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Hotdog In A Hallway posted:I worked at a law firm where the billing department was 2 people handling 6,000+ files. Unsurprisingly they fell way behind and as a result over a million dollars worth of work was past the billable invoice period. When this came to light, the senior one was fired and the other was screamed at. Yeah, the same thing happened at the lab I used to work at. Over $1M in payments owed to the lab were never billed to our clients. To this day I'll never understand.
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May 29, 2014 13:03
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I'm at the other end of that equation: I have a lot of problems with companies not billing Accounts Payable against the Purchase Orders I give them. It's especially common in two situations: catering from chain restaurants who do most of their business in cash, and journal publishers. All journal publishing companies are staffed by people with poo poo for brains. The publishing office of any academic journal is usually handled by a company, which is a subsidiary of another company, which may be a subsidiary of a third company. The mysterious conglomerate usually has several addresses spread across the United States and one or two foreign countries, so when I send the PO to the contact email/address in our purchasing system (which one of their sales reps had to provide) it's a shot in the dark. Three to six months later, I'll receive a barrage of past-due notices, sometimes from two companies and which as many as six addresses between them. More likely, the professor will receive the past-due notice and hit the ceiling. I have spent hours on the phone, spaced out over more than a year, desperately trying to pay someone hundreds of dollars.
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May 29, 2014 14:26
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Solkanar512 posted:Yeah, the same thing happened at the lab I used to work at. Over $1M in payments owed to the lab were never billed to our clients. To this day I'll never understand. Mostly because they don't have a clerk doing recs between purchasing order (incoming and outgoing), involves and good receipts. This is pretty much half of my days work. So much stuff gets missed no matter how good someone is.
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May 29, 2014 15:41
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I just got an angry email demanding to know what my email address was. No, you are not crazy, that sentence said what you thought it said.
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May 29, 2014 15:56
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Let me guess: an Outlook addict who doesn't know how to actually view your address? I had a cockup a couple years ago when I had to get a hospital user ID in order to edit our website. I told them not to give me the email that goes with it, because then everybody's Outlook will default to it, and who knows whether or not setting up a forward will actually work properly? They did it anyway. I had it deleted. But for months afterward, I had to teach secretaries, one by one, that they needed to either refresh their lookup or type my email address. The response was...kind of pathetic. "Buh-buh-but that's what Outlook puts there! Huh-how could it ever be wrong?! Muh-muh my momma said, my muh-muh-momma said that--"Seriously, people suffering some kind of ontological crisis because a Microsoft product can't do their thinking for them.
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May 29, 2014 16:02
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oh good! All of my coworkers who live in the suburbs are now saying horribly offensive things about the local homeless in the part of the downtown core our office is located in! This doesn't make me want to puke at all!
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May 29, 2014 16:45
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peter banana posted:oh good! All of my coworkers who live in the suburbs are now saying horribly offensive things about the local homeless in the part of the downtown core our office is located in! This doesn't make me want to puke at all! People say weird things like that here all the time, and it's as if they don't get what they're saying. "Oh, downtown Lancaster used to be awful, but it's really turning around now that rent prices pushed all the poor people out. Now if only we could do something about the homeless people..." I mean, really? Where the gently caress do they think the homeless population in Lancaster came from? That's ignoring the part where downtown Lancaster was never really a bad neighborhood even at its worst, too. It's like living out in suburbs surrounded by Amish farms addled my coworkers' brains a bit. How do you even have suburbs to a town with only 30K people?
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May 29, 2014 18:02
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peter banana posted:oh good! All of my coworkers who live in the suburbs are now saying horribly offensive things about the local homeless in the part of the downtown core our office is located in! This doesn't make me want to puke at all! At a few large client sites I have heard a lot about "those people" you know like the ones that are dark skinned &c?
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May 29, 2014 19:29
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I feel like using "HOT URGENT REQUEST" as an email subject is.. ill advised.
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May 29, 2014 20:12
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peter banana posted:oh good! All of my coworkers who live in the suburbs are now saying horribly offensive things about the local homeless in the part of the downtown core our office is located in! This doesn't make me want to puke at all! The worst is when you have co workers say offensive poo poo when it's their job to actually (arguably/maybe/pretend to) help these populations or otherwise know better. The hypocrisy blows my mind.
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May 29, 2014 21:32
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yoyomama posted:The worst is when you have co workers say offensive poo poo when it's their job to actually (arguably/maybe/pretend to) help these populations or otherwise know better. The hypocrisy blows my mind. I guess I could understand it as a way to blow off some steam. I'm in IT and sometimes after a really difficult call I'll want to vent a little to my coworkers about the idiot who can't remember their loving password for the 20th time. If I was a social worker who'd been trying to help someone get off of Heroin for months and then they had a relapse and undid a ton of progress, I could totally see myself saying some hosed up poo poo out of frustration. But there's a difference between occasionally getting mad at someone as an individual and just growing to hate the people that justify your job. If I found myself cursing when the phone rings at work, before I even find out what the problem is, I'd need to either start fixing myself or finding a different job.
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May 29, 2014 21:52
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This morning I got rewarded for staying up until 1 A.M. working on an urgent report by my boss chewing me out, since now that I've done a report on X topic they will always ask US for a report on X topic. This was after she logged off at 5 on the nose without telling me who was supposed to make the report, who she had been talking to all day, leaving me to catch all the flak from sales' management on why it wasn't done with nothing to tell them. And, of course, she later had to call me to tell me that it's actually alright if we do reporting on X topic for this client - no duh, this is literally our biggest client and they are giving us millions upon millions of dollars. There is also apparently one (1) person apparently who is responsible for this type of reporting to sales in our huge national company. And of course I get a non-apology about not wanting to sound confrontational. I think that sounding non-confrontational is the minimum when someone goes above and beyond. At this point I'm actively looking for a new position.
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May 29, 2014 22:47
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Sundae posted:People say weird things like that here all the time, and it's as if they don't get what they're saying. "Downtown" Lancaster  I really do appreciate this thread. Every time I think about how I could be making double what I'm making now I catch up on a hundred posts in here to realize that the corporate machine would beat down my soul and make me a miserable alcoholic.
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May 30, 2014 00:25
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I don't understand how it's acceptable for someone to routinely set meetings and then never show up, to the point that it's a department-wide running joke 
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May 30, 2014 01:06
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potee posted:I don't understand how it's acceptable for someone to routinely set meetings and then never show up, to the point that it's a department-wide running joke This happens to me too on a regular basis with conference calls. The person who sets up the meetings doesn't have Communicator either so we can't send messages going "yo wtf where are you", someone has to leave their desk and hunt them down in person and then they get all huffy about it. It's really embarrassing when we have customers on the line waiting for this person to decide to call in 10-15 minutes late.
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May 30, 2014 01:17
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:But there's a difference between occasionally getting mad at someone as an individual and just growing to hate the people that justify your job. If I found myself cursing when the phone rings at work, before I even find out what the problem is, I'd need to either start fixing myself or finding a different job. This is partly why I left a customer service call center position. That and having been told, effectively, to stop actually trying to help a customer because of systemic issues, offer free crap, and lie to them about why we can or cannot do thing. Otherwise, last month of our spring campaign, time for me to double down on the job search. I am going to do my damnedest not to go back to retail.
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May 30, 2014 01:44
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potee posted:I don't understand how it's acceptable for someone to routinely set meetings and then never show up, to the point that it's a department-wide running joke
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May 30, 2014 02:31
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Harry posted:Sounds like a never ending good excuse to avoid doing other things to me. "Can I speak to my husband?" "He's in a meeting" ::Guy is banging mistress in a hotel::
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May 30, 2014 03:37
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I was hired by a really big company because they really don't know anything about field X and want to get into field X. I already went over some of the typical big company stuff that this place has in spades. Anyway, the department head and pretty much everyone else were all moved from different areas for the most part, there are only a handful of people with relevant experience. The colleagues aren't downright incompetent mind you, but it's not their forte largely. Apparently a while back, they plucked a random manager they liked (my boss's boss), and said "hey, you're now our expert on X." That person is more than capable, but their strategy has basically been hire consultants up the wazoo, study other huge companies and see how they did it. I don't doubt there are a handful of really smart companies who aren't inclined to share their secrets. However, the fact that it was sincerely said to me that everyone does it our (really inefficient and inexplicable in many ways) way either means that all of those Fortune 500 companies dipping their toes into the water are/were similarly clueless coming in, or poo poo, we have been getting some really bad advice. I don't want to be a little tyrant overnight, but there are some near term things that could easily be done that would shoot up productivity astronomically, never mind long term changes with operations. I'm not talking consulting bullshit, let's work people to the bone - things are generally done in really convoluted, repetitive ways that can be easily streamlined. Yeah, I'm saying that from a state of relative ignorance, there are tons of institutional hurdles, maybe some of the "stupid bullshit" actually is important. I really do think there's a lot of obvious changes though. My boss and colleagues seem amenable as long as it's making their lives easier for the most part, and our only hurdle is that we have to try to keep everything in-house without requests going to other departments who range from not giving a poo poo to actively hostile.
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May 30, 2014 05:29
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Shyfted One posted:"Downtown" Lancaster Yeah, tell me about it.  I love Lancaster (this place really is pretty awesome), but we're in loving Amish country. "Downtown" and "urban" and other descriptors of that sort have no business being applied here.The funny thing about your post is that I do the exact opposite thing with the Retail thread. I look at it and realize that I'd be just as deep in bullshit but without benefits and for 1/10th the salary.
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May 30, 2014 13:32
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Well, I finally have all my systems, and all it took was to be part of a massive email chain where my manager and her "buddy" went around sending angry, panicked messages CCd to what seemed like every employee in every helpdesk, telling them all about how we hadn't had access for a week, she sent us home early, unacceptable, blah blah blah. They got pretty high up on the leadership ladder before someone said "Okay, so Clockroach is having trouble with her password on that app? Just tell her how to reset it." So Buddy called up and it worked, very easily, and he did not sound happy. He told me I needed to get Manager to go thank everyone and tell them the issue was resolved, but she went on vacation the next day, so I had to field some worried follow up emails. Today I finally got an 8 hour day where I was working the entire time, what a strange feeling.
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May 31, 2014 02:03
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My company is moving its office in a particular city (not mine) from one building to another. I got word of the new address today in an email.A division-wide email posted:The new space is currently being renovated and will include ... a cafeteria designed to double as a space for large group meetings. Somehow, I suspect this space will end up performing neither function particularly well.
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Jun 1, 2014 01:10
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The correct term is cafetorium and what is that place, a fuckin high school?
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Jun 1, 2014 02:51
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PurpleButterfly posted:My company is moving its office in a particular city (not mine) from one building to another. I got word of the new address today in an email. If they mean 'everyone on site' when they say large meetings, I've never worked at a place that didn't have something similar.
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Jun 1, 2014 13:21
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 The horror you feel when you check your work email on Sunday morning to get a birthday party invitation and you realize the photographer is in the process of emailing you either 6 or 150 RAW files one at a time as attachments. ...and none of them have any metadata
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Jun 1, 2014 16:03
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:The correct term is cafetorium and what is that place, a fuckin high school? Guess so  Blorange posted:If they mean 'everyone on site' when they say large meetings, I've never worked at a place that didn't have something similar. It might mean everyone on site; it's not a very big site.
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Jun 1, 2014 16:14
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PurpleButterfly posted:Guess so Makes sense to create a combined space like that, rather than having two infrequently-used rooms. Plus it makes it a bit harder to skip out on lunchtime* all-hands meetings. *This meeting counts as your lunch break. Lunch is not provided. No food or drink allowed.
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Jun 1, 2014 17:45
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Super-small business here: We let a guy go around mid-May & shuttered his one-man division because apparently we were hoping for more than "break even" out of his first year with us despite him being in a market we'd never been in or marketed to before (it's honestly a surprise he did that well, but he's extremely well-respected in his field and several higher-ups with the companies we work with love him). The reason cited was "there's not enough work coming in for him". At the beginning of the month he received his $500 bonus for meeting his Feb-Mar-Apr quarter goals for billable hours. He had his mutual separation pushed back a week the day after the decision to cut & run was finalized because he was too busy so his final day was the Thursday before Memorial Day. We called him in the following Tuesday for an emergency because there was stuff left undone by one of the companies we work with & we needed his expertise in how to fix the issue. In the last week we've turned at least three job requests away because his division no longer exists. All the marketing material we spent time devising and money mass producing is now in the recycling bin, and all the code time spent updating our website with new mechanisms to streamline his work is now being gone through to see if it can be repurposed in any manner or if that too is a complete waste.
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Jun 1, 2014 17:58
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dennyk posted:
Is this even legal? It for sure is not where I am from.
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Jun 2, 2014 07:23
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Keetron posted:Is this even legal? It for sure is not where I am from. Where I'm from it's not illegal, as far as I know.
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Jun 2, 2014 11:10
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Keetron posted:Is this even legal? It for sure is not where I am from. Nor anywhere else in the US if you're talking non-exempt employees.
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Jun 2, 2014 13:16
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I finally got all of my backpay so all my bills got paid. Sadly as one final gently caress you most of it came on one cheque which bumped my pension deduction up two levels. The women who hosed me so badly is also "retiring" at the end of the month though she no longer has any duties.
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Jun 2, 2014 15:13
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sbaldrick posted:The women who hosed me so badly is also "retiring" at the end of the month though she no longer has any duties. So they're paying her for a full four weeks' worth of time, plus accruing vacation (which will be paid out), for her not to do anything. Have to love corporate culture sometimes.
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Jun 2, 2014 20:26
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I got yelled at, as in actual angry raised voice directed at me, about something that was not my fault and the result of someone else's poor planning because that's totally an effective and productive management technique. Guess whose projects I'm just not going to have the time to do before my last day on Friday?
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Jun 3, 2014 00:00
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FreshFeesh posted:So they're paying her for a full four weeks' worth of time, plus accruing vacation (which will be paid out), for her not to do anything. Have to love corporate culture sometimes. I mean, I'm not complaining, but that was nearly five months of zero productivity.
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Jun 3, 2014 13:54
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FreshFeesh posted:So they're paying her for a full four weeks' worth of time, plus accruing vacation (which will be paid out), for her not to do anything. Have to love corporate culture sometimes. No, she's on some of her accrued vacation.
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Jun 3, 2014 14:01
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100 HOGS AGREE posted:From August 2013 to the end of the year I was "between" projects at my company and did literally no work for nearly the entire time. I'd come in, do my 40 hours a week where I mostly browsed SA and listened to podcasts, and get paid. Occasionally someone would give me something to do if I pestered enough. I didn't get lucky enough to have 5 months (goddamn!) but I did have a good 2 months where all I was officially doing was "reading documentation". As a contractor I could barely fill out my timesheets with a straight face (expectation was 40 hours minimum, of course). Yeah, I spent 40 hours reading documentation this week. Like last week. Wait, I also prepared some meaningless documentation. Now, there was a poo poo ton of incredibly boring documentation to go through for this project- it was ICD10 compliance, which for anyone who does healthcare data, is the crown fuckin' jewel of tedious drudge work. But even that doesn't take 200 hours! The highlight was when the project got pushed back a whole year so I was able to burn all that useless ICD10 information out of my brain forever and work on something more interesting. FieryBalrog fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Jun 3, 2014 |
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Jun 3, 2014 17:00
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This morning we got an E-mail warning us about an Excel exploit going around at one of our remote locations. By mid-afternoon, multiple morons had ignored this advice and spread the exploit all over the network. Around 3, the IT security folks went around the building and ordered everyone not to use Excel until further notice. This is the point where I mention that I'm an accountant and it's the end of the quarter. We can't post journal entries or run financials without Excel. Since none of the other offices were affected, the deadline can't be extended and are still scheduled to close the books by Thursday. Whoops.
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Jun 4, 2014 06:47
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lavaca posted:This morning we got an E-mail warning us about an Excel exploit going around at one of our remote locations. Would Open Office work? You can try on an USB stick using portable apps.
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Jun 4, 2014 10:15
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There's also gnumeric http://portableapps.com/apps/office/gnumeric_portable and Google drive.
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Jun 4, 2014 12:54
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