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

awes

glad this thread has returned to form.

What was boss's response???

My boss's response? She cried! I made my terrible boss cry! There was also yelling.

Carl's story is fantastic!

omg you made her cry

there's no better ending for that story

can we give you some kind of parade? I feel like you need a parade

after just having had a very tiresome chat with a co-worker (but... but... but... yes i know but...), that story has completely cheered me up.

that is such a good story.

I was shocked about the crying. I expected anger, indignation, quiet seething rage but when she just burst into tears I was definitely taken aback. But then I rallied and continued reading the items on my list.

If one of the things on your list was about her being a bully, I'm not surprised she fell apart when confronted. They usually do, so their whole lives are about creating an atmosphere where others are scared to call them on their assholism.

i work in civil service and there are a lot of empty shell type people wandering around my building (i don't mean me, i have a rich life full of hobbies i enjoy) - these zombies tend to make strange social missteps - basic human courtesy is rare in this 20 per cent.

this afternoon i was waiting for the lift and a person kind of stormed onto the landing, then pressed the "up" button several times. after a few minutes a lift came, so they rushed ahead of me. i followed them in and they said "i'm going up" and held the 8 button for a long time - the lift however remained loyal to the first button pushed, and as they said "i'm going up!" again, and nothing happened, and they looked at the buttons like an ape that had found a diamond, i felt a kind of sadness and just had to break the news... "i think the lift is going down"

I don't know if I'm comforted or just sad that civil service employees seem to be the same the world over. You could teleport that person to the state government where I used to work and nobody would know they hadn't worked there forever.

I often wonder about civil service in America, I think after reading an article about those workers in the gigantic cave somewhere, maybe it was Inland Revenue letters they process? I guess it's basically the same.

It's so odd how institutionalised the people become - like you see the weirdest behaviour, people eating full English fry-up breakfasts every day in the canteen, a few weeks ago I saw a guy asleep and snoring at 1pm, on a couch.

There are a lot of people who seem like they might not be able to work in other places - and I mean I guess I kind of support that the state should employ these people. But that doesn't mean it's not a bit sad sometimes.

do they do important work, these 20%? or do they just turn up day in day out as if to use up the time? I work in an academic library and sometimes wonder what would happen if all of the staff just stopped turning up. On a pessimistic day I think, not much probably.

it's hard to be sure - i suspect people are handed out basic jobs, eg if you go to get a new security pass there are maybe 5/6 people doing it and it's really dysfunctional.

it's hard to tell - i guess there must be a lot of slack - i find it v hard to actually work out how a state could be efficient, not that i mean that as advocating losing people either, i just think if you want a big state that tends to employ people you must accept the waste that goes with it.

I can only speak to the notoriously crooked government of the state where I worked, but there's a lot of patronage, meaning that people often get jobs because of their connections (anything from being blood related to a senator to being the son of someone active in a church that's pastor is known to bring in votes for a specific candidate). Sometimes these people are in no way qualified to work the jobs that they get, and sometimes they totally are but don't give a fuck.

But that doesn't really explain the just general weirdness of people who worked there. Ronan's elevator person is such a good example and I have seen that exact kind of behavior. Like the professional and social customs of a regular private sector workplace are completely out the window. Sometimes that's good, sometimes that's amusing, sometimes it's dreadful.

I've put a lot of the five years I worked in that environment out of my mind, but I'm remembering the coworker who 1) went through my trash can (we put our trash out in the hall for collection) and 2) stopped by to talk about something interesting she found in my trash (the packaging for a wrist brace to help stave off over-use tendinitis) and did not act like it was weird or objectionable at all.

Like the conversation opener was, "I was looking in your trash and I saw the packaging for a wrist brace. What's going on with your wrist?" And I think I was so taken aback by the entire thing that I just told her!

that is really weird, i'm lucky in that the team immediately around me is kind of based on changing behaviour, so we're all sort of in the eye of the storm and can joke about this kind of thing.

i think i mentioned upthread the woman who has just been jettisoned by any team or boss, and spends all day looking at a google map of daventry, talking to herself and muttering things like "but you were holding the child", or grumpily chuntering on in vague terms about whoever "stole" the chair she had annexed since the previous time someone stole "her" chair. like "red coat, red coat, red coat".

lots of weird corridor/lift/stairs behaviour though, people are treated essentially like children and behave accordingly, rushing out of lifts, shoving past each other, there are signs everywhere, like the most basic thing has a sign "don't forget your laptop!", "did you wash your hands!" etc etc.

there's the more higher echelon people too, like someone who's a policy expert or something - the type of people who send an email as if they sat down to write it with a glass of port underneath a big taxidermy deer's head, while drinking a brandy. just so ineffectual.

i published a webpage last month, which i had to fight to publish, which came to me as an "urgent" request last june, in the form of a forwarded email chain which had the same "urgent" subject line when it first originated in december 2013. "urgent" just means "yeah we have to actually do this one, not like the others".

forgot to mention i fucking love it here, prob my favourite job ever

hahaha

whole last 24 hours of this thread has been nuts

Sorry my furtive posting meant I added in both port and brandy

god its rly quite normal over here now :(

We've got this weird wall decal in the restroom that says in cursive font, "Don't forget to wash your hands! Love, Mom"

… and I hate it. My mother is pretty whimsical about most everything, but even that would be too much for her.

And really, thank goodness she's alive. I'm scared that one day I'll go in there, and there'll be a co-worker leaning against the wall trying to contain his tears.

I hate the implication that it's anybody's mother's job to policy handwashing. You're grown. Wash your fucking hands.

See also: "Do your dishes. Your mother doesn't work here."

FUCK YOU

well if my mother doesn't work here, how did she leave that stupid note in the restroom?

"Maybe you should wear something more flattering to work? Love Mum"

"I don't think I could wear lipstick that color. Love Mum"

"Are you sure you ironed that shirt?"

"did you specify non-sequential bills?"

"Don't forget to deliberately not wash your hands! Love, Richard Feynman"

I don't technically work in civil service, but it's as good as. It's actually the most smart and professional workplace I've ever had. (Whereas the creative private sector place my partner works in is total nuts)

I work in a place where I was able to put a sign saying "ONLY FULL-TIME STAFF CAN URINATE INTO THIS BUCKET" on a bucket being used to catch water from a roof leak in our main corridor and the sign stayed there for a whole day; don't know if this makes my workplace good or bad

i vote good

It makes you a model coworker.

See also: "Do your dishes. Your mother doesn't work here."

Well, tbh at my workplace thats exactly what *I* think because fuck me, if anyone in this office ever learned how to wash a cup its news to me. We have a dishwasher and TWO sinks, but inevitably by Friday afternoon both sinks are piled to the brim with filthy plates and cups and people just rinse off dishes and shove em in the drainer rack.

I also, btw, have a ton of stories about institutionalized behaviour in public service jobs but... its hard to bring any to clear recall now, it was 25 years ago and it is all a big, horrible blur that Ive blanked out.

The problem with that sign is the assumption that it's your mother's job to do dishes.

But yeah, people should clean up after themselves. That's gross that you end up with two sink fulls of dirty dishes at work! Bleh.

Oh right yes of course, thats a good point.

But yeah ugh. The worst offender is a woman who eats some form of gross chocolate porridge at her desk every morning, so I have to put up with the clinking and stirring and slurping and then she puts the soaking gummy bowl in the sink all day.

Private sector can be just as bad, you get places that have over-hired and pay too much with maybe a weird appraisal system where it ends up like a cartel of denial, nobody leaving cos they can't get a better job and they're getting worse and worse at their current one. Public sector need not be like this as a rule, BBC was nothing like this, most people were on short contracts and it was incredibly competitive, ultimately tiring and unfair/

I thought there was a danger of my colleague, who seems to have an unusually relaxed approach to work, being in a position where she finally had to deliver something. I was kind of interested how that would turn out.

Get in this morning to find she's off sick and I'm nominated to take this work over.

This is probably more an issue around poor management really, though.

i have a regular client, a designer, who once expected me to build a website with the only design reference being an animated gif that she had sent over

I was a civil servant until 3 years ago, and can endorse a lot of Ronan's observed behaviour. At least part of it is to do with the kind of people/quality of people you can get for the money - at the lowest grades, during the NuLab years, there was a special dispensation to exclude public servants from having the minimum wage applied to them. When the coalition decided to revoke the dispensation, some people were getting a 30% pay rise just to get to minimum wage. Perhaps as a result they don't really have a sense of belonging, so basic things like making sure you do your shit in the toilet as opposed to on the floor sometimes go by the wayside because it's somebody else's problem to clean up and it's not like it matters. Actual staff pay through the range is poor, even to the top; the only people paid market rates are consultants and temporary staff because they wouldn't come in otherwise. But I wouldn't say any more about that until I know this is definitely de-indexed.

Also, the reason you then end up with people like Map Woman is because it's very, very difficult to discipline people, and almost impossible to sack them. You can give her hard performance targets to get measured against to try and prove she's not capable, but those targets have to be within her abilities to start with and she may only be able to stare at a map - in which case that's all you can ask her to do and as long as she does that then her performance is satisfactory. Again, there are de-indexed stories about that.

would enjoy a de-indexed thread

I thought this thread was de-indexed, but I'm not going to load 6864 posts to try to find out.

Could this thread be de-indexed?
― Je55e, Sunday, June 10, 2012 5:09 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Done.
― 9 1/2 Gleeks (WmC), Sunday, June 10, 2012 6:20 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're welcome.