Work Gripes

WolFyre said:
I been keeping this in me for nearly a week. When I posted that last week. I almost knew something was coming up and I was right. The damn company let me go.
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Sorry man. But looks like you're already bouncing back.
WolFyre said:
I start this Monday for an architectural firm, so move over Hectic. :p
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Good God. Soccer and now architecture? You're really testing my patience Wolf.
 
Here's a work gripe. A coworker said farewell to us in an email today, announcing his retirement to everyone in the department (about 200 people). So far, more than a half-dozen people wished him well in a "reply-all" email. WTF? Is it laziness, or stupidity, or perhaps they want everyone to know that they're sending their regards? It's not as if engineers don't know the difference between "reply" and "reply-all".
 
IdRatherBeSkiing said:
When a door closes a window opens.
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Boy did I read that wrong. I've always known the expression as "When one door closes, another door opens" - meaning if something goes wrong, don't worry you'll have a new opportunity to succeed. I read the above as if something goes wrong, leap out the nearest window!
 
scotchandcigar said:
Here's a work gripe. A coworker said farewell to us in an email today, announcing his retirement to everyone in the department (about 200 people). So far, more than a half-dozen people wished him well in a "reply-all" email. WTF? Is it laziness, or stupidity, or perhaps they want everyone to know that they're sending their regards? It's not as if engineers don't know the difference between "reply" and "reply-all".
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Years ago, in the late 90s where e-mail exchange systems were quite primitive, somebody invited his team to a BBQ using the DL. Unfortunately, instead of his groups DL he did the one for the entire company. To complicate matters, he had 'read receipt' turned on. Then he did a reply all to try to rescind the invitation. Then the jokers did reply alls asking if there would be free beer etc. Several people did reply all to ask to be removed from the reply alls. Then several people did reply all asking people not to reply all. Within 3 hours the email exchange was essentially dead. The only things getting through were thousands of messages about the BBQ and receipts. They had to hard code in the exchange server itself to automatically delete anything with the letters "BBQ" in the title.

I haven't tried lately but I suspect you still can't send an e-mail with BBQ in the subject.
 
IdRatherBeSkiing said:
Years ago, in the late 90s where e-mail exchange systems were quite primitive, somebody invited his team to a BBQ using the DL. Unfortunately, instead of his groups DL he did the one for the entire company. To complicate matters, he had 'read receipt' turned on. Then he did a reply all to try to rescind the invitation. Then the jokers did reply alls asking if there would be free beer etc. Several people did reply all to ask to be removed from the reply alls. Then several people did reply all asking people not to reply all. Within 3 hours the email exchange was essentially dead. The only things getting through were thousands of messages about the BBQ and receipts. They had to hard code in the exchange server itself to automatically delete anything with the letters "BBQ" in the title.

I haven't tried lately but I suspect you still can't send an e-mail with BBQ in the subject.
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Haha, I recall something similar about a dozen years ago. Some glorified housekeeping guy sent an email to all the groups of people who have ever accessed a certain computer lab. It was thousands of people. He was asking us all to fully shut-down the computer systems in the lab at the end of each day, including the monitors.

Here are the categories of people who felt the need to reply-all:

- Those who questioned why they received the email
- Those who wanted to be taken off the distribution list used to send the email
- Those who wanted the above people to stop using reply-all
- Those who disagreed with the idea of shutting-down computers that are in the middle of processing data
- Those who disagreed that powering-down monitors would save energy
- Those who didn't want a lab housekeeper telling engineers how to handle computers
- Those who became fed-up with the unending barrage of unwanted emails
- Those who took the opportunity to make sarcastic remarks

For many years now, most of our large group emails come from a "no-reply" source, with the recipients bcc'd.
 
WolFyre said:
I been keeping this in me for nearly a week. When I posted that last week. I almost knew something was coming up and I was right. The damn company let me go.



I sent my resume out to like over 20 companies and I only got couple of responses. One job sounded great and I was all set for an interview and then they almost forgot to mention "Oh the position is in Flagstaff." I live in Phoenix and I'm not driving 2 hours there and back everyday!

For the fun of it, I applied for a position I normally don't go for and thinking I almost have enough years experience in it a project manager. Well the company liked my resume and I went for the interview. They were impressed by me and believe I could have potential become a project manager someday. Couple days went by and the company offered me a position as "Job Captain" I never heard of this role. I would lead the BIM team and oversea some projects and as things grow. The company will train me and potentially become a "Project Manager" one day.

I start this Monday for an architectural firm, so move over Hectic. :p

In the meantime, I been relaxing at home. Working on a few projects around the house and playing with my one year old pup.
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Sorry it happened Wolf, but glad it worked out so well so quickly!
Sometimes you just get that feeling that it’s about to happen. When my old office was slowing down on work you could sense that layoffs were coming even though they hadn’t had any in more than a dozen years. When they got me, it was the 4th round in 2 years. I expected they might be coming. When I got a call at my desk to come down to the conference room, I knew it was my turn. All my projects had been finishing up, and there weren’t new projects coming in. It was a weight off of my shoulders.

Job Captain is a common title. It’s often someone who coordinates teams and handles a lot of the day to day project and team coordination for the Project Managers who are doing more of the direct client interaction, dealing with budgets, and dealing with office leadership. Good for you! congrats!
 
HecticArt said:
Sorry it happened Wolf, but glad it worked out so well so quickly!
Sometimes you just get that feeling that it’s about to happen. When my old office was slowing down on work you could sense that layoffs were coming even though they hadn’t had any in more than a dozen years. When they got me, it was the 4th round in 2 years. I expected they might be coming. When I got a call at my desk to come down to the conference room, I knew it was my turn. All my projects had been finishing up, and there weren’t new projects coming in. It was a weight off of my shoulders.

Job Captain is a common title. It’s often someone who coordinates teams and handles a lot of the day to day project and team coordination for the Project Managers who are doing more of the direct client interaction, dealing with budgets, and dealing with office leadership. Good for you! congrats!
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My first company laid me off in 1989. Years later, I still knew lots of people there. They had been swallowed by a big conglomerate. They were doing another round of layoffs. The way they did it was they called your desk and then you went in, were given your envelope and speech and then escorted by security to your desk where you got your personal stuff and then were escorted out.

One of the guys I knew decided to have some sick kind of fun and started calling people at random. The reaction of people having their phone ring in that situation was kind of funny. I understand it did relieve some of the tension.
 
I’m still friends with a number of people from my old office.
The office had already agreed to pay to send me to the state architect’s convention that was the week after they laid me off. They said they would honor that, so it wasn’t like they were mad at me for anything, there just wasn’t enough work. So the weekend after I got laid off I was out drinking with some of them. Life is too short, and the professional community is too small to hold grudges. Sometimes business just sucks.
 
HecticArt said:
I’m still friends with a number of people from my old office.
The office had already agreed to pay to send me to the state architect’s convention that was the week after they laid me off. They said they would honor that, so it wasn’t like they were mad at me for anything, there just wasn’t enough work. So the weekend after I got laid off I was out drinking with some of them. Life is too short, and the professional community is too small to hold grudges. Sometimes business just sucks.
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In 1989 they sent me on the convention 2 weeks before they laid me off. In retrospect I should have seen it coming. I was doing about 1 hour of work a day (there was no more).
 
JHDK said:
I am currently 8 days deep into a 14 straight day workweek. But this isn't really a gripe. My boss needed me for a couple days and I asked to work the other 2 days so I can get a ton of OT.
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So that 14 day stretch turned into a 21 day stretch and just this evening I told my boss I'd work tomorrow (which would have been my first day off in 21 days) if she'd have me so I will now be working at least 27 straight days.

I like my job and about 90% of the time it's not very hard. And (I assume this is the exact reason they let some of us live one site) I feel a sense of pride in keeping it looking very nice. If I leave for 2 days the place goes to shit and I'm not one of those property managers who will be a dick to their relief managers so as long as they don't screw up anything w/customers I'll just do all the maintaining of the property myself.

Also, our pay periods are from the 1st-15th and the 16th-last day on the month. So this means I will be making the most possible OT in one pay period since there is only 1 shift per day and I'm working every one of those shifts.
 
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My review was last week. While I hate them like they were an annual prostate exam, it went very well.
This was my first one with this office and the boss is happy, he didn't have any of the usual corporate bull-flarf to dish out.
I should be able to focus on just doing work for a while. That'll be nice.
 
HecticArt said:
and the boss is happy
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Of course he's happy, you went into the review with your blueprints of how you going to make the American version of this newspaper HQ in China.

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Beijing's Amusingly Phallic New Skyscraper

The new headquarters of the People's Daily is only the latest example of the capital's unusual architecture.
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com

But really, those reviews suck so congrats on doing well! We get internally audited and I've been hearing about how these auditors are the bogyman since I got hired. Now that I run a property, and specifically a prop that was pretty shitty before me, every higherup in my district is convinced I'll be audited soon. We'll see how that goes, I've had like 2 major fuckups since I took over. But overall I've really turned that place around. I met the head of Public Storage in FL for the first time and gave him a tour of my prop last week and he was super impressed with what I've done with my prop and with his talking to me so that made my Regional and District managers look good and in turn made me look good. So hopefully when the auditors do show up the big mistakes will be so far behind me they won't even catch them. They don't go back months so it's very possible.
 
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:laughcry:
JHDK said:
Of course he's happy, you went into the review with your blueprints of how you going to make the American version of this newspaper HQ in China.

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I wish I'd have done something that epic!


Congrats on having things running so well at your place.
 
Auditors are not your friend. Questions are answered yes or no not with lengthy explanation where they will find 25 things you will need to fix.

Aside from that, if you are following your own procedures you are usually ok.
 
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