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Oh god. I've worked as an engineer for an A/C and heater manufacturer for five years. While we're a smaller company, it looks like pretty much everything applies to me. Some fantastic bullet points: 1. My boss is retarded. He cannot spell, he cannot use proper grammar, and he even lacks verbal communication skills. Here is a typical email he sent to a customer. quote:We will seal around the holes with foam filter on Booth side to seal. We do not want to make this to small so you will have some tolerance for you hose connections. My emails are typically very detailed and I have gotten in trouble in the past for that. 2. I am the only person in the company that knows how to use a computer. I routinely show people how to access the files on the server, remove viruses, etc... Half of the people don't even know how to save stuff to their computer from an email. If I send someone an email stating that a file is at S:\TCHENG\31-33\31\filename.pdf, they call me and have me email it to them because they don't know how to access it. Which would be fine, if they didn't need me to do it every other day. 3. I am the only person in the company that knows how to use a camera. If I want a decent picture, I have to take it myself. Otherwise it will either be blurry (nobody knows what macro mode is), a video instead ("I wondered why it said it was recording!") or you won't be able to tell what they're taking a picture of. I am also the only person in the company that knows how to get pictures off of the camera, and so every hour I have people bringing me one of the three company cameras with pictures that they need printed/emailed. 4. I am the only person in the company that knows our part numbering scheme. It's not very good, but its been in use for twenty years and its not something we can easily change. But, there are certain tricks to it. If somebody tells me they need a 3425022A6001A I can immediately tell you it's a painted part (34...) for a condenser (250XX) and it is probably a bracket (6001). People are constantly amazed that I can tell them what a part is based on the part number (we have thousands of numbers). 5. The blame game. The motherfucking blame game. If something goes wrong, its always somebody's fault. This is why I am stupidly anal about paperwork. If someone rights something up with a wrong part number on it and I process it without noticing it, I always make sure I can find it easily. I have excel sheets with thousands of ECR numbers so I can quickly search through them and find the request and who wrote it, to absolve me of any wrongdoing (not that I'm perfect, but I'll at least admit when I make a mistake, unlike other people). Because I do all of the CAD, all of the instructions, and all of the engineering changes, I'm the first person people look to blame; I have to make sure that if it's not my fault, I can let it be known. I hate passing the buck like that, but my job pretty much depends on it. 6. Everyone wants their requests done immediately. Everyone. Sales promises customers things that can't physically be done. I have to find a way for it to work, but to do it properly takes time. We regularly release systems that haven't been properly tested, built, etc... and despite being burned on it repeatedly, we still do it. I tell them we can either do things quickly or correctly, but we always end up doing the former rather than the latter. 7. Parking spaces. We don't have assigned parking spaces. But certain people get mad if they can't park in the same spot they always do. I like to show up a few minutes early and take their spot just to piss them off. So basically, I usually feel like I'm the only competent person working here, and because of this I've become a 'go-to' guy for special requests, in addition to my already massive work load. However, I've long since stopped caring, and I don't come in early, I don't stay late (I can't anyway, I have a daughter to pick up) and I take my time and do things correctly, which gets on a lot of people's nerves. I don't do any of the bullshit office politics that tends to go on. I do my job and I think I do it pretty well, and it's gotten to the point where if I quit I'd probably gently caress the company pretty good because I'm the only one that ever knows what's going on. Not that I'd test my luck of course. I have successfully gotten a raise though, when nobody else in the entire company (supposedly) did because they were afraid of losing me and knew I was underpaid. edit: Wow, this was longer than I thought. I'm more disgruntled than I would have thought. I don't even feel that disgruntled - though I do like to mess with people. One of our sales girls has the unfortunate task of updating a customer's 'issues list' which has all issues for a certain system. When we fix one of the issues, they want exactly what we did written on it. Which wouldn't be a problem, except they just gave this to us a few months ago and it has issues on it from years ago, which have been fixed, which we hardly remember. So we had a new issue come up (they wanted a hole .030" smaller) and when I was done making the simple change, I sent the salesgirl a 5-6 paragraph email detailing exactly what was done, what it will effect, etc... going so far as to estimate the expected gravitational influence from the additional .030" of plastic on the part. She was not amused. I certainly was, though. CornHolio fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Apr 21, 2010 |
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Apr 21, 2010 16:45
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 09:15 |
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Oh I almost forgot: the following tale is precisely why I hate some of the people I work with. In September, I found a problem with a switch of ours. I wrote a change request, sourced a new part, etc... Sales would not sign off, because the new switches were $4 more per, and there was only the one supplier. So, it was put on hold. We would slightly rework the switches we had to make them work. The rework would be ghetto and there was a lot of room for error, but if done correctly, it might work. I filed it and moved on. Last week, sales got a call from the customer about the switch. It was having the exact problem I had tried to fix. Sales wanted to know why we had not done anything. Somehow, in December, our purchasing department had ordered 1,000 of the new, more expensive switches, for no reason at all. Still don't know why. Nothing would have prompted them to do so. We had them in stock, though. So I put the original request through, and thought I was done. But no, sales knew it was their fault it was not done sooner. They wanted me to cancel the original request and write a new one, with a newer date and number assigned to it. They didn't want to look bad. Suck to be them though, I had logged everything using the original number, and that is something that cannot be edited. So ultimately in stating to the customer was was done to resolve the problem, the sales department was intentionally vague and didn't reference any of our own documents. The best part was when purchasing refused to sign it, insisting I call the sales guy, who was out of town (and who restarted the whole mess), to confirm. I had the phone in my hand, and I told my boss what I was going to do, and he wouldn't let me and told me to go ahead with it without confirming. Which put me right in the middle of stupid loving people politics.  I hate how irresponsible and immature 'the bosses' can be. And it makes me sick to think of how much more than me they make. Which is why I don't usually do them many favors. CornHolio fucked around with this message at 18:16 on Apr 21, 2010 |
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Apr 21, 2010 18:13
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I hate to post in this thread again, but you know what I absolutely hate the most? The questions that people come and ask me that would literally require ten loving seconds of research for them to find out on their own. TEN. SECONDS. Today: "Do you remember what this system was designed for? "WELL LET ME PULL UP THE SPEC SHEET, OH HERE IT IS, RIGHT WHERE IT SHOULD BE, AND LO, IT DESCRIBES PRECISELY WHAT THE SYSTEM WAS DESIGNED FOR! BOY I'M GLAD I WASTE MY TIME MAKING THESE!" Also, our assembly line builds things. I created massive amounts of instructions on how to build said things. Well, they don't follow those and instead go by memory. Why? Because the Production Manager has them locked up in his office. Great idea! No wonder they come to me with questions on how to build them! I'm becoming bitter  On the plus side, I loving OWN casual fridays. I wear jeans all week long (I'm routinely in the plant and found I tear up nice pants within days). So on friday I wear my most awesome heavy-metal band shirt I can find (as long as it's not offensive of course). Megadeth? Nile? Amon Amarth? gently caress yeah. I've been doing it for years and nobody says a thing. Then again my boss wears a Harley shirt most days, so... yeah. We don't have a strict dress code.
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Apr 22, 2010 00:24
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Chemmy posted:Not to ruin your day or single you out but those people make you take pictures off of the camera because they know you'll do it. I usually say I'll get to it when I have time. Which is usually the end of the day. Except when it's my boss, which is most of the time.
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Apr 22, 2010 00:59
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Chemmy posted:Think of it more as being an efficient resource. CornHolio is an engineer with an engineering degree. He can do more valuable things than download photos from a camera. My actual engineering work to mindless bullshit work ratio is about 1:10. And most of that isn't mindless coworkers, it's mindless management. It doesn't help that I'm one of two people in the entire company with an actual college degree. And the other one got his degree in the USSR and while he's smart, he's also kind of isolated and has no idea about how the company works. And then as for the actual design work that I do, Typically I'll spend a lot of time on a project, only for it to be shelved for a year or more while management tries to decide what they want to do with it, if anything. And then when they do decide, none of the parts quotes are accurate anymore, and half the unit has to be redesigned anyway because the design specs have changed. Then we're given the go-ahead but we don't have time to test it, create instructions for building it or servicing it, or do any time studies on building it because sales has sold hundreds of units before it was released and they need them NOW. Except those many units we release and sales has purchasing order hundreds of parts on, only to never. sell. a. single. one. I enjoy wasting my time. Seriously, if management would let me and the R/D fabber guy have at it, we'd be able to create a new unit every week. Hell, there's a unit I've been begging to release, but my boss won't let me because he can't decide on what he wants the intake screen to look like. Our customers are apparently begging for it, too. fursmbrero posted:Good god, engineers do so love to take pictures. And video. And only an idiot would encourage an engineer to transfer media files to the network themselves. Talk about a recipe for a storage disaster. I'm also partially in charge of the network, though I really don't have a lot of networking experience. We have eighty gigabytes of server space! We're with the times! Yeah! God drat I've bitched about my own job enough. Basically everybody I work with is your typical midwestern Nascar-loving Obama-hating uneducated redneck, even the CEO. If you don't like classic musclecars, the Colts, and country, and send stupid forwards to everybody in the company every day, you don't really fit in. CornHolio fucked around with this message at 03:49 on Apr 22, 2010 |
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Apr 22, 2010 03:35
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FogHelmut posted:At least the free instant coffee tastes like mud and makes you poo poo so you get to spend a lot of time hiding out in the bathroom stall. I can say this is 100% true. 
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Apr 22, 2010 14:45
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bitreaper posted:Start your own company. Even if I had the willpower and the resources, everybody that works here has to sign a 'non-compete' agreement where we agree that we can't get another job in the same industry (ie, for somebody that might possibly be a competitor) for five years after our employment ends here. I don't even know if they can legally do that, actually. I'm no lawyer though. Something else I thought of. Management likes to change the clocks on us. Right now, between the timeclock for hourly people, the server, and my phone, none of them have the same time. The server and the phone are four minutes off, and the phone and the timeclock (and thus the lunch buzzer) are another two minutes off. And none of them match my cell phone. I was consistently late to work for over a month because I was going by the wrong phone; The first time I heard about it was during my review where my boss told me I had been late every day for months. I'm supposed to go by the phone clock, by the way. Which recently jumped back two minutes based on my other clocks.  So it goes.
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Apr 22, 2010 15:09
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marketingman posted:I hate the office politics but is it wrong for me to like suits and dressing "well"? A nice french cuff shirt always makes me pretty happy. Sorry no, it just makes you gay, that's all.
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Apr 25, 2010 18:40
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So a question re: salary employees. I am in Indiana. I am salary. Myself and every other salary employee, when hired, was offered $XX,XXX per year (equates to $x,xxx paid every two weeks). In the month of July, we're shutting down for a week. We are told we're not being paid unless we use vacation time. Shouldn't my pay every other week be increased to hit that salary number? Can they do that to salaried employees? They've done the same thing around Christmastime when we shut down for two weeks.
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Jun 8, 2018 15:52
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