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

we keep having learners who "log in" to class, then peace out once roll is called, and in big classes it doesn't get caught right away.

earlier this week, I noticed I had this one who literally showed up for an hour and peaced for the day, then showed up for a few hours the second day. This was obvious as I was monitoring the attendee list for her name after she disappeared, messaged her, and also downloaded the roster from MS TEams, which confirms entrance/exit times.

Her manager assured me she was there "because the learner told her she was", so I told her that was impossible for the reasons above, and that she hadn't done any of the assignments (the only person in class who hadn't).

So the student msgs me upset saying "I've been there, how do you not see me?" and I pointed out she hadn't done any assignments and that I had a log of when she left each day. dead silence - she literally thought she was fooling everybody and didn't count on there being assignments that I checked every day.

I'm realizing that I'm terrible at taking attendance over Teams. So far I haven't been calling roll because I have a 50-minute class and 32 students and it takes SO LONG to get them all to unmute and reply. But I think I'll have to because I can't seem to use the "download attendance" feature right; people are always missing from it who I know were in class, and then I can't be fully confident about the people I think were absent.

roll call for a 30+ person class in Teams is hell. after the first day, where I do a full roll to learn voices, ask if I'm saying names right, and ask them if they have a nickname they go by, every day forward, I look at the attendees list and make sure they're connected to phone, and take down who I see, and call on just those I'm missing. Imperfect, but I'm on a crunch usually.

I did see some weird results in Download Attendance the first two times I used it, which is why I can't confidently use it alone to confirm absences. I check the number of attendees, and if it varies at any point, I look to see if anybody new joined or if anybody departed, and only after I've confirmed that and/or called on the person, I use the Download feature to confirm what I already know.

Unfortunately sometimes you find out late if the class is too big, and if I can't stay for sure that the person wasn't there, I don't report it....so people often get away with it anyway just due to the bad teacher:learner ratio, having too many learners. also technically, their managers should be joining training and helping monitor them, but...they just don't.

but then I worry that i'm going to get in trouble for not noticing someone skipped on class, so....my OCD flares up

Yeah, I've been basically trying to just look at my attendance list, the problem is that in the moment I get hyper-focused on running the class, sustaining their interest and keeping the energy high, and I forget to give myself time to actually check who's missing.

yup. I have that problem too.

at some point I just say "you're doing teh best you can", cos if I hyperfocus on attendance, I suddenly get tongue-tied.

I've also noticed my training classes went from being more fun and loose to being rigid simply cos my heart isn't in it right now with all of the problems.

i mean, get the right end result, but.....I don't want to make it boring for anybody, and i kinda am atm, which isn't the norm for me

kind of annoying that on a week I'm teaching a class so I wanted to opt out of reviewing Alpha materials for a course redesign we're doing (due today), I can't because I notice two major errors in five minutes that none of the other 4 reviewers caught (and they're regulation errors which would be really bad if we taught incorrectly).

so now I have to because apparently nobody else is paying close attention.

I had a weird conversation with my boss this week where he pointed out that I keep picking up on errors in our courses/literature/websites and he said it wasn't my job to do that (it isn't) and that I get paid too much to be the department's proofreader (I do).

I pointed out that he was right and that I'd be quite happy to be left off all review circulars from now on as long as he was happy to acknowledge that literally no-one else is either arsed or capable of getting things right first time or correcting them afterwards.

We agree I shall continue in my unofficial capacity as Mr Pernickety.

been trying to start my portion of class for ten minutes and my partner has, without even pausing to take a breath, non-stopped talking for ten minutes about unrelated bullshit, and got them onto a topic taht is now generating a lot of discussion. the only way for me to get started is to rudely interrupt her.

SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

i'm in no mood today. we're way behind and i'm stressed tf out.

today my co-instructor asks the entire class what their 'song' is, the one that gets them going. I usually participate in these to encourage the others participating, so I listed my gut reaction, Strapping Young Lad - "Detox". she says "that sounds like metal - that's expected from you, I want something surprising from you", so I said Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes - "Wake Up Everybody". she asked other people to give 'surprising' picks and then said she would play our songs. naturally I figured she was going to go with my second choice, and I also forgot that SYL's Detox begins with Devin Townsend screaming "HEY YOU STUPID PIECE OF SHIT!".

so suddenly I hear her start my song and I can't get her to stop in time before he says that. idk - maybe a head's up that you were gonna play both my choices woulda been nice, or maybe before asking for our fav tunes telling us you were gonna play em!

I'm sure that woke everyone up all the same. win/win

I blamed it on one of the students and had security escort him out of class

which makes no sense as he was working from home but

Not really a coworker, per se, but I'm being driven up the wall by a particular vendor we frequently use. So this vendor is producing new stuff for us to use as we adapt to COVID concerns, fine. Great. So every few weeks I have to coordinate with him to be on campus to receive the delivery and put it into storage. In the pre-COVID times, this would be fine, I would never be more than a 15 minute walk from the storage place and can meet him fairly quickly. But obviously, having to work from home and being off campus makes this a bit more tricky. (As a side note, I'm still not sure why this particular task hasn't been delegated to one of our employees that is already on campus anyway now, but that's an argument for another day).

Anyway, this guy keeps calling me while he is literally on his way to campus saying, "I'll be there in 20 minutes, see you then". The first time it was annoying, but fine, whatever. I told him that next time he needs to let me know as far in advance as possible, preferably at least 24 hours in advance, so I can make arrangements since I'm off campus and need to juggle between my schedule, my wife's schedule and making sure someone can be around to oversee my son's online classes. Every time we make a new order, I reiterate this in writing and on the phone. Today was the fourth time now he's called me last minute to tell me he's on his way and will meet me in 20 minutes. So once again, I had to drop everything and scramble to get there.

Obviously I'd like to just tell him that I can't do it and he'll have to figure out another time but, unfortunately, we have a lot of other people I work with waiting on this stuff. So blowing this guy off impacts way more coworkers than just me and can put them into a bind. So, I don't have much of a choice in that respect. Unfortunately I also don't have any pull to threaten this company with losing our business either, since they are a preferred vendor and have been for many years. I could tell him, "look I need you to be more respectful of my time or else we're gonna go somewhere else" but he knows that decision gets made way above my head and completely outside my department.

It's just infuriating that I have go through this every few weeks and no matter how proactive I am about scheduling ahead of time and underscoring the advance warning I need, this guy just either isn't willing or isn't capable of respecting my time.

If you are late to meet the guy, is he obligated to wait for you? If so, maybe being late would be a good passive-aggressive way to get your point across. I would think that having to sit around and wait for 20 minutes, an hour, what have you, would make this guy more prone to advance scheduling

That thought crossed my mind, honestly have no idea if that would work or just make him worse tbh.

Yeah stop rewarding him by turning up when he calls, hes assuming you still can.

Could you work it on your side to get one of those other on campus employees to meet him?

that other employee being Joey Bananas who will have a "heart to heart" with him?

Lol

I've tried reaching out to a couple supervisors that might be able to help but, y'know, I think it's falling into that "well that sounds like extra responsibility for me that I don't wanna take on" k-hole and will remain unanswered, but we'll see.

dying of laughter right now. This is why my company has stagnated.

5 years ago, we decided to upgrade our call handling platform. ALL teams were supposed to move to it. That became an impossibility almost immediately, because inexplicably, our contracts had standard language about a type of encryption that our new platform was unable to support (without us paying an exorbitant amount of money). our sales execs and our technology team were not communicating. so every client with that language COULDN'T use the new platform. and other clients demanded that language in their contract. so we've had half of our teams on the old platform, half new for 5 years, but we've been telling them eventually we'll get closer to 100%.

Today, I'm told we're abandoning the new platform and going back to the old one, and just changing our case management system. Years ago, we similarly moved 4 teams to a new platform of user content, only to roll it back almost immediately after as we realized it is terrible. We just abort project after project.

you should be a visionary and introduce them to the “fail fast” methodology

they’ve got half of it right

Dayjob client: has been letting past-due accounts slide for years to the point where she has 11 owing four figures and two more owing five figures (and another 15 or so with no payment in years), and I have dutifully sent out invoices and account statements with additional interest and rebilling charges, but yesterday I'd had enough and asked if I needed to keep doing this. Obviously it's long past time for her to take charge of shit and start chasing payment. Part of the problem is that a lot of the very late accounts stem from an annually-renewing directory listing that is opt-out rather than opt-in, and if she actually did anything about it, let's say drop the listings for which there hasn't been payment, the directory would drop to about 40% of its previous size and the financial problems would be obvious to everyone left.

2nd job: one of the servers seems to have trouble processing or retaining info. She's been working there for months and still comes up to me saying things like "I need a Coors...Life? (checks order pad) Light? In a bottle? Does that come in a bottle?" It's possible she may just be high as a fucking kite.

haha that last one

Goddammit. Now I'm hearing "Coors Life" to the tune of "Pop Life."

xxp - ugh, my 2nd job has a contract for which we haven't received payment (we are technically subcontractor to this other company that is the main contractor, but we are doing the majority of the work) ... and the contract is with the City, but with this other company as the main contractor, and my co-worker never got any official contract with anyone (as far as I know) that shows they are supposed to pay us for our work. So, it is kinda awkward asking for payment for a contract that doesn't actually exist?

Someone quite a bit senior to me just sent me an email asking 'who do I contact to do X for me?' where X is a thing that this individual has almost certainly had to contact someone about hundreds if not thousands of times before in the normal course of their job. Like, contextually, it's such an absurd and profoundly stupid question that I don't know whether I'm being punked or whether I should call 911 about the aneurysm this person is currently suffering.

we have a 'mock' client in our system that we use for training only with fictional customer data, and literally you're taught on that client when you set foot in this building. everybody should know they're not real.

and yet they don't, so projects go on, and these people see the mock client on the list of clients. so we occasionally get requests to do work for them like they're a real client. like today, when I got thrown a series of tasks for a 30+ hour work assignment regarding web chat setup. We aren't going to spend 30 hours to set up live web chat for a fake company, guys.

that's not as annoying as the times I still arguments and pushback saying "well they're on the list, we need to do it"

additionally, new hires that handle 401(k) calls aren't trained on processing withdrawals or distribution payments, as we want them to build knowledge and comfort before they go through that training, and then come to find out they have the people we just trained doing them, when we didn't train them on how to do it and told them they wouldn't be.

totally laughing my ass off at the mock client situation ...

also this reminds me of at various points in an old job I had, which was for a performing arts non-profit called the (Founder's Name) Ensemble, and we would get calls and letters addressed to Mr. Ensemble, and at one point the Founder was trying to make a change to a bank account or discuss a tax issue with the state and the customer service rep said that they could only give that information to "Mr. Ensemble"

hahahaha

"Is Mr Starbucks with you?"

we also have to add a "*DO NOT MAIL*" tag to any fictional client accounts so that the documents don't get created and mailed to the fake people at the fake address, and some idiot on one client team I guess thought it was ridiculous that we had to have that, so they got rid of the "*Do Not Mail*" tags in their acceptance environment.

and I looked, and all these letters got mailed to people who didn't exist at addresses that didn't exist...and then said mail was returned. good use of company money there.

omg -- where do these people come from??? (not the fake people, the real ones that do stupid shit)

I don’t work in our retail stores but I sometimes have to stop by to grab stuff or drop off stuff, so I know what the windows look like, which is: drab as fuck. Sloppy. Pale colors against a pale background. Dusty.

My boss asks me for suggestions about getting more customers in (she absolutely won’t do any advertising or marketing) so I tell her we need to make the window displays more eye catching.

Her response is: no one looks at the windows! That’s not what brings ppl in!

This is the same woman whose response to my suggestion years ago that we actually promote the fact that our stuff is locally made was: that’s so gauche!
Eventually we did start promoting it.

you are seriously undervalued, just1n3

otm

people dont look at windows LMAO jfc

One of my UK colleagues has twice now asked me what "RVA" stands for. It is INSANELY well known and common an acronym in telecommunications ("recorded voice annoucement") and this guy being Level 3 for a fucking mobile phone call centre should KNOW THIS SHIT. he always asks me to "dumb down" responses from the phone networks that say things like "site tower degragded performance repair ETA bla date". LIke what else does he think that means GAHHH

a student entered a live training class in MS Teams today where people were actively talking and presenting and typed "I heard class is cancelled today, is that true?"

bit like walking into a McDonald's that's serving customers and saying "I heard you all are closed right now, is that true?"

Xps that’s the thing though - I’m not even suggesting creative solutions, I’m suggesting the most basic things that EVERY other remotely successful business does! I’ve gotta post a photo here one day so you can see how truly bad our windows look. I’m surprised anyone goes into the stores at all.

Tonight my boss texts me a picture she took of her computer screen, showing a listing on our website. This is the following exchange:
Her: did u take this photo
Me: no
Her: who put it up
Me: Susan [a former coworkers mum who did all the transition work when we had to change platforms]
Her: how do people buy it

*now I’m confused*

Me: what do you mean?
Her: Well it is saying you can buy the shirts
I wondered how?
Me: by hitting “add to cart”???
Her: you knew about the photos. I guess that’s what meant
Me: I still don’t understand
Her: I googled [our business] and all these odd shirts came up
I was surprised

*still confused but feeling a sense of dawning understanding and horror and what she’s getting at*

Me: that’s our website
Her: Ok so it links to our website
I didn’t realize that would happen!
Technology!!
I didn’t think google went into our website!!
Me: It goes into every website ever
Her: news to me!!

I mean Jesus Christ the website was right there in the url. But this is the same person who also asked what our “web address” is when she actually meant “email” (she has repeatedly called it our “web address”) and wants to start promoting our business on Twitter (?!??!??!!) even though I’ve been telling her for a year that we need to be focusing on Instagram

please never leave this job, as long as she is willing to keep blindly funding it for years and occasionally thinking "what is... shop?" before making a noise like a stepped-on balloon, we will cherish the content

She has by some miracle had this same business for close to 40 yrs

I mentioned this on the careers advice thread but I'm getting made redundant soon. It has been an absolute disaster.

- our branch is at risk of closure but if it doesn't close then my job role is being eliminated anyway in restructuring, for a replacement position which is 1/3 less salary.

- so if we stay open I'm meant to finish in the middle of December. But if the branch is closing then all of us are finishing at... some point in the future, that could be any time between December and March, yet to be decided. So we pointed out that if I get made redundant, there would still be a need to hire a replacement for what could be as little as four weeks, which obviously makes no sense. It took two weeks for Head Office to realise that yes this might be an issue and put a pause on the redundancy process.

- meanwhile despite knowing I'm getting made redundant at some point imminently, I can't really start applying for new jobs in good faith because I don't know when my last day would be yet, and if I leave before I'm redundant I lose out on the payment, which is significant enough to not be worth abandoning.

- if the branch stays open for now, it could still end up closing in a year or two years. So if you take a new contract on reduced pay then 12 weeks later you're made redundant, you've thrown away a considerable chunk of a redundancy pay-out as your payoff is worked out on the past three months of earnings. This isn't just our branch but every branch. So as you would expect, anyone eligible for redundancy is taking it because it's too big a gamble to risk losing out on several thousand pounds.

- our H.O has obviously been banking on people panicking and taking a lesser contract, not realising that all the people they're "restructuring" have long service and are all eligible for a good payoff, while knowing there's no future in retail.

- so this week I had to have a ridiculous conversation with a grandboss three levels up who wanted to know why I wasn't applying for the new position. "Given the choice between leaving with a good payout, or staying in a job being paid a third less, I think it's quite obvious why." The seniors are spooked now they've realised they've basically forced out their most experienced, expert staff and are going to have to replace them with people who won't have the knowledge, and with the new contracts they won't get any level of committment from them either.

The whole thing has been a fucking nightmare. It's stressful enough being made redundant without having the people making you redundant clearly have no planning or foresight.

(I mean if you think that post is confusing... try living through it and trying to plan your immediate future)

sincere sorry for your situation, delighted "eat shit" to your bosses

Guy briefing us today has an assistant to work the magic next slide button in PowerPoint (coz it's so fucking hard to click and speak) and instead of saying "next slide please" is going with "okaaayyy Richie FLASH FORWARD noooowww!"