What part of "I don't care" don't you understand?

[dalesys]

... marital arts aficionado...

What plays in Vegas...

[Jay 2K Winger]

After that exchange, being a marital arts aficionado, I'd be having visions of powerbombing that annoying woman right THROUGH that desk.

You just reminded me of something. TNA/Impact Wrestling is promoting an upcoming show in which fan-favorite brawler Bully Ray finally puts his nemesis, stupid-evil authority figure Dixie Carter, through a table. It's an angle that's been going for months, and it finally pays off, I think tomorrow.

They've started promoting it by endorsing "Put Your Boss Through A Table Day," encouraging people to tweet their hatred for their boss, for a chance to win money from the company. (I think $250 in credit for their online store.)

Almost everyone who's read about this, with perhaps the exception of the TNA diehards, has said what a stupid idea this is, since in this day and age, your boss will read your social media, and quite possibly may fire you for saying it.

[BlaqueKatt]

Swingline never actually produced a red stapler (it was made for the movie by the art department) but the demand was so great after Office Space that they added the model.

Incorrect-I have one from the 1960's, they stopped making them, which according to *everyone* means they never existed. I'm really tired of actually owning the debunker of this myth and *still* being told it(it was actually to to me by someone HOLDING MY RED SWINGLINE STAPLER FROM THE 1960's)

original red swingline

[XCashier]

sometimes you just want to tell someone to stop talking, and start listening

I actually have told my son that. "Close your mouth, open your ears and LISTEN!" I'm afraid to guess what would happen if I said that to an adult, though...

[bankworking]

We had a move of our corporate offices and call center, and it seemed to go really well. They gave every cubical and office in the old building a number that corresponded to where they would be located in the new building. The numbers were in order for the new building and each spot in the new building had a little cardboard plaque put up with that number (we're still using them as "addresses" to find specific people). Employees were given a box for personal belongings that they had to take home with them, pre-labled with their new office number, and when they came to work the first day at the new building, the movers had been hired to be at the front of the building in force to take those boxes and carry them/escort the employees to their new locations. Apparently everyone was super impressed with the movers and how smoothly everything went. At least on the employee side, but I imagine that means the movers didn't have too difficult of time with it either.

The company was smart about timing too. They coordinated the move with a major IT upgrade. Everyone due for a new computer or other equipment (or overdue in some cases) had the new stuff moved in first and just left their old stuff behind to be sold off/recycled, and IT got to set up and test their brand new systems in the new building before tearing down the old stuff in the former building (which the bank still owned for several months after everything was completed as they built possible delays into their planning.

After hearing so many horror stories here, I know I was impressed.

[evilhomer]

We had a move of our corporate offices and call center, and it seemed to go really well.... After hearing so many horror stories here, I know I was impressed.

That sounded awesome. That was the good old days of office moving when customers were required to follow those kind of procedures. And, surprise surprise, that kind of planning and efficiency makes for faster and CHEAPER moves. But in the past ten years, I've had exactly ONE move, properly planned like this. Lazy, unqualified, just plain dumb, one or all of the above apply to literally every move co-ordinator I've dealt with.

It really pisses me off because these assclowns are raking in high 5-figure, even up to 6-figure salaries to not know enough to come up with a logical numbering system and properly label. It's even more frustrating when they've got a whole team, representing a quater million in salaries, who are collectively unable to pull their head out of their asses. I see this, knowing that me and my barely above min wage cost could have set things up much better and saved a great deal of money.

This move was a perfect example. Everything was just randomly placed in the storage area, they had no planning for when it was placed there, so obviously there was no plan for having it come out. He didn't even have the sense to try to come up with a plan to make up for that, just saying screw it and assigning things seemingly randomly. This woman's particular desk was a prime example of the poor planning. There were parts of it literally in every corner of the storage room, not a single one of them identifiable. Fortunately, since it was a quoted job, I got to tell him "no" when he asked me to put in the right desk; I had alreadly fulfilled the obligation of the quote by putting in the temp desk. If he wants the proper desk, it has to be re-quoted and done on a return trip.

[Geek King]

I actually have told my son that. "Close your mouth, open your ears and LISTEN!" I'm afraid to guess what would happen if I said that to an adult, though...

Most adults do an excellent Guppy impression when you tell them that.

[XCashier]

Most adults do an excellent Guppy impression when you tell them that.

And they still won't listen, because how dare you talk to them like that?!

[wolfie]

Even the little things can screw up an office move. Back when I was working in an office, we had a move where we used rigid bins that were held closed with zip ties. Can you see the problem that this can cause at the unpacking end of the move?

Apparently nobody involved in planning the move could see it. Cue everyone standing around wondering how to get the boxes open. Even though at least half the people had scissors at their desks, the scissors were packed away inside the boxes.

Fun fact: The boxes used for this move had enough "give" that you could snake your hand inside even with the zip tie in place. One of my boxes had a small "X" in one corner of the label. Why did it have this "X"? To show that it was the box where I had taped my scissors to the inside of the lid, where they could be reached by slipping a hand inside even with the zip ties in place. Needless to say, a lot of people borrowed my scissors.

[sirwired]

I had to move my department once, and it was a *bleep!* of a job. The department was a tech support group that had been in the same offices for about a decade. Since the department was in operation prior to being able to Google/.pdf everything, there was an astounding amount of obsolete manuals to dispose of prior to the move. We had really giganto recycling bins, and I had to steal the bins from every floor of the building, plus a tilt-truck from the loading dock to dispose of them all. And that was just the hallway.

Then I had to handle the paperwork for each office, each of which had at least four phone lines (two digital, two analog), three network jacks, a stack of assorted network gear, the employee's PC, and whatever other detritus they had accumulated, plus their very own stack of outdated documentation. (One crusty fogey literally had a box of punchcards he did not want to part with... we had some old gear in the building, but I guarantee we did not have an operating punch card reader.)

After disposing of all this cruft, subsequent moves went a bit more smoothly.

[greek_jester]

I had to move my department once, and it was a *bleep!* of a job. The department was a tech support group that had been in the same offices for about a decade...

At the end of last year my firm moved into brand new purpose-built offices (with lots of lovely new problems). In the process we had to get rid of a lot of rubbish. How much? Well, the firm originally came into being in the 1880s. I can personally attest to shredding the original Memorandum & Articles of Association (i.e. the contract created by all limited companies when incorporating) from a business that we shuffled through from creation to dissolution. The M&A was dated 1912.

Between 6 of us we had to sort through, scan, and/or put to shred (the majority of it was shred) enough paper to fill over 200 large-sized confidential shredding wheelie bins. This was after pulling just under 3 large skip-loads of non-confidential paper/card dividers (trade recycling was cheaper than confidential shredding bins).

That's not even going into the large room stacked floor to ceiling with 25 years worth of broken computers/printers from all 6 branches (we had the most storage space), the skip and a half filled with nothing but broken folders of various descriptions, the 40 unused waste paper bins (we all still had 1 rubbish bin and 1 recycling bin each after the move and didn't buy any new ones) and enough damaged/rejected office furniture to fully supply a 20 employee firm (why did we need 28 old-style pull drawer filing cabinets when we never used the stupid things?)

This all for a branch holding less than 30 staff (including receptionist, secretaries and partners).

Suddenly the other offices are having to find room for their own "hang onto it in case it comes in useful" collection.

[evilhomer]

The M&A was dated 1912.

Wow! I consider it bad when I'm handling stuff a couple of decades old that's sitting around for no reason other than nobody wants to deal with it. Crap that's over a century old is just insane.

These places you're describing sound like a huge job I just did that I've got to post about. These dumbasses have got to deal with garbage rather than just doing the old "out of sight, out of mind".

[Shalom]

I can personally attest to shredding the original Memorandum & Articles of Association (i.e. the contract created by all limited companies when incorporating) from a business that we shuffled through from creation to dissolution. The M&A was dated 1912.

I'd have saved and framed that one for the corporate office wall.

There's a synagogue in my town that spun off from an older congregation about 1921 or so, that's in their third building so far. (They outgrew the first in the early 40s, then lost their second building in 1967 when the state decided to route a highway right through the sanctuary.) They still have the Articles of Incorporation of the original, long-defunct congregation, dated 1889 or so, mounted on wood and on display in the social hall.

[greek_jester]

I'd have saved and framed that one for the corporate office wall.

I tried to argue that we should keep it as a piece of social history, but apparently there's an offshoot of the company (with relatives/descendents of the original shareholders) still in business and still on the books, so we had to shred it to be sure we didn't run afoul of the Data Protection Act.

To be honest most of it was because we were historically rather under-supplied in the trainee/junior assistant roles to do the grunt work of sorting out what was old enough to shred, and the secretaries/receptionists tend to work flat-out to handle everything the partners and managers need doing.

To be fair, the partners and managers do pitch in when things get really slammed; during the move one of the partners managed to tear a tendon helping to lift the photocopier up an internal step when we were running out of time to get everything moved.

The same partner, after having an op to reattach the tendon, insisted on helping us to move furniture last month when we realised the original planned set-up of the office just wasn't working for us. At least I managed to chase him away from moving the copier again this time!

[CarcinogenCrunchies]

Incorrect-I have one from the 1960's...

I've got the very same one.

Excuse me...I believe you have my stapler?