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

the hot water from the taps here is too hot to put your hands in (why?). but they are mixer taps and you can control the mix using the lever on the top. move it anti-clockwise, all the way away from you, to get cold water, move it clockwise, all the way towards you, for scaldingly hot. simple enough.

only the tap in the other kitchen is on the other side of the sink so the positions are reversed.

people here also don't know not to try and flush paper towels, the idiots.

one of my colleagues recently switched spaces with another colleague, and although the one that was in the adjacent cubicle had her own very annoying habits, the replacement gets on my nerves even more with her frequent loud drawer opening and closing. like closing the drawer loudly against the divider between our desks. she's forever getting something out of her drawers! Snacks, some sort of stationery, you name it, she will retrieve it from the drawers. she's not a particularly sensitive person. she's one of those kath from kath & kim types that gets her little sachet of whatever, idk creamer? and will stir it really loudly and furiously into her mug at her desk. there are certain kinds of people in my office, let's call them bogans, that are terrible for the furious tea and instant coffee stirring. no thought of how annoying their presences are on a daily basis.

thank goddddd she is leaving us soon

It has taken our whole office a number of days to realise that whenever someone uses the kitchen toaster, it flips a safety switch which kills all our computers. This has happened about a dozen times, and yet nobody who turned on the toaster just as everything died thought to say anything.

At what point did confidently asserting one's abject ignorance come to replace competence? And can we switch things the fuck back already?

i didn't like it when someone dumped a battered chair behind desk but i figured it was a wide aisle and not exactly in the way.

but today someone is using said chair as a clothes horse. there are damp jackets and socks hanging from it.

can we get back to aldo on Fools & Horses? Or, it may deserve a dedicated thread.

This is more my stupid, possibly future co-workers.

I'm supposed to give a presentation at a job interview (the second round!) this Tuesday. But it seems like they've forgotten to give me the brief on what to present.

I sent them an email today, and an email Wednesday when I got the offer, and they still haven't sent me a brief. I called the HR team and they didn't help at all.

Not sure what to do next! This doesn't exactly reassure me about working there, if they expect someone to make a presentation based on a brief given to them just the day before.

Maybe they'll give you the brief when you get there? Give you ten minutes to prepare something. I've heard of interviews like that, but like you I would be wary of working somewhere that did them.

What kind of job is it (sector?)

my new boss is starting to annoy me. so, I went on a business trip a few months ago. All of the expenses were filed and reimbursed. However, I was a few days late per AmEx's standard, so I was charged a $39 late fee. That late fees are my responsibility is fairly unambiguous, so I paid it myself. However, there was also a toll charge that came in a month after the trip from the rental car company.

I had stayed over the weekend on said business trip, and decided to take a trip to Virginia, 4 hours away. As the rental car mileage was unlimited, and this was not expressly forbidden by the travel policy, I opted to go, but I decided to use only my own money for the duration of that escapade, to err on the side of caution...meaning all gas, food, etc, that would have normally been paid by the business card, I paid for myself. So, naturally, when this toll charge came in...I also paid it myself.

However, these things still show up in your electronic Wallet, and we're moving systems in Jan, so I opted to file an expense report to 'clear' my Wallet. I did so, marking everything non-reimbursable, and informing my boss that I was owed no money, and that it was just to clear my wallet. She approves it, but asks curiously where the charges came from.

I was transparent and told her, same as I've written here. Radio silence for over a day. Now, I'm on PTO this week, and just logged in to send that email, so maybe she's trying to wait til I get back, but there's no easier way to spike my anxiety than not to simply write back "oh, ok, makes sense! thanks". besides, if she's doing it out of respect to my vacation, well, now I'm sitting here anxious about finding out if I'm in trouble* or not.

*I don't see how I could be, as I used zero company dollars for anything that wasn't eligible, but my boss is kind of a ditz when it comes to the travel policy.

Just had a chat about retirement savings with a coworker. He thought that the "k" in 401(k) stood for thousands, and thought the name 401(k) was to encourage people to save $401,000 for retirement. I asked if he didn't think that was an odd number to settle on, and he said "I figured they thought it sounded better, like 99 cents sounds better than a dollar when you're in a store."

This is the same guy who was putting his coffee grounds on top of the filter in his French press on the off chance anyone remembers that story from the coffee thread.

I... thought that too (in my defence I’m british)

My annoying future co-workers

Got a new job - yay - and asked my future manager to wait till I'd given my notice before sending out my references.

Naturally the HR team forgot and sent them out before I'd told my boss.

Fun discussion tomorrow!

I thought the (k) means it's kosher?

Congrats to Chuck on a new world of stupid annoyance!

Next time you have a rush request, how about instead of getting all over my ass you take your thumb out of your own sometime before the deadline, how about that.

Anybody else here read Ask a Manager to get more of stupid co-workers?

The one about the woman whose dad was dating her boss and they tried to get her to go to counseling with them - bonkers

Oh yeah, loved that one. The comment sections have everything moderated out of them but smug self-regard, but the letters are great.

Coworker (via email): Here is a thing that doesn't pertain to your job and that I have no reason to send you, and also as an added bonus I'm just forwarding it to you without any additional explanation.
Me (giving the benefit of the doubt, against my better judgment): Hi, I believe you might have sent this to me in error.
Coworker: You left a note in the file indicating that you wanted this information.
Me: (checks file, plainly sees the name of a completely different person who in fact requested this info, sets desk on fire and goes home for the weekend)

i’ve been helping to mentor a new admin over the past few weeks. last night she learned the horrors of end of month billing + sales shenanigans ie “i really need this giant complicated thing for which i can only give vague details handled NOW” at 10 minutes to 5pm last night. i felt so sympathetic to the stress of the experience that i stayed back with a senior coworker to help her take care of it.

i am liking my job a lot more than i did but that specific aspect of it still sucks beyond measure

yessss someone just reply-alled to 800 people and attached a healthcare flexible-spending account enrollment form featuring their ssn and everything

I believe the polite approach in this situation is, for the sake of clarification, to let all 800 people know that the email wasn't meant for you.

'please remove me from this thread'

It may seem unnecessary, but I promise that you'll see the more etiquette-minded individuals in your company doing just that very shortly.

And when you do, you should thank them for their manners (copying everyone on the thread, naturally).

The people who Reply All to ask to be removed are angels compared to the people who Reply All to scold everyone else about hitting Reply All.

who are these people who just piss all over the toilet seat and floor without cleaning it up ?! wth would you do that in your own house

The question which occurred to me lately is: how does one manage that neat puddle in front of the urinal without absolutely hosing down one's shoes?

I won't even detail some of the horrific scenes I've encountered in our professional office restroom used exclusively by professionals. Animals would be repulsed.

Not every request or piece of correspondence that you receive is a hot potato that you need to toss to me as soon as you receive it. If you spend 20-30 seconds examining these things and confirming whether they should even be forwarded to me at all, I promise they will not burn you.

sat here fixing things for a semi-hard deadline, kind of annoyed that the last week has had three mandatory end-of year meetings just eating into my time.

and then i look up and my team-lead is fannying around making the 'information radiator' that we have here, the one that normally shows build status etc, show snowflakes instead.

FEELING YOU. I'm out of the office for the rest of the year as of a week from tomorrow, I have a sudden annoying uptick in my workflow as I'm trying to get everything caught up, but oh hey let us please have a meeting every day because you might not feel as important if you weren't saying aloud the useless things that could be just as easily communicated (and twice as easily ignored) in an email.

ha, customer's christmas code freeze means that the thing i was rushing for them is no longer a priority.

i now have about 2 hours of things that i need to do this year.

I'm looking forward to working much of the xmas break for similar reasons - IT companies all have embargoes from like Dec 20 to Jan 2, so I'm likely to spend Dec 27-28 sitting in the office knitting, or playing video games cos there aint gonna be much work to do.

Pity its not overtime but oh well.

Last week the office manager sent an all-staff email saying she had put some samples (lotions/shampoo/etc I think) from her friend's "business" in the kitchen. I looked up the name and yeah it's some kind of MLM thing. I made some comment to a colleague I'm not sure it's appropriate for her to be shilling for some pyramid scheme in the office but then forgot about it.

This morning she sent another all-staff email complaining that she went to get the samples today and 2 are missing, and they aren't free so she has to pay for them unless someone owns up to who took them. I mean she said they were samples, they are usually free aren't they? I'd be pretty annoyed if I had taken one and was now asked to pay for it.

Yes, I'd argue that the 'free' in 'free sample' is assumed and redundant and if you refer to something as a sample it's pretty much on you if you meant 'actually not a sample at all'.

Just picturing a panic-stricken Costco employee on the intercom, 'attention customers, I had a trayful of tiny plastic cups of trail mix laid out and now I see that two cups of trail mix are missing, please don't force me to alert security.'

I just checked the original email and it wasn't the office manager (sorry office manager) but someone else with the same first name.

She even says please try out these samples at lunch and if you want to order some we can get them before Xmas.

But yeah lol that's what I was picturing too

my boss has been going around telling people she is “off for her morning constitutional” - meaning off for her morning walk. don’t have the heart to tell her that that’s the archaic meaning of that phrase and that she’s actually telling people she’s off for her morning jobby

Horses have the courtesy to combine both activities

the archaic meaning of that phrase

when did it acquire this alleged new meaning, outside of a joke euphemism

It's not in Websters. I don't recall it ever being anything other than "a walk"

It sounds like it should be, but.

OK, its in the Urban Dictionary as such, filed under "ten minute club"

i had to look up what a "jobby" was. very glad i did.

Uhh I get that "morning constitutional"'s real meaning isn't poop but uhh its secondary use is nowhere near as obscure or "ten minutes" as y'all are claiming. Least not in these parts.

But i'd also argue the primary usage isn't archaic and everybody would know she meant a walk so...

What’s wrong with ‘dropping the kids off at the pool’?

Uhh I get that "morning constitutional"'s real meaning isn't poop but uhh its secondary use is nowhere near as obscure or "ten minutes" as y'all are claiming. Least not in these parts.

I adjure my honorable fellows to consider the source.

I've never said it in my life!

can’t believe ur all cutting about announcing ur jobbies like this

I just meant of course ILX's most openly bowel-movement-centric poster is jobbying for Big Poopa

ahem