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

ikr, he's bilingual volume schizo

how many times do i have to tell you something to remember it? literally 5 times in the past two days i've clarified my role on a specific project, and you keep remembering it wrong, and i have to keep correcting you. the information has not changed!

About eight months ago a person in management who is politically connected and has no scruples used her pull to have a good friend of mine (who I referred to her job, even) ousted from her position so the person's husband, who already had a job elsewhere mind you, could have it. Gross, right? So other than keeping the bare minimum of pleasant interaction with this person, I've avoided her and her husband even though she and I used to have water cooler chats occasionally and like, I saw her wedding photos and coworker shit like that.

Until first thing this morning when I had to email her because I forgot to take all of the incentive days I racked up (for every two furlough days we took last year, we got one paid day off as an "incentive day") before the deadline and I need to know if I can swap them out for previously taken vacation days.

I haven't heard back from her, or actually from the help desk about my Lexis issue either.

OMG you guys! The help desk FINALLY called me back, almost two full business days after I called to report a high priority issue! And also, after I fixed the problem myself (by using a different browser) and called to cancel the ticket this morning! Two things:

1. I remarked on their atrocious response time, to which the guy replied, "I'm doing the best I can."
2. I remarked on the pitifulness of a service desk support person never having heard of Lexis, an app used by at least one and usually many people in every agency. He said, "You really can't expect every service desk person to know every app people use."

Then I told him I had already solved the problem myself by using a different browser and so canceled the ticket this morning. He then went on to tell me how I can solve the problem in the future by using a different browser.

That last part does not strike me as particularly unique to our IT department though.

omfg I love that he told you how to do the thing you did
ah, IT. you blow goats.

As it was happening I was thinking, "Wait. Is he really telling me to do what I just told him I did? He is!" I was honestly kind of delighted because I knew I could come share it here.

Hahahaha, it's nice to have stories :)

Awesome coworkers:
Coworker took out $360(!) that she owed another coworker (used her credit card to claim a discount on something.. she'd already used her own card for the first purchase) and then just left it in the ATM! Realized about 4 hours later. So she and I scouted the building, talked to security, the bank, etc. Coworker put a sign with our business line on the ATM for any good samaritans who may wish to return the money. But in the meantime another coworker started a collection and we've got about $160 now in a jar to replace her money! I am pleased by this. I also threw in the first $20 to shame-compel. :D

my recent IT call (another issue that i resolved myself by looking through tutorials on adobe's website) ended with the person suggesting that i attend a webinar in two weeks and ask them there. my question was about how to record a webinar. attend the webinar to learn how to use the webinar software.

That's a great story Finefinemusic, love that the coworkers are helping out. I did a similar sort of thing a few years back, but I accidentally dropped the envelope full of cash at some point. I was pretty distraught about it, but my coworker just said "lol dumbass, you'll learn next time".

It feels good to see everyone pull together! The president came by & laughed at her (they've got a relationship where this is okay) but came back twenty minutes later with a $20. :)

That is amazing, ZS.

FFM, your story is pretty sweet, too. ;)

The ZS story kinda reminds me of when I was having tons of issues with my C0mc@st router and I kept having to call them for tech support. Every single time they'd make me power cycle the router, so I just started doing it before I called them to save time, knowing that was not the issue. 75% of the time even after informing them that, yes, I did already power cycle the router and having them even say "okay, let's see what else we can do", they would STILL walk me step by step through power cycling it.

...ended with the person suggesting that i attend a webinar in two weeks and ask them there. my question was about how to record a webinar. attend the webinar to learn how to use the webinar software.

haha! I got an outge notification from one of the upstream wholesale telcos we use, the other day, saying [OurPortalURL] is currently not accessible. bla bla services afected etc. For further information, please log onto [samePortalURL no one can access].

o_0

oh, coworker, your snitty passive aggressive tone in the emails is even more grating than usual today.

is it right to claim two offices? one in each building? when realestate is already scarce? is this a boss faux pa?

yes i would think so. are the buildings close to each other?

walkable. in fact one of the offices previously housed TWO people and is used about .05% of the time now while two people are crammed in the adjacent office

sounds like that boss is being selfish!

ugh, this person i work with is not a team player.

warning: i might be extra grumpy about work in the future. was denied a promotion and am looking for a new job...

Oh boo. I hope you find something fantastic! And fast! Because leaving the crap job that denied you a promotion for something much better is going to be sweeeeet.

thanks carl!!

can't you over-rule the denial of yoru promotion? my job is so unorganized it almost seems like I could give myself a promotion and there wouldnt be much anyone could do about it

huygens to thread!! "YOU ARE PROMOTION!"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Christiaan_Huygens-painting.jpeg

i mean it's kind of a blessing in disguise in the sense that i don't really like what i do, but the salary & benefits make it tolerable, so then i just sit here at this job, stagnating. so the promotion denial was kind of a wake up call.

it's just that there is day-to-day stuff where shit happens and i let my resentment over it bubble up. (like, this other person who got promoted is a really bad team player and has zero management skills or initiative and sometimes it just makes me a bit nutty) But really it should just be a motivating factor for me to find a job to which i am better suited and care a little more about.

Sounds like a lot of things suck, rayuela, I'm sorry! I hope you can find the awesome job.
I was hoping to create myself a marketing job but I put some feelers out and it looks like the new branch of our company won't be big enough to need what I hoped to offer so I have to keep plugging away at my job that I am good at (numbers: I feel like if I could just get into mktg/design I could be great at my job, which I would prefer to be.)

Taught a marketing girl how to do a screenshot today, turned around and she was doing it in the same roundabout way I'd just corrected. SIGH. If I could give myself a promotion I would be the Style Advisor or whatever the equivalent job is. These lazy, poor photoshoppers shouldn't be allowed to send anything out of the office without me looking over it. Company conference powerpoint had the word 'STRAGETY' in big capitals on a card explaining how focused we are on excellence ;_; I think I complained before about how I showed mktg girl how to correct a photoshop error (liquid pouring in front of a bottle instead of into) and she sent it out to national ad campaign without fixing it :(

and why the devil won't chrome play an m4a file from your google drive in the browser windows!

thanks ffm!

those sound like pretty big errors -- you should use them as examples when you make your case for Style Advisor)

:D
lol the 2 coworkers I help the most were just talking about their reviews & how they want to ask for me to do a photoshop training! hell no, I will not train. I just want to do. ;)

everyone around me in my cuberhood is whispering. god i hate this shit. i want to walk around yelling "seeeeeecrets!"

"SEEEEeeecrets!"

i get that every once in a while you need to tell a secret, but this shit is getting out of hand. all i hear is "whs-whiissp-shhh-whissshp-sshwhwhs-E-XACT-LY-whsis--whiiissspper--whisper--whish-whissper-E-CACT-LY"

just make low -key grunting noises that sound like you are a zombie - its fun

everyone around me in my cuberhood is whispering. god i hate this shit. i want to walk around yelling "seeeeeecrets!"

Fuuuuuckk yessssssssss The very noise whispering makes is, in of itself, irritating but yeah the whole ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE? thing... so rude.

In an old, shitty govt job I had, a large bunch of the office ladies would drop into Greek when they wanted to bitch (and oh boy it was really obvious - everyone whos lived in melb for a few years picks up a little greek eventually). That caused a bit of a shitstorm when others complained. It was like "theyre bitching about us!" vs "you cant discriminate against my cultural background!" and eventually I just resigned bcz fuck that noise.

I'm seriously the cube in the center of this whispering club, but I think they don't mind me hearing the whispers because they're not talking about me and they know i won't rat them out (except, er, on the internet!). but the thing is, of course, when people talk shit all the time about other people, it makes you wonder what they're saying about you when you're not around.

Oh yeah, there are a group of girls in my office who all knew each other from college and they frequently walk around the office whispering and looking around. Its annoying. I just want to stand up and start singing that elementary school rhyme, "secrets secrets are no fun, secrets secrets hurt someone!".

Another attorney used the word "penultimate" in a decision he wrote, which apparently completely flummoxed my boss. He brought the word to my coworker, who had never heard of it, and he keeps talking about "He made me have to go to the dictionary!" and talking about how he's going to bust this other attorney's balls for using such a big word.

I am having that feeling again where I am pretty sure I am living in a different reality than everybody else around me.

Also the crazy hymn-singing security guard was having an animated phone conversation whilst mid-poop in the bathroom telling someone not to park in front of Miss Cookie's house because she'll steal the car and I could use some cheering today so...

http://i.imgur.com/7UPLUl.jpg

Seriously, though, penultimate is not a crazy big rare word, right? It's not like nonplussed where it looks like it would mean the opposite of what it means, or like sesquipedalian in that it's hard as hell to even sound out and seriously nobody uses that word. Right?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0e3b1b27k1qzlxlho1_500.jpg
cat to rescue!

I love that cat.

Can that cat come hang out with me at work?

nah, penultimate is fine.

i remember being at a party once (IN CHICAGO) and i said "lynchian" and this girl got all pissed about it. earlier i had mentioned that i was heading off to graduate school in the fall and so she was like "are you going to study 'lynchian' things at grad school?" and laughed and laughed. it felt terrible

I would understand what you meant by "Lynchian" but it makes sense that someone at a party might not (although she shouldn't have made you feel bad about saying it, dang). It just seems like lawyers and judges should be familiar with words like penultimate. Or at least not act like it is some kind of AMAZING and NEVER BEFORE SEEN word that has never graced the pages of a legal opinion. I mean holy shit, do these people read case law? Even one time ever?

or just read in general!

but yeah, i shouldn't have said lynchian but thought the response was totally disproportionate to the mistake!

Totally disproportionate.

Shortly after The Shins Chutes Too Narrow came out I was talking with one of Jesse's friends at a bar and he mentioned liking the song So Says I and I started drunkenly babbling about Thomas Moore and what it meant in the song and how amazing it was and that dude actually did the thing where he looked around, said, "Ummmm... I need to go over here" and walked away from me to stand by himself at another part of the bar. To be fair, I was being a prat.

BUT come to think of it, this dude was part of a group of people who were really into being super exclusionary about their topics of conversation in an attempt to preserve the illusion of being some kind of small town intelligentsia to which the rest of us can only aspire so fuck that guy.

Uh, I thought you told me that you realized later that that guy was actually just not that bright and you had broken his brain. IIRC, you told me b/c you thought maybe you weren't making sense, but then you realized that you'd lost him and he was running away b/c he thought you were speaking in tounges.

He was a really nice guy, but he wasn't especially smart.

tongues

But one thing is for sure: your boss is really being penultimate.

In my callow youth, I'm sure I attributed his departure to his own stupidity but in hindsight, that feels like a crappy way to look at it. It's safer to assume that I was being a jerk because it will keep me from doing that again.

It's also possible I was speaking in drunken, slurred tongues and he just couldn't understand what the fuck I was talking about.