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

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!

of course I had that mega awesome plan when I was 24 and had no health maladies to speak of.

should have stayed 24 then, shouldn't you. poor planning.

I was 24 for 4 years actually

i'm 24

i legit just felt a weird existential dread thinking about how i’m closer to 42 than 24.

I've got 5 months until 42 :/

though I hate prime numbers so I guess I prefer that

wait a minute, hold on, back up, you hate prime numbers?! what! why!!

lol I keep screwing up my age based on a couple friends’ ages, my brain rolls me over to the next year a month or so before, and then after that I think I’m a year older or younger than I actually am

so yes, I’ve almost said i’m 42 multiple times in the last month. so instead, 24 😊

before my actual birthday that is

I'm 24 x 2 - so I guess I have as much health as two 24-year olds

I resigned from my job this week! (Going to a new one!) Which is good because I've developed severe loathing for anyone in the organisation's technical & product teams, who clearly give more of a shit about internal KPIs rather than uhhhhh our customers.

I am much closer to retirement than I am to the beginning of my career. That gives me anxiety.

not really 'stupid people', but more venting, but the product we've spent almost a year training people on and rolling out, after being fairly smooth technologically for a while, had the login/syncing stop working abruptly out of nowhere today. we were thinking it was a simple 'outage' that would be fixed, now we're being told "welp the entire login process is going to change for good, we'll have a new document for you later today".

which means not only will my partner and I have to retrain every trainer on this new process, but that misguided folk are going to come out of the woodwork asking him and I what to do because many of the users already (falsely) think he and I are product IT and ignore what emails say.

my poor boss's boss is coming back after a week off today to this, and she just dealt yesterday with her mother falling and fracturing her thigh, and also exposing her to COVID as she unknowingly had it prior to admission. (her and I are good buddies due to the ailing parental connection)

two separate, simple processes that wind up only being done by me every time. even though I've showed three different people how to do them multiple times, and sent them reference emails with screenshots/links to previous tasks I created (which can literally be copied into a new task with just the details changed).

why don't I complain? well, cos it makes me termination-proof since if I leave, nobody knows how to do it.

my business instructor asks me what time training ends today - she asks me this at 5 pm ET. the class ends at 5:30 pm ET. It said this on the initial email I sent welcoming them to instructing the class. But even more bafflingly, that's the time the Out look invite says - the invite that this person CREATED THEMSELVES.

do you feel like you work in a sitcom without a laugh track because it has ceased to be funny?

actually today it was very funny, i told my boss's boss "get what *I* just got asked?"

lol ... i had a client a month ago (now ex-client) ask me to design a form for them to use as a template ... so I did, even though I strongly suspect they could have done this themself. Then I sent the template form to them, and got asked, "what do I do with it once I fill it out?" ... This is the person who manages and oversees the information architecture for the organization. Like ... do I need to tell the person that makes the folders and organizes them to make a folder and put it in one?

I didn't respond because anything I could think of would have come across as sarcastic or antagonistic and while the question seemed absurdly stupid, they weren't asking it to be an asshole.

hah I hate those situations because it seems like anything you say will come across as, well, glib, and it's mostly because the question was....something they should have known?

yes, exactly.

ok, now this one isn't funny and making me angry. so the new Customer Care tool rollout that I've mentioned like 700 times itt, well, the old tool, no access had to be granted, you automatically had it when you were given access to a specific client. when they rolled out the new tool, access was separate, so now we as trainers had to for the first time submit access requests . creating a lot of extra work. but we got used to it. and when we submitted it, it took effect immediately, so it worked just fine.

abruptly, in June, they told us they'd be changing the way access was granted later in the year. they apparently did this last week, and all of us were left off of the notification, so my manager had to find out, and one of my colleagues had to figure out the new process as the SOP was dicked up.

I didn't find this out until today as I was gone all but two days last week, and now I have learners who don't have needed access two days into training. AND....our training client is missing from the list of clients to request, and now instead of the access being instantly granted, it requires two separate approvers to approve, and takes another half hour.

I was supposed to visit dad in the hospital today by lunch. now I have no idea how I'm going to do that, as all I've been doing is this all day.

third time I've had to ask the managers to resume putting our ad hoc assignments on our group calendar as they used to do this, and abruptly stopped for no reason and without warning. Instead, they just assumed we'd check these random training trackers throughout the day, so a few times I almost missed that i had an assignment as our group calendar showed as blank, like I had no assignments.

on Friday, I got assigned like 3 classes to prep this week after I had left on PTO for the afternoon, and I didn't learn about them until 11:30 am this morning. now scrambling to figure out what I'm even doing and get these meetings scheduled in an hour.

Every single time I work with this particular coworker, it's the same story:

him: Hey, so I looked into this and there are two solutions, A or B. Which do you want?

me: Well, Option B looks better for the end users, let's go with that.

him: Oh, well, that doesn't really work. Here's why we need to do Option A.

me (internally): so why didn't you just say that option A was what we needed in the first place?!

This happened so often that I now anticipate this back and forth so I try to pre-empt it, but to no avail. This morning:

him: I looked at that lab space this morning, we can go with Option A or B here.

me: Well before I get back to the users, can you let me know if there are any issues that would prevent one of the options working on your end?

him: Whatever the user wants is fine with me.

me: Okay, so I talked to the lab manager, Option A is definitely their preference.

him: Well, I was hoping they'd pick Option B because that's really the only option that works on our end.

me: (internally screaming endlessly)

ugh ... sorry you have to suffer this absurdity

meanwhile ... my co-worker went on vacation without giving me any heads up. I am guessing that in his mind, he would be trying to get work done while on this camping trip, and thus maybe he did not semantically consider it a "vacation" and thus, didn't communicate this to me ... while it does make me feel better about him not responding to my calls, texts, or emails ... still ... it is like we exist in some parallel universe where it is okay to do this??

3 years ago, when I was a contractor and not an employee yet, I had scheduled a meeting with him for Wednesday. Tuesday afternoon I call him to confirm the meeting time, as he frequently would need to reschedule meetings.

He answered the phone and said, "I am going through airport security right now, I can't really talk"
Me: You are at the airport?
Him: Yes, with my family
Me: Your family is going on a trip?
Him: Yes, me and my family are going to Italy for two weeks. Gotta go. Bye.

No, that is definitely not ok. first of all, "well I'm still going to get some work done so it's not really vacay" is something people have fed me before and what usually happens is, they.....don't get much, if any work done while they're gone. and they're still not available when you need them.

fact is, if you're going to be somewhere that is not an office where your primary aim is not working but doing something recreational, and where you could feasibly lose connection at a moment's notice and not be able to get it back, you should tell people so they know not to expect you to be available.

thank you for reminding me of the rules of this universe, Neando! <3

<3

Now, I will say, there were definitely times I would go out of town for like festivals/concerts etc and bring my laptop to work, but these weren't vacations, like I would tell everybody I have full availability during my normal hours today, made back-up plans if the hotel connection wasn't working (like going to a library). even took a trip to Vegas and worked 6:30 am - 3:00 pm so that I'd be present at my usual hours ET. I think that's ok.

but you know going on a trip where "hmm maybe one hour or two I'm working each day, tops" and you're ultimately unavailable, fuck no.

lol, going on a two week Italy vacation with no notice.

seriously though, if it weren't for the fact that his wife dutifully captures every endearing moment of their child's life on Instagram ... I would have had no clue.

my favorite thing is when someone is going on vacation, and lists you as a backup without talking to you OR making sure you're available those days.

I always clear it with people first (unless it's an evergreen backup sitch where I'm one of three people who are points of contact on something), but I once had someone send this big blast email to everyone listing me as their backup for their staycation and I had to privately email them and say "uhm, I'm on PTO four of these days, so no I'm not your backup".

That is frustrating, I can't imagine any scenario where you wouldn't let folks know you are on vacation!

thank you, jon, for being yet another grounding voice ... I swear this guy exists in a parallel universe

my favorite thing is when someone is going on vacation, and lists you as a backup without talking to you OR making sure you're available those days.

hahaha, he has done this as well ... fortunately, I have no family obligations and never go anywhere and I am paid by the hour ... on the bright side, I feel good that he trusts me to do a good job covering for him (this is really a major accomplishment) ... on the not-so-bright-side, I will be told at 11pm that I have to be on site for an inspection at 9am the next morning (which would often be when I am waking up in the morning).

My coworker scheduled a six week vacation through a product launch and checked in with me being okay to cover her support work through it a week after we found out she had booked it. Six weeks! Another dev and I have been working nonstop for this launch and dreaming of vacation time.

My coworker scheduled a six week vacation through a product launch and checked in with me being okay to cover her support work through it a week after we found out she had booked it. Six weeks! Another dev and I have been working nonstop for this launch and dreaming of vacation time.