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

if you really want to go crazy, learn how to press print screen and paste the screenshot into an email rather than requesting permission and $149 to buy screenshot software

sorry. *rips eyeballs out*

haha. the slooooooowly thing drives me NUTS but more than that, I'm usually sitting there like, is this how you interact with your computer every day? my immediate supervisor knows that keyboard shortcuts exist, he prefers not to use them. i'll be sitting at his desk, and he'll be showing me something in a paper, and he'll scroooollllll through the entire document (usually 40+ pages). i'm like, pleaaasse just hit ctrl-f and type in the phrase you're looking for!

I have a couple of notoriously smelly coworkers, who smell bad to varying degrees, and one of them walked past me today and I am not kidding, he smelled like people who smoke a lot for a long time and get that awful death smell about them, plus dank and mildewed basement, and filthy, filthy butt. I like this coworker and as he walked past me he smiled and said, "Hey! There she is!" and I started to smile back and then I smelled him and it was like in cartoons when bad smells make flowers wilt and die.

I feel it's more of an approach to how to learn things than whether one grew up with technology or not.
No lies detected. I am an adult who has her own work to do, not your personal remedial tutor.

I quite often get screencaps or images sent to me embedded in Word docs. That's infuriating.

I called my super recently to ask her to forward me an email I didn't have, and she complained that it would take her too long to find it (this was so I could do her a favor btw). The reason? Because she doesn't use the "search folder" function on her emails and never has. She scrolled through probably 4 months of mails to find it.

omg. a coworker of mine screencaps EVERYTHING. and i have to use the data in the screen caps, so i just end up having to type it all out. not to mention that you can't use the search function to find what you're looking for when you have pages and pages of screencaps. also she can't seem to save files with any sort of consistent naming strategy, usually just saves it as whatever default file name pops up. so many times i've needed info, and she's said (somewhat passive aggressively) "did you check the folder?" and i'm like, you mean the folder that has a zillion files that are all named random things that indicate absolutely about the content of the file?" i even went in once and reorganized a folder, renaming all these files, and she thought it was fabulous, but continues her crazy practice of not naming her files at all.

I answer emails on the helpdesk of a library (the librarians email us, not the readers) and many of our queries take the form "hi I can't place a reservation on a book! what is going wrong?" without giving any details of what book

so then we ask for the database ID number of the book, and then the reply is usually either a screenshot in a Word doc that we have to squint at and retype the number from, or they give us the title instead of the ID, except they misspell a few words so we can't copy and paste, and hey, why not do it from memory and rephrase it slightly, or maybe the title is just something like "Annual Report" which is no use for identifying the actual record whatsoever

anyway I don't want to bitch about the people who write to the helpdesk because helping them makes me feel like a good and useful person whereas the people I actually have to share office space with make me want to shout and punch things (ok, really just one of them at the moment)

I'm amazed that so many tech-challenged people know how to take screen caps!

i've never been treated like a stupid person before but it's been going on this week and it's breaking my will. Pro tip, my young supervisor friend- if you took maybe two hours to give me some basic training on monday morning then i wouldn't need to put so many ppl on hold to ask you questions that i don't have the answer to. Ps they can get rid of you in a flash, but i'm on a particularly stiff contract so if this turns physical they'll prob take the easy option, consider that before rolling yr eyes at me ever again.

oh yeah btw i'm on a helpline, that's a telephone helpline, without training. I'll pick it up as i go along, apparently, and i'm helped along by an email after every call telling me what was wrong.

Now *that's* an efficient use of both of our time, you'll go fucking far quickly, you will. Three storeys at 9.8m^2/sec for a start.

Another thing that guy does that makes me want to give him a wedgie is he uses open windows as his primary/only running to-do list. I would bet $5 that right now he has no fewer than 10 emails open and as many Word files.

aaarghhh the old tech director here did this. And hes *really technically skilled*. But you'd tell him something, he'd go "ok, lets address that later" and then open a fucking new email on his Macbook, address it to me, type up half his notes and then alt-tab (or etf rver the Mac version is) and fling it into the pile of 29835784256837 other things he has open and half finished.

And then 3 months later completely have no idea what you're talkng about cos he never sent/read/actioned various emails... grrr.

Darragh, anyone you can informally reach out to above your young friend there, or would that be perceived as hostile escalation?

Yeah Darra I'd be ropeable too, I'd say something like "look this is wasting my time and his, take an hour or 2 for training or supply me with notes or SOMETHING".

training today apparently, should be goid

he uses open windows as his primary/only running to-do list.

Is this bad? If I have a reply email waiting on my taskbar, I know it's something I expect to do sometime today (or before I next turn my computer off, at worst), and I regularly scroll through these open emails to keep on top of urgent stuff. Right now I don't have any open replies, but that's the exception, not the rule. Even so, I have 11 open tabs - 3 Word docs, 1 excel, 1 pdf, Act, Outlook and three emails.

I do have a to-do list on paper, too, which has 20 times as many things that need doing as I could even fit on my taskbar. Don't judge me.

To-do Bar in Outlook has become my friend since the got the 2007 Office upgrade. So much easier than a paper to-do list.

Oh god yeah the todo list combined with the outlook calendar and reminders is my effing BRAIN at work.

SO easy to just click in the little task line "check blah blah for update", hit enter, add a "9am tomorrow" reminder.

Mark, the key is:

/he uses open windows as his primary/only running to-do list./

Versus your:
I do have a to-do list on paper, too, which has 20 times as many things that need doing

One of the girls at work is planning her birthday party, and is inviting (mostly?) everyone from work and people who used to work there. I don't want to go to this. Especially if she is charging money for this and the only people I know are going to be people who are always fighting with each other.

Oh, and she asked if had heels, because we are all going to have to dress up and wear them.

"That is so sweet of you to invite me! Thank you! But unfortunately I already have plans*. I hope you have a great time!"

*She needn't know these plans involve sitting at home watching TV and not dressing up and wearing heels.

Or maybe I will get lucky and have to work that night.

Even better! Then it's ironclad and you don't run the risk of, "Oh! What are you up to???"

I would rather pull out my fingernails with pliers than have to go to some girlie night - with WORKMATES - that involved having to wear heels.

Hi Jesse! Thanks, and I guess you're right (update: 13 Outlook tabs, 2 PDF, 3 Word)

"oh yeah, I don't read any emails that I'm cc'd into. Actually they all go into a folder which I then empty on a regular basis. If people want me to read things they should put me in the To line"

-three cheers for my awesome manager, taking my colleague to task over a fat joke she made about our mayor on twitter (we are all on twitter, as friends)

Hi Jesse! Thanks, and I guess you're right (update: 13 Outlook tabs, 2 PDF, 3 Word)

My count: 10 folders, 2 PDFs, 4 Word, 4 Excel, 85336890 Chrome tabs.

Oh and one IE window bc I have to monitor a second email account that isn't connected to my Outlook.

I have an Excel file that I keep pinned in my last 25 items, which has a checklist of what I do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis with 4 columns for each month as well as a notes column and a few "last minute request" rows. I recommend!

Finefinemusic, i hope you don't live in Toronto!

I sure do. :(

then who cares? dude sort of brought it upon himself with that idiotic fat challenge (i mean, i'd agree *somewhat* otherwise, aside from the fact that it sounds like this is her private twitter feed and not related to work and therefore not really yr manager business if she's not talking about work)

Well, I'm a fat girl so it sucks to see fat jokes by friends and colleagues all over my twitter feed first thing :P The girl in question is one of those particularly skinny Asians who eat whatever they want - and she then condemned the mayor for doing the same. Not a big deal, but it sucked a bit and seeing my manager (who this colleague added on purpose, knowing she's outspoken) defend the fatties was nice. Same colleague has an even more private account which she ALSO added us on and which we usually just ignore because it's full of hatred. :P

(My manager is about 35, me 29, other colleague 30, and the manager is not HER manager, just mine.. so it's generally a friendly situation.)

and all THREE of us went out for cheeseburgers yesterday! Thanks, Grid's Burger Week!

ah - fair enough.
i remember durring the election some of my friends were throwing in bringing his weight into various tweets and posts etc about him. i got a few of them to knock it off, by pointing out there were (are) *so* *many* more relevant things they could be talking about and even mentioning his weight undermined their point.

like, we get it - he's a drunk driving liar with an awful record at city hall. you throw "fat" in there and that's all a lot of people will see.
it was a shame he started that whole weigh challenge idiocy (iirc as a distraction to his senseless portlands meddling) - because it gave the weight-mocking a sliver of legitimacy.

anyways, we should probably stick to talking about his Fordness on the Toronto thread... back to mocking coworkers!

Hah! Fair enough. But yeah the annoyance is fat shaming coming from a person who's never had to worry about being fat, and SO MANY LEGITIMATE COMPLAINTS to choose from about him. Sorry, coworker thread!

I manage X. X is applying for my job (I'm leaving soon). It's an internal position and he's drafting his application during working hours. His work buddy just called him out on it and I overheard X tell his buddy that it's fine because it's an internal position.

I say it isn't, but haven't said so yet and am now (not-I)A at X and IA at myself.

er, isn't fine, I mean. It *is* an internal position... and he should be able to write a strong application.

So I inherited some work from someone who was making a big song and dance about not having time to even think about it, except now she's babysitting the easy parts of said work in tedious detail, so instead of me taking 5 minutes to fill in the self-explanatory admin spreadsheet, I've spent half an hour listening to her ask me what goes in every column and then (after I've already told her the right value) explaining what the column is for again, while I end up telling her what I was going to put in there about 5 times before she puts it in

now she's insisting on going through emails to check all the dates I'm offering, all the while saying "of course the exact dates don't really matter, it's just to get some rough information" - oh, but apparently less "rough" than the ones I've already looked up from the emails?

Getting the 30 minute tutorial to complete the 5 minute task is exhausting. And actually, it sucks from the other side, too, when you just need someone to do something quickly for you and they end up requiring handholding the entire time.

I have already had the tutorial at least twice and have already filled in the form unattended previously! And I don't need hand-holding, though it may be my fault for radiating such an aura of incompetence that everyone thinks I must. I mean I do have that aura BUT this lady is a super control-freak too, and not just with me.

And I didn't even tell her that the new set of work for that project had come in, she was just... watching everyone else's tickets on our new ticketing system, even though she never picks up any tickets herself.

I do hate being given work which was originally hers, though, as she's guaranteed to complain that it wasn't done right and nobody else does things properly, etc - again, not just with me, though I do feel like I get the brunt of it because I happen to have the skillset to be given most of the tasks she makes a fuss about

(plus she totally looooved the last guy who picked up any of her work, even though he was also slapdash and impunctual which she is always snarky at me for, because he was 1. male 2. goodlooking 3. a lot more patient about nodding and agreeing that her way was the best about everything)

I wish this was on 77

Me too. I've said that before here. Someone told me to start a 77 co-workers bitching thread, but I don't want to siphon off any business from this thread.