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

so a new hire with ad agency experience was asked to give us lessons on how to make better looking powerpoint presentations. one of these recommendations was to use "elephant" (bold) as the font for all titles and headers. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS FUCKING FONT? now it's all over everyone's presentations. IT IS SO UGLY AND I HATE IT!

Teach me how to redact from a pdf.

Tools>Redaction>Mark for redaction>Apply redactions. Or you can do Find & redact via advanced find.

I covet Acrobat X b/c it can automatically find and redact portions of text that appear to social security numbers, email addresses, addresses, etc.

James, that's bizarre. That person wanted the person fired even though s/he was already leaving? Is that volunteer actually nuts?

ytth, assuming it's this Elephant

http://i.imgur.com/s5Ig7.jpg

but hoping it's this one

http://i.imgur.com/WVvH2.png

Literally five minutes before it starts an unhinged volunteer who works here races into the CEOs office and demands that the leaving person be fired because of something that happened 18 months ago that he refuses to actually discuss or explain.

Hahahah wtf!? So what ended up happening?

My aforementioned supervisor keeps asking if we should download nitro for all our PDF needs when acrobat x comes loaded on all our computers. Every time we need to edit a PDF or something, "so should we all just download nitro?" acrobat x does everything we need!

Nitro is good for MAKING pdfs, tho! I use it for that. That or Primo.

I've made such identifying comments in my last two posts that I'm slightly paranoid he will find it but I rest easy in the thought that if he doesn't understand how the search function works, he is probably not the type to be on this site. Xp

I dunno we can create PDFs from word with acrobat x. Does it do anything special? Maybe I've dismissed his ideas out of hand because I distrust any of his technology-related statements.

You know Word can just save as a PDF now?

Im usually PDFing scans, I cant think of the last time I used word tbh.

I was just baffled someone would not know how to "convert Word to PDF." SAVE AS
SAVE AS

Oh I didn't realize it was native to word now! For some reason thought that function was some relationship btwn acrobat & word

Literally five minutes before it starts an unhinged volunteer who works here races into the CEOs office and demands that the leaving person be fired because of something that happened 18 months ago that he refuses to actually discuss or explain.

Hahahah wtf!? So what ended up happening?

The CEO said 'Why didn't you tell anyone earlier?', the volunteer went berserk and stormed out, the CEO took the rest of the weerk off

lol je55e

it's the first one, but it looks way more normal there than saying "SYNDICATED DATA RECAP Q1 2012" in bold on a blue background.

James: yike. Does anyone know if whatever-it-was was true? I'm imagining awful scenarios like nutty volunteer claiming sexual harrasment and realising they have to jump on it NOW because person is leaving, or thinking they should be fired because that way they wont get leaving benefits because person is grudgeful, or ... lord only knows.

knowing the personalities involved, i would be amazed if it was anything other than bitter reactionary man misunderstanding flamboyant gay foreign man's jokes

I was just baffled someone would not know how to "convert Word to PDF." SAVE AS
SAVE AS

Reaction would be "HOW DO YOU DO 'SAVE AS'????" at least from most of them.

Man, just from my typing, you guys can probably tell how bossy I am when explaining computers to people. I lost all my patience after working at Kinko's for two years. I was explaining "save as" to someone older the other day and I had the kind of tone in my voice you use to discipline a mischievous puppy. I realized it but I couldn't stop it.

ha ha hahaha!

And the thing is I have been explaining Save As etc for 4 years but they just will not grasp it bc they know I can do it for them when they fuck up.

Also annoying: email from boss saying "Please get me _______'s phone number." I get the number from his Outlook address book and email it to him. If I don't send it soon enough he will email me again or call me and ask for it.

If I'm on vacation he emails the associate to ask for numbers.

I've told him that his Contacts list -which he has in his iPhone - list contains all numbers and addresses and he joked "You're my contacts list." "joked"

We are having a big old building-wide fire drill today that requires everybody to exit the building completely and go outside, and they close the building to the public, and then let everybody back in. It takes about an hour.

It's also our agency's bring your kid to work day.

A coworker just rushed out into the hall, breathlessly exclaiming, "The kids are here?" Then she did a weird screamsigh, because she saw the kids, and ran up to one and said, "HIIIII!" in that awful way that people who talk to kids like they are dumb woodland animals instead of people do.

I have a headache.

But speaking of PDFs, a firm where I used to work during law school (so about six years ago) approached me about a year ago about a job and told me that they still use the horrible Word Perfect software that they had when I was there, because it's the only way to create PDFs. I told them that you can save as a PDF right in MS Word now, but she didn't believe me.

Got invited to a fancy award ceremony by a guy who I send my company's reports to. Manager told me I should turn down invite as there is unspecified drama. Month later, owner sponsored a table, invited most of the girls but me. :( It's tonight, so everyone is dressed up, giggling, there's a hint of exclusivity (they gather around the desk of the girl beside me and whisper excitedly about it) and I want to be all WHATEVER BITCHES I WAS INVITED FIRST. :P

Bright side: I left the job where my boss would email me to look up things she saved on her own computer!

I'm going to stop griping about my job for a while. I like my job and the frustrations could be greater, but they are still frustrating.

ca, I was hoping you were going to say that that person screamed in panic b/c she wanted to save the kids from the fictional fire.

No, but I heard one kid in the hall just now say, in reference to a very randomly placed (at kid height, even) fire extinguisher that appeared on the wall outside our office a couple of weeks ago, "If there's a fire, I'm going to spray that on it and put it out."

Thanks, kid.

we had a pizza party yesterday and someone claimed all the leftover pizza. there's just like 4 slices left, but someone wrapped them all in cellophane and put a red dot on it. seems odd to do that, i think...

coworker posted ' (X) Awards tonight. Common (brand she manages)!!'

Naturally manager & I began DMing each other Common People lyrics with the brand name stuck in. Heh.

argh! every time i see that pile of hoarded pizzas, i have to fight the urge to just take one.

Do it!

Also Je55e I hope you keep posting about your coworkers/bosses because it gives me the lolz and makes me feel better about myself and my colleagues! It is a public service!

replace the red dot with a sticker with another coworker's name on it.

put my name on it!

hehe. i wanted to put a green dot on it. maybe i will go do just that. (i wish it had the perpetrator's name on it!)

i agree w/quincie -- je55e's co-worker related rants are always amusing.

(i just did it. i feel kind of guilty!)

no the green dot is classic - just enough to fuck with them :)

excellent move!

Who pays for this pizza, anyway? Unless it is the pizza hoarder, idgi.

haha. it was an office party (yesterday was administrative professionals day!) so i think the office paid for it. my ex-catholic guilt is creating scenarios in which the red-dot was completely justified, but i think i'll just repress for the next 5 minutes and forget about it on the ride home.

green dot is innocent enough, i'll have none of your catholic guilt!

LOL. rayuela, I think you did the right thing! Unless that red dot was there to signify infection, it pretty clearly is a sign of a claim on the pizza and that seems totally messed up. It's community pizza.

and thanks for making me feel better about my complaining.

Haha. Thanks everyone! I no longer feel as guilty.

well, i just got offered a new job today, so i won't have to put up with stupid elephant powerpoint presentations for long. i have kept most of the stories about my awful current job out of this thread due to paranoia, but GODDAMN am i excited to be leaving!

Always the best feeling, knowing you can jump with impunity! :)

Ugh chip-crunching boss is sitting behind me making these constant very loud sighy deep breathing sounds. Its very weird and distracting, either she has a cold or she's trying not to cry/has been crying, the room is so quiet tho, its all I can hear. Why must I be so easily set off by these things *jams on headphones*.

Not to point fingers but didn't you say you made weird breathey noises yrself?

Yeah, well spotted haha. but I dont do it all the time, and mine are actual sighs (that sound like annoyed sighs). this was a constant heavy breathing kind of thing, like she couldnt breathe, it was going on for ages. It was weird because it isnt normal for this person.

I'm back.

- Phone calls to our firm go to one of two secretaries in our remote office.
- Everyone in our office prefers written (emailed) messages instead of voice mail (email is immediate and half the time I or somebody else transcribe and email voice messages, adding room for error)

- Secretaries are terrified to tell a caller that someone is on vacation (even when instructed to do so)
- Secretaries are terrified to request that the caller leave a message with them instead of a voice mail (it's not scary or difficult!)
- Even when they do take a message, the secretaries are terrified to ask:
1. Person's last name/spelling of person's name
2. Why they're calling
3. If they need immediate assistance
4. For basically any info except what the caller volunteers, including a phone number where they can be reached

Thank you for listening.

Seems like they are bad secretaries.

seems like they need to be MORE terrified of something else. if you catch my drift.

They're pretty bad. But their direct boss is terrible and he has encouraged their badness. He does virtually no work, so he's really paranoid about them telling people he is out of the office.

They should be terrified of me mushroom stamping them and their boss.

I don't know what mushroom stamping is, but if it is along the lines of green-dotting pizza I encourage you to pursue this.