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

boxedjoy, recently went through something very similar. Sending you best wishes, hit me up via e-mail if you want to talk

thanks guys. I went to meet my manager yesterday with one goal, namely "tell him you're not ready to go back to work unless things have changed: can he take a few days to think about a possible solution?" But there is no possible solution. My manager is a really nice guy who 100% has my back and he told me believes that I'm capable of doing the job but (xpost to rolling depression thread) I'm not prepared to feel so tired, so defeated, so combatant, all the time. The reimbursement is lacking - my store department is bigger than 60% of store totals in the company and yet I don't approach the wage an actual store manager would get - but even if it was a rewarding salary I just don't want to do it, not in this environment. It has made me ill and without any change it will make me more ill.

the whole thing is an absolute disaster. There are no full-time positions in the region so the only way I can go back to work is to return part-time in a basic role ie a paycut of over 50%. My sick pay will expire so this is the reality of it.

And the reason I'm in this mess? Three months ago, I found out the role I was about to progress into was being made redundant (supervisor to assistant manager, but now we don't have assistant managers). My then-manager had a realistic conversation with me about my prospects. "You can't have my job cos I'm going nowhere but if you stay in this job you will be bored and unfulfilled and you are better than this role." So when a new job came up in a flagship branch I applied. I scored best of 10 candidates in the assessments but was told I wasn't to be offered the job because of a personality test (a tickbox exercise from Buzzfeed!) indicated my style was too similar to the people I would be working with and they wanted more diversity. Which is great if you work for the UN and not in a retail job to keep you in gig tickets and wine. So instead I was offered the job I've had to take sick leave from. I didn't want it because I knew the atmosphere would be toxic and the work would be demanding without worthwhile reward, but I let myself be persuaded into it because being overpromoted is a great ego boost. So I am literally in the position where I went to a job interview, was the best candidate, and yet this is the result. I don't know whether to be angry that I've allowed this to happen to me or simply relieved I don't have to go back into the culture of sniping and bitchery.

I mean, in the world of work you have to be tough and strong and resilient and not take criticisms personally and that's all stuff I accept I need to work on, not just for my career but for the sake of my own mentality in life. But there is a difference between "as your boss I have to tell you that this is not right" and the constant backchat of 30-40 people who have nothing good to say about you or anyone or anything.

sorry boxedjoy. That sounds crazy and miserable and I hope you find something better because you clearly deserve to.

also Buzzfeed tickbox personality tests for actual hiring decisions, overriding actual assessments and experience, wtf

(disclaimer: the thought of personality tests for hiring in any circumstances at all makes me itchy. everyone says psychologist Martin Seligman's self-help books are v good and as a kinda learned-helpless-depresso I ought to read them and take in his joyous self-improving message or whatnot, but when I got to the part where he rubberstamped some tickbox personality test for BigCorp to reject people who didn't think they were fantastic in every way and when they weren't it must be someone else's fault, I threw the book across the room and never finished it)

I scored best of 10 candidates in the assessments but was told I wasn't to be offered the job because of a personality test (a tickbox exercise from Buzzfeed!) indicated my style was too similar to the people I would be working with and they wanted more diversity. Which is great if you work for the UN and not in a retail job to keep you in gig tickets and wine.

this is appalling!

we did some personality-style testing in our team once and we're all pretty much the same AND WE LIKE IT THAT WAY although granted it's probably not for the best...

So the woman who was pissed off at me the other week congratulated me on my performance in today's meeting. So that's good. I was given her category and improved its performance by over 200%. The other campaign I was working on, I was able to create materials for it that performed around 185% better than the past materials they were using.

Now I've run afoul of the marketing manager. I was given a new project, and ended up developing a new vision for the product while doing research. I think it'll work. Today he tried to school me, but his schooling used scenarios that didn't match the fact pattern of our situation, so I know it's some dumbshit ego thing on his part... things got real fucking weird for the rest of the day after I submitted my proposal.

I wasn't trying that, I was just looking for something that worked, and invested a lot of time and effort into developing something that I thought would. And based on actual metrics, I've already got a pattern of doing just that at this place.

Today was a pretty miserable day. I've been dealing with crap like this since I was a kid. I have no idea what job or situation would be a good fit for me at this point.

It sounds like you work in advertising or similar - that work is full of toxic bloated egos.

Yeah, I just fell into this work. I probably just have to own this stuff and find a new way to live... you know, more self-confidence, all that bullshit.

The way I present myself is like some schlemiel, then it turns out I'm pretty damn good at things, maybe it throws 'em off what they expected. maybe my life's not geared to who I am properly. Whatver, just bitching here.

It's actually a lot more serious than that ... that woman tried to get me fired ... and today the marketing manager caused a fucking shitstorm that made me look terrible. The big boss likes my numbers, so he shrugged it off, but I'm tired of fighting battles like this.

I got fucking tortured at my last job for stuff like this. And I just limit myself because of it, because people really friggin' hate who I am.

I don't think I have any choice but to learn how to play with power, because I guess I got it whether I like it or not. Anyway, enough on my dumb shit.

half my office have these in-joke phrases that other coworkers have said over the years, inane shit that is only funny to them, and I swear it accounts for 50% of what is said every week

drives me fucking insane

Not only did one of my coworkers make the pun of a law firm called "Dewey, Cheatham, & Howe", but one of the others about shot hot coffee through his nose laughing so hard at it.

inane injokes? Fuck washing a hat!

also my boss does "impressions" of various managers & ppl in the company, and when he gets spun up about someone you get an earful of the impression du jour at full volume *at least 20 times*
he's like a hyperactive 10 year old just saying the same thing over & over

*headdesk*

Groovy, I had a coworker threaten to beat and murder me, and it freaked out me and another freelancer so much that we had to leave the building to process it.

Nothing was done about it after I reported it. And the marketing manager is now trying to get me fired because I came up with two new marketing campaigns, and he wants to keep trying the same shit he came up with that's done nothing but fail.

No idea why these people hired me. I have marketing experience and management training from some of the biggest corporations in the world, yet they keep saying I have "no idea what I'm doing", and I keep pointing to the numbers that shows I do know what I'm doing. After 2 months I've beaten all the KPIs of years-long running marketing campaigns by up to 200 fucking percent, and I was given no resources or help whatsoever to do it.

I honestly believe they hired me as a joke, they didn't seem like they intended me to actually do the job properly, and I kicked its fucking ass into the stratosphere with no resources whatsoever. And I fucking hate marketing.

And I'm nice to these people. I'm nice! For real, IRL, I'm an easy-going guy, hard to believe.

What the hell did they expect, then. I really need to own my own value... I'm tired of almost getting murdered and ending up in these awful environments.

going out for lunch in a huge group of coworkers can really be the worst.

yesterday like 12 of us went out to celebrate a milestone in the product we're building. one colleague, who booked it, tried to insist we should begin the set menu we'd ordered despite three colleagues not being there yet. the same colleague doesn't eat lamb, in a setup where there are like many, many sharing plates that don't contain lamb, decided to change a lamb plate for something else, rather than just the obv choice of everyone sharing a bit more of the other dishes her way or whatever. this is a situation with loads of other foods left over.

then there's the payment obviously and the fact that it's always below and nobody includes a tip. it's amazing how many filters of politeness, general decency and good humour people pass through before becoming actual friends, and how few of these filters those we're forced to work with would pass through.

in a setup where there are like many, many sharing plates that don't contain lamb, decided to change a lamb plate for something else

this is rude imo but then I like lamb. but I bet there were vegetarians present and nobody said "let's switch out all the meat dishes because there are 3 vegetarians"

although I should be careful what I wish for, that did happen at one of our work lunches, and the result was that lunch was cheese and pickle sandwiches with no choice, and I don't like pickle

(everyone will now post to say that I am wrong. perhaps I should have pretended to be lactose intolerant; that is more socially acceptable than not liking pickle)

I'm with you on the pickle front, aps - disgusting muck. Lettuce, or a little onion, in a cheese sarnie is acceptable tho.

fp'd u both, sorry

the one vegetarian got a large platter to himself! tho it was a mix of vegetarian stuff anyway so it wasn't as if others couldn't help out. indian food so the vegetables were not an afterthought.

xpost

Our office/company has a LOT of hindus and muslims who dont eat any meat, beef in particular.

So the company xmas party 2 years in a row was at a Brazilian BBQ restaurant that basically serves nothing but various meats on skewers.

I dated someone who had an anecdote about how she and her friend, in younger years, were really drunk and went into one of those places to eat when they were both practicing vegetarians

I think they demanded the baked potatoes and salads and ended up paying a stupid amount of money because it was a one-price-for-all place. I should have seen this as a red flag and not an amusing story of youth, because every week of the relationship had some incident of about this level of demanding idiocy

Huuuuuhhhh, I think I know why the marketing manager flipped shit at my marketing campaign. I figured out that he's more likely than not stealing money from the owner of the company.

He's been running all these bogus ad campaigns for huge amounts of money, that have not only failed, but damaged the company, and he keeps trying to convince the owner to go further along it. "No, this guy's a genius!" Fuck that, he created ads using Comic Sans that made fun of the audience for the product, and pissed off thousands of people! For over 50 grand! He convinced the owner to buy this horrible product for a million dollars, and keeps calling it a "race car", and he knows damn well it's not.

Dude's using it to steal money from the guy, who's getting older and is a little senile.

The other freelancer noticed some of the bullshit, too. Marketing manager keeps giving the owner this godawful advice that always fails and costs tons of money to do. My ideas came from my background working on actual marketing campaigns for major international brands. I only ended up at this place because my life took a shit-dick turn from my own set of bad advisers...

So now I'm in the cross-hairs of this guy robbing the boss. Yippee. I'm going to work my ass off to find new jobs ASAP.

You know, I wonder if he hired me because I put my corruption investigation experience on my resume ... he said to me "who is stealing my money!" What a weird fucking world, man.

Lad

darragh otm

*coughk3rrycough*

what the hell is an "on-boarding proposal walkthrough" (in relation to me getting out of bed)

My guess is a submitted routine for new employees to follow in their first weeks on the job to be tested and/or inspected in a live meeting, step by step.

*sips coffee*

Yeah I dont know where the phrase "on-boarding" sprang from suddenly but it seems to be all over like a rash now. We use it to mean "new resellers who we have to guide thru using our ordering systems". Stupid phrase. Whats wrong with "introduction training" ffs.

Lad

― passé aggresif (darraghmac), Saturday, September 16, 2017 3:19 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, yeah. These people are scumbags and I'm getting the fuck out of there. I've just been in a down point in my life. Fuck all that, life's too short for this crap. Call it a much-needed kick in the ass.

sent an email with a series of questions to our tech folks today asking how something would work (as I have no idea).

one of them replies with what he can answer, another adds more info, and then a third jumps in and says "Please ignore everything Neanderthal said as it is 100% correct and if you think it will work this way, you are in BIG trouble", apparently conflating me with the guy who gave the (allegedly) wrong answers.

fun thread.

INcorrect?!

ahh yes good catch lol

project manager at work talked to the guy who is replacing my team's customer service leader temporarily due to her unexpected indefinite absence. He apparently groused about the "optics" with our client, that they might think we're "disorganized" since this puts us on our second customer service leader change on this project.

Which might be a reasonable gripe if our second leader wasn't out because her domestic partner is in the hospital with an enlarged heart, serious enough that he's also been added to the transplant list.

he chased this Trump-esque moment by passive-aggressively scheduling a meeting Monday afternoon to talk through her transition and requesting her be there even though she's technically supposed to be on leave.

boy it was a nice 2-3 months without drama, welcome back, missed ye

Fuck, what a dick. Do you have any power to call him on it or report him to HR?

There's a rumour in our office about the CEO getting drunk and harassing women at events. The rumour has him being "over-flirty" but let's not bullshit. Really hoping someone is inspired by the week's events to report him. I'm leaving soon, so I'm preparing for full bridge-burning mode, and trying to work out the best strategy for challenging him before I go.

leaving do, 12 of us. "let's just get one of each of the starters, share everything and split the bill"...

(plenty of vegetarian options so it turned out ok but... there were also people drinking and people not drinking. and then people were trying to pay with old pound coins (not legal tender since last friday))

finally found another position that opened up that I could feasibly do in this job. Posted for it today. if nothing else it shows my boss I'm srs, and pulls me out from being client-facing. which is 80% of my pain.

yesterday I walked out of a conference call w/ client due to having a panic attack due to her bully-like behavior.

oof that doesn't sound good, hope you're ok

two guys who work near me, one is a dead ringer for john kasich and the other for michel foucault, and i do a triple take whenever i pass either one of them EVERY TIME

i'm the stupid annoying coworker here lbc

typical text message exchange for me, usually once a week or so:

text from CEO: Hey can you email me that sales data?
me: the one I send you every week on Mondays?
CEO: Yes
me: I sent it to you at 7am today. Did you get it?
CEO: Yes
me: And you need it again?
CEO: Yes
me: ??
CEO: I don't have time to search for it in my email today
me: And if I send it to you now, you will be able to find it?
CEO: Yes. And all these texts between us is taking me more time than it would have taken me to actually search for it.
me: Uh, ok.
CEO: thx

That sounds very familiar except it's "I accidentally deleted it as soon as I got it" instead of "don't have time to look"

u_u

i got a “project” email that entailed sorting an excel spreadsheet. and that is all.

had another day today where I shut down. no idea how I can get through another day. waiting for recruiter to hopefully pass me to the pre-interview round.

our main client contact, let's just put it this way....

my colleague in the office today told me he was on a conference call during the evening before Irma, and he lives in Orlando too. they were demanding something on the weekend it was to hit and he mentioned something about having to get ready for the storm with his family.

and she remarked something like "he seems more interested in the weather than helping us"

i got a “project” email that entailed sorting an excel spreadsheet. and that is all.

lol