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

I finally got a reply from true/false woman, edited for anonymity:

"if you tick no states false. So does false mean we haven't "xxxx blah blah blah" and true mean we have?

What do you reckon?

OK wow, what the heck, how does this woman get dressed of a morning?!

STATEMENT 1: Statement 2 is true
STATEMENT 2: Statement 1 is false

this one dept we use makes mistake after mistake, but if they make one to report it to em we have to fill out a stupid ticket rather than the old system where we'd open the original ticket. screw that -- you open the ticket after I report it to you by reopening the old issue. or stop making mistakes. uRHGGGGGGGGGHHHH.

Actually if you actually use the word 'actually' one more time I might actually scream, actually.

i had a co worker that got promoted to being my boss (when i had my job) and um, whenever he'd talk he'd, ummmmm - in meetings and stuff - just um say "umm" waaay too much. i asked him to try to not do it before a conference call once, to no avail. i always thought it sounded unprofessional and i was worried it might give vendors an impression we had no idea what we were doing. oh well.

why is it that when someone gives you an instruction, whether verbally or written, and you don't follow it as written, you get called out for it (and rightfully so)...but when the tables are turned, and when you've not only provided written instructions, but held a meeting prior to discuss these expectations, and the person still does it wrong, oh they acknowledge the instructions were there but "I'm sorry, I've been so busy, I guess I overlooked it".

No no no no no...if I don't get to use that excuse, neither do you. Nor is it an excuse I ever would use as it's ridiculous.

"omg they should make a reality show out of our office!"

"make that funny noise / do your impression of coworker x!"

I've grown to accept that my coworkers will have the worst sense of humor known to man and will only be able to speak in pop culture references

How to liven up tedious conference calls with dull people (only works if you are alone in your office at the time):

Load up one of those sound effect search engines (http://www.findsounds.com/ etc) and then find and play random noises during the call. It completely derails things in a way that makes the meeting bearable.

don't give me ideas dude, lol

Hi, thank you for telling a manager that you thought the project would be held up by me not sending you files fast enough when I've sent you everything you asked for by the deadlines you gave; sure the next stage is threatening to be a massive disaster, but not cz I can't perform my job description of getting data out of the database and into spreadsheets, more because the people who are meant to put the data in the database in the first place have spent the past 20 years not doing so

note to future data monkeys: just give them the sparse and useless information in the database and then stick yr fingers in your ears and go "ain't my lookout" instead of pointing out the shortcomings and trying to discuss ways round them, because asking questions is just heel-dragging, and by querying anything you accept responsibility for everything that might go wrong

you just described a lot of pain points I experience, too. feel ya :/

"See, I can’t watch exorcism movies because I’m a lapsed Catholic. Halloween's scary because it's plausible. A guy could escape from the mental hospital and go around hacking everybody up! A guy who invades your dreams? Who’s been dead? Not plausible. But your soul being possessed by Satan? Plausible.”

you should hum in latin at your desk, and do weird physical rituals daily. then one day, up the ante by making a fake Necronomicon and leaving it at your desk when you go to lunch.

then have a fake phone conversation one day saying "no, it HAS TO BE A VIRGIN, he won't accept it otherwise....." then mumble indecipherably.

I volunteer to do some work this week for someone else as I am ahead of schedule on another project. It comes in, I'm happy cuz it's not difficult and will keep me busy this week. I begin to look at what I'm given, and realize none of the info I need to do the work is ready to go from the person I'm helping. (And I'm not hyperbolizing here -- not one item of the pre-work was ready).

Person is 'unaware' that they had to do these tasks first, and asks me if I can do the work with what's there. I want to reply "That's like challenging me to a game of one-on-one basketball without a hoop or a ball" but I decline.

So I get saddled with trying to salvage the entire thing, and to say I'm furious is putting it mildly.

though I'm not taking it, either. i made the other person do all communicating to get the additional info i need.

While I'm still very grateful to even have a job now, let alone one I really like, I am trying hard to wrap my brain around the girl that sits behind me and eats only popcorn all day every day. Three or four bags a day. Which, fine, different strokes. Except she likes it burnt. So the office is overwhelmed with burnt popcorn smell four times a day. And, for me, there is more nauseating smell in the world.

"no more"

burnt popcorn smell never goes away and is the worst. Why do people eat that at work?

related: I know you ate your desk but you can still throw the fast food trash out in the lunch room so we don't have to smell it for the rest of the afternoon.

we had that problem so bad that popping popcorn is forbidden on any floor but the ground floor, where the cafeteria is.

I have a suspicion that this guy just passive-aggressively "forgot" to do his part on an project that I included him on because I rejected one of his ideas about how the assignment should be structured.

related: I know you ate your desk

I guess s/he needed some extra fiber.

Seriously, anyone living on nothing but popcorn is going to get pretty damn sick - its nothing but fibre and salt. Hello, scurvy!

Yes, coworker, let's keep interrupting and complaining about off-topic items on a meeting that has already run 20 minutes over, and when the thing you're complaining about IS NOT UNIQUE TO YOU!

I also dislike the people who wish to back into their parking spaces, but don't know how to do it, so they drive through one parking space to get to the other side and park. I once almost got hit by some idiot that did that.

Similarly, the idiots that use the parking lots as driving lanes and drive through them rather than the designated lanes. If the lot is empty, ok whatever, but when it's at the height of its activity, no drivers are looking for you when you're doing that!

Jesus lady. Take the minutes, don't take the minutes, nobody else cares if they happen or not. But don't bully someone else into taking them, then whinge that they don't include everything on your own copious notes which you always write anyway, and stop them being sent out until you've rewritten them, which you then don't do for a month (by which time any information on them is either irrelevant or obvious to everyone), and then have a massive hissyfit about how long it takes you.

EVERY. TIME. This has happened at least ten times with at least five different people taking apparently inadequate minutes. Fucking hell.

(I should know better than to check my work email from home, yes? I already had an earful of this all day and all yesterday and now I have an inboxful too)

lady sounds like the type who writes Powerpoints in paragraph format and overexplains things

A critique of your powerpoint that you have to give in front of the company president is not fairly comparable to the McCarthy hearings.

I hate co-workers that can't take feedback. the one major chewout I've ever gotten I treated as a valuable learning experience.

what should have taken approx. 1.5 hrs max has now evolved into a multi day project, due to the total spazz idiot airhead that i've been stuck working with on this thing. she set the times for us to meet yet was still 90mins late monday and 40mins late today. she talked my boss into making her a part of this project that was MY idea and which i already had worked out, and all the things she told our boss she could contribute have turned out to be TOTAL BULLSHIT. ugh.

Point that out to boss! Or dont you want to be a dobber.

Jesus lady. Take the minutes, don't take the minutes, nobody else cares if they happen or not. But don't bully someone else into taking them, then whinge that they don't include everything on your own copious notes which you always write anyway, and stop them being sent out until you've rewritten them, which you then don't do for a month (by which time any information on them is either irrelevant or obvious to everyone), and then have a massive hissyfit about how long it takes you.

EVERY. TIME. This has happened at least ten times with at least five different people taking apparently inadequate minutes. Fucking hell.

(I should know better than to check my work email from home, yes? I already had an earful of this all day and all yesterday and now I have an inboxful too)

You should have known what you were getting in to when you started working at Nine Year Old Girls R Us.

xp ugh it's this weird situ where my boss just lets this spazz get away with anything - she is so fuckin flaky (eg. she didn't turn up for an afternoon shift starting at 2pm bc she SLEPT THRU HER ALARM) and unreliable and air-headed but she gets really easily butthurt and makes a point of letting everyone know that she is special bc a) her dad died 3yrs ago and b) she is bi-polar and has ADD.

thing is, my boss is also totally fuckin flaky so they are like two peas in a pod. this is the same boss who thinks it would seem 'desperate' to advertise the fact that we manufacture our clothing locally (and this is in berkeley, the fcukin hippieorganiclocavore capital of the world).

oh man, Berkeley, say no more.

(Don't) Putting Spaz

I also dislike the people who wish to back into their parking spaces, but don't know how to do it, so they drive through one parking space to get to the other side and park. I once almost got hit by some idiot that did that.

I do this allllll the tiiiiime! or would if i drove more than once a year. it's not to do with backing in, it's to do with getting a quick exit! would have to be pretty unlucky and unobservant to be in danger of hitting someone coming from the other direction imo.

would have to be pretty unlucky and unobservant to be in danger of hitting someone

^from the man who doesn't look behind him when changing lanes iirc

encyclopedantic^

yeah I subscribed to the jaymc.xls mailshot

I stand by all of my manoeuvres - only thing I've ever crashed into was stationary and right in front of me. (of course I realise i'm not doing myself any favours with this argument.)

backing in is fine, but driving through the spot to the other side=NO NO NO. someone almost hit me doing that once here, and took a spot that I had a right to! I shoulda hit him, cuz I woulda collected nice $$$$ on that.

also coworker why do you keep asking me what I mean by these notes when I've told you multiple times in the past that these notes aren't written by me, but by your superior. Makes you look pretty dumb that you don't even understand your own department's MO.

would have to be pretty unlucky and unobservant to be in danger of hitting someone

^from the man who doesn't look behind him when changing lanes iirc

― meta the devil you know (onimo), Thursday, September 23, 2010 10:50 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

saw ledge's post and also thought of that changing lanes thread straight away. scary stuff ledge.

God I'm trying not to begin the day on a cranky note but it's next to impossible when a certain someone keeps asking me questions about notes LEFT BY PEOPLE IN HER OWN DEPARTMENT. And this is not the first, second, third, or even fourth time I've told her, no, this is not my note, it is your project lead's, please see HIM if you have questions about how this works.

Not to mention that it's sad that you don't know how your own department's process works...but even worse that you go to someone outside of it to ask!!!

we got some paranoid people in the bathrooms here. i keep finding these toilet paper "flags" in the stalls in two places: one to fill the small gap between the door and the wall panel, and one to fill the gap in the back of the stall wall.

These things look like they take 5 minutes to take each. Why? To tackle the obvious clear and present danger of the person in the next stall craning his head back to watch you take a dump? It's ridiculous and a waste of toilet paper!

Wd sooner have my eyes pinned open for 72 sleepless hours of the worst of rotten.com than see any of my coworkers take a dump

yea but in order to do it in this stall, you'd have to crane your next back almost in a sleeping position, or if you were at a urinal, would have to look to the right and duck. I mean these guys are protecting themselves against an evil that doesn't exist!

"You're coming to lunch at 12.30 right?"
"um... first Ive heard of it. I actually had plans.."
*whining* "noooo I'm not taking no for an answer, COME TO LUNCH"
"Uh dude I was going to be shopping on my lunchbreak..."
"you can go shopping after lunch!"

Dude, are you even listening to yourself!? Gah. I hate pushy people. I said no, I don't have to justify why or be talked out of it. Fuck off.