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

think the honeymoon w/ my new job is ending. it's still way better than what I was doing, but it's the same stupid company so y'know...

so they wanted us to make a detailed list of our desired PTO for the remainder of the year by last week. I have 12 days accumulated because due to my years of service, I accrue about 2 days a month, and our boss originally told us between 7/1 - 9/30, we needed special permission to take more than two days off in a row due to a project we were on. Or, I was teaching back to back 5-day training classes. So suffice it to say, I couldn't really put a dent in it as taking 2 days a month makes me break even. And the days do not roll over.

Well, I look out on our team calendar, and they've basically already scheduled me to train 65% of the rest of the year, so I basically threw my PTO around all of the holidays, but they apparently won't tell us what's approved until like...next week.

However, my boss didn't seem to mind volunteering me for a class in two weeks that requires me to drive into the office. I'm Virtual, so this is generally supposed to be cleared with me in advance - and it just so happens to be the days we booked a hotel to celebrate my mother's 65th birthday. I had originally planned to work from the hotel since these were designated non-training days, so I could spend time with her.

I worked out a compromise with the other trainer so I can lead it from the hotel, but she sounded actually surprised that I was mad about this. Saying she didn't contact me cos it was my day off last Friday and she didn't wanna disturb me.

Well, I woulda preferred getting a call on my day off so I could tell you "no, I'm not ok with that on the 15th and 16th", then coming back and seeing you made the fucking decision for me.

Goooood.

like it's kind of annoying how we have to plan 3 months in advance for our PTO, but they get to change our assignments with next to no notice or consultation

oh boy - so even though nothing other than one virtual training class is scheduled between 12/3 - 12/23, I decided to be proactive and tell them I can't travel between 12/3 - 12/23, because I am doing a theatrical production, among other obligations (ie concert tickets) and it sounds like things are starting to get ridiculous.

she tells me she'll 'do her best to accommodate, but the calendar might change'.

so...how the hell am I supposed to have a life outside of work if I can't plan things two months out because you're going to arbitrarily tell me that might not work?

I am not ok with this and told my boss so.

humorously, one of our values is "People Matter". I guess just not "all" people.

Neanderthal, that's the worst. When I was an assistant store manager, my immediate supervisor (the store manager) was horrible about creating schedules and doing one of two things: 1) Granting people their requested days off before the schedule was posted and then, upon writing the schedule where those days fell, scheduling the employee anyway and / 2) Just pretending they never got the day off requests to begin with. Sometimes, they wouldn't post the next week's schedule until the day before the new week started. The company has a policy that all days off must be requested at least three weeks in advance. The problems that resulted from this should be pretty apparent. It was extremely shitty. I was in management, so I had to be there all the damn time anyway, so it didn't bother me. I had a way better rapport with the staff than the store manager, so inevitably they all started to come to me with their discrepancies. I told them all that there wasn't really anything I could do with my authority, so I told everyone to just go to HR and tell them that the schedule isn't being posted within the legal timeframe of fourteen days. I don't know how many people actually did that, but about a week later, the district manager was in the store asking me if I had ever been allowed to write the schedule (of course, I hadn't). It eventually got cleared up, but there was a time for about three or four months when it was just completely fucked up. The schedule would be posted, but there would have been so many mistakes made when it was written that it was a running joke for a while that the schedule was simply a list of people who worked for us and nothing else.

Also, Veg:

i just would like to ban everyone from asking me questions while witholding that they know at least some of the answer

I would like to propose that this is the action of a malicious person who has bad intentions. No exceptions. For someone like me that struggles with a lot of anxiety and paranoia anyway, this is just gross manipulation and I would interpret it as a sign that the questioner has an active vendetta against me, whether founded in substance or not.

I despised that too. over time I started to get good at reading when people were doing this and deliberately sabotage them, i.e. "my understanding is this is the answer, however I suspect you've spent more time on this than me, so if you believe that's incorrect, please let me know and show me wehre it says taht".

I will admit to occasionally doing this when I think a coworker or my kid is lying to me.

what kind of person registers on the company-wide message board (potentially hundreds if not thousands of people) using only his (common) first name? good-luck jonathan.

(that said, i used my slightly cryptic company-assigned userid - surname, first initial, 2 digits, so i'm probably as bad, for the opposite reason.)

Email exchange:

Me: <asks question>

2 days later, response:

Idiot: How are you progressing? Any questions, let me know

Me: Yes, the same question I asked before you fucking moron

Haha I am frequently Idiot.

what kind of person registers on the company-wide message board (potentially hundreds if not thousands of people) using only his (common) first name? good-luck jonathan.

one of my co-workers is an Upstate Limo Crash Truther

Do I want to know? (I do)

i put my headphones on, so i didn't actually hear the theory

I read in the local paper that the limo company driver was an FBI informant for the Newburgh 4 case so I'm assuming the conspiracy theory has something to do with that.

"I'll tell you what's the funniest thing ever, right? EVER. There's never been ANYTHING funnier."

me: don't say del boy falling through the bar don't say del boy falling through the bar don't say del boy falling through the bar don't say del boy falling through the bar

"Del Boy falling through the bar. It's only just ahead of”

me: don't say chandelier don't say chandelier don't say chandelier don't say chandelier

"that one where they're emptying the house and he knocks the chandelier out of the ceiling BUT IT'S THE WRONG ONE!"

I would only be thinking of Stewart Lee in such an exchange.

https://vimeo.com/141220204

The solution to every problem in this thread: Get your boss to buy you a fancy pair of Panasonic horse blinders!

https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2018/10/panasonic-blinkers-technology-design_dezeen_2364_hero-1.jpg

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.pastemagazine.com%2Fwww%2Fsystem%2Fimages%2Fphoto_albums%2Fstar-wars-infinity%2Flarge%2Flobot-sw.jpg%3F1384968217&f=1

Friday's one was like a stand-up routine and it's taken until now for me not to be mad about it.

One chap lecturing another about how Hitler was just a misunderstood chap, and did so in the form of a number of 'and I was the teacher's statements that were e.g. "and who had a policy of reducing the price of food for working families? Hitler. You wouldn't have guessed that, eh?" although he let down his perceived logic by ending with "and of course he hated Eastern Europeans and Jews".

The reason you don't know all his good points is because Thatcher covered it all up so you wouldn't find out he was a good guy.

The Valleys are fkn weird (in addition to being massively racist - the second week I was here there was a discussion about the Solihull murders as the guy was being sentenced and one of the women in the office said it was "kind of sad, but it's not as if they were real people, is it.").

This isn't even the racist part of Wales, you have to go to Oswestry and all points north for the places the people here would describe as racist.

Ive never understood this Del Boy falling thru bar thing. ILX was the first place I'd even heard the phrase so I googled it, found the scene in question on youtube and was utterly baffled. Had to be there I guess?

I assumed it was a poll result winner for funniest scene in funniest show ever or something to that effect. It triggered Stewart lee doing an extended sketch illustrating it as something going into popular culture on a ceremonial level. Showed it as an Up Helly Ah like event that would be celebrated for centuries, become a tradition in itself. Which may be why it's in the list consciousness more than it would be otherwise.
It was kind of funny in its original context cos it showed a pretentious idiot having a momentary comeuppance. Thought it was one element among many that would probably be mostly forgotten if teh show it was from hadn't got further circulation through vhs sales and endless repeats.
Much like the chandelier thing being the funniest thing ever. Was quite ribtickling at the time but should fade into the public memory if that and not always be thrown up as the pinnacle.

A quick googling reveals it to be the perennial runner up in actual polls, but it's a mainstay in the innumerate recent-era nostalgia circuits as having become the consensus pick.

If we're going to pick apart Stewart Lee's take as a curmudgeonly middle-class metropolitan lefty elitist, it's because this is a very minor part of the episode in question which is all about attempts to game Right To Buy in order to exploit the forthcoming inevitable gentrification of the area - a last hurrah of self-immolation sacrificing working class lifetimes of struggle in the pursuit of a brick-sized mobile phone. Or is it about 20 seconds of physical comedy? OFaH itself plays with the class struggle never acknowledged by The Guardian, that working classes (particularly London) completely buy into the the aspirational elements of Conservative mythology and vote accordingly, and Del Boy is a Thatcherite poster hero using his own guile and abilities to better himself. Or does Trigger do a face? Perhaps it's even a commentary on the soundbite culture and lack of attention span in today's society - the series reduces to Trigger calling Rodney Dave, Del Boy falling through the bar, Trigger's broom, the chandelier and hahaha they think they're shagging in the van after the auction. Fuck the rest, it's not important. Who dares wins Rodders.

how could you forget del boy and rodney as batman and robin ffs

Oh yes Del Boy and Rodney as batman and robin (in an episode that flirts with a future of the Baby Damien basically becoming a hybrid of Murdoch and Trump, debates whether Del Boy actually cares about Rodney beyond obligation, plots the breakup of Rodney and Cassandra's marriage and the 'unfairness' of fertility Vs wanting children and ends up being about council corruption and behind closed doors deals based on favours, even to support obviously bent schemes).

XP I thought nobody could, or was allowed to forget about that.
Probably caused a lot of people to go to fancy dress parties as them since too.

KInd of funny how decontextualised the public memory of certain things becomes really.
When you're talking about the actual background its contextualised to in the original.
Seems to happen a lot with things 'in public knowledge' dunnit?

aldo, you're skirting dangerously close to me advocating for you to do an exhaustive episode-by-episode breakdown of the entirety of only fools and horses

Probably caused a lot of people to go to fancy dress parties as them since too.

Going to a fancy dress party dressed up as someone going to a fancy dress party explains a lot.

Actually since Trigger's broom is from the same episode and the auction is from the third of those Christmas specials there's an argument that nobody remembers anything except the concluding trilogy (and let's not go near the sequel trilogy).

To return to the Class War subtext, the rights were one of the big investments for UK Gold and repeated indefinitely to exploit the expenditure back in the days when a satellite dish on a house was like a Right To Buy graffiti tag; this makes the populist viewers the del boys and the curmudgeonly middle-class metropolitan lefty elitists the nostalgia pundits, ignoring generations of aspirational behaviour because do you remember the Chartists Stew? The Chartists with their 'votes for all men over 21'? They Chartists Stew? They had a march, didn't they, eh? Joseph Rayner Stephens with his 'votes for all men over 21'? William Lamb the Viscount Melbourne did a face.

Thing is, these comedy bits enter the common parlance, often shorn of the actual conclusion.

The falling through bar bit - OK, th "David Beckham" one was funnier, but mainly because on that Comic Relief thing, I was doubting that any thing about it was going to be funny so it was unexpected. A bit.

The Chandelier thing: "Well, I wish you'd told me! I was doing that one!" is the funny. Not the crashing to the floor bit.

A different one, less cited, is Del doing a "Why Ask?" routine, based around "Where have you been all night? Been down the pub!!" which finishes off with Trigger going "Yeah! .... Why Ask?" and you just know he hasn't understood a word of it.

xpost! (Lols)

common parlance was what I was referring to as public knowledge.

Funny that a lot of things will take on a life of their own when de-anchored from their original context and in fact themselves become normative. Not sure how beneficial the end result is.

"It triggered Stewart Lee doing an extended sketch illustrating it as something going into popular culture on a ceremonial level. Showed it as an Up Helly Ah like event that would be celebrated for centuries, become a tradition in itself."

Del Day:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32cwns

one learner's favorite phrase:

"I promise I was listening, but..." then proceed to ask me to repeat the entire instruction I already stated 3 times.

Now that we're probably nearing a triple-digit number of instances where I've forwarded an email to a particular coworker (because it was meant for him) only to have him inexplicably send it right back to me without additional comment, I think I've moved all the way through irritation and into deep concern for his well-being. Like maybe he has a gaping head wound we've all been somehow overlooking for months.

I've just done the Unconscious Bias online training at the place I'm currently placed in.

Maybe it's my unconscious bias showing but I think the person who drew it up is a fucking idiot and anyone who considered paying for it is even more of a fucking idiot.

It genuinely recommends that, so you're not biased against candidates, the following information should be redacted from CVs prior to conducting an interview:

Name and gender
Date and place of birth
Marital and family status
Home address
Education history
Work history
Hobbies and interests

Also:
Words
Whitespace
Printed matter/electronic files

A CV is more a feeling than anything else, really.

Education and work history was the bit they were most focused on. Apparently there's a real danger that you value experience you know about rather than experience you have no idea about, or that mutual acquaintances can give you an opinion that you might consider as part of a decision.

i'd be inclined to give that a whirl tbh, lots of ppl's education and previous work history is irrelevant to their job. I'm not convinced the correlation between experience and competence is v strong. recruitment is such an appalling business. I know plenty of ppl who are excellent at their jobs who'd never have got them through applying/their CV.

I agree on the below being redacted, unless the job requires specialized education to be listed or if you don't have very much work experience, are a newbie to the work force.

Name and gender
Date and place of birth
Marital and family status
Home address
Education history
Hobbies and interests

if this is internal hiring, that's mega crap re: work history. external hiring, a bit more nebulous - I had zero call center work experience, at a time when that usually was something held against you during interviews, and lucked into getting the job and parlayed it into a 14 year career.

but even then - they still weren't "ignoring" my work history!!! they were very much looking at how what I did mapped into the role I was applying for.

I started to leave out the year I graduated college just because I was annoyed by terrible interviewers feeling obligated to ask about the 3 year or whatever gap right after college where I didn't list employment because it was well over a decade ago and i literally can't put "fucking around" as my job.

The Trigger's broom joke was common parlance before it was Trigger's; I'd heard my dad say it many times before it appeared on OFaH.

Was your dad Plutarch?

Trigger's brom a thing about whether a brush that you replaced the head and the handle on several times remains the same broom?
I've seen that come up in different circumstances too. THing about identity or object constancy that has cropped up in some philosophical stuff i've studied.

Otherwise know as the Ship of Theseus... (Eyeball Kicks otm)

I have an unconscious bias course to do but have to do it "face to face".

All removing those things from CVS will do is mean that you do more interviews of unsuitable candidates, wasting more time. And the moment you set eyes on them in reception it all goes out the window anyway.

Job interviews should be one question long: Do you shit at the office?

(The correct answer is NO, barring a life-threatening emergency.)

Bollocks. If i held in a shit at the office all day then everybody would be bitching about my flatulence all day

wtf, getting paid to shit is the only reason to go to work

next you’ll be tryna tell me that embezzling six figures from my employer each year is wrong too