December 11, 2006

>> Queen of Annoying Coworkers!

[ Fools ]

Anonymous writes...

"I work as a clerk for a government office where I do the usual office clerk stuff like answering the phone, filing, typing and photocopying. I haven't been there very long - about a year and already I am a disgruntled government worker! Actually most of the people I work with are pretty nice and I like my supervisor. The only really bad part is my stupid coworker who is the Queen of Annoying Coworkers! She and I work as a team to cover the reception desk and cover each other's work for vacation. It started out well between us but now one of the happiest days of my life will be when I leave! Amazing how one person can make work life hell!

Here's some of the many irritating and unprofessional stuff she does!

She's consistently 5 to 10 minutes late relieving me for my lunch break - on a few occasions, even up to 30 minutes late and with rarely an apology. I have to actually notify her in advance if I want to leave for my lunch at the time I'm supposed to so I can actually leave at that time or she will pull her usual crap and be late. She can leave anytime she wants to for lunch but I have to wait until she's back. So unfair!

She packed up her stuff and announced that she was leaving at 2:30 p.m. (this was at 2:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon that she told me) because she had been running company errands the night before and was leaving early to make up the time due to her. Thank for the notice, stupid cow! If she knew that she was leaving early, why didn't she tell me in the morning or did she just feel like leaving early for the weekend!

Books her vacation months and months in advance so that I haven't even had the chance to plan my holidays. Even if I wanted the same time off as her, I am effectively screwed as she has "claimed" those days already. In fact, she has "stolen" days that I had verbally told her that I wanted but did not yet book off through the supervisor as it was still months away.

She has 3 times as many vacation days as I have but to maximize her time off, she takes as many of the weeks with the paid holiday Monday in them as she can. Given how much time she has off, it would have been considerate to let me have some of those paid Mondays weeks. Stupid cow!

Forgets to tell me about vacation days she's taking off - I am supposed to cover her work so shouldn't she clear it with me in advance. No, but I am supposed to clear my days off in advance with her before I can take them! Unfair!

Leaves early but forgots to tell me that's because she is working a different shift for carpooling purposes.

At Halloween, wore this stupid costume where she pinned mini-boxes of smarties candy to her pants so she could be a "smarty pants". It was cute for the first half hour but an entire day of hearing those damn things shake and jangle as she walked away from her desk just about put me over the edge. You work in an open space with cubicles with dozens of people - how incredibly inconsiderate are you, lady? Did she not think it would disturb other people who are working?!? Inconsiderate yet so sensitive that there would have been a fight if I had said anything.

She files her damn nails at her desk.

She had lots and lots of personal calls, especially from her stupid husband. When he can't reach her on her line, he calls the general reception number that I answer. Then I have to tell him that she's in a meeting, away from her desk, at lunch, or whatever. I am not her stinking secretary! Huge waste of my time having to answer his calls. They are never emergencies - just him calling to tell her what moronic thing happened to him that day for the 5th time! Leave her a freaking voicemail!

She's a big girl so she walks like a baby elephant! She wears terrible plastic flip flop shoes that make such loud clopping noises that you can hear her come from a mile away, just like a horse.

Talks and laughs in a high pitch voice, loud enough to curdle milk.

And that's not all of the stupid stuff she does. Unfortunately, the supervisor and everyone else loves her. They all think she's so organized and so wonderful because she tries to be like a mother hen. They don't have to work so closely with her so they don't see all the crap. Even I have to admit that she does get her work done so they're not likely to get rid of her for that.

There have been 5 people in my position over the past 6 years so I know it's not just me. Also some student interns that had to work with her also didn't get along with her! They even had to get a restraining order against one of the students who threatened her! No surprise, huh.

Unfortunately, she's not going to change and probably won't leave so I have to change or leave which make me extremely resentful and bitter. Can you tell?!?

Anyway, I feel much better now! Thanks for listening or rather reading!"
01:00 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

November 16, 2006

>> Caps LOCK

[ Fools ]

Mystery Man writes...

"Used to work as a developer/support for a Unix based system controlling the entire head office and warehouse for a large frozen food retailers.

The guys in the warehouse weren't exactly the smartest.

One day we got a call from a guy complaining his password wasn't working ( they had to log in to transfer stock so that all movements would be recorded ).

it goes like this...

"Hi, computer room? My password isn't working"

"Are you sure. Could you give me your account name and I can check?"

"No its definetly not working, I checked it on my work mates account too. Definetly bust."

Short story ( if you have ever done IT support you know how the next 10 minutes is wasted.)

He had tried to login. He had left the Caps Lock button on so his password was rejected. He then tried to log in using his mates login name BUT still with his own password. Hey, it still didn't work."

01:00 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

November 13, 2006

>> Asshole making me want to quit

[ Fools ]

DBReed writes...

"There's a guy I work with who has to be the biggest fucking asshole I've ever met in my life. Imagine a guy who uses the anonimity of the Internet to act like a dick to people, and then imagine meeting a guy like that in real life. That's him. We'll call him FA.

FA will always cut me down if I say a like things he doesn't. He's constantly ridiculing me about my weight, even though he's about 30 pounds heavier than me. When I'm in the middle of dealing with customers, he will interrupt me and take my customers away from me, saying that I'm too slow. This has been going on for about a year now.

I almost completely lost it yesterday. After hearing that I had been out drinking the night before to celebrate my birthday, FA got into a conversation with me about how he thought that people who drank were below him and that he would never demean himself like that. I asked him why he thought that and soon the conversation got pretty heated. At this point our district manager came into the store as we're having the conversation. FA then tells our manager that I wouldn't be quiet when the DM came into the store. I told the manager that FA started the whole thing and that FA shouldn't have brought up a topic like that at work in the first place. The manager took FA's side, and at this point I was seeing red. FA was still hanging around talking to me and I told him to get away from me. He left, telling me that I should go cry to the DM if I was feeling upset. I was so angry I almost walked out of the job right there, and I had to go cool off for an hour.

This isn't just an isolated incident, this stuff happens all the time, it happens exclusively to me, and the manager always takes his side. It feels like there's no hope of resolving this between us and I'm about ready to quit my job because of it."

01:00 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

November 09, 2006

>> Another Crazy Printer Story

[ Fools ]

Anonymous writes...

"The printer story reminded me of something that happened at my office. We have a printer that has two trays for paper. We use one tray for regular paper and the other tray for letterhead. About 6 people share the same printer but there is one secretary who always messes up the printer. I would go to pick up my letters that I had printed on letterhead and they would all print on regular paper. I would open the tray and sure enough the tray that was supposed to have letterhead in it had regular paper. So I asked the secretary to keep the regular paper in tray 2 and the letterhead in tray 3. But everyday after that she continued to take the letterhead out of the printer. So next I wrote out a list on instructions and taped them to the top of the printer figuring that she would understand, but still she took out the letterhead. Finally, I sent her a long detailed email explaining to her how to use the printer and which tray to put the letterhead in and which tray to put regular paper in and she sent me an email back that said that she did not use letterhead so that is why she took it out of the printer everyday. Finally, at this point I switched to another printer even though I had to walk farther to get my printouts because I couldn't deal with her anymore."

01:00 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

November 06, 2006

>> Introducing... Natasha

[ Fools ]

TramView writes...

"Here's a quick introduction to a colleague of mine, whom I shall dub Natasha. This is my first post here, but considering how often my jaw drops at the things she says and does, expect many more.

I am the lead developer for a reporting application. Natasha is, cough-cough, an "analyst." Since there is nothing worth analyzing at the moment, she has been assigned the laborious duty of scheduling the user acceptance testing. With the holidays fast approaching last week, she decided to send a heartfelt thanks to all the users who have helped us improve our product. In an email addressed to 25 of our most influential users was the following statement:

"Success opportunity to work together."

Ah Natasha, your command of the English language is unparalleled."

01:00 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

October 23, 2006

>> We charge extra for copies

[ Fools ]

Formerly Disgruntled writes...

"The idiot office manager at the bizzarro law firm I used to work at was REALLY dumb. She'd started out there as the receptionist and had gotten her promotion because of an affair she was currently having with the managing partner. Whatever the current receptionist said was considered law. Now, at the time (mid 90's) at every other law firm I'd worked at, we'd billed clients for long distance calls. It was a simple system, you wrote down the number you called and the time and date and what client you made the call on behalf of. When the phone bill came, receptionists all over the city simply went through the bill, found each charge and added it to the slip on each long distance call and that was sent to the billing department and it went on the bill (this was a few years back before computer systems evolved that tracked phone calls like this). When our office manager had been receptionist, she hadn't liked that part of the job so she'd stopped doing it and she didn't make her replacement do it either. So phone calls weren't tracked AT ALL. When new people were hired from other firms, they always started out writing down their phone calls only to be shot down in flames and told that it was not necessary. I was aghast at the thought of them losing hundreds of dollars every month and went to her and suggested we do this and her answer was "oh don't worry about it, it evens out, we charge extra for copies to make up for it." They were charging clients 25 cents a page for copies and she felt that would balance it out. Of course, there were people who abused this "free long distance plan" -- people who routinely called their out of town relatives on their lunch hours, one guy who spent hours during work time on the phone to his girlfriend in college in another state, etc. It didn't change till the office manager quit and was replaced by someone else and then they instituted the computerized system where you had to dial in your client's account number to dial out (even though it was a small firm and more than do-able) because the receptionist REFUSED to do the phone bill and upper management wouldn't make her. She was kind of "different" also -- she read People magazine all day between calls and it took her a whole week to get through one. And so she didn't have to share it with the people who came and did her breaks and lunch, she would tear out and remove the pages she'd read."

01:00 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

October 19, 2006

>> Fat Ass

[ Fools ]

Artist writes...

"I have this problem with two of my coworkers. They come in my cublicle to chat. I do not have a "visitor's chair" in my cubicle because I do not want one. I do not want to feel crowded nor do I want anyone to linger around for ever.

Well here's the problem. I have two fat asses who like to come in and sit on the counters in my office. I have asked them repeatedly not to do this. They are habitual in their nuisance.

Each time they sit, I see the counter literally decending by one or two inches. As my counters become weary, I envision the eventual fate of my monitors, my computer, my coffee pot, and my bosses reaction.

How can I politely get the understanding that cubicle counters are not made to support their rather large asses!?"

01:00 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

September 28, 2006

>> Hate the Witch Hunt

[ Fools ]

Senior Manager writes...

"I'm a senior manager in a small corporation. There's a woman in our office who is the victim of what I call a "witch hunt."

She is generally not seen as management material because she is too "soft," and so was passed over for promotion several times, and even demoted once. She has allegedly vented her frustrations "anonymously" on sites such as these. We cannot prove it's her, but it sounds enough like her to have angered senior management.

Now, we are to "get her" at all costs, by tapping her phone, monitoring her PC, putting video cameras with microphones in her cubicle, freezing her out at meetings and in the office and cafeteria, moving her desk to another floor away from her team, etc. She is literally blackballed because of the weblogs.

She seems to be hanging tough, however, and there are jokes about how she's too "dense" to "get it."

How about she's too "broke"?

It makes me sick to do this right now, right before the holidays. Did I mention she's divorced with a bunch of kids?

My wife thinks I should stand up to my team of senior managers. I've spoken up against it and refused to follow along when she's ignored or rebuked.

I've even told her to "hang in there." Another time, I told her to "get another job, it's not worth it." Once, I took her aside and asked her, "why do you stay?" She admitted the economy is bad right now and she needs the great medical benefits for her kids. She also told me she works two jobs, but the other one has no benefits.

I'm so sick of the politics and witch hunt that "I" am the one interviewing for other jobs. If it could happen to HER, who's to say it won't happen to someone else?"

01:00 AM - Posted by Disgruntled

September 25, 2006

>> Promoting Stupidity

[ Fools ]

Anonymous writes...

"I work in the HR department of a major university or perhaps better described as the twilight zone department. I was quite naive when I came to work here having never worked in HR or higher education. For five years now I have witnessed this ship of fools operate, for the most part unscathed by their numerous acts of idiocy. HR is divided into divisions, or should I say turfs, such as labor relations, hiring, benefits, compensation, etc. For the most part the directors of these individual departments engage in daily turf wars trying to see who can climb the farthest up the VP's butt, or implement a new useless policy, or claim a new innovative strategic goal. That's just the background.

This story is about a woman hired into labor relations three years ago at a salary of $42K with no college education what so ever and experience in only one company that had one union. The university here has five unions on campus and labor relations is charged with interpreting agreements and policy.

While those who hold comparable positions have at least a four year degree, this woman has not one iota of college, nor does she intend to take advantage of the tuition remission to earn a degree.

From day one she would reply to questions with "I don't know. I've only been here 3 mos., 6 mos. and now she says I've only been here 3 yrs." She is constantly interrupting others work to ask questions that she should know the answer to by now. She has no technical ability. She doesn't even have internet access at home. Most positions at her level are connected to the university 24/7 either by email, or cellphone. I don't think she has a cellphone either. She constantly gives out incorrect information. She creates more work for those of us around her because of her technical ineptness and her just plain stupidity. She loves to give detailed descriptions of her latest ailment or she'll bore you with personal stories about her family. If you strike up a conversation with her about anything she'll turn it around about her.

So what happens to an employee who is incompetent,unqualified for the position and a general pain in the ass? They get a promotion and a raise!"

01:00 AM - Posted by Disgruntled