Can we bitch about work?

climbingsingle

While I was out last week, I had my out of office message on. It said that I would be out with no access to email and to please contact my assistant. 

The owner of my company decided to sit at my desk and answer my emails as if he were me. 

Our new idiot plant manager posted a job offering on Craigslist. He posted the name of the company. Now I've got people that know I work here contacting me to get their kid/nephew/friend a job. 

Now you go! 

JennyColada

Ew. Yucky.

I'm a retail manager, and learned a long time ago that Facebook (despite all my great retail contacts as friends) is not a good place to post job opportunities: I always get my B-list friends clamoring for a job opportunity (and the reason that they don't have a job NOW is kind of also the reason I don't want to hire them).

HisGirlFriday13

When I was on my honeymoon last month, despite having an out-of-office message on my e-mail that said, 'I will be out of the office until Monday, April 21 with no access to e-mail. If you need immediate assistance, contact [boss] at [email]. Otherwise, I will respond when I return.

I STILL had someone send me daily e-mails asking, 'Did you get my e-mail? I know you're out of the office, but are you going to write back? I need that information.'

Our audit is happening today, which means there are extra people all over our office who keep needing things and since my office is closest to the room where they're working, they keep asking me, even though I don't do anything with the audit other than provide one set of financials (which I have done), so I keep having to pop up and find someone else to help them, which means I'm getting basically nothing of my own done today.

I'm out of the office Wednesday of this week and ALL of next week on business, so I'm trying to get stuff done before I leave, which means this audit is fairly inconvenient.

Also, it's a gorgeous day outside and I wish I could take a walk at lunch time.

chibiyui

I'm picking up a table set at another store to take back to my store to fulfill a customer need. Because if I did it through proper channels, it would take 2-3 weeks, and the customer doesn't want to wait that long. And I need the sale. Dammit.

climbingsingle

HisGirlFriday13 said:

When I was on my honeymoon last month, despite having an out-of-office message on my e-mail that said, 'I will be out of the office until Monday, April 21 with no access to e-mail. If you need immediate assistance, contact [boss] at [email]. Otherwise, I will respond when I return.

I STILL had someone send me daily e-mails asking, 'Did you get my e-mail? I know you're out of the office, but are you going to write back? I need that information.'

Our audit is happening today, which means there are extra people all over our office who keep needing things and since my office is closest to the room where they're working, they keep asking me, even though I don't do anything with the audit other than provide one set of financials (which I have done), so I keep having to pop up and find someone else to help them, which means I'm getting basically nothing of my own done today.

I'm out of the office Wednesday of this week and ALL of next week on business, so I'm trying to get stuff done before I leave, which means this audit is fairly inconvenient.

Also, it's a gorgeous day outside and I wish I could take a walk at lunch time.

Ugh. I so feel you on this. This happens to me whenever we have an SQF audit. My office is right in between the two owners' offices. 

HisGirlFriday13

ClimbingBrideNY said:

HisGirlFriday13 said:

When I was on my honeymoon last month, despite having an out-of-office message on my e-mail that said, 'I will be out of the office until Monday, April 21 with no access to e-mail. If you need immediate assistance, contact [boss] at [email]. Otherwise, I will respond when I return.

I STILL had someone send me daily e-mails asking, 'Did you get my e-mail? I know you're out of the office, but are you going to write back? I need that information.'

Our audit is happening today, which means there are extra people all over our office who keep needing things and since my office is closest to the room where they're working, they keep asking me, even though I don't do anything with the audit other than provide one set of financials (which I have done), so I keep having to pop up and find someone else to help them, which means I'm getting basically nothing of my own done today.

I'm out of the office Wednesday of this week and ALL of next week on business, so I'm trying to get stuff done before I leave, which means this audit is fairly inconvenient.

Also, it's a gorgeous day outside and I wish I could take a walk at lunch time.

Ugh. I so feel you on this. This happens to me whenever we have an SQF audit. My office is right in between the two owners' offices. 

If I *could* be helpful, I'd love to be, but I really can't be, and I have my own things to be going on with. 

grumbledore

While I was out last week, I had my out of office message on. It said that I would be out with no access to email and to please contact my assistant. 

The owner of my company decided to sit at my desk and answer my emails as if he were me. 

Our new idiot plant manager posted a job offering on Craigslist. He posted the name of the company. Now I've got people that know I work here contacting me to get their kid/nephew/friend a job. 

Now you go! 

I fucking HATE it when someone answers/sends an email from my desk that looks like it is from me. Hate enough that I will say something every single time it happens. No way is it ok for someone to basically pretend to be me. What if they fuck something up?

Couggal12

I feel your pain @ClimbingBrideNY. I'm a recruiter and I always get friends to ask me to help them find jobs or look over their resume. I don't mind doing that but, it's annoying when they think I can automatically get them a job where I work just because I work in HR/Recruiting.

My complaint is that one of my coworkers is so lazy and feels entitled to everything because she's been with the company longer than I have. If you really want to make your way up then stop being lazy and actually do your work 100 percent and not half assed. That's why I get more opportunities because I work my ass off.

climbingsingle

grumbledore said:

While I was out last week, I had my out of office message on. It said that I would be out with no access to email and to please contact my assistant. 

The owner of my company decided to sit at my desk and answer my emails as if he were me. 

Our new idiot plant manager posted a job offering on Craigslist. He posted the name of the company. Now I've got people that know I work here contacting me to get their kid/nephew/friend a job. 

Now you go! 

I fucking HATE it when someone answers/sends an email from my desk that looks like it is from me. Hate enough that I will say something every single time it happens. No way is it ok for someone to basically pretend to be me. What if they fuck something up?

Exactly! And you're totally negating the purpose of my out of office message. What happens next time I'm out and the owner isn't here to sit at my desk. People will then not forward their email to my assistant because last time, their emails were answered. He's such a fucking idiot! 

MadHops21

Work in Healthcare. Program got upgraded this weekend, and now some nurses cannot sync their information. They all received numerous emails about this coming up to this weekend. 

I work in call center of IT and getting complaints about not syncing. Read your god damn email and stop giving me catty attitude about it. You were warned about this plenty of time ahead! 

ETA I'm a little crabby because a close friend/coworker went to the hospital this morning, and I got 3 hours of sleep behind me. I need to learn how to like coffee. 

buttercup1958

My boss told me to spread the word to clean up and wipe down the hallway cases because graduation is happening this saturday and he wants the department to look nice. So i wrote a note to my coworker telling her this and to find our boss to get the key to start cleaning. I went out to get mail, and I come back to see her doing her job. Yay, finally! She never works, then I go back to the work study room and I find my note all torn up into pieces. I hope she doesn't get rehired haha

lovemyrunner

On the flip side, as a nurse who gets the email, my facility sends me 10-20 emails a week, most of which are spam.  Fluff without much real information in them.  I know 10-20 in a week isn't much for most of you, but as a floor nurse, I am busy with patient care and documentation from the minute I clock-in til the minute I clock-out.  So I very quickly skim.  And frankly, the assumption that a floor nurse in a busy hospital has time to read every stinking email they send out is ridiculous.  I'm trying to take care of patients, not read email! 

Just found out today that the company that recently bought my facility has a policy against using 'violent words.'  So I can't use phrases like "shoot you an email" or "kill them with kindness" or "slap some oxygen on her."  What the actual fuck?

grumbledore

buttercup1958 said:

My boss told me to spread the word to clean up and wipe down the hallway cases because graduation is happening this saturday and he wants the department to look nice. So i wrote a note to my coworker telling her this and to find our boss to get the key to start cleaning. I went out to get mail, and I come back to see her doing her job. Yay, finally! She never works, then I go back to the work study room and I find my note all torn up into pieces. I hope she doesn't get rehired haha

Oh good grief some people are just impossible.

VulgarGirl

Well I just time warped back to the 1950s. 

There are 5 of us here today, three artists, two piercers. One of the artists is doing a custom piece, so he's tied up for the day. The other artist and one piercers went to go get us our lunch order. So it's me and favorite piercer. We're both chicks.

So we just had a dad bring in his sons, both boys wanted piercings and dad was going to let them for their graduation gift, he also wanted to see about getting a cover-up tattoo done. Alright, easy enough. Except he wanted to speak to the artist and piercer directly. Sure, we're right here.

He called me little lady. Then said if I had a father I wouldn't be working here because no dad would let his little girl do this kind of work. He left saying something about finding a real shop that employs men.

Sexism. It's alive and well.

lkristenj

So, my company just got taken over by another and we lost a lot of our holidays. We have two "branches", one in Iowa and one in Texas. In Texas, we normally had Good Friday off but we weren't going to this year. My boss was nice enough (he's not always) to pull for everyone in the Texas office to be able to work remotely from home on Good Friday. Everyone got set up to do so and we all stayed home.

It's about 9:30 AM on Good Friday, and the tech guy in Iowa decides it's a great time to bring our password requirements up to the standard of our new company. So, he does a mandatory immediate reset of all passwords. This would be one thing if we just logged off at our machines and created a new one, but since we were all working remotely, it essentially kicked us all off of our network connection with no way to get back in. We had no warning. He just did it. This tech guy then  had to field phone calls all day to manually reset everyone's passwords so they could log in from home.

Oh, and the reset also included our printer/scanner/fax machine. It couldn't connect to the network, so our scanner was essentially broken until one of the manufacturer's technicians could come out and reset it to a new password.

And we have to do this every 60 days.

Edited for clarity.

Edited again to add: Changing the password on our machine did not change the password for our Outlook, which meant everyone had to call a second time and get him to manually change our Outlook passwords to match our new computer passwords so that we could send/receive email. It was a mess.

APDSS22

I work retail and I really hate when customers come in and treat me like 1. I don't speak-a da English or 2. I might speak English, but I obviously have some sort of brain injury or disability because I'm not understanding their super vague question about something that works really well, they haven't seen it in stores in awhile and it is in a brown package, you know? Brown. The color? (Literally, that much information sometimes.)

I had a lady come in today looking for price tags. I show her the jewelry price tags (she did say removable) she didn't like those. I show her the bigger stickers and some metal-rimmed circles she could tie with string to make her own price tags. She didn't like those either. She just kept saying "the sticky ones". Finally, she decided we didn't have what she wanted, heaved this HUGE sigh like I was personally inconveniencing her and said something about having to go deal with the devil at WalMart because they have what she wants, but they're evil. I just let her go, I was already 5 minutes over the end of my shift helping Crazy McVaguePants.

ETA: Sorry about the paragraphs. They disappeared.  Then reappeared when I quoted myself...odd.

APDSS22

Ignore this one.

buttercup1958

grumbledore yep this is the same girl who is always having her boyfriend around, always late, always doing homework when there is work to be done, and has lied to our boss more than a couple of times. I've already told him about this once and I don't want to be a nag, but it takes all my will power not to kill her haha

climbingsingle

So, two more to add. Regarding the ad on CL, I had a friend of FI's contact me. She wants me to recommend her nephew for the job. I mentioned it to FI this morning. Apparently this kid has been in and out of jail. He's been arrested over 10 times for theft and drug possession. And I'm going to give him a fucking recommendation?? I've never ever met this kid. I'm so annoyed this woman even asked this of me. 

A lot of times we get calls her from consumers. We're an all-natural dessert company and we sell to higher end grocery chains (ex: Whole Foods).A guy called up yesterday and got my assistant on the phone. Once I heard the nature of the call, I realized it was this kook that's called her a few times. He's complaining about the ingredients in the cream cheese. Cause, you know, I have control over what Kraft puts in there. Or maybe we should just buy some cows and make our own cream cheese. 

I eventually get on the phone with this guy and he's yelling at me, telling me our product is not all-natural. He cites the fact that we put sodium bicarbonate in our crust. Uh, that's baking soda. Then he starts reading off more ingredients, screaming that they're bad chemicals. It's the sub-ingredients for baking powder. He started in again with the cream cheese so I told him to call Kraft then to complain. Seriously - if you don't like our cheesecake, don't fucking buy it! Every single Whole Foods in the entire country likes it though, so we must be doing something right. 

gladyscf

We had clients here yesterday to sign some trust documents. The lawyer I work for came out of his office in a rush, thrust the documents at me and declared how disappointed he was in me that I didn't pay attention to details. He had circled the date on the bottom of the document that reflected the date of their original trust and indicated that I had the wrong date as he said it should be the date they were signing the new documents. He then flew back to his office. 

I stood there looking at the documents and at our receptionist (yes, he did this in front of our receptionist) and told her I thought he was wrong. He comes back out of his office to say he was wrong and could I reprint the documents since he wrote on them to show me my "error." 

Then he proceeded to be a dick the rest of the day trying to find actual errors. 

Jerkface.

smalfrie19

I work at the front desk and sometimes I get calls that go like this :

"Hi someone from there just called me?"
"Great, who was it"
"I don't know, I just have a missed call"
"Well unfortunately I have no way of telling who called you, did they leave you a voicemail"
"I don't know, I just had a missed call"

*facepalm* Not a mind reader people

buddysmom80

I just had an hour meeting where my manager read a flow chart to us, then explained to us how a flow chart worked.

I feel like I'm wasting a college education working for her...

lmcooper86

There are 3 departments at my office. I work in the department I'll call A. The manager of department B thinks that HER department is the be-all and end-all of our organization, and that without them we would all fall to pieces and die a slow death, and they are more important than anyone else. She's passed on this mentality to the rest of her department, so there's a fair bit of entitlement going on there.

Department B is dealing with a busy time right now. I get it, we're all busy, but they're currently swamped. So the manager of department B sends out an email this morning to the whole office, basically saying "We're super busy and short staffed, so if you could all pick up the slack and help us out that would be great". ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I should just drop MY work to help you because you can't manage your team and responsibilities effectively? I refuse to do a damn thing for the other department; I have my own shit to take care of! 

My manager is out of the office this week...and was conveniently left off that email. I'm just waiting to see what happens when my manager gets back.

SmileDamnit

We just had to take a "trip" to the bathroom during our staff meeting so we could be taught how to change the toilet paper roll. I shit you not (...pun intended).

SBmini

Well, the hens I work with are so loud right now that someone just came over and demanded to know why they weren't invited to the Happy Hour that happens over here every day. We've complained, they've been asked to STFU. But still- rancorous laughing, loud talking, and sometimes... indiscrete whispering between outbursts, can be heard throughout the day. 

I don't know how any of them get any work done. 

erinlin25

MagicInk said:

Well I just time warped back to the 1950s. 

There are 5 of us here today, three artists, two piercers. One of the artists is doing a custom piece, so he's tied up for the day. The other artist and one piercers went to go get us our lunch order. So it's me and favorite piercer. We're both chicks.

So we just had a dad bring in his sons, both boys wanted piercings and dad was going to let them for their graduation gift, he also wanted to see about getting a cover-up tattoo done. Alright, easy enough. Except he wanted to speak to the artist and piercer directly. Sure, we're right here.

He called me little lady. Then said if I had a father I wouldn't be working here because no dad would let his little girl do this kind of work. He left saying something about finding a real shop that employs men.

Sexism. It's alive and well.

oh hell no!  I feel you though-- I run my husbands auto shop so I have numerous customers who come/call in wanting to talk to my husband. It drives me crazy. While he will fix the car, I will be the one you are dealing with. I am competent enough to get your estimate, go over options with you and even break down a few of the repairs. Anything I cannot do I will get my husband or technician to answer their question.  So many times I would hand the phone to my husband, and he will just tell them "I do not know that info off hand you need to talk my wife..."  I now I have a sign up in my office that says "do you want to talk to the man in charge or the woman who knows what's going on."