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

Jon, I know exactly what you mean. Years ago, when I was working at another company, a coworker and I were asked to give up a couple of weekends to serve as production assistants on out-of-town video shoots. Beyond the fact that this was completely outside my job description -- I was hired as a fact-checker/proofreader -- I was really bothered by the fact that the assignment fell to, oh look, the two young single guys in the department. So I pretty much just refused to do it. My performance review that year took a hit, but that was the only real consequence.

:'( most people at my work print every single email "for the file."

This makes my eyelid twitch. THE EMAIL IS THE DARN FILE. It reminds me of working for a govt department, everything was so freaking old fashioned and arcane and NO ONE knew how to do aything outside their little, set-in-concrete ways. We had ONE windows pc for typing up word docs on (the main work I did was doe on old COBOL mainframes - and this was in the mid 90s).

Oh and also when I had my first ISP job? When we created a new user account, we'd also print out the page with the confirmation user/pass and put it in a pile. WHY? In the end, someone stole half the pile and started using the logins for free internet, til he got caught and fired. We stopped doing it after that heh.

I did some consulting for a PR with really good flexible working and maternity policy in place, but the experience was ruined by a newly-returned mommy going all My Child whenever anyone demanded anything of her, or disagreed with her. But for the most part (especially here), women who have children get hosed by HR and micromanaged out by their bosses - who, on many occasions, are also women.

Trayce, the weird part is that we never purge our emails. My emails go back to 2005, and include those of two of my predecessors. My bosses emails go back even longer.

It's not even like they limit their prints to shit of substance! E.g.:

Partner sends email: Hey Associate, can you tell me what time your meeting w/ Client is?

Associate prints that email.

Associate replies: It's at 1:00.

Partner prints that email.

Partner replies: Thanks.

Associate prints that email.

Ad vitam aeternam.

This makes my eyelid twitch. THE EMAIL IS THE DARN FILE.

As I said, it's for the reference of people who won't start working here for another three years and won't have received the email.

That's what migrating (? that's what our IT consultant calls it) previous users' emails to new users' accounts is good for!

Exactly. And why Outlook etc is centralised on a server. Or bloody should be in an office.

Or on the web like gmail::groupwise blows btw

That's what migrating (? that's what our IT consultant calls it) previous users' emails to new users' accounts is good for!

what about when a temp from the online catch-up service is confirming the rights variations on a certain program? they should have 100 other employees entire email histories migrated to their account just so they can search for any single instance that any of those 100 ppl have discussed ANYTHING about the program -- instead of walking to a cabinet, taking out the file with the contracts and revisions in it, and seeing that someone has helpfully filed the one actual useful email out of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds about this specific issue relating to the program?

Exactly. And why Outlook etc is centralised on a server. Or bloody should be in an office.

our email is on servers, not local machines, if that's what you mean? but presumably on a bunch of them given the dozens and dozens of different offices around the continent. (and anything over six months old gets archived and you have to search a vault in Outlook for it.)

OK printing out very specific emails that discuss contract terms and replied agreements is a diff thing - I can see having copies of that makng sense. Printing every single thing seems overkill.

It's not even like they limit their prints to shit of substance! E.g.:

Ha ha, that reminds me of my first job out of high school, as an office assistant. I was told to keep a file of all fax machine transmissions; when my boss saw me throw away a little slip of paper that just had the date and time (because the old-ass thermal-printer fax machine would spit these out every day for some reason), he demanded that I keep a file of those, too. So there was this manila folder with about 200 little half-slips of thermal fax paper and maybe four actual full-page transmissions.

get ready for a lengthy rant!!!!!!

i went on vacation for 2 weeks - unpaid vacation, since i get no paid time off at my job - and since i'm the only person who does my job, i had to train a staff member to take over for the time i was gone. i spent 2 full days doing this, and i also left extremely detailed, written instructions for everything she needed to do, including v specific itinerary for each day she was working.

she managed to do everything either completely wrong or not at all, and also managed to 'lose' a bunch of things AND create a ridiculous amount of extra work for me - more than if no one had been there to do my job. and not just extra work, but a ton of extra stress, since she fucked up so much stuff that has long-term consequences.

AND she used my hair brush and left it FULL of her gross hair. ugh.

I AM SO MAD

the thing that really gets me is that the money she was paid to 'work' could've been paid to me as vacation time instead.

the litigation industry thrives on having all of these emails printed and filed. what one person thinks is of no substance could be the needle in the haystack an opposing counsel is looking for. you never know. it's always better to cover your ass on this stuff. anyway, you're not going to send entire outlook mailboxes to opposing counsel when they request docs for discovery. you have to have the hard files so that all relevant documents can be coded, numbered, etc, in sequence.
xpost

so shitbreath lady has taken to calling me "guru". "this is chris he is the guru when it comes to..." really annoying

Maybe you can be her fresh breath guru.

sorry just1n3 - can you get revenge somehow?

Wow Just1n3, did your boss have no oversight of this person whatsoever? She didn't check up on her?

the litigation industry thrives on having all of these emails printed and filed. what one person thinks is of no substance could be the needle in the haystack an opposing counsel is looking for. you never know. it's always better to cover your ass on this stuff. anyway, you're not going to send entire outlook mailboxes to opposing counsel when they request docs for discovery. you have to have the hard files so that all relevant documents can be coded, numbered, etc, in sequence.
xpost

Aren't most firm emails are privileged as work product or attorney-client communications (except say communications with our witness or an ex parte communication)? What makes it ridiculous that our firm prints so much crap is that we log, flag, and duplicate emails with experts, and when it comes time to produce them, we print them off fresh and never even look at the paper file. (And of course we try to avoid those emails in the first place.)

xp oh yes... when i came back in yesterday my boss ranted about how terrible she was and how she did nothing and thank god i was back... but she never said anything to the person in question.

I'm just reeling that you're not paid for leave. Are you a casual?

nope i'm full time and have worked there for 2.5 yrs. BUT in the US small businesses don't have to offer any paid time off. i don't get sick days, i don't get paid for statutory holidays... nothing.

on the plus side: my boss pays 3/4 of my health insurance

In this country, if you're not actively trying to fuck your workforce out of their last dollar and shred of self-respect, you're some kinda pinko.

xxp

which reminds me: my husband is getting dicked out of a stat holiday he is supposed to get paid for, because we were on vacation. AND they are penalizing him for 'taking too much time off at once' by charging him an extra benefit day.

this is the same company that forces its salaried workers to come in on weekends to do the jobs of hourly-paid workers when things get busy.

fyi this is ALSO the same company that reported substantial growth in profits even at the peak of the recession.

nope i'm full time and have worked there for 2.5 yrs. BUT in the US small businesses don't have to offer any paid time off. i don't get sick days, i don't get paid for statutory holidays... nothing.

I used to work for a company like that, except we got holidays paid (after much arguing between our supervisor and his boss). Instead of paid sick days, we each got a bottle of Purell. Seriously.

So there was this special meeting that several highers up and many of us mid-level employees were invited to. it was an honor to be invited, and it was for the sheer purpose of determining how to improve areas that are lacking.

throughout the opening of the presentation, they say they want nobody to sit idly by observing, they want full participation. which makes sense -- otherwise you should have rejected the invite.

And everybody does...EXCEPT this one guy. Just sits in complete silence for all 9.5 hours. Never opens his mouth once, looks disinterested. And he took a spot someone else who gave a fuck could have used.

(don't get me wrong tho meeting was still quite awesome).

9.5 hours?! Did you get on the cover of Meetings magazine?

I used to work for a company like that, except we got holidays paid (after much arguing between our supervisor and his boss). Instead of paid sick days, we each got a bottle of Purell. Seriously.

One of the reasons why I left the company I was working for was that they no longer paid CNAs time and a half for working on holidays.

So a coworker won an iPad at some event last night and you'd think he'd won the lottery judging by reactions around here today.

You should ask them to lend you $100

So there was this special meeting that several highers up and many of us mid-level employees were invited to. it was an honor to be invited

struggling to get my head round this concept tbh

ugh surprise 60th birthday party for colleague ugh some but not everyone invited ugh trench warfare between the partitions

in the US small businesses don't have to offer any paid time off

!!!!

I did not know that.

yeah, i was pretty shocked when i moved here - NZ has 4 weeks compulsory annual leave across the board plus stat hols plus time and a half/double time if you work a stat hol.

as long as your boss doesnt play butt bongo on you you still have your dignity

butt bongo is mandatory in all major US corporations.

"you have the choice between giving up your sick days or...."

"oh god"

"yes. butt bongo."

*sighs* "ok..... butt bongo."

It is particularly bad when it is done while you are de-trouser-ed and the entire office has to watch

"Hey, he's getting a pretty good sound out of that guy!"

I think I have to introduce "Butt Bongo" into a conversation with our HR manager today.

dont forget "butt trumpet"

I'm going to say that HR is probably not where you want to start introducing that term. On the other hand, talking about "butt bongo" too much may make you end up in the HR office, so I suppose its smart to get right to the endgame.

Our HR manager is probably the person in our organisation most likely to introduce Butt Bongo as a mandatory company activity.

to the tune of Um Bongo?

I work in the database maintenance team for a library, and my coworker summoned me to look at some problematic records. When the titles came up he announced non-ironically "oh, what a lot of nonsense, they're all in French."

His screen was full of longwinded scientific titles with lots of umlauts and Ks and Ws and "von" and "die" and "über" and 20-letter words ending in "-ischen" etc, i.e. very obviously in German.

Which would be no big deal, except circa 2008 he spent over a year living and working in Germany. I don't expect you to come back fluent, but surely most people would recognise the language after a year of being surrounded by it?

hahahahahaha

this thread had a lot of "annoying" and not enough "stupid" but that story just rebalanced everything and then some

our database tables are in flemmish - wtf
I do like seeing the word GEEN - mean s NO
sometimes I think to myself - GEEEEEN!