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

verbatim exchange I just had. including timestamps, which were visible to the other person while making these statements:

[12:26 PM] GOOBER
how much time do we have I want to take it over but if not enough time to start it I will do it again later.

​[12:26 PM] NEANDERTHAL
about 9 minutes

​[12:27 PM] GOOBER
Ok, I reviewed, I know my mistakes but want to make sure I have time to redo so I will later even if it doesn't count for you guys, for myself.

​[12:36 PM] GOOBER
that was the longest 9 min I could've retested by now.

entire GUI system down in our test environment for over 24 hours. nothing like this has ever happened before.

the lead IT guy's response is to merely say over and over again "this shouldn't be happening".

so basically all of my trainees can't properly utilize the environment they're supposed to use and aren't getting practice.

fun!

fuck ... I want to post in this thread, but it's on ILE and not 77 ... honestly, I should keep it to myself. Stupid, annoying ... but understandable

I told my boss once back in 2019 that he could message me on WhatsApp since I was in the Philippines.

He apparently took that one time permission to mean "message me here always instead of texting" and unbeknownst to me, has been sending me messages there for weeks. Usually for emergencies. Like today, he wanted me to come in early to help fill in for a training, so he WhatsApped me yesterday. I didn't see it as I don't even have it installed anymore, he didn't text me, so I was late.

WhatsApp is like FB Messenger, it shows you if the messages have been read. can't...he see...that I am not reading them?

Not to mention the years of nonresponse!?

yeah for real. i haven't replied to a single message since 2019. lol

told him this morning to just text me from now on.

well now at least he knows what's up

one of our trainees in one of our classes has a smoke alarm with a low battery that has been chirping for two weeks, and constantly forgets to put herself on mute. eventually one of the other classmates said DOES SOMEONE NEED TO CHANGE THEIR SMOKE ALARM BATTERY

observing a trainer who is literally making the training all about him and his emotional outbursts. he made a mistake yesterday and then said loudly "put a bullet in my head!"

oh yikes. Is this training about dealing with stupid, annoying coworkers?

unintentionally, it has become exactly that

i uh hope that fellow gets the help he needs

He did in that I told him he was done for the day and took over

in more stupid trainer chronicles...

"Hi Rob - here's the status report for the week. Sorry, I couldn't take roll yesterday as I was presenting."

"I....what? You literally have a partner who wasn't presenting who could have taken roll. For fuck's sake, MS Teams shows you the people who were invited that aren't present in the session, it takes all of 30 seconds to confirm at the beginning of the day."

it's a level of dumb that I have no antibody for

much like public schools and standardized tests, our dumb leaders think that the stupid post-module 'assessments' are these great predictors of individual performance (editor's note: they're not). We have *14 of them* in the Pension course I teach, and they're open-note so they're not hard to pass, and usually only illuminate the poorer performances (or those with test anxiety).

If you cut them for time - you get an interrogation, even though not cutting them means if you run over time in a lesson, you have to cut tiem in another lesson, and then you're rushing and nobody learns anything.

coworkers who cc themselves on their own emails are 9 times out of 10 completely disorganized and have an inbox that is an actual nightmare

My father died suddenly of a heart attack while I was on vacation and I emailed my manager so that he’d tell my coworkers.. he offered to do so.. then “missed” my reply. So when I got back I had to answer a bunch of chipper “how was your vacation?”s in back to back calls which was absolutely brutal. The first one, I didn’t know they didn’t know, so it felt completely heartless that this usually thoughtful person would ask. I want to burn it all down. So instead I booked my second shot for that night so that I’d get sick (and I did) and miss the next day. Fuck you shitty “oh we are all such good friends” fake ass manager. Having a pension is the only thing that’s stopped me from rage-applying to other jobs. This is after six months of my father going through significant mental health problems during a time of great project stress at work, all of which the manager was very aware of and was praising me for withstanding.

jesus christ, i'm so sorry to hear about your father, but also the insensitive way that it was handled by your manager at work.

thank you. It is nice at least to feel anger occasionally rather than sad. But the first hour when I sat online prior to our calls and none of my decent work friends reached out was so alienating and depressing. I could tell my coworkers were so shocked and sad to see me have to say it too. He fucked that up so bad.

❤️

Wow, yeah he did. So sorry, FFM, what a horrible time <3

ugh what a careless jerk

Thank you ❤️ needed to rant somewhere that won’t get me fired! Please no one snitch. xoxo

Not a specific coworker, but so tired of having some variation of the same exact conversation with our IT department eight or nine times a year when reviewing the design for a new classroom layout with AV needs:

“So based on the size of the room and throw distances, here’s the projector we recommend. The one we used last time was discontinued, but this is the equivalent model.”

Nope, don’t like that one.

“Okay, no problem, which model would you prefer?”

Not that one.

“Sure, no big deal. But can you let us know what you do like, since you guys will be maintaining it?”

That’s up to the designer and their recommendation.

“Okay, but you didn’t like what they just recommended. How about this other model?”

Oh, no way, we had a bad experience with those.

“Alright, fair, so any recommendations at all for brands or types you prefer?”

Well, we’d prefer you stick to our standards.

“Of course, can you share your standards with us?”

Well, we don’t really have written standards…

ahh yes, the UH method of procedural documentation

all standards are stored "up here"

*points at head*

i got yr standards right here

one of the benefits of being burnt out to where I'm phoning it in at work is that I no longer feel compelled to bail out someone who keeps goofing up/failing to do things. like scheduling a meeting for a manager checkpoint with your learners and NEVER INVITING THE MANAGERS TO IT.

when we were spinning off from our parent company in 2017, we temporarily called ourselves NewCo until we settled upon our new name. so our intranet site temporarily contained "NewCo" in the URL.

it is four years later, NewCo is still in the URL, and they haven't bought a new URL with our company's name in it and just moved the intranet there. just looks so tacky.

Bigwigs: "we've got to stop this crazy attrition, we blame you as trainers for people leaving!!!!"

Me: "Hi, uh, today is day one of class, 20% of all of the classes were no-shows, 5 of them were given the wrong equipment by IT, and despite having a whole day to get everything setup on Friday with their IT, another 25% of the classes can't get into their systems, and they all sound frustrated."

Bigwigs: "Dude, whatever, these things happen."

Me: "But this is why they keep le-"

Bigwigs: "I said DUDE, WHATEVER"

classic incident last week

co-worker in email to client: So for some strange reason the inspector contacted me about your request to reschedule the inspection and it is now a week from now

me: the reason the inspector called you was because I sent the email requesting the inspection be rescheduled and gave both yours and my phone numbers in the email. I cc-ed you on the email I sent. I tried calling you to give you the heads up that the inspector might call you.

(privately)
me: I also was surprised that you rescheduled it for so soon because (client) has a lot of preparation to do and I worry they won't be able to do it in time. I had suggested to (client) that we push it back for a month

co-worker: it should be fine

(two days before the rescheduled inspection)
co-worker visits client site and realizes how much preparation work they have to do for the inspection

co-worker in email to client: I have rescheduled the inspection for a month from now.

totally missing from any communication -- "sarahell" was correct in her original assessment that the inspection should have been pushed back a month

ugh! this is my entire working life, swear to christ

.

xp - ugh!!!

idk if I'm just getting used to this guy, but he is less stupid and annoying than he used to be?

though i swear, we have this charlie brown / lucy pulling away the football thing with his "i will call you in 10 minutes" promises that never happen

i have a coworker who will chat something like “ok sending now” which i take with a grain of salt because i know i wont see it until like 12 hours later

for urgent stuff i have had to bug her repeatedly & i hate it so much but she literally says she’s sending the thing & she ~never~ does it

the worst

i don't understand how people like that rationalize the constant dishonesty

totally

do not just tell me what i want to hear & blow me off. stop acting like a teenage gamer! i’m not your fucking mom ffs

omg

it's also like this immediate gratification thing without considering the consequences ... why yes, you pacified me momentarily, but when you don't actually do what you say (and this is an absurd pattern), I get more angry and annoyed than before?

and if you're telling me what I want to hear because your instinct is to not have someone mad at you and avoid conflict ... you are just self-sabotaging tbh

And after a point (which she seems to have already reached) you're not even pacified momentarily, your anger spikes because you know she's bullshitting.

^^^ yep!

there was a rehire back in April who came back for three days and left, and she claimed she left because her trainer told her that she'd be "yelled at all day". In typical fashion, the default assumption is "the trainer said this", and that it couldn't possibly be a really terrible paraphrase (or fabrication). so when I was asked to look into it, I did and found limited information on the class (it's been almost five months) to determine one way or the other. and we don't record our classes.

so I made some small statement about how we should consider that it's possible that a comment was misconstrued, and got told we "need to be open to feedback and unpack objectively".

like...

there's a difference between saying "You aren't clear when you talk, and you speak too fast", which is someone's subjective opinion

and

saying someone said a very specific thing

which either did or didn't happen. it's not 'feedback' - if we'd recorded the class, we could have proved empirically one way or another whether it happened. and I don't feel like putting a smudge in a co-worker's record over a statement that can't be corroborated by someone who quit 5 months ago. now she'll be known as the "person who told her trainees this job is terrible" when considered for future classes.

Fucking hell, getting back in the open plan office every day is annoying enough, but one of my coworkers has picked up the most obnoxious habit over the pandemic that kills me a little every time she does it.

Whenever she goes to make a phone call she puts her phone on speaker, then dials the number, waits for it to ring, then picks up the receiver. At full volume. Every time. I don't know why she feels it important to share the full blast dial tone and dialing with us thirty times a day and I also don't even understand it being some "efficiency" thing since it requires pushing an extra button. Drives me absolutely batty.

I don't know why but this was a common thing among particular loudmouths in an open plan office I worked at years ago.

i used to do it when i had one of those phones but not in an open plan office, saves having to pick up the handset unnecessarily i guess. but in the same office i had a coworker who used to do all her calls on speakerphone, which led to her yelling into the phone and disturbing everyone. when she was told not to do that she pouted forever. and in like the same month i asked her not to burn a very bad smelling candle and she posted a meme about candles on facebook.

in like the same month i asked her not to burn a very bad smelling candle and she posted a meme about candles on facebook.

ok you win the stupid, annoying co-worker award -- as in the having of such, not the being ...

harbl did your office not have a policy about candles? i barely used to go to the office and even i knew that there was a policy about candles.

Mine even had one about perfume