to mention that changing the current setup would involve major construction/plumbing rerouting work in this kitchen, which, aside from being expensive, would completely disrupt our ability to feed the residents. So, again, if this is actually a legitimate problem, how the hell was it completely overlooked during the initial inspection before the facility opened, and how did it continue to be completely overlooked during every single annual inspection prior to this one?

8081

Maybe it’s just me, but it LOOKS like Co-workers #s 1 and 2 also found ways to not have a good day at work…