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

aren't the premium seats exactly the same as regular seats (same leg room, etc) except with a) vinyl upholstery instead of fabric so they can print numbers on the backs b) towards the front of the bus?

― Ina-Garten-Da-Vida (Stevie D(eux)), Friday, 20 November 2015 16:21 (2 hours ago) Permalink

the one sthat are $1 extra, yeah. but there are some for $5 extra that are at the top front of the bus, meaning there's nobody in front of you, and an assload of space/legroom. basically nothing between you and the windshield.

this is why I was able to sleep on a bus for the first time in my life pretty much

holy shit – the only time i ever sat at the front of a megabus, i would start nodding off and then take up terrified, white-knuckling the armrest because the first thing i would see upon slightly opening my eyes is wide open highway fling right at me!

^^

https://media.giphy.com/media/xTiTnjsfQsvr57nlCw/giphy.gif

Ever since I read about that chinatown bus that decapitated all those people Ive been too scared to ever get on a long-distance style tall bus. Irrational I know. but ugh.

Also, how the fuck do they not tip over more often?

...anyway, rather off topic.

low center of gravity

was that a double-decker bus? megabus is single

Even some of those kind seem high! Like, with the storage underneath. I havent been on a long distance bus in years tbh, just as cheap to fly these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2_T4WVnnFU

this woman actually says "easy peasy lemon squeezy" every 5 minutes

only 14 days left in hell

x-post lol oh no

- 3 hour mandatory training session on customer service today
- ive been doing this fucking job for 15 years and I barely do any "customer service" stuff anymore
- they booked everyone - all the helpdesk and accounts and L1 service people - into one session. Guys, who's going to man the actual phones while we are doing this?
- last min scramble ensues to shift half the people into another session
- which we got half an hours notice of just now.

WHEEEEEEEEEEE.

Got a new coworker (Coworker A) last year for a total of four in my team, including the manager. Mostly harmless. Cusses in her cubical a little much, but nothing major. However, whenever our other coworker (Coworker B) calls out from work on personal leave, Coworker A says "I'm calling shenanigans," implying that she doesn't believe that Coworker B (who has been with the company for nearly a decade) has a legitimate excuse to miss work.

In mid-November, co-worker A had to take a week of personal leave due to the flu. We all sent along messages of sympathy and compassion. "Hope you get well soon." Etc.

Two weeks later coworker B had to take personal leave for health reasons as well. She was hospitalized for several days and was out for over over a week. Coworker A's response? Almost every day: "I'M CALLING SHENANIGANS!"

Have u a shenanigans process once invoked? Simple enough to build in a catch for frivolous claims.

Is Shenanigan's the pub down the street? Maybe she wants to know what time Happy Hour is over.

wow rude

I think pplains nailed it, that must be it

Learners in training decide to make disparaging remarks to our San Juan learners who are attending on the phone. It's like grade school.

I opted not to attend my company's off-site holiday party, which is being held today from noon until ??? and which effectively shuts the office down because more people are attending than not. At quarter 'til 12, as everyone is filing out and I'm kinda wrapping up what I'm working on, I get an email "reminding" (AKA mentioning for the first time ever) those of us who chose not to attend that we're expected to work a full eight hours while everyone else is drinking it up elsewhere. I've been seriously considering leaving this job for a while but that might honestly be the end of it for me. No timely communication or consideration ever, on top of numerous other complaints. Fuuuuuuck this.

What the hell.

Though to be honest, if they gave me a choice of going to the retreat or working the full days I would be working, I'd take the latter.

I don't care so much that the expectation is that people have to work the full day if they aren't attending the party. I care that they voiced this expectation at literally the last possible minute, and as a "reminder". And, for the douche trifecta, my boss communicated this through a proxy so as to not look like the bad guy in this situation.

our christmas party instructions came with 6 points of order all of which boiled down to 'don't drink too much and make an idiot of yourselves / the company'. which is a change from, and probably a consequence of, last year when everybody got given 6 free drinks tokens.

xp can't you just blow it off at that point and be like "dude you told us this minutes before, how could we possibly be expected to do this?"

or just say yes to the party and not show up, that's what i'd gladly do

yeah depending on how big the group is, just claim you were there

^^

if you do that, be sure to post a poem on yr tumblr about how lonely you felt at the party and how it seemed like no one even noticed you, and edit the publication date to an hour or so after the party ended. that way you can claim that you were at the party and if anyone claims that you weren't, you can point to the poem on yr tumblr, providing a convincing alibi and possibly also pushing your poetry career to a new level

also: become a tumblr poet

So I've been continuing to train a room of 25 contractors and they expect me to simultaneously train 4 people in San Juan over the phone. Always a losing proposition, but as stated upthread, even more difficult when your in-room learners make so much damn noise that nobody on the phone can hear, even despite repeated pleas from me and the other managers to cut out the side conversations and just listen. Also made some rude remarks about the San Juan learners that those learners could hear on the phone.

Naturally when the efforts of me and the other managers failed, because they're contractors and not employed by us (so we can't discipline them), I gave feedback to their managers to see if they could address with their employees. Shame on me for assuming, but when they agreed to come by, I had assumed it was just going to be a polite reminder to please be respectful of other learners, and to stop being disruptive/pay attention etc.

Their manager asked me to leave the room, but my buddy stayed in. He told me the manager went full-on nuclear on them, threatening their job security, etc. I was horrified and now I feel terrible - they weren't being *that* bad.

No wonder these folks don't do well if this is the kind of message they get on a regular basis.

... And that you're in a position of having to train 25 of them at a time.

Whenever I start to get into a situation like this, I insist on each person attending from his/her desk or couch or whatever with a headset. This way I can mute all background noise and ensure every participant is treated equally. This also reduces the clusterfuck created by two or more "live" groups constantly having side conversations or talking over someone from the other group.

One satellite office manager asshole I had near-daily videoconferences with was in the habit of openly muting the mic so he could disparage me or someone in my team to his own assembled victim-team. I returned the favour by routinely highlighting his aggressiveness and ineptitude during meetings in head office. He was gone three months later. Satellite always loses, friend.

I mean, fuck, he reached over and hit the mute, and we all sat silently trying to lip read obscenities on a giant LCD screen. Then back to the meeting.

omg at that manager - at least be discreet if yr gonna be an asshole. re: training I could have done virtually, but I generally dislike that method as I catch learners napping all the time (they aren't well supervised).

so anywho...they gave me a project manager to report to that is completely useless. It's not even Peter principle - I can't imagine what she excels at even at a lower level.

Early on she kept trying to get me to do her tasks for her, which of course I refused. I then learned she'd been pulling this shit on other direct reports on other projects, more than likely using the excuse that she was 'grooming' the employee for the next level. Likewise, it's not uncommon for someone to do something they're not supposed to either because they don't know better or they're afraid to upset the "person in charge". Me, on the other hand, I used to do this person's job (and left because I hated it), so I need no such grooming, and she seemed stunned when I said "no".

She also, for a while, would basically try to get me to draft every email for her. During meetings, she would ping me and go "OMG WHAT SHOULD I SAY NOW". all while she was whining about all the 'negative feedback' she gets. I had to beg her on three separate occasions to just do her job so I could do mine, had to complain to my boss and hers (the latter who has acknowledged her problems and basically has to babysit her because of it).

She took a whole week's vacation last week (which is poor form when you're in the last month of a project), but despite it making me fall behind, I backed her up and ensured that everything stayed on track. So how does she repay me?

I take a rare day off today and suddenly she starts pelting me with text messages asking me questions about something that happened in training last week. Almost every question, I had proactively answered in the email I sent her before I left the office Friday, which I passive-aggressively pointed out.

I think the only reason she has a job is because they can't afford to lose headcount right now but if she eventually gets shitcanned, she'll be the only one surprised. This is also the person that took credit for things I did on a project three years ago rather than clarifying she had nothing to do with either.

mean, fuck, he reached over and hit the mute, and we all sat silently trying to lip read obscenities on a giant LCD screen.

LOL what a knob! How could he not have known it was obvious if he was ON CAMERA.

after a while the lip-reading probably wasn't necessary, just the hitting of the mute button was enough to signal what he was doing

im leaving my current job with mostly this question on my mind: why would anyone talk to a person who is trying to eat their lunch ever at any time and for any reason

It's a great question. We were just reminded this morning about a loose policy strongly encouraging employees to eat somewhere other than their desks so that people aren't tempted to ask them work-related questions while they're off the clock. To which I silently replied, I'm going to continue eating at my desk until you drag me bodily away from my desk, and your inability to register the fact that my montiors are off and that I'm eating food and browing the internet on my personal device is pretty firmly your problem.

I'm surrounded by ppl for whom that's not a great indicator as to whether they're clocked in or not tbh

yeah, i love that. happened today. guy rolls into my cubicle in the middle of lunch hour, right after i take a big bite of my sandwich and i've got like barbecue sauce on my hands and face. i was civil and helped him out, but i seriously had a flash of internal rage.

At the printing company in Redding, I was no safer eating lunch in the break room than I was at my desk. If I really wanted to be undisturbed I had to leave the building. Hated that shit.

what happens if you just tell these savages "I'm finishing lunch, I'll get back to you in fifteen minutes"

Through a mouthful of half-chewed sandwich that you're spraying into their faces.

"ok, I'll catch you later, it's just it was about this client who emailed saying...." ARGHHH

90% of the people I deal with are salaried and if you're a manager or project lead who is in meetings all the damn time, it's not rare (or at least not rare enough) to get scheduled for a meeting over lunch with the expectation people will eat during the meeting

luckily I haven't had that problem for a while, but there were a couple years there where I had at least one lunch meeting per week. sometimes we'd get food catered by the corporate cafeteria, but... that food sucks

When I had an office, I kept the door open unless I was eating, but when it was closed, a big sign hung there that read "NOW IS NOT THE TIME." Of course, I haven't had an office with a door since 2005. Oh, well.

Interruption from general manager: I didn't say shit to him.
Interruption from front office CSRs: uncomprehending blinking and just standing there. Usually they eventually went away, but sometimes it would be a question for a customer who was standing at the front counter drumming his fingers.
Interruption from sales reps: "I just need 2 minutes and I have to go back out on the road." They're trained to ignore anything anyone says to them anyway.
Never got interrupted by my dept. head, who was one of the best bosses I ever had, or by the press and bindery crew, whose own breaks were inviolate and understood that other people's were as well.

I do not understand why people eat at their desks. Your lunch break is a break. Use it. You need the headspace.

Christ on a bike workmate, stop sniff-horking phlegm up your nose/into your throat every 10 seconds, it sounds fucking disgusting.

I generally pack my own lunch so my options are either eat at my desk alone or eat in the break room with coworkers. I guess I could also eat in my car or bring my lunch to another restaurant? Desk wins, thanks.

manager whose office sits along a corridor that leads to the bathroom/exit thank you for the revolting stench of mothballs that emanates out of said office

Worst lunch botherers are the ones who ask first then bother you anyway.

"Sorry to interrupt, are you on your lunch break?"
"YES!"
"Quick question about..."

Fuck off!