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

This package sat for a week b/c the shipping dept couldn't deduce the business name from the email.

--
From: Purchase Clerk
Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2011 10:38 AM
To: Shipping Dept.
Cc: Me
Subject: RETURN TO NEW EGG

xxxxx the two boxes you have back there that we talked about need to be sent back on our ups or fedx which ever is cheaper.

I just contacted NEWEGG.

Thanks for the help.
--

The first email of the day Mr. X's admin assistant saying she'll be out. The email is sent to all staff. The day's second all staff email is from our chief, titled "Additional people not in today" (bold mine) and listing a couple of people who had also called out. An hour later, Mr. X replies to the chief's email, stating "My admin will not be in today."

The first email of the day is Mr. X's

Silly rabbit -- executives don't have to read anyone else's emails.

Back when the personal computer was new, there were executives who resisted using them. Why? Because they were worried that they'd lose status if they had a keyboard on their desk.

It was analogous to a CEO having a Dictaphone on his desk. But I have people for that!

I have worked with execs who had their secretaries print out their emails and read them aloud, rather than learn to check their own email as it came in. Not surprised by that stuff anymore, unfortunately.

For the love of all that is good, please stop scraping your plastic bowl with a plastic spoon for an hour and a half every morning. I hate you.

i read somewhere (I thought Gawker but now I can't find it) yesterday about an entertainment executive who had his assistant do google searches and videotape the results so that he could look at them later

okay that is horrible

No printed screen shots?

Actually, I suspect that the real point is to assert your power by making your assistants do extra work. Kind of like the wife of the client I had five years ago who insisted on me putting groceries into the cart in a certain weird way, among other things--it's a constant reminder of your servitude.

Silly rabbit -- executives don't have to read anyone else's emails.

― Back up the lesbian canoe (Laurel), Tuesday, April 26, 2011 10:32 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Not an executive.

Christine is kind of OTM but not exactly; sometimes it isn't about reinforcing the servitude role as much as it is an outward expression of anxiety re: giving up some degree of control over a task.

(not always, or maybe even frequently, but often enough that it's worth mentioning)

please stop walking around and talking on your bluetooth headset.

ha we have a guy who does that but he's just the grad student worker and he's talking about the little league coaching he's going to do that afternoon or what sneakers he wants to buy. he has a very loud voice and we have essentially an open campus with nothing to impede the sound, but he seemingly has no shame walking around bellowing about his personal business into his bluetooth headset while ostensibly working.

i can't get too mad though because they're probably paying him peanuts

im about two seconds from ramming that headset into her ear.

One of mine drinks roughly 4l of water/various fluids a day. Which wouldn't be a problem if he wasn't so loud, slurping and gulping to the point I can hear him even when he sits across the room. Suggestions?

a hose. pointed directly in his face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXc5ltzKq3Y

the guys who bring in candy, but it's all hersheys bars (straight chocolate), tootsie rolls, hard flavored candy, smarties, and old jolly ranchers, it's just like DUDE, get some kit kats or something!!!

BASTARDS!

my coworkers only bring in MORE WORK.

AND THEIR EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE

VERYY LITTLE CHOCOLATE

my coworkers bring in so much food it's embarrassing. I mean, it was nice when we'd have a potluck once in a while but bringing in breakfast every single morning gets a bit crazy-making

this could be a new ILX thread - "people who bring hard candy to work are the most irredeemable scoundrels"

Ugh I ate some Hersheys milk chocolate yesterday because it was the only thing in the office kitchen cupboard (a huge cupboard filled with mainly terrible snacks). Now I get why my fellow britishers say it takes like sick because IT REALLY DOES.

That guy who videoed his asst's search queries was Jeffery Katzenberg who is head of Dreamworks and generally considered to maybe perhaps be a bit of an ass.

Shit like this is all too common; a few years ago our letting agents took ages to respond to our email telling them that we wanted to give notice to leave our rented flat, so we went into the office and the asst was like "Oh, I printed out your email but they probably haven't gotten to it in the pile yet".

oh i thought it was katzenberg! but i also thought i saw it on gawker, which is apparently why i couldn't find it.

Ugh I ate some Hersheys milk chocolate yesterday because it was the only thing in the office kitchen cupboard (a huge cupboard filled with mainly terrible snacks). Now I get why my fellow britishers say it takes like sick because IT REALLY DOES.

Somewhere there is a brilliant ILX thread on which I learnt that Hersheys tastes of sick because iirc it is made with off milk!

(You can't get fresh milk to mix with cocoa powder properly; Nestlé found the way round this by using condensed milk, and Hershey, not wanting to be left out on the new chocolate craze, improvised)

FYI I bought some cakes and biscuits to take into work tomorrow, and if anyone calls me stupid and annoying because none of the 6 varieties I've brought in suit them, they're getting a punch bleak look. Especially if they are the guy in my office who eats whatever's going round but never brings any in, never puts money in leaving cards, etc. He is "saving for a holiday" but fuck that, he's just bought a brand new smartphone for the third time in 18 months.

hersheys is the bomb.

if you bring in donuts, the ratio of glazed to filled should be like 12:1

trust me on this

thats what she said

in our office, most of us take thirty mins for lunch.

except one person, who takes forty...to go out and get lunch, which he then spends another thirty noisily consuming. the place he gets it from isn't even far away, there are two around 5 mins away each.

Oh my god, I do not care about the fucking royal wedding. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP. ALL OF YOU.

OMFG. SEVEN people standing right next to my desk blathering like school children about this goddamn wedding. So fucking annoyed today.

but her dress was soooooooooooooooooooo beautiful

lol I know I sound exceedingly bitter, I just DO NOT understand the appeal of this for U.S. people AT ALL. Also, like, how much actual good could have been accomplished with all the money being spent to send all the media over to England?

I am happy that none of the people sitting around me care even a little bit about the wedding

Oh how I wish.

Oh christ, now they are talking about it via email, copied TO THE ENTIRE OFFICE. WTF

One girl sent out a picture of "the kiss" and now its like an unbroken stream of shit. Like, ugh. WTF.

Our connection is abnormally slow today. How the fuck are we supposed to get any work done like this?

so my coworker turned into a pile of batshit crazy yesterday, and forced me to sit down to a "chat" where she listed, like, a dozen really weird things i do that annoy her: that i only show up 20 minutes early for work, as opposed to the 30 i used to; that i once shopped online for a DVD during my lunch break; that i have better relationships with our coworkers than she does (and she's been around longer), etc., etc., etc. she told me she will not write me a good recommendation for another position when this one ends, unless i "blend in" more. she told me i don't "know my place." when i tried to protest/explain/question she yelled "I DON"T LIKE THIS FINGERPOINTING" and "THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER" but made me sit there while she continued to lecture me for a while more. when i told our supervisor, the supervisor basically confirmed that she thinks this coworker has borderline personality disorder.

ughhh. this same coworker yesterday called a juvenile client's parent to tell them the client was in a "self-destructive spiral" and needed "significant intervention" because the client got nervous and cried before a major placement test.

that i have better relationships with our coworkers than she does (and she's been around longer)

WTF. That sounds incredibly annoying, but also a little frightening that this person might have any sort of influence on your ability to advance. Do you think it boils down to jealousy/intimidation?

> i have better relationships with our coworkers

and yet you still need to "blend in" more? makes no sense.

Remy that whole thing sounds really sadly familiar. Have boundaries here but also you know that there's no good answer to this kind of crazy -- no matter how gently you turn it aside, she'll blow up. Can you get out from underneath the chain of command with her in it?

Remy, that's some sick-ass, scary shit. Can't your supervisor do an end-run around the coworker and write you the recommendation?

it sounds like they both report to the same supervisor and the supervisor thinks she's crazy

djp is right. supervisor already thinks this coworker is crazy, but didn't really know the extent until i related the conversation.

this is a contract position will expire in a couple of months, thank goodness. i'll got great recs from all of my other coworkers. i think i already got screwed out of a long-term job here b/c of crazy coworker's snakey recommendation a few weeks ago, tbh. she's got a notoriously bad relationship w/ her closest team, and i don't really fancy being part of it for any length of time. i'm feeling amazingly level-headed, given that the person i have to work side-by-side with for 8 hours each day just outed themselves as totally cuckoo. moreover, a lot of the kind-of-offputting stuff i'd seen from her in the past month and rationalized as "a different way of doing things" i can now acknowledge as straight up malfeasance.