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Slip Slap posted:Still speaking of the "you're lucky to have this job" bit, at my office you're not even given a chance to form a complaint. The "...and don't complain about it because the unemployed masses would kill to have you job" is right there in the memo announcing the change. Ha, I heard this all the time at the job before my current one - manager and team lead would always harp about how the economy sucks and unemployment is so high and "you're lucky you have a job here" bullshit. With all the mismanagement and finger-pointing, not to mention disorganization at almost every level, I was happy to walk out of that place (part due to stress, other part due to my boss being a prick and trying to discipline me for something I didn't do). I found out last week that 3 more people left that place, all of whom I know well and with whom I've been good friends. One guy got fired on the spot for using the company network to stream movies on Netflix, the other 2 people walked out because of the douchebag team lead treating them like crap. So, as far as I can tell, the old support team I was on at that job now has...2 people left that have been there for 2 years or more. Everyone else currently has less than a year (I know because some of them started a couple months before I left) and I heard the support has not only taken a nose-dive, but the bosses are having trouble keeping up with not only having to train new people, but do the support job with fewer techs, and the same number of people to support in both buildings. Miss-Bomarc posted:The problem with a buyout is that the company doesn't actually have that money. It's not like there's a giant bank account labeled "EMPLOYEE VACATIONS" and they take money out whenever someone uses their vacation time. Vacation time generally gets charged to overhead, which is considered a business expense, like keeping the lights on and running the air conditioner. Wouldn't doubt a good chunk of that money gets reclaimed with all the write-offs that companies can take each year. A good amount of company expenses (e.g. vehicles, meals, travel, etc.) can be easily written off come tax time so the company doesn't end up losing as much, or anything at all. But, companies most likely can plan ahead for the vacation time costs and figure out ways to make up for it later, so they end up breaking even or coming out ahead - I just can't see a company paying out a bunch of vacation time to employees without first making sure it's not going to screw them financially. BOOTY-ADE fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Nov 15, 2011 |
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Nov 15, 2011 19:12
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Ann up and quit to accept another job. I'm still a temporary. I foolishly hoped I could get her cube, which has a  a door and I'm now wanted to take over all this stuff she was doing.Nope, they gave it to another department. I will never have a door. 
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Nov 15, 2011 19:59
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You mean there are not one, but two supervisors who think Ann can do a decent job?
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Nov 15, 2011 21:57
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She apparently knew someone that worked over in that department and they gave her a recommendation. It's in HR as well, so that'll be amazing when we're sued because she screws up an I9 or something. I feel bad for them because as an inter-departmental transfer you have no 90 day probationary period. The door saga continues. I spent all yesterday pissed off. Went to my boss, and told him we had to move ALL of the poo poo out of the big office. He suggested putting all of it in my office. I pointed out I had an open cube by an open public door and is that REALLY the place to put our financial information? He suggested I move to one of the (doored) half-cubes a couple of rows over. SUCCESS! I will have a door. I go to Walmart and buy some new stick tape for my hanging hooks. Come in this morning, wave to the floor manager and tell him that btw I'll be moving cubes and my boss said it was fine. Immediately, "Oh, the other boss and I had plans for that cube." That empty cube that had lain fallow for 8 goddamn months. I will never have a door. I mean, why would I expect such a thing, just because I'm a temporary who's been underpaid for over a year and now I'm taking on 2 more jobs since those people are leaving and I thought it would be nice to have a benefit that would cost them a total accrued amount of ZERO DOLLARS and would make my life incredibly easier and would allow them to store sensitive information in a locked office. Rodent Mortician fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Nov 16, 2011 |
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Nov 16, 2011 17:38
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So, I've worked at my job a little over a year now. It's apparently yearly performance review time. I got a lecture from my boss which boils down to "it doesn't matter how productive you are, if you don't look productive, you're not productive." Sadly this includes things like, leaning back in your chair.
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Nov 16, 2011 19:38
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Iron Crowned posted:So, I've worked at my job a little over a year now. It's apparently yearly performance review time. I got a lecture from my boss which boils down to "it doesn't matter how productive you are, if you don't look productive, you're not productive." I got yelled at one time at an old job for reading at my desk, even though I was on my (mandatory, scheduled) lunch break. There was no way anyone of any importance would have seen me anyway, given the location of my cube. Treating people like grade-schoolers has been shown time and again to hurt productivity and foster resentment, yet companies and managers persist.
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Nov 16, 2011 20:06
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Oh god I would kill for a cube with a door. Will never happen, though.
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Nov 16, 2011 20:21
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RazorBunny posted:I got yelled at one time at an old job for reading at my desk, even though I was on my (mandatory, scheduled) lunch break. There was no way anyone of any importance would have seen me anyway, given the location of my cube. I've found management doesn't see 5 minutes of slack time as productive. They see it as 12 people just talked about the football game for 5 minutes, that's a whole hour of pay that was wasted. On top of that the definition of being productive, is apparently based on accountants. EDIT: In other news, my cubemate finally went home. He's been so highly stressed out today that I need a drink from being around him. Iron Crowned fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Nov 16, 2011 |
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Nov 16, 2011 20:22
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Pope Mobile posted:Oh god I would kill for a cube with a door. Will never happen, though. I've got an office with a door  However my "Office" is actually the server room and I'm surrounded by two racks of servers that produce the same sounds as swarms of angry bees. At least I can play loud music.
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Nov 16, 2011 20:30
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Digital_Jesus posted:I've got an office with a door I have an office and there are no caveats .Well, maybe one: everyone has an office, including the secretary (though she doesn't use it).
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Nov 16, 2011 22:55
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Ornamented Death posted:I have an office and there are no caveats When everyone's special... no one will be.
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Nov 16, 2011 23:35
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My typical day: Morning Shoe. We're really under the cosh with Jesus Ltd at the moment. I need you to prioritise them this week. Time passes Hey Shoe, how are things going with Mohammed Industries, am I likely to see that calendar by COP, I asked you to start it at 5pm yesterday. No! I need it today do it now! Time passes Shoe, my computers doing that thing again can you show me how to stop it Time passes The printer cartridge has run out Time passes Shoe, can you do me a favor a spends couple of hours on this Moses.com briefing right now. Sorry I forgot 10 minutes to pub time Shoe, did you send me that Mohammed and Moses stuff? I'll have to look at it in 3 days time because I've got continuous meetings I didn't mention for the rest of the week. How far did you get with the Jesus Ltd stuff? What!? I told you to prioritise them!  That said I wouldn't want to do anything else
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Nov 17, 2011 00:20
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Over the summer - Sales: Hi we would like to make this book with lots and lots of pictures in it. Can you license them for us? Us: Sure. Do you want to get rights for e-books too? Sales: No! There won't be an e-book Us: Ok Now - Sales: Hi we would like to make this an e-book. And it better not cost more! Us: 
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Nov 17, 2011 00:56
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Iron Crowned posted:So, I've worked at my job a little over a year now. It's apparently yearly performance review time. I got a lecture from my boss which boils down to "it doesn't matter how productive you are, if you don't look productive, you're not productive." I was once told in the same review at different times that - "One of my positives is that I am very calm under pressure when given a stressful job which comes across as me being able to handle it." "One of my negatives is that I seem too calm when given a stressful job which comes across as me not caring."
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Nov 17, 2011 01:04
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So, in our cubeland, there are five basic types of cubes. They are (in order of greatness to shittiness): 0.) Actual office - you have to have a phD and 40 years senority to get one of these 1.) Doored cube (walled) with desk facing door (Approx. 10'x10') 2.) Doored cube (walled) with desk facing wall (Approx. 10'x10') 3.) Doored half cube (walled) (all have desks facing wall) (Approx' 6'x8') 4.) Half cube (half wall)(all have desks facing wall)(Approx' 6'x8') 5.) Normal cube ((Approx' 6'x6') Most of the people on the floor are in #5. Everybody hates it -- you're open to the world, people walk up behind you while you're goofing off on the internet, there's no privacy, and you get your poo poo stolen. Most of the people in our subgroup have either #2 or #3. Myself and one lone research person have non-door cubes. Lone researcher also has a lovely normal cube, while mine is one of the half cubes and I've constructed a third wall out of file cabinets. This is one aspect of cube quality. The other is proximity to loudass talkers. Our building is arranged into quarters, and the southeast quarter (which I reside in) has all the loudest assholes in the building. There are no fewer than three phone survey research people (who apparently talk exclusively to the newly deafened). The most prominent we call Loud Howard and she interviews the elderly at top volume. There's nothing like being on one of your calls and having the following in the background: AND NOW I NEED TO ASK YOU QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR SEX LIFE. HOW OFTEN DO YOU HAVE SEX ON A DAILY BASIS. HOW MANY OF THOSE TIMES ARE IN A MISSIONARY POSITION. DO YOU ORGASM. The other denizens are academic longtimers who have become cubedeaf. Cubedeafness occurs when you've worked in a cube farm for such a period that you become unable to hear the cube noises around you and so you start thinking you're alone and stop modulating your own vocal behavior. My northern neighbor, Bullhorn, primarily speaks on the phone to her two daughters (both of whom are human failures) and speaks about her upcoming lawsuits against products that have harmed her. Occasionally someone tries to get smart and move outside of the system. One of the particularly loud offenders who likes to sit with their friends outside of my cube and talk loudly often complains that everyone else is loud and so she travels over to the southwestern quad, takes up residence in her "satellite office" (an empty cube next to one of my department-mates) and then has her loud conversations in "peace", contributing to the noise pollution of an otherwise. Northeast quadrant is basically deserted as they try to hire new research folk, and northwest belongs to an entirely other division who think that we're insane nutjobs. My original desire was for the big cube which is a coveted #1 -- desk facing the door, nobody can see your monitors! It's also in a choice location away from the loudass loving phone survey assholes and the idiots who can't take personal calls quietly in the hallway. My secondary consolation cube was a #3, which was smaller and has an adjacent personal caller (who talks all day to her girlfriend about her son Rayvon) but it did still have a door, so I was willing to settle. However, I managed to rouse my boss (who will be retiring) by insisting that I knew he was unable to get me the any doored cube since he was retiring and is basically a lame duck and that I could probably figure out somewhere I could hide our precious financial information. Now he's gunning for the big cube for me. I would happily kill half my family for this cube. Working in an office does terrible things to you. Never have I been so loving obsessed with a goddamn door.
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Nov 17, 2011 02:21
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Rodent Mortician posted:Working in an office does terrible things to you. Never have I been so loving obsessed with a goddamn door. Why do you still work at that place?
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Nov 17, 2011 09:06
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the jizz taxi posted:Why do you still work at that place? This was my thought. If you spend so much time mulling a door, you might want to go to home depot and buy yourself a door and then find another job. You should watch Office Space a few times and consider your life.
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Nov 17, 2011 11:21
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The day we moved from sitting shoulder to shoulder at a table in the conference room and finally got our own cubicles (two walls, but high walls!) was one of the happiest days of my life. Corporate life!
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Nov 17, 2011 14:28
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Apart from the lovely seating and the insane people, I actually like what my job is. It's also in a pretty niche field so finding another one would involve a cross-country move, in all likelihood. Also the pay and benefits are great if you ever manage to cross the magic barrier between temp and perm (which may happen for me soon -- along with a door).
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Nov 17, 2011 14:34
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I dream of a cubicle. No-one in my company has an office, even the CEO, it's open plan all the way. The majority of my job involves reading contractual documents surrounded by 9 other people who constantly interrupt me. I no longer see the humour in Dilbert as situations in my job are exactly like Dilbert.
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Nov 17, 2011 15:42
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Rodent Mortician posted:Apart from the lovely seating and the insane people, I actually like what my job is. It's also in a pretty niche field so finding another one would involve a cross-country move, in all likelihood. Also the pay and benefits are great if you ever manage to cross the magic barrier between temp and perm (which may happen for me soon -- along with a door). You have a problem a lot of almost lucky people have: you love your work but hate your job. A lot of my wife's coworkers (they're all teachers) suffer from the same thing; they love teaching but hate all the bureaucracy (teaching for the test, interruptions for meetings and individualized lesson plans for kids that don't have a disability, just lovely parents, etc.) I think it is worse to know that you could, you should be happy, but then the world happens. It's easier for most of us because our jobs suck and our work sucks too, or at least we are apathetic to it. You are left complaining and defending like an abused spouse. You should ask yourself what is worse: to take a risk and move across the country to try to be happy, or to grow to hate what you do as much as where you do it.
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Nov 17, 2011 16:04
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Eh, unfortunately this niche is primarily academic, so the complaints are likely to be the same cross-country (and I'm the sole caretaker of an elderly parent who won't move and a disabled spouse). I'm largely pretty happy, but sometimes little stuff just sets me off and I get mad and vent about it for a while, and then things kind of return to their placid monotony of acadamia. The boss, at least, it going to bat for it. It's inefficient and not fair, but the system is inefficient and not fair to everyone, and the people who aren't oblivious are nice and awesome to work with. My last job was actually only inefficient and unfair to the underlings while the top tier got every advantage and you were punitively punished for pointing it out. I hated it with every fiber of my being, so this is actually a step up. (Hah!) At least here I won't be threatened with termination for pointing out we're violating labor laws.
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Nov 17, 2011 16:19
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I work as the office assistant at a doctors office (previously mentioned). I've worked here since March and realized today that there is absolutely no "getting ahead" on my paperwork/other stuff. No matter how quickly I get anything off my desk there is always something to replace it.
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Nov 17, 2011 20:58
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Ah, that first Sisyphean moment of revelation. I'm surprised the French Existentialists didn't write more about office work.
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Nov 17, 2011 21:28
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As Terry Pratchett says, everyone knows that initiatives to reduce paperwork only result in more paperwork.
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Nov 17, 2011 21:54
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'I cried because I did not have an office with a door, until I met a man who had no cubicle'- Dilbert
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Nov 17, 2011 23:51
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Blue_monday posted:I work as the office assistant at a doctors office (previously mentioned). I've worked here since March and realized today that there is absolutely no "getting ahead" on my paperwork/other stuff. No matter how quickly I get anything off my desk there is always something to replace it. And some people wonder why I don't work harder.
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Nov 18, 2011 00:30
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I have that problem half the time, and the opposite problem the other half - when I have work to do, I have so much I can't keep up, and when I manage to scrape it all up and deliver it, it's followed by a dead lull that sometimes lasts for weeks. Being something of a workaholic, this makes me pretty miserable. It doesn't help that some of my superiors find ways to blame me for not having any work to do. Right now is one of the great big crazy work explosion times, and I'm really feeling behind the eight ball. It doesn't help that my transfer paperwork is taking forever and I don't have an established timeframe yet for my switch to the new job.
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Nov 18, 2011 03:16
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I posted:'I cried because I did not have an office with a door, until I met a man who had no cubicle'- Dilbert My first two months at my office I never had a desk. I had a binder and a small laptop that I would move around to any available ethernet cable, depending on which office was available and not under construction. There was a while I sat on the floor in the chart room. Thankfully someone left the company and I got to take over his desk. I share an office with the CEO, who is out of the office half the time and is super laid back. My desk is poorly situated for my position though. Any time I have to do something for a patient I have to go downstairs to get/go through their chart. Beats the hell out of being right in the middle of everything downstairs and getting bothered to death. My desk is also half behind a door and my back is facing the hallway which is super annoying. I had a super hard time getting an outside line today, which happens all too often lately. I asked about getting some more phone lines so hopefully we get them. Ideally I would like to completely redo the phone infrastructure in the building and set it so phone messages come in digitally. We get way too many to keep track of through the phone system
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Nov 18, 2011 04:21
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Years in office culture and marketing/communications have given me a keen appreciation of good marketing, strong messaging and good project execution. The problem is that many companies have HR in charge of employee branding and recruitment campaigns, and they refuse to listen to advice from marketing professionals. That's why we have the awkwardness that is corporate video. In the past few days, HR and project people were romping about the office recording mock interviews and "funny" management advice with a guy in a cowboy hat and lines out of a very bad B-movie. I suddenly get an invite to be part of one of those scenes, but then I learn I'm supposed to be one of the people in the scene that represents the "party" after a project is finished. Picture a brightly lit office with people in suits (many of them engineers) dancing super, super awkwardly to stale pop music. The idea was so cringe-inducing that I bowed out, but the shooting took place next to my desk. I had to focus on my computer screen and clench my jaw the entire time not to burst out laughing, while I simultaneously admired the courage of colleagues who subjected themselves to that disgrace.
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Nov 18, 2011 08:58
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RazorBunny posted:I have that problem half the time, and the opposite problem the other half - when I have work to do, I have so much I can't keep up, and when I manage to scrape it all up and deliver it, it's followed by a dead lull that sometimes lasts for weeks. Being something of a workaholic, this makes me pretty miserable. It doesn't help that some of my superiors find ways to blame me for not having any work to do. Also known as "hurry up and wait" in these parts. I'm kinda in the wait period, but that's due to things out of my control. I'm a technical designer, there's apparently a lot of work to be done, but it's all sitting on engineers' desks. One of these engineers apparently posesses a deck of get out of jail free cards due to the fact that he spends most of his day either sleeping, or bothering us about France (his home country).
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Nov 18, 2011 16:56
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"I know you're on break but..."
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Nov 18, 2011 21:34
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Cup of Hemlock posted:"I know you're on break but..." I've been asked "Are you at lunch?" while I am sitting at my desk eating a drat sandwich and reading a book.
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Nov 18, 2011 21:41
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I was just told I was too impersonal with co-workers because I send emails out about issues rather than trying to gather everyone together to discuss them. There's about a 0.0000000000001% chance we're all in the office at the same time. Email is more efficient. But I'm the douche, apparently.
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Nov 18, 2011 22:52
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Spike McAwesome posted:I was just told I was too impersonal with co-workers because I send emails out about issues rather than trying to gather everyone together to discuss them. There's about a 0.0000000000001% chance we're all in the office at the same time. Email is more efficient. But I'm the douche, apparently. People walk up 3 floors to ask me stupid stuff that could be either in an email or phoned. I'm also super sick of people calling me for phone numbers, fax numbers, addresses or all sorts of other stupid things that I've set up a database that everyone can access. Same with clinic letters. I'm also sick of people using old letterhead with wrong information.
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Nov 18, 2011 23:02
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I'm pretty sure one of the admin girl who sits on the other side of the cube from me hasn't had an uninterrupted lunch in at least two months. Fridays don't count because no one is ever here.
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Nov 18, 2011 23:04
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The Aphasian posted:I've been asked "Are you at lunch?" while I am sitting at my desk eating a drat sandwich and reading a book. "No, I'm conducting a study on the likelihood of assholes interrupting people who are eating sandwiches and reading books.  "
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Nov 18, 2011 23:16
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The Aphasian posted:I've been asked "Are you at lunch?" while I am sitting at my desk eating a drat sandwich and reading a book. Does your workplace pay your wage while you have your lunch break? If they don't then leave your desk, go to the park or sit in your car or at a coffee shop or something. So much peace.
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Nov 19, 2011 01:08
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Blue_monday posted:People walk up 3 floors to ask me stupid stuff that could be either in an email or phoned. I get this but for technical information on a system I was involved in designing. Thankfully at the time I was able to persuade management that it'd be a good use of a couple of days of my time to write up a manual, so my response is always "Have you read the manual? No? Ok, here's where you can find it - get back to me if you can't find the information you need" and management will back me up on this as it would otherwise be a huge waste of my time. Nevertheless, the same people will ask inane questions (often the same inane questions they've asked before) over and over again, presumably out of some hope that I will eventually crack and do their job for them.
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Nov 19, 2011 14:45
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Email is too valuable these days as a paper trail. My IT manager tries his hardest to get everything in email so when he gets the inevitable "This is your fault!" he can point to email.
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