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

classic incident last week

co-worker in email to client: So for some strange reason the inspector contacted me about your request to reschedule the inspection and it is now a week from now

me: the reason the inspector called you was because I sent the email requesting the inspection be rescheduled and gave both yours and my phone numbers in the email. I cc-ed you on the email I sent. I tried calling you to give you the heads up that the inspector might call you.

(privately)
me: I also was surprised that you rescheduled it for so soon because (client) has a lot of preparation to do and I worry they won't be able to do it in time. I had suggested to (client) that we push it back for a month

co-worker: it should be fine

(two days before the rescheduled inspection)
co-worker visits client site and realizes how much preparation work they have to do for the inspection

co-worker in email to client: I have rescheduled the inspection for a month from now.

totally missing from any communication -- "sarahell" was correct in her original assessment that the inspection should have been pushed back a month

ugh! this is my entire working life, swear to christ

.

xp - ugh!!!

idk if I'm just getting used to this guy, but he is less stupid and annoying than he used to be?

though i swear, we have this charlie brown / lucy pulling away the football thing with his "i will call you in 10 minutes" promises that never happen

i have a coworker who will chat something like “ok sending now” which i take with a grain of salt because i know i wont see it until like 12 hours later

for urgent stuff i have had to bug her repeatedly & i hate it so much but she literally says she’s sending the thing & she ~never~ does it

the worst

i don't understand how people like that rationalize the constant dishonesty

totally

do not just tell me what i want to hear & blow me off. stop acting like a teenage gamer! i’m not your fucking mom ffs

omg

it's also like this immediate gratification thing without considering the consequences ... why yes, you pacified me momentarily, but when you don't actually do what you say (and this is an absurd pattern), I get more angry and annoyed than before?

and if you're telling me what I want to hear because your instinct is to not have someone mad at you and avoid conflict ... you are just self-sabotaging tbh

And after a point (which she seems to have already reached) you're not even pacified momentarily, your anger spikes because you know she's bullshitting.

^^^ yep!

there was a rehire back in April who came back for three days and left, and she claimed she left because her trainer told her that she'd be "yelled at all day". In typical fashion, the default assumption is "the trainer said this", and that it couldn't possibly be a really terrible paraphrase (or fabrication). so when I was asked to look into it, I did and found limited information on the class (it's been almost five months) to determine one way or the other. and we don't record our classes.

so I made some small statement about how we should consider that it's possible that a comment was misconstrued, and got told we "need to be open to feedback and unpack objectively".

like...

there's a difference between saying "You aren't clear when you talk, and you speak too fast", which is someone's subjective opinion

and

saying someone said a very specific thing

which either did or didn't happen. it's not 'feedback' - if we'd recorded the class, we could have proved empirically one way or another whether it happened. and I don't feel like putting a smudge in a co-worker's record over a statement that can't be corroborated by someone who quit 5 months ago. now she'll be known as the "person who told her trainees this job is terrible" when considered for future classes.

Fucking hell, getting back in the open plan office every day is annoying enough, but one of my coworkers has picked up the most obnoxious habit over the pandemic that kills me a little every time she does it.

Whenever she goes to make a phone call she puts her phone on speaker, then dials the number, waits for it to ring, then picks up the receiver. At full volume. Every time. I don't know why she feels it important to share the full blast dial tone and dialing with us thirty times a day and I also don't even understand it being some "efficiency" thing since it requires pushing an extra button. Drives me absolutely batty.

I don't know why but this was a common thing among particular loudmouths in an open plan office I worked at years ago.

i used to do it when i had one of those phones but not in an open plan office, saves having to pick up the handset unnecessarily i guess. but in the same office i had a coworker who used to do all her calls on speakerphone, which led to her yelling into the phone and disturbing everyone. when she was told not to do that she pouted forever. and in like the same month i asked her not to burn a very bad smelling candle and she posted a meme about candles on facebook.

in like the same month i asked her not to burn a very bad smelling candle and she posted a meme about candles on facebook.

ok you win the stupid, annoying co-worker award -- as in the having of such, not the being ...

harbl did your office not have a policy about candles? i barely used to go to the office and even i knew that there was a policy about candles.

Mine even had one about perfume

i'm sure there was a policy against candles but we were a very freewheeling and lawless bunch. i know we didn't want to escalate that kind of thing because then we couldn't use space heaters and it was cold in there.

i took a big space heater from the warehouse and when our office got remodeled someone from general services came to walk around and saw it and said "A RADIATOR?!" because it was one of those ones that was shaped like a radiator, no fan, so that became one of our favorite catch phrases

I stole a big ol' two-foot candle from one of our wedding shoots and light that sucker up every month or so when a dog takes a shit on the floor of our office.

I amused the millennials yesterday morning.

https://i.imgur.com/XegnGm1.jpg

fwiw, I had just started a meeting.

a student in one of the classes I'm supervising (but not teaching) has not been able to get into MS Teams or our system for two days. I was not available to help monitor yesterday due to leading my own training, and today I have five classes I'm watching, whereas the managers for this rep have just the one.

Instead of considering human error as a possibility, they just started IT tickets every time, having the password reset. she's on her third password now, and she claims it 'doesn't work' and insists she's typing it in correctly.

In 5 minutes, I logged in using those credentials and they worked without issue. why are so many people technologically challenged? why does everybody assume it's always a 'technical problem' and not consider the fact that some people shouldn't ever touch a computer.

I am working with a group which includes a fairly large age range (20s - 80s) -- yesterday I observed a meeting where a very well-intentioned younger person (probably about 30) wondered why the group was not doing collective work in google docs ... "the olds" have a lot of problems with google docs. Why that is? I don't know. One of the consultants that regularly works with my org is "an old" and he also struggles with google docs, so everything gets sent back and forth in word and excel.

Being in my late 40s, I have a sense of humility about it, because it won't be that long before I, too, am an old.

I wonder how much of it comes down to how people were trained to use computers/software. I know in high school in the mid-90s we were taught about security and how we should never, ever allow others to use or access our documents, so I could imagine someone older and more settled in their ways being kind of flummoxed by the turnaround to everything being shared and collaborative. Fortunately I was (am, he asks hopefully) young enough to see the progression towards collaborative working and seeing how it made more sense and could be more intuitive. I don't know, I can see how the idea of everyone accessing everything might feel kind of anathema to people of a certain age.

I think some of it involves working in the cloud, and where things are stored, and how to access the shared files, and that some people have mirrored copies of the Google Drive on their desktops that sync with the cloud versions, and others don't, such that there are different ways to access and work in Google Docs as opposed to "one way" which ... for people who learned computers as middle-aged adults (as opposed to as kids), could be challenging and annoying.

I had a co-worker who was supposed to be updating a shared Excel file, then save and close it down, and every single time would manage to save a local copy and work on that. This was pre- anything syncing to clouds.

lol we had that issue a LOT

ugh my coworker does this all the time & and t drives me round the bend

i do all her updates in the shared cloud version then the (downloaded, desktop) version she sends to her client is completely different & wrong raaaaaagh

my coworkers are roughly mid 40’s to late 50’s so we’re probably all technically olds

looking at Neanderthal’s issue a bit back and, having experienced it, I wonder if the support never checked to make sure the person was using both username and password, and if they even could connect to anything at all. who knows, maybe Teams was trying to authenticate to a previous job with new credentials

software is terrible and maybe the skill to work around that is not something a sane person should require off job

(She’s probably just fucking it up tho)

the frustrating thing for me is that although I know *some* troubleshooting, I'm not an IT person, have no background in it, and one of the things that made me leave my previous role was that as we continued to upgrade or change platforms, more unique quirks that nobody knew how to solve kept popping up, because we often rushed things into production with insufficient testing/product knowledge. and these things would affect the quality of my team's work and I'd get blamed even though I had no control over it or idea how to fix these things. I'd get pulled into several-hours long triage calls to 'help fix' where all I'd do is every 4 hours or so test something, while I was supposed to be doing my real job.

so I become a full-time trainer and it was heaven for a bit because outside of a handful of minor tech issues that are simple enough for me to solve, I had NONE of that to worry about anymore...

...until the pandemic and everybody started working from home. the day before class begins, everybody is supposed to receive their equipment and test it the day before class starts, and there's literally supposed to be a checklist they're supposed to complete with each person.

the location managers never do what we demand ask them, they don't keep us in the loop on who is having problems or has tickets open, 25% of the hires don't show up to the check-in to set up equipment and enter Day 1 of training having set nothing up. and now we're shipping equipment rather than having people pick it up, and after 2 months of trying that, haven't improved. People get damaged equipment in the mail because the dummies don't pack the shit properly (like literally 5% of all monitors shipped get cracked in transit).

so we get to Day 1 of class and we can't even properly teach because 30% of the class has concurrent technical issues of varying complexity, some of which I know how to fix, some I don't, and we can barely teach because we're stopping every 2 minutes to put our fingers in another hole in the dam and screen-sharing with someone. at least 10% of people have tickets open that prevent them from accessing systems and they don't get resolved until Day 2. the people who didn't get their equipment sometimes don't get it until Day 3 (and then they have to be moved to a later class because they're too far behind).

and then the most audacious fucking thing I saw is that apparently one of our partner sites actually TERMINATES new hires who have equipment issues beyond their control and fall too far behind in class. No finding another assignment for them, moving them to a later class, no...the assholes actually term them. how in the fuck do you have the balls to take away a job (even if temporary) you offered someone because the IT department that sent them equipment fucked up or something Gremlin-y happened?

they actually wrote that in the IT escalation request - "Please help fix this issue as soon as possible or we will have to term this employee". what in the actual fuck.

it's hell right now, and people blame WFH but it's like....we've had a year to get this right and we've actually gotten worse at it :). and now I spent my time being amateur IT guy which is WHAT I CAME HERE TO AVOID.

like every class, we have one or two people who literally don't have a work computer trying to attend training for 2-3 days, not able to see anything, just listening on their phones (or pulling up MS Teams on their phone in Guest mode on a tiny screen).

and then leadership asks WHY IS ATTRITION SO BAD

(why don't they have a work computer? since we ship the equipment so close to the training start date, any delays in parcel shipping timing basically fuck the delivery. some hires are stupid and go out of town the weekend it's supposed to be delivered and aren't there to sign for it. a hire gives their wrong address. but mostly just delays in shipment.)

Xps to sarahell
I was forced into taking over scheduling for our two stores even tho I almost never work in there, so I decided we weren’t doing these stupid fuckin paper calendars anymore (do you know how hard it is to keep paper schedules updated for two stores, the boss, and me, when people are constantly asking for time off and switching shifts??) and I switched to a google sheet. but I had to twist my boss’ arm to get her to ok it. For months I had to keep sending her screenshots of the sheet bc she just just refused to figure out how to look at it on her ph using the sheets app. She’s in her late 60s but she also just doesn’t try, even when it benefits the business to update the technology we use.

I’m also dealing with a staff member who keeps dumping her personal issues on me in long winded texts, when I’m not actually working, then when I reply and inform her of the boundaries she’s violating (which I’ve clearly stated to her) she tells me she’s busy with her family, as if I’m the one imposing on her. FYI I have never met this woman in person, but bc I’m a senior staff member she’s decided that I’m somehow responsible for managing her emotions and talking her off the edge of a panic attack whenever she gets worked up over something. Like, I now unwillingly know she grew up in cult, has been sexually assaulted, her ex’s parents are dying, she gets heavy periods, and she was also sexually assaulted *over the phone* the other week.

just1n3 -- omg, ugh, I am so sorry. Yeah it's the "just doesn't try" part that can make you just want to quit. ... your co-worker sounds like ... one of my clients tbh.

My primary co-worker has actually become way more self-aware about many of his annoying habits. It's become quite nice, actually ... and he actually has demonstrated that he has a sense of humor. Like, this guy is a classic namedropper. The most hilarious example so far has been a couple years ago when we were discussing our org's Google Drive and file systems. I think I was complaining that one of our clients seemed incapable of putting files in folders. And my co-worker responds, "I actually know the guy who invented the folder."

So the other day we were talking about what drew us to be members of and organize DIY venues, and he was talking about going to punk shows as a teenager in the 80s, and mentions Fugazi, and says, "You know, my friend, Ian, who I talk to every other day." And I said, "You talk to Ian MacKaye every other day?" And he said, "No, I was joking. I don't know Ian MacKaye personally."

Haa... I've got no beefs with anyone at my company, but that last one hit home.

We've been switching our subscriber email database from one company to another, which has involved a lot of Zoom meetings where we and the new service study spreadsheets. Exciting!

One "random" subscriber they brought up was a guy who's well-known to us, but maybe not to a bunch of Chicagoland tech workers. Nonetheless, a co-worker pipes up and goes on to describe the guy's social standing, "He was a member of Gov. Clinton's administration and has since created a very successful company that ..." and the rest of us were "Shut. Up. And. Quit. Embarrassing. Us. In. Front. Of. The. Yankees. Please."

one of my instructors got this email from an actual team manager today (only edited for redacting names):

"Thank you for reaching out I have had a conversation with (REDACTED) regarding his constant system issues he did reach out on Friday due to system issues however it was 6 pm and IT was no longer in the building to assist , This morning he reached out as well regarding system issues IT did take control of his computer and notice he does have a defective computer he is supposed to come in today to switch out his computer and he will be staying on site until the end of the day, I did inform (REDACTED) that if he continue to have system issues after this then he will have to come back to office permanently to work. As far as his assessments I have received 1 and 2 from him, He is adamant about getting 3 and 4 done today after training I have also spoken to him and asked why hasn't he shared his assessments with (REDACTED) and (REDACTED) he responded that he thought they were supposed to be shared with his TL I informed him to please send over all test scores to (REDACTED) and (REDACTED) once he has finished 3 and 4. I do apologize on his behalf and please know that you guys will have assessments 3 and 4 by tomorrow. Thanks for all you guys do."

The coworker who is trying to "get back" at our bosses for eliminating the work from home option by cooking fish in a SHARED FUCKING OFFICE every day this week just might drive me to quit. Three days in a row I'm so nauseous I can't eat lunch.

I love fish. I would never cook it in an office. what the actual fuck.

that'd get you dropped out of a window here

David Lynch to thread!

When people microwave fish it is bad enough.

lol, to be clear, she did microwave it. It's atrocious. Two of us said something to her yesterday and her response was, "if they are going to make me come in every single day, they have to deal with my food smells". EXCEPT THE BOSSES AREN'T HERE TO SMELL IT AND YOU ARE PUNISHING THE REST OF US.

yeah that reads more like "I want to eat fish and this is the excuse I have found that suits it"

you need to cook something REALLY stinky tomorrow

My mind is reeling with possibilities of how to top this. I'm mostly just stunned, every place I've ever worked had a basic understanding that some foods were just not okay for an open office meal.

I've got nothing against fish, in fact I've enjoyed some wonderful seafood in my life, but there is something about the smell in a non-restaurant setting that absolutely nauseates me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7t8eoA_1jQ