What nonsense do you have to do/fake enthusiasm for in your job?

[Whatapalavaa]

I'll go first. Performance manage based on utter nonsense criteria that I don't really care about but have to pretend to be oh so serious about. Pretend to care about our mission statement and our organisational culture. Yawn. I sit in meetings wondering if anyone else is seriously buying this crap or rather putting on a good act like me. Anyone else?

The first time I heard agile was in 2015 when a bunch of architects came in to "consult" with the leadership team about the proposed design for a new wing of the school where I teach.

We are asked what would be on our list of priorities and we said flexiblity of room use, i.e. tons of white boards, a shit-hot projector and desks that could be easily re-arranged. We were stopped in our tracks and actually told not to use flexible, but agile.

Needless to say the building turned out be far from agile. Its design and furnishings inhibit flexible use. The projectors are very good, though.

@SummerHouse

My colleagues are either a) reaching out, or b) pushing back.

I am introducing c) the hokey cokey.

🤣🤣🤣

It's an old issue:

Today I went to an hour long meeting at which half the discussion time was taken up with

Who to invite to the meeting
How often to have the meeting
On which day to have the meeting

There then proceeded a dismal trek through the actions from the last meeting at which every single person tasked with an action had not done anything about it since the last bloody meeting.

My suggestion that perhaps less meeting and more doing was in order was shot down as 'management want to keep a sharp focus on this area'

I guess they want to do this by having fucking pointless meetings and not achieving anything. I really CBA to attend the next one

But part of me (the paranoid losing it part) thinks that is their plan. They pretend to be having crap boring meetings and doing sod all to trick all the busy working people into not attending and then the day they have got rid of us all they decide something important ie to shut the service.

@Babysharkdoodoodood

Pretending to be nice to some utter scumbags. Sometimes I just stop pretending though, after explaining to a 30-something manchild that he's never getting his e-scooter back because you know, it's fucking illegal to ride it on the pavement and mow down old people and children, for the millionth time. Then they ask to speak to someone else because my attitude stinks. So I get one of the grouchy old officers from the back (who're counting down the minutes to retirement). Then they find out how nice I actually am in comparison

I am very supportive to real victims though.

I'm not all hard, bad and evil. Which is what I am apparently to the bloke I refused to release his car to after it was seized due to no insurance and an invalid license, and drink driving. Sigh.

I feel your Police staff pain, it's hard to decide which is more soul destroying, the slaver from the small section of the public who are over represented in our day to day work, or the emails from management bearing down on some minor minor detail on a job you glanced over 3 months previously. This too will pass eventually.

At work, any extra curricular activities. We arent allowed to choose them but are allocated them so it's really hard to care about something you have no interest in, let alone when you know the children wont have either. Any fundraising also makes me feel like a crooked saleswoman. I even get a touch of Delboy about my accent when we're doing it.

On mat leave, joining in with conversations about people's husbands and, actually babies at various clubs or the school gate. Cant we talk about something more interesting?

Enthusiasm in another management meeting or presentation with ideas from those bored at home so much time is wasted and there is always one person at the end with a list of questions

Please just let us fucking do our jobs you are taking us away from patients we are working with

I

@Mayaspecialist

haggis973

Shelf stacker in a supermarket when Walmart took over. The weekly chant we had to enthusiastically shout out at the checkout huddle despite the introduction of 24 hour opening and in front of several bemused customers:

Give me an A (A)
Give me an S (S)
Give me a D (D)
Give me an A (A)

What have you got? (asda)

Who's number one? (The Customer)

Followed by the pocket tap 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I worked for Walmart in the uk. This is absolutely true and they made us do it at asda head office on induction day. Then made us make an advert for a product where we all had to sing or speak.

Its was fucking awful.

Yes I had this horror too when I had a mass job interview with Asda.

We too had to sell a product then clap along with “give me an a” A

A bit of my soul died that day.

I got the job though so my fake clapping and cringe shouting must have worked.

Hypnobirthing
Birth plans that say “no forceps” (ok. Wasn’t going to do that without an exceptional cause anyway)
“No episiotomy” (ok. Wouldn’t do such a traumatic thing without genuine cause anyway)
“Don’t talk to me in labour” (ok. Right. Ok.)

All of it.

NC for this

Listening to kids telling me their excuses for not doing their homework. I don't really care, if you don't do your work, you'll get a crap grade.

But what I do like is listening to them winge about the other teachers I don't like

Don't like every new initiative for grading and shit systems that are irrelevant in my subject and being made to feel that my subject is irrelevant, and fighting to get the kids to want to listen to me teach.

One year we were given performance management folders. They were never touched. The next year I had to have an official observation in order to tick a box. I was 38 weeks pregnant, I did not have time for that shit.

Being forced to teach inclusively to not remove the naughty kids. Kid doing her make up and hairspray in my lesson, knowing I couldn't remove her. Boring.

Oh yeah, and the annual child protection training. I get it, it's very important. But I did this exact training last year and it's 99% stating the obvious anyway. Crux is, don't be alone with a kid (even though this is a school), pass on all concerns. End of. Box ticked.

Fire safety training. 99% boring until they give us the horror stories and let us use the fire extinguisher.

Being forced to teach off a Microsoft surface device. It's a computer, just. Call it a computer.

Being told by the head that I don't need a whiteboard to teach. Yes I do. I found one in the attic and got it installed.

The fucking values.

@LemmysAceCard oh god...I feel so grateful I didn't have to do it at a mass interview.

I worked on the offices and at least I had 2 people I knew to commiserate with.

Genuinely the worst work related event I had been to.

Infact, all of the ones there were awful. 6 hour 'town hall meeting' that took place In the US that we had to long on and watch.

Full of cringeworthy moments. I left after about a year 🤣

Endless BHD training and awareness.
Didn't stop the cliques, one member of staff being bullied out and another subject to homophobic abuse and then sacked while off sick.

Work in a specialty where you see and treat patients quickly (not A&E).

Patients literally want to pour out their life story- I DONT GIVE A FUCK literally. Plus they are so selfish sometimes as they forget there is a waiting room full of other people I need to see.

Then they complain about waiting times! Just be thankful if your problem is common and quickly treatable and save the waffling time for those with much more complex problems that take time!

Recently had to do a training course on how to use a hand-held card reader (including all the legal restrictions on what data can be stored etc).

I've never used a hand-held card reader. There is zero chance I will ever have to use a hand-held card reader in my job.

I pointed this out to management and was told it was obligatory. Not only that, but there was a test at the end and I had to produce a certificate to show I'd passed.

It took me three attempts to pass the bloody test.

Never
Been
So
Bored.

@sleepyhead

The fucking values.

This sums values up nicely 😂

Farking acronyms. We use SO many acronyms in our workplace that sometimes, in the same meeting, we can use the SAME acronyms for DIFFERENT things. I spend most of these meetings sitting silently and wearing these expressions ->

I work in a bar so;
-Stay stood up for 6+ hours despite varicose veins and bunions at 23
-Look busy. If a patron sees you not doing something he might think you’re a person and not just a robot, so constantly wipe the clean bar with your beer soaked cloth.
-Accept your boredom. Even though there are TVs in here, they are not for you to cast your dirty staff eyes upon, even if there is only one customer and you have done everything. Wipe the bar some more.
-Accept that drunk men are entitled to make sexual comments about you. They might even touch you during a pandemic. Don’t mistake this as harassment, it is a compliment. You want your £8.91 an hour don’t you? Suck it up, he only wants to see if your arse cheek is a nice squeeze! And smile for gods’ sake. No matter what, you best not look like you’re not absolutely overjoyed to be around these men!

I have to pretend I love to strain my ears trying to listen to whispering that I can barely make out from the literal wankers every day. Yes I work on a sex line but no I do not have supersonic hearing!

LEMtheoriginal

KPIs and targets, selling loyalty schemes and havomg our performance assessed on how much money we generate.

I. COULD. NOT. GIVE. LESS. FUCKS

FEWER.

I KNOW!!

That is one of my pet peeves! I had actually intended to type "i couldn't give less of a fuck" but ended up with just fucks. I was going to comment but thought no one would notice.

I have even fewer fucks niw, in fact, ive no more fucks to give.

Anyone else do the Values In Action HSE in Ireland.
Cost hundreds of thousands of Euro to basically teach us to tell people our name when answering the phone.
We were meant to acknowledge the kindness of our Colleagues. Took me two years to find an example for that one.

The endless amounts of admin and recording- a single text from a su requires an entry on the system, a reply, a entry on system of ypur reply, and an email to their OM which also needs to be recorded!

The constant changing language - are they service users , POPs or Individuals?

Grown men whining and complaining about how hard it is to get a bus 2 towns over by 11am, having to feign empathy at this

Being told by a SU that it is your fault when you rang to complete the work they were in the pub watching footie, as they tried calling to rearrange but you didnt answer (was on a late lunch break)

Being expected, in addition to running 3xgroups a week which involves all the planning and report writing and admin, and the telephone work two evenings a week which again requires planning and report writing, to take the time to create a spreadsheet of your SU (about 6 minimum), detailing their offence and personal targets, what exercises may be good for them- but not just doing this and recording on fhe system, oh no, youve then got to go back to the spreadsheet and do some self evaluation and SMART goals. This is for every person. On top of everyday work

The 'values' which frankly i dont know. Theyre on the wall somewhere i think?

@LEMtheoriginal

LEMtheoriginal

KPIs and targets, selling loyalty schemes and havomg our performance assessed on how much money we generate.

I. COULD. NOT. GIVE. LESS. FUCKS

FEWER.

I KNOW!!

That is one of my pet peeves! I had actually intended to type "i couldn't give less of a fuck" but ended up with just fucks. I was going to comment but thought no one would notice.

I have even fewer fucks niw, in fact, ive no more fucks to give.

Ha ha!