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

Suprised at the suprise over the "desktop icons as background image" prank, that ones old as the hills! As is the "set the startup sound as some really long annoying song in WAV format, then turn the speakers up full and disable the volume knob".

...I think Ive worked in IT for too long.

coworker's son got his car stolen with wallet/licence inside; says she hates men

more of a lol than annoying

was sitting next to a customer service rep today in the office who kept banging the table whenever he got mad and picking pedantic fights with all of his customers. it's like he gets off on ruining 65 year old ladies' days

Was just in a meeting with my boss and saw one of those red "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" Trump hats on a shelf behind him. Almost literally shuddered. Oh, well, this is the easiest and highest-paying job I've ever had, so...fuck it.

maybe it's an ironic make america great again hat

My boss doesn't do irony.

was sitting next to a customer service rep today in the office who kept banging the table whenever he got mad and picking pedantic fights with all of his customers.

Do you live in MTL by any chance?

I wish

Three days ago: assurances from a senior director that our department is appreciated and seen as integral to the business.
Today: head of department sends a department wide email notifying us that there's going to be random drug testing.
I swear I'm living in a fucking Dilbert cartoon.

probably why you got the assurances in the first place

you're important to the business so please don't complain when we randomly drug test you hippie

The department is appreciated and integral to the business. The people who make up the department, however...

Well, we are a motley collection of scumbags...

Wow. I've never even heard of people being drug tested for jobs in the UK before!

I cannot see any valid reason to ever drug test an actual employee (as opposed to a potential hire) unless that employee is operating equipment that could somehow harm another person =and= said employee has exhibited behavior that is concerning in some way. Otherwise...the fuck does it matter?

xp it's happened to a few people I know. I think it's a bit more common in the US though. Oh, and 'refusal to participate in a random drug test will be treated in the same way as a positive test'.

I sure do feel appreciated and integral to the business! I don't take drugs and I haven't had a drink for 13 and a half years, but still this boils my piss. Which ironically is how I imagine they test for drugs.

having to write end of year comments for my upcoming evaluation in October seems kind of ridiculous

brb adding "contribute to ilx" to my performance goals

have started using "I want x to happen" in emails, because its all that seem to work ffs

Citrix based systems Omfg fukkk uuuuuu

The finance team has just noticed nobody has been invoiced for most of our products since April and can't even work out the order volumes to do it retrospectively. Good job I'm not bonused on reven...oh.

xp there's a 77 thread for IT support peeps but I will just add that boy am I glad that Citrix is handled by another team here.

Two people leaving next Thursday. First I heard was the Outlook appointment for leaving drinks...

We get that a lot here. There's a pretty strong grapevine, so I don't usually hear about leavers through Outlook, but the notice we get is about as short. Although sometimes I hear about people leaving after they've left - like a couple of weeks ago someone from another team was in our office to discuss some work, but this week I found out that he's gone. Even worse, he didn't do the work and no-one from his old team knows about it!

do all managers go through the "bully" school of training or

feels like none of them know any method other than intimidation and fear and then it affects you so much that you start almost acting that way towards those that report to you until you catch yourself and realize those people are in the same impossible situation you're in.

I mean we expect a bunch of people who don't have a coach sitting in a room with them and have failing equipment to somehow be amazing at what they do.

It can have that knock on effect. We had an intensely bullying COO for years, and when he moved up to run the Sydney main office, suddenly all *my* managers and TLs turned into micromanaging assholes, because he was kicking their asses over stupid shit.

We had to lose a fuckload of good staff (quitting) before the CEO, I have assumed, realised how toxic this prick was and let him go. Everyone was kind of frightened of him.

yeah exactly, it trickles down. the guy in charge of this one was blaming my team for something another team failed to set up because WE didn't catch it in OUR testing (even though it's not part of our test plan to test for it).

we didn't used to have a bully environment here....it makes me sad to see it. esp after I have worked to the point of exhaustion the last two weeks to where I'm almost falling asleep at the wheel :/

(literally - I almost wrecked last night on the way home)

Two consultants who I'll call Tweedledum and Tweedledee, because they started at the same time and are always seen together, hit a new low today. They were unable to tell the difference between the large version of <product> and the small version of <product>, despite me practically having one of each on the bench and pointing to each one in turn saying "is it this one or this one?". These two fartnuggets are each paid TWICE my salary, yet I have no idea what they even do.

they're optimizing synergistics to maximize the potential for prelapsarian euphoria

Or maybe chainsmoking in the smoking area?

this is an example of the shit our seasonal employees put us through:

emp: transaction is not working for me

me: Can you specify what it is that's not working?
s
emp: I try to run it, it doesn't work, gives error message

me: Can you be specific as to the error message you're receiving?

emp: when I click on it, it goes red, doesn't allow me to open

ME: CAN YOU PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE ERROR MESSAGE SAYS? FOR THE THIRD TIME?

emp: (reads error message that clearly isn't an error message that has already been explained to them fifteen times)

naturally because our leaders think it's cute to spread everybody out in multiple locations, including some thousands of miles away, can't go by their desks anymore either.

I think it's a thing for people to take "What does the error message say?" to mean "Can you explain what the error message means?"

And/or people are compelled to cling to their frustration at something not working exactly as they like on the first try. They care as much about complaining as they do about a solution.

In my experience, a lot of people don't want the problem fixed, they want it to be someone else's fault.

TS: "uh the error message it, like, popped up in the middle of the screen, I couldn't enter any data" vs "yes it said something about an error in a module or something, and then it gave a number... that's enough for you, isn't it?"

tbh error messages that aren't copy/pasteable with no logging are horrible

as much as I hate screenshots, have them take a goddamn screenshot

screenshots are the best but I fully understand the urge when an irritating message appears to pound the "fuck off" key before thinking "hmm I should press 'alt print screen' and email it to someone whose name I probably don't know"

the alt-fuckoff key combo is my go-to

In my experience, a lot of people don't want the problem fixed, they want it to be someone else's fault.

Not quite a co-worker, but someone I have been forced to work with: the head nurse at my daughter's group home seemed to have only one governing rule for making any decision, which was to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to blame her for anything that might go wrong. She recently transferred away. My wife wanted to buy champagne when we heard.

Two consultants who I'll call Tweedledum and Tweedledee . . . These two fartnuggets are each paid TWICE my salary, yet I have no idea what they even do.

we also have a lot of exorbitantly paid consultants who do I have no idea what and whose 4x-ours pay is especially galling because management are not exactly putting in any effort to keep regular staff*, but I am in a good mood about them at the moment because one of them was wearing a very fine cat-on-modular-synth t-shirt yesterday

the guy who wears shorts and sandals with neon green socks in November, routinely works at the one seat in the kitchen and looks grumpy whenever anyone comes in even though he's got a desk elsewhere, however...

* e.g. 1. talk a lot in all-staff meetings about definitely finding some permanent jobs for our 90% fixed-term staff soon; advertise one permanent job; don't offer job to any of the current employees who apply or even anyone else, just keep advertising hoping for that unicorn

* e.g. 2. string someone along until the very last minute before their contract expired just before Christmas, then have them go unpaid over Christmas because their new contract didn't start until January (we don't work the week in between), THEN tell them that because they had a break in employment over Christmas they aren't eligible for longer-term-staff benefits despite working there for n years

that last one is evil, sneaky as hell

if anywhere else had done it (my last workplace did something similar on a much smaller and more-my-fault scale, where a late timesheet shaved a bit off my redundancy benefit) I'd credit it to "evil", but at my current place I believe it may actually be at least 80% incompetence

of course perhaps that's what they want us to think, and it's no better for the person affected either way, and management still appear to be going "what? why would that bother anyone? why won't anyone apply to work here?!"

as much as I hate screenshots, have them take a goddamn screenshot

And when they send you it, it cuts off just above the bit of the error message that might actually be useful

Windows Remote Assistance to their computer, then grab the screenshot yourself. No point in letting these viscose trousered middle management twonks touch any more than they absolutely have to.

one thing to clarify here - I'm talking plain English edit messages that are intended to tell the user in one sentence why they're not allowed to do the thing they just tried to do, as opposed to GUI abends which I can't even figure out.

we have daily chats with our customer service agents, which are meant to be provided as a lifeline when they run into problems. it's well-staffed to where they usually don't have to wait long for a response. but what bogs it down is when you get that one person who wants to go out of their way to make it impossible for you to help them.

now, add the following "challenges" into the mix:

*they often work in different buildings so we can't walk by to help them (we used to always have them based in the same area)

*we use Microsoft Lync which comes with Whiteboard, but they decided that reps no longer need SnagIt or any of the easy "cut and paste" programs they used to put on the machines, so now their only option is PrntScreen (half of em don't know how to do it)

*they get treated like cattle, forced to change their schedules on a whim, and learn a gazillion different clients in one day virtual trainings led by unenthused instructors

....and you see why I hate my life

some of the contractors told me (I can't verify if it's true, but it wouldn't surprise me) that they are told they aren't allowed to disconnect an abusive caller who is cussing and screaming at them.

usually the rule has always been, get them to a supervisor, but don't disconnect yourself. People on my team broke this rule for years and I always looked the other way because why the fuck am I gonna get on them for hanging up on someone who screams "fuck you!!!" at them. (hell once I got someone in serious hot water for continually calling my service center to shout abusive epithets at my employees).

but they staff these centers so badly now, that supervisors are often not available. so what's the alternative? Stay on the line and listen to gay and racial slurs until you're holding back tears, but no don't you dare drop that call???!!!

and, the company that hires these contractors will always throw them under the bus. had some serious technological issues in one of our partners' buildings one year, and they insisted that it was the contractors' faults, because they were using Citrix wrong.

a month later, when it was evident the technical issues were clearly beyond that of "user error", they admitted they lied to us.

do they not have Win 7?? Start > type SNIPPING TOOL where it says "Search programs and files" > click Snipping Tool