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

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.

^hero

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XtV4H9vVL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

a couple of professions have 77 threads for this stuff, maybe we could do with a general co-workers one

today i was asked to change, on a website, someone's title from

Manager, Sales and Account Services

to

Manager, Sales & Account Services

Mookie, this is your safe place, but I endorse that change.

i don't care either way, but requesting it be changed from one to the other -- which passed through at least two other people on the way to me -- is some office space shit

change it to

Manager, Sales 'n' Accounting Services

Sales & Account Services Manager
Manager, Sales + Account Services
Manager, Sales &/or Account Services

you've got a lot of options.

Manager, Sales ampersand Account Services

Manager, Sales U+0026 Account Services

ban all desk-whispering

i fucking haaaaaate it

Oh god yes me too. I immediately react (and this is my problem tbh) with "wtf are they bitching about oh god its about me isnt it oh god"

totally!

coworker who sits behind me was queen of desk whispering - she returned from a 2 month leave of absence today and it's been whisperpalooza all fuckin day. i guess the reason she left was something health-related & not public knowledge but clearly can be talked about at length to anyone who asks as long as its at whisper-level

i mean i hate loudtalking just as much but surely theres a happy medium

Just talk in a quiet indoor voice! No yelling! No whispers!

OTM. The susurration of a whisper cuts through my concentration far more keenly than a normal indoor voice would.

i hate work whispering with a burning passion. there was an egregious instance of it the other day. at precisely 5:27pm, every day, the air condition cuts off and suddenly it's incredibly quiet in the office. you can hear people walking from way down the hall (on carpet!), elevator doors closing behind glass windows, all sorts of stuff you normally never hear. anyway, a few days ago the office was pretty deserted, and then at 5:27pm the A/C cuts off, and then a minute later i hear two people whispering ONE CUBE away from me. they went on and and on, the only two people left besides me in the entire fucking office, practically. and it was so intensely quiet, otherwise, that it felt like ASMR. in fact i think i ended up subconsciously navigating to the ASMR wikipedia page as they were doing it. anyway, it's hard to explain but when there are only 3 people within 200 feet and it's as quiet as a reserved mouse and two of the three people are whispering to each other in a way that would stimulate some people on the internet in weird dreamlike ways, i get uncomfortable

whispering is the worst, especially when it's in a work environment where people use it to complain or have some surreptitious bitching session. not even that i mind people bitching, just the slow seep of bad vibes from two people chuntering on at each other under their breath.

don't get why people don't just use an instant messenger if it's that secret.

The secretiveness is not what bugs me most about whispering, it's that the sibilant sounds are the only ones audible and they are super annoying. The (perceived) secretiveness is most annoying when you KNOW the conversation doesn't have to be secret at all! Or if it were that private, the people could go to a room w/ a closed door. I think sometimes work whispering is a way of trying to look important and powerful.

Happily, we don't have any whispering at my office, but at the social justice non-profit and the last restaurant where I worked, it was an everyday thing.

love whispering, it adds atmosphere

One of the customer service people at my bank had a very sibilant way of talking, which I know wasn't her fault, but it made everything she said sound like psss psss psst whispering and it made me want to scream at her. That branch closed down and now thank god she's out of my life.

xp >:(

My boss' work spouse has a volume level of 12. She is down the hall now.

Not co-workers, but work-people nonetheless: this week I have dealt with two (2) multi-page Official Legal Documents (a power of attorney and a financial disclosure statement) that were handwritten on legal/notebook paper, written out by lawyers. The disclosure I had sent to the lawyer in fillable PDF, and he copied the whole thing onto notebook paper.

when you take the day off and your colleagues try to facebook stalk you to see what you were 'really up to'

pretty pathetic

that is insane

The disclosure I had sent to the lawyer in fillable PDF, and he copied the whole thing onto notebook paper.

― Je55e, Tuesday, May 5, 2015 8:17 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What. WHAT??? What?!?

when you take the day off and your colleagues try to facebook stalk you to see what you were 'really up to'

pretty pathetic

― F♯ A♯ (∞), Tuesday, May 5, 2015 1:18 PM

Strict rule: no co-worker facebook friends. Everyone here is friendly enough, but none are people I'd want to hang out with outside of work. I might break my rule if someone I really liked started working here.

I am surprised you're so surprised. What makes it more surprising is that this lawyer is barely in his 50s. xp

Why did he do that, though? If he wanted a copy, why didn't he print it out? Why did he hand copy it into a notebook?

Yeah, I've told my boss, "you do not want to see what I gripe about on Facebook, and our advertisers would call for my head on a stick if they saw my posts through you." xxp

you have to limit coworkers' fb access

if you want to party freely

And hope for no fb hiccups.

yeah, i don't know if i'm overreacting but these types of things make me hate this place. i shouldn't complain and should just look for something else but i'll be done in 1.5 years then i can leave

I think your reaction is very reasonable, but you should also change your fb settings if they're creepin on u

feeling like coworkers are monitoring your behavior all of the time is one of the most infuriating things about working in an office. I get annoyed if someone even looks at my screen when they walk by my cubicle. to have that feeling outside of the office would surely be hell.

my least favorite is when a co-worker monitors my IM status to know the exact moment I'm online so that they can start bombarding me with questions. Dude, I just logged in, give me a few minutes to get my bearings.

also, your projects are not so important that you need to schedule multiple status meetings every week that you invite me to along with several other managers and force us to sit through your excruciatingly lengthy and repetitive status updates. Just send it to me in a brief email and we should all be good, k? thx.

yes my project IS that important, moodles, and there have ben some fundamental shifts in our direction over the last week that i just need to bring you up to speed on so if you can go ahead and accept this invite for tomorrow from 1-3 i think that should be enough time to cover it, thanks

haha, karl

yeah, sufjan, that's the first thing i did. this one in particular was sending me fb messages so she can see when i read it and when i was last active and some some cryptic/nonsense message. incidentally, she is also the one looking at my monitor at work and eavesdrop on just about everyone. she can hear whispers from across the room. everyone goes to her for gossip, which is disgusting. the funny thing is with just a little bit of information she feels she knows exactly what's going on and makes assumptions, then goes on to tell others or whoever asks. when she's proved wrong, she says, well so-and-so said this so "I ASSUMED" blah blah blah...my goodness...

xpost

ha, it's less "here's a shift in our direction" and more "tell us how to do our jobs", over and over again

karl, i thought i of you yesterday, as i was reading a piece about john beale and the epa - it reminded me of all the insane bureaucracy stories you used to tell

the other day i was browsing for cool c-span footage (my life has turned downhill) and i stumbled on one of the john beale committee hearings. brutal. what a fucking nightmare.