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.

Or in my case, retirement thank god, it couldn't come soon enough.

My daughter was exactly like the Barbie poster, rainbow highlighter pens and all. She even went as far as spray painting her hole punch and stapler rose-gold so they would match her rose-gold binders, clipboard and coffee mug. I'm sure people did laugh at her but it got her noticed and she progressed very quickly.

That is just brilliant!!!
A week looking at cover sheets and not once did she think that the polypocket felt like it had more than one sheet of paper in it??? Thick as shite some people are!!! 😆

If you haven’t watched it already people on this thread might like Severance on AppleTV. It’s about a company where you can undergo a procedure that means that as soon as you leave work you have no memory of what you did, but also when you are at work you have no memory of your home life. Lots of enforced jollity. Brilliant series.

I’ve not got much to add to this thread except one place I worked where I don’t know what I did. I never did find out what I was meant to be doing. It was an electricity company which had been bought out by a bigger company. When they bought it they planned to close our site but they were told that they had to keep it running for a number of years first. That meant that we had whole departments that hired staff but didn’t have much work to do as they were just treading water before they closed it all up. Our department was billing for corporate customers that had lots of sites, mainly chains of shops. I had to look after the bills for a card shop chain. The bills would be generated on the 1st and I had about 3 weeks to check them before they were sent out, then a week to answer any queries. That was it. The company was in an old stately home, half of which wasn’t really used, so I would just wander about the building.

DH is and IT person in a school. One of the teachers laptops stopped working. He had a look and realised that he could repair it with a cable off eBay that cost £4. The head wouldn’t let him and said he had to buy a whole new laptop for hundreds of pounds. The reason was that the head didn’t know what eBay was and didn’t trust it. He refused and bought the cable from his own money.

I work for the Church of England (by proxy) we aren’t allowed to buy things from Amazon because they don’t pay tax.

I love it! I’m really starting to think of sending one. The thing is she’s driven so many people out she’ll never really be able to prove or find out who it was. Also we’ve all gone on to bigger and better things.

And I too am amazed at the number of people confused by the idea of bum washing considering that when I asked for suggestions for eco toilet paper I was told that I shouldn’t be using paper at all but fitting a bidet.

I was on a 6 month secondment role in a hospital an 8 minute cycle from my house. I could see the building from the top of my street. I was offered an interview for a permanent post in a city about an hours drive away. Not the city that we were located in.

The city is in another country to where I worked. I was also 26 weeks pregnant and not driving due to low blood pressure. When I asked if I could be interviewed in the city or hospital it was based in I was told no. I had to get the Union involved to be interviewed in the country that I would be working in.

My very first job at the BBC was in a random department that had something to do with installation of equipment (not studio) with a boss, his secretary and two senior admin staff and two junior admin staff. There was barely any work to do for everyone - I used to do all mine in less than an hour. But I was supposed to spread it out through the day. No one in the department wanted to progress or work in production - fair enough - but they totally disapproved of me wanting to do so and the two senior admins were really vile to me: they either shouted at me, talked about me while I was sitting there or ignored me. I lived for the breaks - we had a breakfast break, lunch and a tea break - as it was the only time I could leave the office.

Thankfully I had a brilliant HR person who got me out and into into much more interesting work as soon as my minimum six months were up. I bet departments like that don't exist now as everywhere else I have every worked in Telly has been manically busy.

When I left school I worked in a shop where they would make us youngsters model the clothes any buyers brought in "to see what they looked like on." You'd be standing there in shorts and a tiny top as three men all leered on. Fucking grim and I wished I'd had the balls at the time to tell them to fuck off. The boss was also a bit of a criminal and loads of the clothes that were sold came off the back of a lorry - this was a relatively decent store in Kensington High Street too... he's a multi millionaire now and I have no idea how he has become so, so rich. Dodgy dealings no doubt.

There have been some schools that were stung financially via eBay, whether from staff selling equipment they'd nicked or was theoretically being disposed of, the school attempting to sell equipment and buyers filing disputes or from trying to buy things and then getting fucked over by sellers. Plus a bit of money laundering by some dodgy bursars and/or heads 'buying' things from themselves (whether they exist or not).

It's a nightmare for financial governance/compliance, so they have been told very firmly that they can't ever use eBay.

Oh bless her heart!! I remember feeling that starry-eyed about my first ‘real’ job! I hope she smashes it and becomes a ray of sunshine in her office!

My very first job at the BBC was in a random department that had something to do with installation of equipment (not studio) with a boss, his secretary and two senior admin staff and two junior admin staff. There was barely any work to do for everyone - I used to do all mine in less than an hour. But I was supposed to spread it out through the day.

That reminds me of the old joke:

How many people work at the BBC?

About half of them.

We had a new HR Manager start who wanted to put her stamp on all of the (perfectly reasonable) firms policies in the staff handbook.

She changed the dress code policy so all staff had to shave and wash their feet before work. Bizarre.

And wearing spandex to work was explicitly banned. We were a law firm

In my last office it would have been removed by the contract cleaning staff as an unauthorised object (whether in kitchen or loo).

Same job, a different woman cut out a circle of paper and handed it to the manager and told him that it was the size and shape of her areola.

I did wonder if this was standard office behaviour but I've not experienced anything similar since.

Thank you, @FuckoffeeBeforeCoffee , for giving me the best laugh of the week!

I used to get 54 mins for my lunch. No one really bothered to check, I think my record was one hour 25 mins.

Working in retail you couldn’t really go for lunch at exactly 1 o’clock or whatever if you were with a customer so we would go as close to the time. Every day I would say to my boss that it was 20 past (or whatever the time was) by my watch so I’ll be back at 20 past the next hour. Every time I would come back and she’d say that I was late and it was 25 past. I’d point out to her that she sets her watch 5 minutes fast and mine was the correct time, and either way an hour was an hour. Every time she couldn’t understand that even though our watches were different an hour was still an hour.

Same boss would rant and rave about people leaving dirty plates in the staff room sink. She was the one who did it.

A few moons ago I worked for a company whose working hours were 08.30 - 17.15.
At 16.30 business closed for the day, so everyone started powering down their computers and the supervisor started handing out tabards.
The owner was too tight to employ a cleaner, so the staff had to do the cleaning regardless of their role, complete with a rota and task list. So for example...
Monday. Jane would wash the doors, skirtings, windowsills and clean the windows, while Sue polished the desks, cleaned the phones and keyboards,emptied the bins and hoovered.
Meanwhile John and Claire would clean the kitchen, do the washing up, clean the microwave and toaster, empty and clean the bin, polish the table, clean the window and mop the floor.
At the same time, Steve and Mark would clean the toilets, empty and clean the bins in there and mop the floors etc.
The receptionist cleaned the reception.
All the staff had to do all the jobs listed in rotation and the owner was a stickler for it being done properly.
Disclaimer. Names have been changed.
Not many people stayed long. I remember one lady starting her first day, she had lovely clothes and heels on, she was flabbergasted to be handed a tabard and a pair of marigolds. She never returned 😂

I worked in a freezing cold office a few years ago. Everyone had to wear huge cardigans and fleeces all day, even during most of the summer months.

The ceiling also leaked whenever it rained heavily, so there were enormous storage boxes dotted around (causing a trip hazard) to catch the water.

It was only once a couple of computers got damaged that they fixed the leak. They never did anything about the temperature though. It was miserable.

I also worked at New Look as a student and I wasn't allowed to wear my hair tied up as the manager had decided it wasn't glamorous enough. Absolutely hated working there

I also worked in a coffee chain while at uni and the Manager used to use our tip jar to pay for cleaning supplies because we used up the allocated cleaning resources way ahead of schedule following her frankly bonkers cleaning routine. The store was immaculate though so that was something

PMSL!!!

Oh I really really want to either visit your company or work with you! 😆

Started a new job. Was told to put my initials next to any updates I did on cases. At the d end of my first day I was taken to one side and asked why I'd put someone else's initials against work I'd been given.

I pointed it it was my initials and nearly went blue in the face trying to explain that Jessica was not the only person in the world who could have those initials! Just got a pikachu face of incomprehension.

Eventually after 3 managers got involved they decided I could use my abbreviated first name.

Even then I still had people point out to me that I really should just be using my initials and I'd be marked down on the QC checks.

I have never been so grateful that as long as my work gets done and I’m not rude to people I can basically do my job how I want!
Here is the batshit thing about my job though. I work in a school office. The school is large, and spread over 5 buildings (2 main ones and 3 portacabin type buildings). The other main building has 2 phones, one in the heads office and one in the senior leader office. The teachers do not have phones in their classrooms. They are not supposed to use their mobiles and not supposed to have their emails open in class. If we get a message for a teacher and no one answers in the SLT office (common, as it isn’t manned continually it’s just a work space) the only way to give them said message is to walk the length of our building, across the campus and into the other building then to their classroom. 10 min round trip. In this day and age it makes no sense whatsoever!!