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

Ewww

I am leading training preparation sessions and monitoring the classes when they start. There are three locations in one country - I am responsible for only two.

They assigned separate people to schedule the trainers for each location. Each person stupidly scheduled trainers without bothering to look to see if another location was using them. Three double bookings.

I tell them, they shrug and say "ok we'll just remove these people from your sessions", which now leaves a class with no trainer, and one with one too few.

(loud whistling of a jaunty tune suddenly pokes its head above the relative silence from several rows back)

WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE RIGHT NOW? AND HOW DO I SEND YOU TO THAT PLACE, NEVER TO RETURN?

I am and have been the only person who handles this particular task for years, largely because everyone else has steadfastly avoided learning the particulars of the task in question. So when I tell you that we cannot undertake this particular instance of the task for the reasons I've patiently detailed for you, that is pretty much the final word on the subject, no matter how much of my day you choose to eat up with your uninformed protests. The only thing that is likely to change as a result of your persistence is how many dozens of pizzas I'm going to have delivered to your residence this evening.

And then when I thought he finally took the hint, the dude for some reason forwarded our exchange to someone in another department (a department which, by all rights, I should never ever have any reason to interact with, so who even is this second guy) who has been calling and emailing me for the remainder of the day attempting to debate some shit that isn't up for fucking debate. Trying to decide whether I should or should not set my workstation on fire when I abruptly get up to leave for the weekend (or forever).

(FTR, the basic request is 'hey let's make a material change to a client's account without getting their consent or otherwise informing them in any way' to which my response has been a firm 'no, we pretty clearly should not be doing that, generally speaking, and to the extent that you want me personally to make the change for you, it straight-up isn't goddamn happening, you gaggle of absolute knobs'.

Coming onto this thread to vent into the void, because don't want to burden my wife with yet more complaints.

I work in a seasonal business where most of the year is preparing for the summer - I am nominally in charge of everything, but the recurring temporary summer ops manager* has the owner's favour and can do no wrong, whereas everything I do is assumed to be a failure even before it's been tried. This year this manager has fucked up loads and I haven't really put a foot wrong as far as I can see, yet the owner still talks to me in this contemptuous tone or berates me in public for any vague worries she has, while letting anything he does wrong slide just because he's her mate, and he'll just say "oops" and be instantly forgiven. For example, many of the best staff are very stressed and tired because of a decision he made, and they don't want to come back, she has even tried to pin this on me somehow, though actually it happened because I wasn't listened to. It is becoming dangerous to my mental and physical health, I need to quit but need stable work for my wife's visa, and yeah, pretty unhappy about all of this obviously.

*overlapping job roles is not good yeah?

My work client has finally reached the point where she can't think her way out of a paper bag. She has to get 20 JPGs to someone who said they need to be sent via Dropbox. She's going to email all of them to me so I can do the dropboxing. She claims chemo brain now that she's undergoing cancer treatment, but she's been acquiring this degree of learned helplessness for years. But I made myself indispensable to her as a form of job security, so I can't complain too much.

co-worker who lacks an indoor voice is discussing which teenage mutant ninja turtle is best

'raph is too serious, you know what i'm saying? it's like, lighten up bro'

Da fuq? That would fit Leo or Donatello more than Raph.

i have no turtle in this fight

the only impression the first movie made on me was that Raphael was having a very rough go of it.

He lost a sai

I was sent to the Philippines for work for a month at a partner site. My work laptop stopped working due to what is probably a bad motherboard the second day I was there.

You would think my company would have some kind of contingency plan, but no. We outsourced our IT to another company two years ago and they blow. We have no office out here, no IT, no pop-up support. No arrangements with local repair companies or any guidance. Just virtual support. So naturally their virtual support punted the ticket as a hardware issue, and the folks back home are just ignoring it. My boss doesn't know what to do because it's not his job to know.

The only reason I have been able to get any work or training done was the Manila partner site likely violating their own security rules to let me use one of their machines (which, in the States, this company never allows). Which I owe them mightily for.

remember to bring this up any time you hear someone say we need to run our government more like a business.

Lol otm

Got feedback today that someone observed me sleeping during a training class I was observing. Obvious nonsense as I was only at that location 1.5 days and heavily multitasking both days, couldn't have fallen asleep if I tried.

Besides, I snore.

I watch you when you are sleeping
you belong with me

Lol.

Fitting that when I actually dropped multiple f bombs during live training on a hot mic that I thought was muted three weeks ago that I inexplicably received no discipline, but "sleepgate" required a follow-up discussion.

Everybody had to change their passwords from temporary to permanent.

I have literally watched this guy not be able to figure it out for 25 minutes. It has to be 8 characters and have one uppercase. He keeps creating an all lower case password of the right length. I have told him five times it needs an upper case, just to change one of the lowercase letters to uppercase.

He keeps adding a new Uppercase letter to his password, making it 9 and invalid.

Two of us have tried to break it down as simply as possible. We are ready to give up.

We aren't permitted to create one for him, but im tempted to anyway

It can't be more than 8 characters? I mean, I get your frustration at the dude, but that requirement is stupid and annoying as well.

I don't disagree with you there.

We are behind the times in a few areas

Why not just tell him to make it 7 characters and one uppercase?

She's going to email all of them to me so I can do the dropboxing.

WC, I just want to let you know that I feel you on this.

We have an internal server for all of our photography, used 99% in print publications. Huge tiffs, 300 dpi, etc. Obviously, we also have a server from which all of our online photos and art are hosted. 1200x800 jpgs, 72 dpi. It's where I live the most.

Every once in awhile, an editor will say, Hey, I saw that mug of the convicted politician online. How come it's not on the internal server? And I'll say Because what you see online is what I found online. There's no bigger version of it.

And they say, But I wanted to download it for something!

I got an email that a learner was terminated today. He is sitting in the class with the person who sent it without explanation. And it's not a mistake - I was given a head's up about it a day or two in advance.

So i am having to pull the manager out of the room to ask "wtf? Is he fired...or not?".

So frustrating when someone beneath you is looking over your shoulder trying to learn your job when you've been doing that job for fifteen years. I mean, it's just not in the best interests of the organization at all. Not worried about losing my job to her, I mean I have loads of knowledge that she can't buy, but it's unnerving and bad for morale that someone just views you as a "rival" and not a human being. She's not going to get my job if I leave - not because of politics or anything but just because she's not qualified. She's not concentrating enough on her own job and mastering that. And the entitlement is getting on everyone's nerves. I wish someone would say something, but she's well-connected so people tolerate her.

two colleagues are very insistent -- behind the scenes -- that certain items on our web page contain no more than three lines of text. there is no particular reason for this -- other items in the same area take up more space. also the page is responsive, so the number of lines of text depends on how wide your screen/window is

why do you even care

Lol those kind of pedants drive me nuts

Yesterday we had a meeting where we decided that we should have a FAQs page (fine) and that it shouldn't be too long or people wouldn't read it (probably true) and we arbitrarily decided that 20 questions was the maximum (ok) and then we ended up with 21 and there was bitter debate about which question should either go unanswered or be merged into something unrelated just for the sake of having precisely 20.

*shrug*

(also annoying because we took time and debate to whittle the list of "general" questions down to 16 and then the project lead just stuck all 5 very specific qs from his specialist area on the end with no debate, but hey)

ime, FAQs 1-10 roll over from last year's project; FAQs 11-12 are specific to this year's project, and FAQs 13-30 are explaining errors that have been pointed out and then corrected

Ops mgr gave me a roster for a class next week. t had 11 people on it who already took the same class last October, almost exactly a year ago. So obviously a copy error where he accidentally merged two Excel tabs.

He insisted he hadn't to my colleague, so I go to him to ask why these 11 would be taking the class again.

He triples down, insisting that these managers asked to enroll these students, then emails them all to ask why they were having these students take the class again.

Turns out six of the 11 learners don't even work here anymore, and one of the managers said the person listed wasn't someone they managed anymore. And the signup for this class only just went up a few weeks ago.

Maybe *this time* he'll get

my job sucks but god is my workplace less annoying sounding than pretty much everyone's itt

My job's great mostly, the company is poorly run and will probably collapse

my job is good, if repetitive. a couple people are entrenched on weird and unimportant hills, but i suppose that's universal

Somedays I'm the only one at work, so I guess I'm my own stupid co-worker now.

lol aps's 21/20 story instantly sent me into my "no lists shd ever be a multiple of five long, it's bad not good" beef, i am everyone's stupid annoying co-worker (i'm not stupid but i have cranky and indefensible views) (which just happen to be correct)

Oh god, something that happened at my last job still sticks in my craw.
Even though I am not a music librarian I was asked to take over the world music aspect of building a music library. The music department asked us to do this. So, that meant buying material that best represented the culture, not watered-down Euro tourist "your tropical vacation" type shit. It's music they use in language and culture and film classes too, so it has to be good. So this faculty member asked me to buy a rare Japanese film soundtrack...and I was told that if a faculty member wanted something, as long as it was $30 or under, to go ahead and buy it. And I did and this co-worker who's not a librarian chewed me out...when frankly, even the music librarian told me she was out of her depth there and could I please do it. I was so humiliated to be talked down to by this guy. What's more, I was asked to order it by the faculty member. Ich. And then the director said I was buying too much music WHEN THE MUSIC LIBRARIAN ASKED ME TO BUY ALL OF THAT STUFF because the stuff our CD vendor was sending us was weak and inadequate. I mean, and then she turns around and says we should all be developing our skills and I thought this would be a good career building, buying all of that music. I mean, sometimes they pull this "bait and switch" stuff with me. We're not all on the same page - one person will say "develop your skills and think about your next job" then will say "you're getting too ambitious and hint hint think about moving on, we need someone less knowledgeable here." I'm still bitter about it. I've moved on, but the director apparently still bitched after I left about all of the music I bought. Like, get over it, lady.

Manager: hey are you busy, can I ask you a question?
Me: sure, what's up?

- 10 minutes elapse

she did this to me again just now. it's 1pm and I'm just about to take lunch, she messages me "are you free for a quick call now?" I think well I'm about to get something to eat but let's get it out the way, so I say "sure yes"

- 10 minutes elapse

... are you new to the workforce?

feel like this is close kin to "how busy are you right now?" i.e. the most tooth-grinding question ever conceived by the mind of humanity. it is so beyond the pale for me. anyone asking it i lose 100% respect for instantly.

I just saw your email appeared in my inbox so why have you walked over to where I'm sitting to say "I've just sent you an email."

Was reflecting on the drive-by email today - “hey we really should get together to discuss this massive project just putting it out there get back to me with your available times and I will undertake to not reply to you for approx 2 weeks”. I have a few of those meetings somewhere in the bardo waiting to manifest.

If one more, just one more, person of whom I've requested something is like 'yeah, we're all good bruh' only for me to discover that we are not actually all good, bruh, and that the requestee never even bothered to confirm that we were all good before consulting whatever goddamn faulty oracle he's using to sense whether a request might or might not be legitimate, I'm going to aim my head directly at that person's midsection so as to assail them with skull shrapnel when my brain finally and inevitably explodes.

Seriously: what the fuck is this tendency and how the fuck do these people remain employed.

Does your company operate like mine where "managers" can't actually fire anybody without a lengthy HR arbitration first, after which they always say "give them another chance"?

That's usually how.

I mean shit I didn't even get a wrist slap for the major code of conduct violation i accidentally committed on a hot mic

The response to basically every infraction or display of incompetence is 'WELL...(*shrug*)...WHATTAYAGONNADO?'. Which is to say that management doesn't, y'know, 'manage' per se. It's a lot of fun!

And the individual in this instance actually is a 'manager' who just sent an email revealing his profound ignorance to me and another employee (basically: I requested that a thing be updated per our current standards and he responded saying 'But everything looks correct to me! Look! (types out the settings which reflect our standards from...three? maybe four years ago? I guess he's been in a fucking coma all that time and wasn't alerted to the multitude of changes that have taken place since then?) Me no understand what is problem! Duhhhhhhh!'

I mean shit I didn't even get a wrist slap for the major code of conduct violation i accidentally committed on a hot mic

you just gonna leave us hanging like that?!

Just went for a piss while still wearing my microphone and the whole conference heard me call the urinal a "thirsty boy"

— Bea_ker (@bea_ker) February 18, 2016