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

omar yeah it's hard in those situations to protect yourself as you need to while trying to be sensitive to the other person. esp since we know managers often tend to be 'snip snip' in regards to problems

xxp it's ok, if it's who I'm thinking of, I have a friend trying to get out of IT there and a number of other friends and family who have cycled through. A job's a job

I feel bad for a guy who posted on a friend's preferred messageboard today. He was bitching about my employer, but because he'd been laid off from a contracting job in the corporate IT realm. Because corporate put the contracts out for bid again and this particular guy's employer isn't in the pool that won the contracts.

I have no doubt this is a guy people were complaining about for some reason and a number of his contractor peers were stupid and annoying, but the way contracting and vendors work, many of them never have a chance to be anything but stupid and annoying for anyone who's one of their full-time peers.

i had to take my boss aside and tell him what was up, and insisted that i didn't want her to lose her job over it, but i just didn't want anyone thinking i wasn't doing my fair share. he acknowledged it and all was good for me, but they kept her around. i don't know that she actually did ANY work.

i was kinda at that point with this person last month, but the difference is that this is a small nonprofit where everyone else is a volunteer, so the fact this person was getting paid for not really doing any real work was not sitting well with a few volunteers who do a lot of work and don't get paid, including one who a few months back was basically living out of their vehicle because they couldn't afford rent.

By no means a unique complaint, as I've seen it at every job I've ever held, but it continues to amaze me that "well I didn't answer you because you didn't pester me enough" is a defensible excuse for not responding to things.

Had a meeting this morning with someone that I've been trying to get information out of for about a week now, having sent three emails and left a voicemail. The question gets brought up in the meeting and he immediately got defensive, saying, "hey, if this was so important you should have just kept bothering me until I responded". And one of the other senior management people in the meeting looked at me and said, "yes, you really need to keep at it to get information from busy people".

Like, wtf, three emails and a voicemail in a week is a lot! Every one of them clearly stated that I needed to have the info by the end of last week. Your choice to not respond to me doesn't just suddenly become my fault because it makes you look busier/more important! I've got a lot of things to do to buddy!

I get saying that if you send one solitary email two weeks in advance of deadline and never follow-up on it again and ambush them, but fuck that in your case, you did more than enough

xp - ugh, I've been there ... maybe that reasoning would be valid if the "busy person" was someone outside your company/org that you were supposed to motivate to do a thing ... but this is a coworker, you are all on the same team so to speak? You should be working together, right? idk just a crazy thought.

I have also been the busy person though ... and I have definitely felt that defensiveness tbh ... but then I get real with myself/the situation and acknowledge that I was not blameless in this.

unless jon works for Glengarry Glen Ross ... you are good here.

lol

Not really worried about it, more just noting that I've seen that excuse fly before.

Yeah, he's a coworker, though not someone I work with on a daily basis. His reaction was whatever, I could tell he realized he forgot and was making a lame excuse, it happens. Wasn't really annoyed at all until the other guy poked at it. What, you want I should camp out in front of his office every morning?

I mean I think we all have a tendency to react defensively by human nature, but i'm pretty quick to say "fuck, I'm sorry, that's on me" if I drop the ball on something

but frankly I don't like to forget to respond, so I flag every email I can't deal with and I go over my flags each day and clear what i can, and if I think I can't gte to something, I say so early.

no matter who you are, you're going to fuck this up and forget to do something or reply to something, but it doesn't have to be a civil case.

I do think in some cases the defensiveness comes from being beat up by other people over menial bullshit, so they carry that baggage into other conversations. I'm still sometimes unnecessarily defensive due to people's toxic bullshit from 8 years ago and haven't been able to get all of it out of my system. so in those cases I try not to reply right away to let that dissipate.

Good points all, which is why I wasn't really bothered until the other dude kinda piled on. It happens! Half my job some days is just trying to follow-up with people and keeping them on task, it's easy and totally understandable that things are going to slip through.

no matter who you are, you're going to fuck this up and forget to do something or reply to something, but it doesn't have to be a civil case.

this is basically my guiding principle in so many things lol

this is begging for some malicious compliance hourly emails the next time it happens.

if the dude is just a regular coworker and not a high profile client or the president the "you should have tried harder to make me do my job" thing is total bullshit. it's low level gaslighting and implies that you're not also busy. like your time is some kind of diminished value.

it's babysittery nonsense. if I'm responsible for something and I can't do it without you providing a piece, and I have to keep prodding you for it, it's actually hurting my wellbeing because you're threatening the way my performance is perceived, AND requiring me to stress over it due to having to constantly remind you, AND having to worry if you're going to treat me worse afterwards because I'm "annoying".

(so yes you otm lol)

like two years ago, when I had deadbeat trainees who would zone out, not participate, etc, I'd just say "alright well, you're fucked and it's of your own choosing", I'd tell their manager about it, let them correct (or not correct) the behavior, and I'd keep on teaching. I would keep trying to involve them but I wouldn't lose sleep if they decided not to give a shit. I'm not talking about people who were working hard and struggling, but people who literally won't respond when you call on them or do any assignments and possibly are actually playing mini-golf and hoping we won't notice. nobody had a problem with this.

now, the last two years, they seem to expect us to babysit. like now even if we approach the managers immediately, they seem to operate with an assumption of "if they're not paying attention, your training must be terrible" and suggest that we need to work harder to figure out why these people don't feel motivated to engage. Like - ok some trainers are terrible and in those cases, most of the class goes to sleep, but you can't just assume that's the cause without any context.

Like, for one, this is a job, not school, you aren't here by law, you're being paid to be here and you literally can't do the job without learning this. If I'm reporting this to you as a manager, this means I already made a ridiculous amount of effort to try to get them to do the work and failed. I'm not wasting more time trying to 'draw them out' at the expense of the 98% of the class's experience, plus they don't actually report to me so why would they listen to me? talk to your own damn employee!

especially when you compare to the class I'm teaching this week, who are have differing skill levels and confidence, but are all 100% committed to it and as a result it's going well.

I still don't play ball with this though, like...one of the perks of being a lifer here is I don't have to do the office politics lol.

we had one person (I think I mentioned this two years ago) create a looping video on his phone and put the phone up to the camera to make it look like he was there and he got caught easily because it was crooked and the borders didn't line up and he'd be speaking and his mouth wouldn't move

yesterday one of my trainees had to miss the afternoon because of an appointment, so I did the usual, gave them the materials they missed with specific instructions and told them in the morning, I'd teach them the transaction they didn't get to see. so I did that and between that and her self-reading, she was caught up.

We get to the next transaction in the lesson, and she says she needs to meet with her manager, disappears for an hour, and missed the whole demo. back to square one. hope that meeting was important boss man

and if I try to ping her manager, he's out of the office with no OOO message up and no backup listed, so I have no idea who she is talking to

Me & one of the other volunteers who worked in the same "department" with Missing Stair finally got to see Missing Stair's timesheets ... she had submitted them to board members who aren't really involved in that work, so they had no real way of determining whether the timesheets were some variety of bullshit. ... Missing Stair was supposed to submit timesheets/invoices on a weekly basis, but did not do so. We saw the timesheet/invoice for the first two weeks in December in mid-January, and the rest when she was asked to stop work last week.

oops that should read Me & one of the volunteers (I am a paid contractor).

Yikes. So sounds like they were knowingly grifting

idk! the thing is, they haven't been paid for any of their work ... and when I asked them about that, in a meeting with the board, they said, "there are other people ahead of me in line" ... like most grifters are doing it for the money and they are very efficient and focused when it comes to getting paid ... like the roof contractor who gave us a bid for skylights, which we paid for, and did not receive.

the board easily understood the roof contractor fraud (this was last year) -- we paid for a thing, we did not get the thing, we did not get our money back. Missing Stair is more complex, because the "deliverables" are not as concrete and clear as "skylights".

missing stairs and missing skylights

there's a lot wrong with this place ...

My place just decreed five minutes ago that we can't have open season PTO during the holidays anymore, it'll be more of a lottery system for dates around holidays.

To be clear, we already get Thanksgiving (and the day after), Christmas,and New Years off for the entire company. And it definitely did suck last year the week where I was the only one in the office.

But they've said they want us to take our PTO earlier, and yet they also tell us each year to limit or not take PTO between August - October during Open Enrollment.

I earn 25 days a year of PTO, and they already have me scheduled for shit months out, so I'm like...uhh I'd this is what you want, I'm going to have to take PTO during weeks you scheduled me to do things.

I resent though more that this is coming from other leaders demanding we be here even though almost nobody in customer care management works in December

ugh that sucks!

Ima take a two week vacay I think lmao

have now lined up two weeks of vacay spread out on various weeks through May, woohoo. eat it dorks.

hey dude, you ask me when the next scheduled training is every month. I give you the calendar link that shows it every month.

and you ask again every time.

why?

why?

why?

(hear that in Annie Lennox voice)

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

we don't beat anybody we just give 25% off coupons to Magic games

if the infraction is severe the tickets are free

my trainer: so here's the new way you log into the console

2 trainees: oh we don't use that console, we use XX app instead

me: uhh hey this isn't in our requirements, you have two users who still use XX app?

managers: yeah, they support Team A and Team B on XX app

me: but Team A moved off of XX app last month. how are they still using it?

managers: HEY LOOK OVER THERE, BALTHAZAR GETTY IS GETTING A HAIRCUT

me: look over where, this is an email

lol they've been logged into profiles on a platform that was decommissioned last month ,so they can't receive any inbound calls on it. they probably just assumed it wasn't busy.

older coworker and I were having internet connectivity issues. While mine was on the fritz he goes “hey I just sent you something on Microsoft Teams, let me know if you get it.”

Once I get my issues I see the message he sent: “Fuck off”

lol

my co-worker's uncle got mentioned on an ILM thread ...

this is the "i know more important and influential people than you" co-worker

weird factoid - years ago I found out Dan Perry and I worked for the same company and almost pinged him when I realized that if I did id be the stupid, annoying co-worker.

we typically double up two instructors to a class here, so that if one person goes down, they have a backup. Typically we don't replace that person for the day unless it's 15+ people.

today, one of our instructors had to leave early due to an emergency, and instead of just telling the other instructor they'd be finishing the last last 2 hours solo, the supervisor began panicking and begging the team chat for someone to help take over.

Gee, Mr Supervisor, which makes more sense, letting the person who's been with the class all week finish, while you keep an eye on the class, or introducing a complete stranger to the class on the final day of training, who has had no time to prepare?

(fortunately they couldn't ask me - I'm taking dad to one of his checkups...booyah!)

i kind of need a sanity check / other povs on this.

i opt out of all work-related celebrations. i DO NOT share my birthday on the work calendar. i don't do treats in the break room. i don't go to retirement parties. i will avoid xmas parties if at all possible. and i don't care how it makes me look. i get paid to show up, none of these people are my friends, i don't want to relate to coworkers outside of work, my career 'ambitions' are miniscule compared to my desire to avoid awkward small talk or field happy birthdays from people i dislike. am i too much of an asshole here? should i pick one of these things to just do? i will sign a card if it's handed to me, but that's about it. thank you in advance for your thoughts.

I think these are quite small things and I get what you’re saying, that you’re not there to make friends, but stuff tends to be better when you do opt in to some of this stuff, doing otherwise makes things unnecessarily difficult ime

You're obviously ok with them knowing you dislike them so you must be ok with them disliking you back. Are you trying to show them how much of their reciprocal dislike you can take and still stand strong?

Is the mutual-dislike thing a dance or some other sort of performance that benefits you all? Everybody gets to say "whew at least I'm not THAT person" and pat themselves on the back.

Being pleasant with people I wouldn't otherwise spend time with occasionally lets me in close enough to undermine their bullshit with a smile but mostly I don't let them live in my head.

Yes, much better way of putting it. It’s more energy!

it's kinda unclear whether it's an issue of active dislike and more of a chill apathy? It depends on the culture of the workplace imo. There are some places where keeping to yourself and not participating really makes people think you're a dick, and others where, there are enough other people with stuff going on in their lives that it's less of a deal?

like perhaps you could just be the motherfucker with dark secrets and peacefully coexist while still maintaining your distance.

thanks. sorry i was being dramatic and over-generalizing - i don't dislike everyone at work & i'm actually pretty friendly with two or three people. the first year or so i was maybe more 'let's be friends' until i realized that just wasn't going to work for me, we didn't have very much in common, etc. we're still friendly though. the people i do dislike i'm absolutely ok with them disliking me back. group things are difficult for me (social anxiety).

Is the mutual-dislike thing a dance or some other sort of performance that benefits you all? Everybody gets to say "whew at least I'm not THAT person" and pat themselves on the back.

lol this is interesting. i don't think so? i think there is at least one other person who fills that role more prominently than i do. also i've had feedback from two-three people that i'm very nice and personable (these people don't strike me as super genuine but w/e). so maybe skipping social stuff isn't having that much of an effect.

i'm considering going to the weekly friday morning coffee thing once in a while. but that's a wfh day for me and when push comes to shove it's really hard to get me out of my slippers on a friday morning lol.

thanks for answering when i guess i have no intention to significantly change what i'm doing lol.

and my workplace is full of introverts and people who keep to themselves so i guess this is relatively Not A Problem now that i think about it. maybe just some ambient anxiety about coming across as gloomy - my partner told me the other day that i'm on the cloudy side when i asked him if i came across as dour or not, which is absolutely true and fair and made me lol.