I was told at work last week that I NEED to take a vacation because “whether you realize it or not your attitude is getting a little combative which is very unlike you.”
GEE YA THINK, GIVEN WITH WHOM I WORK?
Unfortunately I have to wait until the end of the month. However, I have more than enough time banked so I can take a day off here and there.
Hey, peeps…have you ever heard the expression “Failure to plan ahead on YOUR part does not create an emergency on MY part?” If you have sent me a document that MUST be signed and sent out for delivery tomorrow, you have to tell me about it. Don’t just send it via FedEx and hope for the best. Call me, or send me an email at the least. It didn’t even get delivered to my office until after 3:30 yesterday, after I had done my usual last run to check the mail. At that point my boss had already left the office, anyway. But if you had told me to expect the packet and that it was urgent, I would have been waiting and watching for it. Would have worked it out with my boss to return to the office after his appointment to sign, or would even have driven myself across town to get his signature and then to the FedEx office for the late drop-off. But you didn’t tell me. I’m perfectly willing to go above and beyond to get shit done, but I have to know it needs to be done.
So don’t call me and email me this morning in a panic because the docs aren’t there. I didn’t even see them until this morning. I’m sorry everyone’s sitting around in the office waiting to do the closing, I didn’t know. And right now my boss is in an important meeting, so it’s going to be at least an hour until he can sign these and I can send scanned copies over to you. Sorry. Not my problem. I’ll do my best to get these to you as fast as I can, but I’m not going to stress out about it.
And btw…even if I *had *gotten these signed and sent out yesterday, they still wouldn’t have them by now. Because the FedEx label you had so helpfully pre-printed for me was for regular overnight delivery. If you need them to have the docs in hand for a 9:00am meeting, you need to send it First Overnight.
I would have fixed that for you. If you had freaking told me!
Back from vacation. A good long vacation, and right back into it.
Of course the lady who can’t quite get it unless it’s by rote has an issue. Something doesn’t match. So she’s chattering in my ear going omg it doesn’t match and I want to yell at her that she needs to figure out why it doesn’t match and tell them that. I have nothing to do with it. And she’s bitching she has to do something for big boss, well welcome to my world. I have a lot to do for big boss and things are changing around here so figure it out without my hand holding because I don’t have time nor inclination to.
I hate phone interviews.
I actually ran into this kind of situation last year. In March 2014, my department manager was fired by somebody at the corporate level. The corporate person didn’t realize that the third cook in our three-cook kitchen was the head chef’s daughter, and naturally the daughter left along with her dad. Which left me to run a retirement home kitchen all by my freaking self.
I ended up working 24 consecutive days, the last 17 of which were entirely by myself, 13 hours a day, preparing three meals/day for 100+ elderly residents. I was completely fried by the time they finally got a new manager and another cook hired. And I didn’t get any kind of real break after that, aside from a couple days off. Within a couple months, I apparently turned into a real asshole … but I didn’t realize that’s how I was coming across. And nobody said anything to me about it.
Instead, they waited until our Regional Director of Operations was visiting, and the other department heads all complained to her about my “attitude”. She said, “Then let’s get rid of him.” Thankfully, my own manager came to my rescue and said, “No, let me talk to him first.” So he talked to me, and that was the first clue I had that people weren’t liking me. Once I was aware, I was able to correct my “attitude”.
Even so, I was still stressed and burned out. A few weeks later I used my accumulated vacation time and took a week off, and when I came back I was refreshed, with a better attitude, and everybody started to like me again.
When my dad was the “regional manager” of his division of the Washington State Patrol, he had that on a sign on his office wall, behind his desk 
My situation isn’t quite like that since I’m not the only one, but I might as well be, given the fuck-this-shit-who-cares attitudes surrounding me. Others are responding to it by either applying for transfers or outright looking for other work and not being secretive about it.
When I find myself either weeping or overreacting to something I ordinarily wouldn’t blink at, I know something’s very wrong. I’m grateful and embarrassed somebody actually said something, though.
I’m at the point now where I’m terrified of taking a vacation. The last one I took I returned to a hellhole because everyone’s attitude was “Fuck it, Kiz isn’t here.” They even got chewed out by upper management, which you’d think would light a fire under their asses. Nope. Same shit, different day.
My boss forwards every email he receives that has to do with a project I’m working on. Sounds helpful, right? Except I’m already on the distribution list. So I get the email, a copy from my boss, and usually a copy from one or two of the other managers. It’s like the fucking TPS reports around here! STOP SENDING ME EVERY PIECE OF CRAP THAT SHOWS UP IN YOUR EMAIL!!!
I work in a veterinary clinic and we have kennel assistants. We love them and adore them because without them WE would have to clean cages, dog shit, puke, etc. HOWEVER … Cookie is getting on my last freaking nerve. I know she thinks her fake attitude is cute, but it’s not. Yesterday, I tried asking her quietly to turn down the volume on her conversation with the new girl, and she gave me lip. She shut her fat cake hole when I told her that the people in the room behind me who were putting their dog to sleep could hear every word and she needed to move her happy ass or shut up.
Godammit, I’ve been a department manager for less than three months. WHY does my very first major, serious “behavior” problem amongst my subordinates have to involve my one and only African-American employee?
It all started with an innocent, but poorly-worded remark from one of my 17-year-old subordinates. Tuesday night, my three servers (in a retirement home kitchen) were a 17YO white girl (A), a 17YO Mexican-American girl (K), and a 19YO African-American girl (M). I hired all three of them. Speaking objectively, “A” has absolutely been the most dependable and hard-working of all the teenaged girls I’ve had to hire (“had to”, because we can’t seem to get applications from adults for the server position). Seriously, she has consistently done everything I’ve asked of her, and has stepped up and delivered every time I’ve needed her to. Even my bosses have noticed this about her.
These three girls were working the closing shift. Now, once the dinner meal serving is done, the three evening servers split up the closing tasks. One will bus, clean, and reset the tables, one will wash the dishes, and one will clean the kitchen(well, the “server” area of the kitchen - the cooks clean their own area). So as they were dividing up the tasks amongst themselves, “A” (the senior employee of the three) said to “M”, “You wash the dishes. I’ll clean the kitchen [sweeping and mopping, various other cleaning tasks], because I want to make sure it’s done right.” (Poor wording in italics)
“M” took this as an insult to her own performance at “cleaning the kitchen”, and completely overreacted to the tune of threatening violence. Cursing. Following “A” out of the kitchen when “A” tried to walk away, and continuing her tirade in full view of our elderly residents.
So I got a phone call from my boss, while I was trying to enjoy a relaxing evening at home, to get my ass down to work and sort out the situation. I got there, and found “M” very contrite, admitting that what she had done was “unprofessional”, and promising that it wouldn’t happen again. Then I spoke with “A” to get her side of it. She was fucking terrified. Her words: “I thought I was going to get killed.” To clarify that statement, “A” was born to an alcoholic, drug-addicted, abusive father. She was removed from that situation by CPS when she was 5 years old and was adopted by her current parents. But she still suffered bullying in school while growing up. And now, here she was, at work, being cussed at and threatened by a slightly older girl who towers over her (“M” is about 5’ 10", taller than me, while “A” is about 5’ 6"). It probably didn’t help that she hasn’t known many black people in her young life, and suddenly found herself being threatened by a taller black woman.
First of all, I was completely gobsmacked to hear that “M” had done this. As long as she’s been working for me, she has been one of the quietest young women I’ve ever known. She’s an “only child”, and I think this is the first real job she’s had, so she’s still learning how to work. And now, I’m pretty sure she’s going to get fired (it’s out of my hands), and I’m terrified that this is going to turn into a racial discrimination thing. Though I doubt it will - “M” seems to clearly understand that she messed up, and has been very apologetic.
I also get the impression that none of the other girls have gone out of their way to make friends with her. Which sucks. Small towns suck. According to the 2010 census, my city is 0.4% African American. So most people growing up here don’t know how to deal. (“How to deal” = “they’re just like you!”, dumbasses) Which, in my state of “advanced age”, I find hilarious, because all of these kids listen to hip-hop and rap, but when confronted with an actual African-American, they don’t know what to do. And what’s even worse is that some of the girls who failed to befriend “M” are Hispanic. When I moved to this city in 1983, when I was 17, “Mexicans” were people who showed up to pick the fruit, and then went away once the harvest was over. And there was a lot of prejudice against them (which I didn’t understand when I first got here, having had little experience with Hispanics). But over the last 32 years since I’ve been in this city, more and more Mexicans have settled down here, to the point that they now represent 30% of the population, and they’re “mainstream”.And now, I guess they need somebody to look down on, and our 0.4% black population is it. So “K” (the Mexican-American) was eager as hell to jump to “A’s” defense and blame everything on “M”.
And of course, several of our elderly residents witnessed some of “M”'s indiscretion. They’re all over 80 years old. Who do you think they’re going to back, if asked?
I fucking hate this shit.
Sorry if that all rambled a bit. I worked 13 hours yesterday and have been awake for 22-1/2 hours.
hands Mister Rik a glass of warm honeyed milk and a blankie
Mister Rik I started to create several responses but I keep erasing them. In the end I suggest you speak at length with everyone involved, listen to them beyond endurance, and try to find teachable moments - especially life moments. We’re talking about teenagers with all of their lives ahead of them, getting fired or being in a work related incident at this age isn’t the worst of things. Look for perspective and try to encourage each person to grow from this, whether they remain employed there or not. You can pull a little good from even the crappiest of occasions.
If nothing else, as a manager and an elder to them, promoting calm, positive and rational reactions are all good things to do. That can have a positive influence on the rest of their lives.
The violent ex-boyfriend of a co-worker tried to get in here yesterday afternoon. He didn’t succeed, but least he confirmed that he had the right building. Well, that’s nice.
Cue sax. It’s quarter to three, there’s no one in the office except you and me, on the Friday of the Labour Day weekend.
I am all alone in my little corner cubicle, counting the minutes until I can get out of here. No signing authorities available, no higher-up to approve things. You come to me and tell me you need a flight from here to there, leaving Tuesday morning. Oh, and a hotel AND a car rental. No, the travel agent and the hotel will not accept my word that I will send the POs on Tuesday. No sig, no flight, no hotel. And no, I can’t get approval electronically.
You have had ALL FREAKING WEEK to tell me to arrange this and you want it done NOW?
Not happening.
Holy fucking crap! I just looked at my boss’s Facebook page and discovered that my fucking boss was born two months after I graduated high school.
That means I had already started in my line of work for almost a year before she was even born.
Also, great big WTF: She texted me tonight to tell me that I need to call her. 
Yo, Boss! If you’re fucking texting me, you have my phone number. If you need to talk to me on the phone, then fucking just call me! That’s just fucking power-tripping to text me to tell me to call you. It would take less fucking time to just call me than it takes to text me to tell me to call you. Fuck you. It’s my damned day off.
Also, everybody, quit fucking texting me. I have a fucking flip phone, and I can’t text for shit with this thing.
accepts both, gratefully
“A” keeps calling me, wondering when she can come back to work (when she can come back is out of my hands). She has recognized my “counseling” about “choice of words”. She said, tonight, that she should have just said, “You do the dishes, I’ll clean the kitchen”, without adding the “because I want to make sure it’s done right” bit.
So I shared with her a saying I heard some years ago: “Wisdom comes from Experience, and Experience comes from lack of Wisdom”.
LOLOL, my manager was born the year I graduated from college. HIS mother is roughly 2-3 years older than me :eek: :eek: :eek:
My supervisor does this. It’s not really that hard to look and see who else is cc’d on the email, is it? She also neglects to forward emails with very important information that I need to do my job. :rolleyes:
Years ago (before smartphones) I worked for a boss who insisted that he be cc’d on every email sent by all his employees (and as a food wholesaler with about 30 distribution centers across the US, we did a lot of emailing). And that was common among many bosses there. Then they all complained that they were flooded with emails!
Another common thing was printing out their email to read.
This wasn’t as counter-productive as it seems: bosses spent a lot of time in meetings, many of which were long and not very relevant to their jobs. They could take a stack of printed emails with and discretely read them during dull moments in the meeting. So a more effective use of their time.
One way technology could have been used to improve their email use: the software we were using at the time (Lotus Notes) highlighted messages that had not been read yet in bold type. But there was no distinction between messages addressed directly to you and ones where you were on of dozens cc’d on the message. If those were highlighted in a different color, or could be sorted later, or something, it would have been much easier for people to have kept their inbox under control, and concentrated their attention on the more important emails.
[As far as I know, there still isn’t any email system with this feature built in. There are some where it can be done via programming filters to your incoming mail, but that takes more work & expertise.]
[QUOTE=Mister Rik;18661615<snip>
Also, great big WTF: She texted me tonight to tell me that I need to call her.
Yo, Boss! If you’re fucking texting me, you have my phone number. If you need to talk to me on the phone, then fucking just call me! That’s just fucking power-tripping to text me to tell me to call you. It would take less fucking time to just call me than it takes to text me to tell me to call you. Fuck you. It’s my damned day off.
Also, everybody, quit fucking texting me. I have a fucking flip phone, and I can’t text for shit with this thing.[/QUOTE]
I your boss’s defense, many people prefer to text as its less likely disturb someone who may busy and/or sleeping.