Given that there's a bye week and I've been drowning in work these last couple weeks I thought it be appropriate to get pulse on what people say at work that tilts you. I'll start:
1) Someone emailing "can you get this done ASAP" for EVERY request. First, for some reason ASAP just annoys me and second, if everything is that urgent you are unorganized
2) "This will only take a few minutes." Really, you know how long it takes me to do everything? Thanks a-hole.
3) "Hey, real quick...", and then take 15 minutes talking about nothing. That wasn't quick, please get out of my office.
I know there's more but those are my top 3.
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My favorite is "Hey, did you get my email??" Umm yes...and I will get to it when I get a chance. Geez!
My favorite:
1. Receives e-mail
2. Receives IM asking if I saw the e-mail
3. Drops by my office to see if I saw the IM
all in 5 minutes.
Ugh. Fortunately we don't use IM so that step gets eliminated, but yes.
Also, when someone calls, you ignore it, and then they call back 2 minutes later. And then send an email. Ugh.
Damn I am SO glad we don't have IM here....that would just be painful.
"R U in a meeting?"
Well...my chat status says I'm in a meeting and you can see that my calendar is blocked off.
We have a field office in another state, and there's one guy that works there who, after sending an email, will immediately call and ask if you got the email. Like sometimes, the phone rings as its landing in the inbox.
Seriously, dude? I've started replying back with, "I got this. No need to call me, dumbass. What the fuck do you think email is for?" (Ok, so maybe I don't really do that, but it sure would feel good.)
I have a girl here that does that too. I just started ignoring her calls. LOL stupid people never cease to
amaze me...
"Peter...Whats Happening?.."
"Um..yeah..I'm gonna need you to come in on Saturday"...
Looks like somebody has a case of the Mondays.
DIE!
I work in a government environment, receipt request are strickky CYA (Cover Your Ass). That way if anything hits the fan, you can limber up, stretch, and throw someone else directly under the bus.
I am in the gov environment as well, and think you can bypass them being able to see that you read an email by having the preview pane up and not technically opening it up. But if you get that popup box idk how to get around that, we don't have those.
Well, after complaining about them - I poked around the options and found this:
I think I will select that option, and then also change my signature to...
Leonard never, and I mean FUCKING NEVER EVER sends read receipts, so don't even bother.
THIS - ALL DAY!!! You should only use read receipts if you're an angsty ex, so basically don't
Little late to the party here, but yes, I have to hold back from breaking things when I see the read receipt request.
I ALWAYS click 'NO'
Anything to do with website design and customers who don't understand website design/what they want.
So do you actually talk to the customers?
Then you must physically take the demands from the customers to the engineers, right?
What would you say...you do here?
I hate when coworkers feel like they have to prove their value in every discussion or meeting...
I had this guy here in the office that used to say "It is what it is." All....the...damn....time
It was his excuse for why stuff wasn't getting done basically and drove us nuts.
I'm an auditor, and I actually love that phrase from the client because that means that they know I am right and they aren't going to fight it.
Yep, same douche that says that has a supervisor role at my office.
cannot unhear..
seriously, all of a sudden everyone around me is saying this...
+1 to get you to 3200, because, it is what it is.
I'm trying to smile about this...
My old boss always said "six in one hand, half a dozen in the other" whenever comparing things. I swear he said it at least once a week.
I had someone tell me "2 to one, half to the others" . . . !?!?!?!. . . yeah, they obviously thought they sounded awesome.
I have variations of this conversation more often than I'd like:
...and queue the influx Dilbert Cartoons
I've been reading Dilbert comics online for the past 10 hours or so (not including sleeping time). They've got an archive back to about 1989. It's awesome. Turkey leg for you.
Edited comment for not following directions:
Annoying things that people say:
"How yous doing today?" - when did 'you' get an 's'?? Where I grew up it was "you" and "yall"
"Let me ping this off of you" - It would be a nice pun if I worked for Ping, but I don't
that format war drove me nuts...I waited for years before I took a side and started buying them, then everything ended up going in the cloud anyway. I still buy my favorites though hard to beat the picture quality.
Sorry hoqiez - I edited my previous post for not following rules.
I hear ya - the cloud has been catching on in the household - so much easier to store movies that way.
lol no worries, but thanks for letting me know that I wasn't losing it :)
The most annoying to me is "What happened to your Chokies this weekend?" Had it after Duke, BC, and Maryland...
It hurts deep down every time I hear it.
Same here man. Got an LSU fan in here. I never really give him a hard time when they lose b/c
I'm a nice person like that. But every time we lose he lets me have it. I hate it!
This is the worst. I got some jerk who went to William and Mary and is a SKINS fan talking smack. I always say we buckled like RG3's knee.
Fortunately for me, there are very few CFB fans in my department. The only one I can think of off-hand is a UNC grad, and she's not a smack-talker anyway.
With ya, homie. Boss is a UVA grad, other boss is a GT grad, and neither of them follow football -- EXCEPT if the Hokies should lose or either of their respective teams is playing Tech. It drives me fucking crazy.
I hate the idiot who hits "reply all" to reply to something stupid. Ex:
Original email:
"There's a white 2004 Toyota Corolla out in lot D with it's lights on."
Reply all:
"It's not mine. I drive a Honda."
Thanks Jeff, I was really worried it might have been yours. I might have lost sleep worrying about that had you not informed the entire branch that it wasn't you.
This made me laugh a bit. Teaching proper Reply All techniques and etiquette is a must in todays society. It's similar to the facebook comment conversations that go on for days it seems on peoples wall- thank goodness for the 'unfollow post' and the 'hide person from news feed' features.
The worst is how after one idiot does it, you inevitbaly get three or four other idiots who see the first one reply all, and assume that's the proper response to that email. So now, I know Jeff, Bob, Tom, and Stacy all didn't leave their lights on this morning. Good job guys. Good effort, good hustle.
Unless it is a scathing and hilarious "I-quit-F-U-All" message and you are trying to not only burn the bridge with your current employer, but make sure everyone else goes down with it, then "Reply All" should never be used.
Nah, I think the worst is how you get the mass email and some dummy replies to it and then no one replies to it for a couple hours. Then some other guy checks his email, and sees the reply-all blunder and then sends out another reply all to say "PLEASE MAKE SURE NOT TO SEND REPLY-ALL!!" and then there's a "SORRY" and it just snowballs with people saying "STOP"
We get that all the time whenever there's a maintenance email for our building and the manager forgets to BCC everyone.
I just lol'd.
And I reserve the right to read every single email if I get a forwarded email then I read every single email. It's hilarious to see what someone writes when they didn't think their boss and the company VP would read it.
The only time I approved of this behavior is when the email went out that said "Men's wedding band found in the bathroom..." to which my co-worker replied all with "Can't be mine. I sold all three of mine." GOLD!
I worked for GE for a while in the 90s.
There was another type of reply in their email system: Reply global.
It replied globally, as in everyone with a GE email account. Around the world.
People would hit it and send 100,000 copies of an email.
Well, one time, apparently there was this couple having an affair....
"Get down from there"
"Hey, that's sexual harassment!"... I mean, come on. It gets old after a while. Come up with some new material.
/sarcastica
Don't you own your company? Are you harassing yourself?
I'm not judging...
haha... yes, I harass myself every damn day
I can't get it to link right for some reason....but all the gibberish halfway through this video is spot on annoying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUtL6IS7wcY
I can honestly say I have a fat white lady in my office who says "Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays". She had never heard of Office Space before. I showed her the clip and said..."you don't want to be referred to as that"
this was actual conversation I had with my previous boss:
A-hole Boss: "I need this report tomorrow."
Me: "But it's not due until end of next week."
A-hole Boss: "Yeah, but I need to review it first."
Me: "But the meeting is literally called the Monthly Review Meeting"
A-Hole Boss: "I still need to see it first so I can prepare."
Me: "Prepare for who? Everyone reports to you."
A-hole Boss: "I need you to send me the report first thing tomorrow. Do it."
So I quit and started my own business. He was fired 6 months later. Karma's a bitch
I upvoted this once - but it was with the most zeal I have mustered for an upvote in a long damn time brother.
We also have a "phantom shitter" in the office. There is a single unisex bathroom right out my office
and people go in there take a huge shit then spray a ton of air freshener and leave the door wide open for
the rest of us to gag on. Come on! Go shit somewhere else where no one sits. We literally have at least
15 different bathrooms here.
Ok, you have me very curious...
So you sit next to, or at least within smell, possibly eye sight of the toilet and yet you have never seen this phantom shitter. Does he drop his load in the morning before you get there or during lunch while you're out? Wait for you to be in a meeting?
We actually believe its more than one person. And its all the time. No clue who it is.
But they are NASTY.
definitely not cool. put rubber cement in the latch plate with the latch recessed. they won't be able to securely close the door and move on.
guaranteed its a chick. Being a unisex bathroom adds to the anonymity of taking a humongous doogan that most guys would be proud of, while not running the risk of being accused of toxic dumping in the ladies room.
Truth right here. At my first job the only restroom where I had to clean shit off the floor wasn't the men's
p.s. - and other lady products too :(
p.p.s. - it was an ice cream shop :(
Same. I worked at a grocery store and the women's 85-90% nasty-stankier than the men's.
I used to work for Barnes & Noble. Coffee + Public Restroom was a recipe for disaster.
That said, the stories I heard from female colleagues trumped the guy's easily.
Our department is has restricted access to it due to equipment we use. So you have to have a special badge to get in here but we have people that come from all over the company to "deuce" in our bathroom. I guess they feel ours is better and more private. I have seen people walk down three levels of stairs just to sneak into our bathroom. Then when you need to go every stall and urinal is taken up by these people.
I work with a bunch of shitters. Seems like every time I go to take a leak, someone is blowing the bathroom up. I've never worked in an office where people take so many shits at work.
Remember how in school you would make fun of the kids that pooped at school (now times that would be bullying - looking at you Richie Incognito) ? I thought that carried over to the workplace....
yeah I never shit at school except before football games after team meal. (sometimes if i needed to make weight before a match.
People get defensive around here about their crappers and the time. If you encroach they get mighty angry. You can try what my old college roommate did and sprinkle water on the toilet seat. People see it and think it's piss and run out.
This is hilarious. Turkey Leg x10 if I could for you sir.
Ma'am? I'm a woman.
Yes another woman on the TKP!! Here's you 500th turkey leg. :)
woops - my bad - couldn't tell from name/pic.
This is gold
This is how I approach the situation:
I've had the same problem before. Here's how I handled it. I typed up a message that read,
"When you're done putting this poor toilet through therapy, I have to live with your aftermath for at least a solid hour. Please leave the door closed and turn on the fan if you're in here dominating the porcelain. --Thanks, MGMT"
It worked for me!
I'm a longtime reader new poster but this has got to be one of the most hilarious posts on this entire site.
anybody (particularly from a generation prior to Gen X) that says, "I was here at 7:00am this morning."
read between the lines as: "I see you strolling in here at 10ish, and I am going to in one single statement neglect to mention that I leave punctually at 4:00 while simultaneously invalidating your work ethic since I am not here to see you leave at 7:00 tonight with laptop over your shoulder."
Working from home generates that same problem or a different one, they think you are at work al lthe time.
I sent you an email at 11:00Pm last night, why didn't you reply?
I got in trouble one time because someone THOUGHT I had fallen asleep on a conference call that was taking place at 4:00 AM. MY work hours were 8AM to 5PM.
"Hey, Trevor, did you hear!?"
My response every time, "No. I am deaf."
Gets them every time.
"We will be updating the computers and you may experience a bit of downtime."
"Does this look infected to you?"
My personal favorites:
1. "We'll have to circle the wagons on that" from the guy that has NO CLUE how to do his job and must go back and ask his employees what the correct answer is and yet REFUSES to delegate to them so we can accomplish something
2. "It's a good problem to have" from the guy who was too cheap to hire more people to do all the work we were bringing in so the "good problem" was overloading all his employees to keep his profit margin higher. (We all quit within six months and he was screwed)
3. "I don't disagree" No, you clearly disagree with SOMETHING, or else you would have said "I agree". Just sack up and own your opinions, if you disagree with something, tell us and we'll can talk it out like adults
Also, some said something similar earlier, but people that put the "High Importance" flag on EVERY DAMN EMAIL. Plus, people who do this are invariably are more useless than Mike London with a timeout and NOTHING they send me is even moderately important.
Yes, Yes, and Yes. Also the "oh that's a great question" guy. No shit it's a great question, that's why it was asked, now give me the damn answer.
Government jargon response when you clearly don't know the response. "Let's circle back to that"
Good way to escape a tight spot.
The same jargon is used in the Civ world, too.
"Hey, how are you doing today."
Thought bubble... (well I'm hungover as hell and drool will be dripping from my mouth within minutes of me sitting at my desk)...
"I'm good. How are you?"
Thought bubble...(don't really care)
Piggy back to the person that asks about how your kids are doing but uses the wrong name:
Boss: "Hey, how are Sally and Bobby doing?"
Me: "Not sure, who the eff are Sally and Bobby?"
Boss: "Your kids?"
Me: "Oh you mean Elizabeth and Jack, yea they're good, thanks for caring!"
And the obvious answer/response from EVERYONE at the end of the week...
"It's Friday!"
-no shit it's Friday. Thanks for pointing that out to me once again because I needed to hear that from you, as well as everyone else that has said 'Good morning' to me as well.
As I typed this at lunch today, two people did the old "hey how are you" bit. Of course they respond "I'm gooood, how about you?" (because who's going to be the weirdo that says, "hey, my life is a mess"). The funny part, though, is that the second person always says good in a different way (different pitch, drag out the oooooo, etc.) to make it seem like their answer was different and that the conversation wasn't the most pointless thing of all time.
"I hope you don't mind I overheard your conversation..."
"At the end of the day..."
People who add an "s" like so: "Alls we gotta do..."
People who insert "you know" in between every word they speak...No i don't know, that is why you're telling me!
Like MV7 in an interview?
MV7: "you know, we went out there and you know, played well. Shady, you know, had a great run you know on 3rd you know down, and all, but you know he really stepped up and you know got us into good you know field position for you know me to run you know to the endzone"
*** pauses to lick lips between every 5 words***
his 'ya no's vastly improved from his college days. not an accurate bust for MV, the pro.
Yeah, he clearly hired a speaking coach as soon as he went pro.
It did improve quite a bit from college to pro - touche sir
That drives me insane! Especially since more college athletes talk this way. One reason why I turn off closed caption during games.
If i hear "it is what it is" one more time at my office im gonna bang my head on my desk until i knock myself unconscious
"Who ate my sandwich?!"
how many time does one need to say this to understand not to bring lunch in from home?
my favorite bossism..."Immediately, if not sooner!"
Heads slams wall!
MikeMikeMikeMikeMikeMikeMikeMikeMike
Hump-DAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Doesn't even matter what day it is.
For the win!
my boss who i'm trashing below thinks that is the funniest thing ever devised by man. it is beyond annoying on wednesday mornings.
all of these from my boss, i'm her number 2 man. we work very closely togethr. i see her more than my wife and daughter. it sucks.
"we have to be proactive not reactive"
"dont be so close-minded, think outside of the box"
"the only constant is change"
"we need to be on our 'a' game today"
"i'm cold"
"i have a headache"
"i cant believe its already (insert the name of whatever month it is"
"dont make me show my ass!"
"hey i have to leave early today"
"now i like nick saban, dont talk shit on him"
"what happened to tech on saturday?"
i could go on and on.
What's worse is that you probably hear some of these at home too:
"i'm cold"
"i have a headache"
"What happened to tech on Saturday?"
"Don't make me show my ass"
"good luck with that!"
"Good Morning"
once had a coworker go into painful detail about her mom's 'battle' with menopause.
that was my limit. - Headphones please.
"sorry... must have gone to my junk mail folder..."
Bullshit. You just missed the email and don't have the plums to fess up to being a moron.
If you work in my department and are capable of walking to my office or sending me and email then why the hell did you leave me a voicemail on my office phone and expect to get a response immediately.
My biggest pet peeve in the office is when people forward me emails that I was originally included on. I didn't need the original email, let alone it sent to me again.
When the office me-guy says to me "you should have been here in the old days...." especially with the worthless story that always follows him saying it about how great or how bad something was as a one up on whatever someone had just finished saying
PS: The office has existed for eight years, I have been here for six and d-bag started two years ago.....I want to drop kick the S out of him fairly regularly.....
I can't stand when my boss tells me to get off of thekeyplay.com and get back to work.
He just doesn't get it.
"Pants are still required on casual Friday."
Grad school problems:
"Can I borrow your keys?"
"Do you know where *insert professor, TA, or other random person* is?"
"No? Do you know when they'll be around?"
"Do you know where their office is?"
"Do you know how to work this machine?"
"Do you know how to fix this machine?"
And one thing that's just started today... my office is essentially a closet that opens up on two labs. The heating vent for BOTH labs is in this room, so even though it's 70 degrees out, the heat is on, making my office sweltering hot. So today I have the doors to both labs open, trying to not die of heat stroke. Now people are using my office like it's a second hall.
Oh, grad school is a gold mine.
"What is is that you do, exactly?"
"When will you be done?"
"What are you going to do afterward?"
"Why didn't your [experiment, task, whatever] work?"
When will you be done... that's a killer! Reminds me of this XKCD
*PHD Comics
But between those and geeky wit of xkcd, you can pretty much sum up my entire life to this point. This one is my favorite, and I even used it during my dissertation defense seminar:
Yes, thank you. I'm going to blame that brain melt on my office being 90 degrees. Seriously, I think they cranked the heat up last night after I complained. I can't even be in there right now, it's so bad.
The people that wear short skirts and/or short sleeve shirts and thin material then complain about it being cold and crank the heat. They could add a sweater but no, that would be unfashionable.
I'm an intern at VDOT, and over the course of the summer the head of the intern program's intern would email all of us whenever one of us had a birthday. There were a couple things wrong with that:
1) I would get reply-alls back saying the same thing with the same stupid emoticon.
2) She forgot mine.
The head of the program's intern was pretty annoying too, thought she was hot shit because she worked in central office with the director.
Sorry about that :-(
Happy Birthday! :-)
When people have personal phone calls you really don't want to hear.
. . . and even though it was obvious that you just heard 1/2 of the conversation, they still come to tell you about it as though you were clueless.
Actually I'm unemployed at home so it's more like
1
"YOU SLEPT WITH LUMBERG!!!"
"we've got to figure out where we're going with that"
The running joke in my office whenever I make a mistake is "He is a Tech grad". DIE
We used to say that about the Stanford grad in my first company
Its just too easy I suppose. What makes it even worse is one of them is a Radford grad from back in the day
well, I don't know if it's the same thing. The Stanford grad was a phucking smart kid so that's why we made fun of him. I suppose if it's a Radford grad and the like it's more about jealousy
Pet peeves of mine.
Boss: (5 minutes before quitting time on Friday) Can you come in tomorrow?
A RFQ came down the pipes late on Wednesday that had to have a proposal in the following Monday. Big Cheese told us "there's 96 hours between now and Monday. That's two weeks and time enough to do anything."
I have to admit I used it afterwards from time to time.
e: whoops
I have one rule of thumb. If someone says "Six Sigma," immediately stop listening. They are more interested in letting you know that they have the designation than they are about solving the problem.
Second is the use of overuse of popular catch phrases. Tiger Team. Kaizen. Drill down. High level. Key takeaways. Core competencies.
Six Sigma is why my company exists. Kaizen for life. Lean FTW.
I think you forgot "Synergy" and "10,000 foot perspective"
Not going to try to embed this video, but it's the greatest presentation Liz Lemon has ever given:
http://vimeo.com/24297392
And it fits right in with all this
Here's one I hear every Thursday morning...."Happy Friday Eve!!" Ugh!
You should be automatically allowed to do this:
Oh how I wish I could....
+1. One of the best Chappelle skits ever.
"What did the five fingers say to the face?"
"What?"
"SLAP!"
I cannot stand the "one day closer to the weekend" reply.
The only time this should be allowed is when you took Friday off because Virginia Tech has a Thursday night home game....Oh Wait, Thanks Weaver.....
Its not really a phrase, but do any of you have that one guy or girl in your office that just think they're absolutely hilarious? Always cracking corny jokes and whatnot?
Dude, I AM hilarious...
Touche sir. Touche.
Hump Day is definitely played out. The whole Chokies thing is beyond annoying. It just pisses me of something fierce by now.
We have a guy here who always goes around asking people how they would do things. When they tell him their idea he just replies with "Yeah, that's what I was thinking" and runs back to his desk to try (and usually fail) to execute someone else's idea. It has become somewhat of a game for a few of us that when he asks us for ideas we ask what his idea is first. After he throws together some BS we come at him with something completely different to see if he goes back to his go-to "yeah, that's what I was thinking" statement. We love to call him out on it. The crazy thing is he never learns and he just does the same stupid crap over and over.
When people talk about their medical procedures in depth. I've heard every detail about my neighboring cube's vasectomy at least 4 times.
I work in an office by myself, so the only person that I get to have extended conversations with is myself. The worst thing I usually say to myself is "Why did you spend all that time on TKP??!! You had so much other things to do!"
My father always says "Talking to yourself isn't a problem. It's only when you start answering yourself that trouble starts." So, following dad's advice I don't answer the question and pull up TKP.
My boss just said "you guys went to El Rodeo without me?? You bitches!!" My boss is awesome.
(Sorry I know this thread is about what annoys but I had to share)
Another annoying thing that people do is when they go to the breakroom to use the microwave and heat up that bag of frozen veggies or reheat that leftover fish, asparagus, or especially leftover indian (curry) food for lunch. Wtf? That sh-t carries throughout the entire floor. Hey...I bet that's what's giving so many of them the phantom shits.
I was on a redeye flight from Vegas to Charlotte 2 years ago on a Sunday night- I was stuck between two large men. One of which woke me up in the middle of the 3 hour flight with the stench of indian food. it was the worse smell i've ever encountered.
No sleep from Vegas to CLT, got in my car at 6am EST, made my 9AM meeting in Blacksburg. It was so awesome.
Burned bag of popcorn.....
Here's one of my favorites when I used to work in an office -
I usually arrived at work at 7am, ate lunch at my desk, and was ready to leave by 5pm.
My co-worker (who arrived at 9am, took an hour lunch, spent the afternoon talking about his favorite totally obscure hobbies) saw me leaving every day and liked to state rather loudly, "Oh, leaving early?"
Every. Single. Freakin'. Day.
My coworker - similar situation. I arrive at 7:45 every morning, take a 15 minute lunch while working, leave at 5-5:30 every day. She comes in at 9:30, takes 1-1.5 hours out to lunch every day, leaves at 5p and calls me out if I leave at 5 with her...
WTF?
That's seems kinda funny and it does make me snicker, but after, I dunno, about 3 mos, I'd kinda wanna punch him.
Yes i hate this. I have a similar situation. Get in at 7am (supposed to be in at 8am). I dont go around gossiping or talking to other people (unless it is a quick hello how are you). Just eat a quick 15 min lunch at my desk. Leave at 5pm. While the people that work till 6-7pm wonder why i am leaving so early. Its like if you just stop goofing off and going around to everyone's desk to socialize, stop taking 1 hour or more lunches, and just focus on the tasks at hand its easy to get things done and not have to stay till 6 or 7pm.
If i can get in before the traffic it is wonderful.
Ask them next time, when they arrive at 8, why they're coming in late.
I hate to hear "How did Tech do this weekend?" This year, it's because of bad outcomes.
Prior years, you know they won! Duh.