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

Our gas bills are astronomical so buying a couple of space heaters is mandatory.

I gave up on central heating a million years ago.

Reading out your emails to the open plan office at high volume in a sarcastic tone of voice is not a good way to start the week.

Why does my boss not do things/ask me not to do things that cost nothing, take no time, could only be good, and would hurt nothing and no one?? E.g.: She receives an email w/ bunch a of documents that may or may not be relevant to a certain case. If I ask her if she's saved them, she says, No, I don't know if we'll need them. It's not like we're short on disk space! Just save them in the special folder called Unsorted Documents! Why would you NOT DO THAT?

If she were anyone else, I'd say she was asserting her authority by shooting down my suggestions, but that's absolutely not her way, so idk.

Another e.g. - My other boss wanted me and our associate atty. to become notaries. The cost was virtually nothing and the application takes 5 minutes, and bam! your notary commission is on its way. But she decided that it wasn't important that we be notaries b/c, "Electronic verification is taking over, so notarizing is going to be a thing of the past, soon." Well, it's a good thing we dodged that bullet of having notary power that might one day become obsolete.

wrt the first thing, I get annoyed at coworkers that save everything, to the effect that they have so much stuff on their PC that they can't find the things that were worth saving.

i save everything but I am EXCELLENT at filing, so I have nice clear categories for p much everything.

but I also worked for a customer that was notorious for dragging up issues from years previous, and trying to catch us out on stuff that they had screwed up themselves.

the joy of being a person who saves everything AND can find said saved materials is responding to those kinds of queries with a 'see attached email from 2005 which contradicts everything you just said. have a nice day, love VG.'

i love doing that so much, I can't even tell you

BOOM

READ IT AND WEEP SUCKA

<drops mouse>

I'm talking about documents that have a decent chance of being relevant - case file materials! I mean, what bugged me today was that she needed a motion in a case we came in on as co-counsel for a particular purpose. She had received it in an email with other pleadings, but she didn't save any of them because she didn't know if they would be relevant to our work. There were maybe 10 PDFs, 50-some pages, maybe - what did she think would happen if she saved them and then we didn't need them?

Anyway, I like her, and she is overall a good employer, but working in this tiny firm is like spending 40 hours a week with your family.

To bitch about someone I really do NOT like: Former opposing counsel was a skeeeeezy hack who, we found out, tried to file a court order. A party can't ~file~ a court order - you have to petition the court for whatever you want, and the judge can decide to enter an order. But this guy hand-wrote a 3 page order with decisions on some child custody issues, file-stamped it at the self-serve desk, and tried to pass it off as a court order. Who thinks they can get away with this?? It was as hilarious as it was infuriating.

the joy of being a person who saves everything AND can find said saved materials is responding to those kinds of queries with a 'see attached email from 2005 which contradicts everything you just said. have a nice day, love VG.'

MMEEE TOOOO. In fact Ive even done this to bosses, ohhh boy they hate being showed up as wrong. "WHY WASNT I TOLD ABOUT THIS" "oh but you were, dEar sir, here BAM"

the

BEST

Well its the best unless its my current ass of a boss, who even when presented with evidence, just lies to yr face/tells you yr wrong/tells you to shut up and do what he asked.

Then repeatedly re-asks for the same things we already did for him.

/kif sigh

Say it's lunchtime and you're waiting for the food I'd already put into the microwave to finish while I'm currently in my cubicle. And when it does, do you wait for me to come from my cubicle to the break room -- literally 20 steps away -- or do you take my food out yourself? And when I come running in saying, "Please don't touch that" (I'm a germophobe), do you stare me down darkly, and say, "YOU SHOULDN'T MAKE PEOPLE MAD"?

Keep in mind, when you use the restroom, you don't wash your hands.

i would just eat yr food with my hands :D

I want a new mutual adoptee.

;_;

How long was the microwave set for? How much work could you get done while lunch was heating? Walking away from your microwaving food and relying on someone to come get you has always been NAGL in every place I've worked, but the main one of those was a warehouse with a lot of employees, most of whom only had a 30-minute lunch break. And your phobias are not your co-workers' problem.

85 seconds. Seriously, it would've taken me less than 10 seconds to hear the microwave beep (it's within hearing range, obviously) and to walk over.

I think it's not cool to take it out without waiting 30 seconds first, but going back to your desk if it needs less than 2 minutes seems odd to me too

but then both feelings come from having the luxury of being in a job and a country where it's generally ok to take time for lunch, so I guess this doesn't necessarily translate (and my sympathies to anyone who does not get that luxury)

Why does this professional psychologist not have the ability to open Word files? Or Word Perfect or Open Office?? Instead of editing her own affidavits, she prints the PDFs we send her, hand writes edits, and scans and emails them back to us. This is not reasonable!

And why am I reading my work email on Saturday.

And she can't open PDFs either!?

If you leave food in the micro and walk away, I figure you're lucky if it's even sitting on the counter waiting for you when you come back. I say this in high dudgeon since I work on a floor with only 3 microwaves for like 100 ppl.

Yeh, you leave your food in the microwave, it's gonna get touched, and that's reasonable.

food touched touched, or the dish was moved touched?

Our floor has fewer than 72 people with 2 microwaves and this is probably the second time this has happened to me, but the first time by someone whom I know firsthand who leaves the restroom straight from No. 2 without washing his hands.

More the reason to stand watch to protect your food from that savage!

my boss lady occassionally flirts with me, and the way she does it is like she's totally desperate for positive attention. like, it's not the kinda flirting where it's like it's "yeah, I find you attractive, it's cool" and more like "DEAR GOD PLEASE FIND ME ATTRACTIVE!!!! CHECK OUT MY TITS, CHECK OUT MY LEGS. I GOTTA NICE NECK, YOU SEE????" i have to regularly hand in projects to her, and this is making me want to avoid her like the plague.

double down is she's my boss, so i don't wanna just go "ughhhhh". guess it could be worse.

Bizarre. How do you feel about facing the problem head-on?

i couldn't help reading your comment like beavis & butthead. i'll probably just be polite, don't know what else to do right now other than remember to find a new job at some point.

aha! i have a plan. normally i chew on an altoid when i have nasty coffee mouth and have to talk to people, but next time i talk to my boss won't. maybe my crypt-keeper breath will do the trick.

Are you in the US?

yes

Then you're fucked.

hahaha no I was going to say that her behavior is pretty straight foward sexual harassment and suggest that you go talk to your HR department or whoever is responsible for this kind of thing. Hopefully you work for a decent employer who will take these kind of thing seriously. Then you can turn in your work without fear of getting an unwanted facefull of boobs. This is not legal advice. I am not your lawyer.

But if you're feeling direct, you can also say something like, "I really prefer to keep my work relationships very professional, so I don't think I'm the one to ask about that." (If she's saying things like "How do my gams look?" while waggling her eyebrows and lifting her skirt to reveal a garter belt or whatever she's doing.) Might shame her into being less of a dingaling.

"I don't think I'm the one to ask about that because I'm more of a buffalo hump man."

haha, i'll be alright, i was just pissed off today. i need to chill the fuck out.

Man there is so much I want to post on this thread but never do

Dear person who sits 2 feet away from me,

Was there no better time to start noisily bundling up the scrap brown paper that came in your Amazon parcel than just as soon as someone on the other side of the room had started to answer a question I'd asked? I mean you opened the parcel this morning and hadn't touched it since, and have resumed not touching it now nobody's trying to talk to me, but even when I asked them to repeat themselves you kept going so I basically had to just pretend I had a vague idea what they said as if we were making inconsequential smalltalk at heavy metal gig night

(my hearing or my auditory processing or sth is not v good, maybe normal people can deal w/this)

I mean prob. normal people would just have made it more obvious that you should stop but apparently I can't be normal people and can only whine on the internet instead.

i shush ppl all the time, and make it perfectly clear that functioning adults shouldnt need to be fuckin shushed, it works

sometimes i feel like a diplomat crossed with a therapist trying to juggle different co-workers who are unable to communicate or be rational or act like adults. and i actually like all these people! the trouble is a lot of them don't like each other.

I just shout IM SORRY I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE NOISE PAPERMATE OVER THERE IS MAKING SPEAK UP.

But then again everyone at work thinks I'm a nutbar, so I dunno.

"Even though scientists have studied the ocean’s water for more than a century, they still have a lot left to find out about it."

"Pure iron is fairly soft so it is often converted to steel before use."

"Gas is all around you. It has no shape, size or colour of its own."

"This wiped out most dinosaurs but also caused an existing type of plant, the tomato plant, to change its genes. This change of genes is what turned its fruit a bright red."

otm

Read that as all one sentence - ie, the mysteries of the ocean, soft iron and gas being all around you wiped out the dinosaurs and turned tomatoes red. obviously.