The idiots I work with...

And I don't mean Idiots like here, where Idiots are awesome.

One of the bosses at my place (I have five bosses, Bob... Five bosses? Five, Bob.) actually asked me to put together a document (with pictures!!!) to e-mail to approx. 300 people on how to hook up their new wireless headsets just to charge. Think base, power cord, and headset. How fucking hard can it be, right? Especially for people who are in a technical job.

But hell, it gave me something different to do, so I did it. I figured nobody would need it. The very next morning, someone who obviously didn't open the fucking attachment had to ask me how to place their new headset on the base so it would make contact and charge.

That's pretty much my life story at work: Having a parade of fucking Luddites march to my desk to ask me how to fix pretty much anything and everything, from hooking up phones to installing software to mapping network drives to "can I leave early today" when all 5 bosses are in meetings or whatever. And no, I'm not IT support or the boss. I'm just regarded as "the guy who knows how to do everything" and it's by far easier to ask me than to call IT support or make an intelligent, logical decision on their own.

FOCUS: What stereotypical morons do you work with? What's your stereotypical role?

ALT FOCUS: Do you work with awesome people? Entertain us with your lies, you bastard.

 

Let's see, idiot nurses who think a bed is broken when the power switch is turned off. Better yet, the bed isn't plugged in.

 

I've learned that these people aren't stupid, just lazy fuckers who don't want to do work. I encountered the same type of helplessness "Why is my computer all black?" "Turn the monitor on" - except when it came to slacking off. Then all of the sudden people were as competent as they needed to be. Installing and configuring iTunes? No problem. Using proxies to bypass the web filter? Yup. I once called someone out for this and she straight up admitted she didn't try restarting her computer to fix a hiccup because she hoped the problem was bad enough to take some time to fix, enabling her to avoid doing her job.

 

I work for a large CPG company and that describes a good chunk of the people I work with. There is being good at politics by working with the right people, getting yourself in front of the right people in the right situations, knowing how to manage up...and then there is brown-nosing and facetime which serve no real business purpose but to elevate your "importance" and trick people into thinking you're useful or productive. I currently have a senior director/brand lead who has never given me the impression that she's any good at her job, puts together decks that I would expect from a 22 year old first starting at an agency, and general is dismissive and aloof to anyone junior to her that is not her direct report...oh and her direct reports are all Jewish women from either the East Coast or the North Shore of Chicago who previously worked on a different larger brand at the company, that she brought down once she transferred over. A brand that is middling along despite being a huge, well-known name so its not like she is poaching rockstars with a track record of superior success.

Then again, I'm unsurprised. A previous senior director I worked with when I first started her was 34. She jumped from Associate Brand Manager--> Manager---> Senior Manager--->Director--->Senior Director in just over 5 years. She was very smart, but in the 6 months I worked with her, I could never point to one tough or impressive decision she made. But she glad handed people, flirted with our CMO, bought people frivolous gifts, just FOUNTAINS of corporate kiss ass bullshit. She moved on to a VP position at Capital Records in LA making close to half a million dollars. Its funny cause she would be a great case study in how to play the corporate game and move up the ranks quickly, except there is NO way I could replicate her moves as a male.

Finally, as someone who has their MBA, I get semi-annoyed when people talk about it being worthless and other things. However, from working with majority of Northwestern/U Chicago/Michigan MBAs, there is a frightening amount of corporate robots that get churned out of those programs. For people who graduated from a top 10 MBA program, I'd only consider 25% truly "smart". The rest have no creative thinking skills, know only how to color inside the lines, and replicate/copy gameplans and strategies that were established prior. Its exactly how great brands wither and die despite seemingly being run by products of the best and brightest of academia.

 

If I ever run a company I'm going to have two very simple rules.

1. Don't be a retard.
2. If you can't go your day/shift/hours/whatever without being a cunt go be someone else's fucking problem.

I've worked with some idiots, but the second one has been my bigger issue. The manager opposite me has to send stuff over for me to process. Really fucking simple arrangement. I have to call her maybe twice a day to make sure everything is in line. She whines about some bullshit every time. Recently she told another manager I was calling her 'every 30 seconds'. Just to reiterate, it's twice in ten hours. She asked me to remind her when she had to do something (I have to call you to tell you to do your fucking job now?) and then bitched when I did. Then, earlier today I called her to confirm something. It was maybe a 20 second phone call. Of course she had to fucking complain about that to someone else, which they found hilarious, and then threw a couple lies at her to stoke the fire. Whatever. It doesn't really matter at this point. If I ever get so easily aggravated I bitch about something so stupid like, "Yeah, it's ready, I'll send it over in half an hour." *End of phone call* - just open my throat. Good fucking God.

However, my boss is a competent, friendly, mild mannered, on top of things kind of guy and I couldn't be more thankful for that.

 

I work as a machine set-up in a custom steel plant. What in the 'Tard-Nation.

Aside from those pictures I posted of the forklift destroyed by none other than the plant's head tradesman, we had a night crew machine operator caught wearing argyle bedroom slippers and smoking cigarettes while operating a steel-cutting machine with open oil reservoirs operating at 400 driven rpm with thousands of pound of material loaded on it. Of course he got a very stern slap on the worst, because our "crack" management team made up of glorified salesman (who get this-- all four guys flunked out of separate engineering school in separate years) think that punishing an immigrant in any way constitutes as racism subject to lawsuit. Yup. The Man be trippin'. This place is owned by a larger-than-life German man who shows up only twice a year, always with his getting-older-every-year teenage kids, who will soon feel his touching nepotism.

You had better believe that I swear on my daughter I know that these children will be my boss the second they get "hired". I will be finished school in 1.3 years and come hell or high water I will NOT be here to see that day. I have the ability to do this monumental repetitive stupid-work because I can zen out thanks to noise-cancelling headphones, but you can only take so much bullshit from so many angles. I'm gone in a little over a year and this place can kiss my black ass.

And just as a bonus: more than half the crew is 5 to 15 minutes late every single day of the week. I'm sure you guys in supervisor positions on here just ADORE that, yes?

 

I worked on a cardiology ward for 8 weeks as part of my training. We had 4 female doctors who didn't really get along.
The most senior one never failed to show how litle she knew about medicine, making statements that every first year student knew were wrong.
Then there was the one who knew only a little bit more about her profession and didn't really speak the language very well.
There was one relatively new doctor, she was mostly quiet but completely overwhelmed, so she just dumped everything on the med students. And she always waited until it was as late as possible to do it.
And then there was the one competent one. She got her work done and did a lot of teaching.
But she also liked to bitch about other people, ignoring the fact that they may be, you know, right next to you.

Her[In a normal voice]: You know, X just doesn't know how to do this. Look at it, complete shit! Small wonder she always has to stay late.
[X standing in hearing distance]
Me: Uhm.....

Fun times.

 

I don't know how she managed to tie her shoes and remember to breathe with writing skills like that. Jesus, I would have endlessly ridiculed her until she jumped from a bridge.

Something I noticed that I felt was really fucked up in the medical field between doctors and residents and whatnot was the mental torture and ridicule they seem to get off on. The verbal abuse spewed onto anyone available was breathtaking. It was such territorial, alpha dog bullshit and has lasting effects on doctors long into their careers.

 

I work for a huge union (ILWU, International Longshoremen Warehouse Union). You want to see people become the biggest bunch of whiney lazy ass babies? Put them in a big union. The guys in maintenance most of them are older came from small business shops, so they actually had to work for a living. They come here make 100-120K a year, twice as much as they got paid before, then all the sudden, they are underpaid, everything sucks, etc. Then you have the productions guys which are mostly drunks and druggies making 120-150k a year, yea fun place to work.

 

Ortho surgeons are special. They're like toddlers who pitch a fit just because the sky's blue. The following is a bi-weekly occurrence with either one of my co-workers or me.

Particular Dick Surgeon angry text to our dept manager at 7:15 am: "This patient (who's on 5 different pain meds and high as a kite) says he's been in bed since yesterday morning and PT only saw him once and what the fuck is going on? When was he seen? There's only one note in his paper note. I want him seen twice a day!!!!!"

Cue my boss calling me at 7:17 am: "Hey. DS is really upset and wants to know what's going ok with BlahBlah patient."

We write each note for each visit in the EMR software and a written summary of the day's treatments and discharge disposition in the physical chart. The surgeons won't look at the EMR and apparently won't take 10 seconds to scan a note before firing off irate texts to our lovely boss. I took a picture of my paper note and sent it to my boss. It read, verbatim: 1350 (time). Patient seen BID (twice today). Eval completed in am. Please see EMR for details." And then listed how far he walked, how long he sat up, the education I gave his family, blah, blah. Basically everything he wants to know. Now, what doesn't make sense to me is that he flipped to my little tab in the chart, saw my paragraph, but apparently didn't read a damn word before making a big production out of it and taking time out our mornings for this? It's just silly. And, if I didn't have to deal with my bitch of a boss about it I wouldn't care at all about it. They're kind of ridiculous interacting with anyone who isn't an unconscious slab of meat on an OR bed. But we can't ever complain or have any kind of attitudes because they are gods and we are mongoloids.

 

My job as a sub isn't too bad because I don't really have coworkers for the most part. There is one douche-bag sub who I come across every once in awhile. He likes to butt into my conversations with other people so that he can show me how smart he is by correcting the things I say. If it was just that he was an ass, I wouldn't be so bothered. The other issue I have with him is that he is the worst substitute teacher in the district. One of the middle schools in my district has an open floor plan. One day, I was teaching in the classroom next to him. All day his classes were loud, out of their seats, and doing nothing. At the end of the day, I asked a few of the students I knew were in that class what was going on all day. Apparently, this guy has no idea how to control a class, he rarely explains the assignment to students, and spends most of his time as a sub talking about his other job. There is not a single student in the district who respects him and the students who aren't outright cruel to him just feel pity. I've also been the sub for the day after him, and he left the classroom a complete mess. I had to spend the first 20 minutes of my day reconstructing the sub plan to try and figure out what I was supposed to be doing that day.

At my night job, the biggest issue is the catty nature of the environment. One woman does basically no work, which the administration is aware of, but they don't do anything about it. None of her coworkers are willing to say anything because it will becomes a whole thing in which people have to pick sides so everyone just bitches behind her back instead. There is another woman who hides in random places around the facility and talks on her phone instead of doing the work. One of the college-age girls is currently carrying on an affair with the 40 year-old male nurse, so there are the added (unfounded) rumors of the two of them disappearing together to have sex in empty rooms. For awhile, I made a genuine effort to call people out on their bullshit, but it became so exhausting that I had to stop and just go about my job.

 

My coworkers have this awesome habit of 'delegating'. Everyone wants to send information along to someone else to handle because they either a) don't want to take accountability for it or b) don't want to do it at all. Our software for our respective departments won't communicate - so there is a LOT of miscommunication and confusion that could be avoided if people would just DO SOMETHING.

I got called into my manager's office Saturday and asked about an incident that I'd forgotten about...it'd happened on Thursday. Apparently during one of our rushes (hey - just so y'all know - four or five dogs who don't know one another and who are all individually anxious because they don't want to be boarded/groomed/bathed makes for a CRAZY lobby) the upstairs desk called me and asked me to take down information and enter it into our system. They have access to our software upstairs, and the girl who called me knows how to use the software proficiently. I had five customers and four dogs in front of me, and it was a tiny moment of madness.
Upstairs girl wanted me to open our software and input data while she was on the phone, and I told her I couldn't do that - I had people, and so she told me to just remember the owner's name and information, and to put it in later. I told her it was really busy on our floor and I couldn't promise that, but I'd call her back.

I called her back when our lobby cleared, and she said "Oh, I already entered it. Never mind."

Later that day, she told the owner and my manager that I was 'Not doing what [she] told me to do, refusing to be helpful, and being just overall disrespectful'. She wanted me written up.

All of this ties into my point that if she'd just put the information in - like she can, like she knows how to do, and like she should've in the first fucking place, the situation wouldn't have come up. She didn't want to put it in because she didn't feel like dealing with our software, so she wanted me to do it.

I work with women. I hate it. I hate hate hate working with whining, crying, sensitive, whimpering, sniveling, backbiting, back stabbing, gossiping, immature crybabies.


I'm the coworker who just...doesn't. I don't talk to people except in passing. I prefer working and moving to NOT working. I'd rather do it myself and know it's done right than try to get someone else to do it. I'm the manager who - if you can't do it right, you won't be working for me. But when it comes to being a worker be? Meh. I'll just handle my shit and let everyone else do their own thing.

 

Where do I begin?

First, a little background: I have worked for this company off and on for the past 15 years. I have left twice (for better opportunities) and come back (for better opportunities.) But I think that I am going to try to stick it out for the long run this time. I came back this last time because my job (previous to my return) took a turn for the worse and a department that had 100+ employees was whittled down to 30, with me being #33 and out the door at the end. So I called some contacts from this former company and basically begged for a job in the face of unemployment. They hired me back at an entry level position which I was grateful for as the benefits are damn good and, hey, money, right?

Now the department I came back to was the same as I left previously but obviously there was a lot of new blood.
I swear the screening process and hiring has gone to complete shit. There are 5 guys (including myself) and 10 women and I'm not sure how some of them graduated high school with the way they butcher the English langauge... "mines" - as in, "something that belongs to me".... "discharge" - as in, "to remove a charge" (as opposed to a credit)..."pantses" - as in, "I stepped in a puddle and the bottom of my pantses got wet."
I could go on and on.
And these are people that have to talk to our customers on the phone for a good part of their day.

UNFORTUNATELY, due to me calling out some employees and supervisors on various bullshit from time to time, I've developed the reputation of having what some people like to call "a bad attitude." Mind you, this same attitude is what allowed me to constantly get promoted through various other positions I have held with this company and I was even complimented on my "No BS attitude towards resolving issues" by the very supervisor that hired me back (but is no longer my supervisor).

Don't get me wrong, I love the company I work for and the people I work with. It's been a few years that I've been back and I am still EXTREMELY grateful that they hired me back. But I can't for the life of me figure out why I'm still toiling away doing some menial, almost-entry-level work when I used to do so much more for this company.

 

In my previous job, this was me (except I had just been promoted to manager after 6 years with the company). However, when you have managers that have been in roles for 15 - 20 years who ask you how to do their job and use systems that had been in place for more than a decade? Frustrating.

The worst was this one woman whom I would drag out of the fire at least once per week. It wasn't little things like correcting paperwork or giving advice on procedures (this occurred almost daily), I'm talking about the 90% of her job stuff: managing her staff, logistics issues (i.e. required setting up infrastructure for events; she hadn't planned for it and comes to me at the 11th hour). I helped out for a few months before realizing I was enabling her and I didn't have the time to do both of our jobs, so I stopped.

After this I was asked by the senior management team why I wasn't being a "team player" and "helping my colleagues". I said I was happy to help out as long as it was stuff like the paperwork and procedural advice (I was Deputy Operations Manager at the time) as that was an extension of my job. They disagreed.

Stayed a year and a half before moving on. Thank fuck.

 

My immediate coworkers are some of the coolest, smartest, most hilarious people I've ever met. All of the closest friends I've made since college are either through this job, or through this board. Getting to hang out with them is pretty much my main incentive for going to work every day.

My bosses, however, are the absolute worst. Without going into detail about our weird set up, I have two sets of bosses. The set that handles the day-to-day are two of the most incompetent managers I have ever encountered. They stumbled into their jobs through dumb luck, barely do the bare minimum of work required of them, have no idea what they're doing, and run their office like the petty tyrant of a popular middle school clique. The set that handles the big-picture stuff are in way over their heads, and have only a slim margin of experience that qualifies them for the job of running and expanding this program. They are also completely resistant to feedback from people who know better, and consistently focus on changing the most insignificant aspects of the program and job while repeatedly ignoring gigantic problems that have been brought to their attention again and again. The program is wonderful and has so much potential, but between the two sets of bosses they're absolutely running it into the ground with their idiocy. I also felt more valued and more respected as an employee when I was working for basically minimum wage at a Blockbuster than I do in the role of doctor/teacher/counselor/crisis hotline operator that I'm in now. Not having to work for these people has been the main reason everyone has left or is looking to leave, and I cannot wait for the day that I don't ever have to deal with them again.

 

I already discussed in previous posts the people I worked at with in the Senator's office, though they were more vindictive pricks than idiots. The idiots I worked with were at the 2010 Census(though we did have a few vindictive pricks there)

My first job was working in the office, doing payroll and hiring. It was a pretty chill environment and everyone got along rather well. This was especially true when we established an overnight shift specifically to do payroll and hiring packets. Everyone in that group was solid and we all looked out for each other. Our original manager was really easy going, let us take all over the overtime you wanted "You want to come in 3 hours early and stay 3 hours late? Sure!"(note: She wasn't allowed to do this.) She was also of the belief that as long as the work got done she didn't care what you did, if you wanted to take a 2 hour lunch but the work was done by morning it was fine. Unfortunately she gets fired for being grossly over budget and some other shit she did that she wasn't supposed to.

After a week or so they get tired of paying supervisors overtime to work the overnight and decide to hire a new supervisor. Now, instead of promoting someone who was already in the overnight shift to the job they hire someone new who has no idea what he is doing and only has 3 days of training. By this time we had everything down to a science. The payroll people would be done by 3 and then the people in the back would go about updating all the folders and files. So before 3 the back room of the crew was doing nothing and after 3 the front room of the crew was doing nothing, but no one cared because all our work was getting done and the day shift goes handled their own stuff. Also, at this time I was in charge of lunches. I would take my car at around 3 and go to one of the few places open and pick up lunch for everyone. Everyone was cool with this arrangement.

Enter new manager.

1. He immediately gets annoyed that at 3 there is no work for us to do and insist we go in the back and help them in the back room. We refuse. Then he tries us to get to do the day shift's work, this was a major no-no. We had a strict division between the two by mutual agreement because shit would get fucked up. He continues to get annoyed that we don't do any work after 3, so now instead of working fast we do payroll as slowly as possible to stretch it out till 830.

2. He also takes affront to the fact that I was the "lunch guy" and that it would sometimes take me 50-60 minutes to come back with the food and that time counts as my lunch break. I tell him it doesn't and that I'm doing a service for the office. My lunch break starts after I get back. He tries to tell me that I should work extra hours for free to make up for the missing time. I tell him to politely fuck off and I hang out with the other over night crew that was processing surveys after I run out of payroll to do every night.

3. He decides on his own that he is going to provide turnover reports every morning about what we did the night before. We ask him if the bigger bosses asked for this, he said no and that it was the proper thing to do. We told him that's stupid and not to do it because they are going to start questioning whether they need an overnight shift. Every turn over report he submits he writes about how there isn't enough work for us to do and that we need more work. We tell him to stop because they'll get rid of the overnight, say we are overloaded with work if anything. He refuses.

A few weeks into him being hired the shutdown the overnight shift and lay off half of us because of the turnover reports. Night Manager was the first one to be laid off. He shot himself in the foot with his own reports.

 

You're on the receiving end of this conspiracy, too! It thought I was the only one! I've got bad news: You and I are both mentally retarded. Yep. And there's a vast, all-permeating conspiracy to make us think we're smart. Someone like Ben Kingsley's character in Shutter Island is behind it all, pulling the strings. Now, as paranoid as that sounds, as paranoid as it is (even if it's true, it is what it is), there are days when it passes Occam's Razor better than any other explanation for the kind of shit you described above.

Focus/Alt-Focus: I work with awesome people who are reasonably intelligent. It's the best, and now longest job I've ever had. But some of the reasons they think I'm smart... Really, folks?

 

Focus: I'm a jack of all trades type here between sales and marketing, and one thing in particular was getting stuck with the "tech guy" role within the sales teams. Rather than me being especially good with computers (I'm not), the bar just wasn't set very high. This means I've been telling one guy in particular how to set up online demos for three years now and as I was typing this earlier my old boss called to ask about some odd virus email he got with a .zip attachment. Yes, of course, he already opened it. It can be a pain in the ass but on the plus side it doesn't take much proficiency in Microsoft Excel to blow minds, which is nice.

Most of the people I work with on a day-to-day basis here are great but there's the co-worker whom I've nicknamed Princess... a self-absorbed and stuck-up twat who responds to most any help request with an eye roll and "I'm really busy" tinged with condescension. "Country Boy" was the dickhead who grew up in a rich suburb and went to private schools but wore cowboy boots daily, drove a jacked up F150, and always had to one-up people. I pranked his truck once and he absolutely lost his shit. We also used to have a woman here who was an exact copy of Meredith from The Office, a divorced redhead who was never sober outside work. Her bitter tirades were always good for break room entertainment. Our shipping/receiving guy is hilarious- always dresses like a gym teacher in gym pants and a sweatshirt and looks like he's stoned 24/7.