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tolerabletariff
Jul 3, 2009

Do you think I'm spooky?

melon cat posted:

- Being forced to work with Windows 2000 (yeah, you read that right) and IE 6 because the IT department doesn't feel like doing a bit more work.
Amen to that.

It could be worse.
Much worse. As in, I had a winter program at a consulting firm that exclusively used Vista. Not just any Vista, but a Vista that probably hadn't been updated since it came out of the box. Running on some Compaq pieces of poo poo with monitors straight out of 1994 and a server that would go down randomly several times a day. I don't know how anyone got anything done.

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mr_cardholder
Jun 30, 2009

Oh well. It's humanity's problem now.
On the subject of meetings, my old company used to have meetings to decide when and where the next meeting was to be. Then there may be another meeting to discuss what was going to be discussed in the future meeting. Then the actual meeting would roll around and inevitably half of the people who needed to be there would be busy so we would start the whole cycle over again.

Anyone else encountered this or was my company just strange?

GAYS FOR DAYS
Dec 22, 2005

by exmarx
At my job, everyone there uses un-powdered gloves when doing lab work except for this one older guy who has to use powdered gloves because his hands sweat so much. Then when he takes off his gloves, he gets powder all over loving everything. You'll go to open the door to an office, and there's powder on the door knob. There will be loving sweaty powder on the phone. You'll see a loving powder hand print on the window in the door.


My job is pretty killer, though. I recently got promoted to management and will be in charge of training. I'm not taking on any extra responsibilities right now though because we've had a few people quit and a few new people get hired, and the rest of management wants to wait for the newly hired people to be trained before they train me to be the trainer... So basically I got a 50% raise to let them have someone from a different branch come here to do the job they just promoted me to do. This has been going on since early February, and I realistically foresee this continuing through June, due to corporate office dumb-assery and management incompetence.

Chemmy
Feb 4, 2001

CornHolio posted:

I am the only person in the company that knows how to...

Not to ruin your day or single you out but those people make you take pictures off of the camera because they know you'll do it.

If it's not your responsibility just say "I'll try" and then never do it or people will walk all over you. It's their rear end not yours.

CornHolio
May 20, 2001

Toilet Rascal

Chemmy posted:

Not to ruin your day or single you out but those people make you take pictures off of the camera because they know you'll do it.

If it's not your responsibility just say "I'll try" and then never do it or people will walk all over you. It's their rear end not yours.

I usually say I'll get to it when I have time. Which is usually the end of the day.

Except when it's my boss, which is most of the time. :(

WarLocke
Jun 6, 2004

You are being watched. :allears:

Chemmy posted:

Not to ruin your day or single you out but those people make you take pictures off of the camera because they know you'll do it.

If it's not your responsibility just say "I'll try" and then never do it or people will walk all over you. It's their rear end not yours.

This. Get your responsibilities in writing. Not some generic 'be a team player' stuff, that's a license to use and abuse you. Get specific responsibilities on paper, and pull it out when they want you to do something new. Hell, get everything in writing.

shaqalonzo
Apr 9, 2009

by Peatpot
I've found the best way to survive a corporate nightmare is to simply act the part of a smiling idiot. Be extremely nice to everyone, but feign difficulty with even the most trivial tasks. Pretty soon people won't even bother giving you poo poo to do, they'll just think, "Nah, ______ probably can't do this without a lot of help. Besides, he's such a nice guy. I'll just go ahead and do it or give it to that other guy." Before long your responsibilities will have shrunk drastically but you should be too well-liked for anyone to notice/care.

Of course, you're not likely to get promoted this way, and if you've got layoffs going around it could be risky. But if you're just biding your time at XYZ Corp, give it a try!

Chemmy
Feb 4, 2001

WarLocke posted:

This. Get your responsibilities in writing. Not some generic 'be a team player' stuff, that's a license to use and abuse you. Get specific responsibilities on paper, and pull it out when they want you to do something new. Hell, get everything in writing.

That's not what I mean. If your boss tells you to do something and you're "that's not my job" guy you're the first guy getting fired when work gets tight.

If your peers ask you to get pictures off the camera all the time you need to ignore them until it's easier for them to do it themselves. It's a dick move not to help out but if you do you'll always be their bitch.

Don't do that "teach a man to fish" bullshit either. If you teach them how to do it they'll still come to you because you're the expert. Be unhelpful to anyone not signing your paycheck who dumps work on you.

Edit: distinguish between smart and stupid people at work. If people who are smart and helpful or just particularly friendly need a favor I'll drop what I'm doing to help them because they're smart and will help me if I need it.

Rynn
Jul 23, 2003

Oh job, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.

I work in IT (Helpdesk) and our time is tracked and monitored very closely. It would be one thing if I was an employee that slacked off (and trust me, there are quite a few in my department, but more on that later), but actually I'm one of the higher performers in my department. We have to put a code in our phone for everything; Meetings, Lunches, Breaks, training, and Personal Business. So basically if I have to take a piss I have to put a code in my phone, and if it's longer than 5 minutes it's a flag. Everyone in my department hates this and feels like management doesn't trust us.

I also work on other projects and administer and perform break/fix on smartphones. This can be anything from configuration/activation, warranty replacement, low level troubleshooting (I just changed my password and it won't sync because it's asking for a password!), everything except for ordering. People with smartphones are usually in management or executive management, or in some cases specialized departments that have a need.

My big gripe with this poo poo is that for people in the main office, I could just go to their desk to fix this stuff. But it can't be that easy, because if I mention that I'm going to So-And-So Exec's desk to fix his iPhone or Blackjack2 or whatever, I have to clear it with 2 other people because the support phones need coverage. You don't loving trust me to go away from my desk for 15 minutes, when you have people in the department sitting in a bathroom stall with their pants on reading the paper for 20 minutes?

Apparently you can be at this company for decades, and the longer you've been there the less you're expected to do. I've never worked at a place before that has so many people doing so little, and still keeping their job. And it's even more fun to get told that you aren't getting promoted because "The company doesn't promote at annual review time anymore", and mere days later you get the first of at least 20 emails from other IT managers congratulating someone one a promotion. The icing on the cake was when a coworker of mine got a promotion....someone who has poor technical skills and talks on her phone for hours each day with non work related people.

My guess is that I should just start doing the bare minimum if I want to have a job for 20 years.

Scrapez
Feb 27, 2004

modestduty posted:

It could be worse.
Much worse. As in, I had a winter program at a consulting firm that exclusively used Vista. Not just any Vista, but a Vista that probably hadn't been updated since it came out of the box. Running on some Compaq pieces of poo poo with monitors straight out of 1994 and a server that would go down randomly several times a day. I don't know how anyone got anything done.

We still have some machines running OS/2 Warp.

WarLocke
Jun 6, 2004

You are being watched. :allears:

Chemmy posted:

That's not what I mean. If your boss tells you to do something and you're "that's not my job" guy you're the first guy getting fired when work gets tight.

True enough. This is why I'm not in a corporate job, because I'm tired of playing the game. For someone already in that kind of a trap, though, it's maybe not such good advice.

I just don't react well to being the guy who's willing to go above and beyond, and gets taken advantage of. Enough that losing a job isn't enough of a deterrent to get me to put up with it.

Chemmy
Feb 4, 2001

Think of it more as being an efficient resource. CornHolio is an engineer with an engineering degree. He can do more valuable things than download photos from a camera.

He probably also prefers doing engineering work to mindless bullshit. His interests and the company's interests are aligned. His stupid coworkers and politeness are making him unhappy.

WarLocke
Jun 6, 2004

You are being watched. :allears:

Chemmy posted:

Think of it more as being an efficient resource.

Oh, yeah, I have no problem with that. Being more useful is good. It's when they want you to be more useful for the same pay and then promote the guy who's work is actually being done by you that flips my lid.

If my job is to do X, and you want me to do X + Y (where Y is not something simple like make coffee, it's actually more work/responsibility) I have no problem doing both, so long as I'm getting paid for both X and Y.

Unfortunately that's not what happens in the real world.

Merou
Jul 23, 2005
mean green? :(

I work for a hospital owned by the HCA corporation, so I am subject to complete bullshit fairly often. Sometimes its just stupid stuff like getting email invites for some meeting in loving Tennesse, when I work in Texas.

The lamest thing they've done recently is decided to color code uniforms for all employees in the hospital, even those with no patient contact, so patients can tell who their nurse is or whatever. I'm one of the people with no patient contact. As in none whatsoever. So I'm just forced to wear a gay looking sage scrub top with lovely black scrub pants that get all linty after being washed because they suck. Ontop of that they gave nurses and doctors proper uniformed labcoats - keeping in mind none of them wear them ever, and did not issue any for the people who are goddamn required to wear them. If I had gotten a nice lab coat out of this I wouldn't really care, but instead I have to wear uncomfortable scrubs with a lovely polyester labcoat on over it.

So I crank the AC down to 65 every day out of spite. Stickin it to the man.

Humanoid Female
Mar 13, 2008

gently caress my job. I've had all sorts of jobs before, but even the office-bound ones were always in a casual environment at a small company, and I never knew how bad it could get until I made the horrible mistake of taking this job. (Yes, I'm working on getting out.)

Bonuses? Hollow laugh. I just had my five-year anniversary, which is depressing enough in itself, and had to go through the farce of getting the First Big Awesome Bonus which employees are entitled to when they hit five years: a check for $100, and a photo is taken of you shaking hands with the CEO. I don't know which is more tragic - that they actually believe this is something employees will find motivating, or that so many employees actually do.

Everyone who works there is hundreds of years old, has never worked anywhere else, and has not seen fit to acquire any new skills since the 1950s. I'm almost loving 40 and I'm the "young kid" in the office.

A member of our senior management is on record as saying "Work is typing. If you're not typing when I pass your cubicle, you're not being productive." Management in general follows the theory that skilled professional work does not actually exist; there are people who type, and people who tell them what to type. This also means that anyone in the company can be retrained into any other job in the company within a day or two, because after all, it's just typing different stuff. Yes, OF COURSE the receptionist can cover for you, just write out a list of what you do all day as a simple checklist and it'll be cool! Never mind your Master's degree, 14 years of experience and considerable natural talent, around here we know everyone's an interchangeable cog!

This is why the person in charge of our IT help desk is an elderly former secretary who somehow even managed to avoid learning how to use MS Office during her 30 years with the company. She can type and answer the phone but that's about it. They downsized the secretarial staff, but because management liked her, they simply shunted her to the first open position elsewhere in the company instead of laying her off. This boneheaded move achieves two awesome things: crippling the entire company's productivity, while making the employee miserable because she doesn't have a clue how to do her new job and isn't capable of learning it. Let's face it, if you're a loving secretary and you haven't managed to learn MS Office in the 20 years it's been loaded on your computer, you are not capable of learning.

We have an anonymous suggestion box. There's a security camera above it. It is well known to be the "Get Fired Fast" box and so nobody puts a suggestion in it ever, unless that is their actual goal.

Working here is aging me ten years for every year I stay. I have to get out before I forget that this isn't normal - before I turn into one of the shambling zombies who accept it and talk about how grateful they are to have the job.

modeski
Apr 21, 2005

Deceive, inveigle, obfuscate.
What I love most about corporate life is the amount of wasted time and resources. A friend of mine works as a paraplanner in a financial planning firm. They work from templates a lot, however the templates are so badly worded, punctuated and formatted (in Word), that each report takes twice as long to create as it should. Upper management have known about this for over a year. Rather than take two or three work days for the team to thrash out new templates and increase their efficiency by 50% on an ongoing basis, they're told to work from the lovely templates because they can't afford the downtime.

A few years ago, my own employer did an efficiency study and discovered that our reporting systems - a hodgepodge of Access databases and Excel spreadsheets spread over multiple branches and states - was really inefficient, and that we would all benefit from a centralised, web-based software system that could generate the same reports automatically. So they took one of my co-workers and made setting that up his new job. After two years, there was practically nothing to show for all that time/work. The co-worker was demoted, the project abandoned and the system shelved at a cost of gently caress knows how many thousands.

18 months ago they tried again, and flew first my boss and then me up to corporate HQ to document some systems and processes and make recommendations as to what should be included in the new uber-application. Only this time they weren't going to use the software package they'd paid for, but instead our IT guys (a bumbling director and three hugely overworked techs) were going to build something from scratch. That again was abandoned after six months.

Last week I got a call seeing if I still had the reports I'd written back then because they were going to take another crack at it. Thankfully I'm a pack-rat so dutifully forwarded them on. I have absolutely zero confidence anything will come of this. In the meantime, we've had yet another layer of daily reporting imposed on all of us, which entirely replicates another report, but it's formatted differently and has to be inputted manually.

EDIT: Meetings. I loving dread meetings a lot of the time. Except for the ones that I chair, which have become legendary in my company, because I actually run them properly. I even wrote an article series on how to run meetings properly, because nobody seems to have a loving clue. The worst environment for meetings, I've found, is government rather than corporate. The layers upon layers of bureaucracy, Machiavellian politics and worship of inefficiency mean that when a scheduled meeting is somehow not cancelled, you're subject to at least an hour of grandstanding, jargon, waffle and plain old wasted time.

modeski fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Apr 22, 2010

Nomster
Sep 1, 2005
Team bonding day! Yes we will stand outside for 3 hours in 40 degrees celcius building bridges using planks to cross an imaginary river and not once touch the ground. Better yet obese whiny chick refuses to cooperate and stands on the outside being...well an obese whiny chick.

All of which follows 4 hours of team strategising ie, puting sticky notes with trite phrases on pieces of butchers paper which are then collected and to be typed up the next day by me, thus putting me 2 full days behind in any real work!

gently caress you team bonding, gently caress you.

Illegibly Eligible
Jul 21, 2009
Anyone stuck in corporate should pick up a part time job waiting tables at a local restaurant. I did it for extra income initially, then a few months later was a full time server. It's not prestigious, but it's everything a cubicle job isn't and at least for me was a move in the right direction.

You'll get direct interpersonal contact. While I consider myself antisocial and actually ENJOYED the isolation my cubicle provided, dealing directly with people in an unscripted manner really helped my communication skills and I've since talked my way out of roughly a dozen speeding tickets and a few instances of possession. Improved people skills are priceless and it's the best education there is. More sexy time with your preferred gender is virtually guaranteed.

Your pay is dependent entirely on how hard you want to work for it. While it's true your socially awkward self may be stuck waiting tables at some dive initially, once you're relaxed and experienced and able to convince the manager of a fine dining establishment that you're able to provide service his guests will want to return to you'll have the opportunity to make the really big bucks. Get to know your repeat customers and make them laugh and it becomes easy to pull a $50 tip off a $100 bill. If you work somewhere particularly busy and can multitask well you'll be floored by how much money you'll make.

You'll likely be respected among your co-workers. Mostly for having a gigantic, throbbing... brain. Many people get into food service because they have to and lack education proper, but their common sense tells them to respect an educated individual. You'll be seen as invaluable after the first time you "...fixed ALL the computers at once!" by resetting the router, and because you'll likely also be much more punctual and reliable than your co-workers you'll become indispensable. Once that happens, it's an easy matter to get a pay raise or set your own schedule.

You'll get more exercise. An active server looks better to customers and actually burns a lot of calories during the day, along with getting better tips. It's like a treadmill you get PAID to use. Even coupled with the FREE FOOD you'll probably score working at a restaurant you'll probably lose weight. The metabolism boost will likely improve your emotional state as well as your physical appearance. Pretty soon you'll WANT to shave that neckbeard regularly.

That's just my 2 cents. It's like putting a wilting plant back into the sun.

fursmbrero
Dec 27, 2002

Chemmy posted:

Think of it more as being an efficient resource. CornHolio is an engineer with an engineering degree. He can do more valuable things than download photos from a camera.

Good god, engineers do so love to take pictures. And video. And only an idiot would encourage an engineer to transfer media files to the network themselves. Talk about a recipe for a storage disaster.

Winkle-Daddy
Mar 10, 2007
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 occasionally look up random support tickets our India tech support people e-mail out to our customers. When I want to be a dick, I now use a phrase I saw in one of those e-mails:

"I have satisfied you to your satisfaction."

Nothing against people from India, our engineers over there are way smarter then I am and I really enjoy learning from them...but their support people suck equally as much as their American phone jockey counter parts.

Baddog
May 12, 2001

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?



its crazy how so many of those guys say that. Someone in some english class over there must have decided to have some fun with them and they all picked it up.

CornHolio
May 20, 2001

Toilet Rascal

Chemmy posted:

Think of it more as being an efficient resource. CornHolio is an engineer with an engineering degree. He can do more valuable things than download photos from a camera.

He probably also prefers doing engineering work to mindless bullshit. His interests and the company's interests are aligned. His stupid coworkers and politeness are making him unhappy.

My actual engineering work to mindless bullshit work ratio is about 1:10. And most of that isn't mindless coworkers, it's mindless management. It doesn't help that I'm one of two people in the entire company with an actual college degree. And the other one got his degree in the USSR and while he's smart, he's also kind of isolated and has no idea about how the company works.

And then as for the actual design work that I do, Typically I'll spend a lot of time on a project, only for it to be shelved for a year or more while management tries to decide what they want to do with it, if anything. And then when they do decide, none of the parts quotes are accurate anymore, and half the unit has to be redesigned anyway because the design specs have changed.

Then we're given the go-ahead but we don't have time to test it, create instructions for building it or servicing it, or do any time studies on building it because sales has sold hundreds of units before it was released and they need them NOW.

Except those many units we release and sales has purchasing order hundreds of parts on, only to never. sell. a. single. one.

I enjoy wasting my time. :( Seriously, if management would let me and the R/D fabber guy have at it, we'd be able to create a new unit every week. Hell, there's a unit I've been begging to release, but my boss won't let me because he can't decide on what he wants the intake screen to look like. Our customers are apparently begging for it, too.

fursmbrero posted:

Good god, engineers do so love to take pictures. And video. And only an idiot would encourage an engineer to transfer media files to the network themselves. Talk about a recipe for a storage disaster.

I'm also partially in charge of the network, though I really don't have a lot of networking experience. We have eighty gigabytes of server space! We're with the times! Yeah!

God drat I've bitched about my own job enough. Basically everybody I work with is your typical midwestern Nascar-loving Obama-hating uneducated redneck, even the CEO. If you don't like classic musclecars, the Colts, and country, and send stupid forwards to everybody in the company every day, you don't really fit in.

CornHolio fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Apr 22, 2010

Winkle-Daddy
Mar 10, 2007

Baddog posted:

its crazy how so many of those guys say that. Someone in some english class over there must have decided to have some fun with them and they all picked it up.

We wanted to see if we could introduce some interesting verbal combinations into their lexicon of words that they used by using them ourselves in bugs we assign back or e-mails to them when they ask for information.

Some of our ideas:

prespect - the act of preventing an expected problem. e.g. "The launch included a prespected bug fix around user registration."

prepose - When you re-use an already approved proposal that was previously used. e.g. "The change request form was similar enough we were able to use a preposed plan."

There were some other good ones, but I can't remember them now. But if goons give me some good ones, maybe in a few yours you'll hear it the next time you call tech support.

bitreaper
Jan 1, 2007

CornHolio posted:

:(
Start your own company. Apply for government grants for R&D, small business, and everything else you can think of. In your spare time you could learn about running a business, what kind of paperwork is required, what your costs would be and where you'd source parts/labour, etc. Use your valuable domain-specific knowledge and crank out the units your customers want. Be efficient as hell and undercut your current employer, because you don't have all of the incredible costs that come with bloat. If you're willing to spend the time, you stand to make a lot more money and be far more satisfied with your job.

Tinestram
Jan 13, 2006

Excalibur? More like "Needle"

Grimey Drawer
I work as an instructor at a small private college, and for some reason the secretary hates me. I'm not quite sure why, but my wife thinks it's because she asked me to do something once and I said 'no' because I was too busy at the time. As a result, I put up with stupid petty bullshit from her on a nearly daily basis. She routinely "forgets" to inform me of upcoming social functions that involve staff, people who call the school for me have been told I'm "not there", and other such nonsense.

Last year, the security on the building changed. The college isn't the only business in the building, and the building owners issued security cards to all of the businesses in the building. The doors of the building automatically unlock at 7AM in the morning on weekdays and lock at 5PM, outside of the range that I'm usually there, so I really didn't need a card, but I asked the secretary for one anyway. She asked me if I needed to come in on the weekend or something. When I said 'no', she told me if I ever needed to I could borrow the 'extra' card from her.

Fast-forward about a year, and my transportation situation changed such that I was getting dropped off at work at around 6:30AM. I really didn't want to stand around outside for half an hour every day, so I went to my boss to ask him if there was any way I could get a card. I even suggested to him that I'd be willing to buy one or whatever if that were necessary.

:clint: Didn't you get one?
:confused: ...no?
:clint: But everybody got one.
:confused: I didn't.
:clint: Oh...
:clint: Mrs Secretary, would you mind getting a building security card for runupon?
:btroll: *marches into the office, hands me a card, walks out without saying anything*
:confused: ...thanks?

So I went back to my office, and sported my shiny new card to my coworker.

:d: Yay, I got my security card!
:downs: ...ok?
:confused: Wait... do you have a card?
:downs: Yeah, I got one when they changed the security.
:crossarms: ...did you have to ask for it?
:downs: No, she just gave it to me.
:what: ...

Not really a huge deal, I got what I needed, it just irks me that I have to put up with that bullshit. And it still continues.

Recently, a new classroom was added to the college, to accommodate a class that was about to start. The door on the classroom locks, and the lock came with two keys. The secretary kept one and gave the other one to the other instructor, who happens to be the guy I share my office with. Before the class started, I asked the secretary to make me a copy of the key. I wasn't terribly put out by it, as the secretary would unlock the classroom in the morning, and even if she didn't come in to work, the other instructor could unlock the door.

Two weeks after the class started, I asked the secretary if she had made a copy of the key. She informed me she had not. I started getting flashbacks of the security badge. It irked me.

Two more weeks passed, and then my office-mate was about to go on vacation. With him gone, if the secretary didn't come in on any given day, I'd have been hosed. A little worried and pretty pissed, I mentioned it while my office-mate and my boss were both in the same room.

:argh: Class started four weeks ago. Kirk and Mrs Secretary have had keys since before class started. I still do not have a key. Kirk is going away for a week. I need a key to this classroom!
:downs: Well, I can lend you my key...
:argh: I don't want your key.
:clint: Mrs Secretary, would you be a dear and make a couple of copies of this key so runupon and I can both have one?
:btroll: ...sure.

So we left to do our respective duties and all was well, right? Nope, later on the secretary marched into my office and plopped the key on my desk.

:btroll: This is Kirk's key... go get it copied and I'll pay you out of petty cash.
:what: ...

I get dropped off at work, so I don't have a car during the day and the closest key place is at least a 30-minute walk by foot. The secretary, on the other hand, routinely drives around to drop things off and pick things up as part of her job. I'll be absolutely hosed if I'm going to do this on my own time. It's been just about two weeks since I was given the key, and now she's started emailing me to see if I've gotten the key copied. Kirk came back on Monday, and today he asked for the key back. I told him I hadn't gotten it copied yet, and that he'd have to wait.

I figure either we're going to have a nice day (it's been raining recently) where I can take a 1-2 hour jaunt in the afternoon to get the key done, or the secretary will get sick of Kirk not having a key and get one made for him. Which do you suppose will happen first?

tecnocrat
Oct 5, 2003
Struggling to keep his sanity.



We actually did TPS at work. "Lean" manufacturing, based on the Toyota Production System model. We had TPS reports and meetings. A few of us laughed derisively the first time, but none of the management did. That was a bad sign.

What makes it more odd, I work in a call center environment. Not a whole lot can be done to improve the processes.

WarLocke
Jun 6, 2004

You are being watched. :allears:

runupon cracker posted:

I figure either we're going to have a nice day (it's been raining recently) where I can take a 1-2 hour jaunt in the afternoon to get the key done, or the secretary will get sick of Kirk not having a key and get one made for him. Which do you suppose will happen first?

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.

bitreaper
Jan 1, 2007

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.

Exactly this. "You gave me my key, did you not get one made for Kirk? You should probably get that done." She's going to keep doing it if you let her, and you are definitely letting her.

modeski
Apr 21, 2005

Deceive, inveigle, obfuscate.
Oh, I almost forgot the most hilarious thing from my friend's financial planning company. They just bought some swanky offices from a company that went bankrupt. The place is designed as a 'paperless office', which basically means no-one has filing cabinets at their desks, some people have two monitors and others have 24" ones.

So, the bosses think going paperless is the way to go. They started in March, and I calculate that they'll be finished in 2018 or so, given that they have six million pages to scan, and only three people doing the scanning, on a voluntary and part-time basis. I haven't checked, but I'll bet you they're using consumer-level scanners/software.

EDIT:

bitreaper posted:

Exactly this. "You gave me my key, did you not get one made for Kirk? You should probably get that done." She's going to keep doing it if you let her, and you are definitely letting her.

Reinforcing this sentiment. You have a key now, it's up to her to get her own key from now on. Plead ignorance if questioned. "Oh, I thought you got this made for me like the boss asked. Sorry, I can't give it back to you now in case I need it."

Crows Turn Off
Jan 7, 2008


I actually like my job, aside from the fact that I am completely, non-stop busy forever with no catching up in sight.

Amaritudo
Jul 5, 2003

The Bitter Timelord
My most hated corporate catchphrase is "synergy from teamwork". It is a bullshit concept that fallaciously assumes each team member has a constructive contribution to make. 99% of the time, 1-2 people will know what they are doing while the rest of the group will just parrot everyone else or completely destroy the project for the sake of ego. gently caress teamwork. gently caress it up it's matrix-structured rear end in a top hat. Our projects take five times longer now because of our new team structure just so that in case the stars align and "synergy" flies out of our dickholes.

Sepist
Dec 26, 2005

FUCK BITCHES, ROUTE PACKETS

Gravy Boat 2k
I work in a smaller corporate environment. I'm in IT so I hear "do the needful" alot from indian guys, we make fun of it here. I used to work in big corporate and I hated it to death, I dreaded going to work and having to sign out to take a poo poo or closely monitor my unpaid lunch hour. Now I work a 8 hour day with paid lunch, don't sign in for poo poo and my bosses just talk about new ideas about better ways of managing us but they always fall through with it because there's no need for it, so basically if my department doesn't gently caress anything up, nothing ever changes.

I never really thought about how decent we have it here.

Dragnix
Nov 25, 2006

Look out Internet, it's your Dad...IN 3-D!

CornHolio posted:

5. The blame game. The motherfucking blame game. If something goes wrong, its always somebody's fault. This is why I am stupidly anal about paperwork. If someone rights something up with a wrong part number on it and I process it without noticing it, I always make sure I can find it easily. I have excel sheets with thousands of ECR numbers so I can quickly search through them and find the request and who wrote it, to absolve me of any wrongdoing (not that I'm perfect, but I'll at least admit when I make a mistake, unlike other people). Because I do all of the CAD, all of the instructions, and all of the engineering changes, I'm the first person people look to blame; I have to make sure that if it's not my fault, I can let it be known. I hate passing the buck like that, but my job pretty much depends on it.

You see, this is done way too often in our place, but what's worse is our boss.

His philosphy that you should never point fingers, never accuse anyone. That the team let down the customer, and we will find the solution and fix it.

I get in trouble repeatedly for one simple thing: when I'm the one who caused the problem: I say it. I say it and say "poo poo, I goofed up. I'll make sure it doesn't happen again." I get in trouble for taking responsibility for it, in the mean while, people of other departments are pointing fingers left and right taking no time to actually realize that 80% of the time it's easier to actually fix the loving problem then to go try to blame it on someone else.

And this unfortuneatly leads to people never taking responsibility for anything...


CornHolio posted:

Sales promises customers things that can't physically be done. I have to find a way for it to work, but to do it properly takes time. We regularly release systems that haven't been properly tested, built, etc... and despite being burned on it repeatedly, we still do it. I tell them we can either do things quickly or correctly, but we always end up doing the former rather than the latter.

This, my god this.

I have worked at my current place for only 18 months around, but I am astounded at how many things sales doesnt tell us. New features? Ok, fine, you forgot. I just got an email from another co worker ssaying you asked tech support two weeks ago about it, fine.

But the thing that pisses me off the most is when the installation is supposed to happen. Do NOT get pissed at me when you tell me about an installion about a customer you DID not mention and expect me to say that the software's done. No, I am not a psychic. No I can't read your mind. You're wondering why I'm getting pissed at you: there's a reason. Because our department, being understaffed and being lead by the equivalent of a 2x4, can pull off most everything thrown at us. We work long hours, we get poo poo down. A good amount of it is unnecessary as if you would have told us the information when you got it, like let's say 6 weeks ago, we could have planned it and not done code we would have to work our way through going "wtf is this poo poo" later.

I can understand the horse trading, the unclear specs, it sells products. Insane promises? Yeah, it's retarded: I get that. But when you have the information, when you're just sitting on it, and you just dont do anything about it........ugggggh.

Cheesus posted:

The Perfect Interruption. I don't get interrupted very often but when I do, it's absolutely at the wrong time.

Ok, when you're programming, any interruptions are bad. Having to switch your mental gears away from what you're working on is very hard. However, you're not neccessarily thinking/writing full-on during the entire day. There are times when interruptions are not as bad as others. Like if you were coming back from the bathroom or maybe taking a break to read emails.

The most recent example occured last week. I was in a slump that lasted about two days. During this time I could not get anything done. No motivation and I was slacking off, reading the forums, youtubing, etc. During this time when it would have been absolutely perfect to ask me questions, I had no interruptions at all.

Finally I kicked myself in the rear end and got my mojo on. No more than five minutes into "the zone", I get interrupted.

This as well.

I do get interrupted a lot though. I've actually put something at the front of my cubicle to try to block people from entering (piece of equipment developing on), to try to dissuade people from walking in). It worked. For about a day.



-------

My biggest gripes at my place of work:

1) Equipment: You want me to develop some software for a new machine? Ok, that's fine. I'd love to work on it. Oh, I don't have the equipment to do it on? That may be a problem.

This is a simple concept. In order for me to develop for that piece of equipment, I need that specific piece of equipment, or something that simulates the equipment. That's it. There's no other options.

This rule gets broken way too often. We've had things of our shifted: the machines need I remind you are only with us in the first place because they were rejects.

This was definitely a problem when one day I found my Development machine missing. The one that had a Demo later that week. The one that was pretty much the one thing that could bring the Demo to a complete halt.

I was not amused.

2. When the hell am I supposed to have this done, and where the gently caress did it come from? : See above.

3. Salesman. I hate them. Now for sales. Not for the fact that they sell ridculous things as times (and yes there's been moments where I've literally bashed my head against a wall for one request). No. I hate the no info. I hate no installation date. I hate that when I ask a simple question from you, like who the contact for the customer is, something I shouldn't be doing in the first place, you don't respond. For 3 weeks. You ignore calls. You basically are not doing anything. Only when I finally have had enough, walk into the big boss's office and say "do something about this now", you find the time. It's not. this. loving. hard. I'm not asking for that much detail. Simple contact, simple info. That's it.



God I want to go on but I have to get ready for tomorrow. I can handle the busyness. I can handle some insanity. What i can't handle is people who don't give a drat, and people who go out of their way to make it harder for you.

More later.

Mister Fister
May 17, 2008

D&D: HASBARA SQUAD
KILL-GORE


I love the smell of dead Palestinians in the morning.
You know, one time we had Gaza bombed for 26 days
(and counting!)

Humanoid Female posted:


A member of our senior management is on record as saying "Work is typing. If you're not typing when I pass your cubicle, you're not being productive." Management in general follows the theory that skilled professional work does not actually exist; there are people who type, and people who tell them what to type.

Wait, so in your company, if you post on SA all day long, do they consider that 'work'? If so, where do i sign up? :haw:

Scrapez
Feb 27, 2004

Winkle-Daddy posted:

Does anyone work with employees from India?

Oh hot drat. We've laid off the majority of our American employees and replaced them with Indian contractors or employees.

1. They work during Indian business hours so they regularly think it's cool to call me up in the middle of the loving night for some stupid poo poo because they think "Oh it's 1 P.M., he'll surely be up."

2. I try to be patient. I try try try to understand but I can't count the number of times I've said "Can you please tell me what's happening via email?" Because I simply cannot understand what they are saying on a conference call. I mean it's like Americans...there are people that speak English that talk fast or mumble that I have a hard time understanding but you factor in English as their second language and the accent and my god it's impossible.

Wagoneer
Jul 16, 2006

hay there!

Scrapez posted:

Oh hot drat. We've laid off the majority of our American employees and replaced them with Indian contractors or employees.

1. They work during Indian business hours so they regularly think it's cool to call me up in the middle of the loving night for some stupid poo poo because they think "Oh it's 1 P.M., he'll surely be up."

2. I try to be patient. I try try try to understand but I can't count the number of times I've said "Can you please tell me what's happening via email?" Because I simply cannot understand what they are saying on a conference call. I mean it's like Americans...there are people that speak English that talk fast or mumble that I have a hard time understanding but you factor in English as their second language and the accent and my god it's impossible.

Get an intern to take the meeting minutes.

The Fattest PI
Mar 4, 2008
I'm not even an IT guy, I just have a basic understanding of how to use a computer. This makes me the office "computer guy". On more than one occasion some drunk old bat will call me over because poo poo isn't happening like she wants.

"Look I'm double clicking on the thing"
clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick
clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick
clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick

"why won't it open??"
*more clicking until I have to physically pull the mouse out of her retard hand*

and then I look like a genius because I know how to go into the task manager and stop all 54 unnecessary processes from trying to start up and all of a sudden the computer is going normal speed again.

Sapphaholic
Mar 21, 2008

Delicious.

GiveMeABreak posted:

The anorexic chicks who sit in operations without enough body mass to generate heat have access to the only thermostat in the office. The rest of us sweat with the heater on an 80 degree day because they can't be bothered to bring a drat jacket. Whine whine whine!

The opposite:

Working with a slew of post-menopausal women who still get hot flashes who always think it's too warm in the building and oh my gosh, how can you be cold? I'm having a hot flash, hahaha, time to call maintenance to turn down the heat (as we can't change it ourselves for some stupid reason).

Oh, we requested the air on because we had one 76 degree day? It's 40 out right now and the air's still on because it doesn't do anything except "always on" or "never on"? Well, it's going to warm up eventually and I don't want to call maintenance because I can't stand it being cold.

gently caress you, post-menopausal women.

Also, having the air conditioning break in the middle of summer in a building practically made of windows. The thermostat only displays up to 100F. It hit that inside at about 10AM, it continued to get warmer, and we had to sit there and work all the while.

Should be sleeping
Dec 3, 2006
AM I WEARING MY LEATHERS AND A HELMET? NO? I BETTER BE.
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"

I take half assed revit and autocad files, fix them so that the geometry makes sense, and render them in 3D Studio max with an accurate sunlight simulation, using the v-ray rendering suite, in addition to completed landscape designs that have to be implemented as proxies because an accurate model is so polygon intensive 6 or 7 trees would crash the scene.

And yes, I take their 300 by 300 pixel artifacted all to hell .jpg plan views that they scanned into photoshop, and redraw them in illustrator so that when they are printed full size on 11 x 17 paper, they don't look like the internet threw up on the paper.

At least once a day, I hear about how easy I have it, and I'd better feel lucky for being able to coast like I do.

Which is why I feel no guilt for surfing the forums when I'm waiting for something to render.

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Hogarth Hughes
Apr 16, 2006

"As for me, people will be pleased to escape from me in one piece."

:black101:
At my previous shitwad company, not a single person besides me could use the $7,000 Xerox copiers we got for anything other than making a one-sided copy. They bought five of these my last year there, then gave everyone a $20 gift certificate to Applebee's or some poo poo instead of an actual Christmas bonus, since they'd blown all this money on copiers. Of course the previous copiers were in fine working order, but they had just moved into a new, more expensive office so obviously new, more expensive copiers were needed to match the drapes or something.

As a Japanese company, I expected perhaps a different (better) work culture. But they just took the worst of Japanese business practices, smashed them together with the worst of American business practices, and us drones at the bottom got the worst of both worlds. Our CEO would golf most days, and take "business" vacations all over the world though no new business would ever come of it. He would then come back to the office on random Friday afternoons and stay for hours, and everyone was expected to stay until at least 8 or 9 pm despite all our suppliers and customer base being gone for the night.

I would re-sort the same old files over and over, despite the fact that nobody would ever need to look at them again, just to appear busy because they expected you to always be looking like you were working. If they would have given me any actual work to do, I would have gladly done that.

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