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

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.

I've got nothing much useful to say beyond I wish I could put a value on the hours I've spent a) manoeuvring and navigating around this shit and ii) worrying about the previous and future manoeuvrings and navigations to do with this shit. If you're good as you are, crack on!

Also, manoeuvring is a vowel-greedy prick of a word to spell.

I don't interact out of work with anybody I work with. I don't give out my phone number to anyone I work with either and beyond a 'have a nice day off' or 'did you have a nice day off' I don't really converse with anyone at work. it seems fine to me, tho I work retail rather than in an office and a lot of the shift is in a single staffed shop or going from shop to shop replenning. mind you I am v v bad a interacting with people in general and even a customers generic 'how are you today?' when said to me makes me uncomfortable to the point where I don't answer and instead ask them if they need a bag with their purchase.

I've worked several places where I've said out loud there's no fucking way I'm spending any of of my free time with you people. Super fortunate now to work with folks I genuinely enjoy being around but thankfully the company culture doesn't expect people to spend free time in company activities.

Depends on the workplace and the people but I feel like everyone workplace has at least one perfectly decent person who Just Doesn't Do That Stuff socially with colleagues. Once that's accepted I think it's ok. It's the pushback on it that can cause the friction and/or any impression that you're doing it to express your dislike. "Treats in the break room" might be the only thing I'm not sure about as not really sure what that is other than bringing stuff in for people to eat at their leisure? In which case it's fine not to do?

My workplaces usually if it's your birthday you bring in treats and no-one really makes a big deal other than asking if you're doing anything nice. I tend to work in introverted places though.

I am fortunate in that I like most of my colleagues and a few of them are close friends. If I didn't want to be around the people I worked with, I would probably look elsewhere.

That said, no one should feel pressure or anxiety about showing up for work shit like "Hawaiian Shirt Day."

I'm a lawyer, so most of my co-workers are anything but introverted.

There is nothing sadder than seeing someone hang out with people they work with outside of work. I will never spend an unpaid minute with a coworker.

There is nothing sadder than seeing someone hang out with people they work with outside of work. I will never spend an unpaid minute with a coworker.

When I was a magazine editor I would occasionally attend concerts with one co-worker or another. I took a guy to see Iron Maiden, and another guy came with me to see Bob Seger.

I have seen past coworkers socially. It can happen. Cripes this chat is depressing.

There is nothing sadder than seeing someone hang out with people they work with outside of work. I will never spend an unpaid minute with a coworker.

― brotherlovesdub, Monday, March 20, 2023 8:33 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is a completely insane post although i am ultimately tilted more toward the map position in this conversation--i have never sought to have friendships or meaningful relationships with coworkers and have dodged my share of social events. but i've also gone to my share of social events, it's a matter of finding a balance and realizing that some of these things are low stakes and can generate some good will in exchange for a couple hours of your time.

if you want to opt out of all this stuff i would advise being super friendly and accessible during work hours so you have some plausible deniability as being a nice person who "just doesn't go to those things"

There is nothing sadder than seeing someone hang out with people they work with outside of work. I will never spend an unpaid minute with a coworker.

― brotherlovesdub, Monday, March 20, 2023 8:33 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I met one of my all time best friends at my job 18 years ago.