It’s evidently a bit late, but why no screen savers in your office? Although if it’s possible to burn green lines in a monitor, I have to wonder if it’s a monochrome monitor from the '80s.
Social services agencies, eh?
Shameless self-promotion, hope this isn’t against the rules.
My workplace gripe is that I only have enough funding left to keep my project going until the end of June, and we haven’t managed to get more from anywhere else. This Community Fund relies on votes for us to compete with other projects for a limited number of grants, so if anyone could see their way clear to voting for us, I’d be ever so grateful. The project is extremely valuable to the elderly of our community, and also to the volunteers who help them. We can only hope that it is deemed valuable enough for somebody to help us keep it going.
Also, I’ve grown accustomed to the finer things in life, like having a roof over my head and groceries and such.
Please vote for us and encourage your friends to vote for us.
The site sometimes has technical difficulties, so if you get an error page please try again later. Voting ends May 30, so the farther this travels in that time the better.
Registered, and all 10 votes sent your way Dunkelheit.
Voted, and hope you get this funded as it sounds like a totally great program. I’m not in the UK and I hope that doesn’t interfere with my votes. I’m going to recommend this to a couple of friends too. Good luck!
oopsie; double post.
Thanks very much, guys. I hope at least a few of the many funding sources we’ve approached will come through for us.
It shouldn’t make any difference at all where you’re located, and thanks for passing it on!
We do have screen savers, but I don’t have it turned on because I don’t need it. I do have a new monitor (maybe about 3 years old), and those aren’t supposed to have a problem with burn-in. I’m using my computer most of the time when I’m in my office, and if I’m out I turn it off. I have the screensaver turned on now so it won’t happen again.
I’m not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. Last week was not so good, and I’m afraid I might not last there too much longer. :([URL=“http://boards.straightdope.com//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/”]
My workplace rant:
I work for a non-profit organization.
Although communications are via email, time-sheets have to be faxed.
Guess what? No fax machine at my location. :smack:
Occasionally, my company hires a local fabricator to produce steel assemblies. This fabricator sent a delightful word salad email to our purchasing department today; they forwarded it to me. I wish I could reprint it here…seriously, I cannot believe this email was composed by an adult who owns a business. And I’m not entirely sure I answered the questions he meant to ask. If I was interpreting it correctly, part of his question was the result of his inability to read the drawing provided by my company. He has made this particular assembly to this exact drawing many, many times before…WTF???
“I already went through this process six months ago to get access to X! Why are you wasting my time doing this again?”
Because you asked for access to Y this time. It is a completely different thing, owned by a different area of the company. STFU you whiny, ignorant, but all too self important little bitch, and do your part of the process. It would be done now if you’d have done that instead of wasting everyone else’s time with your tantrum.
Did other moron ever get full, permanent access to all databases like he demanded? Or did someone finally load him into the catapult?
Sounds like my boss. A job we’ve done 10 times over is suddenly a complete mystery to him. What do you mean you can’t remember what substrate this goes on, you’ve done this 10 times before in the last 3 years and never had a problem remembering every other time. And because you were convinced you’d remember you never actually wrote down what substrate we chose the first time and copied ever since!
Then he grumbles when I say I’m going to write down every. Damned. Thing. In. The. Art. Files. For. Reference. What a waste of time, he says. Until later that day suddenly he can’t find a reference from a year ago because he never wrote it down because “he’ll remember” and “it’s a waste of time to write it down”. Right. Uh-huh. Updating the file now; he chose “220 forest green”.
In other news I question why every job listing puts down “detail oriented”, “organized”, “passionate”, “fast learner”, and “works well in a fast-paced environment”. I’ve never ever encountered a job listed with the opposite attributes. What, do they think putting down “organized” will make the person who keeps 50 files on their desktop and loses one every day say to themselves, “nope, this isn’t the job for me at all! I should never apply to this because I am not organized!”?
Also completely sick of the listings that describe an “ideal worker” as though this worker is a nonstop machine that drools at the mere thought of working for this glorious company for next to nothing because of their overwhelming passion for the job. Uh-huh. Yeah.
Argh, it seems I was wrong. It SHOULDN’T make any difference where you’re located, but apparently it does. Only votes from within the UK will be counted. 
Sorry for wasting your time. I’m just going to dig a hole over here and pull it in after me.
If you are a government office, you really should keep your voice mailbox from being full, to where whenever someone reaches the outgoing message, it automatically disconnects.
Similarly, you shouldn’t have this issue with three different numbers in your department, to where a person has to call a completely unrelated department, if only to actually speak to a live person.
Also, when being told that people are unable to leave messages, you shouldn’t respond in a demeanor that might lead a person to believe that your offices leave the voicemails full on purpose.
Finally, if by an act of God, an outside party is able to find a number where he can leave a message, it shouldn’t take more than a week (and counting) to receive a return call.
And has any interviewee ever been asked ‘Are you a fast learner?’ or ‘Are you a good communicator?’ and replied with ‘Oh. No, I’m not. Sorry, I’ll go now.’
Also, Dear coworkers:
You see this stuff in front of me? With the bread and the meat and large cold drink? That’s called lunch. I’m eating it. You can see that I’m eating it, you watched me eating it when you walked up. So why the hell are the next words that come out of your mouth ‘Oh, are you eating?’ Seriously? Don’t pretend, we both know you want something and you don’t give a shit that I’m eating lunch cuz what you want is obviously way too important to wait 10 minutes and you’re just saying that so you sound like you give a crap. You do this shit every other fucking day. It’s like you wait until I sit down with my nice hot food and run right the hell over the instant my fork touches it. I’m gonna get a squirt bottle and spray you with water every time you do this from now, saying ‘No! Bad employee! No! Bad!’. And if you don’t get it after a few times, I’m going to use something else instead of water.
I just received an e-mail, and I missed the edit window.
I sent an e-mail to the one contact I know at the county and was just informed that the person - the GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE - does not have access to a phone.
You need mail-to-fax; I can’t recommend one because right now I’m not needing that kind of thing. Maybe a thread in IMHO?
Man, those budget cuts are a bitch.
Not to excuse the agency you’re dealing with, but…
I work for our local government, share a desk. We’re also pushed to work offsite, so I’m home at least 50% of the time.
They just took our cell phones away from us, no reasoning.
Now, in order to return calls, I have to arrange times with my cubemate OR use the crappy VOIP program, which is almost impossible. Calls are dropped, audio freezes, can barely hear people - and I’m not working wirelessly.
I could use my personal phone, but heaven forbid I forget to *67 before I dial. I REALLY don’t want a client to have my personal number.
So calls are now returned either when I am in office OR when it’s an emergency situation.