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

she has an intriguing idea of how the sewer system works

smdh

she has an intriguing idea of how the sewer system works

― μpright mammal (mh), Friday, September 25, 2015 3:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Her concept of public utilities in general is a topic of great fascination to me, cf the time she could not fathom why her home internet would be out when the electricity to her home was still on.

Sounds like the annual confusion I sometimes hear of why the gas heat doesn't work when the electricity goes out.

I heard an interview with a Chicago sewer and water* guy who said that it was slightly greener to put biodegradables down the drain than in the trash, esp b/c they're starting to re-use sludge as fertilizer. But I don't believe she gave it that much thought.

*"Metropolitan Water Reclamation"!

She also puts teabags in the disposal. Why not use it to shred documents?

i'm surprised she doesnt put her tampons in the disposal

I had to explain the difference between astrology and astronomy to my teaching assistant on at least 2 different occasions during the previous school term. Now I teach online.

heavens!

resident SACW earlier -

opens the fridge
rummages around
shouts
"L... L... L... L... FUCKIN LIMA!"

now I love this woman dearly but she has a reputation for being a bit of a slob, and there is this thing that she does where she microwaves food like hash browns or eggs or something but instead of using one of the plates that we have in the plate cabinet, she uses a paper towel (!)

for like kinda moist things!

and then puts the v apparently greasy/wet paper towel right on the counter

bleuch

had to talk to my boss abt desk-whisperer bcz i'm kinda worried about his mental health. dunno if it will go anywhere but i feel better about being on record that his behaviour is unsettling

i like him but no-one should have to deal with his pent-up nonsense

mr veg said "if you hear a sound kind of like a staple gun just walk straight out of the building immediately" lol but also O_O and :/

http://i.imgur.com/kfbteCz.gif

yep

Yeah not funny at all TBH :(

OMG I have just seen that someone who used to work for me is one of the four in the new 'Driving to Oz' Fosters campaign.

Erm... better not post why he stopped working for me in a public place.

just tell us in pig-latin. (also this thread may have been de-indexed?)

I had him fracked for saud (and getting anyone fracked in the sivil cervice is nearly impossible, but facts are facts and is you sign your own clexpenses aims it's difficult to deny you did it deliberately). He went down the route of a clarassment haim and I was minorly old toff for not entirely following porrect crocedures but nothing to orry wover.

minorly old toff, going to nick that

I cannot share but I have some baffling stories of really blatant, how on earth did you think no-one would notice, saud (not in my current job I should add)

he claimed it wasn't him but the forms were covered in his saudi prints

i have always felt like our "test plans" in a QA environment are designed with the flawed assumption that everything will work, and no considerations are made for what to do if certain tests fail - not enough buffer time built in, or clear chain of command for how to fix the situation.

There've been multiple times where we reported unsuccessful tests of a component in QA, where instead of pulling back the migration and devoting the extra hours to rectifying it, they've just ignored it and migrated to production anyway. On one such occasion, this was done and then the application legitimately did not work in production, which cost us 10+ man hours (including weekend time) to fix - while I waited 8 hours for the opportunity to perform my 5-minute test.

This has happened again this week and boy will I be ticked if this thing now does not work, since we've been reporting the test failure in QA since 10/5.

(note the problem with the application not working in Prod was less the man hours to fix, which would have been needed anyway, but the fact that we had a pretty displeased customer).

dunno if any of the ilx civil service lol crew have seen this:

A CIA manual about how to sabotage productivity in offices, made for European spies during WW2.

“Insist on doing everything through channels. Never permit short-cuts to be taken to expedite decisions.”

“Make speeches. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.”

“When possible, refer all matters to committees, for ‘further study and consideration.’ Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.”

“Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.”

“Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, and resolutions.”

“Refer back to a matter decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.”

“Advocate ‘caution.’ Be ‘reasonable’ and urge your fellow conferees to be ‘reasonable’ and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.”

“Be worried about the propriety of any decision. Raise the question of whether it lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.”

I know these kind of articles prompt an easy slide into "lol that's my office alright!!" stuff - but the above honestly is like deeply held tenets of people I've worked with about how to actually do their job.

oops, forgot the link

http://fortune.com/2015/09/30/workplace-bureaucracy-simple-sabotage/

Had you not posted the link, I would've swore that was some made-up list someone put together on Facebook. It's too perfect.

Because it's so darn true! So darn true.

haha...damn, that cuts a little close to the bone,i'm guessing I must have some ex-CIA in my company then

because of the ass backwards way we do things, I got told the only time I could train this one group of temp folk was the weekend (when we're normally off). basically that's asking a bunch of temporary contractors, w/ wife/kids and all, to work forfeit their weekend and work a 60 hour week (time and a half sure, but hat's a big ask). Me, I didn't care cos I could just move my days off, but they don't have that luxury. also, the weekend is when almsot everybody is off, so when things break down, there's often nobody you can reach.

so how shocked am I that stuff broke that we couldn't fix during training and that several people left training early (ie not returning from break)? you mess with people's days off, that happens.

We might have the causality reversed. It seems likely that the CIA just spent some time in workplaces where nobody knew what the fuck they were doing and codified their asinine practices.

How those practices subsequently became the norm within ostensibly functioning businesses, though, is beyond me.

can you imagine how fun it'd be to be a spy in some euro office saying "hey i'd like to bring up last week's discussion on coffee cups" at every meeting, with everyone staring at you and wanting to die?

god it burns

How those practices subsequently became the norm within ostensibly functioning businesses, though, is beyond me.

your faith in the human race is touching

I think if I had three wishes right now one of them would be to live in a kind of WW2 sitcom where I'm using all of the above tactics, knowing I'm doing so solely to destroy progress.

Imagine, like just imagine, how ANNOYING it would be to keep doing all this stuff.

"let's be reasonable here guys!" or "whoa there, let's be reasonable for a second", or "not sure we want to rush into anything here and get caught out later, how about we sit on this and be reasonable?"

this one would be amazing too: “Be worried about the propriety of any decision. Raise the question of whether it lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.”

"Now hold on just a second, Hitler. Shouldn't we exercise some caution here and make sure that steering committee is on board as well?"

"wait a second everyone - I mean, this may well lie within... the... jurisdiction of this group, however... doesn't anyone think it could conflict with the policy of... some... higher echelon?"

The whole handbook is good fun. The extract we're talking about here is on p28

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/CleanedUOSSSimpleSabotage_sm.pdf

Under "General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion"

Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned
Act stupid

and so on

I really feel like one of the people I worked with last year used these guidelines. some of the things she did:

*She wanted a cap on how many people were invited to a meeting. While generally good to limit the number to just key players, she used the same cap regardless of who was needed. for any key players we had to leave off due to her stupid *cap*, we then were asked to schedule a separate meeting to talk about what we discussed in the first meeting. if they posed a question that didn't get asked in the first meeting that we couldn't answer, now we're scheduling a third meeting.

*any time a decision was made by us, she would question it and pose all these doomsday scenarios - "what could go wrong" and kind of require us to prove that the innocuous decision we made to have breakfast at 8:00 am wasn't going to cause everybody to get cancer.

*any time something did go wrong, she'd cut into our time to fix it by demanding a full committee meeting including her boss to discuss what went wrong, why, and who was at fault, and then requiring us to state over and over again how it would be fixed...y'know instead of saving this shit for AFTER WE HAD A CHANCE TO FIX IT FIRST.

"What if we formed a new task force for every single word in the introductory paragraph? These Word Task Forces (WTFs) would spend a minimum of 4 weeks to determine whether or not their assigned word is optimal. After the WTFs determine that their words are optimal, Sentence Task Forces (STFs) would be asked to spend a minimum of 8 weeks to consolidate the work of the WTFs and construct a full sentence. The work of the STFs would then lead to the important work of the Paragraph Task Force (PTF), and then...I'm sure you follow the logic by now, Hitler. I advise that we allow ourselves some time to marinade on this idea and resume the discussion in 8 weeks."

"(7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope."

Being an office saboteur would be so much fun. I would start by targeting the staplers.

take all the mice out of computers in the building. hear the thunder of people angrily banging on their desk

hack into the vending machines and take out the first three items in every slot so that someone would have to pay $3 before getting their product, rendering it useless.

put out of order signs on copiers/printers on every floor, and the one that does work put a "low toner" sign on it.

ok this is giving me a boner I'll stop

pour honey on the bottom of all mice

that would basically end production

never use the "reply all" button at any point

actually there have been two occasions where the entire server of my company was taken down by someone sending an email to everybody in the firm by mistake and everybody "replying all" to tell people to stop "replying all" for three hours.

I imagined each time someone was observing this from afar and stroking his beard with glee.