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

Yeah, one more day and then I begin making it someone else's problem. And oh is that going to be awesome :).

How DO they get jobs? And what is the root of their problem? Do they just not give a shit? It seems like the most likely explanation.

Oh that's most certainly it. Some of them don't care about anything other than fulfilling the term of their contract and don't give a shit about getting hired full-time.

It's not entirely their fault by any means, but we used to get better contractors 5-6 years ago before they changed providers. I'm not real sympathetic because in the days I was a CS rep, we had a much more difficult system to use, and more responsibilities.

*shrug*. People are happy with the job I did on the project, but I feel bad about the person who has to handle these guys next.

Is this a call center in the US?

the pentagon?

Yeah, it's the US. thankfully, one of the worst offenders was shitcanned today, another never showed back up after getting negative feedback the other day. We have more than enough, no big loss.

It does start to feel like adult babysitting after a while. My manager said she had to break up not one but two fights in one of her training classes.

I just wondered if it was a typically brutal US call center environment (limited bathroom breaks, quota requirements for hours worked) and if it was, I was going to conjecture that the environment might not be conducive to people putting forth their best effort.

Not to attack your biz or anything. The folks you are talking about probably needed to not work there anymore. I was more responding to Jesse: "what is the root of their problem? Do they just not give a shit?"

No, that's fine -- it's a fair question. I would say when compared to other call centers, ours is a little bit on the cushier side. They can take breaks as needed (as long as it doesn't exceed like, an hour total all day), and they just work standard 8 hour shifts.

Some of it is the onboardin g process which is not the best, but I think the standards for hires have also been "relaxed" over the years since we changed suppliers for our seasonal help.

the only other gripe I have today, outside of the "I CAN'T LOCATE PANGAEA ON THE MAP"-reps, is that sometimes our Director fires shots before he knows what the target is. Felt really bad today as there was this escalation outside of my unit (for a process owned by a specialized group), so I explained to the best of my knowledge how I thought the process should work, and told him I was copying this other person, who had more information.

He then subjects her to this harsh line of questioning and I'm then forced to apologize to her (to be fair, I should have given her a head's up first) for getting thrown under the bus, as all I was trying to do was introduce the right resource into the conversation, not say "Hey, this is her fault".

It worked out though. It also amazes me that the same guy (who I like, don't get me wrong) feels this strongly about the problem but didn't pick up the phone to call either person. Idk about most but if something's urgent and I ain't getting a reply from someone, I usually give 'em a ring.

no longer have to babysit the reps, today was better, but then at the end of the day I had to explain to another department how their own phone system works (even tho I had nothing to do with building it and presumably they should all know this). wouldn't have been so frustrating if by staying late to explain it, I hadn't been late to someplace I needed to be.

however, in a few weeks, I'm done with this puppy and I'm getting mondo positive feedback for the work I've done, it's just kind of a slog getting there. a marathon really.

Is your role an itinerant call center shaper upper? That's kind of cool. Ride in on your horse, clean up the town, ride off into the sunset.

Kinda, but not exactly. I'm the dude that builds new ones, basically, then hand it off to the team that is going to maintain it ongoing. sort of like a theatre director, but with call centers.

I roll off this one at the end of the month and just realized that I already billed more hours this month than I was supposed to, so I basically told everyone they need to start driving the ship yesterday, and took today off. Feels oh so gooood.

"this minor administrative difficulty LITERALLY MAKES ME WANT TO PUKE!!!"

Not strictly-speaking a "co-worker" but someone has left a list of all the big-name thriller authors they want to poach from competitors on a public printer six floors below the office they work in. If i didn't have such faith in human incompetence, i'd assume they wanted it to be leaked.

I JUST WANT A SOUNDPROOF CUBICLE

Ahhhhhhhh, you fuckwit! Why you don't you listen, or if you don't understand, just fucking ask!!!! I am not your fucking mother.

Rant over. Thank you for the space to share my frustrations.

> I JUST WANT A SOUNDPROOF CUBICLE

open plan office here and it's usually fine but i sit next to meeting room. at the start of meeting there's always that time when 10 people are in there yapping with the door open for the stragglers, 6ft from where i'm trying to work.

My own frustrations about co-workers are as much my problem as theirs I think.

I am a senior developer in our small IT team. There are 2 lead developers who we all report to, so I'm not the most senior. I am also the newest member of (IT) staff.

Currently the other members of my team will frequently pester me non-stop with questions about the work we are doing, which is kind of understandable, but also a lot of RTFM/let me google that for you type questions. I'm often working on the more difficult tasks we've got which means I need to be able to concentrate, and every time I get interrupted I lose my concentration and have to figure out where I got to again. This turns me into something like Jack Nicholson's character in the Shining, so I'm sure somewhere on another messageboard my colleagues are complaining about the grumpy bastard who bites their face off if they ask them more than 10 questions in a row.

In a way I think I'm justified in being pissed off that people aren't using their own initiative to solve problems and just rely on me to fix everything for them, but I'm not handling it in a professional manner at all at the moment. I get increasingly stressed out and then just blow up at them. I guess I have to accept that now I'm in a senior role I have to wipe people's arses for them, I dunno maybe I'm not suited for this... I get on better just being left alone to do my own work. Unfortunately that doesn't happen very often.

I had/have that problem too. When I first encountered it (6 years ago, after I'd just received my first promotion), I acted much the same as you. Even swore at a few co-workers now and then. It's frustrating because you feel like you can't get your own work done.

Really though, what I realized (and what I'm sure you'll realize as you get more used to your position) is that it is a sign of respect, that they view you as someone who is knowledgeable and trustworthy. Yes, they do need to be more independent and learn on their own, but one suggestion I have is when you feel stressed and angry, just breathe, and try another approach. Ask them what they've tried already, maybe say "let me show you how to find that for next time". It may mean spending more time with them than you want initially, but over time, it decreases the number of times they come to you. The snapping at them method actually hurts their confidence and might ironically cause them to come to you more.

(This is not meant as a criticism of your method, by any means -- it's just something that takes time to get used to, and this is coming from a dude that struggles from hotheadisms as evidenced by some of my screeds above). Best of luck, but I think it'll get better for you.

and now, ironically, I gripe. lol. one of the managers who's taking over this center from me is fairly new to her position, but she's actually quite good, and I can tell she will be successful. So it bugs me when I see her missing on the little things.

For instance, there's a daily report that is supposed to go out by 9:30 a.m. each day. I handed it off to her last week, we had a meeting the day before (and she has done it before), and assured me she was fine to do it. I gave her some extra materials to help.

I had to remind her 4 times on Day 1, and she assured me the last time that she'd forgotten but was working on it, and yet 5:30 p.m. came and went, and no report went out (and emails came back to me about it), so I had to do it myself. Day 2, I'm out of the office, so I send her a reminder the day before, and she gets it out (an hour late), but it's riddled with errors. Nobody points them out, though, so w/e. Day 3, I send her two reminders when they haven't gone out by noon, and she assures me that she's working on it, but two hours later, no report, and it's quitting time for me, so yet again, I had to do it for her.

Yesterday, I had to remind her two times, and she got it out at like 10:30, but again, lots of formatting/copying errors, despite me giving her an easy to copy template, and written instructions on where to get the new data from.

Today, I'm out of the office, but occasionally I check emails on my phone just to make sure things are ok. Hasn't gone out yet. Despite being out, I sent a reminder.

It just boggles my mind. This is a report our leaders need daily, and they were the ones who asked for it by 9:30 a.m., which I made very clear to her. It also is something I shouldn't be doing as it could result in me getting follow-up questions about things I'm no longer handling (hence why we hand it off), and plus, I'm now been removed from day to day operations, so I don't have the observational data to fill out some of the details anymore (meaning I have to guess).

And it really is just a pre-populated template that you have to update with numbers from a daily report that takes mere minutes to run. If you prep the report the night before, you can literally just plug and send first thing in the morning. How can someone forget so many times to do something when I've given 10-15 reminders, like doesn't that normally set off a bell in your head that it's important?

I'm sure she'll learn this over time, as I wasn't the most organized when I first started, but it's just one of those weird things because she excels at things most newbies don't, yet can't do a simple email each day. Even I didn't have this problem the first time I sent it out, and this was when she was showing me how to use the system to get the daily numbers!

Maybe it's a really boring task and she hates it. Just a thought.

it is a really boring task and most of us hate it. didn't know that meant we didn't have to do it.

Haha no I mean but I can understand the foot-dragging, I have the same impulse.

I have to do about a 10-page report once a week and every time I'm like "REALLY? AGAIN??"

oh lol yeah I mean I get that, it's just like, I wish the switch would go off in her brain that THIS REPORT IS BEING VIEWED BY PEOPLE VERY HIGH UP IN THE COMPANY, and if it has mistakes and doesn't come out...that doesn't look good!

But I also suppose she is probably less used to some of these leaders than my group is, so maybe the magnitude just isn't clear to her. In any case, I'm mostly just annoyed because it's been a 15 minute task that I've had to babysit, whereas everything else has been smooth. It's like watching a really good movie that cuts out with 5 minutes left, I want closure! :)

10-page reports = blech. thankfully this is just an email thingamabobber.

this is why I'm glad I move from projct to project, like a theatre director. very rarely have to deal with that, except for the aforementioned report, which is only a 5-day thing.

She failed to do it again, so even though I wasn't in today, I had to do it (I thought of leaving it alone but knew it wasn't right to spite our leaders due to her own failure). Despite two additional reminders today (overall, I probably delivered 15 reminders over 5 days, and was promised it would be completed on two days where she went home without doing it).

Not an apology once either, or an explanation, so it frustrates me now that I will have to give feedback to this rep's manager over something this silly and avoidable. 4 other colleagues transitioned this report to the ongoing parties without any issues like this, and I had to waste my own time chasing her down over this. Mostly ruined today out of the office cuz I had to keep checking to see if it was done.

Thankfully, it's the last day teh report goes out.

The office manager and I had spent ages and a lot of hair tearing end last year creating a new spreadsheet to report on all our due/owed/overdue charges for our suppliers, cos the CEO insisted on it in a certain format.

It turned out that all along. he'd been emailed that info, directly from the carriers themselves, in the format he needed. Being direct from them it would be far more accurate than our copypastas from invoices. CEO never once mentioned that he got these already (prob ignored his damn emails)

Now that he's left the company, we find this out. Office manager was ropeable. We wasted so much fucking time on that thing!

sneezing co-worker next to me is also apparently incapable of registering humor from anyone around him, answering joking rejoinders w/o humor in return. also while others are concentrating on tasks likes to interrupt to show them something or look at them and start talking even while they're sitting there w/headphones on, concentrating on work, watching footage, etc.

also rocks an "intentionally schlubby" vibe for some reason.

can't quite describe him right, but it's in the ballpark.

What is "intentionally schlubby?" (I'm wondering if I might fall into this category.)

I'm not going to Glasgow as the weather where I live is pretty bad, so the manager that I cancelled with is pretty pissed off at me over the phone. She then sends me a picture of Glasgow with the comment "no snow here" I felt like sending her a picture back of my middle finger, with the message 'no fucks given here"

Stroppy rude women. Ahhhhhhhhh!

i've been 'working with' the guy in the next cubicle over for several years.

he works weekdays only while the rest of us have to work nights and/or weekends -- although when i used to work nights he would sometimes be at his desk (not working) until 10 or 11 at night. no one knew why.

he's a mild-mannered guy in his mid-50s maybe; he's gone to the trouble of having his emails sent in comic sans. i have no idea what he does -- he doesn't write anything, he doesn't call anyone.

once a day or so, however, he will loudly mutter deeply profane things at his computer. it's kind of weird.

Just curious, what do u do?

i write/edit for a website

he proofs, mookie-style :)

Everyone shut the hell up, stop talking over each other, and stop pretending to have very important thoughts about tedious minutiae. You're all just talking to sound clever instead of solving any problems and it is doing my head in. Also Captain Drummyhooves behind me I am going to saw your feet off

(deep breaths)

To the incompetent loudmouth guy: don't tell other people how to do their jobs when a) you're not their fucking manager (or anybody's fucking manager for that matter), b) you have a voice like a garden gate in need of oil, and c) you can't do your own job properly, even with step by step instructions.

To the gobshite who has to give an out-loud running commentary about everything they're doing, thereby disturbing everyone else: SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

http://www.2dayblog.com/images/2012/december/quotejob.jpg

Please, tell me more about the content of your inbox.

The person in front of me has her phone ringer turned up really loud, and lets it ring a few times before answering. Ringing phones give me anxiety--ANSWER THAT FUCKING THING

mookiproof is this your coworker

http://www.theleakywiki.com/media/k2/items/cache/ad50363b9b3c0e7cd5049a5778e00aff_XL.jpg

did not realize that was so big sorry

lol Captain Drummyhooves.

my co-workers aren't even annoying. I mean there's a couple, but they just strate dicks.

Jesus christ stop contradicting and/or questioning every single fucking thing I tell you - just do it! You don't know better than me! I've been doing this job 4 years and you've been doing it 4 months!

Expressed relief a printout included decimal points because the previous one had rounded values.. my trainer misunderstood me then screamed over my explanations of what I had been saying. Ran into my boss' office and slammed the door. Fuck off. It's been three months now of this crazy bullshit. She's a contract while they find a permanent account manager for me to work with. Feel like I am being initiated or tested or something.. After ten minutes of her yelling at me (!) I told her I didn't have time to argue and put headphones on. Ugh. This will all be worth it some day..

FFM, as far as I can tell you have been a paragon of restraint for not flooding this thread with details of this 'trainer'.

I really need to collect the more amusing anecdotes somewhere! Unfortunately most of it is just annoying bullshit. She started this morning in tears because of a rush job she needed to perform.. which I helped her with, quickly and independently! Then two hours later, I'm the worst person in the world.. I just try to keep my cool and dream of a day when she doesn't sit across from me/manage me.

I broke a pen under my desk the other day while I was trapped in one of her rant feats. :/