April 30, 2005

• Poor moneyjane
• that was a sincere comment above, by the way, despite the sound of it I don't have any really particular annoyances. I just hate the lack of time I can call my own...
• Posts like this one.
• Posts like this one. As opposed to, say, something lofty like 'People who Probably Need a Cock Punch'?
• Oddly enough I have gotten my own blog and posted about just such a thing. But if I can sneak in another one, I guess it would be being talked about like I dont exist: SOME WOMAN WHO WANTS SOMETHING DONE: (to my supervisor) "Have him do X." All why I am SITTING RIGHT THERE! I AM A HUMAN BEING. I HAVE A NAME WHICH IS NOT "HIM." LEARN IT, LOVE IT, KNOW IT. I SPEAK ENGLISH, PROBABLY MUCH BETTER THAN YOU, YOU SUB-LITERATE, OVERWEIGHT, UNATTRACTIVE ZOLOFT-TAKING UNDER-SEXED DUMPY OFFICE DRONE. IF YOU WANT TO ASK ME TO DO SOMETHING, SPEAK TO ME DIRECTLY.
• "all while"
• being asked to do something without a context. what's it for? what shoud the end result look like? when is it due? who is responsible for answering my questions? drives me batshit crazy.
• As opposed to, say, something lofty like 'People who Probably Need a Cock Punch'? I didn't say it had to be lofty. I just think maybe it should be something more than an excuse for you to complain about your day.
• I don't steal cellphones. But I'll contact the union. My job is pretty easy. But my least favorite part is that small faction of people who get themselves worked up over incredibly minor things. Those Who Bring The Drama. Second would be messenger-shooters. You know, those for whom every detail of corporate policy is your personal fault, because you are on the phone and they feel the driving need to bitch about something. I think they're universal. ...and drjimmy11, as such except the Zoloft, I heartily apologize.
• When I'm selling stuff at an antique show and some numbnuts picks up something and asks me a price. I tell said numbnuts the price and he throws it down on the table in anger. I swear to god I'm going to beat the hell out of the next fuckstick that does that. (good post MJ)
• Day Job: "We need a (dummy sample) ASAP. No text, no photos, we don't know if it's gonna be in color, don't know what logos will be included. Gotta be flashy, great pictures, a detailed map... we don't know if it's gonna be printed in-house or externally... We need it for (big potato)'s meeting by 9:00 A.M." "Oh, there was a mistake in the text, I'm sending you the revised, positively final version" (repeat n times) Good ideas/logos shot down by some higher up or external party's crappy alternative. Getting thrice-revised material in a foreign language with he the most incredible grammar or orthographical mistakes. Which causes providers get offended when I bring it up and bother to provide a correction. Freelance: "I want my logo just like that scene from (blockbuster movie or TV series). Exactly like that... " Ahhh... good thing it's friday. See you all next monday. /tears clothes off, runs out the office screaming
• Maybe we need a wiki page for rants?
• I just think maybe it should be something more than an excuse for you to complain about your day.? Ok. Somebody does something that drives me crazy. This something happens as part of my occupation. Other people have occupations; what things bother them? Totally irrational...yeah...ok... Thank God it's Friday and you can get away from slaving at Something Up My Ass Inc. for a whole two days! Yay!
• I think it's a decent post, path. MJ took what could have been just a rant and turned it into a good question. I think pmdboi is being a bit of a supercilious dick by taking her to task for this post. Anyway, my answers are: 1. When people use empty business jargon to say things that are essentially simple and would be much clearer in plain old English. Why say that you and I "synergistically leverage our core competencies" when you can say we "complement each other"? I get that people want to feel that what they do is special, and want to identify in some tribal way with others who do what they do, and thus the obscurantism, but please. 2. When I'm treated like a number, like a cog in a machine rather than a person with a unique mix of skills and loves and hates and fears and dreams. 3. When coworkers buy so fully into the system that they self-identify primarily by what they do. 4. When coworkers buy so fully into the system that they lose the ability to sympathize with problems in coworkers' real lives. E.g. the guy who looks down on his coworker because she chooses going to her son's little league game over pulling an unnecessary all-nighter to get ready for tomorrow's presentation. (Often goes hand in hand with #3) 5. Face time.
• Nail-clipping. Arrrrrrgh.
• Decisions made at 4:50 p.m. - "Oh and yeah, I need you to figure this out. . . " Or "Schedule a meeting for tomorrow morning". . . ad nauseam, anything that guarantees to keep you there another hour. And my favorite "Maybe we could do it tomorrow" - as in, Saturday. No, no, and 1000 times no. And people who don't respect my authority. I gently reproved a bartender today for leaving the goddamn bar unattended while he helped a guy load in kegs DOWN THE STREET and he got all shirty on me , like, who are you to question me? The regulars will watch the register & full tip jar. YEAH, SURE THEY WILL. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I am still angry. On Monday he gets his hide torn off by the big boss. Oooh, now I'm on a roll. In the larger sense, there are two things that piss me off: never being rewarded or acknowledged for anything you do and the corollary to that, which is only being rewarded by MORE WORK. The curse of competence: "Oh hey you finished that already? Great. Then you can do these 6 other things now." Never let anyone know how long it takes you to do anything.
• Being the "new guy." I just started a new job and, while I really like it, it's obvious that many of the menial tasks that nobody else likes to do have become part of my duties. "Let the new guy do it," is the new catch-phrase. (Of course, when we hire the next employee in my department, I know exactly who's gonna end up with all the menial crap-work I have to do...)
• (I'm 50% with pmdboi, but) my current big annoyance is being asked to support software that I wrote nearly ten years ago, for a project that's long dead, and in a language that I have stopped using over six years back. I'm usually happy when anyone shows interest in my dissertation work, but this particular person is starting to piss me off. He called me up at 12am on a Saturday because he couldn't get the system to run for an experiment he was running for a paper due on the following Monday. I spent the weekend getting it working for him, only to be greeted with silence-- until today when he tells me that his paper got rejected. (It's a bummer for me as I end up missing what might have been an important citation.) I'm not fully clear if he blames me or my code for any of it. If he were not one of the big names in my field, I would just file his email in /dev/null. Anyway, I hope this person doesn't read MoFi.
• I just had a job interview yesterday, and although the other applicants are great, I *know* I'm probably the most qualified and could do the best job. However, when I interview I get all nervous and crack ridiculous jokes... which I'm sure makes me look less qualified. :( I hate interviews.
• Bosses who change project plans daily based on cool articles they read in Wired, Fast Company, Business 2.0, etc. In short, technology bosses who know fuck-all about actual, working, day-to-day, nuts and bolts technology. Hey, that felt great to get off my chest. Thanks, MJ!
• Inexcusable stupidity is a big one. But that's mostly just frustrating. The big one is a coworker (especially a boss) who won't get your back when you need it, for instance when you're busting your ass and they're sitting around chatting.
• I figured it was a good Friday post; get it all out now, then relaaaaaaaaaaax for the weekend.
• For some reason, listening to my coworkers who eat yogurt at their desks obsessively scrape every last molecule of yogurt out of the little container with their plastic spoon. That sound drives me batshit!
• nanomanagers: you hired me for a reason, let me do my goddamn job, and do your own.
• 1. barely literate customer contacts 2. being contacted for *everything* - quoting, quality, shipping, expediting and order entry. I know you don't have one person who does everything at your company, why do you think it's that way with mine? 3. phone calls 4. emails with borders or pictures 5. second the nail clipping and yogurt container things -- why are those sounds so annoying?
• Hmm. I don't know, I used to get roused over a lot of things. Now I jut go "meh". Well, stories about genocide in Africa still stir me up to the point of almost going all Che Guevara and try to bring "justice" to the world. But then I go "meh".
• Answering my yes/no questions with anything other than a yes/no answer. I know what is fucking important to your case. I don't give a shit what happened to you in Florida last month. I want to know if you had the gun on you at the time of the offense.
• Every time I'm heading out on a business trip, a lycanthrope absconds with my cell phone.
• Oh, and moneyjane -- sorry about earlier. Indeed, you must have heard about the werewolf problem that has been overrunning Denver. I can't believe how much the fuckers like cellphones. Anyway, I won't let it happen again.
• Did anyone get the license plate number of that comment that just ran over me?
• Last weekend I bought a nice cellphone at a good price from my local dealer werewolf. I wasn't so sure where do he get those great cellphones or why they had the devil's sign marked in blood. Anyway, I found out that applying some rubbing alcohol can removed it.
• Makework is lousy but excusable. Being underestimated is lousy but excusable. Having to train a new hire for a job you were promised makes one want an AK47 and a clear sightline.
• Unappreciative jackasses who suck all my personal satisfaction out of a job with pissant changes. Try as I might to document everything, under promise and over deliver, there is always, always, always some utterly uncalled for scope creep and I end up doing way more work than I promised for a fix bid and it's usually revising something that makes the overall quality worse than it would have been if it had just been left alone. On Tuesday it was the person who asked me to reduce my proposed budget and 'just' retrofit someone else's brittle old code because he charged too much and it doesn't work right. If the dumbass couldn't get his own code to perform correctly, I'm suppose to be able to fix it for less money than he spent writing it? On Wednesday it was the turd who has been sitting on his project changes since January 28th who wanted me to rewrite the entire content management system in 2 days then hurry up and get the site up over the weekend. Never mind that it was work completely outside of our agreed on sitemap and I had other work scheduled. Today it was same guy who rewrote almost all my carefully worded copy and in the process not only killed all the search engine friendly keywording but said nearly the same thing with less clarity and more overblown marketing hype. Now when his site doesn't rank well, it will be my fault because 'I' built it. More generally, it's boneheads who have no clue whatsoever about what is involved in conceiving, planning and producing a website, but have decided in advance on the scope, the price and the delivery schedule. If you're all goddamned experts at web design, why did you bother calling me in the first place? Damn it. I just spent 4 hours decompressing and having a nice relaxing dinner with friends and now I'm mad all over again.
• When some idiot forwards the latest e-mail virus hoax message to everyone in the department, and then all the other idiots have to make their way, one at a time, down to your office (because you're the person in the department who "knows about computers") to tell / ask you about said hoax. grrrrr
• One thing I like about this is that for every monkey who says X makes them crazy, with 3353 monkeys there's no doubt another monkey has been doing that very thing and maybe not even aware it's bugging the shit out of someone. These things are good to know. Y'all bitchs in Denver need to deal. Wait til one of your hairy-ass werewolves busts a move the 'can you hear me now' guy. "Can you hear me now?" "Good...oh fuck me, I'm being eviscerated by a werewolf."
• Yes, it takes a good, clean mirror to realize one's own faults. At a previous job, I went from newbie-eager-to-help-everybody to that bastard computer technician of SNL skits. Very bad attitude, fueled by shitty co-workers and personal issues. Anyways, some time later, at next job, there's this guy that behaves just like I used to... I saw myself and I didn't like it. And another one... subordinates and co-workers that will fumble and screw up things we've done a million times. Intolerance, I know; but when you see them miss that huge button in the middle of their screens, at the very worst time, well... Oh... 10, 9, 8, 7... /AFK for real, this time. Bye.
• Oh, I don't know if I can narrow it down to one or two. But lately the biggest pain in the ass has been a few people hijacking projects that belong to other people (like me) in order to further their own agendas. Also the slowly decaying coworker who sits in the same bank of cubes, coughing and snorting and eating chips and stinking the place up after a smoke break. He's very Milton.
• I ask my clients (I'm an independent contractor) to please give me two weeks of warning about changes to their schedule. And then just last week they told me, oh we don't need you next week can you come back the following week? It doesn't really count as a vacation if you don't have enough advance warning to buy a plane ticket. Plus I turned down a 1-week contract just a few days earlier because I figured I was busy. I don't really have a contract with them, so I don't have any recourse. These guys do another thing which annoys me -- make me feel guilty for stopping to read the newspaper for 10 minutes in the middle of the afternooon.
• Undergrads who bitch and moan that they have to read 20-30 pages a week and come to class! And that quiz was too hard! And they have to pay attention to the lecture and take notes! And the exams have questions taken straight from the text book they refused to read! Waaaah! (And I'm not allowed to remind these whiny brats that they're at university, not at daycare.)
• I'm self-employed, so the thing that drives me batty is self. Self procrastinates when self should be writing. Self figures that surfing on the internet won't do any harm, because self can always do the writing later. Self should get some self-discipline.
• People with subwoofers. Hoo boy, lemme tell you... Since school seems to be my occupation... I live on campus at my university in the freshman apartments, much to my dismay (I am not a freshman), and I can only suppose their classes don't require studying and/or they're completely stone deaf, because a very large number of them have subwoofers. You'd think they'd hear other people's and realize how annoying they are. Or maybe that they'd realize after I ask them multiple times to turn them down. Sadly this is not the case...
• This is a good post. My answer: Cowardice. It drives me up the wall!
• StoryBored, as a self-employed writer myself, I couldn't plagiarizeagree with you more. Many will envy the fact that much of my pro work involves watching TV and DVDs for research, but YOU try to sit through the Star Wars prequels and Season One of Everybody Loves Raymond without losing too many brain cells to write coheerent... I mean, cohairant... I meen, cohoro...
• It is a fifteen person discussion section class. You are three feet away from me. I can see you texting on your cellphone. Do you think I can't? The desks aren't that big and I'm an archaeologist; I'm used to spotting hidden things. I dread the exam next week.
• G-D men that ALWAYS think they need to drive. I can pilot a big 4wd Ram four-door pulling an eight-horse gooseneck trailer with eight horses and a quarter ton of hay 750 miles, passing through Salt Lake City in the rush hour, on a trip alone, but damned if I'm hardly competent to drive a little Nissan four-banger pickup the fifty miles to Boise with a MAN on the right hand side. This could well be the precursor to a divorce after 29 years of marriage.
• Employees who call in at the last minute, with some lame excuse for not being there for their shift. Stupidity and laziness on the job makes me batshit crazy. All the backstabbing and bickering that the employees engage in on a daily basis. Having a supervisor who doesn't have a clue as to what their job is supposed to be, who likes nothing more than to delegate shit that shouldn't be delegated, then take credit for work that was done by others. Piss poor communication between shifts and departments.
• Wendell, ah yes, DVDs and videos. Time to watch more of those to help inspire me with the writing. Need more inspiration. Once i have that i can do the writing. And after maybe a little snack. What u watching the Star Wars prequel for? That stuff dangerous.
• Being given more work to do when I'm busy reading MoFi threads. Shove it up your ass, you stupid boss!
• Fellow students that don't bother to use a dictionary when they don't know a word. Instead, they ask the resident work-geek (me). Would it be so hard to do it yourself?
• *word-geek. dammit
• Waitaminute. I just got up. What the hell smack you talkin about us surS in Dtown? Plus, nothing my lovely boss could ever do would bother me.
• I am, in some ways, a Type A about certain aspects of my job. There are moments, occasionally, when things go awry. Sometimes, when one of those moments occurs, I will react to those moments with, ah, perhaps a bit of invective, a curse or two, on rarer moments something might get thrown, or broken, maybe kicked. During these moments, the thing that absolutely takes what may be an 7.5 to an 8 on the PissedOff-o'Meter to a flat bullet-ridden 10? When someone from the Farm tiptoes into my office right after one of my tantrums and, with faux trepidation, asks if "...everything is OK?" Yes, everything is fucking ok! If it *wasn't* ok, I wouldn't be in here yelling and throwing office supplies against the goddamned wall, I'd be out there blowing smoke off the barrel as I reload! Got that? RE-FUCKING-LOAD! I know what they're doing is trying to find out what went kerflooey. I know that I do the same thing, because I am a nosy fuckhead. And yet, beyond all sanity, this thing really twists my murder gene.
• I'm not too keen on people coming to "ask my advice on something" when what they are really doing is passing me a stanky little task-turd they they don't want to deal with, either. Thanks, asshole!
• Hey...Fes...is everything OK?
• that's it! It's go-time!! *snickSNICK*
• bratcat, do you work in my office?
• People who handball every problem that they face to someone else. I hate it how every time I am supposed to be 'back-up' for someone on the exit desk, they never turn up. More than 60% of the time, and they are always conveniently 'sick' so nothing happens about it.
• For some reason, listening to my coworkers who eat yogurt at their desks obsessively scrape every last molecule of yogurt out of the little container with their plastic spoon. That sound drives me batshit! ...*puts down spoon*...It's not my fault- they put all the tasty fruit on the bottom. Nothing at work really annoys me too much. The way I see it, I get paid the same amount no matter what I'm dealing with. I used to get slightly irritated at people who try to manipulate and use others to advance their own careers, but not any more. I am too wily and unpredictable for them.
• What drives me absolutely crazy is when I ask my bosses for a ruling on a situation, and they tell me what the policy is. It's official, it's documented in management meeting minutes, and I spend the next 3 weeks telling everyone who encounters that situation how it's supposed to work. Then (and you can all see this coming, can't you?) one of my bosses comes into my office and I discover the policy I've been enforcing with everyone else doesn't actually apply to THEM. Oh, no! They're SPECIAL!!
• Few things that drive me absolutely batty: 1. Staff members who shirk responsibility when shit hits the fan. Honestly, I don't care WHOSE fault it is, I just want to know what happened, so we can deal with it appropriately. I'm not looking to blame anyone, I just want to know what the situation is so I can fix it. And in fixing it, I expect you to help. If that fax wasn't sent, or you let something slide -- fine. Whatever. It happens. Just tell me what happened, so WE can work on fixing it together. Scurrying out of sight and pointing fingers doesn't get us anywhere. 2. Clients who expect you to do EVERYTHING. If I'm working on your shit, I expect your co-operation. Getting certain bits of info to me when I ask for it, giving me background to your story so I can understand what's going on, etc. And, for the love of pete, if I send you a letter, don't call me up and ask what's in the letter. READ IT. If you don't get it, READ IT AGAIN. I have better things to do that read my own letter out to you over the phone. Closely related to clients who expect you to do everything are: 3. Clients who lie to you. If I have accurate information, I can help you best. If you lie to me or hide stuff from me, it'll turn out badly for you. So you're embarrassed by this or that. So what? Honestly, I DON'T CARE. You're paying me to help you, to be on your side. If you lie to me, then I can't do my job. You are only screwing yourself. With all due respect, I went to law school and you didn't -- you have no idea what's important in your file, so don't mess around with stuff you really don't know the first thing about. 4. David Frum. Everything about the man drives me into a homicidal rage. Right-wing dingbat traitor...
• *look worried, tells Capt. Renault why, exactly, I shot a man in Reno*
• Does this mean you're my client now? Aaaaaaaaawesome! I get to have closed-door sessions with moneyjane! And SHE'LL pay ME! That news, plus the news of my tax refund -- this is quickly turning into my Greatest Day Ever*. (*Irving Layton's 85th birthday aside, of course.)
• Heh...I'm jumping out of Irv's cake.
• Just not too fast. Nice and easy on the ol' ticker.
• *word-geek. dammit Actually one of the joys of my job is that I am the resident word-geek and a lot of the people here have no idea whether I am completely bullshitting them or not, when they ask for grammer or vocab. advice. It's quite fun sometimes. . .
• I assume that when you say 'grammer', it is but one instance of said bullshit...
• OK Captain. . .*grammar*. . .I can only hope that you said that with a smile. . .I can get all the abuse I need over at MeFi . . .
• When people insert "actually" in to a statement that does not need it otherwise. When people talk "around" and issue, instead of "about" it. Misuse of "literally" can be amusing, so it does not fall into the honks-me-off category.
• MonkeyFilter: If it *wasn't* ok, I wouldn't be in here yelling and throwing office supplies against the goddamned wall, I'd be out there blowing smoke off the barrel as I reload! I don't know if it makes sense, but it sure needs to be a tagline.
• I just had some yogurt, and I scraped every bit I could out, as usual. But thanks to this thread, this time I felt bad, because now I think that the noise is pissing everyone off. IT'S SO GODDAMNED GOOD, I HAVE TO GET IT ALL, SO GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK. Sheesh.
• When my boss says "I'm going to have you do this..." instead of asking (which is now 100% of the time). Especially when it's so far from what my job is that I'd need a degree in an entirely different field to regularly do that thing.
• *scrape* *scrape* *scrape* *lick* *lick* *lick* *scrape* *scrape* *scrape* mmmm...pineapple.
• I like it when the nail clippings from the next cubicle do a splashdown in my yogurt.
• Hey everybody, BlueHorse just got her a jay oh bee! Second, and I'm whipped. Too much brain stretching. I'm about to join the ranks of the employed and bill paying public. Thanks to all for remembering to prepare for work. Got: yoghurt nail clippers bubble gum pen for tapping on table Forgot: Kleenex that constant snuff-snuffle of post-nasal drip is sooooo appealing
• Congrats on the new gig, GramMa! Don't forget to take some of that nice leftover garlic, limburger and fish casserole to heat up for lunch in the office microwave.
• Good luck with it, BH.
• Wishin' ye well, too.
• Well done BlueHorse. :) I've been doing some casual work for LSG SkyChef recently and I had to go look up pregnancy symptons to see if excessive sighing was one, after one of my co-workers commented on how often I sigh while at my desk. Turns out it is indeed a pregnancy thing, although now I'm going to be self-conscious about it for quite some time after the baby is born.
• *75,985 goth chicks look startled*
• Life warrants some sighs now and then. Goth chick wears dark curcles round her eyes -- so much so she dare not cry before defying all misfortune as folk may dream when in disguise.
• ...envision a curcle as more smudgey than a circle.... /dammit!
• I sigh and apply more black to my eyes, "Huh?" I say, then look it up Stricken, I swear on Robert Smith's crinkled ass "I can't believe I'm in gothic pup!"