Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
9142

The owner’s father, who is a millionaire, repeatedly “loans” the company more money every year.

They’ve joked about leaving the business to me and I’ve said I’ll only do it if I’m not personally liable for the mountains of debt. Of course now that it was brought up my brain thought up a business plan regardless and now even though it’ll never happen I’ve got that knocking about in my head. Oh, I know exactly what I’d do to try and turn this place around…and I get to watch everything go to pot for lack of basic sense anyway.

Why yes, I am working on other avenues of employment.

9143

OMG…I’m so sorry.

There are dozens of studies that show how horrible those offices are, including from the Harvard Business School. Gather these up, send them to all of your bosses, and try your best to shut this idea down with facts.

My office has an open plan, and it’s awful. I can’t get anything done when I’m there, which is why I WFH at least twice a week.

9144

What’s stopping you from going into business for yourself?

9145

Financial stability. I’m the breadwinner in this family. I prefer to keep a full-time job and do freelance on the side. I am not convinced that if I dropped the full-time job, freelance would build up enough or be constant enough to keep a roof over the head at the moment. However, that isn’t holding me back. Currently I am designing freelance and illustrating for stock sites, hoping that with enough backlog on the stock sites I would have a “guaranteed” (of sorts) minimum income coming in every month that I could weather the freelance ups and downs. And “for fun” I am drawing a webcomic, but really that is a great stepping stone into further comic projects as well. It proves I’m capable and on time so I’d be able to start working for anthologies and contract work in that field as well.

Oh, and I’m casting about for other full-time (and almost part time) employment of course. Last one I was “overqualified” for. Would’ve been great to have a 30 hour a week job to let me expand and shift more focus to the freelance, but oh well.

And to go into business for myself in the literal exact job I’m in requires a lot of overhead. Large-format printers and CNC routers are not cheap (as well as space to put them in) and I have very little personal capital. It’d be all loan. Too much risk for me.

9146

Hey you, dipshit co-worker. Yes you, the one who can’t follow on-screen instructions on how to clear a paper jam. You are an impatient gas-bag who drives me nuts on a daily basis.

Order of events:
I’m away from my cube for about 15 minutes.

I return to my cube, and while walking by you I see you queueing up a print job.

As I sit down you mention that the printer won’t clear the paper jam message.

Since 99% of the time that this happens it’s because the user hasn’t selected OK from the screen menu, I immediately go to the plotter and ‘fix’ it.

You do not wait the 2 minutes it takes me to walk there and back before sending out your newly queued plots to a different plotter.

I chase you down, but it’s too late. “But I didn’t know how long it would be before you’d be back at your desk…” is not a reasonable excuse. (meaning the time I walked past him originally. He had plenty of time to hold or cancel that second job.)

I tell you what I did to fix it. Oh? You didn’t see the RED HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON above the word OK and wondered why the (not-a-touch)screen didn’t react? Of course re-booting the machine isn’t going to help, you haven’t told the (admittedly badly programmed) system that you are ready for the next step.

No, rebooting the machine does not clear out the print queue. It never has, and you know that. Did you say “Oops,” and go to the original machine to clear out the queue and dispose of you mis-plotted drawings? No, of course not. Half-an-hour later I walk past the machine, and the tray is full of your project. You just wasted a couple hundred square feet of paper. That shit is expensive.

You are the biggest jackass in our department. If you get promoted when our team lead retires next year, I am bailing to another department as fast as I can find a new placement.

And on the same vein - to the idiot engineer last week who just turned the plotter off instead of contacting me (like the sign right in front of you says), you suck too.

To save what little sanity I have left, I have put a sticky-note on the display screen showing users where the OK button is with a short instruction on how to clear paper jams. Granted, the stupid plotter programming is not intuitive, and the folks who designed the POS made the buttons the same color as the backgroud (really?), but that is why I took a marker and colored them RED!

grrr…

9147

Five urinals and this asshole has to keep walking into one of the stalls and pissing all over the seats.

9148

He’s wearing Depends and can’t get his wiener through the leg hole, so he goes into the stall and drops trou. AND he’s got terrible aim.

9149

Boss:

Suuuure I’m one of your top people, “stellar”, etc. Apparently, that means I do not need additional training opportunities being given to people with much less time in the department than I have, opportunities I’ve been begging you for for months. That bit with scheduling my days off so that it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to attend one such training class was a really lovely touch. So was blowing me off when I asked to talk to you today, while pointedly having time for everyone EXCEPT me.

Thanks for totally gutting my confidence. If someone who claims I’m so wonderful doesn’t think I deserve any opportunities for growth, or even a few minutes of your time, that doesn’t say much for my worth, does it?

9150

Sounds like time to look for a new Boss.

9151

That sounds like your bosses are saying ‘you can make money for us, but those guys are too smart to buy what you are selling.’

9152

[Yorkshireman #2] Open plan and desk sharing? Why, I called in the other morning to tell my temporary boss I would be late, and she told me to hurry because there was only one seat left, like it’s a fucking over-booked airliner! Then I heard that three people were sent home the day before because there weren’t enough bloody workstations! I can’t wait until next week. [/Y#2]

I still love my Old Southern Ladies. I get blessed–sincerely–fifty times a day. The first time a lady picked up the phone with, “God be with you,” I caught myself before giving the response, “And also with you.” I was zoned out and I’m real lucky I didn’t respond in Latin with the Pope’s phone number, “Et cum spiritu tuo.” It took a while before I said screw it and decided that there’s be hell to pay if I got fired for responding in kind. Still, I was glad the call, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” was on their answering machine because I automatically gave the response, “It is right to give Him thanks and praise,” before the recording kicked in.

I force myself to use my Suburban Chicago accent rather than the automatic code-switching I do when speaking to someone in the Piedmont. They seem to like nice, polite, helpful Yankee boys down south. Even Catholic ones.

9153

The real catholic response is: “It is right and just to give Him Thanks.”

Bloody ‘new’ Vatican II Catholics!

9154

I had to lead a meeting today with a wicked migraine prodrome happening.

Luckily, I wasn’t quite at the phase where I can’t find words and sound slightly drunk. Also luckily, someone else handled note-taking.

9155

Worse, I went Evangelical Lutheran because it was more VII than the Mother Church!

9156

Why do I have to hear about a stranger’s private parts Just because she is having a baby. Yes, congratulations on your niece’s upcoming baby-having, but the whole office does not need hourly cervix updates. Not centimeters, not mucus, none of it. Since when do you not consider this ok to discuss at random?
I guaran-damn-tee that the neice doesn’t know we all know about what’s happening to her hoo-ha and didn’t give the ok to blab about it. Eew.

I am irrationally annoyed at my pregnant friend's hubby.
9157

So next time the aunt is away from her desk at a meeting or something, call the hospital and get connected to the niece. Tell her that her aunt has been in a meeting, and you haven’t had an update for at least 20 minutes. Ask her how many centimeters she is dilated now, how regular her contractions are, etc. You might also ask her if, after the birth, she is planning to have herself stitched up some, to be tight enough to satisfy her husband – tell her the poll of the women in the office is strongly in favor of that.

She might then tell her aunt to be more discreet.

I am irrationally annoyed at my pregnant friend's hubby.
9158

Would be awesome except she’s not in the hospital yet. We have been hearing updates several times a day for about 2 weeks and it might be another week! I just don’t understand why people share things about family members that they would never share about themselves… Or maybe they would, but I never hear her talking about how her own lady bits are functioning. Maybe I’ll ask her.

I am irrationally annoyed at my pregnant friend's hubby.
9159

(background - unpaid volunteer at a charity shop)

Manageress is on holiday today. Back-up manageress says she’s not working today, as manageress is due back from holiday. Each of them seem to think the other is working, and I can’t help but suspect I’m the only one who’s noticed the problem.

On the other hand, I applied to be a relief manageress back in February and was politely declined as they didn’t need staff, so, if I’m right and the shop doesn’t get opened by anyone today, it’s officially Not My Problem. But I’ll still feel guilty for not doing more to point it out.

(It’s actually not that major a thing if the shop doesn’t get opened for this one day - it’s one of these bizarre local Bank Holidays that affects some businesses but not others, so people will just assuming we’re observing it. And maybe we are!)

9160

Dear co-workers: you are lovely and I like you all very much. We are all happy that we have gotten rid of the crazy people who used to work here, and I am very proud of that two of you have just achieved significant professional goals.

However.

I like to keep my various workspaces clean and tidy. This is NOT an invitation for you, whose workspaces are overflowing with crap, to use my clear space. Clean up your own damn workspace, this one is mine.

9161

All that mental energy wasted worrying over nothing. Back-up manageress has realised there was a problem when I asked her about it last week, told the boss, it was sorted, and she opened up yesterday. All that potential drama wasted :wink: