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

god its rly quite normal over here now :(

We've got this weird wall decal in the restroom that says in cursive font, "Don't forget to wash your hands! Love, Mom"

… and I hate it. My mother is pretty whimsical about most everything, but even that would be too much for her.

And really, thank goodness she's alive. I'm scared that one day I'll go in there, and there'll be a co-worker leaning against the wall trying to contain his tears.

I hate the implication that it's anybody's mother's job to policy handwashing. You're grown. Wash your fucking hands.

See also: "Do your dishes. Your mother doesn't work here."

FUCK YOU

well if my mother doesn't work here, how did she leave that stupid note in the restroom?

"Maybe you should wear something more flattering to work? Love Mum"

"I don't think I could wear lipstick that color. Love Mum"

"Are you sure you ironed that shirt?"

"did you specify non-sequential bills?"

"Don't forget to deliberately not wash your hands! Love, Richard Feynman"

I don't technically work in civil service, but it's as good as. It's actually the most smart and professional workplace I've ever had. (Whereas the creative private sector place my partner works in is total nuts)

I work in a place where I was able to put a sign saying "ONLY FULL-TIME STAFF CAN URINATE INTO THIS BUCKET" on a bucket being used to catch water from a roof leak in our main corridor and the sign stayed there for a whole day; don't know if this makes my workplace good or bad

i vote good

It makes you a model coworker.

See also: "Do your dishes. Your mother doesn't work here."

Well, tbh at my workplace thats exactly what *I* think because fuck me, if anyone in this office ever learned how to wash a cup its news to me. We have a dishwasher and TWO sinks, but inevitably by Friday afternoon both sinks are piled to the brim with filthy plates and cups and people just rinse off dishes and shove em in the drainer rack.

I also, btw, have a ton of stories about institutionalized behaviour in public service jobs but... its hard to bring any to clear recall now, it was 25 years ago and it is all a big, horrible blur that Ive blanked out.

The problem with that sign is the assumption that it's your mother's job to do dishes.

But yeah, people should clean up after themselves. That's gross that you end up with two sink fulls of dirty dishes at work! Bleh.

Oh right yes of course, thats a good point.

But yeah ugh. The worst offender is a woman who eats some form of gross chocolate porridge at her desk every morning, so I have to put up with the clinking and stirring and slurping and then she puts the soaking gummy bowl in the sink all day.

Private sector can be just as bad, you get places that have over-hired and pay too much with maybe a weird appraisal system where it ends up like a cartel of denial, nobody leaving cos they can't get a better job and they're getting worse and worse at their current one. Public sector need not be like this as a rule, BBC was nothing like this, most people were on short contracts and it was incredibly competitive, ultimately tiring and unfair/

I thought there was a danger of my colleague, who seems to have an unusually relaxed approach to work, being in a position where she finally had to deliver something. I was kind of interested how that would turn out.

Get in this morning to find she's off sick and I'm nominated to take this work over.

This is probably more an issue around poor management really, though.

i have a regular client, a designer, who once expected me to build a website with the only design reference being an animated gif that she had sent over

I was a civil servant until 3 years ago, and can endorse a lot of Ronan's observed behaviour. At least part of it is to do with the kind of people/quality of people you can get for the money - at the lowest grades, during the NuLab years, there was a special dispensation to exclude public servants from having the minimum wage applied to them. When the coalition decided to revoke the dispensation, some people were getting a 30% pay rise just to get to minimum wage. Perhaps as a result they don't really have a sense of belonging, so basic things like making sure you do your shit in the toilet as opposed to on the floor sometimes go by the wayside because it's somebody else's problem to clean up and it's not like it matters. Actual staff pay through the range is poor, even to the top; the only people paid market rates are consultants and temporary staff because they wouldn't come in otherwise. But I wouldn't say any more about that until I know this is definitely de-indexed.

Also, the reason you then end up with people like Map Woman is because it's very, very difficult to discipline people, and almost impossible to sack them. You can give her hard performance targets to get measured against to try and prove she's not capable, but those targets have to be within her abilities to start with and she may only be able to stare at a map - in which case that's all you can ask her to do and as long as she does that then her performance is satisfactory. Again, there are de-indexed stories about that.

would enjoy a de-indexed thread

I thought this thread was de-indexed, but I'm not going to load 6864 posts to try to find out.

Could this thread be de-indexed?
― Je55e, Sunday, June 10, 2012 5:09 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Done.
― 9 1/2 Gleeks (WmC), Sunday, June 10, 2012 6:20 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're welcome.

^hero

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XtV4H9vVL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

a couple of professions have 77 threads for this stuff, maybe we could do with a general co-workers one

today i was asked to change, on a website, someone's title from

Manager, Sales and Account Services

to

Manager, Sales & Account Services

Mookie, this is your safe place, but I endorse that change.

i don't care either way, but requesting it be changed from one to the other -- which passed through at least two other people on the way to me -- is some office space shit

change it to

Manager, Sales 'n' Accounting Services

Sales & Account Services Manager
Manager, Sales + Account Services
Manager, Sales &/or Account Services

you've got a lot of options.

Manager, Sales ampersand Account Services

Manager, Sales U+0026 Account Services

ban all desk-whispering

i fucking haaaaaate it

Oh god yes me too. I immediately react (and this is my problem tbh) with "wtf are they bitching about oh god its about me isnt it oh god"

totally!

coworker who sits behind me was queen of desk whispering - she returned from a 2 month leave of absence today and it's been whisperpalooza all fuckin day. i guess the reason she left was something health-related & not public knowledge but clearly can be talked about at length to anyone who asks as long as its at whisper-level

i mean i hate loudtalking just as much but surely theres a happy medium

Just talk in a quiet indoor voice! No yelling! No whispers!

OTM. The susurration of a whisper cuts through my concentration far more keenly than a normal indoor voice would.

i hate work whispering with a burning passion. there was an egregious instance of it the other day. at precisely 5:27pm, every day, the air condition cuts off and suddenly it's incredibly quiet in the office. you can hear people walking from way down the hall (on carpet!), elevator doors closing behind glass windows, all sorts of stuff you normally never hear. anyway, a few days ago the office was pretty deserted, and then at 5:27pm the A/C cuts off, and then a minute later i hear two people whispering ONE CUBE away from me. they went on and and on, the only two people left besides me in the entire fucking office, practically. and it was so intensely quiet, otherwise, that it felt like ASMR. in fact i think i ended up subconsciously navigating to the ASMR wikipedia page as they were doing it. anyway, it's hard to explain but when there are only 3 people within 200 feet and it's as quiet as a reserved mouse and two of the three people are whispering to each other in a way that would stimulate some people on the internet in weird dreamlike ways, i get uncomfortable

whispering is the worst, especially when it's in a work environment where people use it to complain or have some surreptitious bitching session. not even that i mind people bitching, just the slow seep of bad vibes from two people chuntering on at each other under their breath.

don't get why people don't just use an instant messenger if it's that secret.

The secretiveness is not what bugs me most about whispering, it's that the sibilant sounds are the only ones audible and they are super annoying. The (perceived) secretiveness is most annoying when you KNOW the conversation doesn't have to be secret at all! Or if it were that private, the people could go to a room w/ a closed door. I think sometimes work whispering is a way of trying to look important and powerful.

Happily, we don't have any whispering at my office, but at the social justice non-profit and the last restaurant where I worked, it was an everyday thing.

love whispering, it adds atmosphere

One of the customer service people at my bank had a very sibilant way of talking, which I know wasn't her fault, but it made everything she said sound like psss psss psst whispering and it made me want to scream at her. That branch closed down and now thank god she's out of my life.

xp >:(

My boss' work spouse has a volume level of 12. She is down the hall now.

Not co-workers, but work-people nonetheless: this week I have dealt with two (2) multi-page Official Legal Documents (a power of attorney and a financial disclosure statement) that were handwritten on legal/notebook paper, written out by lawyers. The disclosure I had sent to the lawyer in fillable PDF, and he copied the whole thing onto notebook paper.

when you take the day off and your colleagues try to facebook stalk you to see what you were 'really up to'

pretty pathetic