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

"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.

At my last job, when people walked away from their computers without locking them, other people would occasionally 1) take a screenshot, 2) hide the desktop icons, and 3) set up the screenshot as the background image. I was never a perpetrator, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't take some joy in watching the aftermath.

when I worked in BBC it was a massive global mailing list and there were these weird emails that used to go around about like technical outages or whatever, presumably blanket bombed to the entire organisation just in case it meant your programme got fucked off air. Every few months some disparate band of renegades would emerge to ask to be taken off the list, all of them mailing the entire list, prompted by some angry spartacus figure. Then somebody else would always reply that their angry emails were part of the problem. Once I replied and said "I'd just like to say I find this list informative and very useful - until we can be sure a majority are against being on it, I'd lean towards assuming people want to be added to it without their having to ask."

xpost hahaha

hahaha yeah it was exactly like that. "please remove me from your email". I'm like man ,shutting down operations was that easy.

there was one guy who emailed back to say "gee, so glad to be working with a bunch of idiots" via reply all. he had a fairly common name, and people who saw that email looked up his name in the associate directory, found someone else with the same name that was showing as Terminated, and started spreading the rumor, which still incorrectly persists to this day, that the guy was fired for that email.

because the first thing you do during a massive server issue caused by a bunch of idiots replying all is seek out and fire a guy who sent one agitated email.

At my last job, when people walked away from their computers without locking them, other people would occasionally 1) take a screenshot, 2) hide the desktop icons, and 3) set up the screenshot as the background image. I was never a perpetrator, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't take some joy in watching the aftermath.

― I Was Picking Up A Teaspoon When Something Happened To My Spine (Old Lunch), Monday, October 26, 2015 4:26 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OMG

Based on that WW2 list I've identified at least one saboteur in my office

i think there are people i worked with in my last job that would actually argue for the benefits of the approaches in that ww2 list, even if they hadn't realised these were their general reactions to most situations.

I never realized before today that Six Sigma was a CIA term.

How do you play these tricks on Germans though?

"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?"

Exzellent question! The steering committee will be prescribed its duties from Section IV, Chapter 6, Paragraphs (14-23) after this meeting's minutes are offered to the from the Ministry of Transcribing. Their path is rather clear. Next question!"

in one job I had if you left your screen unlocked people had fun with autocorrect in Word.
Kind retards,
etc

hah ahahhaaa

one of our customer service agents was frantically asking in a team chat about what to tell a customer who needed help with her Alpha David.

we kept asking "Alpha David? A.D.?"

she was trying to say "affidavit"

that's top notch

i love stuff like that:

the company picnic was a couple days ago. it's a big deal since there are 5k+ employees here. it's a big enough event that the local police and fire departments come and give some demos, community goodwill and all that. the cops show off their cop dogs, mainly.

i overheard a woman asking "is canine a breed of dog?" and she kept asking cos her coworkers' blank stares didn't really register correctly with her, i guess. and then a guy was trying to explain the visual pun of k-9 = canine. but she just kept asking.

― goole, Thursday, June 27, 2013 11:39 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this friend of my auntie's pronounces picturesque as "picture-es-cue"

I saw a form asking for 'rest bite care'

I knew the training I was leading yesterday was doomed when two people couldn't pronounce "indemnity". kept saying "identity plans"

lol kinder.

Suprised at the suprise over the "desktop icons as background image" prank, that ones old as the hills! As is the "set the startup sound as some really long annoying song in WAV format, then turn the speakers up full and disable the volume knob".

...I think Ive worked in IT for too long.

coworker's son got his car stolen with wallet/licence inside; says she hates men

more of a lol than annoying

was sitting next to a customer service rep today in the office who kept banging the table whenever he got mad and picking pedantic fights with all of his customers. it's like he gets off on ruining 65 year old ladies' days

Was just in a meeting with my boss and saw one of those red "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" Trump hats on a shelf behind him. Almost literally shuddered. Oh, well, this is the easiest and highest-paying job I've ever had, so...fuck it.

maybe it's an ironic make america great again hat

My boss doesn't do irony.

was sitting next to a customer service rep today in the office who kept banging the table whenever he got mad and picking pedantic fights with all of his customers.

Do you live in MTL by any chance?

I wish

Three days ago: assurances from a senior director that our department is appreciated and seen as integral to the business.
Today: head of department sends a department wide email notifying us that there's going to be random drug testing.
I swear I'm living in a fucking Dilbert cartoon.

probably why you got the assurances in the first place

you're important to the business so please don't complain when we randomly drug test you hippie

The department is appreciated and integral to the business. The people who make up the department, however...

Well, we are a motley collection of scumbags...

Wow. I've never even heard of people being drug tested for jobs in the UK before!

I cannot see any valid reason to ever drug test an actual employee (as opposed to a potential hire) unless that employee is operating equipment that could somehow harm another person =and= said employee has exhibited behavior that is concerning in some way. Otherwise...the fuck does it matter?

xp it's happened to a few people I know. I think it's a bit more common in the US though. Oh, and 'refusal to participate in a random drug test will be treated in the same way as a positive test'.

I sure do feel appreciated and integral to the business! I don't take drugs and I haven't had a drink for 13 and a half years, but still this boils my piss. Which ironically is how I imagine they test for drugs.

having to write end of year comments for my upcoming evaluation in October seems kind of ridiculous

brb adding "contribute to ilx" to my performance goals

have started using "I want x to happen" in emails, because its all that seem to work ffs