Things you do at work that make you question your existence

[2024horizons]

I've just spent an inordinate amount of time to enter data into a form, only to find out the data didn't need to be entered at all.

Technically it's my fault and I was tired so I didn't see the wording was different to what I am used to.

Anyone else?

Oh god, so much (life long public sector corporate worker here with more than a lifetime's worth of pointless busy work). Copying and pasting data from one database into a word form (or exciting new development, an MS online form!) so it can be entered into another database by a different team (far too much to ask that the databases talk to one another!). Filling in many many forms to access help or support or data from other corporate teams or 'partner' organisations asking for my name, email address, job title etc (when I am about to email them the form, my signature contains my name, job title, phone number, could you not read it from there? Or take it from one of the other hundreds of similar forms I've sent you previously?).

Arguing with people about whether they hold data I need (they do) and whether I'm entitled to see it (I am), in order to complete some of the said pointless transference tasks.

The many, many meetings at which my opinion/input is neither needed nor wanted but I have to turn up to be polite. Similarly hosting meetings of people whose opinions I don't need or want but who would be offended not to be asked.

Writing reports and papers I know are destined for the bin without being read by anyone other than maybe my immediate team who know the full content already.

Summarizing long reports or complex issues which my boss hasn't got time to read/understand into elegant precises or executive summaries - to be told he 'needs to see the granularity to understand the exam question' (or similar blurghy corporate bullspeak). So, send him the data, tables, details etc for him to say 'too much information, need the headlines only/just tell me what's the so- what here' and repeat, endlessly...

Oh, so much.

Scraping stinky black sludge off metres and metres of flooring, secure in the knowledge I'll be doing it all over again in about a week. Lifting things considerably heavier than my six-year-old child, while sliding about on the stinky black sludge floor, and hoping I don't fall. Smiling politely every time someone tells me 'I bet you love working here, it's not like a job at all!' Ditto when someone refers to me as a 'good girl' or tells me 'I bet you need a strong man for that!' Picking up unmentionable dead things the dogs have left in the compost heap. Driving vehicles/operating machinery for which I have neither sufficient training, nor a proper licence. Working outside, in the wet, when it is well below freezing and I can't wear proper gloves.

I do love my job, as it happens.

Thanks @maxelly , that was cathartic.

Printing 100 + sheets of paper for my class every day with a photocopier that jams every 5 sheets, then trimming each a4 piece 4x with a guillotine that can't do more than 5 pieces of paper at a time.

Smiling at people I can’t stand, but who are much more important than I am.

Having to tell people how to write their own name, and having to show them how to use a fountain pen. I’m a wedding registrar. I know not everyone may have used a fountain pen before, but given that it works like most pens, I find it depressing the number of people I have to show how to pick up and use it.

So many meetings

One small part of my job is to arrange focus groups. Predictably I will be told to condense them into fewer sessions than originally planned to save time and invite more people than the meeting room can hold. I then proceed to wait to be moaned at about how there weren’t enough seats. Even when I’ve turned up at stupid o’clock to source extra seats and put them in the room.

Months of meetings to restructure the directorates back to the way they were two restructures ago. And I had to sit through all those meetings too.

Planning an intervention for a child and doing it. Fine all worthy

However filling in what I have done on 3 separate clunky documents not so much. When I could be planning for the children for next lesson.

So many useless documents.

@TheYearOfSmallThings I recall that pain (now retired!)

People always moan about change, it's just what we do. I coined a phrase I used with fellow-moaners - You don't like it? No problem, just hang about for a year or so and we'll be right back here, doing it this way again. 🙂

Yep

Laminating paper at school. More effin plastic!!!! Hate it.

Repeatedly tell people if they had just read ALL the very clear instructions with pictures from Start to Finish then their phone would have set up automatically and not have you download lots of apps. But then I get great pleasure in telling them to Factory Reset it after all their work setting it up wrongly so that it can be set up correctly

I'm a PA. Setting up endless meetings for other people, which I don't attend, of which 95% seem to lead to no outcome or progress. Mind-numbing and also teaches me nothing and does nothing to further my own career.

Well this week it was counting unused envelopes before throwing them all away....7868 of them in case anyone is interested.

Passwords.

Every single system has a seperate password. Every subsystem/ spreadsheet has another seperate password.
It's like Fort Knox to log in and then everything has another password. You go look for something from a year ago & can't remember the password. All passwords have to be random too so you can't have a standardised system to it! They all expire at random different times too.

I think if the password policy was amended, I would get back 15-20 mins a day.

Removing things from masses of artful plastic nonrecyclable packaging. I love my work (I run a food bank) but the “donation of 12,000 tubes of toothpaste, each in its own plastic baggy” makes me question my sanity.

I was just about to post almost the exact same thing. Too. Many. Passwords!

Most of the time I love my job.

Turn up.

Meetings were the end of my career.

I left one thinking 'well that's an hour I'll never get back' and realised I'd had enough.

I am retired now, but random meetings that I would have to attend used to make me question life when I worked for a local authority. I would get invited as a must attend, so obviously turn up expecting to leave with some useful information, or have some relevant input. The meeting goes ahead, it transpires the subject of the meeting is not what was advertised, and I come out thinking that is 2 hours of my life I am not getting back. The meeting would often be tenuously linked to my role at best, nothing would be decided, nobody would leave with actions, and the people who really needed to be there were at another meeting... It used to make my blood boil thinking about all the waste of taxpayers money, and my time, while nobody else seemed to give a shit. Grrrr!

I work in a shop. Smiling through gritted teeth at people who think they are so much better than me is an hourly thing . Accepting returns that have clearly been used and listening to why it's my own personal fault that shops are going to the dogs too . In my next life I'm going to work much harder at school.

Long ago , in public sector , after a career change . As last recruits , was the tea maker with another person. Unbelievable to think of it now . Women younger than me , talking like I was a maidservant , even requesting that I fetch them a spoon. I wanted to fit in , new to UK , so complied . Deeply unhappy and finally told manager that I would quit over it .
But equally disheartening was photographing documents, before microficheing . Anyone remember that. Very inaccurate, flimsy fragile things .

This thread reminded me earlier of one the most mundane tasks I was every asked to do at work. Must be 20 years ago.

A senior managed called into her office.
Printed off a letter.
Signed it.
Then handed a franked envelope & the letter and asked me "to do the necessary"

I stood there thinking, the post collection tray is on her desk. She can't want me to hand deliver it as it's an overseas address.

Eventually, I asked,you mean put the letter in the envelope?
Her response, yes, what else would you do?
I did and handed it back to her & she put it in the collection tray.

Spoke to other colleagues afterwards and they simply replied "oh, you've been Amanda-ed".

I've been what?

Apartently Amanda used to regularly call junior staff to her office to do stupid 30 second tasks, just to remind them how important she was.

Other tasks included:

1. Replenishing her stapler
2. Finding a customers number on her mobile, dialing it & handing it pack to her when the answered
3. Cleaning a tiny spot on her windows - despite facilties doing a full weekly clean
4. Looking up the dictionary for words she couldn't spell- refused to accept your correct spelling without you showing her the dictionary. Wouldn't use spellchecker

She eventually disappeared after having some sort of episode where she roared across the entire floor that she needed people to understand she was at the top & we were at the bottom & with good reason and that it wasn't her fault that everyone else was stupid.