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

They've probably done it in Meeting Room B

You know, if you are one of seven people that your assistant supports, and Christmas or Administrative Professional's Day* or her 30th freaking anniversary with the firm rolls around and the other six people your assistant supports go in on a gift for her, you are a real heel if you opt out again like you have every time for the last three years, JUST FYI.

*I think this this is absolute bullshit, and appreciation is better shown with higher salary, better benefits, treating support staff as peers and not underlings, being generally respectful, etc. way better than plants BUT when in Rome...

Like, $10 to the woman who juggles a shit ton of fiddly administrative bullshit from seven people so you can concentrate on your big, important legal thoughts is really not too fucking much to ask.

Ew!!! What the fuck is wrong with people?!? S/he is a fucking LAWYER, right?? I mean... I prooooobably make less than them and *I* could spare $10 for a nice person.

This guy honestly believes that she doesn't do enough work for him to justify his contribution to any group gift, which I know for a fact to be a ridiculous assertion. Not to say that she does more stuff for him than for the rest of us, but she does a lot! And we all work remotely so she's basically like a physical extension of ourselves for the purposes of handling physical things like faxing, copying, taking stuff to various places, mailing... I don't know man.

Like if he were in the office every day, I could maaaaaaybe see his point but he works from a different state! He comes into the office maybe twice a year and only when his computer fucks up and requires in-person service.

a lawyer being an asshole? I'm *shocked* i tells ya. *shocked!*

ikr

Fuuuu... I just had a six-second fantasy about becoming a lawyer specifically in order not to act like this. Luckily Carl has this covered already.

I'm managing an idealistic young social justice warrior firebrand so if I've been curmudgeonly lately with ilx I'll ask for yr understandings

I was an admin/paralegal before I went to law school and I made a vow that I would always approach support staff as equals. I think I've stuck to it well but you'd probably have to ask the admins I've worked with to be sure. I admit that sometimes I am a real stereotypical ding dong lawyer when it comes to IT stuff but in my defense, everything about computers changed in the three years I was in law school and now I'm more or less an old man yelling at clouds re: tech.

Like I shit you not, five minutes ago I turned on my laptop, thought, "God this thing is dirty" and then thought, "I wonder if that's a thing people ever call the service desk about..."

speaking as an underling, I don't hate doing my job but i do hate being the object of intra-office group-pressured gift-giving and would be grossed out by any concern-trolling on my behalf. no one at work knows when my birthday is for this reason. just my two cents!

I wouldn't call my post concern trolling. Thanks for your two cents. I'll put them towards the flowers.

The best flowers don't cost anything.

yeah just swipe 'em off a gravestone like a normal person jeez

I share a room at work (separated by a cubicle divider) with a woman who is the single most obtuse human being I have ever met. She has been arguing with an insurance customer service rep for the past half hour because she is (inexplicably) angry that her homeowners insurance is going to be included in her mortgage payment rather than billed separately, and that they didn't tell her they were going to do this in advance, etc. But this is pretty much always the way it works with a mortgage. And why would she even have a problem with that? It’s still the same price. But more importantly... SHE IS A MORTGAGE LITIGATION PARALEGAL AND SHE DOES NOT KNOW THIS.

This is just one in a series of long, loud, seemingly pointless arguments she has gotten into with customer service representatives while I try in vain to ignore her.

"Wrong fuckin place at the wrong fuckin time!
I just can't get enough,
I just can't get enough,
Wrong fuckin place,
I just can't seem to get enough of

Aaah aaah ouch!"

In an argument about the tube strike yesterday, our catering manager told me that a strike couldn't happen in the catering industry because "it just wouldn't work. The company would still need to provide a service, you see, and if the staff aren't there it's very difficult for them to do that."

ha classic

amazing

Condensed version of an email conversation that has been wasting my time for the last 45 minutes -

CO-WORKERS: Why did we change the graphic on this page from a static one to a video?

ME: We didn't, it's a looping GIF from the video relevant to the page topic.

CW: But why did we change it?

ME: To see if we could keep people on the page and increase conversions.

CW: I don't like it.

CW 2: I agree, it might confuse people as to what the page is about.

ME: This page is converting at over 13% and most of the traffic comes from another page that makes its purpose clear.

CW 2: How are you determining conversions?

ME (mentally): GET THE FUCK BACK TO WORK FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

non-stop tunelessly whistling guy is going to do me in

paraphrased text messages

me yesterday: i'm on vacation aug 13-28. do not call, text or email me during that time. rachel will be doing my job while i'm away. send your orders and inventories to her then.

cw today: [sends through order] should i also send this to rachel?

NO. NO YOU SHOULDN'T.

Wait, so.... you're doing your job before Aug 13 and after Aug 28
and Rachel will be doing your job between Aug 13 and Aug 28

so

if it's before Aug 13

Rachel should be doing your job, right? right??? god, i was always so bad at word problems!!! can someone plz parse this confusing blob of words for me????? what's going on what is job even

Stevie, you should send everything to J between aug 13-28, but just copy Rachel, ok?

i'm not copying Rachel if I can just send it to J. she has her phone on her so I'm just going to do that; rachel need not get involved here.

ok so i'll contact her on monday? and after THAT you are like dead or whatever? cool cool

also um who is this rachel i mean do we even know her like what if i have ~personal~ concerns

Yeah, why did J even set this up? I'm gonna email Rachel about it. If I don't get a reply by around, say, Aug 14, then I'll contact J to find out just what was going on here.

YOU GUYS ARE THE WOOOOOOOORST

this is what every work day is like. trying to explain simple concepts to dummies. including my boss. which reminds me:

boss: so what's our website? xxxxxxxx✧✧✧@m✧✧.c✧✧?
me: no

remember that she has run this business for 35 years, and the online store has had the same url for like 10 years

lol

omg

skype it to her inbox (uhh yeah dude joke, applicable here tho)

lol

― how's life, Saturday, August 8, 2015 7:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no actually not lol, as someone who works 45h/week at a help desk where I regularly (i.e. several times each and every day) have to explain to ppl in unfathomable detail how to go to a website (e.g. how to open a web browser, what a web browser even is, to type the URL in the address bar instead of a search engine box, what and where the address bar even is, to press ENTER after typing in the URL instead of clicking on the magnifying glass icon, etc) the agony is real, like you suddenly are faced w/ the task of explaining what you thought were the most basic concepts to ppl but actually having to break them down into even more basic pieces that you had never even contemplated ppl wouldn't already know

fuck evry1

^^^ real talk

It's been years since I've worked on a helpdesk, but as second line support we still get the occasional call like that escalated to us. Then there's the face-to-face encounters where co-workers forget the hard drive encryption password on their company laptop that was issued to them the day before that they got to set to whatever they wanted and then they wrote down.

what if i have ~personal~ concerns

― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl

almost fp

just curious, what's the longest review process that anyone has had to endure for a document (a SOP in this case) that was less than 8 pages long?

you mean outside of academia

Do you mean how long does it take someone to review it or how long do you go back and forth with revisions? Because either way a long ass time.

outside of academia

back and forth with revisions, i guess. i'm going on month seven, although there hasn't been constant communication, that's for sure. typically each stage has involved about 2-3 weeks of waiting for a response. one division will suggest a change, i'll make it, a solstice occurs, send it over to the division that's involved, wait a month, they ask a question about the change, an equinox occurs, i get an answer and/or make a few small changes in response, send it back over, wait a few weeks, another solstice comes up on the calendar, etc

Oh okay never that long. Dang.

my entire job is basically writing documents, getting them checked for facts by the people who wrote the old labyrinthine source content, and then attempting to publish them as quickly as possible, and i would say that unless there is a structure imposed on people and a system and it's agreed on by everyone, eg that when i send you this you take a week to return it, i take a week to make an edit, you get your final look at it for a week, then i publish it, unless there is a system like that it can take forever and ever.

it's v hard for you to impose such a system if this is just one document and your job isn't about getting documents published, but i dunno, maybe you can find a way of applying pressure?

it also might work to get a single point of contact in the division you're sending it to, someone who'll collate other people's responses or take more responsibility for getting it done for you.

someone has left a billy graham book in the break room

Whenever I get bummed about my job, I read Karl Malone's posts and I feel better about it.

xpost

it's just one point of contact on the other side (who is collating other people's responses), it's just that seemingly every minor change or adjustment needs to be run through several layers of management, and inevitably someone is on vacation for several weeks). true on my side, too. all of this for a document that i'm sure will just sit on the shelf.

Xpost
Maybe it's time for someone to draw a penis in the Billy Graham book in the break room

I don't know who goes through the trouble of cutting out the individual Burger King coupons from their junk mail and then laying them out evenly on one of the break room tables, but I just want to give them a hug, look them in the eye, and say, "You don't have to do this. Really."