Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Sir Not Appearing posted:

In person staff meetings with 35-40 staff members in a small school library.

:rip:

At the monthly department zoom meeting someone joined on their cell phone, put it in their pocket and walked somewhere.

*shuffle shuffle shuffle*

Dept. Head: The person with the phone can you stop making noise?

*shuffle shuffle shuffle*

Someone else: Just mute them.

*shuffle shuffle shuffle*

Dept. Head: How do I mute someone?

10 minutes later...

Someone else: ok can you now see the red button that looks like a microphone on their video box thing.

*shuffle shuffle shuffle*

Dept. Head: The one that looks like a frankfurter?

Someone else: Sure yeah.

*shuffle shuffle shuffle*

Dept. Head: Wait that made my powerpoint presentation exit.

*shuffle shuffle shuffle*

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

A Fancy Hat posted:

I remember that one goon (I think it was a goon) who posted about his job and becoming manager of a non-existent department and doing nothing all day until eventually the gravy train ran out. That sounds goddamn amazing and I pray it one day happens to me.

Here ya go! from "Graveyard Grandma" who sadly doesn't seem to be active anymore

https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Riatsala posted:

I'm going to complain about this fully acknowledging that my Dad was a firefighter, so I'm maybe crazy for caring, but my work tests the building wide fire alarms once a month and always tells everyone in advance to say "Don't leave the building, we're testing today".

As much as I don't want to go outside every time they test it, the fact that we never do any actual fire drills and we're being conditioned to ignore the alarm in the first place is extremely stupid.

You're definitely not crazy and this is bad for the reason you mentioned.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Amarcarts posted:

I work in an ER. Every year the staff have tedious mandatory recertification on no-brainer things we do dozens of times per shift like urine pregnancy tests or fingerstick blood glucose tests. These tests are essentially idiot proof. You can buy them OTC. Meanwhile there is a machine we have called the Level 1 infuser for massive transfusion into trauma patients that I'm pretty sure 99% of the staff could not use in an emergency because of how rarely we use it and the fact that outside of when we are hired we never have to re-train on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

SkyeAuroline posted:

Today, as I wrack my brain over how the hell to deal with our own software:
All product identifiers are generated by a random number generator.
No collision protection except manual intervention.
You can do the math.

Lol, can you make the number long enough so there's no chance of a collision like a guid?

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

AHH F/UGH posted:

Here's the best email I ever got from one of our field techs. No information, no context, no nothing - just three words, his typical Windows 3.1 background, and his name.



Staticy emails duh, I've had success wrapping aluminum foil on the bunny ears.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Inzombiac posted:

For the bulk of my job I have to use a system that was designed in 1992 and barely ever updated. Here are its crimes:

1) It can't be made full screen. If you know a work around to make it FS it just color-fills and still makes you work in a little bordered/framed window.

2) No multi-tabs so if you need info to complete a function, you have to kill your current function, find out that info somewhere else and restart the whole thing

3) There are rules for how each screen and field operate. In one screen F2 deletes a query. In another screen F2 copies it. In order to work with any sense of speed, I had to memorize hundreds of rules.

4) The very few updates it has received only serve to make it more confusing. EX: I want to delete a request I made to our budget unit. I go to that screen, enter in the request no. and hit the "delete" button. Doing so gets you an error that says, "Failed to delete. Places 5 and 6 must be numerals." The request is 8 characters, all numerals. What?!
It's actually referencing a small, unlabeled box where, in order for the request to go through, you have to enter "000001".

5) Every department uses this system but it all looks different depending on your level of access. So if someone above me wants my help with something they'll say, "Where do we get the RZW500 number?" and I will have never heard of it at all.

6) In order to navigate it, you can't just click on the section you want, you have to enter an indicator that hopefully you memorized instantly. If I want payroll, I need to enter something like "FAHIJ", reimbursements is "10.18.7" and inventory is "AABERA 14". I swear to god I work for an old, mad god.

7) It is the central processing unit for nearly all of our information and it is down half of the time.

8) They rolled out a new web-based version of it that actually works really well but have yet to migrate it over completely. So now I have the old system and the new system, all with different rules and expectations and I'm losing my goddamn hair over it.

Also, I'm responsible for our IT inventory control and have no way to control who gets what. New equipment just gets dumped into my cubicle. I don't have a closet or any way to lock things up. Thank god I'm working from home, otherwise I'd have to sit on a pile of monitors and laptops. I have to do a yearly audit for all this stuff and since people can just cruise by and take whatever they want, I don't know where any of it is.

Reminds me of something from my old job at a huge company. For some weird bureaucratic reason the manager had to personally go change some tiny thing on an obscure computer system they never otherwise touched. Payroll related I think.

He went to the terminal to enter the data. By terminal I mean a flesh-and-blood green CRT terminal. It had its own little room. He followed the detailed instructions, hit return, nothing. Tried again, nothing. eventually he called the support guy. The support guy walked him through, nothing. Eventually the support guy went to the terminal room to see what was going on.

"Oh, you're pressing return. You have to press enter"

Apparently the one on the main keyboard is the Return key the one on the number pad is the Enter key. The system only responded to the enter key.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

duddits posted:

No, you're spot on, and thats how I look at it, but once that turns up on any kind of background check or financial stuff, you're either not hired for lying on the application, or fired for lying on the application.

I do get the concept, but it's an easy way to out me and toss me right in the trash can. The glittery trash can of course.

A potential solution I see would having background checks be "blind". Applicants submit all their personal information to the background check people directly and they just report to the hiring manager whether anything bad comes up.

I guess its finance jobs that actually do this level of checking? I've never dealt with it myself.

Edit: Actually I believe that's how its done here when hiring teachers, social workers and similar. They get a no-joke background check with fingerprinting and everything by the state government. I think the school district just gets a simple pass/fail back from the agency.

Pekinduck fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Mar 2, 2021

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

titty_baby_ posted:

I am legitimately considering leaving my job to work on a weed farm. The pay is slightly higher and the commute is further, but i think I'd feel better doing agricultural work then "working from home" and lying to my employers constantly

Could you get away with doing it while keeping your old job? $$$

The name chat reminds me of the terrorist who planned the 2008 Taj hotel attack. He had Pakistani parents but was born in the USA.



He simply changed his name from

Daood Sayed Gilani

to

David Coleman Headley

and boom, white looking + US passport + white guy name and he was able to travel throughout India, USA and Pakistan without border officials giving him any mind.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

irpoweroutlet posted:

You may also be interested in Attack of the Mad Shitter

http://www.panix.com/~msaroff/shitter.shtml

Whenever I deal with Texas Instruments products I think of this story.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008
I did a college internship at a huge company that had just eliminated free coffee. The free coffee cost a whopping $100 per employee, per year. The department was all computer programmers making six figures. They all boycotted the new coin-op Kureig and just took a 20 minute trip to starbucks whenever they wanted coffee.

I can't say the internship didn't teach me anything about executive decision making.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008
My employer offers various "benefits" like special deals on car insurance.

I requested a quote and it was more than what I pay Geico.

If HR just directly gave me the money they spent on their Donald Trump tier dealmaking I'd be pleased.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008
I missed it but at a zoom staff meeting the director announced "Its been rough I know but I do have some good news! The department has saved a ton of money in electricity since everyone's working from home!"

There was an awkward silence as everyone realized that its a virtual pay cut as we're all now paying for that electricity ourselves. He was seemingly oblivious.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Code Jockey posted:

please tell me the initial request to take the day off was in writing

my director at helljob was smart enough to never put anything unethical / illegal in writing, the little fucker

One benefit of this pandemic hellworld is I can go " hey sorry my zoom is cutting out, can you email what you want me to do?"

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

72nd bday virgin posted:

Prison Time Off

There has to be a company somewhere where this is just a formal absence reason.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

I would blow Dane Cook posted:

Trump administration?

Jurisdiction:
( ) State
( ) Federal

Type of crime:
( ) Work related
( ) Personal

Email pardon request to supervisor?
( ) Yes
( ) No

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

zedprime posted:

Do you want hackers with video game esque line of sight maps because this is how we get hackers with line of sight maps.

There's a business plan, sell gps tracker apps to security firms, HUD headsets to cat burglars.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

happyhippy posted:

Took it less than a week until someone in Legal heard about it and went 'woah now privacy concerns' and pulled it, and that managers were abusing it already by watching other managers.

Gotta give it to Legal when they shut down bullshit like this. My work is like this, our experienced lawyers know the company really doesn't want an indelible record of everything done on our computers.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Crackbone posted:

A company I worked for had a public IP address that listened for data. Which wouldn't be a big deal, but it accepted ANY data, no matter the type or source, and inserted it directly into the critical production database.

For non-techies, this would be like running an open pipe from the middle of your living room to an outdoor festival portapotty.

NBD, just up your storage space and put a "sensitive content" warning on the database UI.

I'm curious though, what sort of stuff did you get?

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

goatsestretchgoals posted:

that exchange is dumb as hell but 'we ran out of room on the backup drives, can we delete some of your poo poo?' is a solid 2nd dumbest

Yeah its the equivalent of having employees sign a sheet to take a sugar packet by the coffee machine.

Someone told me they worked at a company where management wanted people to spend an hour each week checking their account on the mainframe and delete any unneeded files to save space. They got that shot down by showing an hour of every employees time was worth far more than the extra space. That was 1980's storage costs too!

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Breetai posted:

The space shortage was due to a storage solution our ITC people installed having 1/4 of the space that was advertised (the followup on this is going to be a war in itself) but which somehow managed to display as if the max space was the advertised space right up until error messages presented upon write attempts, and we can't just delete multimillion-cell datasets (some of which are delta-load only and which potentially can't be reconstructed from source due to the programs that created them no longer operating) as we please without confirming whether they're redundant or not. We simply can't have local working knowledge of which of the tens of thousands of files are still in use in a team of 5 when we support hundreds of users. The main files relating to the backups are on a virtual machine so if there's an outage and the backups are gone, then that's it and everyone eats poo poo for it.

It's a far from ideal situation.

Yikes that's not, Ah well, you could, have you considered, uh yeah you can, I think...

Perhaps become a monk at a remote monastery?

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Breetai posted:

Appreciate the apology.

Thankfully we've got the situation under control now, but that's mainly down to the fact that we've freed up a few hundred GB of data which should possibly tide us over until we change our mainframe later this year, at which point we won't need to rely on the VM/backup model that we're currently using.

The original user was very lucky that the way they presented the info was ambiguous enough that followup clarification was needed, otherwise everything would have been deleted as advised and we'd be either screwed the next time the VM went offline, or would need to spend lots of time running manual backups from the VM if we were lucky enough to identify that the deletions were done to otherwise unrecoverable files.

I apologize as well, I should have known there was more to the story.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

zedprime posted:

Biometrics might be capable of technically high entropy but it's a question with a definite answer, and the answer doesn't change.

That's the big problem. A few years back a UK security company, whoops, left their database of millions of fingerprints and facial data exposed to the internet. (and left it exposed for a week after discovery because they hung up on people trying to let them know.)

Perhaps the victims could get the company to pay for that mafia-style fingerprint changing surgery. :v:

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

BitBasher posted:

It's state/local government not a company, so that should explain some of it.

I have a story that might take the cake. Its more funny than dumb.

In my freshman year of college they had a job fair thing for student jobs. One posting was for a Boston green line trolley driver. I thought why not and applied.



I got a letter saying sorry, your name wasn't picked from the lottery but will be kept on file. Kind of a bummer but oh well, I quickly forgot about it. I finished college, graduated, got a job and all that. Then, six years later at that point, I got an email:

CONGRATULATIONS YOU WON THE LOTTERY

I was about to flag it as spam before I realized what it was. They weren't kidding about keeping your name on file, mine had finally come up and I was to report to trolley driver training in a week. I had a friends' wedding on the same day so I didn't go, still kinda regret that.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008
If you want your mind to touch the void read the wiki article on on 90's version of The Cloud, Enterprise Software

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

happyhippy posted:

A friend introduced Autohotkey to his company, and was promoted to executive management near instantly. Still there, hailed as a macro god.

In a just world this would be the norm.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Outrail posted:

'Due to covid related cutbacks...'

After 9/11 a middle manager I know was told something like "We've evaluated our terrorism risk and designated you as a key strategic employee for the future of or company and American enterprise as a whole. Therefore we cannot risk sending you on business trips via aircraft for the foreseeable future. "

He said profits took a nosedive and they were just cutting travel expenses but he appreciated the attempt to pump up his ego.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Zarin posted:

I don't know enough about coding to know why I should hate VBA I guess, I'm a computer babby :3: I don't know what that says about the 85% of other computer users out there but welp :v:

I'm doing most of my VBA work in Excel; this task is basically dumping a shitload of data into Excel and then chopping it up into buckets. Before I got here, the process was to query each bit of information one at a time :stonk:

Honestly the VBA environment as a whole isn't that bad for quickly putting something together for tasks like that. The language itself is a mess once you've learned better ones.

I started off in VBA too, if you want to move on to "real" programming I highly recommend the free online Harvard CS50 course.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Zarin posted:

I took some C++ in college in a failed attempt at Electrical Engineering; I'm sure that actually learning a real language could come in kinda handy as an accountant, though. I'll keep it in mind, thanks for the tip!

No problem, you'll actually find a lot of it easier and more intuitive than excel/VBA.

Imagined posted:

How close is VBA to Microsoft Access? Because in my professional life it's always been some Access database made in 1997 by some old grognard who retired shortly thereafter but whose ancient database is somehow still crucial to day to day operations that's been the bane of my existence.

I remember many times watching techs hunched over my desk cursing as they try to make concurrent installation of the most recent Access AND Access 95 coexist on the same machine without virtualization for reasons.

Access and all the MS Office products use VBA for user programs. Access is an awful, awful database. You're better off cobbling something together with excel and VBA.

Batterypowered7 posted:

Those old rear end mainframes must cost so much to maintain.

Oh yeah, but the old timers still have PTSD from 1997 when the grognard tried to replace it with Access.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Elephant Ambush posted:

Depending on the industry the risk is huge too. Those mainframes have been bug fixed and optimized over decades and replacing them with a brand new server suite with newly-written Java software or whatever is not an easy thing to do. I'm not defending mainframes or anything but for enormous industries like banking you can't just shut everything down over a weekend and replace everything and then turn it back on and assume nothing will go wrong.

Additionally the mainframe often has other systems connected to it that expect data to be handed to them in an exact way, even if it's "wrong"

An example of that sort of thing: Microsoft Excel treats 1900 as a leap year even though it isn't. This wasn't a mistake on Microsoft's part, they had to do this so Excel was compatible with Lotus 123, which mistakenly had 1900 as a leap year.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Slayerjerman posted:

WTF#5
Worked at a busy gas station in high-school in Oregon where you can't pump your own gas, I had to do it for you. Job wasn't hard or anything, but one super busy weekend I was the only attendant running the pumps, lots of customers paying cash.

I'd run each sale inside to the cashier, whom was the boss's bitch rear end daughter. This oval office was supposedly putting the cash in the til and closing out each sale. End of the day Manager confronts me about pocketing nearly 2 grand in cash from sales and that whore said I stole it.

I just stop and look at him in the eye, are you for real? I lost my poo poo jumped the counter and grabbed this bitch's purse from under the counter and we were shocked by how much cash she had stuffed in there from the entire day, it was exactly the amount missing from the til, go figure.

I handed him the purse, said gently caress you and rage quit. For 3 days following they kept calling asking when I'm coming back to work.



Turns out she was pocketing cash from other attendants.

Man and you know some innocent guy has caught a criminal charge from the same scenario.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

goatsestretchgoals posted:

what part of "and everyone clapped" did you fail to understand?

Yeah probably but that sort of thing is common.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Amazing, thanks for sharing.

The one benefit of minimum wage poo poo jobs is if you show up somewhat regularly you have considerable leeway. The manager can huff and puff but they do not want to go though the pain of finding a passable replacement at minimum wage.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Hyrax Attack! posted:

Those motel stories are excellent thanks for typing them up. Were either of these places adjacent to a major theme park?

Made me think about what sketchy motels must have been like before online reviews were available. I know those reviews have major issues but with Google maps you can make an educated guess about what type of motel a place is. I guess in the 1980s accidentally staying at super iffy places was more common?

Travel agents, back in the day. They would know what hotels to avoid. The industry nosedived when online booking and reviews came around.

I remember as a kid on vacation we pulled up to a hotel with guys just sitting on the front steps drinking/snoozing. We didn't even get out of the car, my dad called the travel agent and after some arguing he got a reservation at another hotel.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Mzuri posted:

In my VeryLargeGlobalCorp we're constantly being reminded by IT not to click suspicious links and to immediately report and delete emails from suspicious addresses.

Cue HR sending out randomly targeted wellbeing surveys with a bit.ly link from a shared mailbox without any info whatsoever attached (you can look up the address on our domain, but there is no info about ownership, organisation, names or anything else available). Literally "You've been selected at random to participate in a wellbeing survey: bit.ly/blabla" from hrsurveys@verylargeglobalcorp.com.

IT also likes sending out reminders to update our iOS devices from an even more anonymous address with even less info attached, and with the "read more" link embedded in the text.

Other than that, it's a really good place to work. But I'm just waiting for the news that we've paid some Russians a bunch of bitcoins.

I'd consider a "wellbeing survey" from HR to be suspicious regardless. :v:

Yeah this:

Xaintrailles posted:

They said our HR surveys were anymous but they were obviously tracked with a unique URL per user. I logged into our SurveyMonkey account to confirm this (I have a legitimate reason to access it) and raised it with the HR director. They changed the SurveyMonkey password, didn't give me the new one, and kept doing tracked surveys and saying they were anonymous.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

AHH F/UGH posted:

I've erased out the names and phone numbers and stuff but this was literally just sent to our entire 3000 person multi-state company



Zoom mindfulness sessions! A chance to frankly discuss your personal and professional concerns under the watchful eye of HR. If you have medical concerns that preclude the deep breathing sessions please feel free to opt out so everyone can speculate on whats wrong with you.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

Spatule posted:

I got this, but worse, early in my carreer: I got asked after a good interview to send a mail with what I considered a decent compensation package and then... nothing for 10 days. I had to call to be told they found "someone better" right after they interviewed me.

Everytime I meet the guy who manages that company (which is once or twice a year on trade shows and poo poo) and was the one who never got back to me, I greet him with "Hey firstname, go gently caress yourself". It has been 10+ years. I have explained to dozens of people in my field how lovely that company is. I have blacklisted them as a supplier at my current job. They are losing 100.000k+ a year. I will die on this hill and carry the grudge to my grave.

lol nice, right out of college I had an interview scheduled with a company and the day before it they called me saying "we scheduled you by accident, don't come in" Now I work for the institution they and like 3 identical competitors supply stuff to. I haven't had the opportunity to completely screw them over yet but it almost inevitable I will someday.

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008
My job has either made me a petty rear end in a top hat or appreciative of the little things in life, you decide.

So I work for a college and one of my benefits is I'm allowed to take any undergraduate class for free if its "job related". There was a class I really wanted to take but it was a gray area if I qualified. I email the office in charge of education benefits, no response, waited a month, emailed again and again, deadline for registration coming up, no response. I then emailed the professor who taught the class. He said I qualified and he could bypass the benefits department and register me on his end.

I'm registered and start taking the class. All is good. A month into the semester the benefits department gets back! A one liner:

"No I don't think you can do that"

Ok lets examine this sentence. You don't know whether I qualify. Literally your only job is to administer employee education benefits but whatever. Instead of trying to find out, you just tell me "no" because that's the easiest response and what can an employee of my rank do about it? I reply:

"Sorry I didn't keep you in the loop. Turns out I do qualify, the teacher enrolled me and I'm taking the class right now."

"Thanks, though." :smug:

Ashamed to admit sending that was the most satisfying thing I did that month.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Pekinduck
May 10, 2008

TotalLossBrain posted:

Stupid poo poo my kid's job does: gently caress up payroll and make the kid wait an extra week for a paycheck, twice.

It's a Pizza place who uses a 3rd party payroll processor, but making their fuckups his problem is about as American as it gets.
He sent his boss a few long texts reminding him that the deal was pretty simple - work, get paid on time. Someone isn't holding up their end here and there sure are lots of food businesses desperate to hire right now.

Supposedly he's getting a paper check overnighted, we'll see.


Report it like the other poster said and your kid should probably find another job asap. If they can't make payroll they're probably near closing and your kid won't ever see his money.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply