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

He likes to watch you look at trash.

He just likes bossing you around.

There's a parallel board where Ken is moaning about how someone at work wanted him to describe in detail over the phone exactly how a car was wrongly parked instead of just glancing out the window and getting the thing moved.

I was sure that he was going to be out there by the dumpster waving at you, or mooning you, or something prankish like that!

Oh great, I've got an advertiser who wants to create his own ad and wants me to give him free InDesign lessons so he can do it.

"what's today's date?" asks a co-worker. WTF?

At my old job, we had to work at least two weeks ahead, sometimes a couple of months, to meet court deadlines, which required keeping a calendar always turned a month or two ahead, so I never knew what the actual date was.

i work with creatives and half the office has no clue what day it is. 1/5 - no idea the month.

I spent most of the last week thinking it was July.

I think it is 2012 right now and I don't care what anyone else says

do we work together?!

ya I ask "what's today's date" p much every time I need the date

I ask "what day is today?" That always leaves 'em guessing.

even if you don't know the date, which is fine, asking colleagues rather than just having a look at your Outlook calendar or Windows calendar or a news website or a billion other ways made me roll my eyes. But y'know whatevs!

sometimes it is ok to speak to other people

yes it is, probably I'm being grumpy.

i'm with Neil with this. just look at your ^%&$% phone or something. anything.

the company picnic was a couple days ago. it's a big deal since there are 5k+ employees here. it's a big enough event that the local police and fire departments come and give some demos, community goodwill and all that. the cops show off their cop dogs, mainly.

i overheard a woman asking "is canine a breed of dog?" and she kept asking cos her coworkers' blank stares didn't really register correctly with her, i guess. and then a guy was trying to explain the visual pun of k-9 = canine. but she just kept asking.

during some system tests this morning, one item kept failing. I found the source of the prob fairly early, and in researching, found out that the whole setup error was based on a misunderstanding from 4 months ago. That should have been caught in the heat of the instant message conversation (which was documented), but both sides communicated unclearly and didn't reconfirm to make sure they understood each other.

and I wasn't CCed when this was going on, or I could have caught this. Minor issue at the end of the day, but annoying that we had to waste so many folks' mornings for something so silly.

That does sound awful.

I sure love having a main client contact whose response to every question is "What was I supposed to be doing with that?" or "Remind me what you're waiting for?"

u_u

a couple days ago i was caught at the elevator by this really annoying co-worker who is also stupid, and he asked me for work advice, asked me if he was being intentionally left out of some things, etc. i told him not to worry and gave him a half-assed pep talk. we got on the elevator and on the next floor down as a group of people got on, he said "thanks for letting me be frank, by the way." then he paused, realized he had an audience, and said "but you can call me francis! ha ha." i think i replied with a weak, "no problem..."

he added apropos of nothing "surely you can't be serious! don't call me shirley!" he was actually winking at me at this point, i made a quick "cut the mic" motion across my throat but he didn't notice.

anyway there were a couple of more jokes like this, the elevator ride was long as fuck, and as everyone exited into the lobby he shouted after them, "i'll be here all week!"

i'm also beginning to suspect he's trying to torpedo the career of the girl who has the same job title as him by telling me "we don't get along AND I KNOW WHY." but he won't tell me why.

oh weird.

yeesh

I sure love having a main client contact whose response to every question is "What was I supposed to be doing with that?" or "Remind me what you're waiting for?"

In other news, I'm mentoring some poor kid at work, ha

Hey, when you're warm enough in your roomy office the ground floor, why not just turn off the entire building's heating, instead of just the heating in your office? That way those of us forced to work in cramped shitholes in the basement can just freeze to death.

Ugh, these guys aren't stupid, but they're flustering me today. I'm leading a project and I make most of the contact with the client. I have no problem with this as it is easier for me to do all of the communicating rather than keep sending the dude to 7 different people for answers. All I've ever asked is that I be kept in the loop for those key decisions where I wasn't part of the decisionmaking. In return, I've proactively shared my plan with everybody, as well as made sure all of the other team members were copied on everything and not excluded from meetings.

So the topic of staffing comes up, and I'm given the original plan, but the team responsible for making this decision has kept changing the plan without telling me. One time, only informing me of a change I wasn't aware of in the middle of a client call (one that significantly altered our training plans). I asked them again to keep us in the loop, but they kept on making changes and I'd only find out secondhand or by accident. Eventually, I told my project manager I couldn't own this communication anymore with the client, since I wasn't being kept in the loop, and he agreed, so I asked those in charge to have those communications, and they agreed that they would.

Client then asks about staffing again because they're confused, and these folks just sit there not answering the question and again, I had to step in and schedule a meeting and force them to share it. Now, yet again today, after my second, more stern email, saying that I need to be kept in the loop on all staffing changes, YET ANOTHER discrepency has come up that I can't explain, due to another apparent uncommunicated change.

This time, I told them that I won't be replying and that they need to do it. Three strikes, sorry guys.

How do you not know what subtotal means.

very old story: i worked in a deli in college. there was a girl who worked there briefly (she was let go for calling in sick for a sunday morning shift, after explaining to the manager on the phone she was "hung over"). initially i kind of wanted to stick up for her, as town-gown relations were not great, and the other folks who worked at the deli (even tho it was a hippy kind of place) thought we were all clueless rich overeducated layabouts. but i quickly started to hate working with her, because she was terrible at everything, and didn't seem to have any idea that we was terrible at everything.

but the really dumbfounding moment was when she took a mid-shift break for lunch we were allowed to make items of food for ourselves, within reason. she asked 'how do i make a sandwich'? the rest of us thought she was asking rhetorically, like, what kind of sandwich might i want right now? but no, she was literally asking us how to make a sandwich. the human act of putting meats, cheeses, vegetables, breads and spreads together in a pleasing fashion had never been asked of her before, and she didn't know how to do it.

mind: blown.

in a ... a deli?

rule #7 - this rule is so underrated
keep wheat bread and pastrami completely separated

I just don't get it: We spend time nearly every day hunting down documents, information, or transactions which frequently turn up in a stack of unsorted crap on someone's desk or in the file (having been stuffed there without being logged or scanned). I have worked and begged to put simple processes in place to track stuff, but the response is always, in words or in effect, "That's too complicated/too much work. We just need to keep track of things better."

e.g., spreadsheet to log payments received w/ dates, amounts, check numbers or last-four numbers of CCs. Boss: "I appreciate your work, but it is a lot of extra work. I just need to be more diligent about crediting accounts as soon as I deposit checks."

Today: client wants to know why their payment isn't reflected on their statement, so we download bank report and work out which deposit (probably) contained their check.

Tomorrow: Repeat with another transaction or document.

IT contractor keeps telling boss to buy a new computer b/c hers really starting to crap out. Today it had a major spasm. Boss: "Do you think he's not maintaining it right so that I'll buy a new one and he'll get commission? I mean, the Haggia Sophia is still being used after 2600 years but he can't make a computer last more than 5 years?"

I told her by that standard, she should be asking her vet to make her dog live to 70.

Haggia Sophia reference surprising from someone so dumb

wait goole worked with lex in college?

pretty sure captain awesome over here is cheating on his wife with one of my other co-workers, and the dude has a little kid. it's become something of an office joke. there's always something up with people who seem way too nice on the surface. oh well, guess it isn't any of my business, aside from pissing me off for my own personal reasons.

It's currently 30C in our office and we have the air-con on AND all the windows open. The office manager refuses to countenance the idea that maybe this is fucking stupid. Apparently the air-conditioning company told her to run it with the windows open. We used to have a meeting room with the door shut so we could go in for a few minutes to cool down but she insisted we open the door "so the rest of the office gets the benefit". End result - meeting room now boiling hot too, rest of office exactly the fucking same as before.

What on earth is wrong with your office manager? That's just mind boggling.

The nice thing about office managers is that you can ask them to fix it. Then you can tell them to fix it. If it was your department manager, you wouldn't have that luxury.

Asking/telling doesn't actually achieve anything in this case.

Unfortunately there's no maximum office temperature in the UK so I can't even down tools and go home.

Apparently the air-conditioning company told her to run it with the windows open

this is the most confusing part of all

I suspect that might be a lie.

Replace "air-conditioning company" with "power company" and it makes perfect sense, though.

Later, the water department called and said, "You'll get better results if you just leave all your faucets on all the time."

The gas company suggests running the heat along with the AC while keeping the windows open, and also keeping all your stove burners lit at all times so they are always ready when you need to heat water.

I just don't understand at all. What is that office manager trying to accomplish? Was she cold? Has the situation been resolved?

Maybe the A/C leaks toxic gases into the room, so the only way to not kill everyone is to leave the windows open.