Annoying things at work

[kamari]

ok here's my round two...I hope none of my coworkers are on here...The lead engineer on the project I'm working on sits right across from me. He's at a 7:30 meeting every morning that usually gets out at 8:30. I walk around the office with a fleece jacket on b/c it's cold as hell in there all the time. Well whenever the lead egr sees me in the morning he says, in a rather loud and sarcastic voice, "good morning!" as if I'm just walking in the office. The first few times I laughed it off, but now it's further up my system than even a pain in the ass would be. Now he's migrated to doing this all thru the day with the "just getting back in?" BS when he sees me walking thru the building. WTF!!??

Then there's the packaging engineer who puts my designs into the pretty lil drawings that everyone will later use. I'll tell him something and he'll ask me FIFTEEN minutes later the EXACT SAME question he just asked FIFTEEN minutes before...THEN will STILL give the lead engineer wrong information regarding what I tell him. So now I have to get an unnecessary attitude from the lead who's trying to subtly make me look stupid, and even after I correct the misinformed info that's been relayed to him, he still goes on what he's been told from the incorrect package designer.
Then there's the guy who sits next to the lead egr. He's pushin 70 if not over 70. He has this REALLY deep voice and the volume on his voice is always on a permanent MAX. When the person on the other end of my phone can clearly hear him from 2 cubes away...that's a problem. Engineers are the smartest and dumbest people on this planet...

[jangliss]

Originally Posted by phorn45

Sweet!

The other annoyance is the conference call etiquette (or lack thereof).

• headset mic too close to the nostrils - whoosh....whoosh...whoosh...
• car window rolled down....buff-buff-buffet...honk
• caller puts conference on hold to take another call...elevator music background, or worse, the announcer blabbing about the last song and who's coming to the music hall this weekend...
• toilet/urinal flush (and, yes, you can tell the difference)

I've had somebody take a conference call from inside the server room. Apparently they had more interesting items in there, but had to be on the call too. They neglected to mute. Nothing quite like the sound of 30 odd servers, and a few a/c units buzzing away on the conference call.

We also get a lot of the "hold" things on conference calls too. I've changed my handling of calls on my phone so that if I'm on the phone, it gives them an option to transfer to my cell if it's an emergency. Mute is a lot nicer to handle on the other end.

Originally Posted by phorn45

And, if I am on paid leave, afterhours, or on travel, I always announce myself on the call as calling in from (wherever-high-noise-environment) and will have to take myself off mute (to give myself time).

I've got into the habit of that too. It doesn't take too much effort to get a little phone etiquette.

[Arnor]

At the age of 45 I have to admit of holding a job for a total of about 3 years. The rest I have worked for myself. The only extended period of time I worked for someone else I worked for a small company in Denmark, it was only 4 of us when I started. Two of us did programming and the cople who owned it did the managing, directing, reception, whatever. For me it was generally a nice place to work. I ended up quitting the job due to healt issues with my parents who lived in Iceland.

Reading those stories just brings it home for me how fortunate I have been, even though the pay hasn't always been high or secure<g> My wife has also worked independently for the past 9 years or so. Now we have our own corporation that pays our salaries and we are kind of our own or each other boss' and it works out pretty well.

Working from home has both advantages and disadvantages. I sometimes work late at night and if the neighbors are having a party or the damn dogs in the surrounding states are all barking at the skunk crossing the street in front of our house, it can get really, really, annoying.

Sorry for being so boring<g>

Best regards,

[Ahh!]

Originally Posted by kamari

Then there's the packaging engineer who puts my designs into the pretty lil drawings that everyone will later use. I'll tell him something and he'll ask me FIFTEEN minutes later the EXACT SAME question he just asked FIFTEEN minutes before...THEN will STILL give the lead engineer wrong information regarding what I tell him.

fotfl! My espression of this is, "I tell them 'the sky is blue' and they tell someone else that I said, 'the sea is green.'"