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

Hey, ol' TB Sheets across the way is at it again, choking up what sounds like hunks of lung every few minutes. Pretty sure he very nearly barfed on himself a little while ago. And, oh hey, is that the beginning of a scratchy throat I'm feeling? Could it be that after numerous failed attempts over the last several months of carefully nurturing a series of recurring illness he's finally managed to share his gift of with me? Fuck yeh, bro, can't wait.

Just got done listening to my coworker lie yet again to a vendor over the phone.

The vendor then called me and said, "Why does she lie to me like that? Does she think I'm stupid? I might be but my lawyers are NOT."

That sounds like potentially a serious problem?!

Nowhere else to put this, but. . . uhmm. . . one of my coworkers uses the term "mental retardation" when discussing some clients. This person isn't using it in a derogatory way, they are actually trying to describe another person's condition. But, it just doesn't seem right to use such an antiquated term that has such harsh connotations. It's especially wrong for my coworker to use it, considering the nature of our jobs. My coworker really should know better. I've thought about correcting them each and every time they've used it, but I just don't have the self-discipline required to approach the situation assertively and respectfully.

My company serves a lot of businesses that still have 'retarded' or 'retardation' (in the context you mention) as part of their business name. Although many of them now do business under an abbreviation. It's always kinda stunning to realize how widespread the usage still is.

Sheesh, that just doesn't seem right.

Ugh my opposite-desk coworker smokes those illegal chop-chop black market handmade cigs, and when he comes back to his desk he smells FOUL, like a 3-week-old filthy ashtray. Not like "ugh a smoker!", it is way way worse, it is so gross.

And I'm a smoker!

As a person very sensitive to cigarette smoke and lingering cigarette smells, that sounds awful.

Maybe, as a smoker, you can answer this: what is the appeal of the black market tobacco?

let me just throw a guess out there before Trayce corrects me: it’s cheaper

It is INSANELY cheaper. We pay incredibly high taxes for smokes here. A pack of 30 would cost about $35 depending where you get em.

But thats not enough of a motivation for me to ever try em, given this stench :/

they’re made of ground-up cigarette butts and dog poop but you get a harsh buzz

I think they're actually made from the dried, shredded lungs of deceased smokers

not sure if qualitative difference

Email went out this morning containing an invoice from a photo shoot; it was clearly meant for our Accounts Payable dept. but was sent to a company-wide mailing list instead. I get an inordinate amount of pleasure from people's reactions to this sort of thing. Can't decide if my favorite is paranoid Stephen, relieved Jamie, or baffled Kathryn. Love that Pat refers to Martha as Hannah. I think Rachel finally put a stop to it.

Martha
Please upload
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Hello, 
Please find attached a recent prop hire invoice. 
Many Thanks

Martha
Sorry – wrong email address. Please ignore.

Keren
Hi
Sorry I don't think this was meant to come to me
Regards

Lauren
Dear Martha,
I have no idea what this is about?

Jo
Me neither....

Stephen
Sounds like spam. Do not open.

Andy
Martha has already responded saying this was directed to the wrong address. You can delete it from your inbox and ignore it.

Gianna
Guys- She already responded saying she sent it to the wrong email. Stop replying.

Pat
Hi guys
You obviously did not receive the second e-mail from Hannah immediately following the first one.
It was sent by mistake and can be ignored. see screen dump below.

Jamie
I was wondering!
Sent from my iPhone

Maureen
Sorry All, but I do not code UK invoices.
Hi Laura,
Would you know who would get this?

Kathryn
I'm afraid I am also at a loss!
I have not ordered any lacquered wooden bowls recently
Thanks!

Rachel
Could we please stop 'replying all' to this email chain.
Many thanks

Hi, I think you posted this in the wrong thread? I'm not sure how to help you with your story about people who bafflingly 'reply all' to emails. Sorry!

My favorite is always the 50 follow-up reply-all emails that scold everyone about clicking reply-all.

Those really are the best.

(Side story: People outside of the company who send an email to one of my work addresses receive an automated reply to let them know that their inquiry was received along with various details of what we need from them in order to proceed. People do occasionally respond to these autoreplies as if they're being sent by a real live boy, but they usually only do it the once because, y'know, after receiving an identical response twice in a row, it's fairly clear what's going on. Or so I assumed, until a couple weeks back when someone who was apparently in the middle of a nervous breakdown responded to the autoreply no less than three or four times in less than an hour, each time seeming more panicked and despondent. Her final email was something like 'I don't understand, do you just want me to leave you alone?!' Yes. Yes, I do.)

Oh man, I absolutely love the company-wide emails that get caught up in the "reply all" loop. Of course, my favorites are the condescending morons who tell everyone to stop hitting "reply all" by ingeniously clicking "reply all" in order to do so.

But, I'd also like to rep for the gloriously oblivious, "Please remove me from this mailing list!" lot, all of whom I'd like to personally meet and shake hands with.

both latter are valid and correct and nevessary responses

It's probably best to confidently 'reply all' to the inquiry in question with a solution which is completely wrong.

There's a woman in my office who has a "Do Not Disturb" sign tacked permanently to her door. She never takes it down.

Smart

My company serves a lot of businesses that still have 'retarded' or 'retardation' (in the context you mention) as part of their business name.

Lord.

Also, I found this while perusing the MS style guide and couldn't help but bleakly chuckle.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/a-z-word-list-term-collections/a/abort-abortion

I was thinking specifically of this org: https://www.thearc.org/who-we-are/history/name-change

It seems that the memo hasn't yet made its way to some of their regional chapters.

New job has been wonderful. Company as a whole is still fairly dumb.

This week, I got asked to teach a course somewhat last minute,but I didn't mind as I'd taught it previously. When the roster came in, I had a suspicion, and on Day 2 confirmed that suspicion - that 6 of the learners didn't have the prerequisite knowledge to even be in the class (they were supposed to have already learned how to use a specific call handling system and reference tools, of which they had no knowledge).

My course is a 4.5 day course - the course they would need is an 11 day version, one I've never taught. So I brought this up to the powers that be while doing my best to make adjustments to my course, and got basically asked "can you just...extend the course and keep teaching next week".

to which I said....no.

the days go by a lot faster now that I'm no longer salaried too. which I love.

found this in a staff area earlier, had to stifle my laughter while reading it

https://i.imgur.com/Cr7o2tB.jpg

haha oh man.

Makes me want to pick a glass up, one with something strong in it.

And make it lighter.

put the glass down, smash it against the table, stab it into the signmaker

I suspect I commented on you a month ago but FUCK YOU ANONYMISED CO-WORKER CUNT. We could have made this project a success but you would rather have done fuck all and tomorrow, on your final day, you're going to slope shoulders and make you having done nothing my problem since I'm here for the next 4 weeks while you're in Disneyland.

What you don't know is I've been mailing your new boss ALL WEEK (since your company ended up as part of ours and he was my boss already) showing where you'd been deceiving him and lying to the customer. I HOPE HE SACKS YOU AND YOU END UP DESTITUTE YOU FUCKER.

Now I just need to work out how to do 12 man weeks activity in 3 weeks with one man.

Aldo, you took on the new 52, you can survive this.

Took the next steps today after another row in the office. Email to people working on the project telling them how we're going forward based on decisions I made this afternoon/evening and another one to our shared management pointing out how workshy he's been and the only effort he's put in is noting conversations he wants to use to claim failure isn't his fault.

He flies home tomorrow, he might be having a packet of crisps and a wank for dinner for all I know as I'm out on my own. He took a taxi back to the hotel as soon as we stopped arguing, I walked back and composed the emails in my head then typed them before coming out to eat.

By making the decisions I have I've raised success rates from single figures to approaching 50%. A firm hand over the other people working on it will increase that further. I'm actually more relaxed than I was yesterday.

I'm at the stage that if they backed him over me then I would go back to my old place that sacked me at the beginning of the year - they've already asked and the guy that sacked me has gone.

Working with other people is one of the most unnatural things possible. It’s like a screen door on a submarine. Every job I’ve worked at has been littered with shit heads

So, last week at work, I was, for the third time in my life, the target of anti-semitism ... despite being a gentile.

It's a very strange situation which I'm currently processing, and mulling over whether I report the colleague or not. Perhaps you lot could advise.

The situation is, crowded corridor full of people leaving at end of day; someone has sprayed aftershave around, someone else glares at me then says 'Smells of Jew' and melts into the crowd laughing.

Now the person in question is a Muslim (this is happening in Britain, for context, during some seasonal work which involves shifting stuff around in a sort of warehouse environment) who appears to be part of a bit of a boy's club slightly separate from the rest of the other, perfectly nice Asian people who work there. This boy's club I've overheard discussing 9-11 conspiracy theories a couple of times as well as being laddish and 'banter' in general and not doing a lot of work (even by my standards). I believe they have in general identified me as someone who is a loser because I turn up and do the work.

The other two times previously were in a different workplace and from a dodgy housemate respectively. White people both times, both fellows prone to their conspiracy theories though which appears to be the link.

I don't know if it's something to do with wearing glasses, or something to do with me being very distantly latin american but really that's only visible if you squint at me, I think. Some sephardic ancestry is hinted at in the official family biography (written in high-toned spanish in the 1890s by my preposterous Andean ancestors) but I'd think anything visual is so slight as to be unnoticeable - other than glasses. Maybe they just shout stuff at people who wear glasses hoping to score a hit?

I feel somewhat individually targeted here, although I suspect the aim is to create that feeling, so I'm putting it to one side. I'm more bothered, as with people using 'gay' as a pejorative, about what happens when they use it at someone who actually has the identity, and that someone or ones is/are walking round my place of work making it unwelcoming to Jews. It is mostly giving me quite a bit to think about rather than bothering me, but is also bothering me.

Was unsure what thread to put this on. We have the 'Is this ...' thread, but then this obviously is. The 'Real England' thread is another contender. But the behaviour is certainly stupid and annoying and done by co-workers. Must stress that I have other, high value Muslim colleagues (we have lengthy conversations about Alfred Hitchcock movies and cooking etc) who seem to be in a separate social group to this lot.

how old are they? whether or not I'd report it would depend on how I thought it would be handled

nobody should be targeted with discrimination, report it

are you in an union?

If that's what going on a busy corridor then I hate to think what is said behind closed doors. You might not get the person to become tolerant and you might not be able to get rid of them but you can certainly make it as uncomfortable for them as they made you feel, and it means that were a situation were to arise where this person had power over eg hiring and firing, then they would have probably a level of accountability necessary to demonstrably show no prejudicial bias.

Also the intent behind calling someone a Jew (I can't believe I'm typing these words) might be less to do with appearance and more to do with traits

I probably would've just knocked their lights out, though that might not be the optimal career move. I'm thankful that I haven't run into a lot of open anti-Semitism in my lifetime. Maybe it's more of a thing in the UK?

Thanks folks.

This group are young, say 19-23-ish. I've got about a decade on them I would say.

Something actually came up today - the boy's club I mentioned before have been messing around to such an extent that the pretty chill manager (himself a Muslim) has had to bollock everyone 4 times now with increasing severity, including a moment today where we had to work in silence 10am-5pm due to errors getting in because of them sitting around talking. I have an email for this manager and might compose a few drafts over the weekend. Keep it statement of fact. Suspect the boy's club are not long for the job.

I think part of the problem is that this is a summer job. A lot of people are students or otherwise not expecting to work here long term. There are permanent jobs here I would definitely go for though so am taking it quite seriously on the grounds of, make good impression, raise chance of getting permanent job. For these guys I think it's basically, this is something not very serious to do before going back to their business degree hence the tooling about and I suppose the outright prejudice. It is in fact the kind of job where friendly chat is quite possible, I do plenty of it with my team, it's just we're not tooling about.

I wouldn't call them stupid or annoying but I've just sat through 45 minutes of half-baked conspiracy theories - AIDS, vaccines, baby milk, Thalidomide - and garbled political and sociological analysis and lots of "But THEY don't want us to know" stuff.

... on to cloning now.

that seems both stupid and annoying tbh

A co-worker took lots of speed, borrowed a company car without permission for personal errands, crashed the car, told several conflicting stories about what happened, got into a screaming match with the boss and then stormed out the back door, slamming it behind her. I'm employee of the year in comparison.

Me: Please fulfill this boilerplate request to set up a thing correctly (of which I have sent variations to you literally dozens of times before) so that I can do my job.
D-nozzle: Wh-what is this request you have sent?! I cannot possibly plumb its intent! (copies fourteen people) Do any of you understand what is being asked for here? Because everything looks like it's set up correctly to me! I'm so very cormfused!
Me: (checks the thing that wasn't set up correctly, sees that it has now been corrected, also sees the date stamp indicating that it has been corrected since he sent the request) Looks like it's fixed now, thank u for the performative feigned ignorance and the dumb and pointless and easily-disproven lie u felt the need to tell.

guy in the next room over has neither an indoor voice nor an outdoor voice but basically just yelling

also he wears polo shirts buttoned up all the way and *really* loves to use the word 'jabroni'

fuck him