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

third time I've had to ask the managers to resume putting our ad hoc assignments on our group calendar as they used to do this, and abruptly stopped for no reason and without warning. Instead, they just assumed we'd check these random training trackers throughout the day, so a few times I almost missed that i had an assignment as our group calendar showed as blank, like I had no assignments.

on Friday, I got assigned like 3 classes to prep this week after I had left on PTO for the afternoon, and I didn't learn about them until 11:30 am this morning. now scrambling to figure out what I'm even doing and get these meetings scheduled in an hour.

Every single time I work with this particular coworker, it's the same story:

him: Hey, so I looked into this and there are two solutions, A or B. Which do you want?

me: Well, Option B looks better for the end users, let's go with that.

him: Oh, well, that doesn't really work. Here's why we need to do Option A.

me (internally): so why didn't you just say that option A was what we needed in the first place?!

This happened so often that I now anticipate this back and forth so I try to pre-empt it, but to no avail. This morning:

him: I looked at that lab space this morning, we can go with Option A or B here.

me: Well before I get back to the users, can you let me know if there are any issues that would prevent one of the options working on your end?

him: Whatever the user wants is fine with me.

me: Okay, so I talked to the lab manager, Option A is definitely their preference.

him: Well, I was hoping they'd pick Option B because that's really the only option that works on our end.

me: (internally screaming endlessly)

ugh ... sorry you have to suffer this absurdity

meanwhile ... my co-worker went on vacation without giving me any heads up. I am guessing that in his mind, he would be trying to get work done while on this camping trip, and thus maybe he did not semantically consider it a "vacation" and thus, didn't communicate this to me ... while it does make me feel better about him not responding to my calls, texts, or emails ... still ... it is like we exist in some parallel universe where it is okay to do this??

3 years ago, when I was a contractor and not an employee yet, I had scheduled a meeting with him for Wednesday. Tuesday afternoon I call him to confirm the meeting time, as he frequently would need to reschedule meetings.

He answered the phone and said, "I am going through airport security right now, I can't really talk"
Me: You are at the airport?
Him: Yes, with my family
Me: Your family is going on a trip?
Him: Yes, me and my family are going to Italy for two weeks. Gotta go. Bye.

No, that is definitely not ok. first of all, "well I'm still going to get some work done so it's not really vacay" is something people have fed me before and what usually happens is, they.....don't get much, if any work done while they're gone. and they're still not available when you need them.

fact is, if you're going to be somewhere that is not an office where your primary aim is not working but doing something recreational, and where you could feasibly lose connection at a moment's notice and not be able to get it back, you should tell people so they know not to expect you to be available.

thank you for reminding me of the rules of this universe, Neando! <3

<3

Now, I will say, there were definitely times I would go out of town for like festivals/concerts etc and bring my laptop to work, but these weren't vacations, like I would tell everybody I have full availability during my normal hours today, made back-up plans if the hotel connection wasn't working (like going to a library). even took a trip to Vegas and worked 6:30 am - 3:00 pm so that I'd be present at my usual hours ET. I think that's ok.

but you know going on a trip where "hmm maybe one hour or two I'm working each day, tops" and you're ultimately unavailable, fuck no.

lol, going on a two week Italy vacation with no notice.

seriously though, if it weren't for the fact that his wife dutifully captures every endearing moment of their child's life on Instagram ... I would have had no clue.

my favorite thing is when someone is going on vacation, and lists you as a backup without talking to you OR making sure you're available those days.

I always clear it with people first (unless it's an evergreen backup sitch where I'm one of three people who are points of contact on something), but I once had someone send this big blast email to everyone listing me as their backup for their staycation and I had to privately email them and say "uhm, I'm on PTO four of these days, so no I'm not your backup".

That is frustrating, I can't imagine any scenario where you wouldn't let folks know you are on vacation!

thank you, jon, for being yet another grounding voice ... I swear this guy exists in a parallel universe

my favorite thing is when someone is going on vacation, and lists you as a backup without talking to you OR making sure you're available those days.

hahaha, he has done this as well ... fortunately, I have no family obligations and never go anywhere and I am paid by the hour ... on the bright side, I feel good that he trusts me to do a good job covering for him (this is really a major accomplishment) ... on the not-so-bright-side, I will be told at 11pm that I have to be on site for an inspection at 9am the next morning (which would often be when I am waking up in the morning).

My coworker scheduled a six week vacation through a product launch and checked in with me being okay to cover her support work through it a week after we found out she had booked it. Six weeks! Another dev and I have been working nonstop for this launch and dreaming of vacation time.

My coworker scheduled a six week vacation through a product launch and checked in with me being okay to cover her support work through it a week after we found out she had booked it. Six weeks! Another dev and I have been working nonstop for this launch and dreaming of vacation time.

Mostly my co-workers are actually great, no complaints. Kind of bummed about this new co-worker. We have these team calls where we just kinda shoot the shit and talk about our weeks, and last month a lot of what I had to talk about was Pride, and she ghosted on the call two weeks in a row when I started talking about it. She's started replying to my emails with "Have a blessed day!" I kind of get the feeling she doesn't approve of my _lifestyle_ or my _agenda_, but she's professional enough not to say so directly. She's definitely going to have a worse time of it than I will, but it still sucks. We're probably not going to have a very close working relationship.

hey, this says 1 minute, i thought we'd agreed on 30 seconds?

yeah, but then remember when boss said to standardise the code so we didn't have two branches to maintain and everything else uses 1 minute...

well, this needs to be 30 seconds.

ok, i will change it...

[two sprints go by, a simple change held up by design discussions, other work in the same area, lack of reviewers and testers. finally goes live on friday morning...]

monday morning:

hey, 30 seconds is too short, needs to be longer... and this needs doing before massive public event happening on thursday...

(at least it's a parameter change now, and we don't need to redeploy)

^lol oi that is painful

my classes are going well this week, but this is the shit that infuriates me. so they gave us all 'recharge' days this month, to take a day off to just take a mental health day. that part is cool and good.

but it has to be done by the end of the month, meaning lots of managers are using theirs this week as they put it off, and some are bookending it with extra PTO days. so this means managers are in short supply Thursday and Friday.

we need them to meet with their new hires and lead a few important presentations, and I get told by the location leader "we're just gonna have to move it to next week, we don't have anybody available".

you're the same people that requested these classes start this week, you dumbfuck, how did you not know we had these meetings that require managers, which we've always needed and you've always known we needed? Pushing to next week just messes with the flow of things, means we have to backtrack and wreck the momentum.

She's started replying to my emails with "Have a blessed day!" I kind of get the feeling she doesn't approve of my _lifestyle_ or my _agenda_, but she's professional enough not to say so directly.

Jesus would be so proud.

blessed day, gtfo of here with that nonsense.

We have these team calls where we just kinda shoot the shit and talk about our weeks,

this is the kind of thing that could be really stupid and annoying tbh, though maybe y'all actually like each other and it's cool, idk

this is the kind of thing that could be really stupid and annoying tbh, though maybe y'all actually like each other and it's cool, idk

― sarahell

yeah we legit like each other so it works

Jesus would be so proud.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux)

if jesus has a problem with it he can address it with her directly, at this point i'm assuming that jesus is totally cool with all the awful shit people do in his name. i'm done caping for the dude.

I don't mind shoot the shit calls except when I'm really busy, like, all that forced levity does is make me think of how much more I have to do if it's not conveniently timed.

I already keep a lot of things about myself a mystery which has served me well over the last 17.5 years.

so that issue I bitched about a few weeks ago, where it's an issue that I've told everybody how to fix 3000 times and emailed them instructions and they play forgetful.

so last week, one of them actually remembered and did the entire thing without me! I was so happy.

then the same issue comes up again today and once again two people (one of whom is a gd MANAGER) once again forgot how to fix it and they addressed the issue entirely incorrectly, so other people had to report the issue again later in the afternoon.

like if the issue is a GUI issue, the GUI part has to be fixed or nothing will work for anybody!

I don't mind shoot the shit calls except when I'm really busy, like, all that forced levity does is make me think of how much more I have to do if it's not conveniently timed.

― We were clothed, except for Caan, who was naked. Don't know why. (Neanderthal)

well, like one coworker is talking about her sick cat, which i guess would be really fucking annoying if i didn't care about her or her cat, but i do in fact care about her cat and i hope her cat gets better soon, and it's good to hear her updates on the cat situation. it only really works if you actually like your co-workers, i feel like.

I mean I do like mine, and we take a vested interest in each other's lives. I don't mind having these as long as workload is small and I can afford the hour away. I had to miss one last time for that reason, sadly.

we have a caretaker support chat going with me, my boss, and my boss's boss, who are all in the same position atm. it's helpful.

if jesus has a problem with it he can address it with her directly, at this point i'm assuming that jesus is totally cool with all the awful shit people do in his name. i'm done caping for the dude.

Post of the day.

otm. if Jesus was real, he's kinda been cool lying back in the shadows while millions of his followers disagree on what he said and he's not exactly hell-bent on coming back and clarifying it so fucker is complicit.

I don't mind shoot the shit calls except when I'm really busy, like, all that forced levity does is make me think of how much more I have to do if it's not conveniently timed.

I already keep a lot of things about myself a mystery which has served me well over the last 17.5 years.

― We were clothed, except for Caan, who was naked. Don't know why. (Neanderthal), Monday, July 25, 2022 10:26 AM (one hour ago)

yeah, that's pretty much what I was thinking, esp. in the context of a large company or government agency. Maybe I just end up being "the person who takes on a lot of work and is conscientious about it actually getting done well" which also makes me feel this way.

meanwhile, my co-worker apologized for not telling me he was going on a camping vacation, and today, he actually texted me in the morning letting me know he is taking a personal day. I thanked him for that.

that's all it requires, just a liiiittle communication.

I've a bit secretive/cagey still even after all this time with the company because there was a short period of time where I listed my employer on FB, and I made one little post about a pay raise I got, and inexplicably, someone I worked with saw it and reported it to another person I wasn't friends with, and it got all the way back to my manager. I didn't get in trouble, per se, but that taught me to keep both lives separate.

I changed my employment to "Fay Canoes" a while back and every co-worker is blocked from seeing any status I write, so as far as the profile looks to them, I've never posted to FB lol. there's a few ex-co workers who left the company who I unblocked because tehy're trustworthy.

most of my friends don't even know the name of where I work. and it's a terrible company name so I'm happy with that.

my only slipup was when I saw the black metal band Mayhem live and posted a video of it including me drunkenly flailing to them, and I mistakenly set the privacy to "All Friends", and left off the coworkers group from teh list of exclusions, and one of my colleagues (who used to be a metalhead) laughed about how "someone here went to a cool concert last night".

lol @ fay canoes ... it took me a while to get it, embarrassingly enough.

while I genuinely take pride in the org I work for (part-time, I still have a lot of freelance work), non-profit culture (at least here in the US) generally expects you to list your employer on FB (and social media) and do outreach (and often fundraising) for your employer via your social network. ... I've seen a lot of awkwardness around this, esp. when the org gets called out for something. An org I used to work for had a problem of this type, (actually two of them did, but one was a large museum and my position, when I worked there, was on-call so I didn't have the same affiliation) and when that happened, I was so fucking glad I no longer worked there and could just not be involved in the drama.

xp Mayhem slays ftw

ya they do. i was embarrassed for my boss to see how much a fool I typically acted.

in my old job, I didn't train except for small pockets of year, so if a cool show wasn't coming to FL, but was coming to ATL during the week, I'd take a Megabus there, stay overnight, and work from the hotel/a library.

She's started replying to my emails with "Have a blessed day!"

You could start saying “have a heeeaaavenleeeyy daayyyy” back to her in a really pandering tone if you really wanted to get under her skin. Or maybe she’ll get the reference and love it. Who knows.

This week is really testing me, struggling with feeling like I'm a punching bag at work. As I've mentioned before, I work tangentially related to construction projects, an inherently inconvenient process that at times requires annoying disruption, so I'm no stranger to fielding and responding to complaints. An annoying, time consuming part of the job, but it's part of the job.

All that said, holy shit, the entitlement and rudeness level of people is off the charts right now and it's really making it difficult to turn up day after day doing my best. Every morning I log in to a barrage of not just complaints, but complaints that really personally directed at me as if I individually am ruining their professional lives. And I wish that was flowery language I was adding for dramatic effect, but "these delays are ruining our lives and abilities to perform our duties" was a direct quote from one of this morning's gems. The delays in question? The "softer" lounge chairs they requested to replace the seating in the break room have been on backorder from the manufacturer.

I guess this is hardly unique to me, people seem to have gone collectively batshit over the course of the pandemic in all areas of life, but damn if this isn't just making my job a pure misery most days.

I made one little post about a pay raise I got, and inexplicably, someone I worked with saw it and reported it to another person I wasn't friends with, and it got all the way back to my manager. I didn't get in trouble, per se,

That's good because penalizing employees for disclosing their pay is ILLEGAL.

The delays in question? The "softer" lounge chairs they requested to replace the seating in the break room have been on backorder from the manufacturer.

ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh sorry

Thanks, in isolation it's easy enough to laugh at something plainly ridiculous like that, but when it's frequent and coupled with other abuse, it gets more wearying than anything else.

It was illuminating to be told by two different people this week that I am personally responsible for the global supply chain issues affecting the delivery of audio-visual control equipment.

jon, my last job was “tangentially related to construction” as well and I can totally relate to the toxicity. So much of it was caused by knowingly unrealistic deadlines set by clients/management.

jon, my last job was “tangentially related to construction” as well and I can totally relate to the toxicity. So much of it was caused by knowingly unrealistic deadlines set by clients/management.

whoops

Yeah, throw academia into the mix and it gets even worse.

admin to new department head hire: "we are so glad to have you here! we will give you anything you need to get your group/lab/team up and running!"

admin to me: "build out this space for the new hire but the budget we're giving you will only cover roughly 1/12th of what we promised them and you have to deliver that message, good luck, byeeeeeeeee"

Damn it, brimstead, these double posts are ruining our lives and abilities to perform our duties!

Yeah that extra scrolling I had to do was painful and just ruined the rest of the day.

That's good because penalizing employees for disclosing their pay is ILLEGAL.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Wednesday, July 27, 2022 11:03 AM bookmarkflaglink

yep (though at the time, I didn't actually realize that, though I suspect my manager did).

the person who ratted on me is an insufferable conservative Rick Scott-voting asshole who would call her son during lunch, yell at him for 20 minutes, and bang her desk disruptively in anger. and who would go to HR any time she got any performance feedback from her manager, to get it rescinded.

sorry you're on the receiving of that shit, jon. like who gaf about the break room chairs being late.

so that new bit of technology I bitched about weeks ago. What great design and innovation, now that I've gotten to learn more about it.

Old process:

Can request access with batch Excel file containing company IDs

Get instant confirmation that access has been processed, or reason it could not be processed (i.e. already had access)

Email goes out to approvers and the individual who gained access

Access effective immediately

Non-approvers who submit requests sends the approval request to a queue, where it sits indefinitely until processed

New process:

Can request access with batch Excel file but it's not working yet and requires much more info

People with an account on the new server just need client access requested, those without must have an account requested AND client access

^If you choose the wrong option for this person, it will let you submit the task, but absolutely nothing will process, and there will be no error message or warning that the submission didn't go through.

Access takes 30+ minutes to go through from time of approval.

If non-approver requests, it is sent to approvers, but if approvers don't approve the access within a half hour, it is automatically denied and must be re-submitted

oh fuck today. so somehow, none of the managers input the 8 hours of time worked last week for 6 new hires. they didn't realize this until like, today, when we've already passed the cutoff for this week's paycheck. so none of them are getting paid this week (which I'm still fairly sure is illegal and plan to whistleblow on) and it's going to be paid to them two weeks late. which, ok, it's a small check, but some of them may have been counting on it.

none of them made a formal statement or apology to the six, and my instructors got peppered with questions about it. when I asked if anybody could reach out to the 6 and send a formal statement/apology/explanation, I got an eyeroll GIF sent back to me.

.....................

this is how we treat new hires now. fantastic.

WONDER WHY EVERYBODY QUITS.