Work is totally batshit crazy...if anyone wants to join the party, please bring wine and chocolate.

[shadypines]

I am not talking about busy, although it is quite busy, I have worked in extremely busy places so I know what busy looks like.

No, I am talking about quite literally, batshit crackers. I cannot emphasise it enough . Every.Single.Fucking.Manager. tells you something different about pretty much everything. Some days I feel as if I've gone through the Looking Glass and I'll meet a White Rabbit or a
blue caterpillar smoking a hookah.

Here's a few things to go on:-

1. Being told TO DO things differently from one minute to the next ( not even one day to the next).
2. Told that X is a fact or what is going to happen. Next day told or discover that it's Y. The following day back to X and so on and so on.
3. Training days planned prior to an important piece of work only to then be cancelled at the 11th hour. Replacement 'training' is reduced by about 90% and is a total shambles.
4. Endless shit emails (I'm sure we've all been there).
5. Annual staff survey (which we are asked to fill in about ten times). Told every fucking year we will be given feedback on said survey and proposed outcomes for change. Never happens.
6. Useless IT department, takes ten days to do an urgent job, they cannot prioritise their way out of a paper bag.

1. Line manager who calls endless meetings about bugger all, repeats a complete load of waffle and wants to know the ins and outs of everyones social life. End result is we know very little about our work agenda which leads to more confusion.

8) Extremely rude and useless staff who get away with being rude and useless. 9) Adding insult to injury the regular emails which then tell us to look after our mental health and tips on how to do it .. FFS

If I wasn't so near retirement I would be telling them where to stick it.
Meanwhile I will just continue to scrape my brain up from the melted puddle it has become....

I am only using humour here as being angry is utterly exhausting.

I just knew it was going to be education...

You are definitely not alone. I'm just waiting for the big reveal that actually I've been the unwitting subject of some kind of hidden-camera farce since about Feb 2020.

{grin] my thoughts exactly, you start to wonder if you are on candid camera. If anyone is old enough to remember the Benny Hill show chase scenes , that was me last week. Just needed the little bald guy to slap on head........

You get to the stage where you give up trying to do any sort of good job as you are exhausted with wading through all the shite. You know that even if You do a good job, it will become ineffective by someone else's laziness/incompetance. I hate feeling like I don't give a monkey's but I knew I had to do this several yrs ago for my own sanity.

Ahh....Definitely Higher Education. Where else can you run a month's worth of resit exams online without informing students that they need to resit? (because you don't know who they are yourself)

I'll be back later...feel free to top up my glass

I know a really good one for batshit poker what about a convicted sex offender sitting in your office working with vulnerable people and if anyone says anything about how inappropriate it is they get disciplined 🤔
Or what about an apprenticeship which is level 2 that everyone has to do even though my college has two masters and three degrees and everyone else has a degree ah well we get a day off a week to do it guess what no one does it I do a horse diploma 🤷‍♀️

Reading this has actually perked me right up as I wade through the absolute pile of shite that is my to-do list on a Friday afternoon before a bank holiday (big regulator. bonkers.)

Parsley, I think you have enough cards for 'Batshit Poker' to be the outright champion..unless anyone else can raise any?

I can raise you a one way system put in place (for Covid) but no other signage up, so it was basically 'one way to nowhere' as you didn't know where the heck you were going one way to.

Glad to have perked someone up Menopals.

@shadypines I like the idea of a Covid road to nowhere lol I’m off for two weeks from today Weehee no more bollocks for two weeks ! I know another one fraud department was suspended in Covid even though they knew 85-90% claims were fraudulent 😆

@Parsley1234 of course you would get disciplined for daring to state the sensible bleedin' obvious, why wouldn't you?? i mean why not let a sex offender work with vulnerable people, they have to have their human rights you know, never mind the human rights of the vulnerable or your human rights to speak your mind if you see something questionable...grrrr
I really hope you enjoy your bollockf-ree fortnight, wish I had one too.

@shadypines the truth you speak is so obvious actually this thread has made me feel so much better I thought it was just my stupid work that was so stupid now I realise it is endemic which makes me wonder what the fuck and also makes me want beer when people believed the government were conspiring with Covid I was incredulous 🤨 don’t you realise the government cannot implement one thing that is right without knee jerking and with no cognitive dissonance the aspiration that the government could do a Covid coup was deluded 😆

@Parsley1234, I am glad has at least made you feel a bit better. Initially started the thread in a bit of a haze as last few weeks of work have been particularly awful. I have been re reading it and I am so sorry you lost your own business. I hope you may be able to do something with it in the future.
I now feel like raising a few cards from the NHS, 20yrs ago, why the heck not? Once went to a senior manager to raise serious concern there wasn't enough staff on the ward to give basic patient care. Told don't worry shadypines, in a couple of months you will have more staff. Guess what, in a couple of months we had less staff as they were deployed elsewhere..at that point I knew I was arguing with stupid.

don’t you realise the government cannot implement one thing that is right without knee jerking and with no cognitive dissonance

You speak wisely. If I see Boris elbow bumping someone in that silly knees half bent way again.......then afterwards he stands literally right next to them, wtf, god give me strength. Going off track but never mind...must be the gin/wine combo.

@shadypines I lost 3 completely unrelated businesses a beauty salon which was a nice high st social business a second hand designer clothes and clearance business and a very lovely lucrative dog accessories business all the shows were cancelled. The problem is having a regular job with amazing pension makes me lazy my contract is until June next year and guess what another batshit poker one they are still recruiting because the retention is so bad. It’s like revolving door of dissatisfaction 😆🤔

Mine is nhs and it is insane.
To be fair my previous nhs role was a bit of a doss and actually makes me feel quite resentful now as it was lots of meetings , marketing type stuff and plenty of time for trust wellness activities that I didn't really need as had very little work stress. Now I'm in a very challenging specialist team which is top heavy but very short on support staff and band 5s meaning constant overtime, everyone running round like headless chickens, nature of the patients is very stressful and feel like my adrenaline is so high ...When I'm not at work I just want to hibernate at home it's relentless and definitely no work life balance

Love this thread. I'm private sector and my work is unbelievably stupid at the moment. Stupid and unreasonable with all sorts of nonsense going on and people going around in circles being sent on daft goose chases and meanwhile forty million emails coming through every day.
I've never been so busy and achieved so little and it's just batshit.

I believe 'the great resignation' is all the rage these days and it's not hard to see why tbh.

I have a good tip
I’m waiting to see how it works out
I am off for two weeks on annual leave I am going to delete every single email I get when I get back and see who notices
My guess wd be no one
No one will not notice whether I answered their email
Which renders the whole point of inane emails moot at best

It certainly sounds like you have resilience and imagination Parsley and I'm sure we'd all be interested to hear the outcome of 'The Great Deleted Emails Experiment' my bet is you're absolutely right.
Thirtyrock39 I hear you 100% top heavy but very short on support staff as this was me in the 80s, 90s and early 00s. Very few staff to give the 'basic' but VITAL care eg. feed patients, meanwhile god knows how many £1000s being spent on expensive drugs and equipment for same. Managers and senior docs not seeming to grasp no point in one without the other , result, BANG. HEAD. WALL.
Ancientdecs 40 million emails, it's a wonder your PC doesn't blow a gasket, or your brain. There seems to be a common theme of headless chickens and running round in circles from posters here. It's like management decide we must be seen to look busy, never mind if we are actually achieving anything, utter bonkersness.

Oh my, the 'great resignation' sounds like a wonderful dream!

Bit late to the party, but the virtual gardens and solidarity have cheered me up no end.

I feel so much better reading some of these. Recently I've had several promising candidates offered jobs who refused them, having met the boss. A new employee slipped through the net despite having zero computer literacy-couldn't switch it on. And several employees ordered to be in the office for their contracted hours (instead of WFH) despite no WiFi or mobile phone signal. As you can imagine, the square root of fuck-all was achieved that day.

I feel so much better reading these myself I will update you all on the great deletion of my in box ASAP, however another bat shit bingo one. My line manager thought it wd be a good idea for me to become more pc literate she is not wrong however I have no interest in this but in the spirit I said I would have a session fuck me it was so bad after 45 minutes of this dull as ditch idiot rambling on I said I had to go never again. We had 85-90% of fraudulent new claims as I said before however if someone is failing to engage it no phone or email or journal message we have to do the longest procedure in history to get a sanction and when it goes to a decision maker they reject it anyway guess what ! I don’t do them I can’t be bothered it’s all nonsense 🤷‍♀️Sadly I can’t get bent out of shape by someone fraudulently claiming because the decision makers are complete idiots what can I do ? The answer is nothing so that’s what I do nothing ! I deal with complex kid cases guess what the council that charge over the odds for substandard accommodation is also the landlord yes batshit bingo hole in one the landlord is the payee and the piece de resistance the most vulnerable children placed in three places are told they can’t work because the rent is too high so what I do is hold these kids emotionally because I can do fuck all else 😭

I need to join this thread. Local authority and hear every word...

@Bobmonkfish you are welcome
I told my line manager last week the reason I’m seen as so good 😊 is because I work at 50% of my capacity which is 100% better than anyone else she didn’t disagree 😂😂😂🤔🤔🤔

You’re not the only one.
I work in Safeguarding, which seems to consist mainly of filling in bits of paperwork and spreadsheets which all duplicate another.
We get lectured on prioritising all the time, mainly as we have relentless referrals and not enough staff. Am looking forward to tomorrow’s priority chat, as I have 5 cases to present which I need to prep for, a spreadsheet, 40 current clients, new referrals, constant requests for teams calls off other agencies for advice and my manager calling to tell me it all needs to be prioritised.
Throughout this I’ll be getting wanky emails about mindfulness, and well-being, gently chiding me not to get stressed.
But am currently working through my notice, fuckity bye!