Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I figured that my fellow dakkadites needed a place to vent about the silly things that happen at work after I was told about a schedule change the day it happened. I work at a fast food resturant that closes at ten, but with the recent high school football season, the owner of this establishment decieded to stay open until 11. The idea was mentioned and played around with briefly about a week ago, but no final decision was made a and then the topic disapeared. On friday I was told that the decision was made, which frusturated me and my shift manager because we were not given a clear notice. The funny thing is that there was no football game last night, and had only 2 more customers during this extra hour, so the place lost more money in wages and wasted food then it made.

That night, we also had a guy complain for a solid 5 minutes about the lids we put our milkshakes in. They're the collars that any other place which makes their shakes from real ice cream uses. That just blew my mind.


Feel free to post your stories as well, as I feel that this thread has theraputic potential.

quiet thread.

well, I work for a massive help desk. Some dumbass from (wait for it...) upper management decided it would be a good idea to replace our main software. Well, now its 10x slower and we cant keep up with all the work thats flowing in. Its like releasing a computer game only to find tons of bugs and a million patches have to be released to fix it.

Code red anyone?

Heh heh, I don't want to post stuff from my work here, because it invariably involves students being morons. Posting about them would be unprofessional.
I look forward to some good 'uns from Dakkaites in the service industry though, when I used to work there I had some really "fun" experiences.

I to work in a helpdesk position but I focus on in house work instead of people calling us up and us driving out to their site. The most difficult part I would have to say is assisting the handfull of employees we have out of state. As a sharp contrast to the norm, I have to say I like our executives. They are well organized and deligate responsabilities appropriatly which, let's face it is all you can really ask for. In addition to this they are pretty funny to, I can't tell if it's just an act to keep up moral or what but they joke around with eachother quite a bit.

My rant acctually comes from the otherside of the ladder, and specifically one department. This department consists of some of the dumbest G**D*** people you will ever meet in your life, at least I hope so for your sake. While working helpdesk I will often get called from someones desk a common example is that they cannot access Application A. I will often then try to access their computer remotley only to find that I cannot, this would be a simple network issue at most places but not where I work. You see out of the 200 computers we have on the floor below us we have determined that only 80 or so are occupied at a time, this along with a handy little feature in Windows Networks called roaming profiles means that they can plop their asses any where they want and continue to work while I get around to fixing their issue, none of them have EVER done this even after being previously told. I will then try to call their desk, ring ring...ring ring... no answer... EVER. I will then have to go down stairs to their desk. The %20 of the time I find them acctually at their desk they are A. sleeping or B. Texting on their cell phone. When asked why they didn't answer their phone when I called the most common response is "Cause I couldn't access 'Application A'", this is completley irrelavent to their ability to answer the phone but it somehow makes sense to most of them so I must be the crazy one right? The other %80 of the time by the way, no one in the building knows where they went or even if they decided to leave for the day. I have stopped searching our 6 story building for them because this happens far too often for me to care anymore.

Our (Helpdesk) response time is about 10 mins on a busy day. I will often find out that the user with the issue was sitting at their desk for a minimum of an hour doing nothing before telling anyone that they are not able to access Application B, not the one I was told (Application B wouldn't acctually prevent them from doing their job, it's just an excuss not to work). This will then take the person they told between 30 mins and 45 mins to contact us. Upon arriving at the desk I will find that %80 of the time with this particular issue the network jack cover for that desk, which is a little white plastic box that is secured to the wall under the desk and out of the way, has been kicked off of the wall and stomped into oblivion, leaving no wonder as to why that they cannot access the application. But because I was told it was a software issue and not a network connection problem I have to run back up to my office for tools\equipment. During this time about half the people again choose to disappear and not tell anyone where they went. After repairing this issue, which I have become quite good at because of the frequancy of its occurance, the user will often be no where in sight and I will tell some random co-worker that if they come back they can tell them that the PC is working again. I fill out a report and move on to the next issue.

I know what you are thinking, "Just fire them! There are plenty of people looking for work these days!". We did this for a year, we ended up with a %600 turn around, that's not a typo we calculated that we hired and fired SIX TIMES our company population over the course of one year from just this one department. End of rant for now. This is just one story, I have dozens more some of the "Better Ones" I can't share yet because, no joke, the resulting criminal prosecution has not gone to trial yet.

Dear God, the stories. I managed a gym until very recently, and our single biggest issue was sanitation. No one wipes down their equipment after use, and the few people that do wipe it down do a very poor job of it. Its infuriating for employees because bad sanitation leads to waves of sickness in the staff. I had mono 3 times while working there simply because people didn't wipe anything down, and I know many members of the staff caught ringworm for the same reason.

Anyway, I was doing my rounds one afternoon and noticed this really sweaty guy circuit training. No big deal, sweating i what the gym is for. But on my second pass I notice him on a different circuit, and also note that all the machines he had been using are dripping sweat. I approach the dude, and ask him if he wipes down his machines (note also that we didn't have uniforms, so I didn't stand out as an authority figure). He tells me that he usually doesn't, because people should wipe them down before using them. I note that gym policy requires him to wipe down machines after use, and that his membership can be revoked if he doesn't do it. He laughs that off, and asks me if I was going to be a little bitch and report him. I told him that I didn't have to, because I ran the place, and that his membership was now revoked.

The ensuing shock was hilarious. Almost as hilarious as the screaming fit he threw on his way out the door. Something about 'taking his business elsewhere', as though that hadn't been the entire point of revoking his membership.

Even better were the old men that had to be reminded that, while semi-private, the locker room was still a public space; requiring certain standards of decency.

Well, I can't say much about my work for professional reasons but as an example, I went into work today for an hour to sort something out...while I was there someone bit the end of their own finger off..and I mean at the first knuckle, an inch or so off the end.

The best bit is he swallowed it.

dogma wrote:Dear God, the stories. I managed a gym until very recently, and our single biggest issue was sanitation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKsdPBVHO7g

The biggest gripe I have with my work is that there's a complete failure in scheduling people for various jobs. My primary job, probably 9 days out of 10, is to package bread in the bakery (it's baked in the morning, and I come in in the afternoon to evening to package it all up for the next day). The problem is, the scheduling is completely bi-polar about matching up how much bread is baked with how many people are packaging for how long during the day. Most of the time, it winds up being way too many people with not much bread to package up - two or three people packaging bread can get the entire job done in about three hours, leaving us to twiddle our thumbs for another two until the end of the shift. The other times, which are worse, are when the bakery cranks out about 15 big racks of bread and rolls, and the scheduling winds up with one person (usually me) with a four-hour shift to do all of it.

Locclo wrote:The biggest gripe I have with my work is that there's a complete failure in scheduling people for various jobs. My primary job, probably 9 days out of 10, is to package bread in the bakery (it's baked in the morning, and I come in in the afternoon to evening to package it all up for the next day). The problem is, the scheduling is completely bi-polar about matching up how much bread is baked with how many people are packaging for how long during the day. Most of the time, it winds up being way too many people with not much bread to package up - two or three people packaging bread can get the entire job done in about three hours, leaving us to twiddle our thumbs for another two until the end of the shift. The other times, which are worse, are when the bakery cranks out about 15 big racks of bread and rolls, and the scheduling winds up with one person (usually me) with a four-hour shift to do all of it.

Scheduling is always a big issue at my job too. Part of that issue comes from ramdom people requesting/ calling in/ or just not showing up. Our management (as cool as they are, the need to show some fortitude at times though) just lets it slide. So usually what happens is that I show up, thinking I'm going to have an easy day, only to find out that one person didn't show up/ called in/ took off and now I have to do their job as well.

Aaarrgghh! Help me Dakka! I want to laugh at BrotherOmas post but then when I think about it I conclude that he is being vague because he must work with special needs individuals and I feel bad now! How does a person bite that much of their own finger off otherwise?

I work for an extremely "high end" auto body collision shop,Maserati,Ferrari,Aston Martin,Lamborghini and so on are our bread and butter,but we also handle alot of BMWs and the like.

Many of our clients are "celebrities" and uber rich "movers and shakers",and while many of them are fairly decent people,some are so self absorbed and out of touch with reality that it is truly jaw dropping.

A week never goes by in which we are not entertained by some trust fund kid who throws a six year old like tantrum because he is told he'll have to wait a few days for the part for his Lotus to come in,or in which some trophy wife throws her coffee at a painter and goes into a shrieking fit because her Porsche isn't the "pretty blue" she thought it would be.

I often have to shake my head and wonder how these people handle "real crisis"...but have to laugh because clearly "real crisis" is apparently unknown to them.

I work at a Summer Camp, and it is usually great fun.
However, we get some kids who are a big hassle. The ones that get the financial aid the the Summer Camp raised last year.
Well, needless to say, the reason they get the aid is because they usually have bad home lives, which means they are bad kids.
Granted, one of my favorite campers got financial aid, and my least favorite's mom paid, but whatever.
90% of these kids are THE WORST. They hit counselors, make a huge mess at lunch, don't want to participate in swim lessons, but cry when they can't have free-swim for not doing their lessons, etc.

Not that great of a story, but still.
I have another short one. Last year, I was one of the 2 seven and eight year old counselors. We had an asian kid, who barely spoke English. Rather than attempt to say he had to go to the bathroom, he straight up pissed his pants. And it wasn't a little bit.

ComputerGeek01 wrote:Aaarrgghh! Help me Dakka! I want to laugh at BrotherOmas post but then when I think about it I conclude that he is being vague because he must work with special needs individuals and I feel bad now! How does a person bite that much of their own finger off otherwise?

Be assured I do not work with special needs people, feel free to laugh. Basically I work in a prison but I'm not giving out any more details..sorry!

I thought it was great though, and yes..it was done on purpose..