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

sending out emails with a Keep Calm and Carry On theme, what year is this?

where does neighboring co-worker refusing to use a mousepad rank on the list of crimes?

CLACK.... CLACK... CLAAAAACK

I don't think I've seen a mousepad in about 15 years, do they even exist any more??

Deicide sells one

I'm using a mousepad right now - its filthy

Someone was trimming their nails in a bathroom stall this morning. Whether fingers or toes, I couldn't say, but at this point I just assume whatever makes the least goddamn sense.

so ppl just scrape the mouse on their desks all day? what a world.

I actually use a little blackboard for a mousepad, and have a little tiny nail affixed to the bottom of my mouse. Works beautifully!

i have a mousepad with a picture of a puppy on it and i have a cordless mouse. much better mouse situation than in any of my previous jobs

These are only 8 euros!
https://www.seventhrecords.com/en/various-collectibles-37/magma-mouse-pad-1285.html

https://www.seventhrecords.com/en/upload/magma-rouge-noir-print-f54zty.jpg

sorry bit big there

I use the trackpad cos i have a lapper

Jesus Christ thats huge!

Thanks I use Extenz

lol, stop

Tho at first for some reason I thought it was the mark of the Empire from STar War

(Note: the following phenomenon mostly applies to outside parties rather than coworkers per se but, because these things often slip past coworkers unnoticed before they're routed to me, I am okay with implicating them.)

I never, ever thought I'd see the day that I'd encounter professional adults who lack awareness of the necessary components of a US postal address (i.e. those who fill out the address fields on a form and omit a street address, city, state, zip, or some combination of the above). Now I see that day on most days. And this post was, btw, prompted by encountering two instances of such within the past hour. Do these people receive mail ever? And if so, how?

super bizarre lol

These things come from enough different sources all across the country that I'm mostly convinced at this point that I'm just bearing witness to the degradation of the American mind in real time.

Okay, sorry, I was too hasty. Make that three instances.

Y'know, it's Friday, maybe I can just go for a drink or four and forget to come back.

If the zip's there you probably can leave out the city and state.

this is probably young people who genuinely aren't familiar with sending mail

maybe they aren't american?

Nah, these things are filled out or at least ostensibly vetted by professionals licensed and working in the US. Traumatic brain injury/liquefication is really the only acceptable explanation.

Can't bitch about my annoying co-worker on Facebook rn because of lol work filters but I finally acquired one a few months ago and boy howdy is she a one. Over ten years older than me yet has the mentality of a boy-crazy 15-year-old, total head in the clouds, monopolizes every conversation she's in, has little of consequence to discuss, etc. I'm the type of person who feels like the vast majority of people are intelligent in some way and have things to teach me, but the only thing this woman is teaching me is to value the other people in my life who ARE "intelligent in some way and have things to teach me". Also, she's bizarrely against progress, e.g. when I raved about the Impossible Whopper to my co-workers she immediately jumped in with, "I've got to have meat so I'm not getting anywhere near that!" Like, I'm an omnivore who couldn't give up my beef, poultry, and seafood, but holy fuck you (ESPECIALLY you, annoying co-worker) can lay off on the meat every now and again. Whew, feel better now having typed all that out.

Me: Dear person z who is assigned to manage outside party x, please add contact y in the system so that, in future, we are able to recognize that contact y is affiliated with outside party x. Here is the specific information identifying party x.'

(no response)

(new correspondence received from contact y)

Me: Dear person z, second request, see previous email below containing all the information you need.'

Person z: I am not assigned to party x.

Me: Hmmmm, interesting, the system shows that you actually had an on-site visit with party x two weeks ago.

Person z: Who even is party x, I don't see any information indicating who party x is, where am I, how do I make food go in tummy, so hungy.

Me: (copies and pastes information from initial request, highlights, blows up to 720pt flashing type, hits send, shoots self)

This is one of those things where I don't know if it's symptomatic of my particular workplace or if I've just worked here so long that I don't realize it's creeped into the culture-at-large, this thing where people will very confidently declare something that's just flat-out and demonstrably wrong without even bothering to spend .025 seconds beforehand to confirm before they make themselves look like utter dipshits. Or am I the dipshit for failing to realize that this (e.g. deflecting responsibility in hopes that people are so exasperated/exhausted that they eventually stop following up or badgering you) is just the new professionalism? That trying is just dumb and lame?

So my stupid ass did a screen share today forgetting I had an ILX football thread up.

Congrats guys, you're famous.

Bright side: coulda been wallogina.

'what's that sir? you want me to share the front page of Le Monde? sure, i'll just..'

l e m o n ...

i accidentally screenshared the dinosaurs asteroid thread in a meeting today. they were into it.

it’s an objectively good thread

lets not bitch abt yr smart and pleasing co-workers

My company is, among other things, an HR outsourcing firm, so we build call centers for clients that don't want to handle their own benefits recordkeeping. This part of our business has been suffering for probably a decade. Because of the terrible cuts we made to training over the years, people got frustrated and began leaving in droves. So our representative base is rather green and has little veteran leadership to learn from and they're entrusted with processing things like 401k withdrawals and distributions, which of course, due to training cuts and having no veteran help, they routinely screw up, and it costs us buckets of money each time.

we also have service level fees for calls answered that we are struggling to meet, but the reason our clients are leaving is mostly because our quality sucks. we were once an industry leader, now....we're a joke.

Anyway, their solution to this problem was to cut our already too-short trainings from 4.5 days to 4 on these complex topics. and, the kicker, to start piling high volumes of warm bodies (50+) into a class, from a third-party partner location whose technology cannot handle our servers on a routine basis, and it's being done entirely virtually. And the person they gave to teach the class with me has never handled 401(k) before and does not know it, and is working entirely from his guide. He's a great trainer, but I don't care how great you are, if you teach a topic you don't know...

*time to update resume*.

what can I do that won't get me fired but might put me to the top of the 'layoff' list?

cos we get 2 weeks for every eyar of service, that'd be 30 weeks for me. but I'm afraid if I wait until the company finally folds, which seems inevitable, they'll go bankrupt and not be able to pay me any severance.

Ahh, those days of youthful innocence, when I didn't strongly suspect on a daily basis that the people in charge were involved in some elaborate Producers-esque scheme to ensure the failure of their chosen enterprise.

moved to a new office location last month; the new space has new chairs, which look nice but offer no back support at all -- like if you lean back, you just keep going until you hit about 45°, and there's no way to lock them

lots of people complained, myself among them

company's response is that it will order aeron chairs for people who want them -- but will only pay for them if you can provide a doctor's note saying that you *need* back support. otherwise you can pay $1000 out of pocket for one

no other outside chairs will be allowed, for the sake of 'conformity'

i can get a doctor's note, i'm sure, but the whole thing is fucking stupid

That is really fucking dumb.

I can't sit in one of those chairs without locking ability but fuck a doctor note

Get as many doctor notes as possible from across the business and submit/

my old building said that those yoga ball chairs weren't allowed, everyone just ignored it and did it anyway.

You should just jimmy-rig a standing desk and use the chair to put your knee on.

moved to a new office location last month; the new space has new chairs, which look nice but offer no back support at all -- like if you lean back, you just keep going until you hit about 45°, and there's no way to lock them

lots of people complained, myself among them

company's response is that it will order aeron chairs for people who want them -- but will only pay for them if you can provide a doctor's note saying that you *need* back support. otherwise you can pay $1000 out of pocket for one

no other outside chairs will be allowed, for the sake of 'conformity'

i can get a doctor's note, i'm sure, but the whole thing is fucking stupid

Holy fucking shit is that a dumb thing to do. Decent office chairs aren't even really that expensive if you're buying them in bulk but boy do they make a difference when it comes to productivity and overall worker satisfaction. Also, thank goodness my workplace allows you to purchase your own ~fancier~ office chair if you wish.

Just...I mean...why do I have to tell a professional adult, why do I actually need to spell out the fact, that a person's name written in a cursive font in an unlocked and editable Word document does not suffice when a signature is required? Just...fucking...why.

Because signing a Word document is stupid and makes no sense?

I got scheduled to do basically a month's worth of training for this special client. This morning, I was told I needed to submit to a background check with them to lead this training - separate from the background check I already did for my own company.

I know in some industries where there are client relationships, this isn't unusual, but for our company, it is. I have a clean report, but I object to having to subject to a second one.

then after hemming and hawing about this for hours, it turns out we were only told this because the manager who requested the training misunderstood that we were going to use his client's own unique systems, which we're not. which we never agreed to do.

dumb.

I've encountered a multitude of variants that approximated the same, but today marks the first time I've full-on encountered someone asking essentially 'please advise on how I should undertake [task that I somehow do not realize is an essential and unambiguous part of my own job and that I should be deeply ashamed and possibly even tossed into an active volcano for asking you how to do]'.

I genuinely do not know how to respond without utilizing the phrase 'fucking idiot'. Help.

To be clear: this is a manager in a department completely separate from mine. Our job duties abut but do not overlap. And, perhaps most essentially, when I see that the task in question needs to be completed in order for me to do my job, I send a request to these specific managers so that they can do the thing. Because it's their job to know how to do the thing and then do it.

Me: Please add this thing that is missing in that record.
Dipshit: (five minutes later) It looks like it's already there?
Me: (checks, sees timestamp revealing that the thing has been added since I sent the request, full-on blasts self in face with keyboard 4-5 times)

WHAT AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY, I AM OVERCOME WITH SUPERNATURAL VIBES RN

Every fucken day with this shit. Every fucken day.

if it's me, i'm responding with "yes, looks like it was just added four minutes ago" including screen cap of the file w timestamp.

I used to engage in such petty fripperies but the momentary self-satisfaction was never enough to offset the fact that I was clearly the only party in that exchange who GAF.

lol I still do mostly just to tell the other person "ok, i see u"