Please tell me batshit things about your work.

[TheLightSideOfTheMoon]

I am unwell and hunkering down with MN and TT for the day.

I’ve just started a new job (today is a day off), it’s all new, I’m not settling in as well as I’d like (I’ve gone from a tiny place to a HUGE one) and I’m kind of hyper-focussed on different work practices right now.

Funny stories will cheer me up.

I’ll start.

At my new work they use poly pockets/polywallets UPSIDE-DOWN!

They go in upside-down and they slide the paperwork upwards into it.

I find it so, so weird. Each time I look at them I’m like, WTAF?

Anyway, that’s mine. Please share yours. Entertain me with batshitness. I beg you.

Someone in a team that I need to check in with regularly is delightfully formal on Teams. So will send me a message starting 'Dear Iamanunsafebuilding' and end it 'kind regards Colleague' where most of us are 'hey' and 'cheers'. But they also ❤️ messages that I send back, it's most incongruous and makes me chuckle!

I previously worked for a well-known insurance company. They were batshit crazy. They took controlling and micromanaging to a new level.

Take more than 3-4 minutes to pop to the loo and you'll find your team leader at your desk tapping their watch when you return, demanding you explain your toilet issues to the whole team (time of the month, dodgy curry the night before, nothing was off-limits) and it was all noted down and thrown in your face a month later at your one-to-one. My team leader actually told me once "You should get a coil fitted so your periods dont interfere with work so much" (never once had any time off with periods; just needed to pop to the loo a few times a day during working hours!)

"Enforced Fun" was another one; management would make the whole team take an hour off to go for a meal for "team cohesion", which just caused stress and anxiety as its not like anyone else would be covering our duties while we're gone. As you're all leaving, the managers enforcing the "fun" will make snide comments about "Making sure all work is completed" even though they're literally not letting us do any work. We had to pay for these meals out of our own pockets, nobody wanted to go, the atmosphere would be tense and steessy because all we could think of was the work piling up back in the office. Those days always ended in the whole team staying till 6-7pm (for zero recognition or overtime pay) to get everything done and avoid a bollocking at your next one-to-one.

When I see job adverts for this company preaching about their "values" I LOL. They are literally lunatics.

Bum washing?!!!

@Medusaismyhero yep, because the office toilets don't have hose attachments.

@cocksstrideintheevening 🙈😂🙈😂🙈

That is completely bonkers!
Did they want “Dear Superiors, Colleagues, and Underlings” to cover all bases?

GPO as was. We weren't allowed staplers, we had to pin papers together in such a way as to hide the point. First day there I was given training in doing it correctly....

There was no end of batshittery....

I have had to do this in a past job a long time ago. I worked as a PA for the head honcho who was so important but also Luddite that I had to print his emails and stamp them with a bit red stamp with his initials in the middle and the date (seemed lost on them that emails say the date they're sent) and file them in a folder divided by Mon/Tues/Wed etc, which he would then read and tick his initial in the stamp once he had.

I also had to electronically file all his received and sent emails but also Print and electronically file hard copies of all sent and received emails.

Also whenever they sent a letter I had to sent the letter but also send it via email and file that email as well as a print out of the email and photocopy of the letter.

And they used to get cross at me that I always had these massive stacks of filing on my desk that I was behind with....

(Oh I also had to enter all his appointments and meetings (which got rearranged multiple times per day in the Outlook calendar but also TWO additional separate hard calendars, which were therefore a mess of rubbed out pencil....).

Not my current job but I once worked in a call centre where all calls would periodically get re routed to an Indian call centre instead so we would have nothing to do all day.
Despite this we would still have to sit with our headsets on and logged in, we were not allowed to read a book / browse the Internet (was before smart phones were a thing) and the managers would tell us off if we went for too many toilet breaks etc.

Plastic wallets rock. But as you say, only the right way up.

A previous job made a new rule where no one was to leave their seats..... we had to call people we needed or managers / supervisors who may be sat on a bank of desks next to us....

If they were on the phone already we put our hand up and they called us back 😂

It was a office / call centre type environment, honestly it was hilarious

It lasted about 2 months before it abruptly ended and we could leave our seats again

@VictoriaPlummm omg forced fun!!!! I had to endure this.
2 hour Buffett lunches or little midday parties while the work / calls and emails went mental then we got bolloxed the rest of the day about how behind we were....

My old boss used to ring us from his car whenever he was out (early 2000s) and if we didn’t answer the phone with the right tone of pitch on each word would hang up and ring again. He’d also try and catch us not at our desks, to reprimand us, even if it were our first break for two- three hours. So we used to rig the phone out the window into the courtyard where we would sit with a cup of tea and smoke on our breaks just in case.

Do you work somewhere where this would be usual to have hose attachments?

No one in my office seems to understand how scheduling assistant works so you get random appointments clashing.

We had an office manager (she had another job title but she was basically an office manager) and she tried to micromanage everything. Her team had to cc her into every email they send so she moaned all the time she was overwhelmed with emails!

Exjob the summer before covid - called into a meeting after work to be berated for not meeting new CFO's expectations. The expectations we had no idea even existed because he didn't actually talk to the hired help, he just went into his office every day and shut the door.

Same CFO - he'd be all gungho about us doing some work process, which we would dutifully do for a couple of months, then he'd forget about it. Leaving us to wonder are we still doing this or not?

Also made a point of not too subtle remarks about it being his birthday soon so we'd do a card and cake (in fairness we did that for all dept members but I suspect he suspected that we hated him).

Dept had AMAZING turnover once covid subsided.

I worked in a pub back in my younger days. The landlord was obsessive about even numbers. All bottles in fridges had to be lined up into rows of 2; any extras had to be hidden in crates under the bar. All bottles of spirits behind the bar had to be organised, tallest to shortest, and by colour. Even the lemons and limes in the fridges had to be grouped into even numbers or he'd get all twitchy and throw them in the bin so he didnt have to look at them. He was actually a really nice man, just a bit quirky 😂

Do you work somewhere where this would be usual to have hose attachments?

Lot of staff from middle east/India would be my guess.

Currently working on a project with a PM (with over 30 years experience) who doesn't know how to use Microsoft Project (or any other project planning tools). Keeps everything in very badly managed spreadsheets. If you update him with progress on a particular task, and say that "Task C is going to take 4 weeks longer than planned" - he updates his spreadsheet, but as nothing is linked, the end date of the delivery does not change. And they wonder why his projects always unexpectedly overrun, and have to bring in contractors to finish the delivery (hence why I'm here).

You know in scooby doo where they all chase each other and pop out of random doorways?
I had a job in a hospital and every time the fire alarms went off it was my job to shut all the fire doors. Every single time I'd run around shutting them and someone would run around behind me propping them alll open

I once had a boss who, when he had bad/ridiculous news/instructions to impart, left it in a message on your chair, then he went back to his office and climbed out his window and down the fire escape so he couldn't be questioned. He's obviously read Catch 22.

I also had a boss who had been demoted due to a sexual harassment charge (so he ended up managing us) and his secretary was basically his minder, following him around making sure he didn't corner any younger women in secluded places.

I started my new job on Monday. There's a man In the office wearing slippers.....in financial services

When I worked for the nhs, if the admin staff took a call for someone wanting to speak to a practioner who wasn't available we had to find the communication book, write in the message. The practioners the would read there messages in the book and tick to say they had read them. The admin staff had to check messages were ticked and prompt people to read their messages if they were not getting ticks.
Why we couldn't just send an email and then practioners be responsible for actioning them like adults rather than being chased up I don't know, we were also double handling the work as we had to write notes as we took the telephone call and then write it in the book. I did raise that emails would be more productive but was told this was how the practioners like to work.

I had to do this when I first started work many many many years ago. The whole trail got printed and filed every time, not just the most recent response. Properly batshit.