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

Right now, we're doing a training redesign with a third party that we're paying. They've been awful from the very beginning - they were cheap, not particularly good, and they're completely in over their heads - they're used to training materials for simple how-to tutorials, not a complex, 560 hour training course. Their staff has also been a revolving door and they've sometimes hid new hires from us, despite them having to go through background checks prior to working with us.

In any case, it came to the point where we had to tell them we were not happy with their work, and they decided to try and save face by finding fault with our partnership...possibly to stave off a termination of the contract. So the main guy in charge on their end accused us of giving "non-actionable feedback", and inflating the feedback by focusing predominately on nitpicky things like punctuation.

A Trump-esque claim, because this is an outright lie that can be easily disproven. There were less than 5 comments left for punctuation out of near 100 comments total. Instead of our leaders growing some stones and backing us up, or actually validating the claim themselves, they gave this feedback to the person in charge of the project, as if it had weight, and asked her to make sure we weren't overfocusing on punctuation. Many of us decided we would leave egregious punctuation/grammar errors out there just so they couldn't hang us with it, and a day later, the same feedback was given to us again.

We now have six figure leaders micromanaging the feedback being left, rather than admitting we made a mistake in hiring these assholes and severing ties, maybe going to arbitration to recoup money spent. It's been almost a year and they've shown little improvement - but somehow that's our fault.

They don't teach that kind of leadership in business courses, but somehow most managers learn it on the job anyway. If they admitted they were wrong to hire these bozos, then they give their bosses proof that they are not competent to make decisions of that magnitude, which is pretty much their whole job description. What justifies their six-figure salaries, except their ability to correctly make those weighty, costly, and difficult decisions? So, it can't be that they botched the contracting process, right?

I'm on a small email thread, planning a project, with a guy who is a writer for a living but maybe he uses voice recognition when he writes emails?

Ahhh, okay, this sounds good to me, yeah I think ff we should have that cause other wise it'll have to be a call for the newer people who are newer / it's more of a general problem. Jillian thinks of a space that is best to start this effort, than can start doing it here and potentially get arrive some of the work. So yeah I agree that's how we we left it till next time, thanks.

this could only happen to my dumb ass. So we use Skype for Business at work. Today was a pretty light day as a bunch of things I'm suppose to work on are waiting on something, and I work from home, so I decided to go shit, then take a shower. But I'd had to use Skype on my phone earlier as the desktop version had crashed during a meeting, so it was still on.

So on the john, I flip on my phone and see I got a message from my boss, asking how things are going. Since I'd been gone 5+ minutes I decided to reply and say "uhh nada just working on prepping for tomorrow's session". So she then asks "do you have a moment to chat?".

Figuring I better just "finish", and go back out to my workstation since who knows what she's going to ask me, I go out there. I pulled up Skype on the computer and typed "sure" in response to that message.

And then I realized that sometimes, if you're on Skype in two locations, Skype doesn't show the messages on the other device. I pull up my phone and realize I never closed out Skype on it, and moments before I typed "sure", she had asked me "hey, we need someone to travel to San Juan next Monday, for two weeks. are you available?"

So I'd just unwittingly agreed to the travel, and before I could clarify what I meant, there she was thanking me.

Yay! :(

(don't get me wrong, I probably would have said "yes" anyway based on the politics of the office, but I would have liked some time to work it out first).

you get a trip to San Juan, congrats

I thought the punchline was going to be the boss got extended audio of you taking a shit.

you brought leftover chicken bacon ranch pasta which you made for a candlelight dinner with your husband. i am so glad i only have to eat lunch with you for 6 more weeks.

you get a trip to San Juan, congrats

― sans lep (sic), Monday, January 28, 2019 7:06 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Aint pooh poohing that but i have to bail out of a few obligations with friends and family which i have to figure out.

Not to mention i wont get to see much beyond the hotel and office. But its fine

considering this and the countless other posts, across multiple years and jobs, that you've made on this thread . . . maybe it's actually you who is the stupid, annoying co-worker

that was quite actually the point of my post, but go ahead and eat a dick anyway

you fucking shitbeak

or maybe walk into traffic

"hey I'll make a fun post about how stupid I was for accidentally agreeing to go on a trip due to reading skype on the toilet, this will go well"

I thought the punchline was going to be the boss got extended audio of you taking a shit.

I am happy to say my coworkers are great. Felt sorry cause my one colleague was crying over her ex. Told her to take a long lunch break. :-(

i mean, i shouldn't complain because i have a job and for the most part i love everyone i work with, BUT

my name, according to the other administrator that I share duties with (technically she's supposed to be my supervisor but she is hapless), is

"Josh! I'm sorry....Jack!"
*walks down the hall*
"Oh. ... Zach!"

this has been going on for weeks now. every single fucking job i've worked at, no one can get my name right. usually they call by my last name, since it's also a first name (FUCK), and at my old job the email convention was lastname.firstname@__ so it kind of made sense that people would accidentally call me by my last name when they first met me.

but this is just silly

tell them to call you the Mailman

at one point at my previous job I hung up a giant name/title on the outside of my cube that said

ZACH in 200 pt font, along with my last name in 8 point font. people would still walk by, lean across my cubicle entry way and address me by my last name

Pretty sure I've mentioned itt that people I've worked with for years semi-regularly contact me via an email address which contains my full name and somehow still manage to misspell my name in the body of said email. Semi-regularly, this happens.

oh, that's a whole other subgenre for sure. half of the people who get my name right in person still spell it Zack in emails. but whatever, at least they hypothetically know how to form their mouthshape so it resembles my name, that's good enough

There's a manager in a parallel group (he's the same level as my manager) that keeps frustrating people because he just. can't. understand. anything.

We've been working on a project where my group is an intermediary. Basically, the software version of delivering some documents. Some stuff has been reworked and needs to be resent from the original system, meaning what was originally sent no longer needs to be processed.

I get an email message: "mh, please delete the previous data that was sent earlier."

my group delivers the data. I do not have the data. It exists in a database his group controls.

I mentioned this to my peer in his group and the response was "I explained the same thing to him in a meeting yesterday, in front of our whole group"

he does this shit all the time! we can explain something a zillion different ways and it's like shouting into the void

uh oh, mailman, I found video from your workplace. I didn't realize it was this bad.

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

People call me by the wrong name all the time at work. I just let them (plus I like people not knowing who to email) and then once a couple of years go by I randomly will correct them in front of people. I think I posted about this before, but I was temporarily sitting at a desk for a couple of weeks until my office was ready and the nameplate read "Alice" something. So everyone from that department kept calling me Alice. I just kept responding to it for like 2 years until I had to sign up for March Madness and one of them was recording names.

looooooool Moodles, that is amazing. bookmarked for LIFE

It's a great film too, if you haven't seen it before

jarmusch, right? i haven't seen it. i assume the entire film is about jack and zach's adventures with people who can't get their names right

yep, basically that's the plot. 3 misfits share a jail cell, Tom Waits and John Lurie race to out shtick each other, while Roberto Benigni struggles to get their names right.

The escape is one of my favorite bits in all of film.

really looking forward to when the guy next to me stops having a 1:1 call on leaky headphones, meaning the whole office hears 55% of a conversation (50% of it very loud), while he clicks and drums and fidgets with a springy biro and jiggles his creaky desk up and down with his knee

someone can probably work through this, perhaps even most people, but I suspect even the less sensorily-deranged people in the office are not reaching 100% efficiency while this goes on (50 minutes and counting)

p. sure the person on the other end is a manager so I guess they're OK with that though

My boss asked today how I felt ab the job. This freaked me out. Am I being let go? Don't think so but paranoia has set in. Lol.

that seems like it could be innocuous unless you've seem downtrodden or have been griping? tbh I have been giving plenty of feedback lately regarding training I should be getting and things that my manager should be pushing back on

Yeah, she's actually very nice. Interested in how we're doing outside work. (Except one colleague. They hate eachother. I don't like it but try to keep out of it.)

20 minutes now of them talking about wasps and rollercoasters and blind greyhounds and videogames and tv licence legalities. they sit facing each other, i sit two desks along but am only slightly further away and no amount of Late Junction in my earphones means i can't hear them just prattle on.

would noise cancelling earphones be impractical?

Omfg yesterday manager and colleague had gigantic shouting fest in the shop. Very uncomfortable as we had two pple. I sold them some goods while trying to calm my colleagues down. Wtf. I really wanted to say: ffs take it upstairs.
Also they tried to make me take a side. No fucking way did Ido tgat

Guy has learned the phrase "writ large" and uses it for all-purpose emphasis.

"I heard the hiring committee is made up of five men with only one woman, it's like sexism writ large!"

"I'm not sure we need to go over the December video numbers again, we've done that writ large."

It is time for lunch, for I am hungry writ large

Strangely, it's charming when you do it, loathsome when he does it

someone has microwaved hot dogs

did i ever mention the lady who used to work near me who would microwave a full, skin-on raw fish filet? that happened with regularity

there's a few fish microwavers in my office which is abhorrent of course but somehow the hot dog really filled the whole office, more than any of the fish people. also all the fish people are either from eastern europe or the global south so perhaps my Western-Eurocentric mentality is as much to blame

there's probably no discernible difference but for some reason some freshwater locally-caught fish seem especially odoriferous when microwaved, especially the amount of time to get it from raw to cooked

woman, who admittedly already bothers me, has been complaining this afternoon about how bad her “migraine” is. aside from her sporadic complaining she seems fine – snacking on cheese and joking around with another coworker, at one point singing some song they were both trying to remember. as someone who suffers from the occasional, *actual * migraine – this really is getting under my skin. I will miss the odd day of work because of them, or sometimes leave early if I’ve got one coming on – but when I suggested she go home if she’s got a migraine, she just kinda shrugs and says she’ll be ok and has work to do (I also know for a fact she’s not too busy). maybe this belong on irrationally angry, but I want to choke her (she’s complaining about some friend of hers right now).

now she's left early to catch a movie/dinner.

but when I suggested she go home if she’s got a migraine, she just kinda shrugs and says she’ll be ok and has work to do (I also know for a fact she’s not too busy). maybe this belong on irrationally angry, but I want to choke her (she’s complaining about some friend of hers right now).

this annoys me too. also when people say things like "i'm so depressed right now", which is not something that someone who is depressed would say

yes! after she left i was talking to a coworker who's on the same page as me - and this is exactly what he said.

Hmmm. I do work with migraine attacks. That said, everyonz can tell though. But I do it cause I was warned staying home too much, wld be criticized. And it's doable. Not easy, but doable.

I've only ever had one full-on migraine and there was no way I could work through that, luckily I was home when it happened because all I could do was curl up in a ball on my bed.

I've had a few "silent migraines" at work where your vision gets blurry and you get aura symptoms, but you don't feel like your head is in a vice, you feel a bit dizzy and it's hard to look at computer screens when you've got shimmering lines all over your vision but you can kind of work through it and it goes away after about an hour. I guess technically it's still a migraine, could she have had one of those?

^ https://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/ocular-migraine.htm

i get them from time to time, like 3 a year and they only started about 5 years ago. freaked me out the first couple of times but now i just sit back and enjoy them (i get no other symptoms, just the vision thing and a slight disassociated feeling)

I had one of those once, and even tho there wasn’t much pain, it scarred the shit out of me.