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

Emailed my department chair three times about the same issue, a somewhat urgent one for me as it regards class load and pay in the fall, and haven’t received a response. One email in April, one in May, and another last Friday.

I am going to text him this Friday, but feel as if that, too, will be ignored.

send an email with return receipt, and then an email with the subject "If you reject the return receipt request and read this email and ignore it, I will swallow your soul (EOM)" and no body

there is a dark comedy to be made about this one place I started working (again) ...

i've read a couple fiction books about office culture/life that feel like are inspired to similar workplaces to some of y'all (currently reading And Then We Came To the End)

we should make a movie that only 3 of us would appreciate about this

got asked to give feedback on a set of modules, said I probably couldn't get to it (because I'm slammed), so they of course extended deadline rather than just use the feedback of the other two.

well, I'm glad they did because the other reviewers let two quiz questions with COMPLETELY INCORRECT answers listed go by without a single note.

i get one person missing something but how did two people?

xp lol -- my best friend works in that capacity for a large corporation (designing courseware and tests to evaluate/assess competence) and -- from what he tells me, the fact that two people missed it is ... lol "par for the course"

also quizzes/test questions that are stupid and badly written that numerous people who are his bosses don't grasp are "not good"

no one cares and if the trainees fuck up by following the course literally, management will either never notice or put it on them, despite the fact they were trained wrong

the game remains the same, it’s not like we’re training the C-suite and even if you did, they’d just fire you if they fucked up something where you trained them correctly

a bit cynical this week, sorry

someone will inevitably decide it's crucial that the wheel get reinvented in a year or two

IRS changed the regulations for withholding changes for ongoing Pension annuity payments this year. I updated our training guide for facilitators to change the exercises to incorporate this, spent a lot of time doing it.

someone randomly posted a new version of this guide a month ago that completely reverted every single one of my changes, which I only found out today as they started to go over this section.

i swear to god....

i got to hear more from my friend about his stupid annoying co-workers in training/accreditation -- and you are not alone ...

still no response from my department chair

wish them happy father's day lol

I’m texting his personal number tomorrow. I think there may be some political stuff happening in the department to which I’m not privy, and which might be keeping him otherwise occupied.

that's probably true ... it's the classic "I don't know what to tell you, so I am not responding" tactic that is characteristic of bureaucratic cultures everywhere

i just took the most massive detour out of work, a really laborious long route round, to avoid bumping into the CEO and a consultant who i could see further down the way. as a consequence of this ended up also having to wait by the corner of a building “checking my phone” to avoid some other not really that stupid or annoying co-workers with whom i’d just said i couldn’t go out for a drink due to needing to get home (a lie, i just didn’t want to go).

being an adult is grebt

I do that all the time w/ neighbors I don't want to get caught up in a chat with

live on a terrace so you just tend to bump into each other. one of them is an extremely colourless man who keeps ambushing me with v moribund conversation as if we’re stuck at a wedding or funeral. the other side is fine. we talked about shoes just yesterday.

want to hear from table how it went with the chair!

are we all sitting down for this?

he's probably got a lot on his plate.

i hope they finally folded

He apologized and then told me I was correct about a department debate that took place earlier this year. I’m still trying to find a way to not teach there this fall.

knives out?

Minor complaint because he's an otherwise great guy so far, but a relatively new person in our office is the sloooooooooooooooooooowest talker.

oh geeeeeez, there was a guy like that who was the property manager/super at one of our client sites (he still is, I think, but I am not involved in that project in the same capacity as I was 2 years ago) ... between him and my extremely verbose co-worker, every conversation took way longer than I felt necessary.

Yeah, every time he comes over to ask a question I know there's 15 minutes of my day gone.

meanwhile, at another job, they received grant funding so that they can pay volunteers to staff/manage events at the space, which is good because they've always had trouble retaining good volunteers. Paying people helps with retention.

One of the volunteers who was feeling burnt out suddenly, with the promise of pay, is more enthusiastic to work on events. I'll call this volunteer, Volunteer A.
When news circulated about this grant funding and event volunteers getting paid, a volunteer who had quit last fall, Volunteer B, suddenly resurfaces and says, "I would be willing to come back and work events if I got paid." ... Volunteer B had been paid last summer for some events work.

And of course, the reason for posting this, is that Volunteer A and Volunteer B don't get along ... or if they do, it's totally surface-level, because they shit-talk one another to me. Volunteer B believes that Volunteer A is incompetent and irresponsible. Volunteer A believes that Volunteer B is "not all that" and exaggerates their degree of skill and value, and is also mean.

They are both adults. It reminds me that adults often exhibit "childish" behavior.

Yeah, while I've always encountered adults that act like children over the years, I've run into a significantly higher number of them since working in an academia adjacent job.

Meanwhile, I've now had the same coworker twice call me when I'm in a meeting, leave no voicemail and immediately text me to call him "as soon as I possibly can". Both times when I've called him back, it was to tell me that he is about to send me an email.

Good grief, just send me the damned email.

it makes me wonder how they have been trained/cultured to communicate like that? As in, why don't they just send the email? Is it a weird thing about this one person or is there some culture where their behavior is the norm?

Volunteer A will text me asking for my advice about what to say in emails to other people about things that I am not actually involved in and aren't really "my problem" ... and I'm nice about it, like, I don't want to be an asshole, but ... unless it's some highly fraught issue or something technical or legal where specific wording and phrasing are actually crucial? ... Why can't people just write their own damn emails and send them like nbd ... idgi

It's certainly not a cultural thing that I've encountered here, maybe he brought it from an old job. And neither time was like he was trying to give me a heads up about bad news, both times they were just informational emails. It's weird.

it would drive me up the wall ... i would end up doing the thing where i would ignore communication from this person except for the actual emails, and then only respond to those. ... as in, if that was my preferred mode of communication and the most productive form of communication.

that call to alert a forthcoming (?!) email thing is insane

I learned that some coworkers prefer if you mention you're going to invite them to a meeting and that's a new one to me? Just schedule it at a sane time and put enough info in the invite for me to draw a conclusion of why I'm being invited and what's going to be discussed

unless they are asking you if you'd prefer not to be invited? otherwise, yeah ... though, my co-worker has his google calendar set up so that he automatically accepts all invitations to meetings ... and my view of his calendar doesn't show what the meetings are ... it just shows the times and "busy" ... so in reality, I have no idea whether he is actually attending a meeting, only that someone invited him to something that it is highly possible he didn't even look at because of the automation.

he also has "recurring meetings" that actually don't happen, which I have to cognitively pretend aren't on the calendar ... like he had a recurring weekly meeting with a city official who was fired about a year ago ... he does not have a recurring meeting with the current person in that position ... the meeting is still on his calendar!

at that point, yeah, just contact him any time

it's more like, someone will ask me if he is available to do something at a specific time and I will have to honestly say I have no fucking idea what his schedule is!

Things had been fine for awhile with this relatively recent hire (for the record, she is exactly the same position and title as me), but lately she's been back to her method of firing off directives to me as if she's my boss. Never framed as a question or a conversation, just emails where she directs me to meet with people (on her behalf, for her projects, because she can't for one reason or another) and copies in a ton of people, including my actual boss. It's not that I mind helping her out and often times I'm able to step in to offer some assistance, but her tone and commands are pissing me the fuck off.

Today's specific example was an email, sent to me, copied to fifteen other people saying, essentially, "since you will be in this building on your project, I need you to stop by and walk this other area and report back to me on the scope". No ask, no framing it as a question, just a command.

I'm torn on how to deal with this without coming across as whining about it. Had this been delivered to me as an in person, friendly ask, it's not a completely unreasonable request to the point where my boss would object to the use of my time. It's just the tone that really pisses me off, it feels really belittling and disrespectful.

so ... wait ... is this her job that she is asking you to do for her ... ?

Essentially, yes. In this case an issue popped up related to one of the projects she is managing. Since I'm going to be in the area of her project tomorrow, for a completely unrelated project of my own, she sent an email telling me (and copying in all of our outside contractors involved in her project) to meet with her team, walk the project and get back to her with the scope of the issue.

Obviously you need to tit-for-tat this shit ASAP. Find something you can shove onto her plate and do it.

Don't be petty about it — do it in the exact same tone she uses with you, like "OK, if this is how things work now, here's one for you."

I like that idea, but she's kind of got me stuck on this one. I could just send something to her to do, but I'm nearly 100% certain she would just sit on it to make me look bad. To make the tit-for-tat have any teeth, I'd have to copy in several of the same people she copied on her email to me and I fear that would just come across as petty (especially to my actual boss).

Check and mate.

Just say "since this is your project, that is outside the scope of my position."

then fart on her

Probably email her and your boss back and say that you are occupied with what’s on your plate (if you can get away with the embellishment) and ask that going forward, next time she needs you doing her job for her that she request your assistance directly instead of a mass email.