Office martyr

[Larryduff]

Been made to feel like a miserable cow but I'm hoping for some vindication.

We have an office martyr who buys all the leaving cards etc and moans about this while also insisting that no-one else can chip in or god-forbid actually buy them. Apparently that wasn't enough and now she's started buying everyone birthday cards, well not everyone just the people she likes. Fair enough if they were just from her but no, everyone has to sign them (about 30-40 people). So I told her privately that maybe it was a bit much and people would get sick of signing loads of cards and/or people who were missed would feel a bit shitty and unpopular. I've come back to work after a stressful 2 days looking after a poorly toddler and there's this fucking sickly sweet PA email obviously aimed at me about how some people may be a bit fed up of signing loads of cards but how lovely it is to receive them. Yeah I know this doesn't sound like much but she has form so it's really wound me up.

Anyone else got similar and how do you deal with it without coming across like a sour old bitch?

Our office martyr takes all of the teaspoons and hides them if they aren't washed quickly enough.

What is it about teaspoons . . . . ?

I used to work at a big global company at which one of the biggest of big cheese had the weirdest obsession with the fridge (and the building in general, but mainly the fridge). She had a really serious job with some really heavy shit to take responsibility for, but she never seemed to do it because she was always obsessing over the possibility that someone might leave a yoghurt in there till 00.01 on the day after it's sell by date.

I went on maternity leave and told everyone "stay in touch!" "Keep me posted!" but whenever I read my email, everyone had forgotten about me and all there was, was

"Please! We are not animals. I do not expect to open the fridge and find this kind of rubbish in there. I have really had enough of this awful mistreatment of our shared environment." then there would a picture of the inside of the fridge and I would struggle to identify the violation: half an apple on a saucer - is that very bad? A bag of leaves not in the salad drawer - is that appalling?

We moved offices to somewhere much smarter and posher and the obsession reached fever pitch. People stopped referring to "x, vice president of global sales" and started referring to "x - who's always sending emails about the fridge and tidying up."

Results were bad. 25% of the global workforce were laid off. An entire building in the US was closed. But nothing could get x to deflect her attention from the fridge.

I'd do as other pp have suggested....reply to all stating you have no problem signing cards but you have noticed people being deliberately excluded by those running it.

We used to do a collection/card/gift in a previous job. It got so that we were handing over cash every week, often double if there were 2 birthdays. The manager stopped it after a couple of years and said it was to be for specials only.....18th, 50th, wedding, births etc. When you're only working 12 hours a week then handing over best part of 1 hours wage for 2 birthdays it gets expensive!

Ah, office politics... how well I remember this stuff. Solution: work in a school where such trivial concerns aren't even an issue. Too many things of real importance to think about

I worked in a place once that had a there very own little own lady who came around with a tea trolley! Everyone paid in £2 a week or something and she came round with tea and toast mid morning and tea and biscuits in the afternoon. This was in the early 90's but this place was like going into a time machine!

Anyways, she was a lovely old Irish lady, and she took a shine to me as the only other Irish person and made me and extra slice of toast occasionally and the odd extra custard cream.

The office martyr noticed this and reported the tea lady. She said that it was not right that I got extra biscuits as she worked harder than everyone else and never got extra toast. The poor tea lady got told off. She was about 80 years old and was sooo upset that she cried for days. Office martyrs are often really nasty people.

Oh Paula, what a horrible person your office martyr must have been to report the tea lady. Shame on the person who told her off too.

I definitely think office martyrs are generally horrible, petty minded little people. Certainly the ones I have met are.

I think I would have bought the office martyr a pack of own-brand custard creams to make up for all the extra ones that you got paula, and then accidentally hit the pack very hard, several times, with a big book so that when she opened it there would only be custard cream shards.

Paula
Office martyrs are often really nasty people.

I was reading this thread, and laughing, and wondering whether these "Office Martyrs" were a PITA or actually covert joy bringers.

Then I read your post and it answered my question. Some of them are more than a PITA - they are vile, spiteful and vindictive.

What a thing to do over a slice of toast. (Mind, if I'd been the boss I would have said to the tea lady - "For God's sake - shove another bourbon onto Arseface's saucer will you? Keep her miserable face straight." Or I would have pointed out to Arseface that if she was working as hard as she claimed she wouldn't have had the rime to count how many biscuits other people got.)

Paula When I first went out to work in the 1970s we used to have tea brought round every afternoon. In china tea cups and with nice biscuits..

Fast forward to the present and now we have to supply our own kettle, tea, coffee, sugar, biscuits, mugs, spoons, washing up liquid and tea towels. The only thing the company provides is water and electricity.

We also have missing tea spoons. There are only sinks on alternate floors, so other offices come to use the sink in our office. Our tea spoons are always going walk about.

But we don't have an office martyr :)

Aw its so nice you all feel sorry for poor old tea lady! This was 20 years ago, I'd say she's long dead the poor old thing.

This episode did result in a little bit of an uproar, with everyone being really loving and caring to her, and the office martyr being told by a few people that she was cowbag, if that makes you all feel better for her!

In this same place, the cook in the staff canteen refused to serve me lunch for 3 weeks because I turned up early one day. It was a very weird office!

We have one at the gym - except she is a sickness magnet. As soon as anyone has any sort of illness she is rallying around buying cards and flowers. Not with her own money though and there are suspicions she runs a small profit.
My worst nightmare is to wake from major surgery to see her looming with a bunch of garage flowers ( and a few picketed tenners)

This episode did result in a little bit of an uproar, with everyone being really loving and caring to her, and the office martyr being told by a few people that she was cowbag, if that makes you all feel better for her!

It does.

What a bitch!

Pocketed FFS

In this same place, the cook in the staff canteen refused to serve me lunch for 3 weeks because I turned up early one day

Once when we were having a Big Meeting with Other Departments, the tea lady entered and proceeded to give cups of tea to members of Our Department, but refused to serve the others because They Had Not Contributed To Our Tea Fund.

We all handed our cups back and got on with the meeting before she'd even left the room. I would like to think she felt embarrassed, but I suspect not.

I would add that like many other tea funds, people contributed (en masse) about fifty quid a week, and received in return about a fiver's worth of tea and biscuits. Somehow only one person knows where the other £45 pounds goes, and they aren't saying . . .

Our FULL cups - I should have made that clear. . .

Detectives

Do you think autocorrect does this on purpose?

I noticed the other day that I typed something like "retrning" and it couldn't work out the word, but it will give some extraordinary suggestions for simple words, some of which contain only one of the original letters . . .

2kids
Yes I do - it has a very strange mind of its own

God, got one of these in my office, what is wrong with these people? In at bloody 7am, doesn't leave until 6pm; collects constantly for every bloody collection under the sun...

I really can't be arsed about peoples' birthdays and don't see the point of contributing to get something back that I just don't care about when it's my turn.
Enough of the stupid collections, unless someone's leaving.

Constantly whinging about too much work - try bloody sitting at your desk for 20 minutes and doing some then.

Wants to know everyone's business and pretending to be 'there' for them, when in reality she's fake as fuck.

Drives me crackers.

I should feel sorry for her as her marriage is shite and her 11 yr old still wets the bed but she is such a martyr, honestly.

I want to wangle a PA present for her Secret Santa, but am trying to resist being a bitch.

Our OM does crazy hours too. Still achieves very little except clean the kitchen, monitor useby dates in the fridge, count cutlery, plan Christmas parties and police the shredder boxes.

We have a huge and very expensive high capacity industrial shredder for shredding confidential information. It has an equally expensive service and maintenance contract.

Said shredder cannot cope with staples according to her so we get regular snotty emails about removing staples from documents prior to shredding. The £20 home shredder I bought from Argos will rip through staples all day should it need to, but the same cannot be said for the one at work .

police the shredder boxes

Ooooh! A new one on me.

I suppose all of those spoons get tedious after a while, and OM's need a bit of light, staple-related, entertainment.