The Childfree Life

Probably more of a FWP, but it's still as annoying a hell.

When I'm on call and a job fails after-hours, my process is send a text to everyone on my team, so they know I'm working the issue, then to send a follow-up text once I've fixed the problem and the job is completed. Personally , I don't even like doing that first one, but our managers insist on it (even though the ticketing system has redundancy built in, and everyone else gets notified anyway if I fail to grab a ticket after 30 minutes).

So me...two texts. Guys, I have this, followed by, Guys, this is fixed and done.

Everybody else, it turns into a damn text conversation, resulting in 15-20 texts:

Guys, I've got this.

What job is it?

It's the depreciation job.

We saw that fail last week, is it the same error?

Don't know, still looking.

Probably is.

Ok, it's just a table lock in the database, restarting.

Ok

Ok, sounds good

Did it finish?

It's still running.

Just finished.

We have to figure out why we're getting these locks

Yeah, I don't know.

Me, neither.

Maybe job conflict with another job

What else runs at the same time

The legal entity job, currency updates, and adjustments

That shouldn't matter

I know

Could be orphaned user sessions?

And this will go on and on, bing bing bing bing bing on my phone, until I get pissed and shut it off.

Geez, guys, save that shit for the office.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

I work as a merchandiser, often called a vendor. I stock shelves. someone else orders product,someone else delivers it, I take it from pallets and put in on shelves. simple.
Walmart is hell. they have a new "cap" program where they label every item in backstock. They started it on Tuesday. Previously, you would label one of the items in the stack, but now they want every single fucking thing labeled. whatever, I don't care, I'm not doing it. my backstock is always straight and organized, and I work everything every time i'm in the store (5 days a week)
I walked in yesterday, and This Bitch tells me i can't touch my new product until i go through everything in backstock. um, what? you know, fine. whatever. i dont care. she continued to complain at me the whole time i'm there about how i'm doing everything wrong, and that we have a system, gives me conflicting direction. i continue to ignore her and do my job the way i know it needs to get done.
When i have everything put away, i address her the same way she does me: I start talking in her general direction and figure she must know I'm talking to her.
She then gets her chance to be a bigger bitch. tells me i need to take everything out of backstock so it can be labeled.
I said no. i understand your shitty system says I need labels, but I can label things without doing 3x the work necessary.
she says i can't, because they have a system, and this is how it is.
This is different from every other store I go to
"WELL THIS IS HOW WE DO IT HERE!" she starts going on about how she had to work over, and someone else has to come in at 4am for something...like I'm supposed to care? She accuses me of being angry and directing it at her.
I start to tell her that every time in come in here, someone has messed up my backstock.
she cuts me off, talks over me, and says that that has nothing to do with her.
bitch, what?
you know what, fuck you. you asked me why i was angry and i'm trying to tell you? are you going to let me speak? no?
then she brings out the "fine. I'll just call your manager and tell them you're refusing to do your job"
BRING IT ON, BITCH.

I stare at her. Tell her I can put the labels on without taking all the product down, but I am absolutely not taking the product down. I'm just not.
we argue back and forth again.
she says "fine. you go on, and I'll call your manager"
I can see we're not going to get anywhere, and I have no fucks left to give. which I think she didn't know. dangerous to play the "i'm going to call someone" game when the other person doesn't give a fuck.

so I grabbed my phone from my pocket as I turned and started walking out the door. Told him "I'm not coming back to this store again because of how they treat me." and what could he say? "ok"

and today, I gave my 3 week notice. Told him I'm still committed to the rest of my stores (8 others) but won't be back at that store. and I still dgaf.

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I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I shall never live for the sake of another man; nor ask another man to live for mine.

^^^ I love it when workers stand up for themselves!

I can hear "Take This Job And Shove It," playing in the honky-tonk of my mind.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

it got better! My roommate said she would go today, and she did. she didn't have the same problems I did, everyone was super nice to her. until the end. they told her stickers, she said fine, but I'm not taking everything down.
then they told her the same thing. "if you won't do it, don't come back to the store"

She called me to ask my for my managers first and last name, and his phone number. They already got her full name from her, too.
I said absolutely not. if you're going to threaten to call my manager and get me fired you really should:
Check to be sure I have fucks left to give
Know my name
Know my managers name
Have his number

and they had none of that! i'm not going to help you get me fired, you twat.
I'm moving out of state (back to MN) in just over three weeks, so I don't care. I'm going to Chicago (C2E2!) the 22-24, and when I get back Monday everything is going in a truck and I'm GTFO of Indiana. WOOHOO!

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I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I shall never live for the sake of another man; nor ask another man to live for mine.

I don't even know where to begin with work.

We have routine requests to back up data from our live databases, move it to one of our non-live areas (Staging, Testing, or Developing), restore it, then perform a data scrub to remove any sensitive data, then restore that cleaned data to an area where our vendor can get to it.

I manage this process, meaning I do a fair amount of the work, but we also have 24/7 offshore resources who do some of it.

We've been doing this for a year. It's a straightforward process, and it's time-consuming - start to finish is about four business days. Also, each time we do this, I have to fill out official request forms for our offshore folks. They won't take a shit without a form, and those forms have to go through an approval process which takes three days. It's well-defined.

Because of that, I submit these forms a couple of weeks in advance. No biggie.

So, I had one of these in motion, and the guy I was doing it for (not IT guy) asked me for a status Friday morning.

I sent him a very thorough email, detailing every inch of the process and exactly how long each step would take. The process is pretty stable, so it's easy to get it within a half-day.

I ended by saying, "...so that means best-case is late Wednesday afternoon, or sometime Thursday before lunch." I even mentioned that the process is very predictable, as most of it is copying files and running a scrubbing utility and it's easy to gauge the time.

That was Friday morning.

Friday afternoon..."Hey, is my stuff ready yet?"

I'm a nice guy, I resent him the email, with a summary saying, "See my comments below, no earlier than late Wednesday, no later than early Thursday, and I'll let you know when it's available."

Monday morning, before my email is even fully loaded...I get an IM..."Hey, any chance that finished over the weekend?"

No, none.

I told him a third time. Wednesday or Thursday.

Monday afternoon, he sent his assistant guy over to my desk to ask. Again. I very pointedly said I'd already told him when this crap would be done, that copying goes at its own pace, that the scrubbing utility is as fast as it is, and to kindly quit bugging me about.

Tuesday...I get logged in about 9:30AM. First email I see is from 7:30AM - "Can I get a status update?"

Another email from 8:30AM - "Are you in today? I really need a status update." - never mind if I'm not in, how would I answer that...

Before I could answer those, the little pecker IM'd me!

I reiterated that there was absolutely no need to keep checking. It would be done late Wed/early Thu and I would let him know.

"Gotcha, thanks!"

11:30AM - another email, followed by one at 12:45PM, and 1:30PM. I ignored those.

At that point, I forwarded everything to his manager and my manager, and asked his manager to kindly kick his ass up over his head. She said she'd deal with it, that he could be a little intense and she'd tell him to dial it back.

Great, problem fixed, right?

Wrong!!!

I was online Tuesday night for some emergency work, and he freaking IM'd me! At 7:30PM!

I didn't even respond, and this morning, I talked to his manager again, face-to-face, and she said she'd tell him he was to stop asking me, and that she'd put another person on it as well, and that person is a lot more laid back.

Great!

What happened 20 minutes later?

I got an email from the new person, "Hey, Stace says I'm supposed to track this now. Can you get me caught up and give me an ETA on this?"

And the email he sent me...was my original email with all the details.

I work with idiots.

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

After the pipe burst in our office, the place sort of smelled like a sweaty sock. We have a general "no air freshener" rule because some people find them overpowering, so until now, people only had mildly scented items about. A candle on a desk, or one of those oil things with the reeds. Because everyone was complaining about the sock-smell, someone got a plug-in air freshener and they bought "Obnoxious Cheap Perfume" scent. One guy walked in today, and said "This place smells like a bordello". It reeks of cloying, cheap floral perfume. It is BAD. I am sitting about 2/3 of the way across the office from where it is plugged in, and it's not overpowering, but I still smell it. People who sit closer have been sneezing more than normal for this time of year, probably due to that nasty thing. It's been well over a week since the water disaster, so I'm hoping someone will decide to pull the plug on it, literally. The place might actually be smelling worse with the thing than it would without it.

Holy shit, CO! I think I'd go postal at that point! That's beyond ridiculous, and no one could get through to him to make it stop???? *scream*

_________________
I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I shall never live for the sake of another man; nor ask another man to live for mine.

We'll call this "General Work Facepalms" for a change:

We had issues overnight that got two of my coworkers out of bed and working several hours (and one of those was my manager). Add to that another coworker on a scheduled day off, and from about 8AM-11AM, I was the only one working and covering everything.

Knowing that my manager's manager likes to keep abreast of things, I emailed him this:

Big Boss
Since Roger and Dodger were working overnight and Todger is out today, I'll cover running the manual report for the tax department and I'll also take care of verifying that Collections gets their summary database updated."

Nine minutes after I sent that, he *replied to my message,* saying, "Thanks. With everybody out, I need you to make sure we're covered for the tax department's report and the summary database for Collections. Thanks."

Yes, he replied to my message telling him what I was doing, to tell me to do...what I'd already told him I was going to do.

I love my job!

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown

^I love it when a boss is totally incapable of saying “Hey, thanks for being on top of this” and has to find a way to tell you to do the stuff you’re already doing. Ugh.

Had a bit of a crazy day at work today. I had an event from 12-2, and then after running all over campus returning various items to the departments I’d borrowed them from, I found myself on one side of campus at 2:40, with a meeting on the other side of campus at 3. I knew I wouldn’t have time to heat up and eat the lunch I’d brought, so I ended up buying a burrito and chowing down on it while walking across campus to my meeting.

It is looking like I may have the opportunity to move up in my organization/career in the not-to-distant future, and it’s an opportunity I want to take, but I am somewhat worried about the additional stress that it might entail. Eating a burrito while racing across campus to a meeting is not something I want to become my daily lunch routine.

It was a good burrito though. I didn’t realize that the burrito place had Beyond Meat.

One hour before I knocked off work today, my manager sent me an email for some last-minute work that has to be developed, tested, approved, and deployed on 1-June. That's a helluva tight timeline.

Guess what? I go on vacation tomorrow, not back until 28-May, and reading through the email chain he forwarded, he's been sitting on this for two months.

I responded back and reminded him of my vacation, mentioned I was out of the country and no laptop, no email, no phone, so someone else will *have* to do the prep work for this if it's to go in 1-Jun.

How much you want to bet none of that will be done?

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"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." - Unknown