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

tracer - what happened with your 15 hour red-eye shift?!

I routinely print out long articles from the New York Review of Books o_O

...

and when i get home i put the paper upside down in the paper tray of my own printer

This is the way to live.

i ended up not having to do it - the work-from-home-thingie magically came back just minutes before a taxi was due to arrive at my house and take me on on a 1.5 hr drive to west london

however the 20-minute phone fight i had with the acting boss of my dept. is irretrievable and either today or tomorrow i am going to have to speak to this tightass about it and probably apologize because he's so wound up he will never mention it and it will simmer forever inside him

Arggghhh people trying to manage projects which aren't theirs because they resent someone else being put on it, picking up on every little mistake going OH GOD I KNEW THAT WOMAN WOULD GET IT ALL WRONG and busybodying the subordinates on the project (i.e. me) to see what I've done yet (nothing on the next phase because the person actually in charge told me not to yet - HAVEN'T YOU EVEN DONE THAT YET WHAT IS THAT WOMAN THINKING), rearranging our meeting times so she can come when she wasn't invited, declaring that everyone else on the project who is massively confused because we keep being told different things (partly because the management change their mind every 5 minutes and partly because she keeps appearing and contradicting everything) is just being, like, feebleminded and/or stubborn, THEY SHOULD KNOW EVERYTHING I JUST SAID IS THE ONE TRUE WAY ALREADY AND STOP COMPLAINING

(also I'm going on a week's leave tomorrow and everyone else is cool with that except the busybodying woman has just remembered everything I was ever meant to do but had to drop because some other urgent project appeared out of nowhere and wants it all before I go away, and admittedly this is only a problem because I'M the stupid and annoying coworker, but, jesus, get me out of here. meanwhile I made a fuckup of something she didn't even ask for which I wanted to get done before going and that'll need some careful checking to put back together. aargh)

sorry guys, rant over. maybe i can tread water until the end of today and then i get a week to daydream of never coming back

should probably not have lingered in front of the xpostometer with the words "stupid, annoying co-workers" on my screen at like 40 points but hey, screw you guys

My coworker who can and will talk about how much he hates DRM for hours is right in the middle of what's probably a 1/2-day long anti-DRM jag.

MORE ENGINEERING LESS SNORTY LAUGHING

Jesus Christ, M4rk Phi11p5, you have to be the most, to quote Luanne van Hauten, the most incompetent and managerially impotent person alive. How you ever got to be in charge of anything (especially people more educated, and certainly smarter than you) is amazing. You've lost our respect, and trying to be an asshole to everyone to cover up your own unacceptable failures, and being a total hypocrite is just making you a bigger asshole than you are. And your macho, misogynistic attitude doesn't help either.

Fuck you, you piece of shit.

Dear colleague who does what I do in a very closely related organisation

Stop sending snarky emails to colleagues in a third very closely related organisation and copying them to everyone. I don't think you mean to be snarky, and she occasionally deserves it, but it takes time and energy to work out a reply that defuses the situation.

Your colleague who does what you do in a closely related organisation

girl: loses something
girl to me: can you call finance and tell them you lost xyz and ask for another copy?

why am i your bitch???

Wow. Please say you told her to stick xyz sideways!

i just kind of hit my internal killifile button because i'm pretty sure after she leaves for vacation i can find it and avoid all this dramas but USADL:GKJS.

Arrgh. Just arrgh.

Oh fuck you, you sales asshole, its not MY FAULT we have a pricebook with an error in it so your quote to Big Client is somewhat wrong. You and management set the pricing. NOT ME!

So it is not my issue to fucking go and sort it out, so dont throw hissyfits in my direction!!&*!^!$%!#!

*tears hair*

Aformentioned asshole also happened to not pay me for the first half of February; likely there will be a long, tedious, and stressful bureaucratic process ahead of me, like those other people who are still missing pay from December. Here's to your being fired!

*Purple Rain comes on radio*

Co-worker: Oh, I LOVED Oprah in this movie!
Me: o_O

Same woman couldn't wait to go to Hawaii for vacation to see the hunchback whales.

lol at this very moment, four feet away, my acting boss is answering questions from our brand new CEO who is asking simple, basic questions about what we do and he is DYING ON HIS FEET

the problem is that this will just make him less confident and he will now be more bullying and weird and passive-aggressive than ever

It always amazes me how some people seem to get into higher up roles by the skin of their teeth and you wonder how they hold a job when they're as dense as dark matter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert_Principle

So I work in a building with like 30 other people, everyone pretty much knows everybody and socially things are relatively laid back most of the time. But there's been occasional rashes of people's lunches/etc. getting stolen out of the refrigerator everybody uses, and in the last couple weeks I've had 2 cans of soda stolen. This morning I shook the shit out of a soda can and put it in the fridge and am waiting to see how long it takes to disappear. Am I just inevitably egging this on to become a bigger thing than it has any right to be, or should I be proud of my lame attempt at vigilante justice?

you watched that Simpsons ep where Bart blows up Homer with a shook-up Duff, didn't you.

well bitching and whining about it in an email to the entire staff will just make you the cheap bitchy, whiny guy and just letting people steal your stuff is not an option so i honestly think you did the best thing.

well bitching and whining about it in an email to the entire staff will just make you the cheap bitchy, whiny guy

Heh I did this and yeah to people I don't normally interact with I'm the guy who got pissed off about stolen cheese, but on the upside no-one's stolen my food since then, so y'know, whatevs.

yeah definitely not doing an e-mail or anything like that.

actually the thing that complicates this is that the guy who works next to me also had a soda stolen yesterday, so he just put a post-it on the refrigerator noting both thefts. so whereas before only people in my little dept. know that I had a soda stolen recently, now it's public knowledge and the soda bomb could be more easily traced back to me. I kinda covered my ass by using a different type of soda than what I usually bring in and putting it in a different place than I usually do, though, so I'm prepared to play dumb.

you watched that Simpsons ep where Bart blows up Homer with a shook-up Duff, didn't you.

― WmC, Thursday, February 26, 2009 11:54 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

true story, yesterday for like an hour I was feeling annoyed about this and thinking "is there something I could do to booby-trap a soda? cover it in a clear sticky material? no. hide something weird at the bottom of the can? no....oh, duh, I can just shake it up, why didn't I think of that an hour ago?"

on the other hand, it could easily be tracked ot him, since he posted the note.

Why would it be bad if the thief found out who it was who shook up the soda anyway?

It wouldn't necessarily, but I'd rather just burn them so they wouldn't wanna do it again than have a big confrontation.

I mean I'm kinda psyched about it working but at the same time a lil embarrassed to be all immature and "lol REVENGE" about this.

it'll be funny more than anything, esp if you tell a few other coworkers what you've done (obv coworkers who aren't likely to be the culprit), so then when you all hear the explosion and the resulting cussing, you can all eye each other and snigger.

i would totally do this.

the person wont confront you because then they would have to admit to being the soda stealer.

haha yeah who knows...the thing is that we have 4 floors, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't anybody on my floor, so if I find out who did it, it'll probably be hearsay later on, or if someone is walking around with a big wet stain on their shirt.

Can't wait to find out it's the CEO, looking to find out who to bill for his ruined suit.

Actually I hope that doesn't happen, I approve of soda-bomb.

lol yeah there is one bigwig I would actually be freaked out if it was him, but he's not around that often so I doubt it. mostly I'm worried it'll be someone I'm totally friendly with or have to work with fairly often.

back in my old job for a freelance shift today and seriously, even after 3 months out of there it's exactly the same as ever.

the thing I notice is that because everyone there has been there about 6 years or so, and the job is fairly rote/non changing, they all have their own systems for doing things and they want you to adhere to these when you're working with them.

sadly they don't realise this, and each one assumes their particular system is the be all and end all, and will act as if you don't know how to do the job if you try and do things in the way you did them last time you were there.

part of the problem is cos I trained in this place so I have to be quite docile to colleagues. this is fine, it's only casual work and that doesn't bother me. but it is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to have to have one co-worker, eg S today, saying "oh no you need to add in this to that story, did nobody show you this? someone should have shown you."

and it's like "nobody showed me cos you're the only one who does this", but it's too hard to explain that.

jesus I hate that office...better off unemployed.

Brodie caught the lunchroom bandit red-handed. It was Officer Gaffney...

> and it's like "nobody showed me cos you're the only one who does this", but it's too hard to explain that.

i get this all the time. people expect you to know their code or their procedures despite not documenting them or, indeed, mentioning them to anyone else ever. we aren't psychic.

Looking forward to hearing about the soda-bomb!

Someone once stole the cheese from inside my sandwich, but left the sandwich itself behind. I didn't know until I bit into it, then found myself wondering about the hygiene of whoever had been handling my food.

I had a softdrink-stealer in a previous job, and I was pretty sure who it was but of course couldnt accuse anyone blind because it was this brand of energy drink a lot of us drank, so seeing someone else with one, they could have got it themselves.

So a workmate suggested I tag the base of some new cans with an X in permanent marker. We did this, and the next day found the guy I suspected drinking a can of V. "Hey Simon where'd you get the V from?" "oh its mine I got it at the petrol station" he said evasively. I asked if I could look at the base of the can and there was my mark. Fuck you buddy.

He got fired a little later on for being a useless shmuck anyway so swings and roundabouts.

James, just playing Devil's Advocate here, but maybe you just forgot to put cheese on your sandwich before you came in?

I did wonder that at the time, but I checked and there were imprints (and crumbs) of the cheese in the margarine.

Maybe you were just about to take a bite out of your sandwich and the hot sales rep walked past and you got distracted and the cheese fell out.

So our employee promised to come in the afternoon for some client. Yesterday she emailed our other employee saying she'd probably couldn't make it and could she cancel it. She needed an answer RIGHT AWAY. Eh? First of, she should ask ME (or my mum), secondly like wtf. Today I asked her why she couldn't come. Is it rude of me to ask? I mean, shit, it's for something really important, then I could understand. She said:"Why should I give a reason?" in a rather rude way. She finally said she'd come anyway. WTF.

fire her

"Dear [single person out of several people working on project, others not CCed],

I was looking at [catalogue number of item in latest project] and noticed [different kind of catalogue number for completely unrelated item not in latest project]. Why is there [something which doesn't show up for me for either item, which would be nothing to do with me anyway]?"

Yeah, I'll... get right on that.

Sunny, didn't. :-) I quickly realized that it wasn't such a big deal. Thing is that our other employee is using this as a "look at me, ain't i so much better" through constant whining about it:"Wow, she's rude isn't she? I'd never do this! Very impolite." I was tempted ot make her STFU by telling her she's done "much worse" but what the hell, why get bothered by this?

otoh, it's great that you're not letting it get to you... but on the other, you're letting her know that it's ok to act that way. which means she'll push it a bit further the next time, and bit a further the next time. ppl like this - you give an inch, they take a mile.

dear coworker,

thank you for leaving shit til the last minute, then throwing it at me so that when i have to ask people for materials to complete said shit, i get yelled at for not giving them enough time. it's so very considerate of you.

t