OK, jerk, you are NOT a lead. I, on the other hand, AM! That means you do NOT snap orders at me, you do NOT ignore instructions (I do tend to phrase such things courteously, but that does not make doing what you know you’re supposed to be doing anyway optional!), and you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT make patronizing remarks to me post-shift about “good job trying to be a lead”. I will be chatting with our supervisor about your attitude toward me and toward other cashiers, as well as your crappy customer service. Since when is it acceptable behavior for a cashier who is not otherwise busy to redirect customers to another cashier rather than serving them himself?
Just because I try to be as nice as reasonably possible does not make me a pushover. I have more work experience, including at this employer, and more life experience than you (I’m old enough to be your mother, you know). I HAVE the authority and I will use it to adjust your 'tude. Got it?
the world will not end if you go home after 8 hours and leave the rest of us in charge of inventory. I promise.
Dear Clueless Co-worker:
Yes I mean it when I say the rules are different for you than they are for me. I’m more or less full time, and you are seriously part-time. So no one cares much if you work all your hours, but I need to work all of mine.
Also, I like you, but . . . you are the sort who says everything that comes into your brain. If there’s a backstory to Boss’s crankiness other than the part you know about, I’m not telling you.
(Note to those reading this: I’m not sure if there is more to the story. I kinda think there is, but I don’t know the whole thing. Co-worker probably knows less than I, although he’s better connected to the gossip network, so he may know things I don’t know. Mostly, though, I think Boss is irked by a pattern of behavior rather than a particular incident, and Co-worker should be aware of it.)
Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to test the fire alarm system on a Monday morning? :mad: This wasn’t even a fire drill, just setting the alarm off several times while an entire office building (including a call center, volume is highest on Mondays) is just supposed to ignore.
For two years my boss has been a shit to me and my co-worker about the very idea of working from home when necessary. We could not, while two co-workers in another state work from home at the drop of a hat. Fucker blamed it on his boss, who has multiple teams, all of which involve people working from home on a regular basis.
So while he’s out on his own medical leave and I’m experiencing my own issues, I emailed his boss (the guy he claimed was saying no) this morning and asked about working from home when I’m dealing with pain issues.
I hope you don’t get in to trouble with your direct boss for going over his head (but really for exposing him).
Hopefully you copied him on the exchange with the big boss to keep up the pretense of “I didn’t want to bother you since you had your own medical issues but I was in pain and I really needed an immediate response to this so I went directly to big boss.”
Do you work in fast food or some similar setting that employs a lot of high-school age kids? I find it hard to believe that an adult would either be so slow to learn that or react in such an immature fashion.
Nope…this is the engineering department of a small company that is owned by a larger company (that seems to have no idea what we actually do, but that’s for another post someday). The rank-and-file positions of this department do have a very high turnover rate though…I’m 32, and I’m one of the oldest. They tend to hire kids straight out of college.
Follow-up: despite the extent of his new-found knowledge, co-worker is still unsure of how one pees when wearing a tampon.
XD They would have to discipline almost 1/3 of the department in that case.
Strangely enough, I’m the only female engineer at this location. There are two other women with offices on this side of the building, but they report to another department.
Ohhh…it’s been ages since I’ve had to deal with one of “those kind”.
Flex that authority. Write him up if you have the authority to do so. Get backup from whoever’s higher than you and possibly HR. Call him into The Office. Throw that kid on his a**. There is no reason for any retail outlet to condone that kind of behavior.
Our supervisor and I have discussed this, including the fact that I am NOT the only one having problems with the kid’s behavior. I didn’t see him very much yesterday, since we only overlapped by an hour and he was 20 minutes late getting there*, but he seems to be at least sparing me the 'tude (doesn’t have much to say, but I can deal). I think there may be some improvement afoot. If there is, OK, cool, I’m not inclined to hold grudges longer than needed.
I’m still not enthused by such details as lack of expression when ringing up a customer or his slow speed doing so, but that’s one of the topics that was covered with our supervisor when she and I discussed him. Since this is a training program, a large part of the point is to teach people work skills. There’s a bit more tolerance than there would be in the “real world”, but not THAT much more.
Supervisor’s day off was yesterday, but there’s a notebook she and her three leads use to leave notes for each other. She’ll be aware of it.
Hey, thanks for threatening to escalate to my manager (who is out on a medical leave, so go for it!) because we didn’t have your stuff processed by 8am this morning when you only sent it to us at 3pm yesterday.
I’ll be sure to give your stuff an appropriate priority in the future. I can assure you that in no way will it be accidentally misfiled and we’ll absolutely jump on it as soon as we finish quite literally everything else on the planet that needs to be done.
I’m feel rather odd at being pleased to learn that one of our suppliers thinks they may have had moisture-contamination into their (water-reactive) product we buy. I mean, we paid for crappy product that caused all sorts of problems in the area I’m filling in for*. BUT there’s actually a root cause to investigate for once! Normally I have to run random analyses and lab batches hoping to find whatever it is.
… Also I’m pleasantly shocked the supplier actually 'fessed up. Normally I get the “oh, we investigated everything and are sure there’s nothing wrong with our product” sing-song BS. Without them even bothering to pretend they took the time to investigate anything - their NMR must faster than the ones on CSI.
Apparently the theme of the week is, “Give Dung Beetle something to do and as soon as it’s done, ask her to undo it because you didn’t really mean it. Plus points if it’s a pain in the ass that takes up lots of time.” I’m thinking about instituting a three-day waiting period.
Also, I had to take some papers in and ask a doctor to sign them (while he was eating his lunch, because he hadn’t done them when first asked). He slurped the Cheeto dust off his fingers, signed, and handed the stuff back to me with a big orange smear on the envelope. I was trying not to gag visibly, but my throat was clenching and my shoulders were jerking like a cat getting ready to hork up a big ol’ hairball. You are nasty, Dr. G!
I’m am again working on someone else’s caseload. She’s a new worker, freshly supplied with the crappiest of crappiest of cases from the worst of the worst workers.
Holy shit.
Dead clients. Incarcerated clients. Charging where there should be none and vice versa. Work started, never completed. Wrong information all over the case.
Many years ago I had a coworker, very nice guy but a horrendously lazy coworker. When he retired, cleaning his caseload took 4 of us a full month to clean up.
This has been worse, and I’m the only one working on them.
These poor clients. It’s bad enough that they have to deal with us. I’m sending letters apologizing for errors made yonks ago and btw, I’m adding thousands of dollars of arrears to your case and now we’re actually going to work it. Sorry we hadn’t before. Calling people to confirm requests made 6 months ago to close cases.
We just had the annual employee survey. What a laugh. Biggest issue our division complained about is employee and management accountability. Received an email from the grandbosses “We hear you and we’re going to work on it!”. Yeah, sure. The workers that sent these shit cases are still here, have been here for decades, and will never change. Nothing ever changes in government work.
When new workers don’t know what is right from wrong due to non-existant training, how are they supposed to know what to fix? I don’t have time to explain to her what all is wrong, all I can do is fix them and set her up to move forward .