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

i accidentally screenshared the dinosaurs asteroid thread in a meeting today. they were into it.

it’s an objectively good thread

lets not bitch abt yr smart and pleasing co-workers

My company is, among other things, an HR outsourcing firm, so we build call centers for clients that don't want to handle their own benefits recordkeeping. This part of our business has been suffering for probably a decade. Because of the terrible cuts we made to training over the years, people got frustrated and began leaving in droves. So our representative base is rather green and has little veteran leadership to learn from and they're entrusted with processing things like 401k withdrawals and distributions, which of course, due to training cuts and having no veteran help, they routinely screw up, and it costs us buckets of money each time.

we also have service level fees for calls answered that we are struggling to meet, but the reason our clients are leaving is mostly because our quality sucks. we were once an industry leader, now....we're a joke.

Anyway, their solution to this problem was to cut our already too-short trainings from 4.5 days to 4 on these complex topics. and, the kicker, to start piling high volumes of warm bodies (50+) into a class, from a third-party partner location whose technology cannot handle our servers on a routine basis, and it's being done entirely virtually. And the person they gave to teach the class with me has never handled 401(k) before and does not know it, and is working entirely from his guide. He's a great trainer, but I don't care how great you are, if you teach a topic you don't know...

*time to update resume*.

what can I do that won't get me fired but might put me to the top of the 'layoff' list?

cos we get 2 weeks for every eyar of service, that'd be 30 weeks for me. but I'm afraid if I wait until the company finally folds, which seems inevitable, they'll go bankrupt and not be able to pay me any severance.

Ahh, those days of youthful innocence, when I didn't strongly suspect on a daily basis that the people in charge were involved in some elaborate Producers-esque scheme to ensure the failure of their chosen enterprise.

moved to a new office location last month; the new space has new chairs, which look nice but offer no back support at all -- like if you lean back, you just keep going until you hit about 45°, and there's no way to lock them

lots of people complained, myself among them

company's response is that it will order aeron chairs for people who want them -- but will only pay for them if you can provide a doctor's note saying that you *need* back support. otherwise you can pay $1000 out of pocket for one

no other outside chairs will be allowed, for the sake of 'conformity'

i can get a doctor's note, i'm sure, but the whole thing is fucking stupid

That is really fucking dumb.

I can't sit in one of those chairs without locking ability but fuck a doctor note

Get as many doctor notes as possible from across the business and submit/

my old building said that those yoga ball chairs weren't allowed, everyone just ignored it and did it anyway.

You should just jimmy-rig a standing desk and use the chair to put your knee on.

moved to a new office location last month; the new space has new chairs, which look nice but offer no back support at all -- like if you lean back, you just keep going until you hit about 45°, and there's no way to lock them

lots of people complained, myself among them

company's response is that it will order aeron chairs for people who want them -- but will only pay for them if you can provide a doctor's note saying that you *need* back support. otherwise you can pay $1000 out of pocket for one

no other outside chairs will be allowed, for the sake of 'conformity'

i can get a doctor's note, i'm sure, but the whole thing is fucking stupid

Holy fucking shit is that a dumb thing to do. Decent office chairs aren't even really that expensive if you're buying them in bulk but boy do they make a difference when it comes to productivity and overall worker satisfaction. Also, thank goodness my workplace allows you to purchase your own ~fancier~ office chair if you wish.

Just...I mean...why do I have to tell a professional adult, why do I actually need to spell out the fact, that a person's name written in a cursive font in an unlocked and editable Word document does not suffice when a signature is required? Just...fucking...why.

Because signing a Word document is stupid and makes no sense?

I got scheduled to do basically a month's worth of training for this special client. This morning, I was told I needed to submit to a background check with them to lead this training - separate from the background check I already did for my own company.

I know in some industries where there are client relationships, this isn't unusual, but for our company, it is. I have a clean report, but I object to having to subject to a second one.

then after hemming and hawing about this for hours, it turns out we were only told this because the manager who requested the training misunderstood that we were going to use his client's own unique systems, which we're not. which we never agreed to do.

dumb.

I've encountered a multitude of variants that approximated the same, but today marks the first time I've full-on encountered someone asking essentially 'please advise on how I should undertake [task that I somehow do not realize is an essential and unambiguous part of my own job and that I should be deeply ashamed and possibly even tossed into an active volcano for asking you how to do]'.

I genuinely do not know how to respond without utilizing the phrase 'fucking idiot'. Help.

To be clear: this is a manager in a department completely separate from mine. Our job duties abut but do not overlap. And, perhaps most essentially, when I see that the task in question needs to be completed in order for me to do my job, I send a request to these specific managers so that they can do the thing. Because it's their job to know how to do the thing and then do it.

Me: Please add this thing that is missing in that record.
Dipshit: (five minutes later) It looks like it's already there?
Me: (checks, sees timestamp revealing that the thing has been added since I sent the request, full-on blasts self in face with keyboard 4-5 times)

WHAT AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY, I AM OVERCOME WITH SUPERNATURAL VIBES RN

Every fucken day with this shit. Every fucken day.

if it's me, i'm responding with "yes, looks like it was just added four minutes ago" including screen cap of the file w timestamp.

I used to engage in such petty fripperies but the momentary self-satisfaction was never enough to offset the fact that I was clearly the only party in that exchange who GAF.

lol I still do mostly just to tell the other person "ok, i see u"

i find that shit only gets worse if you don't call it out as early as possible.

it does amuse me when people seem to forget things are timestamped/logged. the security manager at my firm ten years ago said a handful of our own people used customer information to apply for credit cards and things thinking there was no way it could be tracked, until they wound up in the office getting terminated and referred to the police.

two of them even stole a ladies pension benefit in collusion with a trust contact but were easily discovered because they left a heavy electronic trail - got perp walked out the door by police minutes before I got back from lunch that day.

that sucks you missed the perp walk.

Works both ways. At my last job, a coworker's manager was gunning to get rid of her (for reasons that were entirely personal, as far as anyone could tell) and on the day she finally got the boot for supposedly falsifying her timesheet, she asked me on her way out (because I had access to the pertinent systems) to see if I could find logs of her activity for the supposedly-falsified time in question. And sure enough, there it was. Because, see, her manager had checked the security records to confirm that she hadn't beeped through the turnstile on that Saturday afternoon...without bothering to check if she'd done work from home. And so they sheepishly had to rehire her and she subsequently split on her own terms and sued them for wrongful termination.

The moral: abject stupidity runs rampant through every stratum of the American workforce.

That's fucked. Anytime I thought I found evidence of malfeasance, I always made sure to look at every alternative explanation first before assuming the worst.

A colleague of mine almost got one of our client's employees fired once. I don't remember what it was about, but this employee was suspected of something or other, but they insisted they said something on this call that absolved them. Again, don't remember what.

So this colleague goes to pull the call but pulls the wrong one. Doesn't notice that the company the caller states she works for is wrong, gave a name completely different than the employee, DOB doesn't match. All these obvious clues. So she reports to our client that the employee didn't say what they alleged they said, and almost termed the person until they insisted our rep must have listened to the wrong call and begged our client to re-review.

Fortunately someone else did and almost immediately it confirmed the employees' version of things, and our relationship with the client was damaged by the ordeal.

One of our classes I teach has a set sign-up process. We rarely have issues with it.

However, this week, a bunch of leaders who don't typically get involved in the sign-up process decided to stick their noses in and gum up the works. Working with the team managers, they came up with a huge list of employees who need to be trained, but somehow botched the communication on who was supposed to sign them up.

So yesterday, one manager asks why six of her employees didn't get training invites, only to find out nobody actually signed them up. We fixed that and got them enrolled. No big deal.

Then, one of the Operations Leaders kept telling us throughout the week that she was going to submit more names, only to not send any. So we finally message her on our chat client on Wednesday to ask "look do you have names or not?". She then gives us five names, but tells us they will come over on the sign-up sheet that night, so to hold off signing them up until then, just in case plans changed. Rather than letting us just do it right then. Of course, nothing comes over that night, so I don't know if that means if they no longer need training or if someone just forgot again.

So I ask her yesterday "hey, these specific five people, do they still need to be signed up?", only for her to give an answer that was neither affirmation or denial, just "anybody who is supposed to attend should have been signed up already". Given the previous fuck-ups, I wrote back and asked her to please confirm if the *five people I specifically named* needed to be signed up, yes or no. Day goes by, no reply.

So naturally, the manager of one of the five learners who I've been trying to confirm needed to be signed up for a day and a half messages us asking why this student didn't get an invite. so the week is out and we still aren't clear on the official final roster for a class that starts Tuesday.

they also laid my friend off today, one of the few members that was able to keep one of our most difficult clients happy. the other managers on that client have all but given up home on retaining them.

you'd think that might have saved her job, but nope.

A coworker who isn't stupid or annoying forwarded me an exchange between her manager and the stupid annoying fuckstick I've bitched about 315 times itt.

Manager: Why did you, a person we know is a full-on moron who always does shit he shouldn't do, do this thing you did and that you shouldn't have done?
Fuckstick: Hmm, I don't know why I would have done that thing I very clearly did. You should ask Coworker about why I did that.
Manager: Coworker, why did Fuckstick to this thing he did and that he shouldn't have done? P.S. Absolutely nothing in the file indicates that you've ever had anything to do with this account. Not sure why I'm asking you about it at all except that Fuckstick said I should. Sure hope he never tells me to walk into traffic!

They find new ways to surprise me, every day.

i used to be the 'subject matter expert' on a couple of things where I worked and people would always unnecessarily add me to random meetings on completely non-relevant to me things. And then they would totally call me out to ask me questions about someone else's department, of which they were the subject matter expert, while that person was also. on. the. call.

We are forced to run all of our programs through a remote connection, for some reason. The remote install of Acrobat just stopped working about half an hour ago. 99% of the work files I handle are pdfs. I was already hustling to make up for the three hours of work time I lost yesterday when our systems went down completely (not unusual, as I understand they went down for a cumulative seven hours when I was out of the office on Friday). I am going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs until my workday is over. Because, y'know, fuck this absolute joke of a workplace.

(I guess this is an indirect indictment of our stupid, annoying IT personnel, who I only really know from their exemplary reputation as dick-tripping tech wizards.)

one of my coworkers was using both printers to do huge jobs while also having a bubble tea sitting on one of the printers yesterday. very confounding

(the two long jobs were non-urgent, nobody has beverages in the printer room ever)

Instant beheading for that

I swear to fucking god. So, I order some civil rights A/V material for a program the students are putting on, and this bitch who is not even my boss was overheard throwing a massive tantrum about it. Because, uh...the material made her uncomfortable. And rumor has it had to do with an alleged discrimination complaint against her, and my association with this group makes her look bad.

Then another faculty member asks me to buy an expensive Japanese CD, and some other asshole disrespects me and asks me why I bought it. Because I was ASKED to buy it, you unprofessional dickface. Just because you play in some band no one cares about doesn't mean you have the right to condescend.

Did I mention that Mr. Condescension and Ms. Ill Temper are friends?

Did I mention that Mr. Condescension and Ms. Ill Temper are friends?

Why am I not surprised? Anyway, godspeed to you for working with two such "prizes", and I really hope someone local to you treats you to some potent potables (or whatever else makes life better for you).

Thank you. The faculty seem to hate them, but every time there's a bad apple at work, the people in the immediate vicinity do nothing.

It just dawned on me that maybe they're just jealous because I know a lot of the faculty.

Omfg we hired a guy a few months back. I can’t begin to describe how awful he is. Basically doesn’t do jackshit. And what he does, he does all wrong. Have to correct his mistakes. Fucking awful. And just disregards all the rules.

today I had one learner in my class who started interrupting me every 2 minutes, then took 30 minutes to do an assignment correctly while not listening to my instructions.

put me so far behind. but....all of us are stressed, so I just pretended it was no big deal.

and then asked my boss for Wednesday afternoon off to just....decompress.

ffs now the office is closed, my email is just constantly pinging with idiots emailing the entire fucking company with their witty anecdotes about working from home. FUCK OFF

Dear fellow employees I am overhearing in a conversation right now about not wanting to follow anyone's orders about sheltering in place re: Covid-19, with your "not being afraid" and "it doesn't matter to me, I'm healthy and young": do you want what's happening right now in China and Italy to happen? Because that's how you get what's happening right now in China and Italy to happen. I am not going to confront them about this because to do so would be exceptionally unprofessional and create an antagonistic work environment, so thankfully there's this thread wherein I can vent. BTW, if we do end up enacting a San Francisco-style "shelter in place" order in my city, you better fucking believe I'll obey it because I'm not a dick and would actually like the whole "flattening the curve" thing to happen.

wait til next week when this will just serve as a thread about seinfeldeaque observations about all of our partners/families/housemates

I'll prefer that to the dire daily news

xp and pets, don’t forget those of us beset by small cats crying because they want to get into the attic

my home coworker, who is a cat, has now been exposed as a food grifter. if i am working from the dining room table and see you snack on food every half hour, i am no longer going to believe you're starving when you yowl at me at 5pm

I’m not looking forward to the one benefit of this, not having to get up at 6 anymore, being taken away from me by the attic-crier kneading us both until one of us gets up to feed her. Sometimes she does this and suddenly isn’t hungry!

My coworker today (18 year old with cancelled Uni classes) is awesome. He stayed in his bed all morning then made me a coffee.

again

thats not unlike my normal routine tbh

Guess I'll just comment on my co-workers then since I seem to be in the increasingly rarer numbers still going into work. Except work hasn't been that bad lately and the execs even sent us lots of coffee and doughnuts this morning to boost our morale. (in a quiet voice) Plus I'm in a supervisory role here so I feel awful about bitching about my co-workers for all but the most boneheaded reasons. (exunt quiet voice mode)

I can tell my trainees are distracted today. I'm being friendly and nurturing as I can, because ultimately, this thing I'm training them on just doesn't matter in the scheme of things