Don’t touch me!

by on August 25, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Posted In: Nasty

Rescuing Co-workers

by RecoveringKincoid

Ever absolutely boil when you see a comrade at arms get treated badly by a SC?

I tend to get even madder when it happens to someone else. I am protective of my friends, particularly when they are younger girls. I've always been everyone's "Mom".

We had a girl working at Kinko's who was waaaay too nice a girl to be working in a snake pit like that. She never had an unkind word or anything less than a sunny disposition for anyone.

I used to be in charge of all the color stuff, back before color copies were commonplace. This JERK comes in and wants slides done, and wants to wait on them. My friend is taking his order. Well, usually, I never do slides on a wait, because the machine had a special set up for slides. And I was very, very busy. So she came back and asked me if he could wait, and I said I was really sorry, but the quickest I could do was half an hour. (I fact, that was VERY quick turnaround for slides. He didn't have many, and basically, I was gonna work him in, because I was trying to be nice.)

Well, he turns on her when she told him the turnaround time and cusses her out up one side and down the other. So here she is between this asshole's temper and the simple fact that I was unable to pull what he wanted out of thin air.

Man, I saw red.

Well, you know those Kinko's machines. Always breaking down. I opened up the copier, grabbed a wrench, and started disassembling the guts and laying them out all over the floor.
"Sorry, D" I called over my shoulder. "Scratch that. Got a problem. Dunno how long this will take. All color orders on a tentative 3 hour turnaround." All anyone could see of me was my ass sticking out of the machine front. "Tell him thee oclock and if it's done any sooner I'll call him."

Guy was pissed, but what could he do? He left. I started putting the machine back together.

D comes over. "What's wrong with the machine?"

I told her "not a damn thing."

Don’t touch me!

by on August 25, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Posted In: Nasty

Don't Touch Me!

by RecoveringKinkoid

We had this ass at Kinko's we used to call The Groper.This guy had a habit of getting way into your personal space, and gestureing wildly with his hands while talking. While he was gesturing, his hands would "accidently" find their way onto your breasts. Repeatedly.

C'mon.

We got so we would never deal with him unless there was a counter between him and us.

One day, he caught me of guard out in self serve. No counter. I saw him out of the corner of my eye as he was approaching the back of me while I was removing a toner cartridge from a machine. He was reaching for me. I whipped around quickly, the toner cartridge still in my hands and belching ominous clouds of loose toner. I held it before me like a shield.

Groper: I need some help!
Me: (taking an aggressive step forward and shaking the cartridge slightly. More toner erupted forth. ) Can I HELP you? (I was giving him the stink eye. I had his number and he knew it.)
Groper: I need a …a…glue stick.
Me: (without breaking eye contact and removing one from a pile on the desk.) Here. (more toner clouds.)
Groper shuffles off.

Pig!

Big Mistakes and Bad Ideas, Christmas in July Edition

by on August 23, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Posted In: Managers

Planet Stupid: The Underlings Revolt
by TNT

The company I work for is in transition, and some of the ideas coming from the new management are… um… not particularly good.

The latest involves telling a relatively few customers their prices wouldn't go up, at least for awhile… but as it turned out, their prices will go up. We got the news in an email. When the Big Boss walked by, I grabbed him to get an explanation:

Manager: When the computer updated, it changed their accounts, too. It's only a few customers who are going to be affected, but we know they're going to be very mad. Still, it'll be easier to ride it out than to go back and correct their accounts. So, we'll tough it out.
Me: Correction. You'll tough it out.
Manager: What do you mean?
Me: I am not going to tell irate customers, "Hey, we lied. Get over it." Instead, I'm just going to give them your direct number.
Manager: You wouldn't… what am I saying? You would.
Me: Yes. Yes I would.

The reps around us overheard the entire conversation. One said, "Yeah, I will, too." Which led another to say the same thing. And another. It's a small center and it didn't take long for almost everyone to weigh in.

Not long after, a new email… "The previous email is no longer in effect. We have decided to go back and manually change the accounts for the affected customers so that their prices won't change."

Score for one for us. Personally, I think it guaranteed me "Employee of the Month," but I don't management is going to see it that way.

Big Mistakes and Bad Ideas, Christmas in July Edition

by on August 23, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Posted In: Managers

My boss is a cow
by Fera Festiva

My boss is horrible.  I need to vent.

I'll try and sum up, but it won't be easy. Basically she is very insensitive, opens her mouth without thinking, goes back on her word, talks about employees behind their backs, picks favourites – and disguises it all very well when there's anyone else around.

Example: I have clinical depression (in many ways not a big deal – it's just part of my life). She told me I'd probably "outgrow" it when I grew up a bit! Never mind that I am 24 and have suffered with this illness – because yes, it is an illness – since the age of 17. Leaving aside all the factual errors in that statement, the fact is that she's my boss, and I have a medically recognised condition. IMO that should be good enough – she shouldn't be making judgements. She didn't tell my coworker with repetitive
strain injury she would "outgrow" that. Maybe I'm reading too much into that, but it struck me as particularly insensitive and inappropriate, especially as she regularly mentions how I am "too young" to understand this, that or the other.

On top of all that, I recently had a couple of weeks off because I had a minor breakdown of sorts. When I returned, I heard independently from several coworkers that she had said she felt sorry for my boyfriend for "having to put up with that", and that it was "typical" of me.

Another example: she told me that if I signed up for a Master's degree (which I did – I am meant to be writing an essay for it right now, actually), the company I work for would definitely pay me back my fees, and she would have no problem letting me have time off work to take exams or if I had an important assignment. She would even let me study while at work if it was really quiet. I really felt she was encouraging me to go for it. So, after much umming and ahhing, I signed up. Then she told me that actually, the company wasn't paying for anything. On top of that, every time I need time off for course-related things, she puts on the guilt trip. "Your job has to come first, you know… we're not paying you to study, we're paying you to work…" and, best of all, "I might not be able to give you time off for your exam if we need you, October is the busiest time of year you know". If I miss the exam, I fail the course! (And yet, when another coworker took a day off at no notice because it was a nice day and he wanted to go shopping, there was no problem.) Today came the final straw, when she told me it would be best to give up the course since it wouldn't do me any good.

An example that doesn't involve me: a woman I work with has a son who, when he was younger, was regularly ill. Mean Boss put this coworker on disciplinary because she took something like three days off to look after him when he got out of hospital. Now, another coworker has two young kids. Boss is absolutely fine about letting him take time off if they have colds or flu. I'm not begrudging him that at all, I know I could never be a parent at all, and he does a great job of it – but it seems awfully unfair to penalise one person for looking after their kids and being very understanding towards another.

You get the idea. She's not a nice person. More than once, I have come home in tears because of something she's said to me (if she ever spots me dealing with an SC she hauls me into her office and blames me, even if they are being utterly unreasonable; she has also claimed I've said or done something I know I haven't, like swearing at someone or "having one of my tantrums").

Reading through this it seems like it's not that big a deal, and I'm just being overly sensitive – but it's causing me grief, and I needed to get this off my chest. Thanks for reading.

Big Mistakes and Bad Ideas, Christmas in July Edition

by on August 23, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Posted In: Managers

Management by Phone
by Hauntedheadnc

First, let me establish that my boss is not a moron. In fact, I have a lot of respect for her and consider her a friend even if we do have knock-down, drag-out fights from time to time, and even if she is cheap to the point that if she can save a penny now she'll do it, even if she has to spend a thousand dollars later.

But I digress. One thing she does really annoys me, although I realize the earth will have crashed into the sun long before she would ever stop doing it, and this thing that she does is manage by phone.

The fact that she's Indian contributes to this. She has literally hundreds of relatives scattered around the United States and the world, and this family loves nothing more than a good party. Any excuse will do. Your cousin's nephew's roommate's secretary's son's best friend might (or might not) be getting engaged? Well then! Off to New York for two weeks. Or Edmonton, Atlanta, Paris, London, Washington DC, Atlantic City, Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, or Toronto. She's gone everywhere while I've been working here.

It seems that she uses her huge network of relatives to scour the globe in search of the areas with the poorest cell phone reception, and with this strategic information in hand, she knows where to call me from. If a location with poor reception is unavailable, the middle of the Patel party will do just as well provided there's a sufficient number of people screaming in the background.

My boss is known for repeating herself as it is, but it gets much worse when the phone is cutting out or when there's a thousand people with lampshades on their heads dancing on tables in the background. A typical exchange goes like this:

She: What is the rate?
Me: $109.95
She: $109.95?
Me: $109.95
She: I cannot hear. It is too noisy where I am. What is the rate?
Me: $109.95
She: $109.95?
Me: $109.95

And so on, as though we've both suddenly become afflicted by a Tourrette's-style number fit.

She's also keen on trying to micromanage from the road, which brings its own set of special problems when she's giving you detailed instructions five or six times and the phone keeps cutting out on the crucial parts — which aren't always that crucial because you already know how to do what she's telling you to do. She is undeterred, and a typical instruction session tops out at roughly 25 minutes. This while you're trying to check people in, deal with their idiot complaints, hand out extra towels and pillows and all the other crap the front desk deals with.

Whew… I feel better having gotten all that off my chest. It's not especially funny, but definitely therapeutic. Thanks for reading.