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

I talk to myself at my desk all day long :/ I'm That Person. LOL.

the other day, I still hadn't received information that I very much needed, so I sent an email follow-up stressing the urgency (the language was probably a bit more dramatic than I had planned, as I was without my meds that day). I opted to leave the project manager off because I wanted to talk to one of our tech guys first to see if it was something simple to solve, and figured I'd forward it to him if I didn't have a satisfactory reply by noon.

Someone else on the email decides to forward it to the project manager. Project manager blows up my spot on a conference call for not looping him in, and letting someone else forward it. I can't remember the last time I was that angry at someone. Had to explain to the PM why I'd left him off. Was going to give a sternly worded follow-up to the person who forwarded the message, but decided it's not worth it, as in three months she'll be off the project anyway.

i work with an older american hispanic guy, who is reasonably nice and quite good at what he does and professionally we work well together. we have a client that exports furniture material to rwanda and uganda for manufacture. he is from uganda. today, my coworker pretended to be a southern american plantation owner and told our client, "be quiet, the white man is talking" in a poor southern accent. he also insists that our ugandan client is a muslim and derides his nonexistent refusal to eat pork and frequently makes reference to the september 11th terrorist attacks.

also, he is married. when i come in on monday and he asks me about my weekend, i try to be lowkey and sketch out some details. but he invariably steers our chat toward sexual topics and directly asks if i "got any pussy" or took any girls home. in the same vein, he likes to tell me stories about times when he almost cheated on his wife but stopped himself. he frequently tells stories from his younger days or whatever and they always start with him taking mescaline and end with him having sex.

That man is a gross racist.

i'm definitely getting that vibe, yeah.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH STOP IT, NNGNNNGNGNNGNGNHGHGHHGHHGHHGHGH

stop calling me "brother," Tim! it's not entertaining

I should get all evangelical here on the office and see what happens.

"Brother Holcott, do you have any extra P-20 templates?"

Listening to someone I've probably mentioned on this thread before giving "induction information" to a new guy.

"this one guy from another department - the department used to be called something different - bob and frank and steve used to be head of the department but now it's frank and ben - ben's all right, he bought me a drink once - and bob, he works for department z instead now - department z are at [address] after they moved and changed their name in 1989..." (continues for 6 hours)

"well that one guy said [extended description of clearly noncommittal statements] so i know for a FACT he is very interested in what we're doing here" (continues for several more hours of delusional self-aggrandisement)

NOBODY NEEDS TO HEAR THIS ON THEIR FIRST DAY.

ok, i like this guy a lot, it was a jokey convo over email, and he might be kidding, but:

"What is the male version of an ‘heiress’? I’d like to be that."

heirloom iirc

heiry.

heir bud

There's an older staffer in my office who has been there so long and is such an institution that she kind of forgets we actually do work sometimes. I mean she's perfectly competent, but she mostly doesn't give a fuck when she doesn't have to, which, you know, fine, probably the right attitude to have at that point.

Anyway, the other day I'm on a call with a partner, on speaker, but I have my door open, so she walks into my office. So I make the "I'm in the middle of something important" wave-off gesture. She ignores it, and just sits down in the chair on the other side of my desk. This is an important call about a time-sensitive thing going on. So I keep talking to him, and it goes on a few more minutes, and she starts smirking and making the "Get on with it" hand gesture. I'd say as much as ten minutes go by, finally I'm off the call. What does she want? FOR ME TO PICK A NAME OUT OF A HAT FOR SECRET SANTA

facepalm

had a mediocre year-end review, but the feedback was very constructive. all well and good, but I am thinking the feedback was from the person who is meant to be coaching my team, so why was this feedback not delivered in a more timely manner than the year end? irritating.

Same lady just did it to me again. This time I was obviously on the cell phone (with my wife about our sick toddler, as it happened) and she just barges in and goes "Haha did you see that e-mail?!" She was wearing a green sweater and a red jacket and a santa hat (because today was the office holiday thing). I have worked the entire weekend two weeks straight and gotten no more than five hours of sleep a night for over two weeks, I have so little patience for this shit right now.

We got an email today feeling everyone out about Santa Claus visiting the office. Would we bring our children up? Maybe our pets?

I didn't respond, but no, I'm trying to wrap up two weeks worth of work in two days. Monday and Tuesday could be my busiest days of the year. I'm not complaining, I'm working hard because my company is gracious enough to give everyone a complimentary week off between 12/25 and 1/2. But no, I will not have time to go drive to the kids' daycare, pick them up, bring them back to the office to visit this Santa man, take them back to daycare, finish my work and go home before the real Santa appears. Thanks anyway.

that sounds like an idea likely the brainchild of a person without children.

Which reminds me, I sometimes gripe about how miserly my office is -- our holiday "party" is typically everyone cramped into a conference room to eat pizza for 30 mins -- but I'm kind of thankful that my office doesn't have lots of mandatory holiday bullshit, because I'm working so much lately that I'm just thankful not to have additional mandatory time to be with my co-workers and away from my family.

You're right re: person w/o children, but she does have a dog!

which is almost like having kids, say childless dog owners

I shouldn't really be on this thread because while my co-workers are stupid and annoying, I also love them and I'm definitely no better than they are.

But I went through this same situation less than a month ago when not only did I have five days of work to wrap up before Thanksgiving, but I also had that rare November that ended on a weekend, meaning I wouldn't have a Nov. 29 or Nov. 30 to come back in and get things done before everything new sprung up on the 1st.

Which is fine, I'm not laying bricks, it doesn't happen very often... but my boss comes over that Wednesday and says, "Dude, go home." And I tell him, well, I don't think I can, not this year. He asks how he can help, what can he do, and I tell him it's a bunch of design stuff that he can't really do or doesn't have the software for (he's an actual journalist, not a copy-and-paster like myself), and I'm trying to let him off the hook. But no, every fifteen minutes he's either telling me how sorry he is that I have to work like this or wondering if maybe we can get the IT guys to load a copy of InDesign on to his computer. JUST LET ME DO THIS STUPID THING YOU PAY ME TO DO, I SWEAR I WORK BETTER WHEN YOU LEAVE ME ALONE NOTHING PERSONAL.

My office has a pretty significant workload divide btw attys and staff, where attys tend to work late and weekends while staff tend to stick to their hours unless it's an emergency. I generally have no problem with this, understanding that it's reflected in compensation. However, occasionally I get IA at the inability of the lazier few staffers (mostly the aforementioned lady) to understand that some of us are actually busy a lot of the time with real work.

This is about stupid, annoying former co-workers at the job I used to post about here a lot but one of my neither stupid nor annoying former coworkers sent me an email about the politically connected dingwad they hired to replace me and in summary:

1. The entire agency was sent to an "Emotional Intelligence" workshop, which lololololllllllll forever right there.
2. The Dingwad was very obviously texting/playing games/who know what on her phone* during the workshop, as in holding the phone up at chest level with no pretense of paying attention at all.
3. The employee responsible for organizing the workshop gestured for her to put the phone down and pay attention. She did not.
4. The employee passed her a note telling her to be cool with the phone thing. She did not.
5. The employee interrupted the workshop to tell the Dingwad in front of everybody to put the phone down and pay attention. The dingwad made a big, noisy show of putting the phone down, then continued to use it in her lap like a civilized person who is in a meeting she hates.
6. But eventually she got tired of the subterfuge and just went back to her original texting methods.
7. The outside workshop leader hired by my former employer to conduct the workshop - the workshop on emotional intelligence, mind you - stopped her lecture to attempt to publicly shame the Dingwad into putting the phone down and paying attention.
8. In response, the Dingwad noisily packed up her belongs, announced that she had work to do, and walked out.

It's worth noting that my former boss was pressured to hire the Dingwad over another, waaaaaay more qualified and contentious applicant (she had already held the position for a year in another office) despite the fact that my former boss is connected as hell (that's how he got his job). Anyway, sometimes I think about going back to not that job, but maybe public employment, but at je55e's recommendation, I'm going to print out that email and read it any time that thought crosses my mind.

*She once approached a coworker with a legal question, and while he gamely started searching for a case with the answer, she sat down on his desk and whipped her phone out while he did her work for her.

conscientious, not contentious

That's what I get for accepting a spelling correction without actually looking at it.

which one of you wrote this:
http://www.theguardian.com/money/work-blog/2014/jan/10/singing-colleague-distracts-me-work-advice

Surely the question is 'which ILXor is the singing colleague?'

yo.

look man.

if you're not gonna do your job, i feel you. working sucks. sometimes you don't wanna work.

but you know sometimes not working is gonna put you under the gun, right? you get that your incomplete data is gonna cause problems?

and you know that when you're causing problems, that the man-up move is to say "yo, i'm sorry, i'm behind, let me fix this," right?

so you understand that it's inappropriate to try to go all watergate and cover up your slippage by asking *me* to stop my report so nobody notices your missing data? and you get that it's problematic to lie to me and act like the missing data in my report is a consequence of bad report structure on *my* part?

and you get that it's beyond the FUCKING pale to straight up *lie* to your boss and say that we're slipping on this deadline because *my* reporting is fucked up? and you get that it's bullshit to try to duct-tape-and-string a solution together and then tell your boss you *have to* because ~i~ fucked up?

motherfucker i have been on the phone with you for hours a day holding your hand while you sight-type into your fisher price front end, and then you're gonna try to throw me under the bus?

this shit nearly got me fired, because they thought *i* had fucked up. change your game or move on, dogg. and don't call me again.

― BIG HOOS aka the denigrated boogeyman (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, August 8, 2013 4:01 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so

this guy just fucked me **again**.

called me. had me tweak a SQL query by a centimeter. i'm wary, but i'm like "what the fuck can go wrong here, i'm doing this cat a tiny favor and we're like trying to rebuild rapport."

then he went and did all kinds of godknows on his end and broke the shit.

tells his boss, and my boss, "why isn't HOOS's thing working"

this.

motherfucker.

Can you tell your boss (and his boss) like "this guy is doing all this shady-ass shit"?

Or go to him and be like "I'm going out of my way to help you do your job AND help you cover your ass; why are you fucking me over?"

why don't you say "You are right, it was all my fault. I am very sorry."

Can you tell your boss (and his boss) like "this guy is doing all this shady-ass shit"?

― vylvyt ylvis (Stevie D(eux)), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 5:23 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well now they all know what happened last time, and my boss is basically saying "i'm not *his* boss, just yours--so if he makes you look bad, i have to give you shit, but if it turns out to have been his fault i can't do anything about it--stop doing him favors"

Or go to him and be like "I'm going out of my way to help you do your job AND help you cover your ass; why are you fucking me over?"

― vylvyt ylvis (Stevie D(eux)), Wednesday, February 12, 2014 5:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ultimately the problem is that *he doesn't even know these things are his fault*--he's not blaming me out of malice, he's blaming me out of ignorance. and it's only by untangling his trainwrecks, which he doesn't know how to do, that i even get to discover that he was in the wrong to begin with.

i feel like this is what people in IT must feel like.

"i unplugged my ethernet cable. why did you break my internet."

Oh Jesus, yes, now you are speaking my language

texts i received yesterday from a co-worker (working about 100 feet away in a different office):

"Has that fat, useless cow shown up yet? Ugh, I don't even want to see him..."

"I'll be ur Valentine if u cause him to have a heart attack and/or stroke..."

je55e, I found a picture of your coworkers:

http://31.media.tumblr.com/4bf927d1458f6a7cc957c1e1a9fe0404/tumblr_mqpcjk9iF81qd8ysoo1_500.jpg

lolsob

One of them actually gets worse with time. This week she freed herself of being able to comprehend tracked changes in Word.

Agh Aghh that happened to a colleague this week too! Result: scanned in version of printed doc with edits in pen. >:(

Yesterday a co-worker insisted that I watch a scene from Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo on his phone, saying, "If you don't laugh at this, there's something fucking wrong with you."

wtf, even mainstream fart-comedy fans have forgotten that turgid flick by now

I have had issues with one colleague for a while. Just consistent undermining, and she's not even a member of my project team, but always interferes. We just had an internal debrief with leadership and we were supposed to put Powerpoints together detailing what went well and what could go better. I edited mine and forwarded them on. She waited until I was on vacation, snuck in an update, and reattached it without notifying me so that it snuck into the final copy.

I eviscerated her for that one. such grade school pettiness.

to be clear, she took my slide and updated it (we were not supposed to touch each other's slides)

Coworker who shares a room with me told me that I had a missed call from someone while I was out at lunch. She complains that the caller left it ringing for about 5 mins by which time he should have given up, thereby disturbing her concentration. I ask her why she didn't simply answer the phone and take a message to which she replies "He was calling you, not me."

had to have docs reviewed and feedback given by a peer in another dept on a project, and they asked if we could hand off as we finished each doc. So I had the bulk of them subbed over to this person by 2/25, the remainder all handed off by 3/7. Deadline was 3/21.

Assured I'd get it by then. 3/21 passes, I get a little over half of them. Get daily promises for the remainder. Friday ends, still nothing, I'm told Saturday. Today, I'm off, but log in...nothing, was told she had 'computer issues'. It's been over a month now and the review takes like two hours.

If this person reported to me, I could have had this resolved weeks ago. since they don't, no matter how stern my message, it has little effect. *sigh*.

Had that last week but by someone senior. Had to bust a gut like never before to reach a deadline :(

guy at the desk next to me got poached by another department.

can't begrudge him seeing an opportunity and taking it--i'd do it too.

still, our team is fucked now.

I don't think I wanna play at IT any more, on account of being increasingly tired of:
1. dudes;
2. young people;
3. dudes who think they're hot shit by some personal definition which features Being A Dude as an unwritten, unexamined cornerstone;
4. young people who think they're hot shit by some personal definition which features Being Young as an unwritten, unexamined cornerstone;
5. a whole gang of all of the above forming and cutting out anyone not meeting their criteria;
6. (a) listening to one of them take over the all-staff meeting to talk non-stop about his opinions after 3 weeks in the job, followed by (b) getting a reply from another which ignored the question and was at the level of "the keyboard is the clicky thing in front of the monitor, now don't worry your pretty fat ugly head about the details", then (c) meeting a friend at the pub only for the whole gang to be there braying at the next table (without inviting or acknowledging me, obv)

alternative reading which doesn't involve accusations of unconscious sexism ("but who is the REAL sexist, for even noticing that all these people are men and most of the people they won't let finish sentences are women?"):

my org does a lot of things quite badly but to have so many new staff start and ignore everyone who's been there for several years in favour of bro-ing down raucously w/ each other is p. annoying. Hi, we've got problems but we know why things were done the way they were, would anyone like to know about that? Guess not

Sorry to write this on this heretofore equal opportunities thread, because I appreciate that it will be read by men and young people who are not like the above, and indeed there are men at my work who don't do the above (but are closer to being invited in than most of the women), and I don't mean to tar you all with the same brush, I just don't know how else to explain the tiredness

i have a vision of a conference room - all serious executives - the leader is disaplying their buttocks - they are all carefulyl studying - it is the most important decision fo their lives