Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
9302

Coworkers are suddenly dropping like flies. When a fellow longtime FT employee transfers to another store with no warning, it makes you wonder what’s coming down the pike.

It’s no secret that many of my now ex-coworkers think our manager is a brown nosing dolt. I can see why they’d think that, and yes, in some ways he is. However, I’ve worked with managers 100x worse on the brown nosing front. And yes THIS IS RETAIL YOU BELONG TO US. HR has actually told people “Either conform to the schedule or walk.”

I don’t even want to think about the holidays. Plus you know things are bad when your manager is considering rehiring a known addict who was let go because of excessive absences because “at least they know the department and I won’t have to train them.”

:headdesk:

9303

And, oh, on top of this? I’m on vacation next week and I was scheduled to work one day, possibly two “because we have absolutely no choice because we can’t get anybody from another store to take your place.”

So I went to HR and asked if I work these two days during my vacation, how will I be compensated for it if I’m already getting vacation pay?

Turns out that I’ll be paid my regular pay in addition to my vacation pay for ANY day I work next week. In other words, if I chose to work 40 hours, I’d be getting paid for 80 “because you’re doing us a favor.”

I have to admit it’s tempting. OTOH I’m also looking to buy a new-to-me vehicle and that’s what I’d planned for next week.

9304

Never, ever, tell them you aren’t leaving town on vacation. Made that mistake exactly once and got called in, got calls with questions, was asked to come in another day. From then on, as far as anyone knew, I vacationed in Tibet.

9305

The good news is that I gave him my mini-script and he started doing well with it. Then they transferred him back to Robot Insurance. He took it poorly because that’s an entry-level position and he’s been here, off and on, for seven years. He also said that he got two different reasons why from two different people, one saying that the program is over-staffed and the other saying it was because he spends too long between calls. “They can’t even get their stories straight,” he said, not realizing that both could be true. Better him than me. :rolleyes:

Then we had a meeting explaining the new attendance policy, which sounds a lot like the original policy, which had gone by the wayside some time back, leading to people working only a fraction of their scheduled days while making lame excuses. “So why didn’t you just fire them,” I asked. “We didn’t have a mechanism in place. Now we do.” Oh, for fuck sake, could this company be more lame?

Anyway, all this shit was too much for Bro and Sis, so they took Friday afternoon off without leave. I was asked by the super, “Where are they?”

“Permission to speak freely? They are throwing a tantrum. He is a grown-ass man of 55 who acts like a spoiled six-year-old and his big sister is his enabler.”

I have never, ever spoken like that about a peer to a member of management, but I’m sick of them. I may have mentioned this before, but I once asked Sis if he has always acted like he does, and she only said, “I love my brother very much.” Apparently she doesn’t know that “I love my ______ very much” is first on the list of “What Enablers Say.”

9306

That trick usually works…unless you’re me who 1) takes one family vacation a year and has already taken it, and 2) has so much vacation time I was asked if I’d be willing to forfeit some of it “because we have no help”. I turned that down pronto because, even if I am sitting at home, it’s my VACATION.

I was expected to work 12 hours yesterday. I LOL’d because that’s what I did day in/day out when I was in my 20s and 30s. I had to walk away before I got a whiff of any guilt trip.

I’m a vested FT employee, btw, and in my industry I’m akin to management minus the title. As one of my old HR people said, “We don’t expect you, as a FT person, to act like someone PT. We expect them to screw around. We’re paying you NOT to.”

As it is, my boss has to forfeit a week’s vacation because of all this. He was given a choice: Either forfeit or lose you job. Because he’s salaried, I don’t think he’ll be compensated the way I’m going to be.

9307

Preach it. I took 3 days off last week. I worked 9 hours those 3 days, 12 the next, and 8 the last. 29 hours on “two work days”. Admittedly, the thing they were asking for was something nobody else could have done, but I was pissed that they didn’t let me know of the need the week before so I could have done it beforehand.

9308

Preach it. I took 3 days off last week. I worked 9 hours those 3 days, 12 the next, and 8 the last. 29 hours on “two work days”. Admittedly, the thing they were asking for was something nobody else could have done, but I was pissed that they didn’t let me know of the need the week before so I could have done it beforehand.

Back to kiz, though: work the hours, then you’ll have more money for that new-to-you car. You can do the shopping on the day(s) you DO have off, and/or after hours.

9309

That’s why I’m not too upset about it. Still it’s the principle of the whole idea. It’s only going to to get worse the closer to the holidays.

9310

Another business analyst rant: We just implemented yesterday a small software product, linked to our web portal for the use of both internal staff and external customers. Today’s the first business day with it in production and internal people are telling me that although it was designed with Y, it should actually be X. In a tone like “well, duh, of course it should be X” and yet none of those people bothered to come to my requirements gathering meetings where we hashed out the design.

Even worse, a manager level person sent me an email saying “now that it’s in production - good job - when can we change the link to say <something very slightly different> as intended?” I don’t know who intended the name to be that, but they should have been in the requirements meetings a month ago where the name of the link was decided on.

As the business analyst on the project, now I look like an idiot because I should have ensured that these people were included in the process - despite the fact that I DID invite them and it was their choice to blow it off. :mad:

9311

I’m again assisting a newbie who is WAY behind on her work. I don’t mind, I have nothing to do on my own caseload.
However.
Our program has a few screens where we cannot take actions on other people’s cases. I did all the work, one screen needs to be completed by her, I sent her an email telling how to code it line by line, requested she do it within 24 hours, otherwise info could change.
This was last Wednesday. Nothing has been done. I asked her WTF? “Oh, I didn’t realize it was time sensitive”.

Another newbie asked me Friday to walk her through a process of removing arrears from an account. I did so, including the real amounts. It was to the point of “Change $1000.00 to $500.33 on line X” easy stuff. Figured she did the work, moved on with my day.
Today, when I was in office, she asked me how to remove the arrears again. Even though she had all the info, she wasn’t comfortable doing the work, so put it off. I spent almost an hour with her on Friday… and another hour today.

9312

Every fax or scan you send us is upside down. Our faxes and scans come in to us as e-mail PDF attachments. Since you put them in upside down, we have to rotate the view. Not a back-breaking inconvenience, I know, but still annoying.

But what I want to ask is do you *seriously not know which end is up??? *

9313

If they continually do this, then you are just enabling them by accepting them.

Refuse them! Send an email back to these people saying that the attachments were unusable, because they were upside down, and you won’t be able to process those until they resend them right-side-up. And stick to your guns. That’s the only way to get them to fix this.

9314

Can’t I just quit my damn job? Literally!

I’ve been with this company for 11 months. It’s a half-assed company with a couple dumbass owners who know next to nothing about this industry. I’m only waiting for another company to open a new facility. I’ve had a standing job offer for the new facility for over a year.

The time is near! My exile is finally over!

I turned in my notice today. What followed was an hour of the strangest conversation I’ve ever been a part of. The owner tried to throw a huge guilt trip on me for leaving. We’re family, we’re friends, we can’t believe you’d leave. We can’t believe you’d accept an offer without talking to us about it first. What? That’s not how it works! Hey boss, it’s business, not personal. I… I’m really at a loss for words. “That’s your conscience bothering you for doing this to us.”

Aside from the immense guilt trip which is just too long and insane to type here, he kept asking why I would possibly want to leave. I didn’t want to say “you and your company suck, I’ve never liked you, you won’t be in business after this other company opens, etc,” so I kept saying “more money, insurance, more vacation time, etc.”

This current company doesn’t have insurance and he kept zeroing in on that like it’s a good thing. Now, I actually have my own insurance but I never told them because I thought it would help pressure them into getting insurance for everyone. Hey, I tried, everyone.

Anyway, like I said, he kept talking about insurance like it’s a bad thing. He repeated over and over again that, sure, the other company might offer more money, but once I sign up for their insurance, it’ll probably be so expensive that it will negate any extra money I make. Whatever, I’ll be making about $25k more, I think I can afford insurance.

10 minutes after I talked to him, he came out to give me a piece of paper. He had called Farm Bureau to get an insurance quote. I don’t know if he got a quote for an 80 year old person or what but it was 4 times what I (secretly) pay. He said “See, if you take that job, that’s what you’ll be paying for insurance. I think you’re making a big mistake. Sure, they might pay you well, but once you get their insurance and start paying this much, you won’t be able to afford to work there. Think about it. You don’t want to leave here. It would be a huge mistake.”

What the…? I’m 37 goddamn years old, do they think I don’t know how insurance works? Do they think I’ve never had insurance before? If I go out into the world, is insurance a big scary monster that will eat me? Am I supposed to thank him for keeping me safe from insurance?

9315

The first clued me in to the second. “How can you do this to me?” and variants thereof seems to be a favorite with lousy bosses and abusive assholes. In fact, all the ex-bosses I’ve had who tried to pull the guilt trip were abusive assholes! The good ones respond in terms of trying to minimize negative impacts: “oh shit… damn. Is there anything I can do to keep you? No never mind. OK, can you please make sure you’ve documented everything, and since your replacement won’t be here by the time you leave, hand over to Joe and he’ll hand over to the replacement.”

9316

Link to a proposed Part Two of this thread.

9317

Based on the title I take it work place griping is ok here. I want to rant! This happened to me 30 years ago and still pisses me off every time I think about it.

   My proudest period of employment in my entire life was turned to shit by a jealous boss thinking I wanted his job, resulting in me loosing a job I had been on for 15 years. I played a part in my loosing the job but his attitude toward me was so fucked up I was at the point I just wanted out. I really loved the company, I was highly respected and liked by the owner and top brass. All that was tainted and it still pisses me off.

   The company was anticipating some rapid growth because of several companies they had recently bought out. They were going to close them down and move all the production to our location. 

   As it was because of a period of time where there had been some bad hiring practices we had some problem employees with a lot of seniority. In order to get rid of these problems the company would have to lay off 1/2 of all employees for one year. The owner of the company asked me if I would be willing to give up my job running the truck shop and move into the plant with the same pay. He wanted me to see if I could speed up production. 

   Within 2 months I had all the machines upgraded, parts in stock as well as cataloques and manuals that were needed to keep the machines up. With an investment of about $1,000 per machine ( replacement was well over $100.000 per machine) I was able to get production up over 4 times what it had been. We didn't even feel the lay off and was able to drop an entire second shift and all over time. 

     My boss had been there 28 years and the plant had done nothing but deteriorate. Inspite of that I ran everything I was doing through him and only him and discussed it with no one else. He didn't trust me and was burning up with jealousy. He pulled my keys so I couldn't come in early anymore and get the machines ready for the day, he never accused me but he told the owner and the upper brass he was sure I was stealing. The relation ship just was downhill from there, I took a medical leave of absence for 3 weeks and they rejected my dr's note and sent me a notice of termination on my 3rd day. He then told the owners and brass that I had hired some lawyers for a workmans comp case which was a lie. 

I moved on and actually was better off for it running my own business for several years then going back to work for a great company with better pay.
9318

I wouldn’t say mine are abusive, but they’ve only been in business a couple years and are… strange. They’re very unprofessional but they think they’re the best place around. I don’t see how they’ll survive once my new employer opens though.

After our talk Friday, they suggested that I think it over and talk to them again Monday. I was dreading it. I finally got called to the boss’s office to talk, sat down, told them I had thought about it and decided to take the new job (I actually didn’t think about it at all over the weekend), nothing personal, i just think it’s a good opportunity, etc. And guess what, they were perfectly professional about it! ‘Hate to see you go, do you know anyone qualified for your job that we could call, keep us in mind, if things don’t work out we’d like to have you back, etc.’ It was a total 180 from Friday.

9319

Would it have been better if they had tightened the job?

:wink: