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

I hate when people try to make you solve a problem just because you're the one that discovered it.

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xp I'm at this place where I'm in a rut bcz I'm still kind of on the ground floor in my field, and I want/need to be ambitious and expand my skillset and learn new things, so there are many instances where I've taken on projects and volunteered to do things outside of my job descrip and then gotten fucked in various ways. Once I got screwed out of a bonus bcz I didn't meet the metrics for my actual job position, bcz I spent so little time in the bonus period doing it (phone support) and so much doing other things (developing training materials, helping migrate the intranet, etc). Both I and my manager were PISSED and the bumbling HR dept was basically like "yeah that's such a shame, it's too bad we can't do anything about it"

hey man you have a seat and everyone else in your section has gone home, sit in your damn seat and talk at a normal volume instead of pacing up and down right outside the door to our section bellowing down the phone

also that sucks, sorry Stevie

There was a small group of people relocated to our (previously pretty quiet) aisle a couple of months ago, and MY GOD do they talk. Constantly, about any banal thing, and at a volume level that suggests they want everyone in the office to listen in. One dude is particularly egregious. I honestly don't know how he can possibly get any work done. On a day like today, when he's out of the office, is glaring.

totally with you Old Lunch/Stevie on being punished for excellence. On several of my last projects, because I watch things very closely, I've identified problems where somehow, even though I wasn't the person who knew how to fix it , I got tasked with owning and watching over it, and re-explaining the problem to all of the groups. which then takes me away from what I'm supposed to do.

I tend to be the type that won't ignore a problem that he sees, but the problem is everywhere I look, I see problems - lots of people tend to cut corners these days or not pay attention, and I have a keen eye, so the problem becomes ok, I don't want to create extra work for myself and make my life hell, but I also know xxx is wrong/broken and I wouldn't feel right seeing it and not saying anything about it, but at the same token, if I keep doing that, are the people who are responsible for it ever going to learn how to do their job and keep a watchful eye on these things or will they defer to me?

I learned that I should just stop looking, keep my purview to that which I am responsible for, and quit peeking at other things, or just outright "playing dumb" if I do see something. my scruples don't like that, but when you consider the hell I got put through for two years having loads of work thrown on me simply because I find and spot things easily, I can't handle that any more.

it has on the other hand lead to a lot of one-time bonuses and huge raises, so it's not like they haven't compensated/recognized me, but it becomes where the moment you take the reins on one or two things, suddenly people just think you're always going to do it and stop doing their own jobs. today, I got told to leave the help chat as a result (they told me I was babying people too much and the people who are taking over the ship Monday wanted to just do it themselves and give me a break, which was nice).

I just don't get the mentality though because if someone brings me a problem that they spotted and I know they aren't the person to fix it, I take it out of their hands and let them go on their merry way.

I've gotten to the point now where I don't even bother pointing out any of the (numerous) technical issues that I encounter within the proprietary (read: cobbled together by people who know just enough to trick technically-challenged people into thinking they're competent) software that our company uses for everything. Because if you report it to management, they expect you to be the point person who constantly follows up with helpdesk and the developers. And if you report it to helpdesk directly, you may as well have written it out and flushed it down the toilet. They just resolved the last issue I'll ever send (wherein single-quote characters were being replaced with the corresponding escape character...I'm fairly certain I understood the problem and the potential solution better than they did) after nine months of doing nothing outside of attempting on numerous occasions to close my ticket.

I hate that too, when you know the answer but you have no ability to see for certain, they ignore your suggestion, go about it differently, and then in the end you find out you were right and their refusal to take your guidance (which they shouldn't ahve needed anyway) led to an unnecessary delay

the other thing I hate is that our seasonal employees are typically garbage - often many of them only care about lasting through the end of their seasonal period, have questionable skills, mouth off, etc. and because they're outside contractors, *we* have to go through their employer to discipline them.

there are plenty of good ones, but the bad ones are so bad that it just causes a lot of noise. in prior years, leadership kind of understood "you get what you pay for", but this year, they've started making noise on the quality of the representatives, but it's like...I can generally tell 2 hours into a training session if someone is a lost cause, because they aren't paying attention, they're asleep ,they're on their phone, etc. and yet I get told I can't take them off of our project because you simultaneously demand we cut our staffing by 6% and start whining if we don't have enough people on the phones.

it gets to where I say "you're going to shit on me for the quality issues the resources have, yet you're giving me people that should never have been let into the building, who are being given shoddy equipment to take calls on, and are treated like cattle....and we're given an abbreviated timeframe to train them, but I'm supposed to achieve perfection with that?". Even after all of the extra refresher sessions I scheduled, the extra attention given , they're still lousy and I've just given up and am moving onto the next project knowing I did the best I could rather than taking it personally.

also the people they gave me to train in december were supposed to be the "high performers", the people that got retained due to doing well in Oct/Nov, and yet at least 5 of them have been terminated for poor performance since then and another 4 are on the chopping block next. THESE are the best people?

logged 200+ hours of training from Oct-Dec btw. facilitating. often alone. that's a lot.

When I was temping, I was regularly baffled by the praise I was given by employers for demonstrating what seemed to me base-level competence. But after a while of being exposed to other temps, I kinda got it (one assignment ultimately involved doing my own work and then correcting fully half of the work that the other temp had fucked up). In part, I think you can blame staffing agencies for paying more attention to their $$$ earned per head than to ensuring that their staff actually has the competencies they claim to have.

logged 200+ hours of training from Oct-Dec btw. facilitating. often alone. that's a lot.

logged 50+ posts of complaining from oct-dec btw. whinging. often at great length. that's a lot

i got the same thing when i used to temp. sometimes i occasionally become the lord of the temps, simply by being the least lazy/dull. i wouldn't get paid anything extra because i was still a temp – but I was expected to heard all these underpaid/dipshit cats on top of the regular work i was supposed to be doing.

so it's basically like IDiocracy then

my boss asked me to schedule a meeting for 1pm. at 11am, she asked me to reschedule for noon. at 11:30am, she asked me to reschedule back to 1pm. she showed up 25 minutes late to her own meeting while we all just sat there. this happens basically every single time i have a meeting with her.

is this anywhere near normal? it seems bizarre and rude as fuck to me but i guess i should be used to it

Wait... she asked you to reschedule her own meeting?? twice??? what was she doing at the time? it's something that takes about 15 seconds in outlook, for fuck's sake.

not to mention how incredibly inconsiderate of everyone else's time.

yeah that's horseshit. for one, if there's an emergency meeting you have to call in less than two hours, you need to make sure to cascade it broadly (ie walk-by) so everybody knows since one could easily just get lost in work for a few hours and not see it. and you never adjust it backwards. and then if you're going to be late, this needs to be communicated beforehand.

former head of my dept used to do this, yet if you did the same thing, it was 'instant feedback' for you.

i never quite got the 'having other people schedule your meetings in Outlook' thing unless you were like such a high level executive that you had too many meetings to keep track of.

she does this all the time, and although she's my boss' boss, she's still several hundred layers down in the overall hierarchy

All of the lawyers I work with ask others to schedule things in Outlook. Sometimes partners ask junior attorneys to do it, and juniors in turn pass on the task to support staff. It's a contest to get as far away from Outlook as possible.

i lost the plot at my boss yesterday.

[ridiculously long and boring post redacted]

after 35 years of owning this business, she still has no basic system for managing inventory, and every time i come up with one, she decides it's not working after a few months, but this time it was a couple of weeks. so i basically yelled at her that she should have this shit figured out by now.

so – are you posting this from work, or...

nope i decided to take the day off! she won't fire me - she can't. there is no one else who would do all the shit i do for such little pay. also it's not the first time (nor the last) that we've lost our shit at each other.

Long term and entrenched member of another team has a history of being disrespectful & unprofessional to coworkers blew up for the nth time yesterday at one of us. she went to hr because historically these incidents were brought to his supervisor who is great at doubletalk and could always assure you that "things will be different now". last i heard, several svps were going to CEO to discuss this, and the lady that went to hr has refused to work with the jerk any longer. i see it 50/50 at this pt whether anything concrete comes out of this or we end up w status quo. never worked with a more needlessly abusive dude than this one, so i sincerely hope they boot his ass. literally could poll anyone on my floor and they'd either have an unpleasant story, first hand or witnessed, of this dude blowing up at someone for a minor disagreement

Whoops strike either from last sentence. Anger gums up the works

lots of intelligent people here doing all sorts of complex things.

but none of them have figured out yet that if you fill the sink with dirty crockery then it stops being usable as a sink. twice today i've cleared bowls and mugs out of it so i can use the taps.

Sounds like they've figured it out.

i see it 50/50 at this pt whether anything concrete comes out of this or we end up w status quo. never worked with a more needlessly abusive dude than this one, so i sincerely hope they boot his ass.

question – have you considered going to hr yourself, or maybe with a few others to back-up the offended coworker? if you want to see this guy gone, it might help to put up more of a united front.

xxpost Intelligent people are some of the dumbest people I've ever encountered.

i haven't yet been actively involved but my understanding is that this has escalated and some kind of 'investigation' will likely involve me in some way as i was cited as a witness in a letter to hr. i am letting things develop and organizing my thoughts at this time, and anticipate further developments soon.

the front is currently united by people a step above me in the hierarchy, it seems ranks are being actively closed around this guy

xp

that's not good (if i understand correctly)

yeah i should have modified it a little to say the usual ranks are closing but there is a breakaway segment of upper management that it is actively trying to get him terminated. his boss is influential and utterly dependent on him and has handled these events in the past. i suspect the ultimate resolution will be at the ceos discretion and i don't know how he will decide. this guy has been here a decade and has a lot of special knowledge that some might think protects him. my fear is that the ceo buys the argument that he's required personnel

thoughts still all over the place, been a stressful week with this amplifying things. dude is the reason ive never seen myself staying at this company long term because he's just such a bully and a miserable human most of the time

koogs same here except in our kitchen the cups in the sink are right below a big sign that says 'please put all dirty crockery in the dishwasher'

we have one of those too. but you're never sure whether the dishwasher is a) full of dirty stuff waiting for cleaner to start it, b) full of clean stuff waiting for the cleaner to put it away or c) running. we need a system (something as simple as just leave it on the side) but that's not going to happen.

people stirring coffee with a knife...

we have a note system. works 50% of the time. which means you never have any idea.

Yesterday, my boss's boss give me and my boss a lift back home - I live round the corner from my boss^2, and my boss was driving back to his home, a couple of hours away. It was a little early (about 3.45?) but I figured that I'd ask for a lift with them both. It was probably a bit cheeky, but since its a cheek that was being shared by two levels of boss above me, I didn't think it would be too much of a drain on company resources. Howevere, I get in the car and my boss immidietly starts going on about how I'm leaving early, but doing it in that "i'm only joking but I notice you and i'm not really joking" kinda way. I guess he's just trying to look the big man in front of his boss, but its made me feel like a terrible piece of shit. He's not in the office today and I'm weighing up whether to call him out on his grandstanding or whether to wait till he's next in the office on Tuesday.

Like, I know I'm in the wrong and maybe he did need to have a word and tell me not to sneak out early with him, but even so, he didn't have to do me like that.

A couple people have gone on a kick of forwarding stuff about Donald Trump including this http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/lil-donald with the comment And this clown could be president????!!!!

How do you train someone who doesn't take in written or verbal instructions at all, who blindly dives into tasks with half measures & doesn't ask questions until after everything is a total mess?

He always looks as though he will fall asleep if you tell him something for too long.

He only half-reads any information he is given. Or refers to it afterwards when he then reads what he should have done. And does not retain it the next time.

If he does the same task 7 times, he will do it slightly different every time, repetition does not seem to help.

He assists me with an account - he can sort of handle one pretty basic task, and he wants to do more. I would love him to do more and am happy to help him grow. But the extra that I have given him has so far ended up a total mess. I am at my wits end trying to teach him in a way that sinks in, and I just don't know what other angles to pursue.

I worked with someone just like that: half-reading/listening, reading too late, no retention, does things differently every time. We tried him on every possible task but had to remove each one from him in the end. When we ran out of tasks and he was doing just one thing, he finally got bored and left.

Because he was a volunteer and not an employee, the person managing him refused to countenance a conversation with him where any of this was raised properly. Is there any way of addressing some of these things directly with this guy? I'm hilariously reliant on the book 'Difficult Conversations' for that kind of stuff.

Why did you marry him, then?

(joke: I suspect this is how my wife feels about me much of the time)

xpost

lol

He came up to me today & said over & over "I'm not stupid I just (blank)" etc

I think I am going to try a policy of "YOU MUST ASK ME QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU DO THESE NEW THINGS UNTIL YOU GET IT" - no excuses.

like i beat a path back & forth to my old manager's office for months, almost a year, learning this account. I dont care if he *thinks* he *kinda* gets it, that dog dont goddamn hunt. In this new Vegistan regime he better lower his self-esteem down to a dull simmer or he wont learn a damn thing & will drive me to the nuthouse in the process

or i'll just die quietly

Sounds like ADHD to me, particularly when you mentioned he can't "do" repetition and looks like he'll fall asleep if you tell him something for too long. I have some experience here so maybe I can help.

1. What is the physical environment like where his desk/workstation is? Is there a lot of stimulus/sound/people walking by?
2. Is this the kind of gig where one could wear headphones?
3. What type of work is it? It sounds like Excel based on your description. How "important" is this task?
4. Do you have a sense of what this person's hobbies are? Much like people on the autism spectrum, hobbies and interests can be a clue to understanding the individual's coping strategies.
5. What percentage of this person's work day would be dedicated to meetings, check-ins, or impromptu interactions?

late to this party but

you're never sure whether the dishwasher is a) full of dirty stuff waiting for cleaner to start it, b) full of clean stuff waiting for the cleaner to put it away or c) running. we need a system (something as simple as just leave it on the side) but that's not going to happen

ppl should leave dirty stuff on the drainer next to the sink and it should be the cleaner's job to put it in the dishwasher. problem solved?

How do you train someone who doesn't take in written or verbal instructions at all, who blindly dives into tasks with half measures & doesn't ask questions until after everything is a total mess?

He always looks as though he will fall asleep if you tell him something for too long.

He only half-reads any information he is given. Or refers to it afterwards when he then reads what he should have done. And does not retain it the next time.

All of these things could describe my bf, who I'm certain has a reading disability of some sort and is also ADD. Yeah you're gonna need a different learning strategy for him, and since the systems in place aren't going to work for you or him, helping him grow might involve a deeper look into learning styles, what does he do well and how did he learn it originally, etc?

ppl should leave dirty stuff on the drainer next to the sink and it should be the cleaner's job to put it in the dishwasher. problem solved?

Not if you have more than three ppl in your office, or anyone wants to wash their containers and take them home before someone else nicks them, or you don't want to attract cockroaches.

We have about 200 people in our office. The cleaners are around all day and put the dishwasher on three or four times a day.