The office: Chatter about your job

Regarding the incident I mentioned in my last post here, I'm now certain that it was not a taxpayer who was writing "fucktard" on envelopes, but an employee. I've been seeing more of them in the past month.

To understand how I know this, some background is required. After envelopes sent to us are opened and their contents sent to the appropriate departments, the mail clerk puts the envelopes aside in a basket, which is later taken to "candling" to make sure they didn't leave anything inside, like a check or anything else unusual (the article I linked to describes the process as used on eggs, but the method is basically the same). Doing this for the night shift's baskets is what I do during the first hour or so of my work day, while the rest of my day is spent opening the envelopes (think of the mail-sorting minigame from The Wind Waker and you'll have a rough idea of what my main task is). The baskets are identified by an ID number rather than name, so I don't know the exact identity of the culprit. I only know that it is a night-shift employee. A simple look-up of that ID number by the higher-ups will reveal them.

I have informed my supervisor about this. I do not think he takes the issue seriously, since it has been going on for a month, and today I overheard him talking to a co-worker dismissing the problem, which makes me wonder why he didn't tell me directly to disregard them. But is this something I'm blowing out of proportion that he is disregarding so as not to feed the troll, or something I should be genuinely concerned about?

That kind of bs is inappropriate and should be stopped. It is also quite evidently meant to be a rude comment aimed at someone. Has anyone but you received these envelopes? If it is just you it is harassment and your employer is obligated to act.

I highly doubt it is directed at me personally. The person whose candling basket they are showing up in is a night-shift employee, while I am day shift. The only time workers from the two shifts even see each other is the brief time when we are preparing to leave and they are preparing to begin their shift. Also, me and another employee work together doing candling in the morning, and which of us checks which basket is not something that's formally assigned. We just grab a basket off the shelf, check the envelopes, then when we're done we grab the next one.

So it's not just me finding them, and if someone wanted to harass me specifically, they wouldn't do so in a way that I might never see. In fact, one of the reasons my supervisor mentioned when I overheard him expressing apathy over it is that the rude comments don't seem to be toward anyone in particular. But that would mean that it is directed either upward to his/her superiors or the IRS as a whole (which consists of many more employees than just me) or outward to taxpayers (in which case the culprit is vandalizing envelopes that once contained important papers from them). Either way, it is really petty and spiteful.

Ok makes sense. If it was just you that would have been one thing. If it is random then someone is just being an asshat.

Even then the costs to cease the unprofessional behavior is minimal and the chowder head should be reprimanded to say the least.

For the first time in nearly 7 years I will have a week day holiday off. Other security arrangements have been made so I don't have to be on site that day.

<does kermit arms for Teuffy> YAYYYYYYYYYYY!

I am not entirely sure what to do with myself. I so rarely have days off outside of my relatively regimented schedule.

Take a nice nap

lol. I get plenty of sleep on the week days because of how I am scheduled. I rarely need to sleep close to when I need to shower or get ready to go home. I won't have to be anywhere in the evening that is mind boggling. The last time I had a day off due to a minor emergency I panicked briefly thinking I needed to be at work then remembered I had it off.

Take the missus out for lunch? Dinner? Whatever?

Just revel. And savor. Maybe have a small cookout. Have fun!

Those are both good ideas. Just got to make sure it goes through and keep my phone on hand because I am always technically on call.

Well it looks like the duck eggs either hatched or an egg eater got them. I think they hatched though. The top 1/3 are cracked, there is no muck, or blood in the shells. They likely hatched in past couple of days and the mother was brooding on them before walking them off. She was on the nest last night for certain. I will have to do a check this evening after my last round to make sure she isn't going to return to the nest.

edited 16th May '14 8:41:27 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Well, my shift went out on an interesting note. We had an older woman shop at our store who:

1. Parked in the fire lane because she didn't want to walk all the way from the handicapped spots

2. nearly ran down seven people on her power cart, and

3. considered "texting 911" about a collision with some fixture in the store

before coming through my line.

She asked for help carrying her items out, and my supervisor, a middle-aged Muslim woman, agreed to help and tried to gently tell her "by the way, you're parked in the fire lane, and your car could be towed for that".

This woman went off on her, saying "I don't need a lecture; I know I'm handicapped," and suggesting she lecture my supervisor on her "weird scarf thing" (her Hijab) in return. My supervisor then asked me to be the one to give her carryout assistance instead.

On the way out, the store detective told her that "an officer was here and was going to ticket you for parking in the fire lane, but I talked him out of it. Please don't park there again." I'm not entirely sure there really was; he might have just been trying to find the gentlest way to say it.

The woman sweetly told me that it was just fine that she wasn't allowed to park in our fire lane, that she'd just go to the closest other branch of the chain next time. (Their fire lane is also not handicapped parking)

I found more of those envelopes today.

It's making me wonder if now is the time I should start trying to move up in the organization to the areas with more mature co-workers.

Heh, handyman/construction jobs bring you into contact with some of the weirdest people. Between the crazy cat/dog ladies and the Nazi Cuban conspiracy theorists the last week or two is certainly a memorable one.

I see some weird stuff passing across my desk sometimes, too. Some of the things I often see are summarized in the "Tax Protestor Arguments" tab of This Very Wiki's Useful Notes on Conspiracy Theories page. I usually just pass it on to whatever department it's being sent to like I would any other piece of mail.

Though I'd have to say the weirdest thing I've seen someone send us was the cover off an issue of Hustler. Someone else got that one and had put it in her candling basket when I was walking by and noticed it (this was before I got assigned to doing candling in the morning). I pointed out that it was something the higher-ups might want to know about. That wasn't exactly my smartest move, though, since through Gossip Evolution, it somehow became me "asking for a closer look at it". That blew over rather quickly, thankfully. I think it was mainly since it was only a cover, and the fact that I've overheard racier conversations from my female co-workers, so they weren't exactly in a position to criticize.

Between working at the library and working as a security guard I have seen some odd things.

The company I work for does occasional security wall/fence construction on private and government property, so we get calls from the militant types occasionally. One (rather wealthy) fellow wanted a ten foot high razor wire rig around an elaborate underground bunker in some godforsaken neck of the Appalachian mountains. Apparently he thought that his bunker would make him "impervious" to gubbermint satellites despite the very-obvious enclosure and helipad.

For that matter, it was funny enough that he thought he'd be able to freely fly to "safety" from his Florida estate after a nuclear attack. . .

I hope you guys smiled, took his money, and laughed all the way back to the shop after installing it.

Heh, worked out for the company at least. We were referred to the chap who builds the end-of-the-world-bunkers and got some additional jobs from him.

Apparently he has a nice little scam running. For those who can't afford to buy the full bunker, he rents out others like timeshares for exorbitant rates. If your turn is up and a global catastrophe occurs, he promises to fly a helicopter out to you to ferry you to the bunker.

Nice. You guys did work for the Real Life Vault Co guys.

I am amazed that people think triple strand concertina wire aka razor wire is any way inconspicuous or really that hard to breech via determination. You need guards to back up the fence or to electrify said fence.

It's kinda funny how someone who's trying to hide from "gubbermint satellites" hired someone who's done work on government property.

That and those fences and heli pads really stand out in the wilderness.

I always had the idea of putting the concertina wire below the level of the fence on the inside. That way people wouldn't find it until they were about to hop over. Wouldn't intimidate nice folk and would only bother somebody trying real hard to trespass.