Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
141

In the spirit of Christmas, I sent out my list of all our employees and their home addresses to be verified. Now, I shouldn’t have to do this as we have a system for updating addresses and hirings and firings. Our people have been told this over and over. Technically, it’s not my fault if someone doesn’t get their Christmas card. However, my Inner Scrooge isn’t nearly as ascendant as I thought she was. And, yep, sure as shootin’ here come all the corrections… “Oh, she quit. Yeah, I moved. Oh, him? He’s new. He started six months ago.”

I get that I like following the rules and accuracy. I get that these things don’t mean as much to others as they do to me. It’s part of the reason I’m an admin, afterall.

But Jumpin’ Baby Jesus, if you want your people to get their Christmas card, ya gotta let me know if they move!

Bah-humbug.

142

My relationship with the rest of my team at work has always been dicey at best. Now that I’m having a baby in March, they’re all geared up to get rid of me. I’m prevented from being a functioning member of the team when I am in meetings with them, because two of them have teamed up to disagree with absolutely everything I say–even when it means contradicting themselves–even when it means contradicting things they’ve agreed to ON PAPER.

But now I’ve begun to just not be invited to meetings. I’m supposed to be the head of my sub-team, almost a boss unto myself. Well, yesterday I find out that the team lead and one of my insubordinate part-timers had a meeting with a fucking Vice President about the direction the project is going. I wasn’t consulted.

I hate my job so much that you’d think I wouldn’t care, but it really fucking plays with your self-esteem.

143

Hey, other people responsible for video conferencing at our other locations around the globe! See how this email asking for our contact information specified that it should be sent to the mailbox it came from? Not, you know, to the ***ALMOST 150 OF US ***who also got the same email?

Also, person who sent the email: Really, you couldn’t foresee this happening and just put us all in the BCC so that it would be impossible to Reply All and hit everybody who doesn’t give a shit with a string of emails with attachments?

Sattua: Are you in the U.S.? I’m pretty sure what they’re doing may be illegal, if you can prove that it’s related to your pregnancy. IMO, start documenting everything, talk to a lawyer, then talk to HR with your lawyer.

144

Shot From Guns, it isn’t illegal unless I’m actually let go, and even then, what they’re doing is the best defense should I be foolish enough to waste my time suing–they’re building up a great big wall of documentation about how lazy and uncooperative I am. Because I’m always disagreeing with people and not attending meetings, right?

Just spent most of the morning trying to figure out where some software is located on our servers. There is no documentation ANYWHERE on the company’s internal website about where it is. Turns out that the server it resides on is on the fritz, going on and offline and randomly denying people’s credentials… including mine. And the IT guy is on his usual three-hour lunch. Fuck I hate this.

145

Right, which is why I’m suggesting you start establishing counter-documentation *now *and talk to a lawyer. So that, if the lawyer thinks it’s a good idea, you can go to HR (or your lawyer can go to HR) and say, “Hey, you wouldn’t be preparing to fire **Sattua **for being pregnant, would you? Because we have a bunch of proof here that you’re building a specious case against her, and I’d *hate *to have to sue you for gobs of money.”

I’ve been in exactly your shoes–though because my manager hated me, not because of a pregnancy–so I know how frustrating it is. I got to sit through a meeting where I was accused of being incompetent because of the high number of edits I had on the second pass through a folder of copy, and when I pointed out that most of my folders came from other proofers, so I wasn’t the person who did the first pass, well, then that was evidence of a disregard for my coworkers’ abilities. :rolleyes: In retrospect, I really wish I would have kept better documentation of everything as it was happening.

146

I’m having déjà vu and not in a good way.

Years ago, I was a lab tech in a small factory, and I got picked to represent the factory’s Quality department in a SAP implementation. I went, I drove the consultants nuts, I redefined processes, I bloody well conquered - in the end, they said “if you can’t beat them, hire them” and moved me to the consultants team.

One of the ugliest fights we had involved, not the consultants, but the Training Team. The courses were utter shit, powerpoint-based and with definitions taken directly from SAP’s documentation and a language more appropriate for a senatorial report than for the training of smiths-turned-mechanics. To give you an idea, the definition of Maintenance (sadly lost in the mists of time, so I can’t provide it) was five lines long. Then we had these manuals, called “BPPs”, which, for every screen in the program, described every button, nook and cranny, but without telling you how and when to use them, or how to achieve what you needed.

When we asked to have materials that our workers would actually understand, we were told “that wouldn’t be pedagogic!” In the words of my coworker Javi, “well, that shit of theirs may be very ped-a-gog-ic, but it don’t teach worth a fuck!”

We used ISO9000 to beat the system :stuck_out_tongue: Wrote the new ISO manuals in a language our workers would understand, separating things by process, and for each process going step-by-step and don’t explain any button that’s not used: “if nobody has explained to you what a button is for, it’s a button you don’t need”. And it worked. Eventually, our “pirate manuals” replaced official ones, and we did victory dances, and the wave, and high-fives.

And now I’m expected to perpetrate on my client’s workers that same “ppts and bpps” shit… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH! IT MAY BE PEDAGOGIC BUT IT DON’T TEACH WORTH FUCK, DAMNIT!

147

Hey coworkers, please SHUT THE FUCK UP!! Yes, this is a technical support centre and we all talk on the phone and to each other a lot and that’s fine. Just stop it with all the humming, singing, whistling, desk drumming, and setting off of your noisy toys. And when you are talking to someone use you indoors voice. If you need to talk to someone in the next cube get up and go talk to them, don’t just shout in some random direction. And that space next to the printer near me is NOT a phone booth. If you need to take a personal call on your mobile go out in the hall!

148

Tee-hee. I work in technical support and we totally drive the rest of the company batty. We don’t leave our desks to communicate to each other. We’re a team and we work any complicated problems (which lately seems like all of them) together which requires. We talk on the phone a lot (not loudly, just talking).

Since this is a software company, we have the programmer people who like things very quiet so they can concentrate (to the point that clacky keyboards and slurping soup have been outlawed in their areas). We used to have a constant stream of people who would move away from our area as soon as any other space in the office became available.

Then we finally moved offices. We now have our own area away from everyone else and can work in peace (well, it’s still loudish but that’s the way we like it).

149

Follow-up to my first gripe: Now they’re talking about hall decorations. What hall decorations celebrate Saturnalia? And how do I pull this off without excessively annoying a strongly conservative Christian co-worker?

(The co-worker is so strong in eir belief that e had trouble seeing a statue of a Hindu deity at an Indian restaurant.)

150

What did they even mean by that?

151

Oh man, now I have to go ask my boyfriend if they have any crazy rules like that at their work. If I hear anything good, I’ll report back. (Personally, I’ve found that a lot of geeks love clacky keyboards, so I find that one particularly odd. Although maybe it’s only that we like hearing our own keyboards rather than other people’s…)

Maybe a picture of Saturn draped with untied ropes and some dice?

152

Do Yule, lots of evergreens, mistltoe, holly. Drinking, meat. I think the blood can be skipped.

For Saturnalia, you’d have everyone wear colorful casual clothes= NO SUITS, a *pileus * cap, small gifts (esp to underlings), a banquet, and gambling.

I suggest the theme be “Cool Yule” and he won’t figure it out.

153

Dear idiots:

Please let people OFF the elevator before you try to cram your asses in. Thanks.

Failure to do so will result in me blindly kicking through the gap in the elevator the instant it opens.

154

Misrule … so looks like nude dancing about and lots of drinking, and those bouncy fake penises …

Sucks to be your christian co-worker.

155

That would make me want to decorate my desk and cube in a Religions of the World theme. I think you should go with at least things like pine boughs and mistletoe and shit (nice and pagan, is what I’m getting at).

156

I doubt I can get away with the Roman orgy. So gambling it is.

157

What if it just stays in one place?

158

Talk about missing the elephant in the room!

159

Go to your room.

160

I hate to interrupt your bitchfests because, truly, it is a rare delight when your shrill obscenities grace my ears. But for the love of frog, stop cussing loudly when I’m on the phone. It’s fucking unprofessional. Cuss after the phones are off, or outside (like I do!). Go eat a sammich or something. Take your PMS meds and don’t call me in the morning.