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

Boss:"Ronan could you comb your hair next time you come to work"

Me:"eh in fairness the contract doesn't say anything about me having to comb my hair"

Boss:"yeah but I mean you're a student now yeah? this job isn't so bad. they look after you well, it's a good wage, I'm happy with my lot"

Me:"I don't think there's any chance of me ever working here for a living, long term"

Boss:"Yeah and they pay your health insurance, it's not too difficult a job either"

Me:"Yeah no I'm never going to want to work here, to be honest I was planning on quitting as soon as I start college, or maybe even sooner, you needn't tell the main boss that"

Boss:"Oh don't worry, whatever is discussed here stays here. *long David Brent style lecture* I know what it's like to work WITH people and AROUND people, and I know that this station is not being run as effectively as possible, it's a clique, and I'm sure you can see that too Ronan. But quitting isn't going to change that. You quitting will not make this a smoother operation.

Me:"Eh I don't care about this job, I'm not sure what your point is"

Boss:"All I'm saying is, think about what I've said to you yeah? Just think about it"

Me:"............ok"

CEBCWTJCW: Morning Rachel!!! Oooh! What have you done to your NOSE??

Me: What? Oh yeah, it's a spot.

CEBCWTJCW: No! You've cut yourself or something! It's really RED.

Me: No, really, it's just a big, shiny, noticeable spot.

CEBCWTJCW: It looks really BAD!

At this point I gave up all hope of having a good day.

Woman At Next Desk: Oh, you used to live in London? So did I. I moved back after my daughter started school and, to be honest, I'm really glad I did. The education you get in London is terrible.

Madchen: I've heard inner city schools are, er, challenging.

WAND: Oh yes. I mean, she was one of only three white faces in the class.

Madchen: Oh. (Mutters something under her breath about 1 in 4 Scots).

Office twats who preface statements with 'I'm not being funny' should recognise that everything following the phrase comes with its own virtual kill file.

My other suggestion would be to canvass other coworkers for a pizza delivery one Friday and exclude her blatantly.

I work in a room with two people. Person 1 said to me all the stuff I wrote above. She thought nothing of saying it to a stranger (the assumption, I guess, being that I would think the same). Person 2 laughed along merrily. Also, I have come across numerous people in Glasgow who tell me they get scared in London because there are so many black people around. Again, the way they express themselves implies they feel no sense of shame whatsoever - they just don't see there's anything wrong in expressing obviously prejudiced opinions.

I'm not denying for a second that racism doesn't exist elsewhere (and I'm not forgetting that the survey found 3 in 4 Scots aren't racist) but this is the only place I've encountered bigots who have the expectation that my opinion must be the same as theirs.

reply from me: "actually, on Friday we both determined that we had the wrong CD and would have to special order a new copy. On Monday."

reply from my boss: "There must have been some miscommunication here."

yeah, between your ears and your brain. moron!

What the fuck?

Despite the fact that she's obviously still pregnant.

However, I AM authorized to purchase them, however I want, whenever I want.

What does that even mean?

SUBJECT LINE: I gotta get outta this place
...if it's the last thing I ever do (feel free to hum along.)

After a delightful morning spent discussing why someone:
1. Shouldn't open a printer paperfeed drawer, while the printer is printing;
2. Shouldn't send emails to everyone on their mailing lists about Church-related emails;
3. Should let others know when they need the printer instead of deleting documents in the queue;
4. Shouldn't tell someone "this is urgent" so they work really late to get it finished, when really, it isn't urgent at all and in fact, doesn't need to be done at all; and
5. Shouldn't take someone else's lunch from the refrigerator and leave it on the counter to make room for "extra drinks in case we have visitors,"
I have now experienced the conversation to top them all (and really, you have to laugh at this one. I did. Once I calmed down, imbibed chocolate and nicotine, and thought "well, at least it's not quantum physics?). So....here it is:

A Dialogue between "M" (yours truly) and "S" (Otherwise known as Scarett/Princess/Arch Nemesis/The Scarf Lady/etc.)
S: Hey "M"!
M: Yes?
S: You know how to work that digital camera yet?
M: Yeah, figured it out last week.
S: How long does it take to get those photos developed?
M: What?
S: I need some photos really fast, so I can photocopy them and make notes on the back. And get duplicates too, in case they get messed-up.
M: What? What pictures do you need taken?
S: I need to you take pictures of my computer.
M: Why?
S: I need to know what's on my computer.
M: (sigh) You are looking for a file?
S: No, I need to know what is on my screen thing.
M: (dawning awareness) You need screen captures?
S: No, I need pictures of my computer.
M: For....?
S: I need to know what's on my screen, 'cause these instructions don't make sense and I want to make notes.
M: Okay, then you need a picture of the information on your screen, that you can print and add notes to?
S: Yes.
M: Okay, we don't need the camera for that. We can just do screen captures. It's easy.
(M walks over to other office, taking deep and soothing breathes all the while, and explains how to "CTRL+ALT+PrtScn" - runs into trouble with explanation of holding down all keys at the same time. Eventually resolved and screen is captured.)
M: Now open Word and set the page to ?Landscape.?
S: My computer won't do that.
M: What? Yes it will.
(M goes through brief discussion of "portrait" vs "landscape" and how to perform operation in Word. Discovers part of problem is that S doesn?t know how to open Word because the icon isn?t on her desktop.)
M: Now just hit "Shift+Insert" and your screen shot will be inserted.
M: No, you need to hold down both keys at the same time.
M: I don't know, that's just the way the program is designed.
M: Yeah, it is find of frustrating.
M: Okay, now you have it. Just insert a new page for each of the next screen captures and then print the file.
(M returns to own desk and gets back into rhythm of formatting proposal.)
S: M! It isn't working. I want you to take the pictures for me.
M: I don't have time to take the pictures right now, I have to get this back to _____.
S: Well, I don't have the time to use the camera, so I guess this won't get done and _____ will be mad.
M: Yeah, I guess ___ will be mad, but I'll explain the problem to him.
S: Can't you do these thingys for me?
M: No, not right now. I have to get this done.
S: You know, it's your job to do this.
M: No, actually it isn't. I am sorry, but I really can't do it right now. If I have time later I'll come over and see what we can do. In the meantime, why don't you look under the "Help" menu to see if those instructions are better.
S: Oh, my computer doesn't have any "Help" on it. I keep telling ____ he needs to fix it, but he won't.

(M decides, for sake of sanity, to not try and figure out what that last comment means and returns to her editing, swearing all the while.)
End of original email.

And here are additional interesting tidbits about ?S?:
She claimed on her resume to be ?Microsoft Certified,? but was unable to explain what that meant;
She wrote all of her correspondence in Excel, because she didn?t know how to open Word (the icon wasn?t on her desktop);
When she came into work each morning, she made herself a pot of tea and sat in her cubicle reading household decorating magazines and drinking tea for the first two hours: and, best of all
She was once asked to provide a file that she had finished working on to another co-worker. The file was not on her hard drive for, as she explained, she ?didn?t want to fill it up with things? (and it was a 20 G HD!) File was eventually determined, by her, to be on a floppy. But floppy was blank when co-worker opened it. Eventually ?S? showed supervisor where she stored all of her floppys containing important info. She was attaching them to the metal parts of her cubicle with large magnets, so she ?could always find them.?

~ Laura (who is thankful that she can claim to be a happy rat, that abandoned the sinking ship in time to move to a much cushier and affluent ship, and is now ridiculously happy with things)

I've met a few people who have done basic "computer literacy" courses at colleges and Adult Ed. places who do this. What seems to happen is: the college says "don't store your files on the hard drive [of our lab computers], use a floppy" and the person absorbs this without understanding *why* they're being told it.

These sort of courses always seem to produce people who can't do anything except exactly what was on the course, and then only if their computer is set up exactly like the college ones were. Hence, not being able to start Word if it doesn't have a desktop icon.

(of course, the other stuff shows that this person seems to be a fuckwit regardless of that)

The ex-receptionist at my office once printed out an email so she could type it up in Word.

it's a sappy day.

1. "What does agriculture mean?"

2. "I was so annoyed. Someone threw themselves under my tube yesterday. People that do that must be mad."

3. Me: "Just tell them to put the web address in and it will take them straight into the site."

Her: "What address? Their address?"

Other things he did: worked at his cube standing up (making everyone around him very tense), unbuttoned his shirts halfway down his chest, commented on every phone conversation I had (work related or not), talked to himself, and played horrible CD-Rs of cabaret tunes he wrote and produced. I think the whole experience inoculated me against ever being annoyed by co-workers again.

Unfortunately something this stupid is uttered in my office at least once a day...

that is cray cray

There are approx 1/4 of the kids in my child's school year off with covid or suspected (waiting for pcr results) and about 40 of the parents are apparently going for a meal tonight. Tbf some of them have already had covid, but this is gonna be a superspreader event - just in time for a lovely covidy run up to Christmas.

There are just some people who want to rush blindingly forward back into "normal" so badly that they lose common sense.

they lose common sense

'common sense' usually amounts to whatever wins the contest between 'I desire this' and 'I fear this'. You've just incorporated what you know about covid into the 'I fear this' side of the equation. Me, too.

just need a little whine.

i took today off because i just needed a break. i've been at this job 1.5 years and my manager has shown herself to be .. terrible. she offers no coherent vision for the complicated responsibilities that i'm tasked with, and when i try to offer something, because frankly i need it to function, she obstructs me. i'm starting to lose my patience with it in meetings. i've gotten irate with her in group meetings twice now. everyone else i work with feels similarly as me, and i'm not even the person who has been most snarky to her, but still, i'm troubled about it. she does not have the balls to try and get me fired, i don't think. i don't have the heart to do battle with these kinds of people either. but i'm too old for this shit, and my patience has grown shorter! i sort of want to play the ice-cold long game and make her suffer, because frankly i'm smarter and better than she is. but i'm struggling with burnout and tbh my heart is bigger than my desire for revenge. i have also tried the "detach and check-out more, pretend to pay attention to whatever random in-the-moment thing she asks you to do for no good reason, and then don't do it" route - which DOES work pretty well with her, frnakly - but which turns work into an existential crisis every day. i have been in the workforce for 10 years after getting my graduate degree and i keep getting handed these childish, god-awful managers who want to have their egos stroked, hands held, feelings coddled, and then to be able to treat everyone who works for them like subjects in some kind of fucked up royal court. fuck all of them!

my unscientific guess is that 75% of people who are managers hate being managers and resent the fact that they're accountable not just for themselves, but other people. whether it's resentment that their employees are actually asking them to help, resenting the fact that they're upset about something, or oblivious to the fact that even if they aren't abusive, nasty bosses, their erratic inconsistency drives their employees almost just as insane as if they were....it's a type.

sounds like your boss. honestly I've felt the same way, some people used to ask me why I got so frustrated, "you're making a good salary, you're well respected, you get good reviews, and sure, shit is going sideways, but nobody blames YOU for it", they wouldn't get that I actually tie my own feelings of self-worth into my performance and want to be proud of what I do and get frustrated when I can't.

is this boss mostly ineffective or do you think she is threatened by you being smarter and more accomplished than her, like she's afraid you'll be in her spot years later?

honestly i don't know. i do think that she feels pretty insecure. i don't think she feels threatened by me specifically. this doesn't seem like the kind of place where someone gets demoted, it seems like the kind of place where people either slowly move upward of people like them, or just stay in their place forever if everyone feels like they have to put up with them. but i have heard a story that a demotion happened in the last ten years (under a different director). she no longer has the majority of people under her on her side, i think that's part of it. she also seems to be trying the patience of other people who are at her level or higher, but i have very little visibility into that.

thanks for your perspective. i think the best way forward tbh is to expect her to be this way and to engage in my job a little bit as i can anyway, just enough where i am "doing something" but not enough where i "care about the outcome." i felt like i had that a little bit earlier in the year, but it's very tenuous and trying.

On the topic of empathizing with your SACs (Stupid Annoying Coworkers) -- my current, more generous (?) theory about my namedroppy coworker, is that he feels personally inadequate and unaccomplished compared to the people he namedrops (including family members, which are likely the source of the feelings of inadequacy) and thus he relies on the relationship to make him feel less shit.

* relationship between him and the impressive person he brings up as knowing / having worked with, etc.

finding grace for the annoying habits of coworkers is harder than actually working at work

truth bomb

there is literally nothing "important" or "urgent" or even "complicated" about my job, the job itself is barely there. maybe that is one of the reasons why my manager is so bad - they are in denial about this, so everything they come up with to do is just a reflection of whatever insecurity happens to be nagging them in the moment. the hardest part of my job by far is not getting dragged into the hell that everyone else seems to be trapped in. in that sense, doing other things at work - like reading, or anything to take my mind away from the fact that i'm at work - is actually very crucial to the job itself.

My reaction to the truth of this statement:

there is literally nothing "important" or "urgent" or even "complicated" about my job

is to simply remind myself at the beginning of every workday that there is nothing important about the job, and that I am only selling my labor and intelligence because we live in a rotten society. it doesn't make me feel better, but it has freed me from feeling like a single ounce of my self-worth is tied to my day job.

like "you missed a typo when editing the 9000th iteration of this obscure drug's objection handler"

i do not give a fuck, my supervisor.

i have been in the workforce for 10 years after getting my graduate degree and i keep getting handed these childish, god-awful managers who want to have their egos stroked, hands held, feelings coddled, and then to be able to treat everyone who works for them like subjects in some kind of fucked up royal court. fuck all of them!

This part of map's post hits extremely hard.

people who a) chime in late to a teams chat thread and b) respond to the last thing said without getting further context and just sound like wackos. truly the doddering aunts/uncles of the office

My reaction to the truth of this statement:

there is literally nothing "important" or "urgent" or even "complicated" about my job

is to simply remind myself at the beginning of every workday that there is nothing important about the job, and that I am only selling my labor and intelligence because we live in a rotten society. it doesn't make me feel better, but it has freed me from feeling like a single ounce of my self-worth is tied to my day job.

Have just gotten hired for a part-time gig that is gonna manifest in exactly this way, I just know it. I'm gonna literally be one link in a chain of people who have to approve marketing copy; I won't even have to make the changes myself, just...suggest them to the creative team (and cc my boss, presumably). It is a pure money gig. I'm already imagining what I'm gonna spend the money on (putting out records).

It's kind of liberating— it's the other work I do (running writing workshops, teaching kids about poetry, editing manuscripts, writing for magazines etc) that I actually care about and agonize over. I just decided a few years ago that I'm not going to agonize over something that gives me no pleasure anyway— if the checks are being cut for the work I'm doing, then that's all that matters.

there is literally nothing "important" or "urgent" or even "complicated" about my job

on a deep level this is true about my work as well, but this rotten society has made certain things complicated, urgent, and important, and I have chosen to help people navigate these things or do these things for people, even though it mostly boils down to checking the right boxes and filling out forms in ways that will keep them out of trouble as well as saving them money they don't have.

true of most work,

but inside the context of the current world economy some things become significant because of how they operate within said economy.

In my profession, I sometimes make jobs for people. (As in, like, they previously didn't have one and now they do. Or they had a job and now they might have a slightly better one? I dunno.)

Of course I would rather they did not have to have jobs, of course. And I would rather those jobs not be soul-sucking clusterfuck meaningless office jobs.

But, until utopian fully automated space communism exists, people mostly have to have jobs, to like, live in buildings and eat food and wear clothing. Hence, what I do feels... at least a little bit helpful? Maybe?

Or maybe I'm just moving people from one terrible choice to a slightly less terrible choice. I don't know. But I don't think my purpose is to burn the system down, merely to function compassionately and thoughtfully within it. Because I also need to live, eat, feed my family. Which likes to eat food and wear clothing and live in a building.

Or maybe I'm just moving people from one terrible choice to a slightly less terrible choice. I don't know. But I don't think my purpose is to burn the system down, merely to function compassionately and thoughtfully within it. Because I also need to live, eat, feed my family. Which likes to eat food and wear clothing and live in a building.

true, some of my work involves improving the conditions of buildings where people live, or making it so people can live in buildings they can afford, so they can both live in a building and eat food ... or something like that.

xp yes it's helpful.

map and table otm

I think it's great that people here have interesting and meaningful jobs, but my outlook is that less purposeful make work jobs are good as well, and that shouldn't be stigmatized.

I had no intention of stigmatizing anyone for having dumb jobs tbh -- I feel like map and tables, two ilxors have much <3 for, have good reasoning and healthy attitudes towards theirs.

I absolutely do not think you were, just meant that as a general comment on this attitude, particularly in the US

Moodles - totally! Just doing your thing at work and leaving it there (so your real - and presumably meaningful - life exists elsewhere) is totally cool and should not be stigmatized. Full agreement.

My job looks important, but pretty much all I do is drive mentally disabled people places and watch them do stuff.

Which likes to eat food and wear clothing and live in a building.

which is on fire

too soon

lol eephus and sarahell, great sequence

there's a learner in one of the classes I'm supervising whose father is dying, and doesn't have long left.

she's missed a little time to go to the hospital here and there and wanted to know if she could dial in from the hospital to listen on those days (since she has a desktop, which she can't bring with her).

her manager kind of callously just says "no, not unless you have a tech issue", and she was rightfully upset that he was insensitive, so he came to one of our teachers, and I offered to escalate for her. tried to see if a) could we move her to a class that starts later so that she can spend the time with her father now, and still know she has a job waiting for her, or if b) on a limited basis we might be able to let her dial in from hospital, and work with her to keep her caught up (which the teacher offered to do).

instead, they're basically non-committal saying "no, she can't do that, and we may have to remove her from this assignment and reassign at a later date", instead of actually earmarking her for a specific class. worst, they loop in the team lead in question and he butthurtedly states he was disappointed to see this was escalated above him.

well maybe don't act like a dick to someone whose father is dying next time. I know there are rules and parameters but maybe you could have offered to look into some alternatives or at least been less David Spade-y about it.

*she came

I will admit, before I was on my anxiety meds, and when I was younger and more naive, I was pretty callous to a lot of people as a manager back around 2006. it took getting called on it many times to actually cause me to change my behavior (so maybe this guy needs to be called on it too)

there's "pretty callous" and there's "making desperate people choose whether to spend time with their dying father and risk losing a job" - this is horrifying.

yeah, and quite honestly, it's a bit horseshit because we already have people miss ENTIRE DAYS due to:

-catching COVID
-going to a funeral of someone who died from COVID (or something else)
-not having equipment shipped to them on time
-just literally not showing up and asking the next day "lol can u stay late and catch me up"

her boss said he "had to adhere to the attendance policy". this is a third party who regularly doesn't give a fuck when their employees miss one or two full days of class for reasons that are legit bullshit. NOW we're going to put a line in the sand?

If she gets reassigned to another class quickly, at least she still has a job but usually they tell us what class they're moving the person to, not merely mentioning it as a possibility.

all this is probably why I never cut it as a higher level manager, because I couldn't take the toxicity those assholes spewed.

Find out if the people with ‘acceptable’ but bullshit absences are all or predominantly men, and if so, your colleague has been discriminating against the female learner.

I know it's not going to change anything and I'm not going to get the job but you're very much mistaken if you think I'm not coming after you for lying, you deceitful HR fuck.

So uh maybe if you wanted to do literal construction in each of our cubes you maybe should have had us work from home instead of coming all the way in to find out our workspaces were going to be inaccessible for much of the day?

today my boss's boss said this of a partner manager who is extremely over the top and teaches her reports extremely incorrect things: "We appreciate you, but you're hurting us".

I want that as a bumper sticker

xp - that is fucked up and totally not common practice for any construction work I'm familiar with (and I am familiar with a bit). I mean, on the construction crew side, I'm sure they would have preferred y'all were not needing access to your space and that they could just do the work they've been contracted to do without the awkward interactions and accommodations.

update to Frank Mills from the Hair sequel

lol sic

xpost - it's just a shitshow of communication. they are lowering some of the built-in workstations in our cubes that were installed at the wrong height years ago. my boss told us they'd start early morning today and be done with all five of them by mid-morning, so we should come in late. well, no. they are still on the first one and it's been a mess but fortunately he wised up and sent us all to work from home.

yr boss sucks at managing construction as well as communication

manager today asked my boss's boss (again) why the training said 9 am - 12 pm, as she thought it was a morning training.

I'm going to hope she doesn't actually think 12 pm means midnight buuuuut.....

are 15 hour training days normal?

definitely not!

the one with Denzel was 2 hours

Lolz

yes, it's a good idea to plan a virtual surprise birthday party for the head of our division at 7:30 am their time, and when they're not online at that time (like usual), to text that person and try to call them telling them their boss is looking for them.

because the heart attack they have is going to be worth the momentary 2 seconds of excitement when we shout "happy birthday".