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Office work sucks, at least the instant coffee is free.
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Apr 22, 2010 08:19
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The worst for me is the stupid team lunches. Thank goodness the economy tanked and they got cut. Why would I want to sit around and eat with the same people that I sit around and eat near every day? Oh, but the company is paying for it! BUT DON'T YOU DARE THINK ABOUT GETTING A STEAK. Play it safe, let your manager order first and order something of equal or lesser value. And you can't even tell dick jokes. You can't make fun of senior management, you can't talk about getting drunk and being stupid, so all that's left is talking about work and the weather and how bad traffic was that morning. Sometimes I wish I was a contractor, they get to eat in their cubes. 
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Apr 22, 2010 08:22
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So loving glad I went into nursing. The respect, perks and pay that come from nursing far outweigh the thought of having to go to some cubicle prison 5 days out of the week and sit at a computer. It's enough to blow my brains out.
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Apr 22, 2010 08:28
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When I worked at Earthlink, we all got called into a super important meeting one day. Everyone, callcenter-wide, which was the unmistakable sign of something big. Some higher-up HR person spent 30 minutes explaining to us that the "Human Resources" department was to be referred to as "People Services." This change was explained to be for reasons of political correctness. The department was ONLY to be referred to by this name. Using the phrase "Human Resources" would no longer be tolerated for any reason. It was oddly threatening. Of course there was only one logical question to be asked here. "So does this mean we're afraid of offending the people at this company who aren't human?"... Somehow the HR lady didn't even understand the question. Later they downsized entire departments by raising their weekly minimum call-volume requirements to just above the levels the best people had been able to obtain on their best weeks. However they had been giving out awards for excellent performance all along, and oddly didn't make any changes to that program. The end result was that I lost my job for performing poorly for the past two weeks, while I had already earned a little plaque for outstanding performance during one of those same two weeks. Apple was another matter. Working in design, development, or any of those places might be great. Working in their tech support callcenter is not. Tech support has one goal above all others, and if you have one of the awful managers, one goal only. That goal is sales. If you call in to Apple for tech support on your Mac, the tech your are talking to has sales quotas to meet. My own supervisor made us write up a written report explaining exactly why we failed to make a sale on each call where we didn't sell anything. If they called just to ask how to empty the trash, we drat well better get them to buy something too, or else. When I started, that actually wasn't the case. If it had been, I wouldn't have taken the job. They started sneaking sales in slowly, and eventually snuck everything else out. Our weekly meetings were ONLY about sales, and bringing up technical questions was considered somewhat off-topic. We were exactly like the sales department, except we also had to fix computers, and we didn't get any commission. In the end I lost that job because I didn't meet sales quotas. The next company, an ISP/Communications company called O1, was... incredible is technically the right word here. It was a small company, yet the internal divisions were actively at war. We weren't allowed to even speak to the 'enemy' divisions. The recording on our phone message told people to visit our site, and then recited the wrong URL. I noticed this right away, and customers complained of it all the time. I mentioned it to my boss, but he explained that fixing it would have required speaking to another department, so I was never to mention it again. My actual yearly review involved being called into a room my my manager and supervisor, the manager proceeded to make beeping noises at me and told me I was a robot, and then they laughed until I walked out. They had to downsize a position. I was still (for some unknown reason) working hard and doing everything that needed to be done. The rest of the team sat around talking about their World of Warcraft guild all day and playing Adventure Quest. There were actually 4 supervisors in the department over 2 non-supervisors... In the end though, they had to pick me to lay off, mostly because the other possible choice was their guild's Shaman, and they needed him for raids. I promised myself then that if my only employment option in the future was ever to work in a callcenter doing tech support, I would do the honorable thing and kill myself instead. I absolutely loving mean that. I would rather die than work in a callcenter. I work for a printing company now. I'm currently the entire I.T. department, half of the data processing department, a third of the digital print division, and I think I'm also security. I run the security systems, anyway. I'm not in a callcenter though, so it's by far an improvement. We recently bought a smaller, failing company though, and they're causing issues. They seem to believe that they're in charge now for some reason, and seem to lack any semblance of organization or common sense. Today the account coordinator from the acquired company told me she needed me to do a task. Data entry... which we don't do. At all. At a client's request, she wants me to go through a series of trade-show catalogs and take down the contact info of every person or company on the West coast, apparently to make a list for them to send unsolicited junk-mail out to. This sounds shady to me, not sure if it's entirely legal even. She seemed to want me to hurry up and get it done by tomorrow. I did some quick math, and pointed out that it would take roughly 233 hours to complete this. So that's about 6 week IF I also ignored all of my other duties, a lot more if I didn't. Her answer was just to get it done right away. I talked to the actual owner about this one though, and he qualified it as "completely insane," so I think we are going to be having a talk with her tomorrow. Robot Hobo fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Apr 22, 2010 |
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Apr 22, 2010 09:08
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MelonWheels posted:Making people believe work is fun has got to be the most absurd irony of human history. Not really. When I first started in corporate I thought work was all about making money and getting a condo and some douchey car that a douche would drive. I didn't like what I was doing for a living, I didn't like my boss, I didn't like my clients, I disliked my co-workers and I spent many nights a week drunk at bars but I got paid well. Then it dawned on me that I was doing it wrong.
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Apr 22, 2010 09:34
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Should be sleeping posted:Everyone hates me at my office. Because they crunch numbers, and estimate how much it costs a building to be made. But apparently, me, the staff artist, gets to sit around and "fool with photoshop"
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Apr 22, 2010 09:35
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Just reading this thread has made me feel like I must be the luckiest son of a bitch in the entire world with my job.  Sure, I work in a niche area of marketing (  - but it does involve boats, which is cool), but I joined a startup a year ago, own 5% of the company, I wear whatever I want every day (except on days where I meet clients), I'm a head of department have a team of 6 people under me so I literally delegate EVERY single piece of work I have to do, my contract stipulates I can work 3/4/5 day weeks for differing amounts of wage, and when I do work 5 day weeks I'm making probably twice as much as all of my other professional friends. Except the guy who's a doctor. I don't ever have to use SAGE or any other timekeeping thing, ever - as long as the clients are happy, all is A-OK. Seriously, having shortage skills and a combination of sales skills and technical skills means you can basically demand whatever you like! Plus, I'm the second in charge of the whole company, so I don't get hosed every conceivable way every single day - I simply inflict that on my team members! 
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Apr 22, 2010 09:53
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http://www.ellenfryuu.com
astrollinthepork fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Aug 21, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2010 09:59
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Clamps McGraw posted:Go gently caress yourself, unless you're hiring!
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Apr 22, 2010 10:05
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I did about two years in a small office setting. It was a small web design and hosting company, who I'm incredibly surprised is still in business. None of their software was paid for. None of it. At all. While I've been told that some software piracy is common in businesses, not a single thing we ran on any of our computers or servers was paid for. Operating systems, programs, nothing. Though I think the company would get into bigger poo poo because of it because they actually run some services for the US government. Network guy was a typical fatty fat fat, who lost most of his sense of smell and his meals showed it, stinking up the office every single day. Also had a major phlegm problem, constantly clearing his throat. The coworker across from me also had a throat clearing problem, though instead of coughing or doing the "Ahem" or some variation of it thing to clear his throat, it was always a guttural "HHHHHHNNNNNNNNN!", like he was dropping some major bricks in his cubical. The biggest dickweed in the company though was our... gently caress, I don't even know what his job title was supposed to be. I think he was marketing or something like that. But essentially, it was his duty to bring in work for us and ever since he took over, there was no work for us to do. After months of his fuckery and lack of jobs, there was a meeting with everyone in the office and it was revealed that this sort of thing was no longer his job so he hadn't been doing it. He attempted to shift his duties over to everyone else in the office, saying that we should be helping to bring in work and it was now our responsibility. Of course, neither of the owners knew or approved this sort of move, but he didn't check with them in the first place, the owners finally finding out about it months down the line. So what the gently caress was he doing in that time? Mostly, he was trying to get people in the office such as myself and HHHHNNNN guy to work on his stupid, half thought out schemes in the form of several businesses that he ran on the side. He wanted us to design, set up and run websites for him for these businesses, a task which we would constantly dodge. I eventually left the company because of lack of work, which was another annoyance of the job. See, they didn't pay you hourly or salary, they paid you hourly while you were working on a project. So basically, failed marketing guy wasn't bringing in work, so hardly any of us were making any money. Oh, and they mostly expected you to be in the office. So basically, they expected me to make the hour and a half commute to sit on my rear end for 8 and 1/2 out of the 9 hours I was supposed to be there, get paid for the half hour of actual work I had, then drive the hour and a half home. I was told that Failed Marketing Guy eventually was fired, not because of his gross incompetence, but because he actually moved halfway across the country, continued to collect paychecks from the company and DIDN'T ACTUALLY INFORM ANYONE IN THE COMPANY THAT HE WAS MOVING. He would log into the system remotely, do some bullshit updates and claim he was working from home. His home that was now a thousand miles away from us.
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Apr 22, 2010 10:17
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astrollinthepork posted:I hope you choke. That was a joke, man! I basically tell them what needs done at the start of the week, and then totally leave them alone to get along and do their thing unless they gently caress up badly and a client complains to me about it. That is the extent to which I manage them, because at my last job I swore I would never be as much of a douchebag as my line manager was to us; letting the " vertical strategists" gently caress with us at will and ruin our work schedules because they can't keep on top of their Outlook calendars. Then I got a new line manager who would take absolutely no poo poo from anyone higher up who tried to gently caress with anyone on her team. She will never get promoted again because of this, but I loved her. I think I always will.  Baggins posted:Go gently caress yourself, unless you're hiring! Move to Scotland, and we'll see!
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Apr 22, 2010 10:42
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Clamps McGraw posted:Move to Scotland, and we'll see! Hmm... I'm already in Ireland, and Scotland isn't that much different, really...
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Apr 22, 2010 10:57
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Dr. Steve Brule posted:The worst for me is the stupid team lunches. Thank goodness the economy tanked and they got cut. This, except I work for an absurdly lucrative consulting company so we have these lunches once or twice a week. My boss has a fetish for Japanese steak houses. Which is all fine and dandy but not every loving week no hyperbole here. I have eaten at the same three Japanese restaurants for months. I once faked eating a dish so I could go out and have pizza afterwards. These lunches are "working lunches" and we are forced to be there. They cost on average 400-600$ for the group of us and i'm sure that he finds a way to bill one of our clients. Nobody has had the balls to suggest a new type of restaurant. Including myself, but i'm by the far the most junior and value having a job and not rocking the boat. Some idiot wrote a policy that all correspondance with our foreign engineering counterparts has to be done with videoconferencing software. This means every meeting ( we have a lot of meetings) begins with us fiddling with the software and using the telephone to coordinate the videoconference. Rather then doing the drat thing by teleconference. Which would probably be easier and cheaper with the cost of voip these days. Understanding the unintelligible accents of our outsourced filipino engineers is an exercise in patience. I get the bulk of this fun because i'm usually responsible for analyzing the information and conveying it to the client/my boss We have a very expensive and good Lavazza espresso machine, but no espresso pods. Nobody is sure whose responsibility it is order some, so it just doesn't get done. I asked if I could buy some and expense it, I was brushed off and it was never spoken of again. So now I just spend 2-5$ for my espresso drinks everyday. We have a xerox machine in office, however its setup with some retarded billing system where we have to reference clients to bill them for photocopies. We weren't given any training on this, so everyone just goes to the UPS store. We have no dress code for when clients aren't expected in the office, however the owner/boss enforces some arbitrary facial hair/hairstyle dresscode everyday. This makes no sense, there are no written guidelines on this, it basically amounts to " I don't like your haircut, change it". TL:DR inefficient bullshit drives me mad.
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Apr 22, 2010 11:08
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Oodles of Wootles posted:Can someone that works for a major company talk about bureaucracy? I have to deal with a major company all the time and the amount of steps we have to go through to get the smallest thing done is mindboggling. I usually have to go through 2-3 weeks of "we are escalating to the next level" just to get a drat email sent or a job scheduled. I recently became OH&S Rep for my workplace. Today I was speaking to my boss about a few things, and he explained just how loving difficult it is to get poo poo done. Here's what he told me: "See this light globe above us? If that goes out, I can't get a chair, remove it and replace it. I have to enter it into a database so that someone else receives notification of a fault, prioritises it, orders a replacement globe, arranges for someone to come out, assess the fault and hopefully replace the globe. That might take a few weeks, and that's if we're lucky". Yeah.
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Apr 22, 2010 11:20
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Seaniqua posted:Military contractor? Strike temp work. I'm not allowed to talk about work with my fiance's family since some of them are in unions. It's awkward.
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Apr 22, 2010 14:09
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blugu64 posted:Office work sucks, at least the instant coffee is free. HA no it isn't. A small costs $2.99. I have never been so happy to not drink coffee as I was when I started here. 
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Apr 22, 2010 14:12
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Roberto_Silencio posted:Network guy was a typical fatty fat fat, who lost most of his sense of smell and his meals showed it, stinking up the office every single day. Also had a major phlegm problem, constantly clearing his throat. There's an older secretary in my office who works down the hall who clears her throat every 30 minutes. I can hear her everytime she does it as if she were sitting right next to me, thats how loud it is. Its the most disgusting poo poo ever.
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Apr 22, 2010 14:39
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blugu64 posted:Office work sucks, at least the instant coffee is free. At least the free instant coffee tastes like mud and makes you poo poo so you get to spend a lot of time hiding out in the bathroom stall.
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Apr 22, 2010 14:41
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FogHelmut posted:At least the free instant coffee tastes like mud and makes you poo poo so you get to spend a lot of time hiding out in the bathroom stall. I can say this is 100% true. 
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Apr 22, 2010 14:45
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Robot Hobo posted:Later they downsized entire departments by raising their weekly minimum call-volume requirements to just above the levels the best people had been able to obtain on their best weeks. However they had been giving out awards for excellent performance all along, and oddly didn't make any changes to that program. The end result was that I lost my job for performing poorly for the past two weeks, while I had already earned a little plaque for outstanding performance during one of those same two weeks. I read so many posts where this happens. Is there any legal recourse for an employee in this scenario? It's bullshit that an employer can say "You're not meeting the impossible goals we set for you, so you're fired" just because they don't want to pay you anymore. 
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Apr 22, 2010 14:46
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Winkle-Daddy posted:Does anyone work with employees from India? If so, is the phrase "please do the needful" as universally hated as it is at my office? I thought I was the only one who that sort of thing. I recently got a: quote:Kindly do the needful Maybe it's a literal translation?
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Apr 22, 2010 14:46
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Dr. Steve Brule posted:Sometimes I wish I was a contractor, they get to eat in their cubes. YOU TAKE THAT BACK, SIR! Many contractors get paid a lot, but we're all treated like scum and tossed into what they call a "dugout". Like we don't even have cubes - those are for employees (we used to have cubes  ) We have no job security, no benefits. I am still paid like an intern. I was brought on board as a contractor after my internship and they were like "$6/hr raise!"... and I was like "Okay! " We're not legally allowed to have lunch with the company, but it's okay since we're supposed to be "paid more." gently caress that.Whatever, though, it's (very) good experience.
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Apr 22, 2010 14:58
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Here's a little tale from my current position. I work for a Management Consulting firm (and no, I still am not all that sure exactly what that is, and I've been working for them for about 6 years now). About a year ago we went to a virtual office situation (everyone works from home, YAY!), so this tale stems from the 5 year period where I worked in a traditional office. I am the Executive Assistant for 4 partners, as well as Admin for all the consultants (about 10, give or take, consultants seem to come and go). This tale concerns one of the partners whom I refer to as The Pathetic Partner. The Pathetic Partner is, I think, in his early to mid 60's. However, for many, many years he was a drunk. He is also stupid in general. Drinking didn't help his IQ. He's also the most passive aggressive son of a bitch you'll ever meet. He essentially was asked to become a partner years ago when the company was set up because he gave the founding partner his first job eons ago. A pity position if you will. My first week there we were working on a huge proposal to a huge Sector Council, my task with proposals is to work closely with the Project Manager and bringing all the pieces of the proposal together (read - format the drat thing and make it look good and be readable). The day the proposal is to go into the hands of Purolator to be delivered, I had proofread, formatted, prettied up and gone over the thing with a fine tooth comb, printed and bound and was in the process of packaging the entire thing up for the courier. Enter Pathetic Partner. He wanted to see the proposal in which he had zero part. So, I gave him a copy, told him I needed it back within an hour as the courier would be here then. I got it back 45 minutes later, marked up with 'grammar corrections' (which were not errors in the first loving place!). In a panic, I showed it to the Project Manager and my immediate boss (the senior partner/president), and was told to just print out and bind a fresh copy and not worry about it. Pathetic Partner did this all the time. The man did not grasp even the most simple of modern office equipment or procedure. Every single day.....EVERY SINGLE loving DAY, a minimum of 5 times, he would wander to my desk and ask me how to send an email. Always while looking randomly off into the distance. What was he emailing? Useless 'marketing' emails to the Sector Councils (and the Gods smite you where you stand if you DARE to contact the Sector Councils on your own!). Seriously lovely 'marketing' material that he made up on the fly. In NotePad. Man didn't know what MS Word was. Many was the time I told him to open Word, only to get a blank, deer in the headlights look from the bastard. Ok, you need to open Word. What's Word? I don't know what that is. See that big blue W on your desktop? *looks at actual desk surface* (this is not an exaggeration) No.....*taps monitor* THIS desktop. THIS big blue W. This is Word.You had to email him files, since he had no clue how to access the files on the server (It's in the X Drive. I don't know what the X drive is.) And he had no idea how to save the files to the server. And I always had to show him how to open the drat file he insisted on being emailed to him. And how to print it. So that he could print himself up 6 loving copies to be filed in 6 different drawers in his office. He did the same with emails, then deleted them, then freaked out because he could not find the email he deleted. Part of my job was basic IT, and as such I had to know every single password in the company. He somehow managed to figure out how to change his password once. Because he didn't want me snooping through his computer and email (apparently this was why he was deleting emails). See, my immediate boss asked me once to go into Pathetic Partner's computer to access a file that was on there that never got saved to the X drive. So I did. Pathetic Partner freaked out, at one point accused me of putting a virus on his computer (he was the one that did that, by clicking any link he fancied, having just discovered his IE) and apparently spent all day figuring out how to change the password. Which he refused to give me. Not even to give to the IT Consultant who was coming in to clean out the virus. Fine. gently caress you. Say goodbye to your network cord. Took him a month to figure out I'd physically disconnected him from the entire network. He bitched until I flat out told him either give me the password so that IT guy and I can remove the virus you put on the computer in your stupidity or live without being connected to something you haven't a clue how to use in the first place so that your stupidity doesn't infect the entire system. This man also wanted me to dial a phone for him. Because dialing the big scary Bell Teleconferencing phone number and following verbal instructions for dummies was too much for him. I flat out told him this was not the 1950's and Admin do not dial phones for grown men. Since we went Virtual, I never have to deal with him anymore. YAY!!!!!!
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Apr 22, 2010 15:08
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bitreaper posted:Start your own company. Even if I had the willpower and the resources, everybody that works here has to sign a 'non-compete' agreement where we agree that we can't get another job in the same industry (ie, for somebody that might possibly be a competitor) for five years after our employment ends here. I don't even know if they can legally do that, actually. I'm no lawyer though. Something else I thought of. Management likes to change the clocks on us. Right now, between the timeclock for hourly people, the server, and my phone, none of them have the same time. The server and the phone are four minutes off, and the phone and the timeclock (and thus the lunch buzzer) are another two minutes off. And none of them match my cell phone. I was consistently late to work for over a month because I was going by the wrong phone; The first time I heard about it was during my review where my boss told me I had been late every day for months. I'm supposed to go by the phone clock, by the way. Which recently jumped back two minutes based on my other clocks. So it goes.
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Apr 22, 2010 15:09
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blugu64 posted:Office work sucks, at least the instant coffee is free. Ah yes, the cheap and bitter coffee that only makes you cheaper and bitterer over time.
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Apr 22, 2010 15:10
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CornHolio posted:Even if I had the willpower and the resources, everybody that works here has to sign a 'non-compete' agreement where we agree that we can't get another job in the same industry (ie, for somebody that might possibly be a competitor) for five years after our employment ends here. Courts "Blue Pencil" the hell out of those agreements if they go to court. Generally, the lower the level employee you are, the less and less those things are enforceable. Most employees don't know this, and live in fear of these agreements. Just don't steal customers, and you should be fine.
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Apr 22, 2010 15:11
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Risky posted:So loving glad I went into nursing. The respect, perks and pay that come from nursing far outweigh the thought of having to go to some cubicle prison 5 days out of the week and sit at a computer. It's enough to blow my brains out. A notable difference between your job and ours is that we're still just kissing the asses.
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Apr 22, 2010 15:12
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burmart posted:Courts "Blue Pencil" the hell out of those agreements if they go to court. Generally, the lower the level employee you are, the less and less those things are enforceable. Most employees don't know this, and live in fear of these agreements. I certainly hope they do. My NCA technically claims that I may never work for another company or research firm in this field, ever. I can't imagine that one holds up in court. (I also can't imagine it's even enforced, given how many scientists we lay off.)
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Apr 22, 2010 15:15
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The story of a scheduling program: LAB wanted a custom scheduling program, so we make an Access form for them. It's called SCHED And it was good. But then MS changed poo poo with several Access releases, and it broke half the time and corrupted the database. And more features are wanted. So they decide they want a web based version. Cool. But not by us. What? Because of a merger, they now have another IT department to develop it. Higher ups want LAB to use this other department,who currently knows dick about LAB. We, however, have been in bed with them for 30 years. Our first programs were on punch cards. We are so in bed it took me a year to realize we weren't the same department. So Dofus, the other department's programmer, wants a working version of the old SCHED. It requires personal tweaking to install, so I offer to head over and set it up for him. I ask where he wants me to put the source code. He doesn't it want it. Huh? No, doesn't want the code. Just the executable. And Dofus isn't around when I show up to set it up for him. He had a gout attack and skipped work. The next day I ask him "So, how's it running?" He says "Fine." Which is a lie, because unless he's a clone of me there's no way he could set this up on his own. A year passes. LAB asks us to help support Dofus, because it seems to be taking forever. Well, Dofus says he's finished, and gives us a bunch of html pages to put on our server. Yes, we maintain the server it'll run on. What we get is a horrible thing of broken links that looks NOTHING like SCHED. It's like instead of your date answering the door, a dog comes out. And craps itself. Dofus is surprised we can't get it to work, and asks us what the errors are. Well: 1) Links need to not be broken. As in ALL OF THEM. 2) Scripts needs to actually work, not halt because of errors. 3) Page needs to be a table driven system to schedule multiple studies based on subject ID, protocol, and timepoint, and move that over to an existing database. It currently asks for name, SSN, and a time. The first two we don't even WANT. So we spend a few months trying to get them to not suck at life. Dofus seems completely oblivious to the needs of LAB. He took an existing page, broke it, and gave it to them. I did find it odd Dofus never wanted the source code. Rosetta stone? gently caress that, we can figure out these funny symbols on our own. Emails go back and forth, half get ignored. My boss loses his poo poo, the other boss, whom I'll call COCK, gets pissed. No progress is made. We finally have a huge meeting to discuss this. So we meet everyone. Me and my Boss, COCK, Dufus, and LAB all attend. Dofus is a fat black guy, and COCK is a fat white guy. My first thought is "Ok, maybe there's some affirmative action bullshit forcing them to keep a bad employee?" It's a straw I'm grasping at to try to make sense of their utter incompetence. First thing out of COCK's mouth is a personal gripe at my boss over an email he sent. Someone's feelings are priority one for him. My bos sapologizes, tries to brush it aside, then asks if we can get down to business. COCK assures everyone that Dofus is the greatest programmer that ever lived. Other great quotes from COCK: "Have we got paid yet?" Yes, more than you should have. For nothing useful. "Is there a design request?" No, maybe you should have looked into that two years ago. "If you guys know what you want and how to do it, why do you need us?" My thoughts exactly. He stated this at least four times during this meeting. He also grabbed his face, made heavy breathing sounds and rubbed his cheeks several times, like Michael Moore being forced to listen to Glenn Beck while being tied to a chair with a gun to his head. It all becomes clear. COCK is a mad man. Dofus only knows how to duck his blows. Everyone else left or ended up in his refrigerator. Dofus may have well just been the janitor, was thrown in front of a computer, and screamed at until he just started hitting keys. Even after all this and a talk with the higher ups, they STILL get to continue on with the project. Boss says "Someone is being protected." This can't go on like this. We can't be held responsible for maintaining a page that will never work. We need to ... get dirt. So we look for ammo, something that violates policy. I find it. The page is so vulnerable to SQL injection attacks that you can destroy the database from the login page. Yup. A few months later, we're given the project. For three months I hammer out the page. It's my best work yet. LAB is impressed. it rolls out and all is well. Then the bill comes. LAB asks "That really took you THREE MONTHS OF WORK?!?" I suppress years of pent up rage and smile and say "Yes." LAB says "Well, it IS a really nice site." Yeah, sorry that it was delivered in one eighth the time the last one took. And actually worked. And for a time we were happy. COCK gets fired, probably for punching out a coffee machine or something. Then two years later the higher ups say "Hey, we can save money by forcing EVERYONE to use the same scheduling system!" So we attend meetings trying to tell them why this is a bad idea. Then we attend meetings telling them what features their new system will need to have to replace ours. I sigh. Was nice knowing you, little web site that could. But, just as the corporate hand tightens around SCHED's neck, something happens. The million dollar software they bought appears to be a piece of poo poo. Other LABs rise up against it. Contracts are canceled. Ties are severed. History repeats. Oh unkillable SCHED, you will stay until PC's become obsolete, and future programmers will wonder how we ever accomplished anything with just ancient equipment. And maybe in that future higher ups will understand that specific needs can't be outsourced to outsiders.
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Apr 22, 2010 16:28
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Sundae posted:I certainly hope they do. My NCA technically claims that I may never work for another company or research firm in this field, ever. I can't imagine that one holds up in court. (I also can't imagine it's even enforced, given how many scientists we lay off.) Those non-competes are put there to stop an employee from quitting and joining the competition. Courts don't look nicely on them when they're used as a blackmail tool to keep you chained to your company. They're usually unenforceable if you get laid-off, too.
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Apr 22, 2010 16:31
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Baggins posted:Currently, one of my main gripes is my new manager's complete lack of proofreading anything he sends out. Here's an excerpt from an email he sent to a 200+ people strong distribution list this morning: Out of everything that you've gone through (oh the horros of working in corporate!), you chose one mild transgression to your personal quirk as a grammar nazi? Typos happen; it's just a memo.
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Apr 22, 2010 16:39
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ChuckMaster posted:Decent ending. Hey, at least things worked out.
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Apr 22, 2010 16:41
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WarLocke posted:I read so many posts where this happens. Is there any legal recourse for an employee in this scenario? It's bullshit that an employer can say "You're not meeting the impossible goals we set for you, so you're fired" just because they don't want to pay you anymore. Something similar happened to a friend, the company would raise the sales goals to the highest producing salesman recent weekly amount. People would have to work long rear end hours to keep up and he got lunch or something for an amazing month, then laid off not long after for 'consistently not meeting goals'. Seriously. Since they fired 2 other people for the same (they told them upfront they won't pay unemployment benefits) and they complained to the unemployment office, got it reviewed and their unemployment $$. He had to do the same and got it too.
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Apr 22, 2010 17:17
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Winkle-Daddy posted:Does anyone work with employees from India? If so, is the phrase "please do the needful" as universally hated as it is at my office?
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Apr 22, 2010 17:24
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I only worked in a big office building for 8 months. When I was hired, I was hired along with another Intern, he would work Tues/Thurs/Saturday, I did Monday/Wednesday/Friday. After about a month, I started to see how retarded everything was. - Everyone used one of three programs. All three programs were run from one PC, and a floor and a half of people used these ALL day. Which means we got tons and tons of emails/calls complaining about how slow the script was, of which we can't do anything about. - Clean out the computers. It's been awhile and they're bound to be dusty. Here's a vacuum cleaner with a steel wool brush head. No questsion,s just get it done. - We had to build at least a PC a day, they all had the same build, same programs, everything, but we had no cloning software at all. Instead of the 30 minutes it takes copy an image over, we had to spend 2 hours installing all the stupid poo poo onto the computers. - I had to start working 9 hour shifts on sundays about four months into my 8 month internship, which I now hated. Time went by quick, so long as nothing went wrong, which was neeeeever. I was the only IT staff in the building on sundays from 8am-6pm. -Every computer on the two floors we maintained, none of them were newer than 5 years old, and even then, the computers were painful to use. My computer was a Pentium D 1.3Ghz, 256K DDR1 RAM(But only showed as 124K) with a 20gig hard drive. That was one of the 'newer' PC's for the Help Desk - I was fired the Wednesday before Easter Sunday, but since I was out of town on a BPA(Business Professionals of America) trip, I didn't know I had been fired, no one called me or my parents, or my Internship teacher. My keycard didn't let me the in the building, but seeing as how it hadn't ever worked on sundays, I didn't think anything of it. I head into the office like normal, but I couldn't log into my PC, so I log in using my super secret login for my PC and do my thing until noon, when I get a phone call from my boss asking me what I'm doing on the website. I told her I was at the office checking the stuff, and she told me to leave my keycard, because I was fired. Never was given a reason. After that first month I just stopped trying to be 'professional. I dressed sloppy, got there early all three days I worked so I could pad my paycheck(Wasn't allowed to), played flash games through proxies because they were blocked normally, and of course browsing SA. Also brought WoW into work on Sundays, because why the gently caress not. I really hated that place, and I was the worst kind of intern. gently caress those guys.
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Apr 22, 2010 17:30
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Holy gently caress this thread is depressing. I don't know where you guys work, but my corporate experiences have been great. I work for a massive aerospace company, and LOVE my job. My co-workers are smart, we can dress how we want, and we can come and go as we please (within reason), as long as we do our work. I also can telecommute pretty much as often as I want, which rules. I used to be a programmer for one of the largest insurance companies in the country, and it was a pretty similar environment, albeit with less talented/ambitious people, and less interesting work. These experiences sound terrifying, and I now plan on clinging to this job forever 
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Apr 22, 2010 18:05
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Orgasmo posted:A notable difference between your job and ours is that we're still just kissing the asses. Haha, that's what nurse techs are for. Risky fucked around with this message at 18:22 on Apr 22, 2010 |
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Apr 22, 2010 18:18
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WarLocke posted:If the boss dude told her to make a copy and she decided to just give you the other guy's key, then gently caress her. You got a key, like the boss said, it's no business of yours how she did it. When the other guy gets back and needs a key she can make a copy of 'her' key. Like she was told to do. ^^Definitely this. It's not your job to do HER job. Dude, her behavior seems so unacceptable to me. Not to advocate tattling, but honestly, she's interfering with your ability to perform your job and actively sabotaging you. Have you spoken to anyone about her behavior?
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Apr 22, 2010 18:29
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I worked in an office for a few years that had a horribly placed window that allowed uptight clients to see when you were walking around in the office area-if they saw you the time vampires would strike. This could be avoided by lowcrawling under their line of sight. I am proud to say I have done that many times to the amusement of my coworkers.
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Apr 22, 2010 18:32
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E the Shaggy posted:There's an older secretary in my office who works down the hall who clears her throat every 30 minutes. I can hear her everytime she does it as if she were sitting right next to me, thats how loud it is. Its the most disgusting poo poo ever. Oh god. I once had to share a very tiny office with an absolute hambeast of a woman (new office was being built, so we had like 20-30 people crammed into an office space designed for 10-15 people). No lie, the woman was about 5'2'' and must have weighed in excess of 450 pounds. The first day she was there, she asked me if I minded if she ate her lunch in our office. To be polite, and despite my better judgment, I said no problem. Big mistake. I am already insanely neurotic and disgusted by the sound of other people eating (mostly because you fuckers don't know how to chew with your drat mouths closed!). Why I thought she would know how to eat like a human is beyond me. There she was, sitting like 3 feet away from me, eating KFC fried chicken. I have never in my life heard smacking like this. To make matters worse, she loved to lick her fingers. I don't mean the semi-polite finger licking, either. It's like I could hear her lips and tongue wrap around her finger savoring the grease. I was so disgusted, and felt such a pit of anger in my stomach, I had to leave the room after about 5 minutes, because I couldn't concentrate on anything other than wanting to punch her in the loving face. I do feel guilty posting this, though. I found out a couple years later that she apparently died of a massive heart attack (she was just shy of 50, iirc).
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Apr 22, 2010 18:41
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