The office: Chatter about your job

Congrats, Mark!

Regarding the newish job... kind of torn at the moment between "the boss is right, you should step up your game" and "you're a grown adult with a degree, a job shouldn't treat you like a teenager being scolded by their parents"

My bosses from the old job, as well as forgetting when my finish date was and calling work expecting me to be there three days after I left despite my giving 4 weeks notice, have apparently forgotten to stop paying me for the last three weeks and need me to send them the money back. I did notice an extra payslip that shouldn't have been there, but figured it was the 3 weeks holiday they owed me that I never took.

Apparently no, they had forgotten that too (a model of efficiency, this business *eyeroll*). Hopefully the two things they forgot will mostly cancel out and I don't have to give them much back.

Maybe this is for the best, because I suspect I might have had a hard time getting that holiday pay out of them otherwise...

edited 22nd Dec '15 1:21:24 AM by LoniJay

My day started at 0530 today due to a massive fire that completely destroyed a garage in town. I'm just this minute home.

We needed flats across the road emptied because of the huge pall of smoke but ended up having to get the police smashy-smashy squad to bust people's doors down and drag them out by force when they refused to leave.

Who gets all arsey and barricades themselves in when somebody comes to the door and says 'Excuse me, but would you care to come to the community centre before the cloud of poisonous gas kills you and your family?'

You're obviously more thorough than the Glasgow bunch. When a takeout down the tenement from us caught fire two years ago, all that happened was a fireman chapped our door and asked the wonderful question: 'Is there any fire in your flat lads?'

Yeah, that sounds like Strathclyde. We would come in and have a poke about with thermal imaging cameras and stuff.

Babies eat a lot. That is all.

From the place I work. They put this out.

edited 22nd Dec '15 10:08:10 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Is it wrong of me to think that it should be a capital offense to say "I really appreciate this" to servers making a delivery on a night with shitty weather, and then not tip them at all?

edited 29th Dec '15 5:38:05 AM by Nohbody

I always just responded to that sort of thing by mentally adding, "yes, I can see exactly how much you appreciate it."

Last night was horrifically busy for both the fire service and HMCG as half of Aberdeenshire had to be evacuated due to flooding.

I wasn't on duty with either, as I apparently dislocated my shoulder at a fire last week and went about without treatment for 5 days.

A busy week. And, likely to remain busy. :\

On Tuesday, our full-time driver managed to complain enough about working NYE and NYD that he convinced management to give him the days off. I was informally asked to cover his opening hours, which I agreed to even though I'd still have to close. It's only an hour and a half, and I need the hours anyway since I missed six days of work to go home for Christmas. I was also looking forward to using his truck two days in a row.

I came in today, and I discovered that when they changed the schedule to accommodate his holiday off, without asking any of us, they did not change my hours for today, they gave the other remaining driver the opening shift, and they gave me tomorrow off to make the full-time driver work Saturday in exchange for taking the two days off.

I'm put out because they took away a day of work. The full-time driver is upset because his goal was to get a four-day weekend. The third driver is mad because nobody told him he was supposed to open today.

Oh, and it was absolutely dead today. We had one order, and I went out to pick up parts from other stores twice. I was told I could leave whenever I wanted after twelve because there was only one client shop that we knew to be open, and I decided there was too little work to justify putting in more than eight hours, so I skipped my lunch break and went home at 3:30. So I didn't even get my extra hour and a half.

edited 1st Jan '16 9:10:11 PM by TParadox

Well holidays were good. However the local workplace grapevine ground out something interesting. Someone in a big supervisor role is quite possibly getting the axe within the next month due to chronic problems. I foresee this causing much chaos.

Well, yesterday was my first day back to work after maternity leave. I almost turned around and went home the entire way there and then my mom (she's watching him while I'm at work) had to practically shove me out the door. I wish I didn't need the insurance so I could just quit and stay home with my little guy full time.

Well, it seems that at the moment there's not much going on at the production office that takes precedence over transcribing these interviews, so functionally I guess I'm not so much interning as doing work for hire in their facility.

Of course, I say that, and then one of the producers notices we have a closet full of abandoned printers that need to go out today.

I only logged nine deliveries today at the day job, but I can think of at least two that I didn't log because I didn't have the ticket, and two more times I went to customers that I didn't add a line for because I was fixing a mispulled part.

On top of that, I went to get parts from other stores five times. So it was way too busy for a Saturday. I guess I can't complain too much about it though, because I had the time to read six chapters of my book when I wasn't on the road.

I wouldn't have brought up how busy the day was except an order came in at about 4:30 that we had to supply out of another store, and I agreed to go because I didn't realize how late it was. It also took ten minutes to get the order properly billed so I could leave because the person handling commercial orders was on a run so I wouldn't have had to take another trip to a partner store.

So I left for the hub store at 20 minutes until I was scheduled out. In rush hour traffic, with our store roughly halfway between the hub store and the customer's garage down one of the most congested roads on this side of town. As it turned out, if I just had to get it back to our store, I would have been able to clock out at a decent time, as I was driving by at five after.

So I get to the customer's shop, and they turned out to be just getting off the phone telling our store they had to cancel the order because their customer had canceled the service. I clocked out 20 minutes late for a canceled sale.

So I'm officially done with my part of the EU support justification.

Basically, every year we're supposed to fill a couple of Excel tables, which of course can't be done the easy way because instead of giving the details of every translation contract we want refunded, we need to give a total spent on every subcontractor, subtract the fraction of costs incurred by the year before the last (in this case 2014), then, in an absolutely counter-intuitive bullshit way, list all the contracts, along with the costs of each one, signed by the subcontractor that turned out to be most costly.

Apart from that, we're supposed to submit the logs from our time recording system that pertain to the standards translated, in order to get a refund for the work of people who had to review the subcontractors' work, which of course cannot be simple, because I have to feed a hundred UI Ds (or thereabouts) into a SQL query in the fucking Crystal Reports, manually. Then I have to export the generated report to Excel format and, what a fucking surprise, clean it up, because the way CR generates Excel files is sheer, utter and complete BULLSHIT.

In the week and a half I spent trying to put everything together, three quarters of my Ballantine's mysteriously vanished.

edited 19th Jan '16 12:31:01 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat

We're expecting snow tonight into tomorrow with some significant accumulations for the area. Work has decreed everyone is essential personnel and if you are on the schedule, you have to come in or get disciplinary points. Despite the fact my department isn't very busy tomorrow and likely would have budgeted someone anyway. Not any more. Everyone has to come in and the hospital will find something for employees to do. Considering my department is very specialized and we're not licensed to do any other clinical work, I'm curious to see how many people they can have doing data entry and stock refills.

I was already off tomorrow, so I'm off the hook, but I'm irritated on behalf of my coworkers. A few of them live in really remote areas that don't get plowed. So they have to risk life and limb or get points.

• flop* These last few days I was on call, and unlike previous times I have been on call, I actually got called in. I have been up since about 2-30 in the morning.

To be honest this is a bit more what I was expecting.

I'm supposed to be flying to CA on Sunday to be an assistant instructor for two back-to-back training classes, but a change in our travel policies has held up my travel authorization even being created, and now I'm floating in limbo wondering if I'm going to be able to make it at all.

Producer: "I need you to get quotes from printers so we can put a wrap on our party bus. Here's the web site for the company we're renting the bus from, you can get the specs from them."

Website: specs not listed

Me: *calls number*

Robot: "Press one for Booking."

Me: *presses one*

• hold music*

Robot: "The extension you have dialed is unavailable at the moment. Please leave a message."

Me: *hangs up, calls back, dials 1*

• hold music*

Staffer 1: "Thanks for calling, how can I help you?"

Me: "I need some information about a bus."

Staffer 1: "Okay, lemme connect you with a booking agent."

Me: "... okay." (I'm not speaking to Booking?)

• hold music*

• call dropped*

Me: *calls back, presses 1*

• hold music*

Robot: "If you are hearing this message during operating hours, we are busy with another client, please leave a message."

Me: *hangs up, calls back, presses 1*

• hold music*

Staffer 2: "Thanks for calling, how can I help you?"

Me: "I need some information about a bus."

Staffer 2: "Okay, I'll connect you to a booking agent."

Me: "... fine."

• hold music*

Robot: "The extension you have dialed is unavailable, please leave a message."

Me: *hangs up, calls back, dials one*

• hold music*

Staffer 3: "Thank you for calling, how can I help you?"

Me: "I need some information about a bus."

Staffer 3: "Okay, go ahead."

Me: "... um, okay. I'm not the one handling the booking, but we're looking at renting a 23-seat passenger bus from you and we wanted to wrap it, so can I get the model of the bus or the external dimensions so we can go to a printer?"

Staffer 3: "Let me connect you to a dispatch agent who can give you that information."

Me: "yeah, okay."

• hold music*

Robot: "The extension you have dialed is unavailable. Please leave a message."

Me: *leaves message*

Round 2: fight!

Staffer 1: "Thanks for calling, how can I help you?"

Me: "I'm looking for some specs on a passenger bus."

Staffer 1: "Okay sir, let me get you connected."

• hold music*

Staffer 2: "Maintainance?"

Me: "I'm looking for some dimensions on a passenger bus."

Staffer 2: "Oh, I'm sorry sir, I'm in the maintainance department, I just picked up the phone about to call somebody and we got connected by mistake. I can't do transfers, so you're going to need to hang up and call back."

Me: Okay. *hang up, call back, dial 2*

Staffer 3: "Thank you for calling, how can I help you?"

Me: "I'm looking for some specs on a bus."

Staffer 3: "I see, what information do you need?"

Me: "I need the model or the external dimensions of a 23-seat passenger bus so we can wrap it."

Staffer 3: "Okay, we don't actually have dimensions, we have our clients come out and measure the vehicle themselves so that if the measurements are off, we aren't liable."

Me: "...okay, thank you."

Staffer 3: "Here are our hours, you're free to drop in any time."

Me: "I see, thank you."

Producer: "Call back and demand a model so you can get dimensions from that."

Me: *calls back, dials 2 for dispatch*

• hold music*

Rep: "Thank you for calling, how can I help you?"

Me: "I need some information on a passenger bus. I know you can't give dimensions, but could I speak to someone who can give me the model?"

Rep: "Of course sir, give me a minute."

Me: "Okay."

• hold music*

• actually different hold music*

Robot: "The extension you have selected is unavailable. Please leave a message."

Me: *hang up, call back, dial 2*

• hold music*

Rep: "I'm so sorry for that long hold sir, here's the model."

Me: "Thank you."

• model spec varies in length*

Para: So it boils down that no matter what you have to go down and measure the vehicle by hand anyways.

As is tradition in corporate America. When someone has a lot of tasks becomes proficient in getting a lot of work done the bosses find more work to add on to the load. I now have two extra nightly things to check.

edited 28th Jan '16 4:41:43 PM by TuefelHundenIV