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

Thankfully, pretty much all of my co-workers are neither stupid nor annoying, unless they are drunk, in which case they are fairly easily avoided.

The ineptitude of my colleagues makes me look better and helped me get a second bonus this year for performance so I guess I'm grateful

I was back at my job after two weeks of vacation out of the country and two hours into my first day back and my boss asks me for a status update for one of my (many) projects.

Not exactly a co-worker, a legacy consultant I have to keep working with, but an older boomer to responds to every email with a phone call. Has a yes/no question for me? Calls me on the phone to ask. I send him a file that requires no response? Calls me on the phone to say thanks. I ask him to forward me some information or document? Calls me on the phone to tell me he's going to send it. I'm wise to it and usually just let it go to voicemail, but even when I respond later via email, that still triggers a phone call.

there were five big last minute changes requested Monday night to our training schedules for Tuesday. It was aggravating but I accommodated them all. However, one of the changes made the afternoon class size too big.

I initially said to myself "If I split this class in two groups, no matter what steps I take to communicate the change, some of them will not pay attention and not show up". But I also knew if I kept the class together, the time allotted would be insufficient for a class of that size and then the attendees would complain we rushed.

So I bit the poison pill - I emailed everybody that I was moving to the second group in advance to tell them training wasn't cancelled, but they were were being moved to another group, and that they'd get a cancellation message from the original trainer, and a new invite from me. Then we did exactly that, almost a full 24 hours before the session.

Today, I get a manager screaming at me that we "cancelled training and didn't reschedule it" and I had to spend 15 minutes cutting and pasting screencaps to show that we not only did send a new invite minutes later, but we sent an email to them at the end of the day telling them these people didn't attend and to reschedule them.

lol....and yet after the shitty day that was yesterday, getting mad over stuff like this is actually a welcome distraction to me.

xp Billing the company for every call

I wish even that would explain it, all the work they do for us is on a project by project, fixed fee basis so he gets paid the same whether he calls me once, or if he calls me a hundred time.

This one is more just funny haha as an example of just how petty grown ass adults act in the work environment, but I still rolled my damn eyes.

My boss casually mentioned joining another meeting he had already set up and that I should see an invite from Jill Doe shortly, no big deal. So about an hour later I get said invite, click accept and think nothing more of it. About half an hour after that I get cc'ed on an email from Jill Doe to her own department that says, "Team, feel free to include Rando #1, Rando #2 and Rando #3 if they are available. I thought this was going to be a high level discussion with Boss, however, he has invited three people from his team to join the call."

Oh yeah? You're gonna invite three members of your team to call? I can do that too!

this other colleague and I oversee this special training course - he has one half of the classes, I have the other. all year, our boss's boss has wanted us to keep managers updated on weekly attendance, so they can sign up agents that miss for a makeup session.

I have sent the attendance email every week since it was implemented - it takes 5 measly minutes. He has sent a total of one attendance email over 5 months, despite reminder after reminder. At first, I actually did it for him a few times, then I stopped because I was too busy, my attitude being "if you want to fuck up your portion of the project, that's your problem".

So last week I take two much needed days off and I ask him and my boss's boss if one of them can send a daily attendance email for one of my classes, as it was important as they all have to attend by 6/1. Boss's boss asked him if he could do it, he said yes he would, and of course he didn't fuckin' do it.

so I get to deal with the managers angry that they're getting a day's notice to reschedule people.

AND one of the classes he was supervising had technological issues and more than an hour of content wasn't completed (occurred my last day in the office before my PTO). he said he was working on getting the attendees rescheduled, did nothing, brushed off his trainer's question on it without adequately answering it on Friday, so now *I* have to fucking solve it and by tomorrow.

from now on when I take PTO i'm just gonna dump everything on him.

"wanna jump on a call?"
"not really"

but after capitulating i got 20 minutes of me repeating the details i had already written in the slack channel interspersed with him apologising for his Bluetooth connection being shitty.

I hate "wanna jump on a call", so so much

would you trade it all in for a place with no calls, ever, and a large room of cubes with 3 other people who barely ever speak? Beyond this room I'm lucky to get a "good morning" returned. Everybody just checked out.

this place gives me the willies and i can't believe i've been here 4 years.. well kind of 2 given all the pandemic interruptions. I hope it hasn't turned me into a huge(r) weirdo. Somehow I've put together 3 job interviews over the next week, a couple even relevant to some schooling I did. wish me luck

^^^^

I can feel that maffew, the post pandemic era at our office has so demoralized people that it's like walking onto the set of a zombie flick every day. Silence and an air of quiet desperation has settled over everything, just one more reason not being able to work remotely at all stings and saps the life out of me.

solidarity! The thing here is that it was exactly like this before. It's really wild. When I do get some of them to have a chat it isn't bad, but we go right back to zombie mode. I mean hostility would be worse of course but god dam...

Welp I've been here a bit long to think, like, I'm not part of it now. Time to be on my way.

every time someone misses a day of our class, we get asked if we 'recorded' it so they can listen later.

when exactly are they going to find time to listen to an eight hour recording when you have literally every moment of the next two weeks accounted for and aren't approving overtime at the moment? not to mention nobody would ever pay attention ever again if we recorded them ("I can just listen to it later...")

There's a guy from another office currently visiting ours. He's using a guest office next to mine. He's nice enough, but he's very loud. The walls are not particularly thin, and it sounds as though he's sitting next to me.

that was one of the things that really bugged me about office work. tons of loud conversations that are distracting (at best) or things that you shouldn't be privy to hearing.

once sat next to someone who would call her son and basically do nothing but yell at him for fifteen minutes and bang her fists really hard on the desk. she was also hella racist, liked Rick Scott too.

and then this one dude loudly, on speakerphone, would tell his soon to be ex-wife his entire legal strategy and how he was going to destroy her, loud enough for the whole floor to hear.

It's hard to concentrate! I've had my AirPods in most of the day. They help, but not completely.

should blow an airhorn every time he talks

colleague: can you tell me why <name> is on the roster for Pension training?

Me: well, that would be because you signed them up. I don't just randomly send people things.

probably not co-workers but work related. i have to send my laptop back because the battery is bulging more than i can ignore (it's been noticeable for about 3 years but now you can feel it)

anyway, had a note saying that it'll be swapped on Monday and that it should be placed on the original packaging (which i don't have) AND an outer box with 3-6 inches of bubble wrap (which i don't have). but, Saturday today, the shops are open...

just had a text saying they'll be coming between 10:36 and 11:36 this morning, Saturday, and the nearest whsmith is in Westfield which doesn't open until 10 and is 15 minutes away... which is cutting things fine.

it would also help if my packing tape was actually sticky.

(^ my work laptop, hence posting here)

he arrived 5 minutes after 10:36

and the replacement laptop came in really scant packaging, was probably no need for me to be at rymans at 9 this morning buying 10m of plastic coated air for £8.50

I pretty much set my own hours at my job, though usually try to work either 8:30 - 5:00 pm or 9:00 am - 5:30 pm. but on training days, I usually try to be up by 8:30 because of the endless parade of people who aren't registered for a course screaming at me "WHERE'S MY TRAINING INVITE?", because apparently people in 2022 still don't know how to properly sign up for things and think I can read their mind.

holy shit my manager is a nightmare!!!! the awfulness escapes my ability to accurately characterize it. she shows no analytical abilities, i think she has adhd. she seems literally incapable of taking a step back and having perspective. it's just, tree, tree, tree. it would be one thing if she were somewhat aware of all of this and relied on other people... but she wants to be the one who knows everything at all times! and she expects people, even her colleagues who don't report directly to her, to just do what she wants all the time! she shows no ability or inclination to collaborate or work with or 'dialogue' with people. just absolute dogshit all day every day.

is this the missing chair manager or the closeted Mormon star wars one?

holy shit map, that sounds a lot like mine, just mix in a healthy dose of constant conspiracy theorizing and information hoarding on top of that.

is this the missing chair manager or the closeted Mormon star wars one?

― sarahell, Tuesday, June 14, 2022 6:33 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

haha the missing chair manager. star wars is actually pretty solid, except she kisses up to missing chair all the time and is her best friend, which i don't understand at all.

i wonder if the "information hoarding" is intentional or accidental if they have adhd?

holy shit map, that sounds a lot like mine, just mix in a healthy dose of constant conspiracy theorizing and information hoarding on top of that.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, June 14, 2022 6:42 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

mine is incredibly petty and egotistical but so far she hasn't shown the inclination to "go after" someone if they don't comply. i'm even more sorry if yours does.

xp - that's a good point, sarahell, i haven't been able to tease out the root, but it certainly ties into an overall need to "control" everything

his form of "go after" is more just badmouthing them to anyone within earshot, "not a team player" is his favorite phrase

its always like:

manager: "hey person X, this isn't your job or even in your wheelhouse, but I forgot about it and I need you to expedite it for me so I can look good and my oversight will go unnoticed"

person X: "um no, wtf. I'm in the middle of an incredibly important deadline for what is actually my job, so I might look into this when my workload lightens up in the near future"

manager: "WOW. person X is really not a team player and I'm not sure we can count on them"

sounds like manager is super entitled and arrogant ... I am assuming that manager doesn't "return the favor" for other workers? ... like if they have forgotten something or are overburdened, manager will pick up the orphaned task and do it himself? ... However, if he does actually do this, then it's more an issue of "this job is my life, your job should be your life," when, it sounds like, based on your descriptions of your workplace and duties, that your job should definitely _not_ be your life because it doesn't seem particularly meaningful.

I had a manager once that would schedule meetings, make us wait on hold without showing up for a half hour, then show up 50 minutes late and get angry asking where everyone was and making us rejoin.

oh haha that reminds me 'missing chair' is late to 90% of meetings. 50% of the time she is 10 or more minutes late. oh and her excuse is always "my computer was being weird"

manager: "hey person X, this isn't your job or even in your wheelhouse, but I forgot about it and I need you to expedite it for me so I can look good and my oversight will go unnoticed"

person X: "um no, wtf. I'm in the middle of an incredibly important deadline for what is actually my job, so I might look into this when my workload lightens up in the near future"

she does this all the time too. but doesn't directly badmouth people, she's wayyyy too passive aggressive for that.

of course she never 'returns the favor'! she doesn't have to, she's the manager, that's literally all being a manager entails, not having to do anything she doesn't want to and passively aggressively suggesting that anything that goes wrong is someone else's fault.

i've never worked anywhere that is remotely so passive aggressive, it is astounding. like it is absolutely against the rules for certain people to ever directly communicate with anyone else!!! or like they literally don't know how to do it. total wastes and fuck ups. daresay it isn't a coincidence that those people mormons.

I became very direct and firm in my old job at this firm back in 2017, when I had my back against the wall, and people acted as if I shat on the American flag. I think in the business world now everybody expects passive bullshit like:

"I'm so sorry I forgot to do my assignment and the client is angry and possibly not renewing the contract because of me because I was at Dunkin Donuts"

"aw, no worries - things happen!"

*5 minutes later, to someone else who has no power to do anything*

"WHY DON'T WE GET RID OF THIS PERSON!"

I am assuming that manager doesn't "return the favor" for other workers? ... like if they have forgotten something or are overburdened, manager will pick up the orphaned task and do it himself?

ding ding ding!

you truly work with annoying, stupid people! you deserve better!

my (very likely adhd) co-worker is always perpetually late to meetings ... that he scheduled (and sometimes rescheduled) ... but he doesn't blame others for his mistakes or do the type of pass-agg bullshit described above. He will take on all the work. If I forget something, or flake, he will do it and not throw me under the bus. This makes me feel better about all the times I have to cover for him, like when he double books himself or forgets about a family vacation and then tells me two days prior that he will be gone camping for a week.

that's really what matters is like ,if you're ognna be erratic and goofy but mostly get shit done, it's cool as long as you don't throw me under your bus.

you truly work with annoying, stupid people! you deserve better!

oh, absolutely, i know this. there are certain benefits that i would not find elsewhere, which is what is (for now) keeping me here, along with the hopes of managerial turnover, which seems to be very frequent.

even if you're gonna be erratic and goofy and get very little done, I am way more tolerant if you don't throw me under your bus and are aware of your flaws and are gracious and appreciative that I do not have them (as much).

Innovation for the sake of innovation drives me nuts. so they're doing Phase 2 of the content redesign for the CCR materials (which I think I've talked about in this thread). In doing so, they took content that was in a consistent, structured format across different topics, and turned it into more of a FAQ format, which is much harder to navigate.

but they didn't have time to update all of the content at once, so they did it in waves, meaning half the pages are in the new FAQ format, the other half in the old one. the first wave of pages in the new FAQ format were also written differently from the original pages - all new content.

This time around, the 'redesigned' pages are just the original content structured in the new format - however, they made us re-author it all from scratch anyway. AND worst of all, these redesigned pages are missing things.

Now the Health Care Flexible Spending Account materials don't even include a place that includes the claim submission deadline. Kind of important!

please tell me it includes a "wizard" on top of the FAQ format.

related to the topic of co-workers -- do you know if there is a way to have an employer health plan where the employees are insured by different companies?

(that is an xp to Neando)

I've seen that at large companies but never at medium or small ones. Mr. Jaq works at a state university where there are options for 3 different plan providers.

sarahell - it is possible. my company has a marketplace plan similar to those you find on state/federal marketplaces, with tiers of Bronze/Silver/Gold, and then you choose your carrier. so I could have had this same plan w/ a diff carrier.

but even non-marketplace plans, you can have the same plan with choice of diff carrier. As Jaq says, this is more common at large companies. lots of companies only offer one carrier. or the plan is inextricably tied to the carrier (i.e. "there's an HMO plan, but you can only have Aetna").

that's kinda why I'm kicking myself. I coulda checked what plans utilized CVS before signing up.

btw, not dumb co-workers, but 'venting'.....

re: the growing cost of health care coverage and shrinking employer contributions.

when I started with this company, I paid something like $20-$40 a month to cover just me on an HMO plan that covered 100% of my services with no deductible. amazing plan.

I pay the same amount now for a garbage Bronze $2500 deductible plan that only covers 70% coinsurance and has an HSA attached, with zero employer contributions. they no longer offer plans like the one I had 17 years ago, but even for a plan that covers 90% with a minimal deductible, I'd have to pay hundreds of dollars per month. for just me!