Let's bitch about our stupid, annoying co-workers

gonna kill the dude who keeps sniffling every 10 seconds

blow your nose, fucker

sniffing every 10 - or blowing/honking every 60. you're in a no win.

i'm ok with every 60, plus each nose blow may be subtly different, unlike the sniffling

his sneeze is so twee

My coworker is a twee sneezer so I say, "Bless you, kitten!" which probably means she posting about how stupid and annoying I am on another message board somewhere.

omg. if i was a twee-sneezer, i'd kill you! (than again i'm not a girl)

OMG I hate people who sniff SO MUCH. I srsly want to scream STOP THAT at them, it riles me so badly.

Certain repetitive noises in general set me off for some weird reason -like, my boss sits right behind me and often eats at her desk, so the other day she was having what I guess was a yogurt, and she scraped repeatedly at the little tub with her spoon, over and over and over even after it sounded well and truly empty, so all I could hear was this hollow plasticky clok clok clok sound and I was *literally clenching my fists with rage* trying not to let it get to me.

...it was a very odd reaction.

Today I am the stupid, annoying co-worker: unable to get my PC to unfreeze, i killed it at the power switch on the wall, not realising that the PC of my co-worker across the room was plugged into a powerboard coming from the same socket--destroyed 30 mins of her work. in my defence all the cables are hidden under desks, but even so, she would be right to post about me here

Trayce! I am the same way! Repetitive sniffing, coughing, tapping, scratching. Makes me crazy.

The clever spods who decide where everyone sits have decided to put the technical team (lots of analysts looking at spreadsheets and concentrating) next to the debt team (lots of chatty people arguing with customers about paying their bills). It is the worst seating arrangement in history and I think everyone is getting cheesed off with it. Stop saying "ourselves" and start saying "us" you grammatical ignoramus!

btw JM if it's a PC you should be able to turn it off even if it's frozen by holding in the power button for 5-10 seconds or so

(and if it's one of the shitty Dells we have at work you will then need to press the power button like 3 times to get it to turn back on properly instead of just going "whrrr" on the fan and then turning off again, but it gets there...)

Trayce and carl, I have the same thing. I am so glad there is nobody in the seat right behind me any more because the last-but-one guy was a chronic sniffer and then there was a guy who mumbled to himself all day interspersed with making horrible squelching noises w/ a pen lid he would permanently have in his mouth and I just COULD NOT filter either of them out, urgh.

By 11am some days I felt so on edge I was on the verge of punching someone or bursting into tears just from this tiny little repeated noise, and I know it's ridiculous, and I know I almost certainly do things which my coworkers find annoying and/or disgusting too, and if I could rewire my brain not to be bothered by these things I totally would but I can't. Ho hum.

Not annoying so much as curious: floor in disabled cubicle covered in talcum powder with bare footprint next to the door, as though someone had stripped off, covered themselves in talc, and run arms flailing out into the corridor.

ahhhhhhh space cadet my other thing is MOUTH NOISES so someone squelching a pen around in his mouth would send me around the bend. Gah.

The clever spods who decide where everyone sits have decided to put the technical team (lots of analysts looking at spreadsheets and concentrating) next to the debt team (lots of chatty people arguing with customers about paying their bills). It is the worst seating arrangement in history and I think everyone is getting cheesed off with it. Stop saying "ourselves" and start saying "us" you grammatical ignoramus!

― give me back my 200 dollars (NotEnough), Wednesday, April 18, 2012 6:26 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In my last tech writing job, they put us tech writers (grumpy, pedantic, quiet loners) in the midst of the Q&A team (gregarious folks who needed to yell to each other from their cubicles all day) and it was similarly unsuccessful.

Space cadet, I used to have that problem, with repetitive machine noises. Like "could you photocopy 100 pages some place else"? But I'd feel bad about that. I don't know what to tell you, but I switched to a job where I could go outside if I needed to. You'd be surprised what 10-15 minutes outside will do for your nerves!

Or I'd find something that required visiting another office...seeing faces you haven't seen in a while helps, a new environment, etc.

You haven't experienced noise rage until you've had someone taping up cardboard boxes behind you all day. the screaming noise of the packing tape as they pull it... repeated at *just* long enough intervals that you spend a few seconds anticipating each one totally on edge... I genuinely have an eye twitch from that

ugh that tape-pulling-off-of-cardboard noise is my personal fingernails on a chalkboard noise

I was just at Staples where I saw "silent" packing tape.

I was moving out of a living space I shared with a terrible boyfriend and while he was trying to do something that necessitated quiet I revenge packed by putting everything in boxes and then moving the boxes into the living room where he was and THEN taping them all up slowly. So fucking satisfying.

Also he owed me lots of money so at least four boxes contained his vinyl collection that I was forcibly taking as debt repayment.

nice!

You haven't experienced noise rage until you've had someone taping up cardboard boxes behind you all day. the screaming noise of the packing tape as they pull it... repeated at *just* long enough intervals that you spend a few seconds anticipating each one totally on edge... I genuinely have an eye twitch from that

i almost posted something very similar to this. the interior designer in an adjacent cubicle spent all day yesterday boxing up carpet samples to ship and i had to deal with that noise allllll day.

so we got a new printer. it is fucking massive (longer than an SUV) is loud as a jet engine when printing and is the most epic white noise machine i have ever encountered when it's not.
oh - and it's about 18 feet away from me. i would, in a second, trade any of you people with your tape noises and spoon scrapping and sniffing to get away from the satanic printing engine located directly behind me. i feel like i'm working on a factory floor or airport hanger all day now and it's killing me.

That's crazy. Where do you work that you need such a huge in-house printer?

ad agency.

Is this like a digital proofing system?? Craziness. There's a reason those things are usually located in SEPARATE ROOMS!

Yeah usually print rooms have sound baffles and stuff! The one my ex worked in certainly did, they'd all go mad if they were sitting next to the machinery when they were doing layouts.

In fact you prob have an OHS case for the noise level I would hazard a guess.

Crisis protocol briefing by manic woman who enjoys crises just a little bit too much in an excruciating manic way. All the stress on the wrong words, like a newsreader -'Today what we've got FOR you is...' etc. Far worse was use of the phrase 'battle rhythm'. What?!?!?

Also, letter from bank informing me they are closing my account according to their rules of deposit accounts. Called bank, no reason on file other than 'rules of deposit accounts.' Sent me to the branch for details - good job the branch is a floor down from my desk or I'd have gone ballistic. (I know this is to do with my contract in the US ending and being re-signed, but had thought it was all sorted. But who sends out letters like that without a reason and nothing on file?!)

In fact you prob have an OHS case for the noise level I would hazard a guess.

I was thinking this, too. I would certainly meet with a supervisor or HR if necessary and explain why this is bothering you and ask to move. And check applicable workplace safety regs about this kind of thing.

if the printer is jammed, fix it! don't act like the printer is a mysterious machine. open enough of the panels, and you will find the source of the jam. don't stare helplessly at it like a baby.

the problem is - i have no idea how to measure weather or not the noise level is too much ("too much" according to the provincial OHS guidelines). i don't want to stir up shit - and i've already brought it up with both by superiors who are "working on it".

I know the passive-aggressive approach is generally NAGL, but one approach would be to wear earplugs and not respond to anyone who isn't in your line of sight.

approach approach approach argh

Around here when the printer runs out of paper, they only use about 1/4 to 1/2 a ream to refill it. The machine is meant to hold 1 full ream, and the tray is very deep, so why do they do that?

I long ago gave up expecting them to fix paper jams or anything slightly mechanical. I thought they were feigning ignorance and incompetence so b/c they knew I could fix shit, but the last time a paper jam happened on my day off, somebody mangled the innards while trying to clear the jam.

xp to rayuela

that drives me nuts too! so many people just put a handful of sheets in.

what drove me nuts is my supervisor was just looking confusedly at the sheet of paper in his hand, and looking helplessly at the printer, so when i started opening panels, he was like wow, you know the secret to this printer, and i was like, it's just opening a bunch of panels! and the only reason i was there was because i had to print something, and i just know that if i hadn't come by, he would likely have abandoned it (just like all the people before did, because it evidently had been jammed for a little bit)

basically - what i do is if i have to fix a jam when i know someone else walked away from it, is delete their job and move mine ahead of the others. not going to fix the thing AND wait for their doc to spit out!

I don't think I care as much about all the ways people eat animal testicles as the coworker who just spent 15 minutes telling me about all the ways people eat animal testicles seems to think I do.

Haha. Was it your dumb boss?

What bugs me a lot is when there is a paper jam or other malfunction, and rather than come whining to me about it, they leave the printer for dead and move on to one of the other, smaller printers. E.g., yesterday, the big fancy printer had a weird error, so the associate guy starts sending huge print jobs to the little printer/fax machine.

And once the big printer was fixed, he never switched back. So the fax machine was out of paper and a couple faxes were mixed in with his stupid print jobs.

AND THE PRINT JOBS WERE UNNECESSARY. Because he prints literally every single email and every single attachment.

No, the one competent IT guy. Oh the price I pay for competent IT support.

the other printer jammed and someone just left it!

we got whiteboards at work and people have been putting like inspirational quotes on them and one of our VPs attributed a quote to "ghandi"

I noticed today that I have been sighing a lot, like really deep, drawn out sighs and I bet it is really annoying! I really hate my job though, and it's making me sigh with bone-deep weariness.

Anyway, I'm sorry coworkers for being stupid and annoying.

I sigh a lot but its because Im always a bit out of breath - which, I've only recently found out is partly due to a badly deviated septum (ie cant breathe thru my nose). I know it annoys ppl, theyre always saying "whats wrong?". NOTHING I JUST CANT BREATHE STFU

I don't even think I can coherently explain what is happening, so great is my rage, but suffice it to say that our IT department is probably the most useless IT department ever. EVER.

No wait fine I cane explain it:

I have to watch a bunch of surveillance videos.
It's all in .mov files.
I cannot open those files on my computer.
After some Laurel and Hardy style back and forth with an IT guy who opened a bunch of .jpeg files also on the disc and insisted that they were the videos, I finally convinced him that I could not open the files.
All I need is for someone with admin privileges to install QuickTime.
Nobody will do that because why do I need to watch movies at work?
I am supposed to finish this very time sensitive project today, and cannot do so without watching all of this surveillance.
IT is like "Yeah, sorry."

Oh good, I just submitted a work order so there would be documentation that I tried to remedy this when I get a raft of shit for not finishing this on time. I all but stamped URGENT all over it, marked it high priority, put TIME SENSITIVE in the subject line. I just got the "Hey we got your trouble ticket!" email back and it's assigned low priority to the IT guy who doesn't know the difference between a .jpeg and a video file.

If you have a USB thumb drive you could install portable VLC onto it and watch them in that; that's what I used to do in the school computer labs when I had to write film papers.

That's amazing.