Tales from the real-life Office Space

Jason

Ro and I were talking about this last night: We need a thread where we can share stories about dumbfucking co-workers. I will start.

Yesterday, a fellow reporter showed up to work an hour late and drenched in not just a sheen, but what appeared to a full blanket of his own sweat, mud, rainwater, and more sweat. Apparently, his car broke down the day before, so he decided to bicycle seven miles to work without a change of clothes or any kind of cosmetic remedy, rather than a) calling a taxi, b) taking a bus, c) calling me (I live six blocks from him), or any other common sense approach. Here's the kicker: His wife refused to drive him to work in her car, because keeping their home school schedule was far more important.

So he came to work a disgusting mess smelling like a wet dog. I gagged when he walked in the office. After an hour in the newsroom with him, I finally begged some hand lotion off of my boss and rubbed in on my upper lip to try to mask the stench.

Later in the day, my boss asked if I'd be willing to drive this guy and his bike home. First, I have a coup and the bike would not fit. Second, this guy and his griminess were not going in my nice car. I made up an appointment that I COULD NOT MISS in another part of the county and declined to give the ride.

Rochelle

I have so much to contribute for this thread, but I really need to get some work done.

gomidog

I like my co-workers, even when we have flamewars about random crud.
They are all great.

Jason

My boss, a person who gets paid far more money than I, has asked me twice already today how to convert military time. This is a peeve.

Cremlian

My boss, a person who gets paid far more money than I, has asked me twice already today how to convert military time. This is a peeve.

Hey that's work that is definitely beneath his pay grade :-p

Daedalus

My boss, a person who gets paid far more money than I, has asked me twice already today how to convert military time. This is a peeve.

Mine is when people (in a DoD office, no less) screw up phonetic spellings:
"A as in apple
B as in boy
C as in secret..."

Argh. >_

Rym

Mine is when people (in a DoD office, no less) screw up phonetic spellings:

I've used the NATO phonetic for as long as I've had to recite numbers over audio links. It should be required learning in any IT program.

Andrew

I've used the NATO phonetic for as long as I've had to recite numbers over audio links. It should be required learning in any IT program.

You know what's fun? Saying 'repeat' over the phone/radio with anyone who's ever been ground infantry.

Originalme8

My boss, a person who gets paid far more money than I, has asked me twice already today how to convert military time. This is a peeve.

Mine is when people (in a DoD office, no less) screw up phonetic spellings:
"A as in apple
B as in boy
C as in secret..."

Argh. >_<</p>

Yea because everyone knows that C is for seahorse!

Rochelle

I posted this a few years ago in the Fail Thread

This isn't my own personal fail, but something that just happened here at the office.

Sometimes it just truly amazes me of the intelligence of the people at my work. For a department that relies heavily on the use of computers, fax machines, and printers, you would hope/think/assume that the employees here would/should have an understanding of how to use these machines and its parts.

However, this is the government. This does not seem to happen here as often as one would hope.

So, an older employee went into the copy room and found that the fax machine/printer was low on toner. Because she did not know where the replacement toner was, nor did she even think to ask where it was, decided that taking the old toner cartridge and shaking it would perhaps fix it.

The results are quite amazing:


Since my office is right next to the copy room, I hear an "Oh my god! Oh, shit! Shit! Shit!" out of nowhere. I go up to investigate and find the old lady just covered in toner and seeing toner all over the corner of the room. At first, I wanted to just point and laugh, but since my supervisor's and section chief's offices happen to be across from the copy room, I had to see if she was alright.

So until further notice, the copy/fax/mail room is closed for now until we can get someone to clean it up properly. Of course our department is very reliant on that room as well.

Everytime I pass by the room, I can't help but laugh and give a facepalm to the absurdity of it all.

chaosof99

Not really coworker stupidity, but still funny.

I'm currently in training. My job is (or rather is going to be) basically developing web tools to enhance the ticketing system that is also managed by my department. The ticketing system and the web tools are later supposed to be used by the Service Desk. My boss had the idea that some hands on experience with the job of our "customers" a.k.a the service desk would be good for me and the other guy that started at the same time to gain some insight on their needs.

Well, one of the first things I heard while I was sitting in with one of the guys at the service desk was the words "Read the fucking manual" shouted across the room, describing the advice someone should give to one of the people that called the service desk..

Cremlian

My favorite thing is my supervisor wanted to give me a 4.0 out of 5.0 in our yearly evaluation but was told that no one gets above a 3.5....... Why even have a 5, 4.5 or 4 if you can't get it!!! My other favorite part is one of the scores they rated me on was "alignment" I was like "what the heck is alignment, am I chaotic 3.0?" my boss said "I think it's how often you just go with what the higher ups say and don't cause trouble"... *Note to self kiss ass more*.

P_TOG

Can these tales extend out into stories about fellow classmates? Because I had a guy in one of my classes ask what a water tower was for.

EDIT: It's also important to note that this man was at least 24 while asking the question.

Daedalus

I learned the US Army phonetic spellings because, well, I was a soldier. It is not difficult to learn. I sat down and learned it in one go before leaving for basic training.

When people screw it up it makes me rage.

theknoxinator

My favorite thing is my supervisor wanted to give me a 4.0 out of 5.0 in our yearly evaluation but was told that no one gets above a 3.5....... Why even have a 5, 4.5 or 4 if you can't get it!!!

The same thing would happen at my old job. However, the managers would occasionally give out 4's to new people to encourage them to do better (so I did get a few since I was only there for one year). Basically, if the company has a policy like that, they're basically saying that if you really deserve a 5, you're too good for them and your skills would be better served elsewhere. Also, managers like their jobs and don't want to get ousted by someone underneath them.

As for my current work place, we have a really good team of competent people, so I won't have any stories to tell.

Cremlian

The same thing would happen at my old job. However, the managers would occasionally give out 4's to new people to encourage them to do better (so I did get a few since I was only there for one year). Basically, if the company has a policy like that, they're basically saying that if you really deserve a 5, you're too good for them and your skills would be better served elsewhere. Also, managers like their jobs and don't want to get ousted by someone underneath them.

Actually it's more tied to the fact that the higher your rating, the bigger the raise. So they don't give people 4.0 and up because they don't want to hand out that money... Cheap bastards... However not too upset because I got a promotion with a nice raise as well.

theknoxinator

Actually it's more tied to the fact that the higher your rating, the bigger the raise. So they don't give people 4.0 and up because they don't want to hand out that money... Cheap bastards... However not too upset because I got a promotion with a nice raise as well.

Very true, I forgot about that aspect. Well, didn't work out for me in any case, pretty much everyone got the minimal raise and nothing more.

Brand

While, my current job isn't the height of excitement it is mostly free of stupidity. All my best terrible job stories are from a few jobs ago. I worked for these two fuckwads entrepreneurs, everything with that company was a disaster. But the best story really isn't about them or their company but a company that we shared space with. Oddly, the office was in apartment in a normal apartment complex. The other company had several women working the desks during the day. I kind of knew that the owner of that company was being some woman's sugar daddy there was lot of talk about how he bought some really expensive car for her and such. I never put it together though, with a women in the office who often got flowers and brought in her lap dog (both of which I was allergic to, fun!).

Well, one day I'm working and from around the corner I hear loud yelling and screaming. I get up to look out there is a woman in a full length fur coat in a fight with one of the girls. And I mean fighting, there was blood all over the walls, a computer and a larger printer had been knocked off the desk, coffee was all over the floor. It was really bad. One of the guys I worked with managed to grab one of them (ending up with blood all over himself). Well, it turns out the woman in the fur coat was the Company's owners wife and the other woman was his mistress. I managed to talk her into calming down a bit but shit was really bad. The police should have really been called. In the end the guy walked his wife out saying they would talk about it later. So yeah, best advice ever: If you have a mistress, don't have her work for you, especially if your wife has access to the office.

trogdor9

Mine is when people (in a DoD office, no less) screw up phonetic spellings:
"A as in apple
B as in boy
C as in secret..."

P as in pterodactyl...

gomidog

Some funny stuff that happened at my office recently.
- Nyan Cat was played incessantly yesterday from various computers, and at one point, from the big TV that one of the devs had hooked a laptop to.
- Due to the lack of people checking the documentation, there is a big sign of the Y U guy on the wall. Muse Games, Y U no read docs?!

edit: Also, we share the floor with this Devil Wears Prada fashion lady. One time the fridge coil burned out in the kitchen and made a stink. She FREAKED out (this was after the office had caught fire once) and started yelling at anyone plugging anything in, because she smelled Ozone. We were making tea our office and she came in and called us all "a bunch of crackheads," and we were like, "Ummm, the fridge over in the kitchen is broken. Our tea and computers has nothing to do with it."
She also is really mean in her gossiping. She eats fancy lunch that smells really good in the common area and talks all about who has horrible hair and who she wants to horsewhip. She's like a high school bitch turned pro.

Rochelle

You will be hearing about this certain coworker from me a lot. I really loathe this person and consider her the biggest waste of space on the entire planet. She's dumb as a post.

Anyways, when a big boss was leaving everyone signed a card wishing her good luck. Let's see if you can find the special message this dumb woman left the big boss.

progSHELL

Is this a birthday card as well?

Rochelle

No.

progSHELL

Oh.

ninjarabbi

I remember back in high school one of my classmates was really sick and my friend did the same thing.

JukeBoxJosh

I actually would find that hilarious if I was sick.

Hitman Hart

At the job I just left, I was told by my manager I needed to expand my horizons and be able to talk about anything with the customers by listening to them and asking questions, at least feigning interest to bring them in. This was the same manager who told me no way would we ever have F1 or Indycar on the TV we have as a demo of television service we were pitching and double no way to showing MLP. He argued that it was strictly for kids and refused to listen when I told him it was a big show among geeks, who would be excellent customers for the TV/internet/phone service that was our bread and butter, while something like Home Alone, which he put on once, was okay to have on mostly because it had Joe Pesci in it and he was in rated R movies too. Irony much?

YoshoKatana

So, today is Good Friday. That means all of the actual employees have a paid holiday, and all of the contractors don't *have* to come into work if they don't want to. I could use the money, so I came in.

I'm the only person here.

Also, I finished all of my work for the week on Wednesday, and have been repeatedly asking for more bugs to fix, but to no avail.

"Oh woe is me, being paid bullshittingly high amounts of money to sit around and do nothing!"

EDIT: I can print to any printer in the company except the printer on my floor. Geneva, Tokyo, London, Paris, any office in the world. Except the pinter that is literally ten feet away from me. I've been sneaking down to the trading floor, because they have the closest printers.

Yesterday I had an hour-long mandatory conference call with HR, where they explained to all of the contractors that INSIDER TRADING WAS BAD. Thanks, I didn't get the memo (I actually did).

While talking shop with one of my coworkers a few weeks ago, I mentioned SCRUM meetings (a quick, 15 minute stand-up meeting every day). He went to the boss and suggested it, claiming credit. While I don't really care about that, it really showed me how the office culture is like here. So, we start having these meetings every day, but they're hour-long, sit-down bitchfests. Sigh.

Jason

Yesterday I had an hour-long mandatory conference call with HR, where they explained to all of the contractors that INSIDER TRADING WAS BAD. Thanks, I didn't get the memo (I actually did).

Those meetings aren't for you. They exist so that lawyers can say they were held.

Churba

EDIT: I can print to any printer in the company except the printer on my floor. Geneva, Tokyo, London, Paris, any office in the world. Except the pinter that is literally ten feet away from me. I've been sneaking down to the trading floor, because they have the closest printers.

SOLUTION - Send a message in Japanese to the Tokyo(Or any other country's office, in whatever language is used there, unless you luck out and get the Guy in the paris office that reads japanese) office, asking if anyone can print something out for you on the printer in your office.

Cremlian

Those meetings aren't for you. They exist so that lawyers can say they were held.

I always enjoyed the animal safety meetings I have when I never interact with an animal....