I’m working in a new office. I’m not really used to offices. Most of the people here that I come into contact with I’m indifferent to. A handful are really getting on my tits, though. First up is an Italian woman, very friendly but she has this theeckah, theeckah Eetaleeanah ackachentah. Alaahsoah getsah highahleeah eckah-chitabeelay. I sit directly next to her and her frantic telephone calls drive me up the fucking wall. Another desk over is a nice enough guy except he constantly makes dreadful jokes and puns then laughs apologetically to himself in this creepy asthmatic wheeze. Across the office from me is a goblin. She cackles. Three days a week this Irish woman comes in, she routinely blanks me, I think it may be in a playing-hard-to-get-flirty kind of way. She definitely thinks she’s a hottie. She’s in her 50s. Pig ugly. In the finance department there’s a West Indian woman who laughs herself almost to death roughly every seven minutes. I can’t tell you how irritating that is when all you can think about is going home. There’s another woman who I angered long ago and she still harbours a grudge. There’s the Australian who is harmless but dull. And finally there’s my immediate boss who I think might have Aspergers or some sort of behavioural disorder. There are a few others, but they're not in today so I can't even call them to mind. One's the Director. Way to make an impression, Mr Director!
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
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two people, both (unfortunately) are women. the jolly hockey sticks woman who sits on the bank of desks behind me and speaks with an incredibly loud voice. i'd only just realised that the reason i'm feeling calm and chirpy today is because she's not in.
second woman, is a french actuary who sits across the aisle, about 15 feet away. also very very loud, but prone to high-spirited laughing and flirtatious chat. also: she bust the closest printer to me by sending it about 40 copies of a 50 page document to print then leaving it unattended so the output tray got rammed and blocked the output rollers, the print backlog seizing up the whole works and causing the printer to be out of commission for approx. one month, during which I had to walk down to the other end of the department (50 feet) every time i had to print anything. no remorse was expressed either, the witch.
things are generally on the up though, since my passive-aggressive project manager left just before christmas, thank fuck.
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Gah! I've just heard another one. NOt actually in my office, in an adjoining department, but he's ubiquitous, a roamer, and fucking loud. He's a big fat **** with a bald head and a big satchel mouth. Looks like a dribbler. He's always bellowing at his underlings and he sounds like Henry's Cat. Aaaooooww! I taaaaooooowwwwllld yaaaaa! Yaaaaa needed to fiiiiiaaaaaaooooowwwllll that repooooooaaaaaooort by Friiiiiidiiiiiiiiiiy, yaaaaaa plooooowwwwwnnkah! I'd like to kick his fucking jaw off.
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this morning nicola has made me because I came, full of life, muching on some yoghurty bananas, and proclaimed that today I will work on something different to the thing that I've been doing all year, just in order to clear my mind a bit and refresh my creativity. She laughs and goes "No, you need to carry on with it".
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not...
You reached over with your hand and knocked my Jap over
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No one bothers me in my office, which leads me to believe I'm the arsehole.
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I'm kind of mellow in the office, I can't be bothered to get wound up, if I did I'd fucking kill someone.
I sit opposite an overweight 50plus Dutch Guy who has a speech impediment so bad he can only pronounce roughly a third of vowel sounds, considering Dutch is mostly vowel sounds you can imagine that most of my day is spent listening to what seems to be a Dutch speaking Donald Duck.
My new colleague is from Iraq, he's trying to get ahead in the company after working here for 6ish years in a dead end CS job, and sadly he has no technical ability or memory skills and needs checking on simple tasks by the hour. Plus he can't do any of the paperwork as his English isn't good enough.. And though it sounds mean, neither is his Dutch, but hell he's a refugee so let's give him a chance...
Other than that I'm running out of colleagues as they're all giving notice. Since the job markets picked up here there's a lot on offer..
Up in development there is a massive knob head though, 24 years oldish, money driven lanky streak of piss that walks like a drunken puppet and has a beer gut that wouldn't look out of place on someones grandfather... Still I don't have to see him on a daily basis anymore so I don't care.
The new woman who will be running the canteen somehow knows my name and constantly calls me 'Darryn' and smiles and winks at me all the time... I wonder if I'll get bigger portions ?
One of our big bosses looks like a 70's Dracula and he's just come out of a meeting with what seemed to be Ben Stiller..
What I hate most about this office though is that it's now open plan, I have no shelter, no corner, and no hiding hole so I have to have TMO open in a small window in the corner of the screen.
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The worst thing about my office is the fact that it's about the size of a shoebox and there's eight of us in here. Shockingly, I actually pretty much like everyone here. Though my boss's relentless Pollyanna attidude gets right on my tits.
Me: 'we're going to have a bit of a problem. There's six magazines to get to press by the end of next week, I've got to write 20 pages, and all our clients are fuckwits, who will wet themselves if there's a single comma in the wrong place, and not enough use of the word 'stakeholder'. And there's only me and my deputy.' Him: 'Sarah, it will be fine. Don't worry.' Me: 'How will it be fine?' Him: *wanders off*
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Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
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I have Lisa. Lisa has Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Lisa talks about this in detail. Lisa talks about what she can and cannot eat. Lisa makes a fuss if people bring in chocolate. “Ooh, what’s in it, if there’s more than 40% cocoa solids, I can’t eat it you know. Me with my IBS and all”. Whatever food is on offer, Lisa cannot eat it. Lisa, however, manages to trough her way through about 26 bags of crisps, a ready meal, a loaf of bread and butter and fuck knows what else during the course of the average day. Oh, and she eats with her mouth open as well. Lisa picks up her bag, meaningfully, and says “I might be some time” before fucking off to the disabled loo. Where she probably just has a wank. Lisa gives unsolicited and unneeded detail about the workings of her alimentary tract. Lisa is a right pain in the arse. Plus she has protruding rabbity teeth, which make her look like a wizened rodent. Most of the time I want to smash those massive buck teeth down her annoying whinging throat. Digest that, bitch!
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quote:Originally posted by Louche: ... Whatever food is on offer, Lisa cannot eat it. Lisa, however, manages to trough her way through about 26 bags of crisps, a ready meal, a loaf of bread and butter and fuck knows what else during the course of the average day. ...
Christ, that's annoying. Does she not watch Gillian McKeith? All that shitty food is what's giving her bowels gyp. But I cannot tolerate picky eaters at all. Especially ones that say 'I can't eat that', meaning 'I don't like it'. I'm picky like that.
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posted
I've got to start thinking about SORTING MY LIFE OUT and getting some kind of CAREER. I'm considering selling out and working as a PA in the City, but the one thing that really, really puts me off looking for a new job is the probablility of working in an open plan office. I've had my own office for 3 years now, and I honestly don't think I could sit in a room with other people all day. Talking on the phone in their phone voice. Eating. Bitching. Wandering. Looking over my shoulder. Noticing what time I leave/arrive. It's not natural.
The woman in the next door office is generally sweet, but can be very nosy (ie "ooh, with a boy?" *smirk* if I mention I'm going to the cinema). Also she went into great detail about having a colonoscopy. Why would anyone want to hear about the state of someone else's colon? What the hell is wrong with people?
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Does every office have middle-aged woman in accounts who will exploit every opportunity to talk about her children? Ours also phones them at 3.00pm to make sure they've got home okay, and then proceeds to talk them through the process of making beans on toast (sans fromage). The only time she went quiet was when one of her sons failed the entrance exam to get in to the same public school as his siblings, lol.
In the good old days before The Redundancies, we had a tech support guy who was hugely in to computer games. Now I like PC games too, but once he found that out the true extent of his nerdiness became apparent. When he wasn't busy, he'd come over to my desk to tell me about a new graphics card that was due for launch. He'd say everything in a hushed whisper as if his information was so top secret that he was doing me a favour by passing it on.
"Psst, don't buy an Nvidia forty four hundred. The ATI 9550 GTX Hyper is coming out on friday - I'll send you a link. I've pre-ordered one mate. Only £279 and it's built on a 0.11u fab with a 400Mhz clock and 128 MB of low latency RAM!"
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I had an IT man like that. He'd come and whisper, conspiratorially: 'The email system will be down for half an hour'. Or 'The nework's running a bit slow.' He also put aftershave directly on to his shirt, so it made greasy circles. MAD.
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quote:Originally posted by herbs: 'I can't eat that', meaning 'I don't like it'
What is the fuck with that? I get asked all the time 'what don't you like to eat?' to which the answer is always 'errrr, nothing' and they keep asking 'there must be something....' and they list endless types of food they can't stand until they exhaust their list and my own patience. I just have foods I choose not to eat out of preference. I usually don't eat pastry as I always find if its dry then it becomes less enjoyable and more like a chore, but if someone served me a pie for dinner then that bastard would get my knife and fork going like Keith Moon's drumsticks.
But back on topic, my office is not pre-tty good right now. I mean, you already know about my colleagues who consider bednobs and fucking broomsticks as evil, so you kind of get an idea of what kind of lunacy I might face from time to time.
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Our cleaner is a very talkative lady of West Indian origin. She seems to consider her thyroid operation the highlight of her life. However I feel I should forgive her as she once made me do a proper office-lol. The MD had just returned from a holiday in the sun. As she cleared the mugs from his desk, she said, "Back from holiday, Ken? That's a lovely tan!" then walked away muttering "...not as good as mine though."Posts: 14015
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Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
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quote:Originally posted by herbs: But I cannot tolerate picky eaters at all. Especially ones that say 'I can't eat that', meaning 'I don't like it'. I'm picky like that.
I cannot stand finicky eaters. Okay, you don’t like it, just don’t fucking eat it. Don’t stand there telling me that you can’t eat it because you’re gluten/wheat/dairy intolerant when patently you’re just an attention seeking mememememe whore. Sometimes I think the whole Western world’s relationship to food has got so fucking screwed up that we may as well start praying for soylent green time. At least then there’ll be no adverts about what eating something as fucking basic as a fucking yoghurt does for your poor beleaguered tummy and that Special K bars will enable you to wear a nice red bikini or that Ian Botham’s heart was saved from imploding by a couple of shredded wheat.
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quote:Originally posted by Black Mask: I'd like to kick his fucking jaw off.
Is this one of those posts full of love you were trying to convince me you made so often?
The guy who sits next to me, Tom. Tom and I are on the same project, except that Tom works harder at avoiding work than he does doing actual work. After two years of attempting to expose Tom as the fraud he is, I've finally raised the issue with our manager. She says she knows he's a lazy unproductive bastard, but what are you gonna do?
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H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
one of my friends has a life-threatening nut allergy and will not shut up about it. generally we make allowances, but whilst not normally lolsome, this provided much glee-fodder when at a friends' wedding reception in the autumn, she proceeded to berate the catering manager for providing a buffet where people might touch the food after touching their nuts (ooer) - all this without even asking if they'd kept an uncontaminated selection for her (which they had).
a third friend took exception to this freakout because it happened in earshot of the groom. arguments ensued, including the peanutty-friend's alcoholically-enhanced husband threatening to lamp the third friend one, then disappearing for an hour, peanutty-friend dissolving into drunken tears and dragging fourth friend round entire country-spa venue looking for irate husband on grounds of 'i don't know what he might do', whilst the rest of us relaxed in the champagne bar enjoying the entire floor show.
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There's several behavioural trends that are causing me to wonder if I may be starting to, you know, lose it. One of them is way my morning and afternoon cuppa really are the highlight of my working day. I really look forward to proper strong tea, 3 sugars, in my dinosaur mug. If someone comes into my office and attempts to speak to me while I'm enjoying my cuppa I get really quite irrationally enraged. It's spoilt the tea for me. Is this normal?
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It's God's way. The humble nut is his selection. When he cast out Lucifer, he felt a bit bad about him having to travel all the way to hell without something to nibble on. So he gave him a bag of dry roasted and a bottle of water to help with the powder at the bottom of the bag.
posted
On a slightly related note, I have to deal with a fair amount of callout engineers. Now, there are two types of callout engineers and I struggle to work out which ones I hate more. Typically, say, it’ll be a printer engineer.
Now your first type is the lifetimer. These guys are pretty quirky. I’m not sure how you become a lifetimer, whether it’s the result of simply spending too long in the job, or if they’re a completely different type of person from the outset, but these guys live for their jobs. They spend their entire lives attending printer expos, and can list the part numbers of fusers, developers, drum kits, mainboards, you name it, from virtually any printer released in the past 10 years by the manufacturer they support, along with its current latest driver and firmware revisions. They’re eccentric in the geeky way that’s fairly endearing. You can tell the majority of them are more at home in the company of electrical items than other human beings and are probably all single. These people, if they were slightly more academically minded, would probably have become science and technology lecturers (compare them side by side and you can tell they’re cut from the same cloth). These guys are odd but they’re ok, except maybe for slightly dubious personal hygiene and unfortunate dress sense which can only be described as ‘functional’
The other kind of callout engineer is the one I hate. You can tell, these guys are basically trying to make a fast buck. The money’s not bad in callout work, after all. These are basically the reject sales rep types, who would like to make their livings going about, doing consultancy and pumping sales, winning contracts and the like, but lack any particular social charisma making such tasks next to impossible. Instead they plump for the easy route: sign up with a printer manufacturer’s support team, do the 5 day course, and then you’re a certified engineer despite the most technical thing they’d done hitherto was tie their shoelaces. Unlike the lifetimers who wear functional clothing appropriate to their jobs, these chaps dress like sales reps, but cheaper. Bargain basement shirts and pinstripe trousers, and a big-knot tie. The image is completed by leaky company stationary in the top pocket, and compulsory sweat patches under the arms and on the small of their back. These sweat patches stem from the fact these chaps want to be sales reps, but they don’t get as big a budget for their cars. They will always, however, choose the Audi over the better specced VW or Skoda because of the badge, at the detriment of things such as climate control and air conditioning. So the majority of their day is spent in an under-specced sweaty little hatchback, or bending over broken printers. To cover up their rampant BO, they will be drenched in smelly cosmetics, from the compulsory Lynx deodorant, to the laughably expensive designer aftershave that they apply to their entire bodies from the waist up (and maybe even below). These people would of course be halfway excusable if they had any technical ability whatsoever but they don’t. Typically they wont even have the foresight to bring along a rudimentary tool set (a far cry from the lifetimer’s A2 sized wallet of tools of bizarre varieties, plus assorted plugs, connectors, lengths of wires and home-fashioned specialist tools). The number of times I’ve been asked if they can borrow a screwdriver, let alone an alan key, or small socket. They’ll start off scratching their heads while they think of some bullshit excuse as to why they don’t know the solution for the problem. They’ll then phone up several other people from their company doing their very best impression of David Brent. I can only imagine the guy on the other end, sat there with this clown’s number flashing up, turning to another colleague “Christ, it’s that moron Terry again. You’d have thought by now he’d have accidentally got a fucking clue..”
‘Terry’ will then do his best to try and impress you by how popular he is with his colleagues.
“Hey, Shaun, yeah it’s Terry. Y’know, Tez.. haha yeah, you joker, bet you’ve got a hangover this morning haven’t you.. eh… haha. Yeah, so you out last night then?... yeah, no it’s Terry. You know, Terry, the engineer from the Leeds office. No? Oh right, well I’m with a client at the moment… uhuh… oh right, so Dave can probably help. Right I’ll give him a call then”
“Hi Davey boy, it’s Tez, how’re you doing mate? Yeah… uhuh.. no, Terry, from the Leeds office. Yeah.. that’s the one, you remember me, eh? Hahah. Surprised you’re not out on the golf course as usual…” (he’ll probably cover up the mouthpiece at the this point, and turn to me, whispering “heh, always playing golf these guys, slackers, eh, am I right? Heheheh”)
He’ll repeat this process several times with several different people, each time putting up the façade of actually knowing the guy on the end of the line, who generally will need a couple of ‘reminders’ who the guy is. Eventually, once he’s done character profiling half the people who are all probably senior to him in the company, he might actually get round to explaining the fault to someone. Now, you’d have thought, since he’s got a printout in his hand of the fault description I sent him (the one thing he did remember to bring) he’d have had time to assess the details, and work out whether or not he knew the solution before driving all the way here to look at the printer (a journey he will describe to me in excruciating detail of course, listing road names and numbers in such a way that I get the impression that I’m meant to be impressed by his local geographical knowledge, rather than his ability to remember things he saw flash up on the screen of his Tom Tom ten minutes previously) but no, it seems all he has done is looked at the address, driven here and then phoned half the other support staff to see if any of them didn’t immediately tell him to fuck off as soon as they answer the phone. Anyway, so as he’s recounting the details which are right there in his sweaty, nicotine stained paw, he’s getting everything wrong. It might be something easily mistaken, like saying that the fault is with the yellow print head rather than the cyan, or sometimes it’s like he’s actually somewhere else entirely looking at a completely different printer with a totally different problem. You’ve obviously already explained both verbally, and by the email he’s got printed out, that you’ve tried several drivers, updated the firmware and tried an almost infinite number of settings combinations, so when he says, on the phone “Oh, right so you think it might be a setting on the driver then?” your mouth starts flapping in exasperation only to be met with a finger telling you to hush, and the fucker turning his back on you. When he eventually gets off the phone, he’ll tell you that the guy has told him he thinks it’s a setting on the driver. If it’s not the settings, then try installing the latest driver. If that doesn’t work then maybe a firmware update. Oh, and bizarrely, to try doing the same thing from another application (yeah, because I’ve come across plenty of printers which are completely unable to print from Adobe fucking Acrobat).
Eventually you’ll have jumped through all the requisite hoops, wondering all the while why you didn’t just get the chap he phoned come and look at it for you, or even recount this information to you before actually sending someone, and finally he’ll come to the same conclusion you already did several weeks ago, that it’s a hardware issue and a part will need to be replaced. Of course, he wont have a part. He’ll need to make another round of phone calls before being told exactly what part it is that needs to be replaced. At this point you’ll find, of course, that this particular model of printer they sold you was only sold for 3 days in outer Mongolia, and that no spare parts for it are currently in existence although there is a legend of a mythical spare developer unit atop a mountain guarded by ancient gods, and if he does a load of phoning around he can probably find out where it is and source if for you at some undisclosed point in the future, seemingly months at least, maybe years. Of course he’ll be telling you all along “See, the problem is mate you’ve got the TS-65742348-DET-br59-A whereas if you’d have got the TS-65742348-DET-br59-B, that’s the one that all the corporate customers use, and it used all the same internals and replenishables as every other printer we make, it’s just this one it seems it’s impossible to get parts for” all the time sucking his teeth and shaking his head like you’ve brought this situation upon yourself by your unwise purchasing.
I could go on ad infinitum, but this kind of engineer now seems to out-number the first 10 to 1. He’s part shitty sales rep, part David Brent, and part rip-off backstreet mechanic. He’s the worst kind of **** , but you should never for a second entertain the notion that you should just go ahead and replace the part yourself, because to do so would invalidate the warranty, which only allows knuckle-dragging, sloping browed morons who have been on the 5 day induction training to do it. And woe betide anyone who does because of course as soon as the warranty’s invalidated, the printer immediately turns to ash and crumbles into a pile on the floor, like a staked vampire in Buffy
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
she's also been removed protesting vociferously from a flight for complaining that they hadn't replaced all their nut snacks for the general punters with pretzels, as had been requested ahead of time, since apparently there was some third-hand rumour that nut dust in the recycled air might cause her head to explode on the spot.
i kind of have sympathy for her on that one, even though she later found out that she wouldn't have been at risk, because it was a business transatlantic flight and she had made a prior request which they agreed to, but which hadn't filtered down to the catering people on the specific flight concerned.
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not...
You reached over with your hand and knocked my Jap over
posted
quote:Originally posted by Vogon Poetess: There's several behavioural trends that are causing me to wonder if I may be starting to, you know, lose it. One of them is way my morning and afternoon cuppa really are the highlight of my working day. I really look forward to proper strong tea, 3 sugars, in my dinosaur mug. If someone comes into my office and attempts to speak to me while I'm enjoying my cuppa I get really quite irrationally enraged. It's spoilt the tea for me. Is this normal?
I'm afraid you may be "projecting emotion" Vogon and the clues are all in your post.
The tea you mention is really representing the need within you for a man, look at the way you word it - "proper strong tea" actually equals a "proper" strong man. But it's not just strength you crave, you also need sweetness and sensitivity, hence the (frankly disgusting) three sugars you drop into the mix.
The Dinosaur Mug represents your deep primitive urges and instincts. Basically to find a mate and reproduce, but also it shows that you haven't really let go of your childhood, perhaps you are clinging on to it a bit too hard as things haven't worked out for you the way you envisioned when you were a small girl?
If someone comes in and interrupts you whilst you are engaged in this activity you become enraged and the whole thing is "spoilt" - on a subconcious level you are not just drinking the tea but are in fact enjoying your time with your ideal man. A proper man who is strong and yet sweet, a man who understands you and wants to spend time with you.
The one who you imagined in your childish daydreams. Who has failed to materialise now you are well into your adulthood.
It is not hard to see why this supressed anger, spills out of you when someone interupts the fantasy and brings you back to reality with a rude bump.
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They're good people in the office where I work at the moment. All decent sorts. But that's because it's a contractor heavy environment and anyone that isn't a decent sort just gets their contract chopped ("er, yeah, unfortunately the budget's run out, yeah, just this morning we spent the last bit unfortunately and, er... next Tuesday's your last day then, sorry about that.")
That said, it's also astonishingly top heavy with management here - I mean even more so than every other place is.
You know those sort of Two Ronnies type sketches where a Ronnie goes to a hotel and the receptionist, porter, waiter, chef, cleaner, doorman etc etc are all in fact the other Ronnie doing all the different jobs? Well this place is the precise opposite of that. Every single task has about seven people in charge of it. The day I started I had one guy meet me in reception, another one show me my desk, another one set up my login for one network, another one for another network, another one got my door pass, another one added me to the security system... Every few minutes I'd meet a new manager who was just as much in charge of what I was doing as the previous guy.
I started to wonder if it was a set up. I was thinking, Oh, hello, here comes another one... I should really do a video explaining what I'm up to each morning and hand it round to all of them.
And of course the great bit is how they all take the credit for anything which actually gets finished. They all email whoever their own bosses are (about 5 over-bosses to each under-boss as far as I can tell) and give them the great news, without ever mentioning the person that actually did the work. But I'm cool with that. They're payin', know what I mean.
posted
No I rippsed into him for having nicotine stained fingers, not specifically for smoking. It indicates either a chain smoker or someone with poor personal hygiene.
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![[Frown]](frown.gif)
because I came, full of life, muching on some yoghurty bananas, and proclaimed that today I will work on something different to the thing that I've been doing all year, just in order to clear my mind a bit and refresh my creativity. She laughs and goes "No, you need to carry on with it".
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