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Original poster

Please tell me batshit things about your work.

713 replies

TheLightSideOfTheMoon · 02/08/2023 11:21

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.

OP posts:
Ameanstreakamilewide · 03/08/2023 21:54

@RoseBucket Have you remembered which HMS you were yet?

Newestname002 · 03/08/2023 21:55

This reply has been deleted

This user is a goady troll so we've removed their posts.

I almost exclusively used a headset so both hands were then free to use as I chose. Also I'm very strongly right handed so trying to use my left hand to use the mouse or pick up the phone (which I did try) was like trying to suddenly speak Japanese- not a language I have any familiarity with... 🌹

Falkross · 03/08/2023 22:01

I used to work for an engineering company, a very toxic environment. Predominantly male but also a handful of women including myself, some were sales reps and some were engineers. Company tried to improve things by hiring a new top level manager, the products that they manufacture were incredibly niche and people only learned them inside and out after many many years of working for the company, so I could never understand why they would bring in people top level with no experience instead of promoting perfectly capable current employees (major part of the issues at the place). Anyway the last bloke they hired before I finally freed myself was an absolute cock, often pitted staff against each other, encouraging people to stab each other in the back etc and eventually announced that he was putting all of the women of the department together in the middle of the room as a central hub for answering phones and providing admin. Some of these women had spent years doing various degrees in engineering… funny enough he never followed through with it 😂😂

Ameanstreakamilewide · 03/08/2023 22:24

FedUpFanAnn · 02/08/2023 15:31

My boss insists on printing out all her emails, the whole trail including the bit at the end that says 'please consider the environment before printing this email' One sided as well!🙄And then I'm the one who gets accused of using too much ink and paper...

I bet she didn't do that when she was wfh during Covid.
It's a different kettle of fish when it's someone else's paper and toner.

Curtainswithpompoms · 03/08/2023 22:32

Too many to list but my manager seems to have a strange block with creating a rota for a particular duty, despite the fact that there are loads of rotas in my work place which work fine (School).

For 5 years now, she has been throwing it open to the floor in staff meetings and each time, someone suggests we could cover this by implementing a rota, without fail she looks confused, mutters something about not wanting to burden staff and nothing ever gets solved!

Initially I found this funny/ annoying now I find it bloody weird!

It’s a safeguarding issue if it’s not watertight so I’m interested to see what Ofsted say when they inspect soon.

Chumbawomble · 03/08/2023 22:35

Incompetent nincompoop of a manager. He was an accountant with one CSE (not in Maths). Last day of school term. I ran purchase ledger and was 1p out. He tried to make me run it again. Would have taken ages by which time senior management who had to authorise the BACS run would have left for six weeks. We were paying about seventy suppliers and contractors who would have been waiting for those weeks. I refused to run it again and everyone got paid. Stupid, stupid man. Normally I would hunt down the discrepancy but no, not this time.

CruCru · 03/08/2023 22:36

Orangello · 03/08/2023 21:04

This happens in a friend's office but the office put open a children's entertainer (so fair enough).

So the wives of the employees can get their house ready? Not sure I would be so amused as a working mother, unless the office then also provides free housekeepers to help us out.

Perhaps female employees can also bring their children in. After all, they won’t be wandering around the office to find a female colleague to provide childcare.

JudgeJ · 03/08/2023 22:38

Thirdsummerofourdiscontent · 03/08/2023 02:14

We still use fax machines

Reminds me of the Maureen Lipman BT advert where she rolled up a sheet of A4 very tightly and then couldn't find the hole in the fax machine to poke it into to send it.

ToDoListAddict · 03/08/2023 22:38

In a past role I had to print of cheques for customers that wanted to cash in investments. The cheques were printed & stamped by a machine but those over a certain value needed to be countersigned.
I took the cheques into the senior person that signed the cheques and was just having a friendly chat like Hi how are you? Are you free to sign these please? Etc
Got told off by my manager as apparently I should not converse with senior management!

The same manager, told me to have a fab day off when she knew I had booked the day off to attend a funeral! And it's not like she forgot as she constantly boasted that she had an eidetic memory 🤦🏻‍♀️

Frances0911 · 03/08/2023 22:43

I work as a carer for a private agency. Once a week my manager was sending me to an elderly lady with dementia to put her bins out. Problem is she didn't want the bins to go out if they weren't full so used to hide them. This meant that sometimes I was having to take out bins that smelt absolutely rancid and had maggots and flies in them as she'd been hoarding them for several weeks. I drew the line when she threw a bin at me one day and the whole contents fell out on the floor, which included slimey rancid raw scallops and stinking incontinence pads, which I then had to pick up without any gloves as the box in her house was empty! When I sent my manager
a message saying I was no longer going to do this job any more and explaining why, she replied saying, What's the problem, why can't you just put the
bloody bin out, it's not that difficult!

Muddleofpud · 03/08/2023 22:45

Not RTFT but my job prohibits us from accessing anything to do with work on any device that’s not company issued outside of our working hours, so phone, laptop etc. Same job requires us to log into our roster and email regularly to find out our shifts and keep up to date with new procedures, requests for overtime etc whilst on days off. Make a decision.

Newestname002 · 03/08/2023 22:45

Wow @DemelzaRobins

I'm sorry you were treated this way. I am dumbstruck that companies can get away with treating people in this way. I'm glad you made your escape and hope you got a better job with people who didn't treat their employees in this vile way. 🌹

Curtainswithpompoms · 03/08/2023 22:45

God, work is just soul-destroying isn’t it!? Why does it bring out the weirdest traits in people?

SadieOlsen · 03/08/2023 23:28

I worked in the Civil Service in a very large building. I got the lift up to my little office every morning and walked past an office with an open door- it was never used but there was a desk and chair in there. One day I noticed a mans sports jacket in there but no-one was there. I could see a wallet poking out of the inside pocket. I walked up to the big bosses room and told him someone had left his jacket in that room and there was a wallet in it.

He said "Oh - we leave that there periodically to find out who is a thief and who isn't - you passed". They had put money in the wallet and had a camera to capture anyone trying to take the wallet. This was in 1985 when there was no CCTV inside that building - they had arranged a security firm to come and set the camera up and record happenings.

I was so horrified and mystified by this - I have never forgotten it. I still don;t know what to make of it.

Dontpeeonthecat · 03/08/2023 23:40

RoseBucket · 02/08/2023 12:59

I was a sea cadet many many many years ago and we had to do that, our ‘ship’ was a village hall. 😆. Wish I could remember what HMS we was!

Show quote history

You'd have been TS something or other. I used to attend a purpose built TS unit many years ago. It was a normal building from the outside, but inside was built just like a ship. Tiny rickety stairs, little galley kitchen, ships stern etc where the officers would stand etc

ErinBell01 · 03/08/2023 23:50

I worked for the council and we weren't allowed to use paper clips in case two bits of paper stuck together by the paper clips and the document was never found again.

Underminer · 04/08/2023 00:05

I love this thread.

When I was in my 20s I worked for a husband and wife run company. If ever you dared to have a day off sick, or a holiday she would rearrange your desk to piss you off. Your computer and everything would be in a totally different space because, as she would tell you, it is her things and you’re just using them to work for her. At the same company they banned us using Tippex as we weren’t allowed to make mistakes.

Worked briefly for a company that was taken over by Americans. The sales team had to jog ten laps of the car park in the morning (in their suits) and whoever sold the least in the day had their tie cut off and pinned to the notice board. (team were all men as women didn’t put up with it and left). The person who sold the most got to cut the tie. It was hideous. I got out as quickly as I could.

Sittingonasale · 04/08/2023 00:11

I work in school and get some very interesting language thrown my way.

I wasn't expecting it one day though from a little girl I was helping in year 1.

'Your breath stinks' she said out loud and straight to my face.

I was so embarrassed but she was probably right. Coffee and stress ( not school related) don't make for fresh breath.

I made sure I always had chewing gum on me from then and have been really self conscious about my breath after that little 4 year old spoke up.😶

Toomuchtrouble4me · 04/08/2023 00:14

We were banned from socialising in groups of any more than 3 OUTSIDE of workplace in our own time - as the headteacher didn’t want us talking about her!
She also arranged a visit to her synagogue after school hours (5.30pm) which all staff were expected to attend and required to go and explain in person to her if we weren’t going (which was code for I will make your work life hell if you don’t come) sadly batshit crazy is rife in schools.

ThreeLocusts · 04/08/2023 00:45

My first job: making beds in a tiny hotel run by a husband and wife. My direct boss was the owner's mother, mid-seventies then (late 80s), ruthlessly exploited by son.

The mother was one of 7 children from of a smallhold farmer in one of the poorest parts of Germany and had run away to the big city ('') in her teens.

She used to reminisce about horrendous working conditions in hospitality in the 1930s, guests shitting in chamber pots, the local Nazi who killed himself by jumping into a furnace...

She also wagged the finger at her plants and threatened to throw them out if they didn't grow better.

MavisChunch29 · 04/08/2023 00:47

We were banned from socialising in groups of any more than 3 OUTSIDE of workplace in our own time - as the headteacher didn’t want us talking about her!

How would she have known?

Conky1975 · 04/08/2023 00:54

Goforththenorth · 02/08/2023 13:56

I’m a senior civil servant. The Daily Fail rumours are true - we do bugger all.

I’m SCS too. Don’t know what dept you’re in but we’re flat out. No resource, no money and running around after every weird ministerial impulse these idiots have.

Nohelpfromme · 04/08/2023 01:04

What is it with the stationery police? Are they everywhere, waiting for some poor unsuspecting worker so that they can deny them a new pencil (couldn't produce the stub of the old one), notebook (refused to acknowledge that we had to keep notebooks in case we needed to produce them in court and she could not force us to hand them over when we needed new ones), and god help you if you needed something laminated.
Then there was the senior manager who wasn't qualified to manage the people he was paid to manage so he sat in his office all day with a giant map and his sodding mileage wheel specially calibrated to help retrace your movements and ensue they matched your mileage claim. Then challenging you for taking a longer route that actually saved time and money. That's when he wasn't polishing his shoes with all the equipment in his special shoe polishing cupboard. Manager was also in charge of the Christmas party. It was always at a venue in his home town, 20 miles away from work, and no one else lived anywhere near there. He introduced a 15 minute work log where we had to record what we were doing at that point in time. I'm afraid I started a rebellion and encouraged people to be creative... 'I'm having a wee', 'I'm filling in this form' (that was the only response I ever put), but my favourite was the woman who described, in great detail, the long term problems she'd been having with her episiotomy and how she was on the phone to her consultant discussing what he was going to do to stop everything flapping about.

Agapornis · 04/08/2023 01:41

pinkgraffitirat · 02/08/2023 17:56

One of my co-workers regularly puts on a giant inflatable dinosaur costume and runs around chasing people.

(Admittedly we do work in a dinosaur museum.)

For contrast, possibly the same dinosaur museum a few years ago (does it have Drippy the whale and a new anus-like logo?)...:

The museum membership recruitment team hit their annual target very early. The managers got a 3-4 figure £££ bonus, the actual recruiters got...
A few pizzas and beer to share.
At 9 in the morning.
Before their shift started, unpaid.

A few months later the recruiters got told off for not hitting their newly increased and massively overestimated targets during the quiet season. People were made redundant if they didn't hit them, even if there were no visitors to sell them to.

Utter cunts.

Ameanstreakamilewide · 04/08/2023 06:44

LiloP · 02/08/2023 19:42

Used to work in a super woke place - recruitment policies were basically don’t hire white people unless they are gay or refugees. White men had zero chance being hired unless gay. Quite a few people were hired who are not fit for their roles but hit some diversity targets. We also have a special EDI advisor whose main job seems to be sending all staff articles about inequality.

We've got some dickhead who does this same thing.
I'm trying to work out what his salary is, but I reckon he's earning around £45k.

He's also a bloody OBE for all his 'special advocacy efforts'. If that means going to LGBT events, then he definitely deserves that OBE.

I wrote to him (anonymously, as a regular MOP), and he completely ignored me.
I think he thought i was going to let it lie...he was wrong. But that's another story for the Mumsnet Feminism group.

We're having a few financial issues, as large companies do, and whole groups of particular employees are going to lose their jobs.
But, him.
He's sitting pretty, doing fuck all.

The injustice of it really grinds my gears.