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

I honestly wouldn't care if someone just used a little or something but c'mon stealing the whole bottle? This is ridiculous!

ok, complaint time..
no one i work with is stupid or annoying. but people in my department tend to push off as many pieces of tasks as they can onto those who make tech requests & to be awfully grouchy/not the most accommodating about them. it was the culture i walked into (last hired). a colleague who's a step up on the ladder from me does this & is effectively the one who sets guidelines. it never struck me that we were THAT overwhelmed by work that we couldn't take the extra step when asked, as long as it didn't get out of hand. i try to be cool about requests and just get stuff done, but said colleague, if there, will insist on asking people for all this specific information before we do anything.

and now it's like, well, if you gradually trained other people throughout the organization, bit by bit, to do parts of our jobs, NO WONDER THE POWERS THAT BE ARE LIKELY TO GET RID OF OUR JOBS. what a clusterfuck! the thing is, i don't really share the attitude of most of the rest of my team (things are changing, you just gotta try and roll with it), and it's like.. how do i connect with others at the organization to figure out if there's a different place for me there, when this is what goes on. (in fairness they're all younger than me & i already had a couple years' experience elsewhere at navigating - badly - the minefield of office politics.)

I think you may be talking about a different kind of tech, but that's how it was at my last job. Whenever I called IT they were really grouchy and did anything they could not to help me. At my current job, IT is really good.

However, there are rumors that the last 200 or so people hired in my system will be layed off in July. Co-workers, none of them recent hires, keep on asking me my "start date." Implicit in the question is their assessment of whether or not I will be fired.

I started a year and a half ago. If there are lay-offs, there is a good chance I will be among them. However, is it too much to ask for co-workers to have some tact and to keep their thoughts about my future to themselves?

VP im in a company that was bought out last year but a much bigger company. the layoffs have been weirdly random. in a lot of cases people who have been there 20+ years. ive only been there 2 1/2 which still makes me the new chick but so far ive survived 6 months of constant layoffs. i dont do a better job than most people who are gone and i would certainly be a lot cheaper to get rid of. its really illogical from our point of view (although im sure there is reasoning behind it all). so i wouldnt worry too much about who has been there longest.

Yes, you got a wafflemaker. I'm so proud of you I'm bursting at the seams. But I don't need to hear about it for 2 and a half hours. Shut up shut up shut up.

when we had layoffs here it was the older, more expensive people who got the chop for the most part. same with a previous place i worked. this could be more an advertising thing tho.

When I worked in publishing, they let the older people go because they cost more money. But now I work for the government and am union, and I believe it is done strictly by seniority--last hired first fired. I'm not sure how they allocate for various levels of positions though.

some of the dead weight was cut. but most mostly oldies. sometimes i'm glad there's no such thing as unions in this industry. i could not imagine having to keep around people who can't pull their weight simply because they have seniority.

Sometimes that happens by default even WITHOUT unions. There are people here who will never leave who I'm not sure are even entirely literate.

how does that work?!

That type of things happen a lot. I think nearly every job I've ever had was populated by 1 or 2 long-time employees that no one seemed to want to get rid of, even though they seemed to be complete and utter failures at their assigned tasks.

These ones are nominally in charge of things. It's...painful. Maybe you don't have to be literate to be in charge?

The lack of any small talk in this office is really starting to get to me. Walked in this morning and gave a general "morning" to all 4 co-workers (we have an open office with no cubicles) and didn't get one single response. Haven't uttered a single word since. Just becoming so difficult to look forward to coming into such an unpleasant environment every day.

will trade

Obviously there is a lot of good about not hearing co-worked blathering on about inane shit, but at the same time, sometimes its nice to be able to have pleasant conversations with the people you're stuck in a room with for 50+ hours a week.

kidding aside, i can see how your situation could be discouraging. just be careful what you wish for. i got to listen to a certain someone drone on for 20 min about her cat getting declawed

both extremes are bad, said the guy who's worked alone for 8 years now

It seems like 90% of the time its deadly silent here (thank god for my iPod), the other 10% is one person going on about something random for hours on end. Happy medium anyone? Wasn't always quite this bad, but since our newest hire moved to an apartment two blocks from another co-worked and they've become all buddy-buddy, they don't bother talking to anyone else.

jon I know exactly what that's like - have a co-worker who wouldn't say hello to me for the first year or so of my employment! Dumb bitch. Still don't like her - have learned that when she *is* feeling chatty she talks & talks & talks & talks… ugh. In other news, my manager tried to blame every person but herself this morning because an email to one of our employees didn't go through. My co-worker gave her the email address and the phone number, but she only used the email address, and it's EVERYONE'S FAULT, RAR, etc

The lack of any small talk in this office is really starting to get to me. Walked in this morning and gave a general "morning" to all 4 co-workers (we have an open office with no cubicles) and didn't get one single response. Haven't uttered a single word since. Just becoming so difficult to look forward to coming into such an unpleasant environment every day.

― homage is parody gone sour (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, May 26, 2009 10:23 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

honestly this sounds like dream work environment to me

We just lost like our 3rd new sales guy in 6 months or something, its like Spinal Tap's drummers or something ffs.

Apparently this guy was doing really well, but something X-treem dodgy came to light and he had to be let go. I'm not allowed to know what it is, but I'm guessing crim record/wasn't aus citizen/something legalistic.

"Isn't it crazy that there are people who were born after John Lennon was assassinated so they don't even know that there was a world in which Lennon was alive? That blows my mind."

^amazing!

This guy is nice enough some of the time, but he tosses off bon mots like this on the regular; I swear to god he is the rocknroll dwight shrute.

"Art is a lot different in Europe; people take it more seriously. Everybody has paintings up in their house. It only makes sense you know, because that's where it blossomed. And what do Americans have? Big screen TVs. Actually, I have a fifty inch plasma in my bedroom and 42 inch in the living room. Which is funny, because I don't watch much television."

I swear to god, I work with a bunch of bitchy seventh grade girls. Two weeks ago, a coworker sent an e-mail to myself and another girl to see if we wanted to go to lunch with him. The girl responded yes right away, but I had to step into a conference call and didn't have a chance to reply just then. So I get out of the conference call, intending to let them know I'd like to join them but get sidetracked by my boss. Leave the conference room and they're gone, they had left for lunch. So I sent them an e-mail saying "What happened? I was going to join you, but you left before I had a chance to tell you". Two week later and they are both still going out of their way to annoy me.

ugh
"ignore me" that should be, not "annoy me"

jon tell the truth, are you sitting across from me? doubtful, no boys in the office right now but I feel like our co-workers would get on great

Still adjusting to life in cubicle-land after 14-odd months. Had a beer with some co-workers this past weekend - there's one guy that always manages to invite himself along, and none of us can stand him. This guy is your classic dork - quiet, awkwardly shy, with incredibly pedestrian taste in everything. I'm guessing he was the kid that got invited to the birthday party because someone's mother said so - the kind of guy who hovers on the periphery of the conversation and is desperate for an in, who is constantly interjecting but ultimately has nothing to add, and when he finally gets the "Really? Do tell!" that he so desperately craves, his stories are completely content-free. Also, he has a horrible you're-my-girlfriend-on-the-street-in-my-mind crushes on one of the women in my department, and any time she's at one of these nights he'll sit across from her, make wounded puppy dog eyes, and get visibly despondent if she happens to chat or act flirty with one of the other dudes in the group. It's at the point where she'll cut out early if he's there, which is a damned shame because she's hella smart and fun to talk to.

We'll have to be more clandestine in our plans from here on in.

Oh dear, I know a few people like that :|

If he were just shy, that would be one thing. Lots of shy people are fun once you get them out of their shell.

But this guy appears to be all shell.

poor guy

Should I be disturbed by a guy who looks at porn in his cubicle all day? I know the boss is watching and I cringe thinking he may get caught and the bad morale that may result from it.

Bad morale? Guy who spends all day looking at porn while everyone else in the office is working gets caught and fired? Nothing bad about that.

If redundancies had to be made, but guy-who-looks-at-porn (sounds kind of like a 21st century Native American name) didn't get let go, then that would cause bad morale.

That happened at my last job. Guy got caught but not fired and it did, in fact, cause bad morale. I was so so angry about it at the time. Ugh - just thinking about it gets me fired up.

"Soundgarden is our Led Zeppelin."
Dude is 44 btw

"HAHA, that judge lady Sodom-eyer broke her leg on capitol hill! That's a sign you should stay away from that job!"

Not trying to stick up for dude, cause sheesh, but that's how my head pronounces it.

I like my coworkers but I hate listening to music in the office. If I loop an mp3 of white noise* through my headphones for the next 3 hours to drown out the office music should I expect it to be damaging aurally/psychologically?

*because I don't feel like listening to my own choice of music at the moment

So, All-Shell Dude was doing "Respect my authori-ty!!!" impressions of Cartman from South Park last week, informing me that "Cartman's the man". This after I mistakenly
made a crack that a co-worker's sunglasses were "very highway patrolman".

Keep calling him Ponch until he either gets the pop culture reference or goes back into his shell...

Still adjusting to life in cubicle-land after 14-odd months. Had a beer with some co-workers this past weekend - there's one guy that always manages to invite himself along, and none of us can stand him. This guy is your classic dork - quiet, awkwardly shy, with incredibly pedestrian taste in everything. I'm guessing he was the kid that got invited to the birthday party because someone's mother said so - the kind of guy who hovers on the periphery of the conversation and is desperate for an in, who is constantly interjecting but ultimately has nothing to add, and when he finally gets the "Really? Do tell!" that he so desperately craves, his stories are completely content-free. Also, he has a horrible you're-my-girlfriend-on-the-street-in-my-mind crushes on one of the women in my department, and any time she's at one of these nights he'll sit across from her, make wounded puppy dog eyes, and get visibly despondent if she happens to chat or act flirty with one of the other dudes in the group. It's at the point where she'll cut out early if he's there, which is a damned shame because she's hella smart and fun to talk to.

We'll have to be more clandestine in our plans from here on in.

― Tantrum The Cat, Tuesday, June 2, 2009 9:48 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

This post makes me actually wonder if you work in the same company as me.

My cubiclemate from upthread found a large-ish bug in her apartment LAST WEEK and has spent the past 4 work days describing it to every person she sees, plus on the phone to every friend and family member. I think I've heard this story upwards of 50 times.

I went out of my way just now to help a customer with their new DSL upgrade by recommending some troubleshooting - this despite it not being at all part of my job, I just provision the connections - and when I suggested our helpdesk could do more in depth troubleshooting he replies to my email with "I'm on hold with them now, thanks for the hand ball"

Wanker.

OK, the next dude over will NOT STOP RANDOMLY WHISTLING ALONG with whatever's in his headphones. Sweetheart of a guy, otherwise, but JEEZ.

"Art is a lot different in Europe; people take it more seriously. Everybody has paintings up in their house. It only makes sense you know, because that's where it blossomed. And what do Americans have? Big screen TVs. Actually, I have a fifty inch plasma in my bedroom and 42 inch in the living room. Which is funny, because I don't watch much television."

― Feugh! (since somebody always asks: rhymes with "Peugh!") (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, June 2, 2009 10:12 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark

this sounds like something Patrick Bateman would say

My cubiclemate from upthread found a large-ish bug in her apartment LAST WEEK and has spent the past 4 work days describing it to every person she sees, plus on the phone to every friend and family member. I think I've heard this story upwards of 50 times.

― franny glass, Wednesday, June 10, 2009 8:10 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

THIS IS STILL GOING ON. She has literally screamed three times this morning while looking at photos of it. She is now on the phone reading out a wikipedia description of the species of bug to a friend. I may have a heart attack.

Get her a box of these:

http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/0/02/Spiders_Ceiling.jpg

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Images off!