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"Stop working on this document until you get comments back." Okay, that makes sense, version control. "Hey, I haven't had a chance to comment on that document, and I know you're leaving on vacation, so I'll get back to you when you return." Sounds good. "What the hell is wrong with you? That document had to be delivered to the customer while you were gone and someone else had to work on the 4th of July to make that happen! You should have checked in with me or X before you left on your trip!" Um. I did check in. I talked about it with X, for over an hour, the day before I left. X gave me the impression that it was closer to being done than I guess it was, and never once mentioned that it was due during my vacation. I worked on this document for several months, with zero support. I was writing it totally blind - I know nothing about the system it discusses - and at every turn I asked for someone else to go over it and make sure I wasn't just making stuff up. I asked for a fresh pair of eyes to review my screenshots, because I had looked at them so many times it was impossible for me to edit them. I begged for help. Over and over again I got the "I'll get to it" crap, and then "I can't get to it, you might as well keep working." I've been hunting for jobs outside the corporate world for quite a while now, and nothing has gelled. 
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Jul 11, 2012 13:22
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Defenestration posted:I just want Outlook to search ALL of my loving folders I just ctrl+shift+f whenever I want to find something in Outlook, that way you can select the folders it's looking in.
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Jul 11, 2012 13:29
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Doesn't Outlook also have a "not what you're looking for? Click here to search all folders" button?
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Jul 11, 2012 13:55
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Adrianics posted:Doesn't Outlook also have a "not what you're looking for? Click here to search all folders" button? In 2007, at least, yes. There is a link right below where it says "No matches found for '$QUERY'." that says "Try searching again in All Mail Items." You can also do this manually by clicking the All Mail Items thing above your list of folders.
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Jul 11, 2012 13:59
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Adrianics posted:One of my clients has a long working relationship with the company's Director, and will copy him into e-mails to me as a way to force me to prioritise their work. You should try listing out all of the other things you'd need to drop to "prioritize" and make the director choose rather than trying to get everything done.
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Jul 11, 2012 15:30
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Solkanar512 posted:You should try listing out all of the other things you'd need to drop to "prioritize" and make the director choose rather than trying to get everything done. I tried this once, here's the answer you get back: "They're all top priority."
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Jul 11, 2012 16:12
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Solkanar512 posted:You should try listing out all of the other things you'd need to drop to "prioritize" and make the director choose rather than trying to get everything done. You see, this is the elementary mistake of assuming that the director of my company is a rational person who utilises logic and fairness, and has the slightest semblance that he knows what he's doing.
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Jul 11, 2012 16:23
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I saw a proposal to sort out this sort of queueing problem by turning it into a bidding war; short version is that folk who insist on prioritizing their stuff because their time's worth so much pay for the time they save, while folk who wait get paid for their patience. Should be easy enough to implement, I'd think, and it'd be so much fun to tell people "You think you belong on the top of my queue?  ". Probably wouldn't be politically wise, but it's a nice idea.
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Jul 11, 2012 17:39
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Adrianics posted:God, the more I think about it, the more 'copying senior members of staff into e-mails asking me to do things' becomes the thing about the corporate world that pisses me off the most. I feel your pain. I can't remember the last time I sent an email to just one person. The worst part for me is the one particular guy who waits for upwards of a week before finally deigning us peons with his "Reply All" which just serves to stir up the bullshit all over again.
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Jul 11, 2012 17:56
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Now I'm being reprimanded for not doing any work, by the person whose job it is to task me with work 
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Jul 11, 2012 18:10
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Adrianics posted:You see, this is the elementary mistake of assuming that the director of my company is a rational person who utilises logic and fairness, and has the slightest semblance that he knows what he's doing. That is a big mistake on my part, though I like a variation of darthbob88's idea. Simply email your director and anyone else who needs the other work you're involved in, and make them fight over your limited time. Even if you "have to do it all anyway" some work will be delayed and this will piss people off. Their anger will be directed at the folks who are directing you elsewhere and they'll have to deal with the anger, not you. Unless everyone is batshit crazy, then I recommended that resume dude in SA Mart. He's good.
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Jul 11, 2012 21:36
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Adrianics posted:One of my clients has a long working relationship with the company's Director, and will copy him into e-mails to me as a way to force me to prioritise their work. I'd much rather my senior member of staff be copied on emails for work requests. I ran into a big problem a few months ago where I was asked to do a fairly big project by a manager but my supervisor didn't know, and my regular work started to get behind. My fault for not really saying anything but it could have been avoided with a simple CC.
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Jul 11, 2012 21:46
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Solkanar512 posted:Unless everyone is batshit crazy, then I recommended that resume dude in SA Mart. Ha, it's a long story, but essentially the problem is more that everyone is out of their depth rather than crazy. Incidentally, I'm leaving my current role soon for much greener pastures, but thanks for the suggestion anyway.
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Jul 11, 2012 21:51
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My organization adopted a customized version of SAP almost two years ago and we are struggling to get full functionality because of the customizations. And on top of that for whatever reason upper management has no training program for the software. Today I told my director in a face to face sitdown that I felt the matrix reorganization of the management office has disrupted the program managers' ability to accomplish their jobs because it took away any semblance of authority they used to have, and that I was concerned he didn't understand the issues that my department was going through despite our attempts to communicate them. I provided two examples of how the program managers are expected to be responsible for their programs but can't be because their authority is totally undercut by people who have no ownership stake in the final product, and he totally blew me off. In addition to the reorg we got new roles and responsibilities to accommodate the transition. One of the lines states that the program managers need to "service the customer ... until they are satisfied." The only reason I really said anything at all was because my job is protected. Then any time I had to cc him on an email I kept getting "Great job!" or "Excellent communication!" responses from him. He's never once said that so it makes me a little suspicious. Not all management is like this, right??
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Jul 12, 2012 02:17
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At Pfizer, people got fired for bullshit reasons, laid off for bullshit, etc. At my new place, not so much. They're fired because they're loving dumbasses. We just had someone fired for LOTO violations. (The same thing as Solkanar's LOTTO from the previous page.) Guy is working on electrical equipment. He is not qualified as an electrician. He is not even electrical-safety-trained. He is slightly more than a janitor. Dipshit engineer grabbed him because there was no operator around, told him to do some electrical work. Dumbass says yes. Fries himself on a 480V connection that the engineer didn't lock out, and that he didn't know needed to be locked out. So, engineer gets fired. Guy goes to hospital, is fortunately okay because the 480V part was actually locked out *partially* and was only active at 110V. He survives. Guy's released from the hospital the next day, comes back to work, is reprimanded (and rightly so) for doing that work. That's all, no other punishment, just don't loving do that again you tard why were you working on an electrical box anyway? He proceeds to go fry himself on another electrical box later that afternoon, at the request of a different engineer.  This time, he got fired too, because apparently he's too dumb to breathe. I mean seriously - you literally got out of the hospital TODAY for working on electrical equipment you know nothing about, and you come right back and do it AGAIN?
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Jul 12, 2012 02:56
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Sundae posted:
That seems like enough. It was an honest mistake and he'll never go near one of those thing agai... Sundae posted:He proceeds to go fry himself on another electrical box later that afternoon, at the request of a different engineer. Oh never mind.
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Jul 12, 2012 06:17
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Sounds to me like the engineers need to be yelled at, too. Why would you ask some random jagoff in the hallway to come in here and screw with the electric box?
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Jul 12, 2012 07:37
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Sounds like you need to hire at least two non retarded engineers. *shameless plug* I know how to use lockouts and even electronics test equipment!
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Jul 12, 2012 07:53
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Sundae posted:I mean seriously - you literally got out of the hospital TODAY for working on electrical equipment you know nothing about, and you come right back and do it AGAIN? A lot of this is speculative, so please bear with me, but here's about what I think happens in situations like this (I'm certain this isn't the only time it's ever happened): Engineers and other people with scientific degrees know a lot about things that most other people don't know about. I'm going to also lump people with technical training in here too (electricians, plumbers, etc.) because both groups are able to do tasks that cannot readily be assigned to a machine and can thus command high salaries/payments. In this country for sure, being paid a lot means that you must know a lot about something. Look at how we listen to celebrities about what products or even political candidates to endorse. So, we have someone who is probably paid four times more than the janitor if not far more than that. The janitor works in a building of people who do what is essentially magic. If you're working in a Pfizer-analog like I think you are, this building houses big, complex machines that these intelligent people type bizarre codes into and medicine comes out the other end. Most of us without heavy science or medical training cannot describe quite how medicine works any more than most of us can describe how a radio works. So this janitor is accosted by a highly paid, supposedly intelligent individual. This person tells the janitor to do <X> with something electronic. Now, I don't know about you, but I've never been shocked by anything electronic. I've never stuck a penny in a light socket, I've never had a spark leap to me when I've plugged anything in, nothing like that. This is almost certainly the janitor's experience as well, current manufacturing regs being what they are. So when this apparently smart engineer says, "Do <X> for me, would ya?" the janitor has two possibilities. One, he could say, "Nope, can't do that," and piss off someone far more important to the company than him. Or he could assume that the engineer knows what he's talking about (electrical stuff is part of engineering, right? Yeah, gotta be!) and that <X> is within janitor's abilities. Ultimately, the janitor got screwed by a conjunction of societal assumptions. And 110V of electricity playing tennis in his body. But he goes into the hospital, gets out, gets reprimanded, and finds out the other dude got fired. Well that's fine. He wasn't supposed to be doing <X> then. When another engineer comes around, the janitor faces the same choices again, only this time he's told to do <Y>. Well, the bosses just said he wasn't supposed to be doing <X>. This engineer's asking him to do something totally different! <Y> is probably perfectly fine. And what are the odds of two engineers forgetting to do safety stuff twice back-to-back? Surely this guy heard about the other one getting fired. Zzzzzzzot! We like to say that blind servility doesn't exist in America, but it really does. I'd be willing to bet that this guy goes to his grave (which may be about a week from now judging by his record) protesting that he was only doing what he was told to do.
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Jul 12, 2012 12:49
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Honestly, you're almost certainly right on that. You have the difference in perceived authority, and fortunately the loving retard engineers are gone now too for this. However, we do have, in our training, great big bold letters that all but scream "Holy gently caress, don't touch something you're not qualified to touch! If you don't know if you're qualified, you're not qualified!" They push it doubly hard on the janitorial-type / operator-type staff, specifically because of the perceived authority gap, I think. Frankly, most of the engineers here don't know the entire system themselves! Heck, I can't think of any one engineer who understands every single part of a freeze-dryer. It'd be like asking which engineer designed that plane over there. They have absolutely no business telling someone else to do ________ without getting an expert on __________ to do it. (Insert whatever you want there.) I am happy to see that the engineers got fired for that. Fry your own goddamned arm next time, not some random schlub who thought you knew what you were talking about.
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Jul 12, 2012 15:58
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Solkanar512 posted:I keep running into this and it drives me nuts. I get that if English isn't your first language you might have been taught some odd phrases and the like and that's fine - English is a terrible language that makes no loving sense. I started seeing "thank you in advance" (loosely translated as a polite way to say 'hurry the gently caress up') and such from any company in India. quote:But the idea that you have to ask for an urgent reply, call asking if you received the message and then be continually begged to hurry up is loving ridiculous. poo poo will get done when poo poo gets done and things only take longer when you have to answer the phone from the guy who just sent the email. Do they not get it or do they just assume that no other needs are important? Here's the thing... 75 percent (or more) of these emails that we get asking for quotes are from companies that already have a contract with someone else. So they're using us to verify what their contracted person is telling them is accurate. We're not going to get the business, we know we're not going to get the business, but we still have to do it anyway. But yeah, they pretty much think they're the most important thing I/we have to do that day.
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Jul 12, 2012 17:04
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Yeah, we had something similar to this happen to a contractor and it caused a power surge throughout the entire loving site. We never heard anything more because it was a contractor issue, but there was most likely some arc flash and other fun stuff as a result of the work being done.
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Jul 15, 2012 20:57
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Almost definitely arc-flash unless complete and utter incompetence occurred. Not that failing to wear arc-resistant equipment / attire is acceptable or anything, but that's something a lot of people overlook, at least, unlike this tard who stuck a metal wrench into a 480V electric box. How are you liking your new place, by the way? Still an improvement over the old lab? I'd say that while I hate my day-to-day job more than my old one, the company is WAY better - at a corporate level - than my old company. There is a huge difference in how they treat their employees for the most part; I'm just in one particularly lovely role.
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Jul 16, 2012 01:48
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Sundae posted:Almost definitely arc-flash unless complete and utter incompetence occurred. Not that failing to wear arc-resistant equipment / attire is acceptable or anything, but that's something a lot of people overlook, at least, unlike this tard who stuck a metal wrench into a 480V electric box. All in all, my job is loving awesome. It can be unpredictably stressful at times, but that usually involves a lot of overtime pay at the end. And even then upper management will thank you for hard work. Also, no roomfuls of anaerobic bacteria!
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Jul 16, 2012 01:53
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I came into the office only to discover that we have no connectivity. All my work is done via SharePoint. Guess I'm going home, even though I was told we were trying to limit WFH... When I get there I am writing a resignation email. gently caress this.
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Jul 16, 2012 16:24
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I am now in a conundrum. I have been informed that if I am not obviously doing something during regular office hours, I will be flex-timed out. The problem is that I usually save a lot of those tasks for my employees, since their positions are more subject to being questioned. So now I have to decide between making it look like I am worthy of employment and making it look like others (who I am directly responsible for, both in terms of work and morally) are worthy of employment. Gotta love this place. Edit: I should add that overtime makes up roughly 20% of my income, some years 25%. Further, if I were to flex myself down to a perfect 40 hours a week, I would still be working nights, evenings, early mornings, weekends, and holidays. In addition to that, I would be permanently on-call during "regular" office hours since we've had moments in the past where a supervisor has been needed at literally ten minutes' notice. ItalicSquirrels fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Jul 16, 2012 |
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Jul 16, 2012 16:55
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I have an important fix to a report ready to go to production so I email the only guy with access to the server and ask him to just copy over this one file and overwrite the existing file. 24 hours go by and I get no response, so I send him another email. Several hours go by and still no response. Finally I get my boss to send him an email and he responds literally a minute later saying he'll take care of it right away.
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Jul 18, 2012 20:26
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Yesterday my co-worker on the other side of my cube wall actually expressed disappointment in the fact that Clippy is no longer part of Microsoft Office. He then had a very loud phone conversation about how he just doesn't understand Facebook. Alas, he still has at least two more years until retirement.
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Jul 19, 2012 03:21
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"You seem to be an old fart. Would you like help complaining about kids today?"
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Jul 19, 2012 11:59
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This loving intern won't stop staring at me, or looking over at my drawers when I open them. Mind your own business, you stupid idiot 
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Jul 19, 2012 17:00
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Cacahuate posted:This loving intern won't stop staring at me, or looking over at my drawers when I open them. It's a loving intern, call them out and embarrass the gently caress out of them.
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Jul 19, 2012 17:10
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oops
transient fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Sep 1, 2012 |
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Jul 21, 2012 02:26
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Jet Jaguar posted:I want to take the High Priority button in Outlook and lock it down with a $200/use fee. And a training course on when to use it. When you're hired, you are shown the ticketing system and given the key for a keyed switch that sounds an "Urgent Problem" siren in the IT department. When you turn that key, no fewer than two IT people are dispatched to your office immediately to address your problem. If they determine that it was urgent, the problem is fixed and they log it in the ticketing system. If they determine that it wasn't, the IT manager calls you to discuss what is and isn't an urgent issue. If you've already had "the talk" with the IT manager and you sound the siren for something that is determined to not be an urgent issue, you have to turn in the key. There's always a possibility that you know how to pick locks and can activate the urgency siren without a key, but in that case you're probably working in the IT department or are cool with the IT team and understand the value of texting the technicians "I have a computer problem, fix it and I owe you a 6-pack." Sundae posted:At Pfizer, people got fired for bullshit reasons, laid off for bullshit, etc.
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Jul 21, 2012 03:05
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Friend told me this today which I found funny so passing it on. An email was sent around to everyone at his multinational company, with a massive loving Olympics 2012 logo on it. It starts of saying that the Olympics are starting soon, exceptional time, countries coming together, yadda yadda yadda. Oh yeah, btw we want volunteers for overtime by the way. Or we start selecting people.
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Jul 23, 2012 18:28
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GWBBQ posted:Speaking of that place, I was looking at the Groton site on Bing Maps Bird's Eye View and I can't find a building that's cut off from street access like you mentioned. I see the miles of hallways between buildings, do some of them not have exterior doors? Pardon the bad picture (Google satellite) and the long post (explaining the bad picture)  Okay - see the big building in the middle there that looks like someone built onto it at a stupid angle? (That's exactly what happened.) That's B156 and B156A, where 'A' is the rightmost part of it. There are several problems here that aren't visible from the satellite views. First, there is a fence with no through-access in the bottom right, where that residential street is. No gate there. North of it, there's a double-fence around the train tracks, which in spite of being out of service, are still pretty much constantly locked. In theory you can open them, but it doesn't help much since all the entrances on that side are disused semi-truck loading sites IIRC. The gates are electric sliding gates on tracks, and they have a nifty amount of barbed wire on them. The only street access to 156A is the road to the southwest, running off the west end of the picture. It goes through two security gates and out to Eastern Point Road entrance about 1/3 to 1/2 a mile west of there. However, any ambulance that manages to get up there still has the problem of being unable to get the patient out. Once he goes inside, the labs are all in the far, far back of that building, through offices and cubicles, an air-lock, and (depending on the lab) either upstairs or in the basement. Half of the basement labs are inaccessible by elevator, while the other half are. It depends on whether you're in 156A or 156 for your basement lab.  The upstairs ones are all elevator accessible, but two floors are only accessible by one of the elevators and not the other, meaning if you're on the 4th floor, you need to take an elevator to the 3rd floor, then go across the building to the other elevator that gives you the 4th floor and mechanical penthouse.You have to be very, very careful about where you get hurt. There's actually one place where you have to take an elevator down five feet because of the merge between 156 and 156A having different utility structures. The second floors don't line up, so it's a 5-foot elevator or stairs. Not a problem usually, but tell that to the guys wheeling the gurney.  I suppose technically there is one street-access method for B156A, but it's pretty much impossible to get to the guy who just lost a hand in the labs in time all the same. Also, those miles of hallway are elevated, second-floor walkways. Some people called them hamster-tubes. Sundae fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Jul 25, 2012 |
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Jul 25, 2012 03:23
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I'm picturing a cross-eyed, misanthropic architect whose favorite movie was Brazil. Or an average planning committee.
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Jul 25, 2012 14:55
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lavaca posted:Yesterday my co-worker on the other side of my cube wall actually expressed disappointment in the fact that Clippy is no longer part of Microsoft Office. He then had a very loud phone conversation about how he just doesn't understand Facebook. Alas, he still has at least two more years until retirement. Heh, I had a client like that. He emailed over a bunch of material that I couldn't open. I asked him if he had Microsoft Office, and if not, to please save his files so that they were in a compatible format. He emailed back, "No I do not have Microsoft Office. Please forward it to me. Thanks."
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Jul 25, 2012 16:44
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ItalicSquirrels posted:I'm picturing a cross-eyed, misanthropic architect whose favorite movie was Brazil. Or an average planning committee. Joke's on you - there wasn't a planning committee. Most of those buildings have been haphazardly added onto the original site over the last 30 years or so. On the bottom left part of the picture, you can just barely see building 118N. It connects to 118W, S, and E. 118E connects to 118D, C, B, and A off of it. E stands for both "East" and E. Which one, though, depends on which side of the building you're in. The room numbers reset at the junction of East and E. I got lost in the 118-complex when I first started there, trying to find an ARD lab. I asked a guy how to get to room (whatever the hell it was), and he apologized and said that he only knew how to get to and from his own office.
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Jul 25, 2012 18:05
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I need to find a way to get this one coworker to leave me the gently caress alone. This guy is too friendly to the point of toeing the line between friendly and creepy. He has no business being in my corner of the office every day, yet somehow always makes his way over to talk to me and one other employee about mundane poo poo that is in no way related to our work multiple times a day every goddamn day. He keeps mental notes of the most random-rear end personal facts (who the gently caress else cares and takes note of when the temp tags come off my car and I get real plates? And goes out of their way to see if said plates have been installed every day? Seriously dude. Every day he would be like "looks like you haven't gotten your plates yet!" and when I finally did he waltzed into my cube and was like "someone got their license plates!!" I am aware of this. I drive this car every day. In fact, installed them myself. Go the gently caress away.) He also is too touchy-feely, always doing weird shoulder touches while he's talking to me or my other coworker. He's also one of those annoying people who tells other people to smile. No goddamnit, I'm concentrating on properly dimensioning a computer model. I'm not going to stare at my computer grinning like an idiot just for you. gently caress off. Every day he'll walk into my cube and ask me what I'm doing. Every. Goddamn. Day. I've tried ignoring the hell out of him when he's hovering around my cube entrance, and if I don't acknowledge his hovering he'll walk in and touch me to get my attention, then ask me what I'm doing. I'll give him terse one-word answers and he'll continue to stand there. Every day at the end of the day he comes to my cube and tells me it's time to leave, and waits expectantly like I'm gonna come with him. I always find some way to dick around at my desk for a few extra minutes till I'm sure he's gone. It's gotten to the point where I dread hearing someone walk towards my cube because it might be him, come to inform me about some other mundane detail about my car or ask me what I'm doing, yet again. My other coworker gets the same treatment from him and feels the same way I do (we had a nice bitch-fest over lunch the other day), but when we talked it over together we realized don't really have anything to go to HR about yet since if we went we'd basically be telling them "this guy is too friendly make him stop!" Regardless, I've been contemplating sending an email to his supervisor just to start a paper trail in case he firmly crosses the line into creepy territory.
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Jul 26, 2012 00:40
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I was put on four "15" (60) minute conference calls today, with my supervisor and a few people from other areas of the organization. My role on these calls was to take the last five minutes of the call walking them all through accessing the Google Docs I set up for them to use for filesharing. (I protested this since these people all had trouble logging into a website and clicking one button that said Yes on it, a few months back. After I set up their user/pass and gave step by step instructions with screenshots.) 55 minutes of silence from me, followed by 5 minutes of trying to explain the simplest thing in the world to old people who don't understand anything. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I asked if I could just call in at the end and was told I should be on the full call, "just in case." I also currently have more projects than any two of my coworkers combined. On the plus side, in two weeks I will have an office with a door. God yes. The Berzerker fucked around with this message at 01:02 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 01:00
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