The Work Thread

Tinuviel

We just lost two PM's in a month.

Wish we could lose ours...
</AusPol>

Ghost

There needs to be a very specific circle of Hell for IT employees who schedule skiing trips during dedicated code release windows because 9 weeks prior there wasn't anything planned.

Fuck you, asshole. You KNOW those windows are our responsibilities to uphold even if they decide 48 hours prior they want to suddenly plan something.

There also needs to be a double-specific circle of Hell for employees who, upon learning something needs to be done in the window they scheduled a skiing trip over, laugh and say "Hah not me, I'll be skiing" as management turns to their teammates to double their workload.

And...

There needs to be a triple-specific "Where Hitler Gets to Fuck Your Mom While You Watch" level of Hell for employees who meet the first two requirements but refuse to do any planning or prework despite being in the office for 3 days this week because "...well I'm not doing it".

Apparently this is the "my lack of planning and skiing trip means everyone else needs their workload tripled" week.

silverfox

Man, I'm super excited to be back at the work.

At the same time I'm super nervous for my kiddos to come back tomorrow. Day 1 is the worst because you have to review all the rules/procedures for EVERYTHING, but don't let them get bored. You don't want to get into content again, because kids brains aren't ready to jump into learning yet, but it's hard to do 'fluff' all day without setting the stage for them to not work later. (Setting solid expectations from day 1 is important.) Then also you've got kids coming back who have had seriously traumatic breaks (no heat, electricity turned off, ran out of food, someone went to jail, divorced mom/dad didn't bother to do something with them over break...) and they're just shell shocked. All THEY want is for somewhere to be normal, but, (see above rules/procedures and avoiding content) things aren't normal for almost the first full week.

You never know what dice will be rolled the day after break. Literally anything can happen.

Auspice

Today we sat down to finalize terminology we want used for the tool I'm finishing up the guide for. We realized we were about 95% on the same page, but firming it up was needed before training goes live.

One particular part of the tool, I called panes. Was never used in our initial meetings but then nothing really was. It just felt natural as I was writing the material. Felt like what people would jump to in their minds.

So did another guy. Two others called it sheets.

We asked the fifth guy in the meeting (who had been handling emails) and once he's caught up he goes 'they're sort of like....configuration panes'

A, who I work with most (and had said sheets) looks at me and goes 'I see that smile.'

We ended up calling in our PM since she's the most 'distant' on the team from the tool. Her inclination was panes, too.

Ha! Trust the person whose job it is to educate people. (my reasoning was: if people hear sheets, they're gonna think Excel, and we're referring to something that has a title bar, tool bar, configuration options, and a sheet-like area. And the term I felt most natural was....pane.)

Totally makes up for how shitty I feel from cedar pollen.

Ghost

Being on your A game during a corporate audit be like...

Auspice

Screaming

I had emailed my recruiter to ask if she had any other contracts to put me up for because I like working with her (I do and it's not just because she takes me out to lunch once a month).

She emailed me back saying they've extended my contract to the end of January. It's not much but it's something and assuages some of my financial fears and helps me recover from 'flu and depression made me take too long to update my resume'.

Aria

Sooooooo....

I spent three years in my last department, two of them looking for another role at my company before finally transitioning in June. While most of that was wanting to utilize my expanded skill set in a more challenging job, I'm NGL -- a big part of that was also getting away from another coworker.

She started as a temp, not reporting to me but as my junior partner on my little team of two. I liked her and I needed help, so I busted my butt training her, ceding some of my (then overwhelming) responsibilities to her role, helping her network. Taught her tricks for cutting through red tape. Helped her negotiate a better salary when she was finally hired. We hung out outside of work. I thought we were friends!

...until the post-hire politicking began. And not just politicking, but girl-world style. Doing subpar work, but getting away with it because she was the social butterfly who was "nice" to everyone and just needed extra help. Flirting with some of the male managers. Making mistakes that I had to fix repeatedly and then refusing the training refreshers I offered her. Taking credit for my work, regularly. When I would get frustrated by it, suggesting that I wasn't a "team player". Once, she even went into my boss' office and burst into blathering tears about how I was mean to her because I thought she was prettier. (Yes, really.)

It was pretty damned obvious she was gunning for my job -- a narrative that eventually was adopted by the leadership team as the reason I was "bullying" her, despite me having told them all on more than one occasion that I was looking elsewhere and had originally been hoping to groom her as my successor. I'd even told her. Apparently, she just didn't want to wait.

Well. Of the seven managers on that team, four have retired or left. The person now filling my manager's job has decided to reorganize the department.

....guess who's job just got eliminated?

Karma's a bitch, kid.

Auspice

@Aria that is another reason I love working where I do.

I've never worked somewhere where the women are so inviting and supportive of each other.

I hate how struggling to establish ourselves as equals in the workplace has turned so many women against each other. It's made me miserable in past jobs.

Aria

@Auspice I think that's what really killed me. I had done everything in my power to help her, including trying to position her for my job, which would've been a promotion. My role still exists, is a level up from where she had been, and has executive access. There's C-suite executives at a $5 trillion company who will chat with me in the lunch line and the ladies' room instead of looking at their buzzing phones because of the work I did in that job.....

But instead she decided to turn it not just into a comparison, but a direct competition. I even pointed out to my boss -- who agreed -- that I got more done and did better work. That she was better perceived. And that in both cases, it was because I did my job and she spent most of her time socializing.

If she'd put in the effort towards her book of business that she'd put into pushing a narrative about how "she just wasn't getting a chance to shine because Aria", she'd still be employed and making more money. Instead, she's got 45 days to find something before she'd out the door and honestly, I'm okay with that. <shrug>

Auspice

@Aria I dealt with this years ago at Clear Channel.

A lady and I had the same job title, but completely different duties. However. She was due to be out for a surgery and they asked her to give me some basics so I could help cover for her while she was gone.

I told her hey, let me know the best day to sit down with you (since we were both v busy)..... A day later my boss comes down on me "She says you're refusing to learn the tasks."

Uh, no.

Week later, she stops by my office: "Oh hey the order for the new machines came in but I see you have your migraine sign up so I'll handle it!"

Next day, boss,"she said she told you about the shipment and you demanded she take care of it for you!"

I eventually found out she'd been laid off once and was terrified they were gonna lay her off. I didn't even want her job! I had too much to do of my own!

mietze

Today my supervisor returned after having to help out another branch for 2 days due to staffing issues, and it also was my manager's last day (that we just found out about on Monday). Which means we are back to a near-skeleton crew again after today. Guess who shows up in the parking lot before opening? The regional auditor, surprise!

Stressful shitty day, and I still feel like crap on a cracked health wise, and we already had a scheduled visit with big regional boss tomorrow that is going on even though we no longer have a manager. So tomorrow is going to be even funner, I'm sure.

Roz

Doot doot, making some website updates.

Hit PREVIEW to make sure it's all good.

Hm, everything now weird. Paragraphs now missing.

Go back to live version, everything is fine.

Hit edit on live version, change NOTHING, hit preview.

Everything wrong???

???????????

template how can you both work and not work

Auspice

@Roz said in The Work Thread:

template how can you both work and not work

code

Alamias

@Roz Computed values not getting computed, thus messing up dynamic content? Does previewing your template take into consideration the asynchronous loading of data?

Macha

At work- boss called in sick, and I do not have computer login or access. So I am sitting here and just killing the phone battery.

Roz

@Alamias While the project I'm currently chipping away at is replacing written names and contact info with dynamic content (to make things easier to update in the future), no, I don't think it's a data loading problem. This is fixed, written content suddenly not appearing because, from the looks of it, it's stripping things out of <p> tags. FOR SOME REASON. Hence figuring it's a template issue.

Alamias

@Roz Missing closing tag? I've gotten tagged by that before, and sometimes they are hard to track down.

Roz

lol god fml there was a checkbox to not make automatic paragraphs in the WYSIWYG editor in order to manually make alignments work

Auspice

@Roz said in The Work Thread:

lol god fml there was a checkbox to not make automatic paragraphs in the WYSIWYG editor in order to manually make alignments work

I have such a love/hate with WYSIWYG.
On the one hand: convenience.
On the other hand: toggles like that.

Roz

@Auspice Really if you have to toggle that it usually just means your templates are inadequate.