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

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.

It was a funny anecdote when you first thought he was walking away out of pity to keep you from embarrassing yourself further with your facile and incorrect thoughts on Moore but then you realized he was just confused. Whatever, let's just settle on you both being too drunk to remember who the other was.

Sorry everyone. We're still waiting on Gr80 to build us our own thread.

crazy, antagonistic division meeting (about 20 people in the room). we were doing the regular thing, going around the room to provide updates. but this time, for whatever reason, people were just sniping at each other, making insults under their breath, admonishing others for whispering while they were speaking (and then proceeding to whisper themselves while others were speaking), rolling their eyes, for an hour straight. the one lady who got really antagonistic during her update started out with a surprising anecdote:

"I'm about to have a hot flash!"

and then got more aggressive from there

amazing!

The hymn singing security guard was just singing in the bathroom again, but not a hymn. Three Blind Mice. She was full on belting out Three Blind Mice, church-style, while in the stall.

HOW DO YOU NOT LOVE THIS WOMAN???

"I'm about to have a hot flash!"

and then got more aggressive from there

Using menopause as a threat, thats a unique one.

i'm supposed to be in the office on my own ffs stop wandering in here to have yr inane conversations and let me play nethack in peace

HOW DO YOU NOT LOVE THIS WOMAN???

I'm still a little bitter about the time I found one of my coworkers collapsed unconscious on the bathroom floor, went to the security guard for help, and she proceeded to run in and out of the bathroom yelling "Oh Jesus! Help me Jesus!" Quit calling Jesus and call 911, you dingbat!

I admit to appreciating her, however, as her weirdness does add to the absurdity of my work situation and sometimes that absurdity is the only thing that gets me through my day.

What had happened to your co-worker, if you don't mind me asking?

I don't know specifically. She's in her mid to late 80s (lol public employees wringing every last penny out of their pension) so it could have been a whole host of things. She's been back at work for a couple of years now and is as crabby and gossip-mongering as ever.

(I eventually told the security guard, "Go get [coworker who sits closest to the bathroom and isn't completely useless in a crisis] and tell her to come here NOW," and then sent that person to call 911. So she's not totally ineffective if you give her very explicit instructions.)

About three months ago, I was talking to a coworker at the water cooler when he suddenly collapsed in pain and had to be called away in an ambulance due to a low back spasm, and then about a year and a half ago, another (now former) coworker waited in ambush behind a cubicle wall for his boss and then jumped out and beat the shit out of her. A year ago somebody from another agency jumped to her death from inside the building. I wasn't witness to the latter two although I was the pugilistic coworker's union steward.

So, you know, the security guard should really be able to step up in a crisis.

o_O

remind me to never visit carl's work.

And after ten years, tips!

http://lifehacker.com/5929218/the-worst-coworkers-and-workplace-annoyances-and-how-to-deal-with-them

No tips for dealing with loud chewing or burned popcorn, no credibility.

Jeez, an 80-year-old working isn't against the law?

My complaints (weird social caste politics, mostly) about work are pretty trivial compared to these Wal-Mart people.

Today I am helping organise the world's most inane Guinness world record attempt, something I have no interest in and no belief in the value of, which is scheduled to take place on Saturday, 28 July, when you can guarantee that there will not be even the slightest bit of media interest due to a certain big sports event starting. The people who came up with this are idiots.

ffs ffs ffs ffs ffs ffs ffs ffs

LOL james that sounds like the time my old boss came up with this mad idea to send a camera up in a weather balloon to take pics of the earth from on high, til it came back down.. we were all "someones already done it?" and he didnt care, he was so excited and planning it and testing cameras in freezers ....

it never ended up happening. No one really cared, lol.

Someone did a series of find & replaces in a large Excel file I maintain and now nothing makes sense. Fuck you!!

It's been bugging me for a while that in Word documents that the associate attorney I work with (bitched about frequently above) writes, URLs and email addresses show up as plain text instead of links or even underlined and in blue. Even when I open them on my computer, they won't become links.

Before he came in this morning I went into his office and looked at his settings on Word and saw that he had turned off every auto-correct/replace and auto-format option. Even smart quotes.

The only method I can see for turning off all these options is clicking them one-by-one. If I didn't know him, I would think Word was messed up, but he definitely turned them all off on purpose.

I hate the setting that turns URLs to blue underlined links. I'd be okay with it if it just made it a link. Why does it have to be blue?

Bc links are a different color b/c it's a convention, just like underlining them. If they're not a different color they don't stand out as much and they look like underlined text. To me. And to other people, obviously, since it became a convention for a reason.

I don't like the automatic hyperlink feature either. I either turn them off or create custom templates where the hyperlink colour is not the default bright blue.

It would be different if I created Word documents for screen reading, but everything I write gets printed out and copied so clickable links are pointless and blue links look terrible on paper (they print light gray on a b&w printer). I'd be fine with blue clickable links if there was a separate style sheet for printing that turned the links black.

Hyperlink formatting is (or can be) kryptonite for people in print publishing.

:-/

I'm going to go bitch to my co-workers about my stupid annoying internet friends.

(joke - <3 - you're not stupid)

Before he came in this morning I went into his office and looked at his settings on Word and saw that he had turned off every auto-correct/replace and auto-format option. Even smart quotes.

As would I, that shit is ... shit. Smart quotes especially. WmC is right, it is the worst nightmare in printing.

LOL james that sounds like the time my old boss came up with this mad idea to send a camera up in a weather balloon

Hah ha. Although that would have been more fun than this nonsense. (I'm at work now on a Saturday for the first time in ages. How did I use to do this regularly?)

Hyperlink formatting is (or can be) kryptonite for people in print publishing.

Yeah, when you bring a Word doc into InDesign the links get boxes and become active for PDFs, but this sucks when you're doing a magazine or book because they look mental

>:(

I'm not talking about your fancy "print" and "magazines." We're just humble legal professionals printing on Konica Bizhubs and Canon printer/scanner/fax machine and sometimes converting to PDFs, and for us smart quotes and hyperlinks are convenient and useful.

I forgot to mention that I turned changed his auto-correct settings back to the way I thought they should be.

NOW who's a stupid, annoying co-worker, huh?

FWIW I think you can highlight links in word and change the colour if you want.

anticipating Jesse's coworker showing up here bitching about some insane coworker breaking into his/her office and changing all the settings on their computer!

All I'm saying is that this guy might have accidentally done something that you all agree with but he did it for all the wrong reasons.

We're just humble legal professionals printing on Konica Bizhubs and Canon printer/scanner/fax machine and sometimes converting to PDFs, and for us smart quotes and hyperlinks are convenient and useful.

I can definitely see the use there, and in fact more people than not would find it useful, so fair dos.

I kinda wish Je55e worked in one of those law offices where everyone is still clinging desperately to WordPerfect