This is Why I Want to Retire - Annoying things colleagues do and say

[Zikoris]

The only thing that really irritates me these days is when I can't get a straight answer out of someone regarding what they want me to do. Yesterday I was talking to someone regarding an upcoming event being hosted next week, and my goal was to find out whether he wanted me to work that night or not. After about 10 minutes of me straight-out asking in many different wordings "Do you want me to work late that day?" ("Should I plan to stay late that night?" "Do you need me to help clean up and lock up the office after the event?" and so on), I just gave up. I'll give it another try on Monday I guess.

[sarah8001]

I envy you guys.  I work in a windowless building in a section of the building that no one just walks past on the way to something else.  The only people in this section are the most introverted group of people and they're people who tend not to have the best social skills.  For the first two years I sat here, people would turn toward the wall when I passed them in the hall, to avoid having to look a human in the face.  Days can go by with me not having to interact with another human and it gets really depressing.   

Sigh, this is me. Three stories underground, with a crappy HVAC system that doesn't work, breathing incredibly dry recycled air. I also work nights, and all my coworkers have worked nights, for 10 years plus. I have about 12 other people on my shift, and I'm the only one who has a life outside of work. The only one with a SO, close family, or hobbies. Drives me insane.
Perfume! I can literally smell some of my coworkers from 20 feet away. Loud, fake laughter. Refusing to take a break, then complaining that they never get their breaks. Falsifying patient records to cover up their mistakes. A manager who is so terrified of her employees she hasn't disciplined anyone for any reason in 4 years.
I have one older coworker that likes to tell stories about people who used to work at the lab. She's worked there for 28 years, and I'm 27, so I get to listen to long, involved tales about people who worked here when I was in elementary school.

[G-dog]

How about a boss that only sends a "thanks" email or reply all when her higher ups or others she wants to impress are on the message so she can create the illusion that she is nice to you?

She did this recently (got a nice 'thank you' email from a VP - she replied to all, of course.). I've never gotten anything other than silence or a perfunctory thank you during performance reviews. I don't like being a pawn in her fake 'manage up' BS.

[Spork]

* along the lines of "Did you get my email?"....   Someone opens a trouble ticket for an issue then calls/IMs/walks over to tell you they opened a trouble ticket.   That's fine if the problem is "1 million people cannot access X".   It never is.

* A drummer in the next cube.  When he thinks, he pulls out drumsticks and plays drums on the desk.

[G-dog]

People who constantly sniff. Please just blow your nose.

I am noise sensitive, so the small cube/open floor workspace plan has sucked for me.

Yes, I have ear plugs, but they don't bock all the noise (but block a lot of the noise). I think I may get an ear infection from having these in so long each day.

[sugarsnap]

I have a coworker who likes to narrate my day and comment whenever I get up, drink water, talk to a coworker, etc. He also randomly leaves religious literature and church invites on my desk.

[economist]

I hate IM. People from a department I work closely with will IM me saying "Do you have a minute to talk about this file?" Then they'll call me, then ask their question(s). For me to even begin to help them I have to stop working on the file I am working on and pull up all my notes and documents related to the file they want. During this time they are bombarding me with questions that I can't answer until I research it. I'd much prefer an email listing out their questions. The other people in my department agree and our management has actually had meeting where they tell the IMing department people to please send an email so we don't have to drop everything and try to research while on the phone, but they still do this.

[Dollar Slice]

* A drummer in the next cube.  When he thinks, he pulls out drumsticks and plays drums on the desk.

I used to date a guy like that. You have my sympathies...

[Cpa Cat]

Well, I have this one coworker who insists on drinking water from my glasses. She just saunters over and takes a drink. If there's something in there she doesn't want, she'll often just knock it on the floor. She doesn't speak English, and yet when I don't understand her and don't do what she wants, she jumps on my desk and sticks her bum in my face.

At least, now that I'm ER with only a Fake Job, I don't have to deal with the following:

1. Coughing. You know what I'm talking about. That person who gets sick and then comes to work and coughs all day long. First of all - this is what sick days are for. Second of all - buy some cough drops and drink some tea. The walls of the cubicle do not shield us. We know you're there, coughing up a lung.

2. I once had a cubicle outside of the bathroom. The walls were paper thin and I could hear everything that went on in there. There was a constant parade of toilet-goers. I would put on my headphones and turn up the volume to try to block them out. But then... they would pick up that can of Lysol and spray half the can in there. I swear, some of them were counting to 60 while they sprayed. And then they'd open the door, and like a wave, the Lysol would pour out and envelop me. As soon as a cubicle opened up elsewhere, I took it. My boss couldn't understand why I chose to move to a smaller cube.

[Spork]

Well, I have this one coworker who insists on drinking water from my glasses. She just saunters over and takes a drink. If there's something in there she doesn't want, she'll often just knock it on the floor. She doesn't speak English, and yet when I don't understand her and don't do what she wants, she jumps on my desk and sticks her bum in my face.

LOL.

We have one of those...   I hope to be spending more time with her in the very near future.

[Snow White]

Well, I have this one coworker who insists on drinking water from my glasses. She just saunters over and takes a drink. If there's something in there she doesn't want, she'll often just knock it on the floor. She doesn't speak English, and yet when I don't understand her and don't do what she wants, she jumps on my desk and sticks her bum in my face.



It occurs to me that I might not be the brightest bulb in the pack or haven't had enough coffee yet because I pondered your coworker "situation" for longer than I want to admit to.  Bad kitty and dull witted me! ☺️

[theadvicist]

Or the absolute !@#$ing worst, using a custom font.

Or custom stationery in Outlook, so their email takes longer to open and has a distracting background that also makes it difficult to read!

[mozar]

That if I ask for work I am a problem employee. If I don't ask for work, I'm not proactive enough.

[Spork]

Or the absolute !@#$ing worst, using a custom font.

Or custom stationery in Outlook, so their email takes longer to open and has a distracting background that also makes it difficult to read!

I worked at a place that had a custom font installed on all of the standard desktop windows images.  It included the corporate logo.  About 80% of the people had this in their email signature.  I tried and tried to convince them "No one outside of people with the corporate image can see that."  But  most of them failed to understand.

[RetiredAt63]

Cats, you have to love them.

Well, I have this one coworker who insists on drinking water from my glasses. She just saunters over and takes a drink. If there's something in there she doesn't want, she'll often just knock it on the floor. She doesn't speak English, and yet when I don't understand her and don't do what she wants, she jumps on my desk and sticks her bum in my face.

[Paul der Krake]

Or custom stationery in Outlook, so their email takes longer to open and has a distracting background that also makes it difficult to read!

The fact that such a feature exists is a sign that the software industry needs its own Hippocratic Oath. Giving customization options to a paper pusher office drone is like handling a fifth of whiskey to an alcoholic.

[Torran]

I am amazed by how many of you have encountered colleagues cutting their toenails in the office. These people are animals.

I also used to have a colleague (thankfully she's left now) who narrated EVERYBODY'S working day. She was just constantly talking. I've never met anyone as chatty. Obviously to keep up the constant noise of her own voice, she often ended up veering into weird conversational territory. I guess the normal mundanities of office conversation only used up so much time.

My two favourite moments were:
1. Questioning me about where I was going on holiday. I replied that I was visiting my grandmother - she asked where. I told her. She phoned up her sister who coincidentally lived in the same place as my grandmother, and asked her to confirm that I was indeed telling the truth and that my grandmother was a person who lived in that town. Even more miraculously, her sister confirmed it. This whole phonecall took place while I was there in the same room. Mind-boggling.

2. Commented one day on a yellow dress I was wearing: 'well you know what they say, nobody ever got laid in mustard'. At first I couldn't even figure out what it meant. 'Nobody... what? Laid down in mustard?'. Then I finally clicked that she was telling me mustard-yellow is not a colour to wear if I wanna get laid. It was magnificently surreal. I particularly liked that she started this with 'well you know what they say'. Ah yes, that famous folk wisdom passed down through generations. Nobody ever got laid in mustard.

[Silverwood]

So while I dont work in a cubical I do have to see the same people 5 days a week.

-I recently got my haircut and I had over 60 people comment on it. Im guessing my old haircut was really terrible?

-I think I have  mild anxiety over eating now because of the amount of people that have also commented on my food.

-There is a group of guys that think its funny to shout out weird animal sounding noises. Like a prehistoric animal dying? It annoyed me until I started thinking of it as their mating call.  We are supposed to be professionals and will sometimes have high up people visit and tour so I have no idea why my manager hasnt said anything.

-Working my ass off only  to look over and see that everyone has gone for break 20 minutes early or is standing around in groups laughing and having a great time. By laughter, I mean that its so loud its creating an echo.

-Being told there might be lay offs but yet if you sign up for the company fitness group you could win large prizes. Whos in charge of this?

-getting stuck talking to the guy who thinks hes a hero.  In every single story hes told me he comes out the hero. Like the time he delivered a baby, or saved the company, or how his kid is a genius or ...

-Oh and until ipods got banned there was one dude who would sing out loud.All day. He was talked to but continued to do it.

[Neustache]

I am amazed by how many of you have encountered colleagues cutting their toenails in the office. These people are animals.

I also used to have a colleague (thankfully she's left now) who narrated EVERYBODY'S working day. She was just constantly talking. I've never met anyone as chatty. Obviously to keep up the constant noise of her own voice, she often ended up veering into weird conversational territory. I guess the normal mundanities of office conversation only used up so much time.

My two favourite moments were:
1. Questioning me about where I was going on holiday. I replied that I was visiting my grandmother - she asked where. I told her. She phoned up her sister who coincidentally lived in the same place as my grandmother, and asked her to confirm that I was indeed telling the truth and that my grandmother was a person who lived in that town. Even more miraculously, her sister confirmed it. This whole phonecall took place while I was there in the same room. Mind-boggling.

2. Commented one day on a yellow dress I was wearing: 'well you know what they say, nobody ever got laid in mustard'. At first I couldn't even figure out what it meant. 'Nobody... what? Laid down in mustard?'. Then I finally clicked that she was telling me mustard-yellow is not a colour to wear if I wanna get laid. It was magnificently surreal. I particularly liked that she started this with 'well you know what they say'. Ah yes, that famous folk wisdom passed down through generations. Nobody ever got laid in mustard.

More stories, please, if you have them.  This made me chuckle heartily, in a Kathleen Turner throaty laugh way. 

[Trimatty471]

Keeping track of your hours.

Example:

Come in the first thing in the morning my coworker asks "how late did you stay on Friday". 
I am thinking why?  We do not do the same things.

[benjenn]

When I first started working here 26 years ago (I was 24 at the time), most of the people here were MUCH older than I was... except for one woman who was 27.  (the youngest person after that was 39)  I was only here a short time when she came to me and lowered her voice so no one else could hear and told me how incredibly happy she was to finally have someone ALMOST as smart as she was in the office.  And she was serious.  To her, that was a compliment.  LOL.  I still laugh about that whenever I think of it.  She was the queen of the backhanded compliment.

[cripzychiken]

something that has be bugging me for the last few week: I started on a new projects and one of my contacts in a different department is a type that has "send mail receipt" on for ALL email, not just important or work related stuff.  So me being the nice guy that I am, I make send the "I read this" message for all the useless email crap that I now get sent (chain emails, notes about what's in the break room, where people are planning on going for lunch, after-work happy hour spot, random office gossip, etc).  He got pissed at me b/c I've been "flooding his email with read receipt for useless emails" but never send them for work related stuff (I purposely don't send them if they are 'always on').

TL;DR - coworker floods my email with spam, gets mad when I return the flood with his requested read receipts.

[Torran]

I am amazed by how many of you have encountered colleagues cutting their toenails in the office. These people are animals.

I also used to have a colleague (thankfully she's left now) who narrated EVERYBODY'S working day. She was just constantly talking. I've never met anyone as chatty. Obviously to keep up the constant noise of her own voice, she often ended up veering into weird conversational territory. I guess the normal mundanities of office conversation only used up so much time.

My two favourite moments were:
1. Questioning me about where I was going on holiday. I replied that I was visiting my grandmother - she asked where. I told her. She phoned up her sister who coincidentally lived in the same place as my grandmother, and asked her to confirm that I was indeed telling the truth and that my grandmother was a person who lived in that town. Even more miraculously, her sister confirmed it. This whole phonecall took place while I was there in the same room. Mind-boggling.

2. Commented one day on a yellow dress I was wearing: 'well you know what they say, nobody ever got laid in mustard'. At first I couldn't even figure out what it meant. 'Nobody... what? Laid down in mustard?'. Then I finally clicked that she was telling me mustard-yellow is not a colour to wear if I wanna get laid. It was magnificently surreal. I particularly liked that she started this with 'well you know what they say'. Ah yes, that famous folk wisdom passed down through generations. Nobody ever got laid in mustard.

More stories, please, if you have them.  This made me chuckle heartily, in a Kathleen Turner throaty laugh way.

Ah glad you liked it :)

So many more stories. I think I've forced myself to forget, though. When I first started working in the same room as her, I remember thinking 'I cannot stand this constant talking, I'm going to go crazy if I have to work with her forever'. I really thought about leaving. Then gradually, I guess, Stockholm Syndrome kicked in and I started to find the constant noise of her voice in the background sort of soothing. It just floated by, and then sometimes I would tune in and realise she was talking about something really bizarre.

The things I heard nearly every day were either 1. An intense description of what she ate for dinner last night. It was always a ready meal, or something really unhealthy, like a burger or chips covered in melted cheese, and she ALWAYS finished the description by saying it was 'absolutely beautiful'. She also talked at length about drinking wine in bed. And 2. An intense description of her ultimate dream man. Always, always she would start by talking how she liked 'dirty boys', which meant, criminals. Then she would go into detail. Dark-haired, Irish, and with a criminal record, seemed to be her most favourite sort of man.

She also told me one day that the reason I was so frustrated with my work everyday was because I was just really bad at my job, so things kept going wrong for me.

Now that she's left, we've got a new guy in the office who talks a lot about 'synergy' and dropping 'email blasts' on other companies. I really miss her at these times. And then I think, no, that's just the Stockholm Syndrome talking.

[GuitarStv]

'Synergy' is one of those very important words, where as soon as you hear a person say it . . . you can immediately ignore everything else that ever comes out of their mouth forever.  It's designed solely to make the utterer feel more important and smart, and is used predominantly by idiots.

[asauer]

I interact with the Leadership Team and BoD frequently, unfortunately.  I seriously want to play a drinking game for buzz words.  I literally count how many times the words "leverage", "value add" and "synergy" are used.  Now, if I could add shots of tequila, it would be fun.

[AllChoptUp]

I interact with the Leadership Team and BoD frequently, unfortunately.  I seriously want to play a drinking game for buzz words.  I literally count how many times the words "leverage", "value add" and "synergy" are used.  Now, if I could add shots of tequila, it would be fun.

Buzzword Bingo! Played during meetings across the Dept of Defense.

[cripzychiken]

I interact with the Leadership Team and BoD frequently, unfortunately.  I seriously want to play a drinking game for buzz words.  I literally count how many times the words "leverage", "value add" and "synergy" are used.  Now, if I could add shots of tequila, it would be fun.

Buzzword Bingo! Played during meetings across the Dept of Defense.

I've played acronym boogle before.  Write down the first 5 acronyms you hear and try to find words that you can spell with them.  Or just try to figure out what the acronym stands for, that is usually just as much fun.

[GuitarStv]

When I started working at my current company I received a twenty page manual of acronyms used just on the project that they assigned me to.  Engineers get some kind of sexual gratification in making a new acronym up.

[Le Poisson]

When I started working at my current company I received a twenty page manual of acronyms used just on the project that they assigned me to.  Engineers get some kind of sexual gratification in making a new acronym up.

Ahhh Yesss - we have this at the management level - they have to think up acronyms for every working group that spell out something clever. Like "TRAKKS" and "MATRIX" and "DR-TACC"  we spend half of a kickoff meeting coming up with a clever name for a report or working group that no one will care about. OF course extra words are tossed in the name to make a clever acronym, and half the time the actual name has nothing to do with what the project is about, but the acronym, ooooh its good!

[Snow White]

This topic made me recall one of my pet peeves and that is people who show up after vacation or God forbid, a wedding, with a 4" stack of photos and say, "you are gonna love my photos!"  I didn't work at National Geographic and this wasn't the photographer returning from the rain forest with rare poison dart frog photos.  The photos inevitably were personal photos of people I didn't know and inexplicably, the truly bad photos of the back of someone's head or an out of focus car interior.  Somehow those photos were breathlessly narrated along with everything else.   

I learned to reduce this behavior by asking the person to come back during lunch hour since clearly they had too many photos to look at while I was working.  That backfired a few times as more than once someone showed up with their lunch bag and stack of photos and I got the lunch time from hell that I deserved for being so wishy washy.  Finally I grew a pair and visibly recoiled when anyone came near me with with photos and I crankily explained that I have a 10 photo limit for looking at even MY family photos.  They were told to pick their top few photos but other than that, I wasn't looking. 

The worst though is the person who walks in with the IPhone in hand telling me I have to look at her latest photos it is impossible to tell if you are going to be shown two pictures or two hundred.  At least the person bearing down on me with a stack of photos gave me a heads up what to expect.

[Ghzbani]

Mine has got to be the Out of Office replies when I know for a fact they aren't "out of the office". Or worse, the people who email, I email back and immediately get an out-of-office, then 5 mins later, their actual response.

Sometimes this can go on for dozens of emails. At least at my old job we only got one out-of-office message if we replied.

[shelivesthedream]

1. The woman whose Out of Office still says she'll be back to work on 2nd January.

2. The two women who eat constantly. Usually nothing too loud or smelly but I can hear them giggling about behind me all day: "Ooh, that's filled me up!" "I shouldn't but... Oh, go on!" "I won't need to eat dinner now!" "Just a little top up" "you know, these come in strawberry flavour too, I'll bring some in tomorrow" - ALL. DAMN. DAY.

3. The woman who cannot follow simple instructions. I wrote down step by step instructions for how to do something she was having trouble with, and then one day she calls me over in a panic (she also always panics when she can't do something, thinking she has broken Excel.) I tell her to start goin through my instructions and I'll see if I can work out what's going wrong. She skips step four. Why? She didn't think she needed to do it. Try doing step four, I say. Oh, it works now!

4. The general attitude that any IT problem they have must be totally unique and therefore unsolvable. They think I am a genius because I assume that other people must want to do XYZ and so there must be a way, so I Google it. I think I am finally training another colleague to Google things, but it has taken MONTHS. Before I arrived, they spent YEARS having huge problems because a joint inbox automatically marked things as read when the selection changed so things kept getting missed. I fixed it on my Outlook and then went round the whole office demanding to fix it on wry one else's too.

[Chris22]

'Synergy' is one of those very important words, where as soon as you hear a person say it . . . you can immediately ignore everything else that ever comes out of their mouth forever.  It's designed solely to make the utterer feel more important and smart, and is used predominantly by idiots.

That people overuse or incorrectly use the word synergy does not mean it doesn't have a valid meeting.  Working in the M&A space, that is a significant component in the value (or lack thereof) of a given deal.  It is also good for determining entrants into another hated but valid buzzword, "adjacent spaces".

[Remben]

What I can't stand are colleagues that tend to have a personal discussion (with lots of smiley faces) while a whole team's mailbox is in cc. It's not that hard to think who's going to benefit from the current discussion before sending an email, or is it?

Another thing I can't stand is their hiding behind "I don't have time", while clearly they spend most of their working hours on social networks or news sites. Sigh.

[Jesstache]

My first job out of college was at a big cubicle farm defense contractor.  People would wheel themselves around in their desk chairs instead of getting up and walking to talk to coworkers in neighboring cubes.  One day I got run over while walking down the cubicle aisle.  This lady didn't even look before backing up to the aisle and springing her feet off the floor to try and launch into the cube across the aisle.  Seriously?

[russianswinga]

I work out of client's offices (I'm in IT, and visit 2 clients per day)
Sometimes I work in the server room. What's a server room? A closet, usually 6 feet by 10 feet, with 4 of those 6 feet being taken up by a rack of screaming servers and routers (take a loud desk fan, multiply x 50, and put next to your ear) and air conditioning to cool that space (imagine a NASA wind tunnel, and the temperature set to something like 15c)... and A desk. Where I need to work for 4 hrs at a time. I wear my leather jacked, and sweater, when it's +30c outdoors.
Sometimes there is no table at a server room, so I get put in someone's office. Boy are the owners of the office confused when they get there - but I was told to sit here? I've gotten moved to 3 different desks at a client in 4 hours before, because every person that they thought would be out was actually in that day (they were all off, but the boss decided to call a meeting and interrupt their vacations)
Sometimes I come to a client with a list of tasks delegated to 4 hours. The client then hands me a subsequent list for another 2 hours of work. I have to finish 6 hours worth of work in 5 hours (the last hour of which is my lunch - a lunch I don't get to eat since I have to be at the next client on time)

Today...
Manager: we need you to work at client X at 7:30 pm (after a full day of work) because that's when the client approved downtime.
Me: ok, I can do a bit of overtime. If you send another engineer with me, we can knock this out, and get it done by 10 PM. But I HAVE to be out at 10 pm, I have a 2-month old baby at home. If you can't get someone to help me, I can do it for 4 hours on my own, but it would have to be on saturday
Manager: ok, I'll ask the client
Manger sends email to the client: I asked the engineer, we're good for 7:30 tonight! Please approve this time
Client: we approve!
Me: Manager, did you get me another person to do this job with me?
Manager: oh, I can't get you anyone this late. But you can do this quick, right?
The job solo will be 4 hours, give or take. I'll be done at midnight. And I have a client I have to be at at 7 AM tomorrow. I live 1 hour away from both clients, so I'll be home at 1 AM, and I'll have to leave my house at 6 AM to drive to tomorrow's client.

[Emilyngh]

This topic made me recall one of my pet peeves and that is people who show up after vacation or God forbid, a wedding, with a 4" stack of photos and say, "you are gonna love my photos!"  I didn't work at National Geographic and this wasn't the photographer returning from the rain forest with rare poison dart frog photos.  The photos inevitably were personal photos of people I didn't know and inexplicably, the truly bad photos of the back of someone's head or an out of focus car interior.  Somehow those photos were breathlessly narrated along with everything else.   

I learned to reduce this behavior by asking the person to come back during lunch hour since clearly they had too many photos to look at while I was working.  That backfired a few times as more than once someone showed up with their lunch bag and stack of photos and I got the lunch time from hell that I deserved for being so wishy washy.  Finally I grew a pair and visibly recoiled when anyone came near me with with photos and I crankily explained that I have a 10 photo limit for looking at even MY family photos.  They were told to pick their top few photos but other than that, I wasn't looking. 

The worst though is the person who walks in with the IPhone in hand telling me I have to look at her latest photos it is impossible to tell if you are going to be shown two pictures or two hundred.  At least the person bearing down on me with a stack of photos gave me a heads up what to expect.

I went to a happy hour with some colleagues once and one guy's wife showed up with her tablet and proceeded to sit there and go picture by picture through their entire vacation dominating all of the conversation at the table.  It's not like they were really good friends with anyone at the table, nor were any of the photos of anything remotely interesting.    I left after about an hour (and haven't gone with them since) and she was still scrolling through them...WTF is wrong with people...

[Zamboni]

Another co-worker always talked on the speaker phone.  Really?  There are 50+ people in an open office and you are talking on a speaker phone ? The funny thing is every single time this co-worker came back to the desk (after lunch, break, washroom) and if the phone was lit up with a message, he would start semi yelling "oh for fuck's sake, what fucking asshole is calling me now".  Every single time.  It actually made me laugh.  We used to leave messages just to annoy him. 

Oh my that brings back memories!  I used to share a cube wall with a lady who had two extremely annoying habits:

1) she talked really loud . . . to herself!  Yes, most of the time no one was there with her, but she yammered away. At first I thought she always had company, but then one day by chance I noticed she was sitting there talking to herself. And then I realized that she was almost always just in there by herself, not on the phone or anything, just voicing the nonsense running through her head, which sounded like one side of a conversation, which is a little spooky now that I think about it . . .

2) when not talking to herself she was typing letters from a recorded dictated message. She had a little foot peddle she could use to rewind and play portions of what her boss had spoken over and over because, sadly, she apparently couldn't type very fast. Why she didn't use headphones completely escapes me.  At least she wasn't talking to herself out loud during this process.

I moved to a different cubicle as soon as one opened.

[Cressida]

4. Eating crunchy foods, especially if the first bite is extra loud (people, please close your lips before you start eating/crunching)!

I know, right? It's not hard!

I just don't understand why people have to eat ALL DAY LONG.  Or why they have to eat at their desks. 
I know this sounds so foreign and crazy to normal people, but it is a serious problem for me.

Nope. I have the same problem.

[Zikoris]

Is it just me or do most people take REALLY boring vacation photos? Why would you want to show your coworkers vacation photos of you and your friends standing in a group or line, without even anything interesting in the background? Nobody wants to look at that. My travel photos are a combination of scenery (more erupting volcanoes or cityscape views from towers in Europe vs fields of grass scenery), cool architecture, or funny things. And I narrow them down heavily - the imgur album link that I email to the coworkers who ask for it has at most 15-20 pictures. /rant

[TheBuddha]

I'm sure glad I left my office job and started driving a truck.

Of course, there are still plenty of things that make me daydream about RE.

Chaining up. Driving on snow or ice. A million different traffic complaints. Irregular sleep schedule. Irregular internet access. Condescending/rude people at shippers or receivers (I just smile and think about the ever-growing stash).

[theadvicist]

Another one, someone I work with regularly though he's at a different company: "I've been trying to call x, is he on holiday?"

Me: "no he's working today"

Him: "well I've called his mobile 4 times, he's not answering!".

Me: "Did you leave a message? He may just be in a meeting".

Him: "Oh, right. Well, it's not urgent...".

So if it's not urgent why have you called him 4 times, and me once, within the space of a couple of hours? Did it not occur to you that he may just be tied up with something else?

I have this same conversation, with the same guy, at least once a month.

[Le Poisson]

I don't think anyone else has mentioned this yet, but password hell.

We have to come up with new passwords every 8 months, with a rotation of 25 passwords which lead to everyone having passwords like:

Password1
Password2
Password3

Etc.

The guy in the desk next to me regularly runs out of tries and calls in to IT to ask them what number he's on.

[Insanity]

I don't think anyone else has mentioned this yet, but password hell.

We have to come up with new passwords every 8 months, with a rotation of 25 passwords which lead to everyone having passwords like:

Password1
Password2
Password3

Etc.

The guy in the desk next to me regularly runs out of tries and calls in to IT to ask them what number he's on.

Please tell me IT can't answer that :)

[Le Poisson]

Oops - that should be a new password every 8 weeks... I wish it was every 8 months.

[Le Poisson]

I don't think anyone else has mentioned this yet, but password hell.

We have to come up with new passwords every 8 months, with a rotation of 25 passwords which lead to everyone having passwords like:

Password1
Password2
Password3

Etc.

The guy in the desk next to me regularly runs out of tries and calls in to IT to ask them what number he's on.

Please tell me IT can't answer that :)

Yeah the calls are great - "Hi IT? Yeah I'm locked out of my computer."

.........

"Oh, when I came in today it told me I had to reset my password, and I don't know what my old password is so I can't set a new one."

.........

"Well, I just leave my computer on all the time so I don't have to log in."

.........

"Yeah, I know I'm supposed to, but its easier if I don't have to log in every time."

.........

"OK well I always use SmokinHot with a number after it. I tried 17, 18, and 19, but those were all wrong. Can you look up what it is?"
........

"I'm pretty sure I used an uppercase H, but I'm not sure.

........

"OK, well, if you can just unlock my computer, I'll set it to something new."

........

"I have to wait until this afternoon? Why can't you just log in from over there?"

..........

"OK - bye"

At this point he comes around into my cube to share his displeasure with me - "Can you believe those idiots in IT - they can't even reset my password. I basically told them what it is and they won't unlock it for me, so now I have to wait until this afternoon for them to come. I'm going to go out for a drive - you need anything from Tim Horton's or anything?"

[GuitarStv]

I don't think anyone else has mentioned this yet, but password hell.

We have to come up with new passwords every 8 months, with a rotation of 25 passwords which lead to everyone having passwords like:

Password1
Password2
Password3

Etc.

The guy in the desk next to me regularly runs out of tries and calls in to IT to ask them what number he's on.

We have separate passwords for:
- The HDD on our laptops (computer won't start to boot without entering this one)
- The tool that holds our requirements
- Our login
- Our crippled pseudo-administrative login
- Our timesheet utility
- The utility to book vacations
- The utility used for performance reviews
- The tool that holds our code base
- The remote login that you need to work from home

Each password changes every three months.  You can't use the same password for any of the activities.  You can't use a password that you've used the previous ten times for any of the activities.  Some of the passwords require special characters and spaces, some of the passwords cannot be more than 10 characters, some of the passwords cannot be under eight characters.  It's impossible to remember your passwords.

I have been writing all of mine on my whiteboard at my desk since this was implemented, and have noticed that this appears to be a standard practice.  If you work in IT, please learn about the stupid security policies you implement . . . because they may not actually make things as safe as you believe in real life.

[Chris22]

Why don't these people just leave a sticky with their password written on it stuck to the bottom of their keyboard like the rest of us??

[Spork]

I don't think anyone else has mentioned this yet, but password hell.

We have to come up with new passwords every 8 months, with a rotation of 25 passwords which lead to everyone having passwords like:

Password1
Password2
Password3

Etc.

The guy in the desk next to me regularly runs out of tries and calls in to IT to ask them what number he's on.

We have separate passwords for:
- The HDD on our laptops (computer won't start to boot without entering this one)
- The tool that holds our requirements
- Our login
- Our crippled pseudo-administrative login
- Our timesheet utility
- The utility to book vacations
- The utility used for performance reviews
- The tool that holds our code base
- The remote login that you need to work from home

Each password changes every three months.  You can't use the same password for any of the activities.  You can't use a password that you've used the previous ten times for any of the activities.  Some of the passwords require special characters and spaces, some of the passwords cannot be more than 10 characters, some of the passwords cannot be under eight characters.  It's impossible to remember your passwords.

I have been writing all of mine on my whiteboard at my desk since this was implemented, and have noticed that this appears to be a standard practice.  If you work in IT, please learn about the stupid security policies you implement . . . because they may not actually make things as safe as you believe in real life.

Yes, their policies are dumb.  Forced password changes don't make things safer.  But seriously: use a password manager.

[GuitarStv]

I do use a password manager.  My whiteboard.