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

Boss:"Ronan could you comb your hair next time you come to work"

Me:"eh in fairness the contract doesn't say anything about me having to comb my hair"

Boss:"yeah but I mean you're a student now yeah? this job isn't so bad. they look after you well, it's a good wage, I'm happy with my lot"

Me:"I don't think there's any chance of me ever working here for a living, long term"

Boss:"Yeah and they pay your health insurance, it's not too difficult a job either"

Me:"Yeah no I'm never going to want to work here, to be honest I was planning on quitting as soon as I start college, or maybe even sooner, you needn't tell the main boss that"

Boss:"Oh don't worry, whatever is discussed here stays here. *long David Brent style lecture* I know what it's like to work WITH people and AROUND people, and I know that this station is not being run as effectively as possible, it's a clique, and I'm sure you can see that too Ronan. But quitting isn't going to change that. You quitting will not make this a smoother operation.

Me:"Eh I don't care about this job, I'm not sure what your point is"

Boss:"All I'm saying is, think about what I've said to you yeah? Just think about it"

Me:"............ok"

CEBCWTJCW: Morning Rachel!!! Oooh! What have you done to your NOSE??

Me: What? Oh yeah, it's a spot.

CEBCWTJCW: No! You've cut yourself or something! It's really RED.

Me: No, really, it's just a big, shiny, noticeable spot.

CEBCWTJCW: It looks really BAD!

At this point I gave up all hope of having a good day.

Woman At Next Desk: Oh, you used to live in London? So did I. I moved back after my daughter started school and, to be honest, I'm really glad I did. The education you get in London is terrible.

Madchen: I've heard inner city schools are, er, challenging.

WAND: Oh yes. I mean, she was one of only three white faces in the class.

Madchen: Oh. (Mutters something under her breath about 1 in 4 Scots).

Office twats who preface statements with 'I'm not being funny' should recognise that everything following the phrase comes with its own virtual kill file.

My other suggestion would be to canvass other coworkers for a pizza delivery one Friday and exclude her blatantly.

I work in a room with two people. Person 1 said to me all the stuff I wrote above. She thought nothing of saying it to a stranger (the assumption, I guess, being that I would think the same). Person 2 laughed along merrily. Also, I have come across numerous people in Glasgow who tell me they get scared in London because there are so many black people around. Again, the way they express themselves implies they feel no sense of shame whatsoever - they just don't see there's anything wrong in expressing obviously prejudiced opinions.

I'm not denying for a second that racism doesn't exist elsewhere (and I'm not forgetting that the survey found 3 in 4 Scots aren't racist) but this is the only place I've encountered bigots who have the expectation that my opinion must be the same as theirs.

reply from me: "actually, on Friday we both determined that we had the wrong CD and would have to special order a new copy. On Monday."

reply from my boss: "There must have been some miscommunication here."

yeah, between your ears and your brain. moron!

What the fuck?

Despite the fact that she's obviously still pregnant.

However, I AM authorized to purchase them, however I want, whenever I want.

What does that even mean?

SUBJECT LINE: I gotta get outta this place
...if it's the last thing I ever do (feel free to hum along.)

After a delightful morning spent discussing why someone:
1. Shouldn't open a printer paperfeed drawer, while the printer is printing;
2. Shouldn't send emails to everyone on their mailing lists about Church-related emails;
3. Should let others know when they need the printer instead of deleting documents in the queue;
4. Shouldn't tell someone "this is urgent" so they work really late to get it finished, when really, it isn't urgent at all and in fact, doesn't need to be done at all; and
5. Shouldn't take someone else's lunch from the refrigerator and leave it on the counter to make room for "extra drinks in case we have visitors,"
I have now experienced the conversation to top them all (and really, you have to laugh at this one. I did. Once I calmed down, imbibed chocolate and nicotine, and thought "well, at least it's not quantum physics?). So....here it is:

A Dialogue between "M" (yours truly) and "S" (Otherwise known as Scarett/Princess/Arch Nemesis/The Scarf Lady/etc.)
S: Hey "M"!
M: Yes?
S: You know how to work that digital camera yet?
M: Yeah, figured it out last week.
S: How long does it take to get those photos developed?
M: What?
S: I need some photos really fast, so I can photocopy them and make notes on the back. And get duplicates too, in case they get messed-up.
M: What? What pictures do you need taken?
S: I need to you take pictures of my computer.
M: Why?
S: I need to know what's on my computer.
M: (sigh) You are looking for a file?
S: No, I need to know what is on my screen thing.
M: (dawning awareness) You need screen captures?
S: No, I need pictures of my computer.
M: For....?
S: I need to know what's on my screen, 'cause these instructions don't make sense and I want to make notes.
M: Okay, then you need a picture of the information on your screen, that you can print and add notes to?
S: Yes.
M: Okay, we don't need the camera for that. We can just do screen captures. It's easy.
(M walks over to other office, taking deep and soothing breathes all the while, and explains how to "CTRL+ALT+PrtScn" - runs into trouble with explanation of holding down all keys at the same time. Eventually resolved and screen is captured.)
M: Now open Word and set the page to ?Landscape.?
S: My computer won't do that.
M: What? Yes it will.
(M goes through brief discussion of "portrait" vs "landscape" and how to perform operation in Word. Discovers part of problem is that S doesn?t know how to open Word because the icon isn?t on her desktop.)
M: Now just hit "Shift+Insert" and your screen shot will be inserted.
M: No, you need to hold down both keys at the same time.
M: I don't know, that's just the way the program is designed.
M: Yeah, it is find of frustrating.
M: Okay, now you have it. Just insert a new page for each of the next screen captures and then print the file.
(M returns to own desk and gets back into rhythm of formatting proposal.)
S: M! It isn't working. I want you to take the pictures for me.
M: I don't have time to take the pictures right now, I have to get this back to _____.
S: Well, I don't have the time to use the camera, so I guess this won't get done and _____ will be mad.
M: Yeah, I guess ___ will be mad, but I'll explain the problem to him.
S: Can't you do these thingys for me?
M: No, not right now. I have to get this done.
S: You know, it's your job to do this.
M: No, actually it isn't. I am sorry, but I really can't do it right now. If I have time later I'll come over and see what we can do. In the meantime, why don't you look under the "Help" menu to see if those instructions are better.
S: Oh, my computer doesn't have any "Help" on it. I keep telling ____ he needs to fix it, but he won't.

(M decides, for sake of sanity, to not try and figure out what that last comment means and returns to her editing, swearing all the while.)
End of original email.

And here are additional interesting tidbits about ?S?:
She claimed on her resume to be ?Microsoft Certified,? but was unable to explain what that meant;
She wrote all of her correspondence in Excel, because she didn?t know how to open Word (the icon wasn?t on her desktop);
When she came into work each morning, she made herself a pot of tea and sat in her cubicle reading household decorating magazines and drinking tea for the first two hours: and, best of all
She was once asked to provide a file that she had finished working on to another co-worker. The file was not on her hard drive for, as she explained, she ?didn?t want to fill it up with things? (and it was a 20 G HD!) File was eventually determined, by her, to be on a floppy. But floppy was blank when co-worker opened it. Eventually ?S? showed supervisor where she stored all of her floppys containing important info. She was attaching them to the metal parts of her cubicle with large magnets, so she ?could always find them.?

~ Laura (who is thankful that she can claim to be a happy rat, that abandoned the sinking ship in time to move to a much cushier and affluent ship, and is now ridiculously happy with things)

I've met a few people who have done basic "computer literacy" courses at colleges and Adult Ed. places who do this. What seems to happen is: the college says "don't store your files on the hard drive [of our lab computers], use a floppy" and the person absorbs this without understanding *why* they're being told it.

These sort of courses always seem to produce people who can't do anything except exactly what was on the course, and then only if their computer is set up exactly like the college ones were. Hence, not being able to start Word if it doesn't have a desktop icon.

(of course, the other stuff shows that this person seems to be a fuckwit regardless of that)

The ex-receptionist at my office once printed out an email so she could type it up in Word.

it's a sappy day.

1. "What does agriculture mean?"

2. "I was so annoyed. Someone threw themselves under my tube yesterday. People that do that must be mad."

3. Me: "Just tell them to put the web address in and it will take them straight into the site."

Her: "What address? Their address?"

Other things he did: worked at his cube standing up (making everyone around him very tense), unbuttoned his shirts halfway down his chest, commented on every phone conversation I had (work related or not), talked to himself, and played horrible CD-Rs of cabaret tunes he wrote and produced. I think the whole experience inoculated me against ever being annoyed by co-workers again.

Unfortunately something this stupid is uttered in my office at least once a day...

Did they misspell their name?

yes, ask me a question when you know I'm in a meeting and then use my obvious non-response as a green light and start communicating to everybody that we might be doing this thing because I haven't objected as of yet.

like wtf, wasn't even a meeting I was attending, I was presenting.

nobody's access works today

check ticket - it was closed weeks ago, says granted.

check roster the creator attached - it was the wrong one for a completely different class.

report this in ticket. both the person working on it and creator ignore the note.

in MS Teams chat, I point out same thing - again, comment ignored, they tell me 'have everybody try again', even though nobody provided the correct roster.

it's going to wind up being me creating the roster myself at this point because i'm talkin to a wall!

so that guy from yesterday, his mistake cost us hours of headache, and he wasn't really all that apologetic.

today, he informs me at 3 pm that tomorrow's new class is half-filled with hires with incorrect hire dates in the system, meaning they probably won't be able to access their systems today or tomorrow. we have plenty of case history on what happens in this situation and it is almost always "falling 4+ hours behind schedule PLUS people quitting because of the really bad first impression", and I point this out and ask if we can delay class start by one day.

get told "no, this client paid a lot of money for this special class and the 2nd round of training has to start on time, sorry". so....the client paying all that money wasn't enough to motivate you to prevent this problem from happening in the first place, just to tell me 'no' so it becomes my problem. got it.

he's now denied our final appeal saying 'oh we are actually fixing it right now and pretty sure nothing bad is going to come of it'. will cop to being a chicken little if he's right, but...he rarely is.

there's a status report email that has to go out twice a week for each training class. my instructors failed to send it the first time it was due, so I asked them to send it on Friday. they sent me a copy to review and I gave feedback and said they were good to send, and ...nothing.

this morning, one of them insists it was sent, so I ask for a copy, as they must not have CCed me, and I need it for recordkeeping. First, one of them sends me the email they sent to me for peer review, so I say "no, I need the one you sent to the managers". I get sent another random email.

losing patience, I go to the manager who it was supposed to be sent to and say can you send it to me, she sends me two completely unrelated emails.

3 hours later I still don't have the thing I asked for and I wonder if this is an elaborate ruse to cover up the fact that it didn't get sent. lol

Update - that is...exactly...what happened. smh

Just extremely tired of my own coworkers causing roadblocks.

Tomorrow morning I had three back to back meetings on three different projects, all with the same consultant, but different project managers for each. All thee projects are in key crunch times and these were important meetings. This morning I received phone calls from all three said project managers, all saying that my colleague scheduled a meeting during that same time tomorrow, so now I am left frantically rescheduling three different meetings with about 20 different people.

Just an observation: whenever this thread gets a new answer, I assume either Neanderthal or jvc2.0 are the posters.

In the staff canteen. Table of four people just in front of me: attractive younger woman and three older verging on middle aged guys. It's like a Fast Show sketch with the men all trying to impress the woman. A lot of horribly awkward conversations and low level flirting going on. Truly a revolting spectacle!

They're talking about films and the woman has just said she doesn't watch anything older than 2006(!) because that's "too old and the quality's shit".

My 16 year old son's cut off is 2000. For him, it's more that he does not want to watch something from a previous century.

At the risk of offending table for posting itt again...

I realize this is a really petty thing, but it bugs me. Due to the nature of my job, a lot of our intense work is done over the summer. At the end of the summer, our department's website is updated to highlight some of the work we've accomplished. It's one of the rare times we ever step back to acknowledge a job well done and I like (in theory) that we do it. Except this is now the fourth straight year that none of my projects made the cut to be displayed. I get it, due to my past experience and skill sets my work tends to lean towards the utilitarian and highly specific research spaces that aren't always glamorous or show-offy.

But I gotta say, I am annoyed for another September where I have to listen to my coworkers get kudos from other folks outside our department about their hard work while, once again, my work goes unnoticed and unremarked upon.

Like I said, it's petty and there is a lesson in here to learn about still doing good work because that's what you should do regardless of recognition, but I won't lie that it's not another hit to my morale and general enthusiasm for putting in the long hours again.

I don’t think that’s petty, and I also am not annoyed by your posts itt— I was simply remarking that it is usually you or Neando posting. That’s fine! More an observation than a gripe—

and tbh, the reality is that I want you both to be happier and find jobs without such annoying, stupid coworkers.

I also used to post in here a lot and now I realise its because I was so unhappy in the jobs I was in at that time, every little thing grated. I've had no cause to post in here in a long time because my company/current role is actually pretty smooth sailing.

Now it’s my turn: one of my jobs is desk staff and adult coach at a climbing gym. I am the oldest person on staff. One of my co-workers, a new guy who just turned 18, came in yesterday and within two minutes I noticed he had a cough. I gave him a mask, and wore one myself for most of my shift. He said he felt like it was just a cold and that he needed the money, and didn’t even know that people are still getting Covid.

Gotta say: many people are fucking oblivious, and he is certainly among them. Nice enough, but knows nothing… and yes, I was 18 once too, but I was pretty interested in the world around me.

I have to present to colleagues about stochastic monte-carlo mean regressive modeling soon.

I am terrified how many questions I am going to get that are basically "well, according to my thoughts that shouldn't happen". It is about as pure as math can math. It happens because it absolutely *can* happen, because it is probabilistically possible and is a function of the inputs.

Which is also probably why you don't get to dick around with it.

Though I am pretty sure they all hate me for replying with short answers about a problem within ten minutes, then spending a day or so to prove I was precisely correct on my hunch.

Thinking about the co-worker who was fired for urinating in a bin in a prison visiting room during a security lockdown (we do prison health education, among other things).

Thanks table, yeah oblivious people are everywhere.

I wish I had less to post about itt, or rather I wish it was more just the typical obnoxious coworker stuff and not stuff coming from the top.

To make sure I had the full scope of the issue with our website, I spoke to the person who does the actual updates to our website. They confirmed that no, there are not other updates and yes, it was my new(ish) manager who made the specific decision on which projects were included. I just wanted to be able to confirm this wasn't a phased roll-out or something. So now I'm not sure what to do with this information, but my manager did specifically make the decision to exclude all of my projects, and only mine. I probably should just let it go, but part of me fears this will be just another way I get marginalized if I don't at least advocate for myself.

tbh I'm actually content at my job now (after the nightmare of 2022, we hired like 8 more people and workload hasn't been a problem since), I just post war stories for funsies sometimes.

today's entry is more humorous - leadership decided to send people on this special project a fun little gift. including a candy bar, which they didn't insulate properly in the packaging, so a bunch of people got melted ass gifts.

i didn't get one but my boss's boss did and is laughing about it

Major scandal!

Some underling has apparently been thinks Colonel Dickrod is the bees knees and didn't enjoy my eye rolling.

I checked out a book on DJing for Dummies, returned it, and next thing you know boss says I have to pay for it because it had "ugly brown stains" on it.

Complete lie. The book was pristine when I returned it. I think she did it. I also think she took my leaving DJing for Dummies out in the open as a dig at both of them.

I'd say "why don't you just fuck Captain Horndog since you both suck but he has standards I guess".

Imagine gaslighting someone about spilling iced tea on a book when you did no such thing. I mean grow the fuck up.

On reflection I think I will just pay for the book and be nice and apologetic.

Not sure it's the boss' fault she was just the messenger.

Nobody likes underling she is clearly out if her depth. The question is are they going to be passive-aggressive about it.

did NOT have "removing a white trainer from teaching a class because he said in front of the class that he was friends with 'colored people'" on my 2024 Bingo card.

Memo to the very specific asshole who likes to sit in the bathroom for 20-30 minutes at a time causing others to have to leave the building and walk five minutes to the nearest building with employee access to use another, WE CAN HEAR THE VIDEOS YOU ARE WATCHING ON YOUR PHONE ALL THE WAY OUT IN THE HALL.

Who goes to the bathroom to watch videos? Internet addiction is so 1995.

I know it's the beginning of the end when superior comes in lying about his height and bragging about his athletic past : we're gonna have alpha male bullshit, time to look for another job. Happened last time, it's happening again.

Also I think you're faking it girly man.

So, for the seventh month in a row, we have run out of bottled water well before our next delivery date. This time, nearly two weeks early. This has been constantly and consistently pointed out to the person who orders our water every single time, yet somehow the size or our order just isn't changing? We have no other source of drinking water in our building - no bottle filler, no drinking fountain, nothing. The nearest accessible building with a bottle filler is about an eight minute walk from our building. So you better believe I'm making a big point of taking my sweet fucking time each time I need to fill my water bottle.

Quite frankly their lucky I'm not making an OSHA complaint.

Ah "they're", stupid autocorrect.

We always had plenty of bottled water when our admin person was in lust with the dude who delivered the water, if that helps.

we needed to meet with two of our systems analysts but they work in India so we have to schedule them early since their shifts often end while ours begin. boss schedules meeting - both him and I spaced on it the day of, so we rescheduled, which was difficult due to everybody's PTO schedules. he reschedules it for today, I gave myself a special reminder, went to bed earlier than usual, woke up, and....fucker didn't show AGAIN.

I knew what the meeting was about but did not have the document I needed to explain what we needed, and so I flailed like an idiot, and the audience was annoyed at having their time wasted. I didn't throw him under the bus as I don't believe in that but...fuck, man, like, he could have run the meeting w/out me if I didn't show, but not vice versa. I know I made the same goof he did the first time, but I corrected it - how the fuck do you miss YOUR OWN MEETING twice in one week?

and now I'm starting to realize how much his boss (who they laid off) really covered up his deficiencies. without her, he's falling apart

So, for the seventh month in a row, we have run out of bottled water well before our next delivery date. This time, nearly two weeks early. This has been constantly and consistently pointed out to the person who orders our water every single time, yet somehow the size or our order just isn't changing? We have no other source of drinking water in our building - no bottle filler, no drinking fountain, nothing. The nearest accessible building with a bottle filler is about an eight minute walk from our building. So you better believe I'm making a big point of taking my sweet fucking time each time I need to fill my water.

Section 29 of the Illinois Building Code — the table is in one of the earliest chapters… minimum requirements … anyway. My condolences

OK, I've been confused by that. Is there no kitchen sink type of space? I think a water filtration thing is nice but I have no qualms just filling up from the tap when that's broken at work. I wouldn't use a bathroom sink, though.

Ha sarahell, I actually found the same thing. Holding on to that the next time this happens. We're told it's been "addressed", but that remains to be seen.

Fwiw, we do have a kitchen sink with tap water but it really tastes "off" to me. Normally not opposed to tap water, but this seems not good.

Not a co-worker but I just need to say this somewhere

THESE ARE EXTREMELY SIMPLE INSTRUCTIONS THAT SURELY ANY GROWN ADULT CAN UNDERSTAND. WHY ARE YOU FUCKING ABOUT DOING SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE VERY SIMPLE INSTRUCTION I HAVE GIVEN YOU AND THEN COMPLAINING 'IT WON'T LET ME'?

The most stupid of my stupid coworkers loudly insists, at least twice a month, that she "can't" save Word docs as PDFs. She can, she just refuses to learn and remember the exceedingly simple process to do so, despite myself and two other coworkers showing her, so for the past four plus years every time she needs to turn a Word doc into a PDF she prints it out and scans it back in as a PDF to email to herself. And she probably does this 4-5 times a day.

It's a small thing that technically shouldn't impact me, but the wastefulness infuriates me.

lmao it's the easiest thing to do in Word

Literally a single, very self-explanatory thing to click! Yet, once again today, someone asked her about getting a PDF and she ranted about how she "can't". No one volunteers to help anymore, since it's easier and less painful to ram one's head through the nearest drywall.

ask her to create a calligraphed parchment next time

lol, I've never met a more hard-headed, resistant to change, refusing to adapt person in my life ever. when we got a new copier/scanner, she ranted for THREE WHOLE DAYS about having to learn a slightly different, and less cumbersome, sequence of buttons to tap to send a scanned document.

so she’s a fucking moron is what you’re saying

Oh, absolutely.

next time you have a chance, very quickly uninstall the print drivers from her computer.

an email reply from a third party vendor we work with wound up in Quarantine w/ no way to release it. wasn't a crucial message, just a response to an invite, so I let IT know so they could whitelist these emails, and got the rudest, snottiest response talking about how I was incorrect and they weren't going to blanket approve emails from this vendor/etc/etc.

responded: "so the solution is to have emails from approved third party business partners wind up in quarantine?". give snark, get snark.

the breakout room feature on Teams is great but there's one class we have w/ 3 people in it, and our trainer decided to put them in all one breakout room. that defeats the entire purpose - it'd be one thing if you were giving them a private room to work in outside of your line of vision, but you're in the room with them helping with the activity. there's literally no difference between a breakout room and the main room!

Feels like my new boss may suspect (not inaccurately btw) that I do almost nothing all day and is going to call me on it during a one-on-one meeting this morning (which has become a two-on-one meeting, as she's invited the boss I had been reporting to, before she was hired, to join the discussion). My current contract expires on 12/31, and they both say they want to keep me on for next year - the other boss and I had been in discussions about me going from contractor to full employee, but that never quite happened because... I don't know why, their focus was elsewhere, I guess. I'm getting emails from new boss that say things like, "It doesn't seem like the list of things you say you do adds up to 40 hours a week, can you give me a more detailed breakdown of how many hours you actually think you'll spend on Project A, Project B, and Project C in January through March?" (things get very busy starting in April) and part of me wants to flip the table, rhetorically speaking, and tell them "If you don't like the work I'm doing, just don't renew my contract, I don't care, fuck off," and go find a new job, but this one kind of fell in my lap and obviously the current ratio of salary to workload is very pleasing to me, and I'm not entirely sure I could find a new job right away. I mean, am I currently applying for other jobs? Yes, but that's because I want a second job, not a new job. Ugh, this is some bullshit.

The meeting didn't suck as hard as it could have, but it still sucked. They want me to start filling out timesheets indicating what I worked on on a given day; "We're not just going to automatically approve 40 hours per week anymore." Considering that I don't even get paid holidays, or paid sick days, my general feeling is they can suck it from the back. But on the plus side, my contract is being extended for another six months. And if they think I'm smart enough to do the work, but not smart enough to dummy up a timesheet... Hooray for capitalism!