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

otm. there are other people's workloads tied to yours and if you pull what to all intents and purposes reads like a dick move, then you deserve to be written up.

I tend to view people with suspicion who voice the attitude "working in a call centre is a choice and you chose to have a less stable home life than your friends and family who do not work in call centres."

Call centre work can be low-paid and grindingly awful. We're not talking about medical students who trade 24/7 availability for the promise of eventual riches and the high esteem of society at large. It's often a "choice"—if you can call it that—people make in response to economic circumstances not entirely of their own control.

(To be fair It can be a lot of fun also, I made a lot of great friends during this time. But did I choose it? Not exactly.)

One thing I can also say is I worked with a ton of clock watchers, dog fuckers, and other assorted lazybones. I can also happily say that some of them are still exactly where they started.

Call centres have their own internal karma, whereby if you put in a little extra, cover for someone who's lazy or disengaged, and stop whining about "so-and-so left early yesterday, they deserve a reprimand" sometimes good things can come to you. Depending on the call centre, management might take an interest in you and that's your ticket out.

on the other hand life is too short to prop up other people's shitty behaviour

if shitty behaviour is on one day needing to make sure you leave on the dot from a shitty job then jeezo what a life

So glad I've never had to work with dog fuckers.

it ain't great, but it's a living

Doug Fuckers is actually a very punctual and responsible dude

Dutch guy, right? I think I covered his shift one time.

yes, that's the one. tall as a tree. rode a bicycle. had no filter.

if shitty behaviour is on one day needing to make sure you leave on the dot from a shitty job then jeezo what a life

I praise your good fortune. I've been written up - honest to god written up - for being TWO MINUTES late for work before. In all call centres Ive worked in (and this is why I no longer do), its not the leaving early so much as the deliberate dropping call/putting self on no calls move thats the punisable offence. You honestly DONT get to just swan off 5-10 mins early without warning. Its just that kind of work. You wouldnt do it working behind a counter and leaving the other person in the lurch during lunch rush without warning; same kinda idea.

I once asked 2 times running to leave work 15 mins early (making up the time with earlier start) so I could get to band rehearsal. Because I made the mistake of saying thats what it was rather than something fucking noble like "I have kids", I got told sharply "dont make a habit of this".

having managed ppl, neando is pretty much otm. particularly since it shafted dude's coworkers

having worked at a call center for two and a half months in the mid-90s, that shit is soul-crushingly awful and basically fuck that system in every possible way

Yeah "but they get overtime!" means nothing when your plans have been ruined or you end up stuck on a 35 minute call at shift's end cos some deaf old lady doesnt know what "click the start menu" means.

I DONT SEE THE STAR MENU DEARIE

left click? which left? whats a click?

Oh I dont like mice

Oh you mean my SCREEN SAVER

Why does the cup holder keep popping out???

There's having a word in someone's ear and there's not being able to wait to start formal disciplinary action. If the dude had previous repeated transgressions then sure, write him up, but Neanderthal's post reads like someone who loves exerting his authority.

Helpdesk is a shitty job - everyone who does it needs a plan to get out and into something else as soon as they can. I haven't worked on a helpdesk for years, but two of our helpdesk guys left this week - one has moved on to a better job, the other just walked.

Today is my last day before I leave for two weeks of vacation, which people have known about for over a month and I bet I don't even have to type anything else for anyone reading to know how things are going for me today.

It isn't helping that I've been staying up past midnight for the last three days trying to get things done, so I'm running on a serious sleep deficit.

I can't imagine what it's like to work a job like that where it's like ppl know and they drop the ball and you STILL have to deal with it!! I feel like I wd get so much pleasure from being, like, "uh, sorry, this isn't news and you've had tons of time to prepare for this and your emergency is not going to become my emergency"

The pleasure starts to fade the fourth time you tell somebody that because by that time you start thinking you are doing something wrong.

This is a bitch-by-proxy, but similar to Carl's above; my wife is about to start maternity leave, and had been pestering some dude for information she absolutely needed to get something done. She repeatedly explained that she was going on mat leave (for a year) so it was super important she got it. Eventually got him on the phone and he promised it would be sent by close of business that day. The next day; nothing, so she emailed him for an update. Got an Out of Office as he's on vacation for 3 weeks, getting back the monday after she starts maternity leave.

On the one hand, dick move, but on the other hand I admire his skills at avoiding doing his job and getting away with it.

Not so much annoying as weird: guy singing a (very repetitive) hymn - at least I think it was a hymn - from inside a toilet cubicle. Oh, here's the annoying bit, it was in totally the wrong key for his voice, far too high... why sing out loud in the wrong key?

as a result of last minute sickies, I'd to miss bullshit training this morning to do actual work. failure to show due remorse during a dressing down session led to my immediate manager getting a fit of the giggles in front of the dressing-downer, who had accused me of "grinning like a Cheshire shark" on his way out of the door in a huff.

like I didn't even give any guff tbf I just had to grin or burst

Cheshire shark!

I came here b/c even though this isn't about my co-worker, it's about someone's co-worker. I'm reviewing a couple years' worth of a company's emails, in many of which a manager at global corporation uses exclamation marks at the end of literally every single sentence. (Except those where he doesn't use any punctuation at all.) Usually only one exclamation mark, but here and there two or three (for emphasis, I guess).

Did I already post about this? It's been on my mind so much the past couple of months that I don't know if I've ever mentioned it or if it's all I talk about.

Elaine Benes would approve

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyRLFWF2v_U

although it really doesn't sound so bad. I had a co-worker who ended every sentence with at least one or two question marks.

We had a client who did that! It was terrible, especially since that's also how she sounded on the phone.

My Mexican relatives often put two question marks at the ends of sentences in emails and IMs but they don't use the leading "¿" I wonder if the 2nd ? is a substitution for ¿ ?

it really doesn't sound so bad

not so bad?? but stupid and annoying? no??

I'm reviewing a couple years' worth of a company's emails, in many of which a manager at global corporation uses exclamation marks at the end of literally every single sentence.

Does the global corporation make peppermint bath soap?

OMG I used to have this dictator boss who would shriek if we sent outside e-mails that were non-conformist in any way. Exclamation points are appropriate in some corporate settings, I guess. My brother used to work for a Famous Soap Maker, you sort of have to adopt the products like you joined a new church.

I work in the burbs now after urban jobs my whole life. It's, um, different. Like I feel like I'm living and working in a cornfield different. I hope to make a graceful exit some day. It's taught me a lot about unfairness - like how urban students have the deck stacked against them, when they are sophisticated in so many ways that aren't valued. I miss the city terribly. The young folks are great but some of the older folks are resolutely un-urban and dull.

I'm living and working in a cornfield different

I liked when I thought "different" was an adjective modifying "cornfield," like it was a figure of speech. I shall arise and go to work in a cornfield different.

cornfield difference sounds like a BoC song

http://i.imgur.com/SWktNSB.jpg

More exclamation marks: today I found a case online with exhibits including an email from a state labor commissioner to a lawyer. It reads in part:

Dear [attorney's name]

I have bad news for you! We received your letter but the plaintiff has decided...

bold-face in original

Sitting outside in an area where people eat their lunch, guy puts a private phone conversation on speakers so he can keep shovelling food his gob - then carries on after he's finished eating. Conversation included lots of medical stuff about abcesses and 'the cancer was like a hard lump' and was very loud. I work with some weird people.

We lost our lunch room due to too many staff now being employed here, have been given an outdoor eating area instead, which is 5m away from the designated smoking area

Sounds like a passive way for management to whittle the staff back down to a lunchroom size.

So in the early spring our fundraising VP was unexpectedly let go. Strategic differences between his approach and what the CEO wanted. There was a 6 month search to bring in a new VP, during which time my Dept Dir was clearly recognized as The Person Running the Show.

The new VP arrived 90 days ago. There has been a quiet battle ever since between the new VP and my Dept Dir, during which time it became clear the new VP didn't understand what my data analysis department did, how we did it, or why it did any good.

Today, after a long morning meeting with the Dept Dir working out some data problems and a sudden and odd coda about my career path, my whole department was pulled into a meeting and told that the Dept Dir is "no longer with us, as of today."

I had to hold back a snort. They have no idea how badly they've just fucked themselves--the one person keeping this admittedly sluggish train on the rails has been kicked out the door as we head toward a cliff, and they act like they're gonna learn to conduct the thing before we go off the edge.

**job searching intensifies**

Fairly new CIO calls an all hands department meeting, only to have their PA send an e-mail cancelling it half an hour before it's due to happen because the CIO apparently can't make it and has something more important to do than stand in a room with forty already pissed off people. Two weeks later, the same thing happens, only the cancellation e-mail arrives 3 minutes before the meeting.

That's shitty behaviour, although every suddenly cancelled meeting is like a little gift from the gods tbh. as long as you didn't come into the office specially.

Itd be hilarious if that happened at my work, given they pay to fly my part of the team from melb to syd for all hands meetings!

I'd be all "cool, free sydney holiday, woot"

meetings getting cancelled happens daily in my office. standard advertising procedure.

ugh u guys

this is not a specifically 'coworker' post as much as general office lyfe

the company I worked for for 12 years was sold to a competitor in October. we had 3 month transition time leading up to that point, 2 months of which was not knowing if we were going to be rehired or what. Luckily i was rehired, they kept abt 40 of us which was way more than we expected.

anyway. I work in sales. we were all given 'training' on their computer system...except for most of us, training was 2 days of general overview a month before we went live. there was no pre-planning to figure out how large accounts are currently handled, and how they can be handled similarly in their system...it was pretty much radio silence until day 1 of new company, where we suddenly learned that oh shit we can't do aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanything

the old company's computer system seemed sluggish and dated to us; but this new situation is like we've all been beamed back to 1985 and someone's going to come by and give us a stack of order pads. they hand-key EVERYTHING. if anything fucks up with a huge order for hundreds of accounts, pretty much the only fix they have is oh go in to each order line by line and cancel the item by hand

first two weeks were me every day wondering 'ok what am I even doing here, this SUCKS'. I don't think I've ever had a more stressful time in my life than the last 3 weeks.

today was the first day where sun actually came out from behind the clouds & got my head somewhat above water. but there are a lot of people struggling with it still, who are a lot further behind than me in at least accepting what they can and can't do

the thing that I am seeing a lot psychologically is the difference between coworkers who treat a problem as someone else's to fix, and the people who treat a problem as their own and try to master it. I talked to two people today at length and both them were like 'I DONT' CARE WHY IT WON'T WORK WHY CAN'T YOU JUST FIX IT'
which to me just seems so incredibly exhausting & a general bummer

anyway, ~random thoughts~

ok, that sounds genuinely AWFUL--commiserations, vg