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

so re: my issue hte other day, basically my project lead and I nailed the group on screwing up royally, and their lead has been apologetic, so I'm kinda happy none of it fell back on me.

:-)

One month in, new department gets a solid A.

Oh man, for the past two days a guy near me has been rocking out to whatever he is listening to on his headphones. His extremely loud and off-key whistling and desktop drum solos are super annoying.

― rendezvous then i'm through with HOOS (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, March 1, 2011 5:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Is he whistling something by Billy Squier?

STROKE ME STROKE ME. POPCORN GIRL.

RUB YOUR BUTTERY SALTY FINGERS ON MY WANG.

^^^lyrics to new Jet single

lol

i am going to fucking scream at piss vag. Every week she calls me around this time to ask if its ok that she submits her weekly financials to me. Every week I tell her that they are due at noon on thursdays and every week this dipshit sends them to me at 3. Then has the balls (or rotten vag) to complain that she didn't get her checks. this woman lives on another planet.

As a result of my department change, my desk moved. while I'm away from Smelly Old Smoke Lady with Delinquent Son now, which makes me happy, I sit near a team of service reps. Usually their conversations are harmless and quiet, although today they managed to all agree that Gwyneth Paltrow's version of "Fuck You" is better than Cee-Lo's, which is inexcusable.

In all seriousness, though, then the convo went to the recent BYU player who was dismissed from the college basketball team for having premarital sex. About four of them (mostly just two people on opposing sides with occasion contributions from the others) got in a passionate debate about whether this was right or not. For the first five minutes, I was alright with it, but then the conversation lasted another 35 minutes, and got louder, and louder, and more intense.

It passed the point of innocuous to disruptive and the dude who started the discussion just wouldn't let it go or shut up, even though everybody else had said they didn't feel like arguing anymore. I even agreed with the dude but he was soooo annoying.

Finally had to ask their manager to step in to shut them up.

hokay, if you're going to ask me to take a look at a file (one you actually have open and are looking at and do not need time to find) at 4:35 on a Friday afternoon and say you'll send it to me, you'd better send it to me right there and then

it is a Friday! I want to go home! and not wait for you to piss about! and then have to stay past 5 looking at this file! which I'm 99% sure has got buggered up due to reasons entirely beyond my control anyway!

shoulda just used this thread

~big sigh~

coworker who is frequently sour and negative and doesn't mind letting everybody know when she's in a bad mood.. STOP IT

no, really, go ahead and make a big show of how put out you are by mundane tasks today, that's awesome

kick her in the gunt

I just don't understand why she needs to let everyone know how grumpy she is. Well, why she needs to let the cube dwellers know. Management thinks she's cheerful as can be no doubt

The associate attorney (younger than me, and computer literate when he feels like it) whines a lot about how he can't save fillable PDFs on his computer. We use them a lot and it's annoying that every time I need a subpoena, I have to fill out the whole thing anew. Finally figured out that he was using MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER to open PDFs (and every other document!), which was where the problems with saving came in.

I've tried a million times to make the attorneys go through My Computer to open files, but every single one of them uses either IE or Word to open every type of file.

They think I'm some kind of "hacker" or Harry Potter because of the "tricks" I use, e.g., exploring folders or using Ctrl+Z.

Update on my lengthy situation w/ the screw up earlier:

So basically, the summary was, I had an agreement that these portals would be done by 3/7, and asked if possible to do them by 3/1. even wrote this in the assignment I sent them, and had a written documented acceptance of the assignment and the delivery date, and followed the instructions to a T. To this date, nobody has given any reason why no work commenced between 2/14 and 2/24 even though they were supposed to be working on them gradually.

None of it fell back on me as I said above, but the problem was in order for them to finish for me last week, it required them following up with me more often when they had questions. Problem is, instead of emailing them at the end of the day, they kept pinging me on instant message every 5 minutes. I lost hours of productivity.

Worse, I left on Friday without them even being finished with the final portal so I have no idea if it will be ready tomorrow.

Regardless of the fact that it wasn't my fault, it's going to hurt training, and I hate that the reps are going to suffer if it's not done. Crossing my fingers.

The Good News: They finished the final portal, and all of them actually.

The Bad News: I got told that someone made an oversight during the review of one of my portals and I have to make significant revisions to one of them that will likely take an estimated 22 hours because of their failure to notice or act on it for six months. I have less than a month to do this.

Also, after about 10 assurances that this training would be run better than the last one for this team, and that the facilitators would prepare for the training, and not read the materials to the representatives, I got a report today that....the facilitators were reading the materials to the representatives, and were hours behind schedule.

Both gaffes = same department (not mine). This department is very insular and tends to not give a shit about outside departments and shit like this happens.

Hoping my boss and his boss can step in and ream them out for me like they did the last time.

Really tired of treading on eggshells with co-worker. She is stressed for personal reasons, and when she's stressed, she takes her usual direct approach (which is a good thing about 80% of the time) to extremes. When it goes to extremes, the % of time when being super-direct is a good thing goes down to about 30. I am bound up in understanding and very deeply sympathising with her problems, as a friend. She's got damn good reasons to be stressed and upset. But I find it emotionally exhausting to constantly feel sniped at. Very complicated and tiring situation.

I don't know how people can be inefficient and tardy at work, it makes no sense. If I forget to do stuff or don't do it on time I get monumentally stressed, so I avoid it at all costs. Living in a perpetual cycle of shitness like the perps on this thread would kill me in 6 months.

I used to work with my best friend D and he was perpetually like this, operated on a level of constant slightly irritated panic. It really wore me down and wore on our friendship. Was kind of relieved when we weren't working together anymore tbh.

I only learned recently how to deal with coworkers who have a rep for not doing things on time. I have had several conversations like this:

me: (constantly smiling and being personable) This will get back to me by the end of the week, right?
them: no problem
me: It's just I've heard that you've got a lot on your plate and that sometimes thing slip. This won't happen here, right?
them: Definitely not
me: Fantastic. If it does turn out the worst is gonna happen, you'll email me to tell me.

and so on. Tying people down with velvet ropes I guess, but it does the job. People only forget to do things for me once. Saying that, maybe they've started a thread somewhere called "Let's bitch about our annoying patronising co-workers."

So this morning, it hits me in the shower that the longwinded solution those numbskulls suggested wasn't necessary.

I rushed to my desk and tested my theory, and sure enough, the line item that the facilitators/tech team insisted were not in the system for reps...is there.

Now there is no way they can force me to do that extra work as it isn't necessary.

Moreso, it's going to embarass them that they didn't know their own system as well as a guy who has only been looking at it the past two weeks

oh man one of the women here has the worst shit breath. please do not talk in my face. i can smell her breath when she is talking four feet away. cripes.

Do you know if she wears dentures or has gastrointestinal problems?

no, she drinks coffee all day and then water. it smells like a wet leaf.

Yeah, I think that's coffee.

I realized today, partially thanks to constructive feedback I got that was helpful and friendly, that my attitude has been shit.

I'm still carrying this defensive chip on my shoulder from my old department where I feel like it's always "us vs. Them" but it isn't like that anymore and I have no reason to be that way.

Part of it was due to last week's incident but I'm glad I realized this today because I'm new to this department, I don't have a reputation to coast on, don't want to be surly new kid on the block.

They all seem to like me so I guess I should just relax and trust these guys!

rancid coffee breath.. there is little that smells worse

rancid smoker's coffee breath.

in some odd way the smoke makes it less bad, don't know why

Might depend on the person. I'm having repulsed flashbacks of my year 12 art teacher.

i hear the words 'i apologize' from the reps around me all the time. excessive apologizing is like one of the worst traits you can have as a rep. not only does it imply fault on your company's end, but after the third time you say it, customers get pissed off because it sounds robotic.

learn other ways to say things!!!!!

I mean there's appropriate times for it but you shouldn't go saying "i apologize" if the customer is at fault, say "i understand your frustration, and I'd like to outline your options for you" or something.

there was also this dude who said "have a nice day" to a widow on a death call, and I guess she got upset at him, thinking it wasn't an appropriate thing to say.

He spent the next ten minutes saying "what was I supposed to say, have an awful day?". Granted I don't think what he said was horrible (just there are better things he could have said), it just amazes me that he seemed to think those were his only two options.

Have just realised Ive been drumming on my desk like mad to M83 for the last 20 mins, and I have become the annoying coworker lol.

i fart a lot at work

I tend to talk to myself a LOT at work, especially if I'm doing something particularly taxing. Am I an annoying coworker?

Oh god I do that too :/

I have a bad feeling that we're both part of the same problem.

I'd become the annoying coworker, but I don't have any coworkers. Oh well.

One of my friends reviewed a call from one of our reps where the caller was elderly and stated she was having trouble hearing the rep, and the rep replied "well, this is as loud as I go, how can I help?". Then, because he wasn't listening, he screwed up her transaction.

This dude has a job whereas a friend of mine in Chicago has been out of work almost a year despite hundreds of applications.

Hope he gets fired.

ugh bad breath, i had an orthodontist as a teen who had rancid coffee breath. you'd think when you're staring into people's mouths all day and have your face that close you'd clean up that act. what a dick.

Heard my coworker bitching to another coworker about an unspecified female who was most likely me (since we'd been working 1:1 together most of the day); trying to attain zen-like acceptance of how I bitch about him on ILX/to the bf and therefore it's all cool and I can forget about it, rather than descend down the rabbithole of wondering what thing(s) I did today were particularly irritating

(well, we don't have a thread where we are the stupid, annoying coworkers, do we? if we do, the ILX coders should probably redirect all my posts there)

Actually, I think there is one, but I can't remember the title.

there's this, but it's just one specific instance
Dear ILX, I have a boring tl;dr question about my job and how not to be a stupid, annoying co-worker, and I'm hoping you can help.
(started by a passing spacecadet!)

Me to associate attorney (who has worked here for 7 years): What is your normal hourly rate?

Associate: It varies by case.

Me: That's because it's sometimes reduced. I need your NORMAL rate. It used to be $160 but it went up last year. How much did it go up to?

Associate: (Beffudled, maybe annoyed) I don't know! You're asking the wrong person.

Meanwhile one of the partners is trying to check her voice mail, and she keeps accidentally dialing each of our numerous extensions. She has reached me twice so far.