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

My boss laid off almost all staff 2 months ago except for me and two seamstresses who don’t speak a lot of English. After 2 months of being the sole focus of her chaotic energy, I’m losing my mind. The last few years have been less stressful bc I had a coworker who was v interested in buying the business and took the brunt of my boss’ weirdness. I’d forgotten how bad it can get.

Here are some examples of the whiplash I deal with regularly:

“Our strength lies in offering so many colors” ——> “we really need to limit the amount of colors available in a style”

“We offer too many styles, the stores are cluttered” —-> “lets make 20 variations of the same garment instead of just perfecting it the first time”

“We need to get rid of our store in San Francisco, it’s too expensive” ——> “scale of economies!”

“This is the summer palette” —-> “actually lets drop that color” —-> “actually lets bring that color back” —-> “nah get rid of it” —-> “wait maybe you could make more like {shows me a sample that is a fabric nothing like we make, in a color so rich I clearly can’t replicate it considering the dyes I work with}”

My favorite recurring argument is about our store windows:
Me: Windows are free advertising. They need to be more eye catching. Ours are too beige and nothing stands out
Her: it doesn’t matter. Everyone looks at windows. You don’t need to catch attention
Me: we should dye a couple pairs of pants in brighter colors just for the store windows, bc it’ll help with contrast
Her: but then ppl will see the bright colors in the windows and come in to buy them
Me:......
Me:?!?!?
Her: I don’t you to dye pants in bright colors for instore stock bc nobody buys them
Me: *punches self in face*

are you making things to order anyway cos of reduced frequency of trade?
I mean would seem to be overkill to make so much more stuff.
BUt that's presumably what you're saying anyway.
Though if you drop in production does that mean the last few staff are in danger of being fired if tehy're not seen to be active all the time?

interested actually are you getting a lot of walk in trade now? NOt really been around places like clothing shops cos i think most of them are closed here and the only open ones are departments of larger shops.

Our stores are closed till June at least but our online traffic has increased x 10. What’s annoying is that she’s been nagging me to fill the stores for weeks, and I’m like, why?? If I fill the stores now, we run out of undyed stock, she really can’t afford to buy fabric right now, so let’s be judicious until we actually know for sure when the stores are opening.

I normally do online orders as dyed-to-order but we’re doing too much business for that so I’ve pulled a lot of stock from our 3 stores, which she’s also giving me whiplash over - one minute she agrees with me that we should be utilizing the stores’ stock for online sales, the next she’s going on about how the stores need to be ready for opening at any moment.

The last 3 of us a safe unless she loses the business.

Once again, stupid managers enrolled students who didn't meet the minimum criteria to take my class...into my class. The class they should have been enrolled into is one week longer. I can't squeeze 5 days of extra info into a schedule that's already full, so... they're pretty much lost.

The managers know. They are playing dumb.

We pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalty fees per year due to undertrained representatives misprocessing 401(k) transactions.

Clearly the solution to this is to train 5 people who have never used our systems before on 401(k), and cut the hours of the system training from 40 to 8, and to assign me to prepare for this class on a day's notice while I'm simultaneously leading another class and can't work OT.

This won't blow up at all.

We've got an ongoing problem with our coworker that processes all of our invoices and paperwork. She is just constitutionally unable to wait a reasonable amount of time for anything to get reviewed or moved forward, the second it hits her inbox she just HAS to get it out of her court as fast as imaginable. She's efficient, but it also creates unnecessary stress on everyone. It's been a known issue and our boss has talked to her about it before, but it's gotten so much worse while we are working from home. As an example, a consultant emailed her an invoice at 10:14 this morning. She attached the pay requisition form that I need to to sign and sent it to me for review and signature at 10:18. At the time I was on a zoom call for another project. She emailed me at 10:28 asking me if I had a chance to review it yet, again at 10:45 asking if there were problems with it, yet again at 10:55 asking me why I didn't approve it yet and finally CALLED me at 11:05 to ask why it wasn't done yet. It's infuriating.

I am that person, except I never send the emails or call, I just sit on my couch stewing.

Last 2 posts summing up this lockdown shit. Unconscionable drain on people's wellbeing.

I feel like my company's acquiescence to our clients' concerns that the "quality of our customer service will decline" or the "service levels will suffer" is such stupidity. What call center is anybody calling right now where your first impression is "wow, they really are at the top of their game"?

don't see what it's going to help if you throw a bunch of already stressed out people who aren't used to working from home onto the phone with a third of the training they were supposed to get, knowing if they quit they won't get unemployment.

Had to report a data privacy violation for the first time in my career here today because some motherfucking idiot supplied sample documentation for our training materials. instead of properly redacting the materials, or supplying fictitious customer data from a test environment, they submitted actual customer data/applications with their private data only obscured with a REMOVABLE TAG that said "Confidential". anybody can delete these tags, and sometimes they disappear when you scroll fast, making visible the customer's data.

None of us internally on this project are authorized to see customer data from this client, and we've also now just shared it with a third party, basically breaching this customer's privacy.

motherfucking MORONS.

they used Pop-Up tags. all you have to do is click and drag it out of the way, and boom, customer's info exposed.

first higher-up I reported to seemed to not care. why even have a Data Privacy policy in place if we don't care about enforcing it. fuck.

so I told them I will not be doing any more review of these documents and am deleting the ones I inadvertently d/led

i'm sort of impressed how bad people are at social distancing rules. for example, at work there is a small room that lots of people use that has been decreed to be single occupancy to allow for social distancing. there is also an even smaller entry area into this room. so naturally, while the room is occupied, people waiting to use it just stand around in the entry area and take off their masks so they can have a good conversation.

"Hey Neanderthal and Other Dummy, one of our trainers is sick today. Can you both fill in for him and take over?"
"Sure. Other Dummy and I can figure out how to split up."
"Absolutely. Let me know when you want to touch base, Neanderthal."
"Do you know what he's teaching, Other Dummy? Looks like the Core curriculum?"
"Not 100% sure but I think that's correct! Looks like it is core."
"Ok, I got confirmation he's on Day 6 of Core! We can discuss how to split up the clas-"
"oh I can't actually help with the class, Neanderthal. I have meetings all day."
...

"THEN WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU JUST SAY THAT RATHER THAN WASTING 20 MINUTES OF MY TIME?"

oh sure, tell me I'm going to be only 'supervising' this year's Open Enrollment at the Philippines location, then assume that I now have all this extra capacity to lead training classes, load me up with them, then drop the bomb on me at 5 pm last Friday that the person who reports to me can't report to me next week. which now leaves nobody to prep trainers for a class totaling 100 people.

I'ma make them solve it as I don't have the mental energy to play Schedule Tetris rn

more an amusing one, but my co-worker who has worked with me for two years and sees my name on a daily basis prepared a slide for our training today with our pics, and she butchered my last name in the caption underneath so badly it was comical. not a typo or anything, she outright left 3 letters out of it.

tempted to sign my emails this way now.

Trainers during activities are supposed to send their learners login credentials for our test Console, plus a specific replication number for each dummy account, so that everybody can be in the same account at the same time without locking each other out. We send them a template that they can forward as-is, with their only job filling in the blanks next to each replication number with the name of a learner.

One trainer inexplicably sent her own custom email with just the replication numbers and no login data. A few days later, I found out she was giving them wrong instructions. The learners were all supposed to use the same login credentials and password (let's say for example login: ABC123, pw: youandme). and then when they search for a customer's name, they add the three digit replication number on the end.

She had them changing the last three characters of the login to match the replication number. so if the learner's replication number was 105, she had them logging in as ABC105. which of course didn't work.

So I explained to her the mistake she was making two weeks ago, with screenshots, and a detailed explanation. She replies "got it, so sorry about that!", and no further comments. We have about 15 classes and I'm not really in charge of observing them, I just happened to be on her email last time, so since then I haven't given it another thought.

Today, she sends another email, telling us the logins don't work. She's giving them the same wrong instructions again....two weeks later.

How in the....f.......

today, we had a global issue with a tool. boss's boss found it amusing because we were having similar issues a year earlier, so she copied and pasted the issue's summary from an email from last year, with the lead in "<Tool> issue, from last year". The summary she copied had both an identification of the root cause AND instructions for what action we should take. she made zero distinction that this was a c&p from a year old email until more than two hours later.

So naturally, in context, it appeared that she was telling us "this is the solution to your issue, similar to the issue we had last year", and giving us instructions to cascade. so I abandoned calling in to escalate the existing ticket, and merely gave this update to our instructors. even told her I'd done this afterward! no correction.

like why unnecessarily confuse us like that by dumping "just for giggles" nonsense in the middle of a discussion of a technology issue? I guess she realized her mistake as she was not at all mad at me about it, but it's frustrating that she should know better than muddying waters.

to clarify, she copied this summary into a WebEx Team Chat, so of course none of us had any idea she had just copied in the bones of an old email

as a cost cutting measure all the non-production servers are automatically turned off at 6 at night (and start again at, i think 4am - because we have people in GMT+5.5)

does that stop the tester waiting until 5:35 to start asking me questions about servers that are about to die? he's had literally all day...

(6 is too early imo, but i'm happier with 09:30-18:30 than i am with 9-5)

we keep having learners who "log in" to class, then peace out once roll is called, and in big classes it doesn't get caught right away.

earlier this week, I noticed I had this one who literally showed up for an hour and peaced for the day, then showed up for a few hours the second day. This was obvious as I was monitoring the attendee list for her name after she disappeared, messaged her, and also downloaded the roster from MS TEams, which confirms entrance/exit times.

Her manager assured me she was there "because the learner told her she was", so I told her that was impossible for the reasons above, and that she hadn't done any of the assignments (the only person in class who hadn't).

So the student msgs me upset saying "I've been there, how do you not see me?" and I pointed out she hadn't done any assignments and that I had a log of when she left each day. dead silence - she literally thought she was fooling everybody and didn't count on there being assignments that I checked every day.

I'm realizing that I'm terrible at taking attendance over Teams. So far I haven't been calling roll because I have a 50-minute class and 32 students and it takes SO LONG to get them all to unmute and reply. But I think I'll have to because I can't seem to use the "download attendance" feature right; people are always missing from it who I know were in class, and then I can't be fully confident about the people I think were absent.

roll call for a 30+ person class in Teams is hell. after the first day, where I do a full roll to learn voices, ask if I'm saying names right, and ask them if they have a nickname they go by, every day forward, I look at the attendees list and make sure they're connected to phone, and take down who I see, and call on just those I'm missing. Imperfect, but I'm on a crunch usually.

I did see some weird results in Download Attendance the first two times I used it, which is why I can't confidently use it alone to confirm absences. I check the number of attendees, and if it varies at any point, I look to see if anybody new joined or if anybody departed, and only after I've confirmed that and/or called on the person, I use the Download feature to confirm what I already know.

Unfortunately sometimes you find out late if the class is too big, and if I can't stay for sure that the person wasn't there, I don't report it....so people often get away with it anyway just due to the bad teacher:learner ratio, having too many learners. also technically, their managers should be joining training and helping monitor them, but...they just don't.

but then I worry that i'm going to get in trouble for not noticing someone skipped on class, so....my OCD flares up

Yeah, I've been basically trying to just look at my attendance list, the problem is that in the moment I get hyper-focused on running the class, sustaining their interest and keeping the energy high, and I forget to give myself time to actually check who's missing.

yup. I have that problem too.

at some point I just say "you're doing teh best you can", cos if I hyperfocus on attendance, I suddenly get tongue-tied.

I've also noticed my training classes went from being more fun and loose to being rigid simply cos my heart isn't in it right now with all of the problems.

i mean, get the right end result, but.....I don't want to make it boring for anybody, and i kinda am atm, which isn't the norm for me

kind of annoying that on a week I'm teaching a class so I wanted to opt out of reviewing Alpha materials for a course redesign we're doing (due today), I can't because I notice two major errors in five minutes that none of the other 4 reviewers caught (and they're regulation errors which would be really bad if we taught incorrectly).

so now I have to because apparently nobody else is paying close attention.

I had a weird conversation with my boss this week where he pointed out that I keep picking up on errors in our courses/literature/websites and he said it wasn't my job to do that (it isn't) and that I get paid too much to be the department's proofreader (I do).

I pointed out that he was right and that I'd be quite happy to be left off all review circulars from now on as long as he was happy to acknowledge that literally no-one else is either arsed or capable of getting things right first time or correcting them afterwards.

We agree I shall continue in my unofficial capacity as Mr Pernickety.

been trying to start my portion of class for ten minutes and my partner has, without even pausing to take a breath, non-stopped talking for ten minutes about unrelated bullshit, and got them onto a topic taht is now generating a lot of discussion. the only way for me to get started is to rudely interrupt her.

SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

i'm in no mood today. we're way behind and i'm stressed tf out.

today my co-instructor asks the entire class what their 'song' is, the one that gets them going. I usually participate in these to encourage the others participating, so I listed my gut reaction, Strapping Young Lad - "Detox". she says "that sounds like metal - that's expected from you, I want something surprising from you", so I said Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes - "Wake Up Everybody". she asked other people to give 'surprising' picks and then said she would play our songs. naturally I figured she was going to go with my second choice, and I also forgot that SYL's Detox begins with Devin Townsend screaming "HEY YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT!".

so suddenly I hear her start my song and I can't get her to stop in time before he says that. idk - maybe a head's up that you were gonna play both my choices woulda been nice, or maybe before asking for our fav tunes telling us you were gonna play em!

I'm sure that woke everyone up all the same. win/win

I blamed it on one of the students and had security escort him out of class

which makes no sense as he was working from home but

Not really a coworker, per se, but I'm being driven up the wall by a particular vendor we frequently use. So this vendor is producing new stuff for us to use as we adapt to COVID concerns, fine. Great. So every few weeks I have to coordinate with him to be on campus to receive the delivery and put it into storage. In the pre-COVID times, this would be fine, I would never be more than a 15 minute walk from the storage place and can meet him fairly quickly. But obviously, having to work from home and being off campus makes this a bit more tricky. (As a side note, I'm still not sure why this particular task hasn't been delegated to one of our employees that is already on campus anyway now, but that's an argument for another day).

Anyway, this guy keeps calling me while he is literally on his way to campus saying, "I'll be there in 20 minutes, see you then". The first time it was annoying, but fine, whatever. I told him that next time he needs to let me know as far in advance as possible, preferably at least 24 hours in advance, so I can make arrangements since I'm off campus and need to juggle between my schedule, my wife's schedule and making sure someone can be around to oversee my son's online classes. Every time we make a new order, I reiterate this in writing and on the phone. Today was the fourth time now he's called me last minute to tell me he's on his way and will meet me in 20 minutes. So once again, I had to drop everything and scramble to get there.

Obviously I'd like to just tell him that I can't do it and he'll have to figure out another time but, unfortunately, we have a lot of other people I work with waiting on this stuff. So blowing this guy off impacts way more coworkers than just me and can put them into a bind. So, I don't have much of a choice in that respect. Unfortunately I also don't have any pull to threaten this company with losing our business either, since they are a preferred vendor and have been for many years. I could tell him, "look I need you to be more respectful of my time or else we're gonna go somewhere else" but he knows that decision gets made way above my head and completely outside my department.

It's just infuriating that I have go through this every few weeks and no matter how proactive I am about scheduling ahead of time and underscoring the advance warning I need, this guy just either isn't willing or isn't capable of respecting my time.

If you are late to meet the guy, is he obligated to wait for you? If so, maybe being late would be a good passive-aggressive way to get your point across. I would think that having to sit around and wait for 20 minutes, an hour, what have you, would make this guy more prone to advance scheduling

That thought crossed my mind, honestly have no idea if that would work or just make him worse tbh.

Yeah stop rewarding him by turning up when he calls, hes assuming you still can.

Could you work it on your side to get one of those other on campus employees to meet him?

that other employee being Joey Bananas who will have a "heart to heart" with him?

Lol

I've tried reaching out to a couple supervisors that might be able to help but, y'know, I think it's falling into that "well that sounds like extra responsibility for me that I don't wanna take on" k-hole and will remain unanswered, but we'll see.

dying of laughter right now. This is why my company has stagnated.

5 years ago, we decided to upgrade our call handling platform. ALL teams were supposed to move to it. That became an impossibility almost immediately, because inexplicably, our contracts had standard language about a type of encryption that our new platform was unable to support (without us paying an exorbitant amount of money). our sales execs and our technology team were not communicating. so every client with that language COULDN'T use the new platform. and other clients demanded that language in their contract. so we've had half of our teams on the old platform, half new for 5 years, but we've been telling them eventually we'll get closer to 100%.

Today, I'm told we're abandoning the new platform and going back to the old one, and just changing our case management system. Years ago, we similarly moved 4 teams to a new platform of user content, only to roll it back almost immediately after as we realized it is terrible. We just abort project after project.

you should be a visionary and introduce them to the “fail fast” methodology

they’ve got half of it right

Dayjob client: has been letting past-due accounts slide for years to the point where she has 11 owing four figures and two more owing five figures (and another 15 or so with no payment in years), and I have dutifully sent out invoices and account statements with additional interest and rebilling charges, but yesterday I'd had enough and asked if I needed to keep doing this. Obviously it's long past time for her to take charge of shit and start chasing payment. Part of the problem is that a lot of the very late accounts stem from an annually-renewing directory listing that is opt-out rather than opt-in, and if she actually did anything about it, let's say drop the listings for which there hasn't been payment, the directory would drop to about 40% of its previous size and the financial problems would be obvious to everyone left.

2nd job: one of the servers seems to have trouble processing or retaining info. She's been working there for months and still comes up to me saying things like "I need a Coors...Life? (checks order pad) Light? In a bottle? Does that come in a bottle?" It's possible she may just be high as a fucking kite.

haha that last one

Goddammit. Now I'm hearing "Coors Life" to the tune of "Pop Life."

xxp - ugh, my 2nd job has a contract for which we haven't received payment (we are technically subcontractor to this other company that is the main contractor, but we are doing the majority of the work) ... and the contract is with the City, but with this other company as the main contractor, and my co-worker never got any official contract with anyone (as far as I know) that shows they are supposed to pay us for our work. So, it is kinda awkward asking for payment for a contract that doesn't actually exist?

Someone quite a bit senior to me just sent me an email asking 'who do I contact to do X for me?' where X is a thing that this individual has almost certainly had to contact someone about hundreds if not thousands of times before in the normal course of their job. Like, contextually, it's such an absurd and profoundly stupid question that I don't know whether I'm being punked or whether I should call 911 about the aneurysm this person is currently suffering.

we have a 'mock' client in our system that we use for training only with fictional customer data, and literally you're taught on that client when you set foot in this building. everybody should know they're not real.

and yet they don't, so projects go on, and these people see the mock client on the list of clients. so we occasionally get requests to do work for them like they're a real client. like today, when I got thrown a series of tasks for a 30+ hour work assignment regarding web chat setup. We aren't going to spend 30 hours to set up live web chat for a fake company, guys.

that's not as annoying as the times I still arguments and pushback saying "well they're on the list, we need to do it"