Man I sure hope this one chick gets a new job! She has no speed above first gear and doesn’t seem interested in finding one. Plus, she’s dumb enough to TELL people that she’s interviewing with othe places. As far as I’m concerned, they should just fire her now. Unfortunately, “management” doesn’t really have an employee handbook or anything that has guidelines for write-ups.
nm.
Wow. You should ask them to at least paint a nice design on the bottom of the bus so you have something interesting to look at when they throw you under it.
I’m an alcoholic with 20+ years under my belt. Everyone who knows me knows this.
My former team scheduled our outings at breweries. sigh
Think how your customer feels – they filed a report with two issues, one was resolved, but the other has dragged on for 3 months and they’ve heard nothing.
That last part “… heard nothing” is the problem. Keep communicating with them every week or so about this. Even though you can’t report a solution, they will be happier knowing that you are still working on their problem.
You could have sent them emails like this:
- “We were unable to duplicate your problem. We have consulted with several others, they too were unable to duplicate it. Now we are consulting with an advanced area.”
- “Regarding your problem, in our consultation with Department X, they were able to recognize your problem, but are not the ones who can fix that issue. So we are now checking to find the appropriate department that can create a fix for this problem.”
- “we have consulted with areas and Y, but neither of them are the correct ones to fix this problem. We will continue checking with other programming areas.”
- and so forth.
At least this keeps the customer informed of the situation. And gives you documentation that you weren’t just “sitting on it”.
Of course, now your bosses might complain that “you are making the company look like incompetent idiots to a customer.” You can respond that on this issue, they were incompetent, but that won’t really satisfy them.
Dear lease admin lady, you know, those little “sign here” stickies are only sticky on one half for a reason. You’re supposed to let the non-sticky half hang out the side of the document. That way, I don’t have to go through each and every page of all three copies of an 80-page lease looking for the five different places my boss is supposed to sign. Putting the “sign here” flag in the middle of the page does absolutely nobody any good. I just need to know what page to turn to, I’m perfectly capable of finding the signature line after that point, thanks.
You send multiple leases for his signature every week. This is your job. Think you would have figured it out by now.
And co-worker, I really like you and think you’re swell, but the reason you never get anything done and are always having to stay late and/or come in over the weekend is because you spend about 90% of your time standing around talking and visiting with other people, or on the phone with various members of your family. I could do your job with time to spare on top of my regular duties. When I first starting working here I couldn’t figure out why you had your own office with a door, etc., because you’re not really senior or anything to the rest of us, but now I’ve figured it out. Your boss and the other upper guys hope that occasionally you’ll shut yourself in there and actually get some work done!
And to my boss and his cohorts: I know you think “open-plan” and desk-sharing and whatever else you call this new-fangled method of office design will foster excitement and communication and idea-sharing and whatever-corporationspeak, but the people are gonna hate it. Just sayin’. People want their privacy. They want their own desk, if not their own office, and they don’t want to hear and look at their co-workers every minute of every working day. But what do I know? I’m just a know-nothing peon and you’re the big well-paid experts. With private offices.
Talk to your boss first, but there is a solution to this: you need to stop enabling her to do this. By you doing her work for her.
Just stop searching those 80 pages for those stickers. Your boss can sign on the obvious place on the last page, and then send it back to her. Leave any hidden signature spots unsigned, unless she has those tags sticking out visibly. When she complains, tell her your boss’s time is too valuable to be searching 80 pages for places to sign – that is her job. So she better do it. Because you aren’t going to do it for her any more.
Obviously, your boss has to be on board with doing this. (If you have been going thru the 80 pages to find the Sign here tags, and making them visible before giving him the document, he may not even be aware of the problem. Because you’ve been covering for her.) And consider the possibility that she never even checks those 80 pages for the hidden signatures, just sends it on to the other party. That’s quite possible, for somebody as lazy as her. Make sure that the lack of signature on those places doesn’t leave your company open to some legal liability somewhere in the future.
There’s no manual… and even if there was I’d have to show my partner where the manual is and what page to go to every damn time. Today she came in late, took a long lunch, and left early so I at least got a few moments of peace.
:D:)
Ok, this made me LOL.
It actually turned out ok. I already had a timeline saved, and sent it to my boss. Boss is not concerned and has stepped in to clarify that I responded to what I could find out, but that our team doesn’t own that logic and has no way to know where to look for it since as far as we can tell, it isn’t documented.
Boss is a VP, so you know…
All good points, but let me clarify what’s already happened, because apparently the “transmit additional information psychically” Firefox add-on isn’t working today. 
This isn’t a client question sent directly to me; my team does not work directly with clients. The client’s internal rep sent me the question. I have been providing her with updates on a regular basis, and provided a list of those updates and a timeline with actions taken to my boss.
Thanks for taking the time to post suggestions.
Congratulations, and facepalm.
We had an “interview” with the client’s Ops manager this week.
He’s got three groups of complaints.
- The purchasing system is bad. You can’t do this (yes you can). You can’t do that (yes you can). You can’t do this other thing (yes you can). So why didn’t anybody tell me we could do these things? Why are my people not doing these things, and when I ask them why they tell me they can’t? Are you telling me it’s all a training issue?
Well yes. The same people who trained you and who didn’t tell you those things could be done, are the people who trained your subordinates. Maybe you need to schedule some retraining? (That training wasn’t done by our team; we did train the trainer, the trainer is doing all those undoables but apparently forgot to train everybody else on them).
- There have been no manuals!
There have been tons of manuals. On the Ops side, I have written more manuals in this project than in any three of my other projects together. On the Logistics side, our consultant offered manuals and was told “oh no, we’ll write them ourselves”. On the Finance side, they said they didn’t want manuals and if they needed any they’d create their own. We still provided manuals for Logistics and Finance, but slightly adapted from other factories rather than rewritten to spec.
So why have my people spent weekends writing manuals, uh?
Because they wanted to.
- There are no reports!
Yes there are, didn’t we already do a month’s end closing, which took three days instead of the ten days it used to take in the previous system? That means reports were pulled out.
But I don’t know where they are! I have no idea how to find them!
Oh, let me email you the manual…
It’s very frustrating working with people who only want the paycheck and don’t want to work for it.
I don’t know what’s going on with the coworker who asked if he could get an advance on his holiday pay thus far (that is, get the $ but not take the time off). HR said no. He kept disappearing with his phone. Dude, you’re the manager in charge this week, WTF?
(Snipped a lot of useful helpful stuff)
…Or I could just send her a nicely worded email telling her how to do it correctly…pretty sure it’s ignorance and not laziness that’s the cause. But then what would I have to pettily complain about on the internet?
I understand dealing with the death of a loved one is very stressful; especially when you keep getting all manor of medical bills sent to them. Unfortunately we the insurance company are not able to help you with that due to HIPAA. Even they are dead their estate still has privacy rights which can only be waived by the executor of the estate. Yes this applies even if you’re their spouse or child. If you are the executor you must actually send that a copy of that paperwork instead of expecting us to just take your word for it. Power of attorney lapses with the grantor’s death. It does not matter if you just have “a simple question”, and yelling at the CSR, using profanity, or threatening to sue has no effect whatsoever. Even if you’re holding the explanation of benefits the plan sent out in your hand we still cannot discuss it with you. Nor does asking for a supervisor all they can do is repeat what the CSR told you. No matter who you talk to an exception will not be made. Granted those callers are a lot easier to handle than the ones who break down crying. And even if the actual executor is your equally elderly & grieving surviving parent who told you to handle everything we still can’t talk you without them coming on line and tell us that.
I’m temporarily on another program selling robot insurance to nice old ladies. It’s not an evil product, and could be useful for a lot of people (I considered it for myself, but the math didn’t quite work for me), but I’m not putting a lot of effort into it, just biding my time for another week until a new B2B program starts, selling a new, needed, required by Obamacare service to doctor’s offices. Don’t know much about the program, but I’ve heard enough horror stories from my wife about the clusterfucks all of the offices she’s worked in were. Less money than my old program, which still has me angry and resentful because they not only cut my pay on a whim, but they also hurt my feelings (quite an accomplishment since I can’t remember when somebody actually hurt my feelings). Still, it’s more than I get with robot insurance and less embarrassing to talk about.
First thing back from vacation and once again it’s some south american guy opening up yet another deli asking for a sign. Of course he doesn’t understand or have email, he doesn’t understand the paperwork he has to fill out to the state, he doesn’t understand that it takes time to see a sign design (no we don’t press a button and magically make a sign design mere seconds after you give us the initial details), and I’m sure, once again, he won’t understand “what you see is what you get”. We’ll show him a blue and white sign, for example, get all the approvals, and after installation he’ll say, “I thought the sign would be red and black”…
I wasn’t here for the price negotiations but I’m sure he complained and complained about how expensive we were before finally my boss gave some stupidly low number that makes this job not even worth our time. checks Yep. It’s too low.
It’s just way too predictable. Every time. And I get this headache right after getting back from vacation. Ugh, just send me away. 
“(department name), this is Chimera”
long pause
very quiet “hello?” from the other person.
OH FUCK YOU! I gave you my department name and my name in my greeting. This is not some great fucking mystery. Respond like a real human being, not some passive-aggressive asshole.
I swear to GOD I’m going to simply clear my throat on the next person who does this crap and say “Excuse me, but I gave you my name and department, is there a problem?”
Then this person tells me they put in a ticket in some system I have never heard of. I tell him that. He then proceeds to ask me a number of questions about that system, the answer to all of which is “Since I’ve never heard of that system, I don’t know. Why don’t you call them?”. None of which stop him from continuing to ask new questions about it.
:smack:
How does the company stay in business?
Volume!
Come on, someone had to say it.