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...

if it's me, i'm responding with "yes, looks like it was just added four minutes ago" including screen cap of the file w timestamp.

I used to engage in such petty fripperies but the momentary self-satisfaction was never enough to offset the fact that I was clearly the only party in that exchange who GAF.

lol I still do mostly just to tell the other person "ok, i see u"

i find that shit only gets worse if you don't call it out as early as possible.

it does amuse me when people seem to forget things are timestamped/logged. the security manager at my firm ten years ago said a handful of our own people used customer information to apply for credit cards and things thinking there was no way it could be tracked, until they wound up in the office getting terminated and referred to the police.

two of them even stole a ladies pension benefit in collusion with a trust contact but were easily discovered because they left a heavy electronic trail - got perp walked out the door by police minutes before I got back from lunch that day.

that sucks you missed the perp walk.

Works both ways. At my last job, a coworker's manager was gunning to get rid of her (for reasons that were entirely personal, as far as anyone could tell) and on the day she finally got the boot for supposedly falsifying her timesheet, she asked me on her way out (because I had access to the pertinent systems) to see if I could find logs of her activity for the supposedly-falsified time in question. And sure enough, there it was. Because, see, her manager had checked the security records to confirm that she hadn't beeped through the turnstile on that Saturday afternoon...without bothering to check if she'd done work from home. And so they sheepishly had to rehire her and she subsequently split on her own terms and sued them for wrongful termination.

The moral: abject stupidity runs rampant through every stratum of the American workforce.

That's fucked. Anytime I thought I found evidence of malfeasance, I always made sure to look at every alternative explanation first before assuming the worst.

A colleague of mine almost got one of our client's employees fired once. I don't remember what it was about, but this employee was suspected of something or other, but they insisted they said something on this call that absolved them. Again, don't remember what.

So this colleague goes to pull the call but pulls the wrong one. Doesn't notice that the company the caller states she works for is wrong, gave a name completely different than the employee, DOB doesn't match. All these obvious clues. So she reports to our client that the employee didn't say what they alleged they said, and almost termed the person until they insisted our rep must have listened to the wrong call and begged our client to re-review.

Fortunately someone else did and almost immediately it confirmed the employees' version of things, and our relationship with the client was damaged by the ordeal.

One of our classes I teach has a set sign-up process. We rarely have issues with it.

However, this week, a bunch of leaders who don't typically get involved in the sign-up process decided to stick their noses in and gum up the works. Working with the team managers, they came up with a huge list of employees who need to be trained, but somehow botched the communication on who was supposed to sign them up.

So yesterday, one manager asks why six of her employees didn't get training invites, only to find out nobody actually signed them up. We fixed that and got them enrolled. No big deal.

Then, one of the Operations Leaders kept telling us throughout the week that she was going to submit more names, only to not send any. So we finally message her on our chat client on Wednesday to ask "look do you have names or not?". She then gives us five names, but tells us they will come over on the sign-up sheet that night, so to hold off signing them up until then, just in case plans changed. Rather than letting us just do it right then. Of course, nothing comes over that night, so I don't know if that means if they no longer need training or if someone just forgot again.

So I ask her yesterday "hey, these specific five people, do they still need to be signed up?", only for her to give an answer that was neither affirmation or denial, just "anybody who is supposed to attend should have been signed up already". Given the previous fuck-ups, I wrote back and asked her to please confirm if the *five people I specifically named* needed to be signed up, yes or no. Day goes by, no reply.

So naturally, the manager of one of the five learners who I've been trying to confirm needed to be signed up for a day and a half messages us asking why this student didn't get an invite. so the week is out and we still aren't clear on the official final roster for a class that starts Tuesday.

they also laid my friend off today, one of the few members that was able to keep one of our most difficult clients happy. the other managers on that client have all but given up home on retaining them.

you'd think that might have saved her job, but nope.

A coworker who isn't stupid or annoying forwarded me an exchange between her manager and the stupid annoying fuckstick I've bitched about 315 times itt.

Manager: Why did you, a person we know is a full-on moron who always does shit he shouldn't do, do this thing you did and that you shouldn't have done?
Fuckstick: Hmm, I don't know why I would have done that thing I very clearly did. You should ask Coworker about why I did that.
Manager: Coworker, why did Fuckstick to this thing he did and that he shouldn't have done? P.S. Absolutely nothing in the file indicates that you've ever had anything to do with this account. Not sure why I'm asking you about it at all except that Fuckstick said I should. Sure hope he never tells me to walk into traffic!

They find new ways to surprise me, every day.

i used to be the 'subject matter expert' on a couple of things where I worked and people would always unnecessarily add me to random meetings on completely non-relevant to me things. And then they would totally call me out to ask me questions about someone else's department, of which they were the subject matter expert, while that person was also. on. the. call.

We are forced to run all of our programs through a remote connection, for some reason. The remote install of Acrobat just stopped working about half an hour ago. 99% of the work files I handle are pdfs. I was already hustling to make up for the three hours of work time I lost yesterday when our systems went down completely (not unusual, as I understand they went down for a cumulative seven hours when I was out of the office on Friday). I am going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs until my workday is over. Because, y'know, fuck this absolute joke of a workplace.

(I guess this is an indirect indictment of our stupid, annoying IT personnel, who I only really know from their exemplary reputation as dick-tripping tech wizards.)

one of my coworkers was using both printers to do huge jobs while also having a bubble tea sitting on one of the printers yesterday. very confounding

(the two long jobs were non-urgent, nobody has beverages in the printer room ever)

Instant beheading for that

I swear to fucking god. So, I order some civil rights A/V material for a program the students are putting on, and this bitch who is not even my boss was overheard throwing a massive tantrum about it. Because, uh...the material made her uncomfortable. And rumor has it had to do with an alleged discrimination complaint against her, and my association with this group makes her look bad.

Then another faculty member asks me to buy an expensive Japanese CD, and some other asshole disrespects me and asks me why I bought it. Because I was ASKED to buy it, you unprofessional dickface. Just because you play in some band no one cares about doesn't mean you have the right to condescend.

Did I mention that Mr. Condescension and Ms. Ill Temper are friends?

Did I mention that Mr. Condescension and Ms. Ill Temper are friends?

Why am I not surprised? Anyway, godspeed to you for working with two such "prizes", and I really hope someone local to you treats you to some potent potables (or whatever else makes life better for you).

Thank you. The faculty seem to hate them, but every time there's a bad apple at work, the people in the immediate vicinity do nothing.

It just dawned on me that maybe they're just jealous because I know a lot of the faculty.

Omfg we hired a guy a few months back. I can’t begin to describe how awful he is. Basically doesn’t do jackshit. And what he does, he does all wrong. Have to correct his mistakes. Fucking awful. And just disregards all the rules.

today I had one learner in my class who started interrupting me every 2 minutes, then took 30 minutes to do an assignment correctly while not listening to my instructions.

put me so far behind. but....all of us are stressed, so I just pretended it was no big deal.

and then asked my boss for Wednesday afternoon off to just....decompress.

ffs now the office is closed, my email is just constantly pinging with idiots emailing the entire fucking company with their witty anecdotes about working from home. FUCK OFF

Dear fellow employees I am overhearing in a conversation right now about not wanting to follow anyone's orders about sheltering in place re: Covid-19, with your "not being afraid" and "it doesn't matter to me, I'm healthy and young": do you want what's happening right now in China and Italy to happen? Because that's how you get what's happening right now in China and Italy to happen. I am not going to confront them about this because to do so would be exceptionally unprofessional and create an antagonistic work environment, so thankfully there's this thread wherein I can vent. BTW, if we do end up enacting a San Francisco-style "shelter in place" order in my city, you better fucking believe I'll obey it because I'm not a dick and would actually like the whole "flattening the curve" thing to happen.

wait til next week when this will just serve as a thread about seinfeldeaque observations about all of our partners/families/housemates

I'll prefer that to the dire daily news

xp and pets, don’t forget those of us beset by small cats crying because they want to get into the attic

my home coworker, who is a cat, has now been exposed as a food grifter. if i am working from the dining room table and see you snack on food every half hour, i am no longer going to believe you're starving when you yowl at me at 5pm

I’m not looking forward to the one benefit of this, not having to get up at 6 anymore, being taken away from me by the attic-crier kneading us both until one of us gets up to feed her. Sometimes she does this and suddenly isn’t hungry!

My coworker today (18 year old with cancelled Uni classes) is awesome. He stayed in his bed all morning then made me a coffee.

again

thats not unlike my normal routine tbh

Guess I'll just comment on my co-workers then since I seem to be in the increasingly rarer numbers still going into work. Except work hasn't been that bad lately and the execs even sent us lots of coffee and doughnuts this morning to boost our morale. (in a quiet voice) Plus I'm in a supervisory role here so I feel awful about bitching about my co-workers for all but the most boneheaded reasons. (exunt quiet voice mode)

I can tell my trainees are distracted today. I'm being friendly and nurturing as I can, because ultimately, this thing I'm training them on just doesn't matter in the scheme of things

Plus it's for a client that is an evil financial institution

My company, a UK based high street clothes retailer, is launching a sale on Thursday in an attempt to drive footfall and profit. Wildly irresponsible.

God I am trying so hard right now with all that is going on. I'm not getting mad when people don't listen. Or when people interrupt me or don't follow directions.

But at a time when my nerves are already shot...when this one learner who is supposed to be a VETERAN is CONSTANTLY stopping me to ask things that I already answered. Or to insist things aren't working for her even though they are working for everybody else, and after you try three times to get her to coherently explain what's happening, she can't.

Can't remember her Skype password to screenshare there. Can't figure out how to do it in WebEx teams even with me literally giving every instruction in ridiculously overexplained fashion after three times.

I can't use my virtual session to do it because then I have to take down the instructions that I'm sharing.

It took everything to say JESUS CHRIST I AM FUCKING AT MY WIT'S END AS IT IS AND YOU'RE MAKING MY WAKING HOURS HELL!!!!

This is a class that normally lasts 24 hours and I was given fucking 14!

My company, a UK based high street clothes retailer, is launching a sale on Thursday in an attempt to drive footfall and profit. Wildly irresponsible.

I've been getting more vouchers than I have for months! Today's vouchers: another one for a free eye test, or 40% off lunch at the not v appealing Beefeater on the other side of town. I feel bad abt places seeing a reduction in custom but, no

I suggested to my boss last week that we encourage online shopping by doing an online-only sale. She agreed. I got the draft of the email announcement, and it said something like “we don’t want to discourage shopping in store” and I was like, please PLEASE take that out, it is bad and also makes us look terrible. Amazingly, she agreed.

The email went out yesterday morning and then the shelter-in-place came just a few hours later so our stores are closed for at least 3 weeks.

Our online store is not popular so I’m not sure I’ll still have a job in 3 weeks. My boss is trying to sell the business to the PM and the PM let me know she found out after looking at the books that business hasn’t made any money in YEARS. My boss has been loaning the business money (she owns rental properties, remortgaged her house multiple times) to keep it going.

ouch - good luck, just1n3, but also good job and good timing talking her round re the mailout

I typically do well at annual review time, have consistently gotten an "Excels" rating for 9 consecutive years. Began reading the annual review summary my new boss was sharing with me during the one on one, and it appeared I was well on my way to a 10th. Comments were mostly raves, there was no actual negative feedback or specific area of improvement.

Get to the end, it's the lowest rating I've ever had in 15 years, only the second time I got a "Meets Expectations". I was baffled. I got an "Excels" last year despite doing much less impressive work in 2018. Last year I voluntarily traveled to the Philippines to oversee 12 concurrent training classes, San Juan (on less than a week's notice for an impromptu two week class), voluntarily learned and immediately began teaching a new platform (becoming only the 2nd person licensed to teach it), acquired the access to update internal system materials that had been needed for TEN YEARS but had never been done, and was one of the most prominent participants in the training material redevelopment project.

it was, as is always, bureaucracy. our bosses can't give us direct ratings, it's calibrated at the leadership level, so all bosses in our division present their employee and recommended rating, and leadership either approves or denies it, and they also set caps on how many people can get each rating in each division, so I'm fairly sure they saved the "Excels" for other "more important" roles.

so that was the only chance of me getting any incentive pay which would have been helpful given what's going on. so the message to me is "do the bare minimum from here on out".

OK! will do!

a fairly pointless thing to get worked up over rn but w/e. i'm going to pretend the only reason I got the lower score was for saying "motherfucker" on a hot mic, that's easier to live with.

When I was a manager doing ratings, we were only allowed a minimal number of excels vs meets. Definitely forced us into a position where people doing good work got penalized for no reason other than available budget.

yep same thing here. I can tell having friends in higher places in past years before I switched depts probably played more of a role than I realized.

so I'm wondering how I managed to get the higher rating at all last year, considering I did not get along with the boss that did that review at all, to the point where we had to have meetings to clear the air.

they also set caps on how many people can get each rating in each division

It sucks. I had a colleague quit over the finer details of the review process.

I guess our developers are real real bored sitting at home because they went in on a whim overnight and completely overhauled the layout of one of my essential work apps such that a search function that used to display all information on a single handy screen like so:

Business Name DBA
Street Address
City State Zip Etc.

Now displays everything like this:

Business Name



DBA



Etc.

Forcing everyone to scroll endlessly to find information that we used to be able to see at a quick glance. This is a thing I have to consult dozens, sometimes 100+ times/day, and which has remained the same for years, which allows for a lot of mental shorthand and eliminates a lot of cognitive effort on my part. And my work is already slowed way down, working at home on a tiny laptop screen (down from two big desktop monitors). I'm fuuuuuuuurious.

JESUS CHRIST STOP REPLYING ALL ON EVERY FUCKING EMAIL YOU MORONS

CC: All

After yesterday's fiasco, my class seems fried. I feel bad subjecting them to my braying today.