February 27, 2005

>> Babysitting the Boss

[ Boss ]

Sad Secretary writes...

"It was an incredibly busy day, and I was slowly dissapearing behind a pile of paperwork.

While juggling the phone, a full waiting room and my own work, I get a call from my boss.

"Come upstairs now" he orders and I ran (if you knew my boss, you would've too) to his office, assuming that either there was some dire matter to contend with or that I'd made a big mistake.

"You didn't pour my water," he said when I arrived, panting. "I didn't pour your water," I repeated, flabberghasted.

I had left his pitcher full of water and a glass at its side but, god forbid, he pour it himself!!! It was the most degrading moment of my life as he surveyed me, pouring his damn water. I almost spat in it.

Talk about lazy."

01:11 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 26, 2005

>> A Fool to work for you...

[ Boss ]

What Stress?!?!? writes...

"I work as a courier and have done so for nine years thus far. However, I do depend on companies I contract with for referral of work. Recently, I was with a company for three months until I could take no more.

During that time, I bought a house... certainly no more stressful than divorce, death or open-heart surgery. My question to the closing attorney was, "Is mental health counseling covered in the settlement statement?"

Shortly after closing, my car took a dive when previous scheduled replacement of the timing belt failed by fault of the garage's actions. The only solution was to fully overhaul the engine or replace it at costs ranging between $4000 and $5000.

I should add, between the scheduled work and its eventual demise, the car had been wrecked and should have been totaled. I had a long battle with the collision shop over numerous return visits and the insurance carrier which, of course, won. I chose to go ahead and buy another vehicle rather than put money I did not have into one that was still having problems from a wreck.

Through out all this, I bought a house, bought a car, nearly doubled my car payments, financed a $5000 down payment over the course of a month and had my revenue declining because another manager playing favorites with couriers. Needless to say, I was stressed beyond my imagination and it showed in my day-to-day work with customers and those whom I worked with.

I sat down with the manager over some problems in their organization and made it clear I was stressed and things some things may be exagerated due to this stress. He asked me if I needed time off.

With a family reunion coming in a couple weeks I said I'd just go ahead and take both weekdays off I had requested rather than just the one I had considered.

His response: "Well, I haven't approved that yet."

Had I not been so tired, my jaw would have fallen and still been stuck to the floor of his office. It's a good thing it didn't. I no longer work there!"

01:09 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 25, 2005

>> The Big Picture Is Out There Somewhere

[ Rant ]

Rudolph the Red writes...

"I worked for this large Telecommunications firm in The Silicon Prairie- that's Dallas area... how quaint! Anyway, I worked in a Maintenance Group - how I got there, I am not exactly sure, but there I was. My job was to maintain the facilities in the Corporate Headquarters Building (CHB) The CEO of this company had an office there, so anything to do with CHB was highly sensitive. I had identified a problem with the Split Package Unit<--- that's air conditioning talk and I told my co-worker, Tim about it. He suggested that we bring it up in our next departmental meeting. Which we did. My boss and his boss were there and they were droning on about Quality Action Teams and how we should reduce costs; which is always a good thing and where we could start saving tons-o-cash was to stop buying our own wire nuts and pager batteries. Whenever anyone in our group went to the vendor, we would always buy stuff like that and there were many duplicate purchases. Then they announced that they would start monitoring the receipts to make sure that noone was buying them anymore. When they seemed finished, Tim and I brought up the problem at CHB and how it would require weekend work as we would have to shut the unit down. Our boss held up his hand, abruptly stopped us and said, we can talk about this later. As soon as the meeting was over, everyone left for lunch, there was no interest in preventing a major catastrophe and the Facilities Manager just didn't seem to care. I got in their truck, drove to our vendor and immediatley bought wire nuts and pager batteries. Management never said anything about the purchase and the air conditioning went down about a week later. Maybe management should listen to those in the trenches more and stop pissing them off so much. and so it goes."

01:06 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 24, 2005

>> Turning the tables on the people who fire you...

[ Work ]

CrazyCanuck writes...

"One fine day several years ago, I signed up to work with this store that is in the payday lending and check-cashing business. I worked hard for two months and three weeks out of the three-month trial period. I cashed checks for hundreds of bucks - paying these sums out in twenty and ten-dollar bills! Knowing this, you would think that it would be expected for employees to occasionally make a human error and not give out the right amont of cash. I did so twice (by twenty dollars). Thus, the week before I was to be hired permanently, I was fired and sent on my way. My best friend, who worked for the same company and got to keep her job, was able to lose nearly a thousand dollars without anyone batting one single eyelash. Yes, the money was later found, but come on, folks...someone was playing favorites, here...

Anyway, if anyone from this company that decided to fire me ever reads this message, I would like to say THANK YOU!!! I thought that losing the low-paying, high-risk job you hired me for and fired me from was the end of the world. BUT, since then, I have worked for a former Auditor General of Canada, and for the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada. So the whole bunch of you at Insert Company Name Here should know that by firing me, you showed me that I am WAY above the job you fired me from. How do I know? Because now I work for the people who make the rules that govern how you do business! HAH!"

01:03 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 23, 2005

>> Panty Hose Obsession

[ Boss ]

Cinn writes...

"I quit my last job because of my boss who I will call Shaz. She was totally incompetent but must have kissed a whole lotta ass to get to the position she was in.

I could tell a million stories about her but I will keep this one short and sweet.

Shaz was obsessed with all the women wearing panty hose. ALL of the time!!!! In winter it was understandable but in a Houston summer??? If you don't know Houston, the summers here are brutal with temperatures reaching over 100 degrees regularly and often with 100% humidity. I barely wanted to wear clothes much less restrictive panty hose that made me sweat in places I cannot even bear to think about now.

Anyway, her nickname became the Panty Hose Nazi. She kept spare pairs in her desk drawer and regularly had inspections to make sure we were all compliant with her crazy rule!

At Christmas, we all had small stockings outside offices. Hers, as you have probably guessed, was one of a pair of knee highs. It was so funny. The awful part was, our department was the only one in the whole company made to comply with this rule!!! How jacked is that?

I am so happy to be outta there. I am now at a company working with a great boss and great people and have not worn a pair of panty hose since I started!"

01:02 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 22, 2005

>> Quick-draw Mcgraw!

[ Fools ]

Dusty Dawg writes...

"I work in a food producing industrial setting. Not a large plant, but we do wonders in production numbers. I am priveleged to work with a young genteleman that I am certain is a legend in his own mind. I have yet to own anything that he hasn't owned, been anywhere he hasn't been, have experienced anything he hasn't,or top any type of horror, comic, emotional, or ironic story that has been mentioned in the general range of his earshot. I was talking to one of the mechanics, a few weeks ago, about a un-restored 1939 4 door convertible buick that I had seen at a wal-mart . I was saying that I thought that it would look nice in my garage when Quick Draw butts in, and said that the reason the Buick was probably unrestored was that it was 'basically' worthless. He knows this because some guy dropped 2...2 of them off in his back yard, and since it would cost more to fix them up than they were worth, he scrapped them both.(naturally)

Since myself and the mechanic are used to his 'exaggerations', we just went along with his psychosis, congratulated him on his all knowing antique auto expertice, and led him off to his work station enveloped in his comfy cloud of self delusion. This has been a regular thing since his hiring 2 yrs. ago. He supposedly left a job that was paying twice what he is making now, but he has changed the story of how he left weekly. Basicly he was canned. Anyway... Quick Draw has been, since he was hired, been angling for a mechanic,s job. His only qualification that he has for the position is that he is friends with the maintenence head. That and he has broken just about every piece of equipt. he has ever been assigned to. Did I mention that if anyone of any position, including the janitor supv., in the company is within eyesight, he attatches his lips to their derriere in a vampire-like succle? He does this without any regard for his co-workers, or that his station at the million dollar machine he is manning has been abandoned, just so 'mr personality' can attach his lips and 'make his presence known. Haw-Haw!'....With some pretty disasterious results sonetimes. Oh well, he has to clean it up! As I said, he wants to be a mechanic, yet every time he bids, cajoles, rats people out, gets on his knees, or downright begs for the job, he shoots himself right in the foot. Hence, Quick Draw. The first time the position came open, He told the Big Boss he would only take a mechanics position if it was a daylight one. All of the mechanics in the plant on days have at least 18yrs. in plant. BRRRRRP. Wrong answer. POP.. Right in the foot. Job given to a guy hired 2 mths. after him. He cried the blues for 8 mths. 'til..........

Another position was to come open. Back to his game plan of full frontal 'MeMeMe' assault on the management, including Knee bending and full shift Rat Outs, justified as 'helping the boss to see the problems that can be solved by the the wonderfulness of hiring Him to be a mechanic. We had an abusive manager who thought nothing of berating workers, loudly, whenever he was 'spoken to' by the big boss when thing went wrong, felt wronged, felt the heat,or was ratted out. (get the picture?) and Quick Draw, true to form , in his all encompassing rat out session with the boss, ratted out the manager on some 'minor' problems he saw the manager had. Mainly temperment and his insensitivity toward Q.D.s skills and 'wonderfulness'. Mr. manager promptly chews him a new ass. Q.D. decides that he is going to 'get' the manager by tapeing the manager in one of his considerable tantrums and going to the Big Boss with the tape, and demand his firing. Then he procedes to show everyone...everyone, the pocket tape recorder and tell us that he is going to get them 'all' on tape and get himself the managers job instead. The only problem that he didn't take into account was that he isnt the only snitch in the plant. Word got back to the manager, He went to the Big Boss. The Big Boss called Q.D.in the office and Q.D.s excuse was ... As a country singer, the machines were an inspiration to him and he was recording verses to songs that were inspired by being a blue collar worker. No lie. Ive seen the office memo. A sure classic. BRRRRP. Wrong bullcrap. POP.. right in the foot. Job no longer open. Won't be open 'til a mechanic retires..fast forward to three weeks ago. A mechanic decides to retire and Q.D. figures he will stack the deck in his favor by enrolling in a mechanical/electrical course. He goes to the Big Boss and lets him Know that he is interested enough in the job that he is enrolling in these courses. The big boss Informs him that if he passes the courses, the company will re-imburse him the cost and the job will be his!Oh Joy! Finally! He pays 300.00 for books, gets enrolled. He tells anyone who listens how hard this is going to be to go back to school, work. and drive back and forth, all the while with a permenent crap eating grin on his face, bragging about his new rate of pay as a mechanic, The other operators are hoping to get rid of him to the mechanic dept. The mechanics are hoping he fails out...The Pi'ece de' resis'tance... Over the weekend he cuts doen a tree with his brother, and trying to show up his brotherin a contest of bravado. tries to lift up a piece of the tree and suffers a strangulated hernia. Immediate surgery. 6 wk downtime. Canceled classes. POP....."

01:08 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 21, 2005

>> Incompetent boss/es is/were (a) nincompoop(s)

[ Work ]

Mole writes...

"This goes back a few years, but it still stick in my craw.

I used to work for a major national museum, here in Canada (it is located across the river from the capital city, which should narrow it down for y'all).

I was hired on contract for the duration of the move from the various old storage and museum facilities. My boss was the head of the History Division. This fine gentleman had the habit of wandering in to whatever facility we happened to be working in at a given time, joking around (Him: "Are we having fun, yet?".... Us (under our breaths): "No, we are &$#%ing well NOT having fun yet!"). He would then leave, and a few minutes later, someone (usually someone who had nothing whatever to do with our project) would come running up in a panic and tell us "Bob (no, not real name) says you are doing such-and-such completely wrong!!!!"

Either, they would then give us vague instructions given them by "Bob" which was the complete opposite of what we were doing, or one of us would have to walk out and find "Bob" somewhere in the building, call him, or even drive half way across the city to the main museum building to find "Bob" and get clarification on what, exactly, he wanted us to do.

Keep in mind that all of us had degrees, all of us knew what we were doing, and either we were following his exact instructions from the last time he sent someone to tell us we were doing the job "completely the wrong way" or he had, at the outset said "Just do it in the most logical way", AND he had just been in the same room with us not 15 minutes before and said NOTHING about how we were doing the work, and hadn't even asked us how we were doing the job, anyway!

What a complete and utter ass!

His boss was just about as bad, and HIS boss was worse......

More on this later."

01:13 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 20, 2005

>> The Employee from Hell

[ Work ]

The Baroness writes...

"Several years ago I was office manager for a small company. One of my employees, we'll call her Kathy, was a walking nightmare. She flat out refused to learn new tasks. Her obsessive boyfriend called every 20 minutes (no exaggeration) to make sure she was at work and not out cheating on him. Ocassionally he'd trash their apartment, so she'd take days off to straighten that out. She was a cocaine addict, so she missed a number of days due to her "habit".

This went on for about two years. I regularly went to my boss to try to get some action taken. He'd promise up and down that he'd take care of it, but he was too kind-hearted (read: wussy) to do anything. Since I was the only other person in the office, I didn't go on vacation during this period, because I was pretty certain she wouldn't show up while I was away. Its a bummer to be the responsible one.

Then she gets pregnant. She took a 3 month maternity leave, but wrote a nasty note to our boss telling him how she should get paid more for being off work. She returned to work on a part-time basis, and proceeded to call in sick every Monday and Friday. At least by this time I had a part-time assistant.

So one day, about 5 weeks after she returned to work (if you can call it that, when she only showed up for half a day 3 days out of the week), she came to me to ask for a day off to see her son in a play. I reminded her that she has taken quite a few days off since her return, so I couldn't justify giving her another day off. She flew into a rage, screamed "f- you, I quit!" and stormed out the door.

I was pretty relieved ... I figured my problems were over and I could hire someone competent now.

A couple days later, she shows up at the office to talk to our boss, bringing along her infant daughter. I was on pins and needles the whole time, knowing it wasn't logical for him to let her come back, but logic didn't usually work its way into this picture.

Soon she came out, and came into my office. She put the baby on my desk right in front of me, got down on one knee and said "Peter [the boss] says I have to ask you if I can come back." Sure enough, he had wussed out on me again.

I replied, "Kathy, we've been going through the same stuff for 2 years. If I thought this incident would change anything, I'd say yes, but I know it won't. So no, I won't let you come back." She actually took it graciously, said she understood, and left.

Well, the next thing I know, rumors are flying across the company about what a biotch I am for not giving the poor woman her job back!!!

On top of all this, she filed for unemployment. The VP of Finance told me it wasn't worth the trouble to fight it, so I didn't go to the hearing. I guess she told the truth though, because they denied her claim and there wasn't even anyone there to dispute it!"

01:09 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 19, 2005

>> The Screen Has Eyes

[ Fools ]

Mensan Among Mental Midgets writes...

"Here's an example of stupidity so astounding, one would expect to see it only in Sitcom Land, not Reality World.

The internet access on our network had been running on the slow side due to excessive personal use. Finally, our information systems director issued a warning in which he reminded everyone (yet again) that our technicians were periodically monitoring the network, and anyone found to be spending too much time surfing could lose his or her web access.

A few days after this communication, one of our techs was passing through our largest department when he noticed a worker had turned her computer monitor around to face the wall of her cubicle. When questioned as to why, she--in all seriousness!--provided the following explanation:

"I don't want the computer guys watching me through the screen."

01:01 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 18, 2005

>> Liar Liar, I wish your pants would burst into FIRE

[ Fools ]

Cube289 writes...

"Last week I read an article in my local paper titled, "On-the-job jerks". The article made me realize that others feel my pain. It also provided the name of this website. So thanks for letting me vent.

Due to a merger, my job was transitioned to another office. The people in the group that took over my work have big attitudes and repeatedly try to get-one-over. Why? I don't have a clue.

Today I'm going back & forth in email with some snit who is cc'ing every freakin supervisor we have on her emails. She is telling me that it was my responsibility to handle something from 5 months ago. I politely say no and forward her emails that outline the work transitions and the effective dates. We go back and for and the tone & 'tude in her emails is getting hotter. Then she IM's me and says "Hi, what's your #". I'm thinking look it up on the freakin web list but I give her my number without asking why. Flash forward to 2 hrs later when I've just gotten back on IM from lunch, and WHAM !!! my phone rings and it's her and her cubbie buddy and the supervisor and who-knows-who-else is listening...I'm on a CONFERENCE CALL. She actually has the nerve to lie and say "when I called you about this 5 months ago, you told me not to worry about paying the tax invoice, just pay the summary invoice". Ok, no I did not. I've been paying the freakin' tax on these invoices for years. How do you recover from that? She caught me so off guard that all I could say was that I never would have advised that because that's not the procedure. This group took over my work and assigned 3 clerks to do it. This group is part of a larger group that is always trying to twist the truth. I'm so disgusted. My team wasn't happy that our work left but we didn't sabotage it either. We have new work and we are making the best of it. This group seems to be pissed off at us for some reason. They wanted to know our college education levels and we told them and then they got even more pissed off that they are clerks with college degrees and we are consultants with high school diplomas. WTF - that's the company assigning the job title, not me. I wish I would have had some snappy comeback for being put on the spot like that-this has happened too many times in the last 5 months. Thoughts?"

01:04 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 17, 2005

>> Compulsive Talker

[ Fools ]

Stangdad writes...

"Help! I desperately need suggestions on how to deal with a compulsive talker. The company I work for doesn't have enough office space in the main building for the engineering staff. For engineering, they have leased a portable building and put it at the side of the manufacturing plant. Cut off from the rest of the office staff. You might think this is good - read on. When I first started working here I noticed nobody from the front office would come out to the (special-ed) building. I soon found out why. The person I work with in this building is a chronic compulsive talker and I am the only one he can relieve his compulsion on unless he goes up to the front office. This is my day:

8:00 -9:00 am He comes in my office sits down and begins to spill his guts. He then gets up proclaims he should go in the plant and see what is going on.

11:00-12:00 am He comes in my office sits down and spills his guts and then goes to lunch.

1:00-1:30 pm Comes in my office and spills his guts.

3:00-4:00 pm Comes in my office and spills his guts.

Walking to our cars to go home he will talk my ear off. I sit in my car with the door open and he still talks. When I leave before him with the usual good evening salutation, he will begin to talk from his office and continue as I shut the door.

His topics of conversation are usually repeated. When told this he tells it anyway. He isn't interested in anything you have to say. He is easily distracted, argumentative, overvalues his contribution, egotistical, has loud voice and laugh, acts like a child, forgets obligations, exaggerates and elaborates, has no emotions. During meetings he will zone out, is eyes roll and close momentarily then pop open. I am stuck in a box 8 hours a day with this idiot. Does anyone know how to deal with him?"

01:07 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 16, 2005

>> My IT Manager is the Anus

[ Boss ]

Dot-Bomber writes...

"When I was around 19 my father told me to look out for managers that were insecure. I thought he was full of it because when you're 19, everyone in the world is so stupid it makes you wanna pull your own arms off and head-butt random strangers.

Well, as it turns out, he was right all along. He served 20 years working for the state government in the highest non-elected position in his office. That means that without changing jobs he was exposed to all kinds of leaders and was a manager in charge of about 60 people, himself. The old fool was on to something.

"Insecure managers will screw you a million different ways because they always have to prove they deserve to be the boss," he told me.

I almost think my father must have known this guy I'm working for now. He is such a complete idiot in the workplace that if you look up complete-managerial-ass in the dictionary he will jump right off the page and start being an ass right in front of you.

Mostly he's a coward and nothing pisses me off more than that.

I guess I have to get a little bit technical to prove my point and give examples but I figure there are parallels to all kinds of shitty bosses everywhere in every field.

Here's some background:

I am a Microsoft SysAdmin. I worked for 3 dot-coms before I landed here. I only quit my job at the first one and if I had it to do over I would probably still leave that job. Not because it was horrible or anything, it was actually pretty sweet. I was the IT manager for a fairly well-known design firm in mid-town Manhattan and I had about 5 employees when I left who were all great guys.

I just felt that I had done everything I wanted to do there after being with them for about 3 years and I had a very good tech right below me eager to get my job. Although he was a little naive at the time he was definitely ready for it.

It looked like I was making my way into management for good and I kind of wanted to get my hands into the technical stuff once more before going all the way into paper pushing and meetings. I had had a few non-technical managers in the past and it was pretty difficult to communicate with them. I didn't ever want to be that kind of manager so I took a chance and joined up with a dot-com where I'd be responsible for everything one last time.

I'd have to build the office out and set up all the servers and workstations myself (only about 30 clients). Also, it seemed like a sweet opportunity to build a network from scratch. All new Cisco everything and brand new workstations, all identical, on every desk - IT dreamland.

Unfortunately it fell through after only 3 months but the parent company decided they had need of me so I made a quick jump to them as a consultant. After only 4 months I found a little company I liked a lot better and signed on with them. But again, that company folded after about 6 months.

That would have been the summer of 2001. As you all know, at that point the market was dead with a capital EAD and then I heard about some crazy stuff with some terrorists or something that made it even worse.

I was unemployed for 8 months. The first couple of months were great. I had never taken a vacation in any of my jobs and lying around the house was pretty sweet. Hell, walking around Manhattan with nothing to do was pretty rad, too.

[dot-com rant]
See? Everyone has such a short memory. Ask people what the image of a dot-com is now and they'll tell you things like: foosball tables, caviar Fridays, company trips to the beach, new computers on every desk, Herman Miller chairs, tattooed people wearing Prada, etc. They fail to remember the 120 hour work weeks and twenty-something's power napping under their desks to meet a deadline. Oh yeah, it was all a vacation from reality... nonsense. It was more like a fair reality. Working as if you had three jobs just happened to pay as if you had three jobs back then.

For young, ambitious people that thought college was a joke it was great. We college drop-outs could prove it wasn't laziness that made us hate school, it was the fact that school sucks giant, ripe, ass. We work harder and come up with better ideas than a lot of people that managed to do as they were told and memorize enough bs to collect the paper. We could look over our shoulder at the chumps lining up for the meat grinder with our six-figure salaries and say, "Yeah, you know what you're doing. It's important to understand Beowulf."
[/dot-com rant]

Anyway, I started sleeping all day and doing nothing productive all night. I was still sending out about 10-15 resumes a day (night) but the phone would never ring. The governor extended unemployment a couple of times but I knew that wouldn't last forever. I had turned down one offer early on, my only one, and over the following 6 months I had decided I'd take anything that would get me out of the house and in the sun for a few minutes each day.

My friends couldn't help me. Either they were unemployed too, or they had just gotten a crappy job and weren't in any position to recommend me for anything. Friends I had that were lucky enough not to lose their jobs were over-worked as their companies put hiring freezes into action and replaced people that left with empty space and yelling.

I got an interview with a college in Manhattan. I'm not going to say the name but you'd know it. The department I interviewed with liked me but they decided they needed a UNIX guy despite the fact that they had 80 Windows boxes and 2 Linux servers. Just for the record: Knowing Linux doesn't mean you know doctored-dogcrap about Windows. To really make it sick, the 2 Linux servers only ran Samba. Yeah, they were file servers. Even you Linux people have to admit that Windows shares files to its own clients better than UNIX/Samba.

A couple of weeks went by and I got a call from another department at the university. Seemed they were looking for a Windows guy and someone from another dept had passed my resume along. The guy seemed nice enough on the phone and I needed to get the hell out of my apartment.

I showed up at the interview on a nice hot day in a black suit (the only suit I had) and my manager and I had a nice long talk. He asked questions as if he knew what the hell he was talking about so he fooled me well and good. There was sweat in my eyes if that is any excuse.

He told me that they were trying to convert the 400+ Windows 98 computers to Windows XP and all the good things that come along with it. I was already concerned that he was too stupid to run NT or 2000 in a network environment, but it still seemed like there was a chance he wasn't an idiot. I figured it didn't matter anyway. I'd be doing the work so I'd do it the right way with or without him. He, at least, seemed like he was honestly interested in improving the situation.

When I first got hired here I thought it would be temporary but the job-market never came back around. Oh well, I figured I did the climb up the corporate ladder once, it couldn't be too hard to do it again, especially considering I barely knew what I was doing the first time and this time I have most of it down cold.

Guess again. This guy was so ignorant with regard to all technology he was nervous about the littlest things. He was afraid I'd set something up that people would start to rely on and then I'd leave and he'd be stuck trying to figure it out. Never mind the fact that I begged him to let me show him how I was setting everything up. He doesn't have time to learn from a subordinate. He has plenty of time to play 'Heroes of Might and Magic' with the interns, though.

For example, he was afraid to let me set up a DNS server because 'we' didn't know what it would do to the network. Dude, I know exactly what it will do to the network. Nothing. It's a passive service. Unless you ask it for information it will not give you any. I wasn't asking to have it registered with Internic or anything. Just standard old internal DNS.

After I realized he was a moron and couldn't be reasoned with I just started to lose my will to try. He handed me a 3 CD application and asked me to install it on 15 computers. "I know this will take a while but I expect it to be done by the end of the week." Yeah, it was Tuesday. So I copy the app to my computer, start the install on all 15 machines all at the same time, and head outside for a smoke.

Thirty minutes later it's done, but I know his lazy-ass won't actually check so for the rest of the week when he asks me how its coming I tell him, "A little slower than I figured it would be, but it should be done by Friday." To which he'd reply, "I told you so," and he give me a look that says, "that's why I'm the boss." - Idiot.

Everyone here happens to love him. I have to say, he's not a bad guy in general. You could sit next to him and have a beer and never know he's such a bad manager and technician. His bosses really have no idea how little he does and how little he knows but they really don't care much. They have their own things to worry about. As far as they know he is doing a great job.

He gets nominated to be the administrator of the year, every year. I got to read the nomination once and it spoke very highly of him and his management skills. I only wish the writer had consulted someone he manages.

I was the first person he had ever hired that had any experience in the field at all. I guess he considered himself a technician when he hired me and didn't expect to be so obviously over-shadowed because his insecurities didn't really start coming out until after a couple of weeks. He even managed to hire another real technician that knew what he was doing before realizing that everything he himself had built was stupid. At least it gave me someone to talk to.

As an inexperienced tech he set up everything completely wrong. As an inexperienced manager he didn't understand the downside of hiring people that are grossly over qualified, especially if you don't want them to complain when you ask them to do things your way even though it's wrong. This horrible market put people with skills in front of him for the first time. Let's face it, when you can get 2 times the salary in the corporate world what kinds of people apply to jobs at Universities? People that don't know what they are doing. Like him.

He got to teach the previous techs his incorrect methods and they didn't know to complain or do it the right way behind his back. I mean when he asks me to do something I know will cause everyone more work later I will not do it. I may smile and say I will, but I'll do it the right way the second he turns his back. When it really comes down I'll explain. That's the only way he listens. He certainly wouldn't take the option seriously if the plan I had would require me teaching him something. Which is just about every option.

When I say 'the right way' I mean it. This is not 'my way' and therefore I can defend my actions easily. When they ask me why I did it that way I can point at about a million references telling you step-by-step why it is the standard.

I want out of here so badly but I'm afraid the market will never come back or that no one will ever take a chance on hiring me (a college dropout) again. I do get free classes here so I'm reluctant to just quit. I feel trapped as hell."

01:02 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 15, 2005

>> Nobody Does it Better...

[ Fools ]

Co-worker writes...

"I work with a fellow, "Paul" who basks and bellows in his ego and self righteousness all day long. He parades around our office as a know it all letting everyone know that he's got the connections at the top,he knows all the right file formats and processes for setting up and converting complex drafting/ geomatics files. A few quick questions to him and I was told that he was too busy, the process that I was asking for was too complex, or that what I was doing was over my head and I should leave it to the "qualified personelle", namely himself.

He boasted that he was getting paid the "big bucks" to do his job even though little does he know that I was hired at the same rate as he is at now. And having equivalent education topped with a degree in another field of interest, I know a dummy when I see one - it's an easy give away when a person needs to brag and boast 24/7.

Other employees in his department are fast and efficient in automating their work in the drafting and geomatics area into formats that my office could use. So I've gone through them to avoid the "Nobody Does It Better Song and Dance from Paul".

Meanwhile, others started complaining that "Paul" was criticising their work. Paul tore apart a "draft" copy, which was low resolution and cheapy paper, for initial review and bragged to the project managers that he could do much better job. Unfortunately it wasn't understood that the initial presentation was just in draft format. Taxpayers money shouldn't be spent creating glossy high res images for initial review stages. The work was taken away from this person and given to "Paul" and three weeks of taxpayers money on the project was down the drain.

"Paul" has made the biggest mistake of his career recently though. When I first came into the scene he bragged to me that he'd launched a version of Photoshop and Illustrator and other licenced software over a server for all of his friends in the City to use. His boss, who dreuls over him, gave him administrator rights to his computer. So he posted his program files to a server for all to use, essentially saving his manager some money purchasing a copy for each employee. A coffee session with one of my buddies in City IT architecture made me aware that with the Launch of XP our networks and computers are going to be audited and checked for extraneous or misused software/screensavers.

Apparently, IT security has gone through departments and fired many people so far for less than breech of City software licences. Because of the seriousness of licencing issues, the high fines that a corperation can recieve, and the warnings last spring to clean up our computers, there will be 0 flexibility when it comes to employee descipline for this matter. So far this has been the case with other departments and it'll be fun to see what happens to Mr. Nobody Does It Better..."Paul"

I believe in carma, if you do right by people, your work and your employer you'll do well in your career, if not it'll come back to bite you when you least expect it!"

01:17 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 14, 2005

>> The most... ANNOYING... voice... EVER!!!

[ Fools ]

Eye roll writes...

"I sit across the aisle from a guy who must absolutely have the most annoying voice ever. It's like a Horshack from "Welcome Back Kotter" with a southern drawl, and super-nasal. Painfully nasal.

He's a nice enough guy, and he's a hard worker. And, because he's such a good employee, he's on the phone ALL DAY doing work.

His laugh is a BIG honk. I almost don't think it's real. That is not a natural sound. HONK-HONK-HONK! and, when he's talking to someone who's calling from a cell phone -- forget it! he raises the volume tenfold, shredding my spine.

I try to listen to music through headphones, so I can drown him out (and calm the urge to scream at his ever-present honking and droning), but his irritating frequency slices through my headphones (HONK HONK), and I can still hear him!

Please help me calm down, before I drop-kick his ass!"

01:11 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 13, 2005

>> Totally befuddled

[ Fools ]

Tigger writes...

"I manage the transcription department of a small hospital. We used to have a daily quota of how many lines of dictation we transcribed during the course of a day. We have one transcriptionist who would routinely transcribe at least 200 more lines than necessary because she felt she would lose her job otherwise. We have now dropped the transcription quota, just need to keep the work up to date. However, she still comes in an hour early, types for an hour, punches in, types through her work hour, and never leaves on time...and if we have a slow day, complains that there is not enough work coming in. How she doesn't understand that by her working an hour and a half off the clock, typing frantically, she's actually defeating herself is beyond me. She says she's certain the management is still checking her line count, and is beyond reassurance. From my pseudonym above, you may be able to guess that I've given her the name Eeyore! Does anyone else have co-workers who do way more than expected out of paranoia? Thanks!"

01:05 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 12, 2005

>> Anger Management?

[ Fools ]

Scooter's Drugs writes...

"Once upon a time, there were two pharmacy technicians named Jizz and Leni. One day Leni wrote a memo for the rest of the store to read. (The purpose of the memo is a foolish story in and of itself. One of the employees consistently filled our soap dispenser in the employee bathroom with water rather than go to the trouble of getting more soap when it got empty. Thus it was decided that the best way to curb this annoying habit was to write a memo and affix it to the now diluted soap dispenser.) Unfortunately, Leni made a fatal error in writing the aforementioned memo when she used the word "it's" and didn't use an apostrophe... The next day, Jizz (an english major) read the memo and took it upon herself to rewrite the soap dispenser memo and leave it for Leni to find when she arrived. Leni took great offense to the fact that her memo had been corrected and proceded to "correct" Jizz for the rest of the day. Jizz could no longer take it and told Leni to mind her own business to which Leni screamed " I JUST WANT TO PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE!" Jizz then locked herself in the bathroom ( with the soap dispenser memo ironically enough.) for about half an hour and then came out and did not speak to anyone for the rest of the day.

So if either of our co-workers sees that we have submitted their ridiculous behavior I'm sure Jizz will edit it and correct my punctuation, and Leni will want to punch me in the face..."

01:06 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 11, 2005

>> Employees are children

[ Work ]

airmeister writes...

"I owned an aircraft repair business until recently, having sold it to focus on some health issues. When I started my business several years ago, I wanted to think that if I treated my employees well that they would react in kind, and do the right things. Imagine my suprise when I found that they were lying on their timecards, overstating hours worked, stealing my personal tools, and moonlighting on my customers aircraft. Then they had the audacity to hit me up for more money, even though they were very well paid as it was. I have seen pilots nearly crash because of stupid mechanical errors, and people just don't seem to care. I am so glad that I no longer have to be a babysitter...I'll leave that for the next fool!"

01:10 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 10, 2005

>> Ask your doctor for help so we can work

[ Fools ]

Anonymous writes...

"We have a girl in our small, open office that is just down-right annoying. It is our busy season at work (a sales office) and it's nice to enjoy a few minutes of peace & quiet (no phones ringing, etc.) once in a while, except, that doesn't happen any more since she came on board. The problem: she coughs and hacks all day. Not once in a while; all the time. The coughing just cuts through you like a knife! This has gone on as long as she's worked here. When she talks on the phone to customers, she hacks in their ear. Why would anyone want to buy from someone who can't complete a sentence without hacking up whateverthehellitisyouswollowedlastnight?! She blames it on the air in the building (however, it only affects her).

If that was all, it wouldn't be so bad. But this person hired on only for the benefits of working for a large company. While all the other employees work 10-12 hours a day (as we were told we were when we hired in), she barely manages to "work" an eight hour day. We don't have a micro-manager on site. We've all managed quite well until now (we're adults). This ditz comes in absolutely on time every day, never early. Then she takes twenty-five minutes to get down to work. Many times through the course of the day, I'll look over to her desk and see that she's surfing the internet, writing e-mails to friends, and laughing in the middle of her "Messenger" session. Often times she'll just sit there and stare out the window. A few minutes before lunch, she'll take a long bathroom break. Then she'll either take the full hour (or more) for lunch or bring some noisy bag of feed back to her desk and start grazing. All while placing personal calls on the company phone (yelling at whom ever she's calling).

We've never had to produce a policy manual, because we've always hired people with integrity. It appears that we could easily right a book based on what she does wrong, though. She should figure it out without having to be told. The management doesn't see the day to day crap we deal with in this office. As far as I'm concerned, she's a waste of space and needs to get a job with the government. I guess I could fart all day and blame IT on the building air system, but then two wrongs don't make a right, does it?"

01:03 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 09, 2005

>> Wanna work in burning HELL????

[ Rant ]

Satan's Biotch writes...

"Well here goes nothing....

I work in a factory and I've been there about ten *covers face w/ hands* years now. When I first started there I didn't work anywhere specific so I moved from job to job. That was just fine I was straight out of highschool and I was making good money *I thought at the time* so that was all well and good. The problem was there is a supervisor from Hell. I swear he comes straight from the firey pit. He degrades anyone he wants anywhere he wants. It doesn't matter if you're standing in a crowd of people he'll let you have it. Well, except we had this little tart working there for about five years that could get away with everything and anything she wanted. If she wanted a raise he would go in the office and she'd end up with 75 cents more in the next hour.

If this boss isn't enough to deal with they decided to give me a more permanant job. Great! Except now I have to put up another migration from Hell! This one is Satan's spawn!! I just call him "Him". "Him" is a horror for anyone who steps in this man's space. Our machine is a 3 man operation. Well, we can't keep anyone long enough and I end up training 52 people a year because they refuse to do anything about this man's attitude.

I went against my better judgement and got my neice a job on the machine. She needed a job and I thought we may actually have a great team *slumps in chair*! "Betty" lasted a little over a year until she couldn't take it anymore. Poor thing probably only stuck around that long because of me.

I don't know maybe it's me but I thought there were laws against this type of harrassment? I get so mad somedays from being talked to like a dog that I want to grab the nearest metal bar next to me!! I won't go into detail of what I'm thinking. *takes a DEEP breath*. I have been in the office and tried to tell them but they do absolutely nothing! They know how he is and they just say he's having a stressful day. OK, when I knock him on the floor someday I was just a little overworked. Alright I think I'm done now. Phew!"

01:15 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 08, 2005

>> Happy Death Day

[ Fools ]

Crazy in TV Land writes...

"I used to work with the most interesting assortment of people in a television marketing department. When our boss' mother-in-law passed away, I, being the office assistant, decided to take care of organizing the office outreach. In the office were two of the other five people I worked with. So I got them together and asked what they would suggest to be appropriate for one's mother-in-law passing away. One guy suggested a card and maybe flowers, and I agreed. The other gal, a butch stubborn woman who does whatever is on her mind, said she always sends flowers...and a cake. Yes, a cake. It wasn't unusual for this person to make strange suggestions, but this one took the...well, you know. The other guy and I looked at each other and almost simultaneously and asked her what kind of cake. And she said maybe chocolate, or an almond cake...she didn't know. I said we were doing flowers and that was it. Then, after we went back to our respective cubicals, I overhear her doing just what I feared that stubborn woman would do...calling bakeries and telling them she'd like to send a cake...on behalf of the office! Now that was over the top. What do you do when you're about to be royally embarrassed? Call other departments and promptly tell them. The looks everytime I told what was happening were PRICELESS. People kept talking very loudly about their "Death Day Cake" ideas in the office. Eventually, she overheard one too many jokes and made us believe she cancelled the cake order. But being the stubborn woman that she is, I was never quite sure and never had the guts to ask my boss if a "Death Day cake" ever arrived at his door."

01:10 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 07, 2005

>> Sabotage on the job?

[ Fools ]

WalksWithMulder writes...

"I recently started working next to a co-worker who has a reputation of being mean-spirited and vengeful. We are supposed to cover each other's work when one is gone or on vacation. When she went on vacation for two weeks in July, I did all her work and all her transcription for 3 docs plus keeping up my own work and transcription, not an easy task. Then, when I went on vacation two weeks ago, I came back and none of my transcription had been touched. the charts were sitting behind my desk with two tapes on top. I couldn't believe it!! When I asked her why she didn't do my transcription, she just said "she was busy and couldn't do them." I didn't reply because I was so shocked, but got started with my backed-up mail from the past ten days. There was SO much junk mail and catalogs that the wastebasket was nearly full, and I had to push down hard to make room for the rest of the day's trash. Several times during the day, I glanced at the dictation tapes thinking I should put them in my desk and organize the charts, but was very busy catching up with orders and other week-long requests that didn't get handled. Then, in early afternoon, I finally had to say something to my co-worker about how disappointed I was she didn't help me out when I had helped her out when she was gone. She was very rude and just snapped back at me that "her docs were her first priority and she just DIDN'T have time." Well, I sit right next to her, and I KNOW how busy she is (NOT!) and there is no way she didn't have time do to my transcription, or at least get started on it!! So, I guess that pissed her off since she didn't talk to me for the rest of the day. Shortly after that, she left for home, and I was clearing up to leave myself, and reached for the dictation tapes - and they were GONE!!! I hadn't touched them all day long, and they had been there up until I made my statement to my co-worker about not helping me out. I spent over an hour tearing my area apart with no luck. I only made a cursory check of the wastebasket because first of all, the wastebasket was 5 feet away from where the tapes were sitting, and secondly, there was so much junk mail stuffed in the basket they would have been sitting right on top (since I had seen them after the basket had been filled to the brim). Finally, after looking every possible place, I decided to go thru my wastebasket piece by piece, and had to really pull hard to get the catalogs and junk mail out that were crammed down in there. Well, guess what? On the very bottom of the basket, there were the two dictation tapes. Now there was NO WAY these tapes "fell" into that basket. If one DID fall in, it would have been right on top - there was no possible way it could have slid down past all the junk mail I had shoved down. And what would be the chances that TWO tapes would "fall" in there? The very first thing I did the next morning was tell my co-worker where I found the tapes and how IMPOSSIBLE it was for them to accidentally fall into the wastebasket. She gets defensive and says "Well, I hope you don't think I put them there!" I said I don't know WHO put them there, but they did not get there by themselves, and it was NO accident. So, now I have to watch everything I leave out and I make sure when I leave the office for even a couple of minutes that I take my tapes out of the machine and lock them up. I also have just tons of sensitive work (grants, orders, invoices, charge card statements and numbers) that lays all over my desk that could really screw up any of my bosses work if they were to accidentally "disappear." I told this story to my immediate supervisor, and she said she couldn't believe that my co-worker would do such a thing. This supervisor is one of those naive people who cannot find it in her heart to see anything bad in anyone - GREAT to work with, but useless when it comes to something like this!!! I went a step further with the story, and this supervisor said to just document this story and if anything similar happens in the future, they will take some kind of action. In the mean time - what do I do??? I cannot lock everything up - it's impossible because we work in a common area. I can only hope that she realizes that I caught her at this little nasty trick and won't be stupid enough to do anything more."

01:04 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 06, 2005

>> The most wonderful time of the year...

[ Fools ]

Anonymous writes...

"It is the end of January. The woman whose cubicle is across from mine is playing, for the 4th time today, Enya's "Silent Night". For the 4th time today -- but the day just started. And it's the end of January. Fully a month after Christmas. And you know she began playing it immediately after Thanksgiving.

Please, please let the CD break."

01:01 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 05, 2005

>> Mom & Poppers=no morals

[ Rant ]

madmax writes...

"I worked for this small retail company for approximately two years.The company was owned by a husband and his wife. I have a great working backround & found out from their former employees that these owners have a history of undermining, lying and firing anyone that comes to work for them.

The husband likes to look at young girls in the mall all day and the wife is 50 years old and wears miniskirts. If one makes a m istake they instantly catagorized them, they name-called and insulted former staff so much that many people walked out on them a week before a major money-earning holiday. They fired a former employee when that employee's family member was dying of cancer(they also had several children to support) and they refused to give her any paid time off (like large corporations sometimes do).When the employee's family member was on the deathbed, the employee called the owners ("you can always reach us"), the owners refused to answer the phone.They fired that person even though their shift was covered and refused to pay unemployment because they felt that that person was white trash and counting on getting money from them, not the fact that the employee did indeed enjoy their job, worked hard for them and lost their mate.

They undermined everyone behind their backs ("that Jerry")to other employees and played favorites with old ladies and fat girls that would not threaten the insecurity of the paranoid wife. She bad-mouthed any decent looking woman working for them to her husband, the Worm. The Worm gave all the decision-making and employee meetings to the wife and enjoyed brow-beating and character asassination stories provided by the narrow-minded dominating small woman while he drank, gambled and golfed. Never once did I hear him coming to the defense of a good-hardworking employee, probably it would create further disagreement in their already disagreeable marriage.

I must add that none of their employees was ever interested in the Yuppie-phony Worm husband (they had boyfriends & husbands)but the wife continued to rail against any of the girls.

One day, I watched in horror when they fired a very hard-working nice-looking girl because of a minor misinterpetation on their part. This girl had trained two people, stayed over to help out, without extra pay or consideration and was treated badly during the Christmas season (yeah, good will in retail doesn't seem to apply to the working people does it?).The vile, manipulative wife,whose phony acts towards caring resulted in more problems (I learned not to say anything to her) enjoyed the brown-nosing admininsterations of an older woman employee who goofed off and ran errands while she was on the clock (no one said anything because we thought she was ok). In hindsight, I found out that dirtbag employee "played people" and didn't plan staying there (had her eye on another job since she started). The owners loved her.

I left out of disgust, I enjoyed my job, some of the other people were real nice, but of course they were either fired or left, I could not tolerate the owners, I dreaded walking into work, everyday felt like my last, I felt the owners were hunting for something to get me on.

I decided thati could no longer tolerate their crap and walked out.Of course, the owners cheaped out on me, did not give me my owed vacation pay (whoee! was it because I left them?!)I figured, NEVER AGAIN.

THIS IS A WARNING, WHEN YOU WORK FOR A FAMILY OWNED BUSINESS, THEY DON'T HAVE RULES WRITTEN OUT TO KEEP THEM FROM BEING JERKOFFS, BUT THEY HAVE THEIR OWN RULES ABOUT YOU BEING ONE.

In a larger organization,they would also be employees and subjected to the same amount of respect as anyone else, but family-owned businesses are a genre into themselves.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

Thanks for listening and don't work for any amoral jerkoffs!"

01:03 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 04, 2005

>> All Talk and No Work Makes Employee of the Month!

[ Rant ]

TearRose writes...

"I've worked as a receptionist in a large medical group for over five years now. For the last two years I've had a co worker who could easily win any "Miss Bubbly" pageant. She is always in a hippity-hoppity good mood and will talk both your ears off if she gets you cornered. Normally, I have no problem with this. The weeks I'm assigned to work with her I know I will have to listen to everything that happens to her all week, but I also know she won't vindictively stab me in back.

The reason I don't like working with her is because she works, maybe, 3 out of the 9 hours we are in the office. The rest of her time is spent talking incessantly about anything and everything with anyone who appears in her range of vision.

This leaves me to do almost all of the work. I can usually handle that because then at least I know it is all getting done correctly, but this one incident just made me fume.

We were both assigned the front desk. Which means checking in all the patient, preparing records, mail, and all kinds of other paper work. Not to mention fielding questions from people who walk up to our the counter usually needing directions or random info.

So we are merrily chugging away when one of our nurses going on break entered Miss Bibbity Bop's line of sight and chat is on. She moves to the back of the reception area which is half hidden by a mirrored partition and they start discussing The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Survivor, etc. I can see/hear them and they me, but to the patients checking in it appears as if only I am visible and there are disembodied voices coming from somewhere in the back.

Their conversation about reality shows goes on for 45 min (I am not exaggerating). During this time I have patients waiting in line and paperwork all over my desk. She can clearly see the line 5 patients deep and yet continues to talk.

I asked her to come up and help she said something like "Oh, yea, sure, be right there", and then got wrapped up in her conversation again. When she finally came back out to the desk she was spurting apologies and all kinds of compliments like "you're so good, I knew you could handle it" and "no one can multi-task like you".

I try to avoid confrontations so I politely said "well I prefer not to if I don't have to" and "it makes the job a lot easier when their are two of us working the desk". I just hope some of it got through.

Now, this was all normal routine for this girl, but here is the kicker. The nurse she was speaking with, who also saw the line of patients and heard me ask for help, emailed everyone in the department to suggest we nominate this girl for employee of the month! I was speechless. Now, I don't care about receiving this title myself (when the announcement was made we were starting an employee of the month program there was a stipulation that you could not win if you did not consistently wear your name badge. At which time I turned to my co worker and said "I knew there was a reason I never wore my badge!"). Yet it just infuriated me that someone would watch me do ALL the work for almost an hour while my co-worker did nothing but gab, and then nominate HER for employee of the month. Speechless...for days."

01:11 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 03, 2005

>> "Milky Licker"

[ Fools ]

Anonymous writes...

"I have had quite a few jobs in my live and have seen my share of "slackers", but this person certainly takes the cake.

To start off I work for a non-profit association, so automatically the salaries are higher than they would be in the private sector. So automatically the amount of work that "milky licker" feels they should do is less than it would be in the private sector. Needless to say we get paid very well for what little we do.

In this department we run a 16hour/day 5 days/week operation. Two shifts a day with 3 operators to run the whole shabang. I am responisble for filling in when someone is absent, as well as doing my daily tasks.

The problem lies with the 2nd shift operator. For 5 years now he has worked the 3-11 shift and has grown tired of it. Not that he doesn't get any time off. (We get 24 days of paid leave a year when we start.) About a year ago, he wrecked his motorcycle and broke his arm. Also needless to say that the most physical part of this job is to open a ream of paper and fill a printer, that's it. He took off for 10 weeks while his arm healed. All the while being paid disability from the company for an accident that occured on his own time, own motorcycle etc. Before he comes back to work he says to the dept head "I need to be retrained to do my job that I had previously done for 4 years". All which leads me to work the evening shift more than I had to anyway. When he comes back he acts like he's going to watch me do his job for a couple of days. I don't think so. He realized there and then that I don't deal with "milky lickers" very well and also don't tolerate that menatality.

Now before I run amuck here, this person is in their 40's, retired from the Air Force, and hasn't had any type of "job" b/c he joined the USAF right out of h/s. He doesn't want to work, makes you run to the boss everytime you need him to do something outside of his job description, is a pathological liar, and is looking to skate so he can collect another retirement check in 20 years.

To continue with story, he comes back from his disability leave, 9 months go by and he claims that he needs sugery again on his arm and will only be off for a month. After 1 1/2 weeks, "it'll be 6-8 more weeks. After a month goes by it's 8-10 weeks. Right in the middle of summer when everyone wants to take vacation. And only gave a week notice. Well he filed for FMLA and realized he could take off 12 weeks, well it's now week 9 and it looks like he'll be off for another 3 weeks now. My summer is offically over.

Well, how in the hell can a doc certify you to not work when a fortune teller rubbing the crystal ball doesn't have any more physical/mental activity at their job than he has? He has gotten his summer off. I hope he enjoyed it considering it was a rainy/cool summer. He had burned every bridge with me and the other co-worker. He is one of those "sticks in the mud" that every workplace has, I know. But why in the hell does he still have a job? We have a company policy that states "total time away from work is not to exceed 12 weeks in any 12 month period for any and all leaves of abcenses", paid leave included. Why is he still here?

The anniversary of his accident/injury is tomorrow and he has now been off for 23 weeks over the last 12 months and that's counting his leave time. (which he promply used all but 3 days prior to his leave of absence this time.) Now, he can afford to take unpaid leave (AF retirement check) and he makes the people that pick up the slack for his absence suffer. Makes me want to PUKE!

Now it gets alot better when I tell you all this. About a year ago when he was out last time a fellow co-worker told me that he (Milky Licker) and my dept. head are cousins. That's right cousins! Our company has a 3 page anti-nepotism policy but it only goes down to nieces/nephews as far as relatives go so I guess they flew under the radar on that one. So that's why he still has a job. The boss won't fire him or start a paper trail against him to have him ousted.

Our HR dept isn't any better either. They should know the FMLA and use it to keep him accountable but they don't. No questions asked, "ok you can have off as long as you want". No "I need you to report in here & give status and intention of when you are returning", which is legal under FMLA. He is just "milking" the system and laws for every day that he can get off work.

Other co-workers tell me not to worry and say, "justice will be served" which leads me to belive that when he comes back that he will be fired. But I completely doubt it because they (company) are so submissive/afraid of the lawsuit.

I should leave this sinking ship of a job before it makes me old before my time."

01:08 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 02, 2005

>> Cost analysis shmalysis

[ Boss ]

Lucifer writes...

"Whenever there is a major change to a process, especially when it affects a whole unit of a department...namely, 4 people (doing the work of 6, mind you)...It is common practice to perform a cost analysis on said proposed change.

For those that don't know, a cost analysis simply states what the current situation is, what the change is, and how it will BENEFIT the company. To put it simply, it states how much money it will save, or how much money it would generate. How will this benefit the company financially? If it saves time, time is money, therefore it saves money.

Well my new manager decided that the idea of a cost analysis is pure rubbish. She wanted to know exactly what we work, what we do, when its worked, and from what report. Well, we already have an account for just about everything we do, either in an army of company databases, or within excel spreadsheets. Theres also the production log that I made for the group to track our performance.

So she had her little butt-puppet, a former analyst, create...no...rip off of other people's databases to make this database that tracks all that. So now after every unit we produce, even if it doesn't need to be worked, we have to enter 7 key aspects of that unit into this database that's completely unnecessary. It also throws a wrench at our whole process.

The worst part of all is that not only does this thing take up half of the computer screen, making it very invasive to all the other work I have open...but it takes LONGER to log the work than it does to WORK THE WORK.

I have proof too with my production log. My production for one of my duties was 200% of what the quota was...it is now 95%. Another one of my jobs went from 150% to 76%.

Astonishing. All so that this ditz that I work for doesn't have to look in more than 1 place for our production numbers.

Cost Analysis is done for a REASON."

01:02 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

February 01, 2005

>> Used to have the best boss

[ Boss ]

Anonymous writes...

"I used to have the best boss in the world - Friday, she must have lost her friggin' mind. They gave me some materials for a binder at 5:30 on Friday and needed the complete binders by 8 am on Monday.

When I requested overtime (so I could come in on Saturday and build the binders), I was denied. Somehow, I was supposed to get this done on Friday, even though I have to leave by 6 to catch the last train home and everyone knows this. Or I was supposed to do it Monday morning, when the first train would get me to work at 7:30 am.

So, I got up at 3:30 on Monday, hauled into the office, worked a 12-hour day, and what did I get today? That's right. I got b*tched out because some of my co-workers had to help me assemble the binders on Monday morning.

What else did I get today? About a dozen job applications. I'm outta here."

01:05 AM - Posted by Disgruntled