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

A couple people have gone on a kick of forwarding stuff about Donald Trump including this http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/lil-donald with the comment And this clown could be president????!!!!

How do you train someone who doesn't take in written or verbal instructions at all, who blindly dives into tasks with half measures & doesn't ask questions until after everything is a total mess?

He always looks as though he will fall asleep if you tell him something for too long.

He only half-reads any information he is given. Or refers to it afterwards when he then reads what he should have done. And does not retain it the next time.

If he does the same task 7 times, he will do it slightly different every time, repetition does not seem to help.

He assists me with an account - he can sort of handle one pretty basic task, and he wants to do more. I would love him to do more and am happy to help him grow. But the extra that I have given him has so far ended up a total mess. I am at my wits end trying to teach him in a way that sinks in, and I just don't know what other angles to pursue.

I worked with someone just like that: half-reading/listening, reading too late, no retention, does things differently every time. We tried him on every possible task but had to remove each one from him in the end. When we ran out of tasks and he was doing just one thing, he finally got bored and left.

Because he was a volunteer and not an employee, the person managing him refused to countenance a conversation with him where any of this was raised properly. Is there any way of addressing some of these things directly with this guy? I'm hilariously reliant on the book 'Difficult Conversations' for that kind of stuff.

Why did you marry him, then?

(joke: I suspect this is how my wife feels about me much of the time)

xpost

lol

He came up to me today & said over & over "I'm not stupid I just (blank)" etc

I think I am going to try a policy of "YOU MUST ASK ME QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU DO THESE NEW THINGS UNTIL YOU GET IT" - no excuses.

like i beat a path back & forth to my old manager's office for months, almost a year, learning this account. I dont care if he *thinks* he *kinda* gets it, that dog dont goddamn hunt. In this new Vegistan regime he better lower his self-esteem down to a dull simmer or he wont learn a damn thing & will drive me to the nuthouse in the process

or i'll just die quietly

Sounds like ADHD to me, particularly when you mentioned he can't "do" repetition and looks like he'll fall asleep if you tell him something for too long. I have some experience here so maybe I can help.

1. What is the physical environment like where his desk/workstation is? Is there a lot of stimulus/sound/people walking by?
2. Is this the kind of gig where one could wear headphones?
3. What type of work is it? It sounds like Excel based on your description. How "important" is this task?
4. Do you have a sense of what this person's hobbies are? Much like people on the autism spectrum, hobbies and interests can be a clue to understanding the individual's coping strategies.
5. What percentage of this person's work day would be dedicated to meetings, check-ins, or impromptu interactions?

late to this party but

you're never sure whether the dishwasher is a) full of dirty stuff waiting for cleaner to start it, b) full of clean stuff waiting for the cleaner to put it away or c) running. we need a system (something as simple as just leave it on the side) but that's not going to happen

ppl should leave dirty stuff on the drainer next to the sink and it should be the cleaner's job to put it in the dishwasher. problem solved?

How do you train someone who doesn't take in written or verbal instructions at all, who blindly dives into tasks with half measures & doesn't ask questions until after everything is a total mess?

He always looks as though he will fall asleep if you tell him something for too long.

He only half-reads any information he is given. Or refers to it afterwards when he then reads what he should have done. And does not retain it the next time.

All of these things could describe my bf, who I'm certain has a reading disability of some sort and is also ADD. Yeah you're gonna need a different learning strategy for him, and since the systems in place aren't going to work for you or him, helping him grow might involve a deeper look into learning styles, what does he do well and how did he learn it originally, etc?

ppl should leave dirty stuff on the drainer next to the sink and it should be the cleaner's job to put it in the dishwasher. problem solved?

Not if you have more than three ppl in your office, or anyone wants to wash their containers and take them home before someone else nicks them, or you don't want to attract cockroaches.

We have about 200 people in our office. The cleaners are around all day and put the dishwasher on three or four times a day.

must be nice

Give him.a checklist vg. Ppl with short attn spans like to tick shit off. I've got a short attn span I need that sweet endorphin at every step of I start to get creatively distracted

yeah in my first few confused office years I made myself a few little printable checklists and clipped them to everything I had on the go to keep myself going, A+

i made him a brief, simple bold-font checklist :)
told him a white lie that I had made it for myself back when I was starting on the account, it seems to have helped.

thanks for the ADD tips, guys

He's been a traditional salesrep for 20 years, his main strength is on sales calls, conversations where he sets the tone & builds relationships with customers, bcz he's very friendly & bubbly

This account is handled almost entirely via email requests, and it's a very different kind of account than any that he's ever handled - everything is ordered via EDI, and there's quite a bit of technical minutiae involved in supporting the account. It's very simple *to me* but I think from his end, especially with ADD in the mix, it's a very steep learning curve

I definitely will work on my own communication methods now that I see things a bit more clearly

sales guys are an odd breed. I sat next to one in a prev job whose mind was blown when I clued him in that Windows has a built in calendar. :/

also lol @ cleaners filling/emptying dishwashers. luxury! ours don't even dust the desks. empty bins, vacuum, that's it. I spose they'd charge more to do more.

do not start me on salespeople

90% of the in my office are oldschool
phone salesppl. they are skilled at a) loudtalking and b) making smalltalk with strangers and c) bullshitting ...and that's it.

VG OTMFM x1000000000000000

oh and d) COMPLAINING

tbf you're no slouch yourself

and e) refusing to take "no" for an answer when production/design/creative/whatever says "can't be done, you shouldn't have promised that."
xp

for the third time in a month, i've been asked to be the fall guy for my boss. all of them are variations on the boss forgetting to ask people to do things, then asking me to be the one sending the email demanding that things be due with not nearly enough time for the staff to turn it around. then they all reply to me with their complaints. which i totally get! i'd be pissed too!

btw ILX i'm going to need all of you to prepare a presentation with detailed speaking notes by tomorrow morning. also, the presentation will be in NYC. i assume that's ok with all of you but you'll need to make travel arrangements if you haven't already. THANKS,

ZACH

i'm sure there's a decent portion of this office who don't even know who i am but completely hate my guts, based purely off of these emails

plus side: when i quit in a few months, no one will wonder why

xxpost watch it mookie >:(

we have a nespresso machine at work, the capsules are supplied seemingly at random. (there are (almost) always capsules there but the flavours are random)

someone in there today - 'oh they have (some flavour) again', uses one, sticks two in his pocket.

another colleague always uses the decaf capsules but two at a time.

(i use said machine about twice a year just to remind myself how much i don't like the coffee it produces)

There's been a long-running joke that my current line manager often falls asleep at his desk after lunch.

So I've been working 12 hour days all this week because he's been off sick for ten days. He has insomnia.

if you ever brag in the office about your exercise routine you should no longer get to duck out of any physical lifting/shoving tasks without a good excuse imo

people with bad backs and dodgy knees and who knows what else lugging stuff all over the place while our office's resident gymrat is pretending not to notice

people here go to the gym and then take the lift one floor...

If the past week has taught me anything, it's that 4000 redundancies, the suspension of all bonus payments and an internal social network are not a good mix.

Though my sympathy is obvs with the former, it's difficult to know whether the people openly trashing management / other departments or the ones cheerleading for the "difficult decisions" have the least common sense. You are left with the impression that half the company is determined to make themselves unemployed and the other half would respond to all the CEO's updates with "fuck me, daddy" if it wasn't for the profanity filter.

yikes :(

yes, yikes! hope things work out ok for you ShariVari

ty!

Other than having my bonus cruelly snatched away at the 11th hour, i'm unaffected this time around.

I hope that any other Ilxors rolling in the same clown car (iirc there's at least one) are similarly ok.

you may mean me - i'm good thanks, doesn't seem like there's too much to worry about here atm.

Guy next to me has been asleep for most of the last 15 minutes, he even started snoring. As hes a helpdesk phone person I'm half wondering if he put his phone on no calls and hoped no one'd notice. Yeesh.

I mean dude, go to the loo if you really want a nap.

time to dack him, Trayce

He was sitting down, but I should have dropped a pencil down his pants Homer style. TBF this guy is a friend outside of work so I wouldnt've. TBH Im a bit worried about him.

scheduling a colonoscopy from your cubicle: c/d?

Depends if you're scheduling it for yourself or for an annoying coworker

Ha, that sorrrrt of happened to me a while ago, as in the hospital rang me at work unexpectedly and asked me all these horrible questions that I just couldnt answer aloud, cos who wants to hear me say that shit. err... no pun intended.

someone who works at one of the stores sent me the stupidest most bogus corporate-speak ("communiques", "closing the conversation loop", "our shared goal of successful business in a professional setting" LADY U DON'T WORK YR HIGH-FLATUIN EXEC POSISH ANYMORE YR JUST A SALES CLERK FOR A LAME CLOTHING COMPANY THAT SELLS A LOT OF UGLY SHIT) text message , doing a poor job of subtly patronizing me, and i totally wigged out and sent her a scolding msg back, basically telling her to cut this shit out.

no reply so far. pretty sure she's gone tattling to my boss, bc she's already narced on me to the general manager (who's on my side).

anyone who uses "closing the conversation loop" in a text message needs their mobile phone privileges revoked.

"Hi Xxxxx,
Let me circle back with the client manager once more and get back to you.
Thanks!"

can't decide whether this, which arrived this morning, is a 360, a 540 or a 720.

I always want to tell people who pull that shit "can we speak in english instead of suit? Thanks kindly"

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/1444781839.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

xp OMG i forgot to add - she signed an earlier, corporate-speak, bullshit text addressed to me/boss/manager, with "thank you and sincerely - [her full first name, not the shortened version she ALWAYS goes by]"

i really wanted to text back 'who tf signs their texts?? and especially like THAT??" but that was back when i was trying not to be the asshole.

Team leader was asking one of the accounts ladies to send him a copy of the link she was having probs with.

"how do I do that?", says the woman who works in a fucking IT company.

Advertiser's previous ads have had solid black backgrounds by their request.
My contact, Low Level Functionary, says "let's do something updated and modern this issue."
I produce something sleek and slightly futuristic.
LLF: No, let's go with something rural: meadow, barn
I change it all to meadow, barn. Now it looks like technicolor vomit because the background is too busy and the foreground is three quarts of info pushed into a one quart container.
LLF: change this, change that (repeat repeat)
After 7 rounds of proofs she finally shows it to her general manager.
GM: Make the background black.