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

the one thing that I definitely feel is an "inappropriate food smell" is burnt microwave popcorn. In my 20s I worked in a warehouse with a bunch of dudes in their 20s, and the ratio of burnt microwave popcorn to microwave popcorn popped successfully without burning was way too high.

Forget about reheated fish, those who eat cheese and onion Pringles in an enclosed space need to be fired immediately. Now there's a nauseating smell.

(I happen to love the smell of plain microwave popcorn; 'butter' flavour though is obvious grounds for dismissal.)

we are forgetting mcdonalds fries. both revolting and alluring at the same time.

the thing with a lot of pungent foods is that people bring them to work as leftovers and can just loosely set the lid on top of the microwaveable container, so the smell leakage is minimal

the lady who I used to work near who would just slap a raw fish filet, skin on, on to a plate and microwave it, was on a completely different level

the worst smell, which actually dissipated relatively quickly, was the incident where someone decided to microwave a hamburger, but walked away after starting the microwave. apparently typed in 10 minutes instead of 1 minute, which became clear when the fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate the building. this incident was kind of funny and not nearly as irritating as fish lady

imo if you break the social contract a little once in a great while, no big deal

if you’re scorching popcorn or desecrating the area with fish daily, wtf

i wouldn't feel safe around someone with that much hatred in their heart

the fish lady was confirmed to be a jerk when someone encountered her outside of work

pretty sure she knew what she was doing

distributing poison apples to schoolchildren no doubt

The pungent fake “butter” flavor/smell from popcorn is due to diacetyl, which is also a flavor component in certain fruit yogurts. That’s why sometimes you can smell a yogurt cup from like a mile away when someone opens it. Weirdly, it’s also a natural part of the flavor profile of coffee.

the popcorn lung chemical

ah yes the stuff that tells me I'm screwing up my homebrew beer

i think we can all agree complaining about bathroom smells is just plain dumb right?

back when I was still office bound, I was ripping a grumpy and although I courtesy flushed, my GI system was on overdrive that day. and apparently so was the guy next to me, it was a sort of shitting-in-stereo.

this jackass at the urinal loudly and obnoxiously, obviously for us to hear, said "JESUS, IT FUCKING *STINKS*". I mean....you're the one who walked into the doodoo room, what did you expect? cupcakes?

I’ve idly wondered wtf people eat or what they’ve done to their gut flora, but I’m not going to yell about it

All this is just screaming "no offices have disease defying ventilation wtf do not go there wfh 4ever" to me

I was ripping a grumpy... this jackass at the urinal loudly and obnoxiously, obviously for us to hear, said "JESUS, IT FUCKING *STINKS*". I mean....you're the one who walked into the doodoo room, what did you expect? cupcakes?

now this is that real BJO content

Jaq otm but the social media person at work was microwaving popcorn today* so I got to make a "drama popping off on twitter?" gag while internally thinking I've been seeing popcorn jokes on social media since before they were born

* smelled fine imo

one of our contractors recorded a video of themselves and played the video to make it appear they were on the web cam while they were off doing otehr stuff, and somehow got away with this for weeks.

idk that they're stupid, pretty clever move, but how nobody noticed for weeks is beyond me

if his input mattered that little then more power to him for tricking the company like he's Keanu Reeves in Speed.

he was supposed to be in training, like actually participating. it was discovered because he would get called on, and there'd be a pause, and someone would hear him talking but his mouth wouldn't be moving (as he was calling in on a phone from a remote location or something).

I made the Speed joke earlier lol

they showed me the pic. it looked like when you take a video of a tv screen on your phone, and it wasn't even centered, the border was crooked. they also looked in his record and he hadn't completed any assignments or gone into the modules.

and when he got a verbal warning, he apparently (this time live on camera for real) started yelling, screaming, and throwing things around his house.

this has been quite a weird day at work!

Haha
He sounds like an amateur tbh
When my kid was doing homeschooling in lockdown he got me to take a photo of him sitting smiling which he then used as a background and waited off-screen only to appear as his own double on the other side of the screen at an opportune moment.

lol genius!

the name-dropping co-worker again:

we were discussing the problems of curating a space by committee and I brought up an electronic music festival I was an organizing committee member of for a couple years and how a lot of the artists/aesthetic was based on historical experimental electronic music like Pierre Henry and musique concrete

co-worker: actually, I attended a concert at Pierre Henry's house in Paris

me: of course you did.

for context: we are essentially non-profit real estate and construction consultants.

and when he got a verbal warning, he apparently (this time live on camera for real) started yelling, screaming, and throwing things around his house.

who in the fuck does this?!

Was he from Citrus County or Marion?

this is an adult, right? Not a 4 year old child?

presumably.

so we have this IT chat where if Reps in training have major technical issues (i.e. can't sign into applications, locked out of system), we can 'escalate' their ticket for them. all we're supposed to do is dump the ticket # and the name of the person who called it in in the chat. I usually try to probe and find out what the issue is so I can add a description, but this is really just a courtesy, as this information should all be in the ticket.

normally all they do is reply to say "ticket closed/resolved" or "escalated to next party" or "left voicemail for the rep" - or telling us if the ticket shouldn't have been started. it's been smooth for the most part.

then this one rogue IT person today starts grilling me about four of the tickets I escalated, asking me detailed questions on what each learner tried, can I have them try this, that, etc. I'm supervising/teaching classes, am just a middleman, and I had to pointedly ask "can't someone just contact these four people - they're on MS Teams and can be called, that might be easier than me playing telephone with you". Common sense, right?

then after all of this, turns out three of the four tickets are actually ALREADY RESOLVED and IT just hadn't gotten around to telling us yet (that's fine - they're very busy). Instead of doing what a normal person would do and replying to my status update request with "three of these tickets are resolved" and giving me an update on the one that was still open, I get grilled about all four tickets as if all four are still open.

nice waste of time on an already busy day/week.

oh and it turns out all of the questions they asked me were literally documented in the IT ticket by the person who took the call.

Have you started looking for work elsewhere? It seems like this workplace really sucks for u.

I tried once half-heartedly three or four years ago and got very little hits other than a competitor offering me 33% of my current salary to do the same job. I guess seniority has more perks than I realized. but admittedly I didn't try as hard as I could have.

at this point I'm trusting the devil I know, but assuming this caregiving arrangement eventually alleviates, I'll be ready to spread my wings.

i know a little bit about what you do and given the current labor market it might be worth taking a casual look around

yeah I gotta rewrite my resume but I think it's about that time.

very least maybe I can get a retention bonus

Sounds like you’re in learning & development, maybe some roles would open up with a dumb certification to get past the resume filter?

correct and hmm that isn't a bad idea actually!

Going by what I’ve learned about your coworkers here, you could definitely use dumb certification.

lol

solid lol

"What is the I Award You No Points cert?"

there's this occasional rep we use as a trainer now and then when we don't have better options available. he has a temper and usually tends to give up at teh first sign of trouble. he also makes it impossible to connect with him during his class.

most facilitators know to occasionally check their MS Teams PMs during stopping points, but not him, he ignores them for 8 hours. he also ignores messages that you send him *in the training chat itself*, (even if you tag him so that it pings). so the only way to get him a message is to interrupt him in the middle of his training, which he then gets annoyed about.

he also spends half the training talking about himself and the amazing things he does.

Multiple-monitor and single-monitor people differ in their level of responsiveness to chat during Teams meetings, I have found. Something to do with monitors but I'm not sure in which direction.

(which is not to excuse someone being stupid and annoying and narcissistic, of course)

Not sure how many he has. Most of our employees have two, but not all (including me - I'm rocking just one)

This could have been posted in a few threads, but I'm just sitting here baffled by some of the choices being made. During a significant spike in cases, fresh off the news and still unsettled science about Omicron, we are being told that we are having a holiday luncheon for our group. Next week. For 90 people. Buffet style. Indoors, in one single room. Testing prior "encouraged", but not required. Less than 2 weeks out from Thanksgiving.

I'm not going to attend. Even so I'm baffled that anyone thought this was a good idea and was encouraging of it.

wtffffffff

that is cray cray

There are approx 1/4 of the kids in my child's school year off with covid or suspected (waiting for pcr results) and about 40 of the parents are apparently going for a meal tonight. Tbf some of them have already had covid, but this is gonna be a superspreader event - just in time for a lovely covidy run up to Christmas.

There are just some people who want to rush blindingly forward back into "normal" so badly that they lose common sense.

they lose common sense

'common sense' usually amounts to whatever wins the contest between 'I desire this' and 'I fear this'. You've just incorporated what you know about covid into the 'I fear this' side of the equation. Me, too.

just need a little whine.

i took today off because i just needed a break. i've been at this job 1.5 years and my manager has shown herself to be .. terrible. she offers no coherent vision for the complicated responsibilities that i'm tasked with, and when i try to offer something, because frankly i need it to function, she obstructs me. i'm starting to lose my patience with it in meetings. i've gotten irate with her in group meetings twice now. everyone else i work with feels similarly as me, and i'm not even the person who has been most snarky to her, but still, i'm troubled about it. she does not have the balls to try and get me fired, i don't think. i don't have the heart to do battle with these kinds of people either. but i'm too old for this shit, and my patience has grown shorter! i sort of want to play the ice-cold long game and make her suffer, because frankly i'm smarter and better than she is. but i'm struggling with burnout and tbh my heart is bigger than my desire for revenge. i have also tried the "detach and check-out more, pretend to pay attention to whatever random in-the-moment thing she asks you to do for no good reason, and then don't do it" route - which DOES work pretty well with her, frnakly - but which turns work into an existential crisis every day. i have been in the workforce for 10 years after getting my graduate degree and i keep getting handed these childish, god-awful managers who want to have their egos stroked, hands held, feelings coddled, and then to be able to treat everyone who works for them like subjects in some kind of fucked up royal court. fuck all of them!