What are your co-workers like? Are any of them a bit... off?

-- Anonymous, August 23, 2001

Answers

there's a girl in my department who can't seem to get over the fact that one day while we were both in the library, i went over to this loud group and told them to shut up because people were trying study. that was a good four or five months ago...and she still brags about me to any new shop guy who happens to walk in.

ie: "hi ____, have you met claire? she told these library people OFF..."bla bla bla and so on. mm...great way to meet the shop guys...

-- Anonymous, August 23, 2001

At job #1 (Savin Corporation.....a copier/fax company), I work with a fun, cool girl named Carrie who is just a little older than me (I'm the youngest in the company) and bitches about our boss with me, Connie, Carrie's mom, Peter, the ugly, fat, horny guy with excellent phone skills, Terry, who brings me faxes and does other work (I guess), and Marilyn, evil, lazy, psycho bitch from hell. Marilyn, of course, happens to be the manager.

I have a Marilyn story to tell, because it happened today and I'm upset and want to vent. My job is to get meter readings off of copy machines. That's my entire job. Outbound calling to get meter readings. That's what I was hired for. I only work 4 hours a day, and I'm only paid a stinkin' $8 an hour.

Marilyn decided one day that I was now going to have to do all of the filing of contracts. Not a huge deal, I guess, despite the fact that it's not my job and I'm not getting paid any more for it. So, a stack of individual papers a foot high (and I'm not even close to exaggerating) was put on my desk, and I was told to file. Let me also point out that our filing system sucks....nothing is in alphabetical order, files are missing, the files are old and smell, there isn't enough room to put new files in, etc. So filing bites. But it's not like I'm not going to do the filing.

But meter reading comes first. I have a deadline for that (the customers are under contract for parts, labor, and supplies, but only up to a certain number of copies per month, quarter, or year, and after that number of copies is exceeded, they are charged per copy....that's where my job comes in). I have to get each meter by a specific date. I was hired for meter reading, so I do it first. When I am done and have spare time, I will file.

Well, the girl who does the other half of the meters was on vacation this month, so I had twice as much to do. I haven't had time to file all month. So today, Marilyn asks to have a one-on-one with me (and she always says that in a threatening way). I go in, and she starts out by asking how my job is going (I've been there 3 months). Thinly veiled....she really wanted to bitch about the filing. And bitch she did. When I told her that I hadn't had time, she accused me of being insubordinate and not doing what I was told by her to do. She threatened to fire me. She also threatened to not "allow" me to go online (which I do on my break....I don't take breaks away from my desk, because I want to check my e-mail and whatnot, and she says that she "can't tell when I'm on break and when I'm not"). Over filing, which wasn't my job in the first place!!!!!

She's always like that. I've just about had it. Tomorrow, I'm filing a complaint with human resources over the hostile work environment I'm experiencing (because I've been carefully documenting this), and I'm going to ask to switch to another manager. Stupid bitch. If I can't, I'm going to quit. And when I do, I'll tell her exactly what I think of her. I'm excited about that.

At job #2 (the Minnesota Orchestra ticket sales), I work with insanely cool people. Most are artsy, all are relaxed, open-minded, cultured....I gave one guy, Ralph, a ride home, and he told me about teaching at an alternative school in Oregon....he was teaching history, social studies, and a class called "Sex, Drugs, & Rock and Roll." He had no textbooks, so he made up his own curriculum. The sex class had speakers come in every week, ranging from cops (who talked about drugs), hippies (who talked about sex and drugs), prostitutes (who talked about sex), and priests (who talked about all of the above). That class's finale was a drag show by the leading drag queen in Oregon in the school's auditorium. All the people there are like that. My manager, Lucy, is really why I took the job - - she's so cheerful and she has a fantastic laugh. Love that job, even though it's telemarketing-lite.

At job #3 (the Princeton Review), the only worker I know is Dave, a geeky uber-religious confused disorganized nut. He gives me the posters, and I put them up. Simple.

At job #4 (data entry at home), I have no co-workers. My bosses are my boyfriend's favorite uncle and his partner. Both are older men in their mid-50s who love boating and are rich (the company is CanDock...floating dock systems....www.candock.com....you wouldn't think they make a lot off of those, but they're rolling in it). They pay me whenever I ask, and it's tax-free (cuz they're not reporting it, and neither am I!). Plus, I'm in a network with all of their rich buddies who have outsource data entry....now they all come to me. Woohoo!

Pardon the length of this.....I got a bit carried away with my venting.

-- Anonymous, August 23, 2001

Haven't contributed in a while, but here is the debacle of a workplace I work in, and everyone in Hampton Roads is at the mercy of us.....no, seriously

I work for a large regional newspaper in Newport News, the Daily Press. Katie is routinely slamming it, and go figure one of her friends is now the Editor of the entire paper since the glorious Will Corbin retired.

Anyway, I'm getting off track, back to my co-workers...

I work as a clerk in the Sports Department, which pretty much means I'm the grunt work guy when it comes to taking calls, formatting results and agate and putting it on a page. I used to just take high school phone calls and write a brief on it....now, I put shit on the page. There are interesting people on the "Copy Desk". I'm not even going to go into the sportswriters there, because they're much more visible to the public and people think they're idiots anyway.

Presentation Editor
MO. This guy is actually pretty cool. He's around 40 or so, just moved to the Daily Press from the Orlando Sentinel. Somewhat of a hippie, throws frisbee golf (a hobby I do myself), and is real down to earth.

News Editor
JH. JH is also fairly new....then again, I've been working at this place since I was a senior in high school and Monday I start my 5th sophomore year at Old Dominion. Back to the story. JH just came to the Daily Press from the L.A. Times. Yes, the Los Angeles paper with so much acclaim. JH loathes bad writing. The AP (Associated Press) has so many stringers that have no clue how to write, when editing roundups for baseball, he cringes at the triteness and context of so called "TV words." Yes sports fans....SportsCenter is corrupting our sportswriters. He's probably my favorite "boss" to work with, since he's worthy to take tips from

Design team
MD, JC, SD, NT. Interesting.....to say the least.
NT is probably the best of the lot, he's been working at the paper part time for about 8 years. He's also in the Navy with like 4 kids. He's never home. Big Cowboys fan and basketball junkee. He's pretty much just a sports fan that works at a newspaper. He rocks.

MD. This man has no decibel lower than 3000. His shrill loud booming irritant voice can be heard from galaxies around. Constantly people over in the local section yell " SHUT THE FUCK UP" I know several times a night, I'm thinking it myself. Matt is a hockey dad. Moved here from up north, his son goes to my old high school and was on the state championship baseball team. MD likes to think he knows more than he does. Typical for a father of kids that play sports. As far as work, MD is on point. But who knows about the level of sanity.

JC. Just your typical Bi-Polar, Dyslexic Lesbian sports designer. You think I'm making this up? No, every night, she gets a system crash, some one does something and its not her fault or there's an argument between JC and MD, MO or JH. Nothing is this woman's fault. There is an error from "Dr. Watson" some of you might be familiar with this program. We use an "AssBackwards" news gathering system, and a lot of times the most simple things can go amok. I've never gotten a Dr. Watson. Other designers rarely get a Dr. Watson (I like that sandwich from Macadoo's in Blacksburg called a Dr. Watson, but that's beside the point). Operator ERROR! Can we say it together now.!

SD. This guy knows more about stuff than anyone I've ever met. He's a tennis guru, an upper level player in the area, as well as a big sports fan. SD is one of the smartest people I've ever met, but his drawl reminds you of rainman. Mumbles, talks and yells at himself, under his breath and isn't the most normal person on the planet. I really like this guy, he's fun to work with, but just plain hard to understand most of the time.

Bottom feeders
Ah, yes, the "clerks".
This group consists of five people. In my tenure, we've had high school kids, college kids, college grads, family men, interns, and a whole slew of people that fit into this category.
I've been there the longest total, but Liz (i'll say our names, cause we're all likely thinking the same...) has been there longer than me the second time around. I took a year off and was hired back.
Liz is the college sorority girl at a local university, and is probably one of the funniest people I know. Blunt, brash and blonde. Sometimes is made to feel inferior because she fails to do one thing and all of a sudden she's incompetent. That's not the case. She knows what she's doing.
Considering we were all hired to format agate and take calls and write briefs, we are ALL doing shit we're not paid to do. I'm up for a raise shortly, who knows when I'll get my evaluation.
We're now doing a $15 an hour job for like 7.50. yes, we're designing....this is where most of the fun begins.
Dave. College graduate from CNU. I swear he was born without some chromosones. The most simple tasks take forever and we've missed deadline several times due to him. He's a nice guy, but ARGH, you know...one of those people you wish would finally get the grasp of things. Dave was hired before I came back, and was the last to start designing.
Christian. This guy is a riot. It seems the funny people are the college cats. Christian makes us all feel like an idiot. He can do a crossword puzzle in like 12 seconds. Yeah, he goes to Dartmouth. That's right, THE Dartmouth. Ivy, smart people. Compared to me and Matt (meet him in a second) both at ODU, and Dave and Liz at CNU.
We lose him this week. He's also a tennis player, but a big guy.
Matt. Matt and I write for the ODU paper and we pretty much do the most of any other clerks. Christian was more of a design rimmer, but he felt like a clerk, so I jumped him down with us bottom feeders. Matt and I agree on almost everything I've stated above, why? Because his sense of common sense frightens me. We both cover games and write our own stuff, which others don't do. I'm not here to play myself up (rather get sympathy for a raise!) But this has no point to my story, so I'll end it here.

Oh, I almost forgot. Me. Take a gander at this picture, and that will tell you the collective scaryness that puts out your local sports section. Twinkie's Tuxedo
Frightening. Yes, they hired me. NOTE: If anyone connected to the paper reads this, I was forced to type it at gunpoint and do not fire me. Descriptive doesn't mean derrogetory (sp).

-- Anonymous, August 24, 2001

Druggies. I swear, all of them. The only reason they were hired is because they do drugs, they sell drugs, and basically...the live the drug life. They're just frickin' scary.

-- Anonymous, August 24, 2001

Hey Samantha,

Are you, by any chance, a drug pusher? 'Cuz if you are, then I guess I could see why "druggie life" would be a necessary qualification.... ;)

-- Anonymous, August 24, 2001

haha, the drug life. where the hell do you work?

-dan

-- Anonymous, August 25, 2001

I've had about four different jobs by now, and for some reason, I keep hitting upon workplaces where my co-workers don't do a damn thing! I end up being caught between wondering if I should at least look busy when the boss walks by...or just sit around, surfing the Net, and beginning to think about what to order for lunch at 9 a.m. like the others...oh, the dilemmas!

-- Anonymous, August 25, 2001

i have a coworker who is absolutly insane. she's not a bit off, she's falling off the cliff. she claims that she's going to clone a cartoon character (emily) then make the clones good girls, and then have the clones teach emily how to be a good girl. she also keeps track of every sale she makes on post it notes, even though the computer automatically does it for her, demands that the cash drawer be changed everytime someone new comes to the register (ie, to cover her lunch, etc). she is so crazy that its not even funny anymore.

saddest thing is, she claims to have a ph.d in psychology. from a university she claims is affliated with stanford, yet... it isn't.

-- Anonymous, August 26, 2001

I have never, never had a job where the boss was halfway normal. This is my 5th job, this summer, and this is the closest I've ever got to having a normal boss. And that's only because I'm in charge of myself most of the time.

Job #1: Weekend shop assistant at a local bookshop. Majority of my coworkers were cool, but the boss, David, was a control freak who hated me and took every opportunity to tell me so, especially in public and in front of customers and coworkers. When the company went into receivership, I was sorry because it meant losing my job, but pleased because it meant David had lost everything. Bitter much?

Job #2: Teaching assistant at a school for children with learning difficulties. One or two of the other teaching assistants could well have been pupils too (in a nice way) - the boss was a personal friend of my mum's and so couldn't get past treating me like I was 3 years old. Please.

Job #3: Packer at a local envelope factory. Absolutely *the* most boring job I have ever done in my life and I hope I will never have to do it again. The boss was new to the job and couldn't stop yelling at everyone, including the temps, for 'lack of commitment'. Er, you're paying me £5 an hour for a 7 hour shift starting at 6am and you want commitment buddy? I don't think so.

Job #4: Shop assistant at a local clothing shop. My favourite job to date because with the exception of one of my coworkers, who had never had a job before and thought that she just had to stand around and look pretty, the other shop assistants I worked with were lovely - I'm still in touch with a couple of them, which considering the fact that I only worked there for five months, and I only talk to two of the people I went to school with for eleven years, I think is pretty impressive. The only real problem was with the manager Suzzanne, who had been on maternity leave for five months just before I started and thought she could just take things back to how they used to be. And she kept bringing her kid into work and expecting us to babysit. Uh-uh. Never gonna happen.

Job #5: This summer. Medical Records Clerk at my local hospital. Coworkers mostly cool, especially the other temps, Fatima, Brad, Matt and Lydie. One of the appointments bookers is a bit of a freak though - totally out of her head. But I don't have much contact with her. The boss situation is surprisingly good though, mainly because the people I answer to mostly aren't that much older than me and aren't really bothered what I do as long as I don't destroy the department. I really don't like one of the directors though, as he led one of the secretaries I help, to walk out. Luckily I don't have much personal contact with him. Only 3 more weeks left at work! Yeah baby!

-- Anonymous, August 26, 2001

I worked with a bunch of druggies, too. They started a drug dealing operation in the store (a toy store, of all places. And this was at Christmastime, too. Spreading cheer and goodwill, dontchaknow). Then they got mad at ME because I wasn't in on the operation and, therefore, was not cool. I quit very soon after that.

A co-worker at an engineering firm I worked at used to write to Dear Abby all the time and then leave the letters in the printer, as though she wanted people to find them. She also clipped her nails (fingernails AND toenails) at her desk.

I don't know my current co-workers very well (yet), but the one lady with whom I have to work directly seems like she could be pretty odd. For one thing, she takes cigarette breaks about five times an hour.

-- Anonymous, August 26, 2001

Okay, that brings up something that really irritates me: smokers getting more breaks than everybody else. When I worked at Pizza World, *I* had to stay inside and answer the phones/clean up, while everybody else went outside for numerous half-hour smoke breaks. In an eight-hour shift, these guys probably only worked about five. In the office where I work now, there's a guy who goes out to smoke like six times a day. The rest of us only get two fifteen-minute breaks.

I mean, how is that fair? Because I'm not subjecting myself to an early death by way of lung cancer, I only get two breaks, while they get as many as they want? Blergh.

-- Anonymous, August 27, 2001

I know! It's enough to make me want to tell everyone at my new office that I'm a smoker, just so I can go outside a few times an hour and get some fresh air. That happened at my old job too, the one with the druggies. Everybody got to leave the mall except me; I slaved away in a hot toy store while everyone else took thirty-minute smoke breaks. And, of course, I was the only employee who *wasn't* allowed to complain about anything. Sheesh.

-- Anonymous, August 27, 2001

At my last job, people actually STARTED to smoke in order to get the breaks. Sometimes if it was slow though, they'd let us go out with a smoker to just get out for a few minutes.

-- Anonymous, August 27, 2001