Hello, August!

by **Teena** on Fri May 08, 2009 11:05 am

Our PTA has been awesome this week, giving us little gifts for Teacher Appreciation Week every day. Little things, but we're loving it.

I only got one gift from a kid, who said as I opened it, "My mom said she had too many of those anyway, and that she sure wasn't going to buy you anything for doing your job." Sigh.

by **Jamie** on Fri May 08, 2009 11:56 am

This might be less "work sucks" and more "Jamie is dumb," but in every single media position I've held, a salesperson has asked to abuse the outlet in order to plug an advertiser, and you'd think I'd come to expect it, but it still surprises me every time. Like, are they serious? Do they know what "news" is?

Naturally, I had my first attempt today, and I should have seen it coming but my reaction was still, "Sonofabitch."

by **Adrienna** on Mon May 11, 2009 9:32 am

And I also hate whenever my company gets coverage, there's always a salesperson calling who wants us to advertise. (We don't advertise except on Get Human and trade shows.) Trade pubs are definitely not real news pubs. It's annoying, although I guess I could take advantage of the situation and buy exposure.

by **Harmony** on Mon May 11, 2009 4:23 pm

Because another admin just seriously asked me, after I suggested using stamps instead of using the postal meter on a postcard, "Where are we going to get stamps?"

I DON'T KNOW. WHERE THE HELL COULD WE GET STAMPS OMG I COULD KILL YOU.

by **bonkrood** on Fri May 22, 2009 11:15 am

I am on the phone with our franchise tech support. The email address that they supply our hotel is web-based. This is the email that we can access on their old ass hunk of junk computers and the company that brings tour busses to our property all summer long always sends me rooming lists to that email address. Suddenly about 2 weeks ago, their emails started getting caught in the spam quarantine. I would log in to the spam area and release the emails. They get released but they never show up in our inbox. I added their entire domain to our safelist, as well as this one woman's individual address and it still keeps quarantining her messages.

I called yesterday and the guy told me that I needed to filter the emails to a different folder than my inbox. THEY NEVER ARRIVE IN MY INBOX TO BE FILTERED.

Then I sent a stern email to our brand manager saying you need to help me figure out who to talk to who can actually help me or I'm gonna lose my shit. So she calls me back today and gives me a guy's name. I call back and ask for him but the guy who is helping me tries to be of assistance. He reads over the entire help ticket from HER conversation with the other guy this morning and then he remotely logs into my machine. I showed him what was happening. I can view the emails from within the spam area but NOT the attachments which is what I need. IT DEACTIVATES ATTACHMENTS TO SPAM obviously. I release the emails and they disappear so I've quit releasing them altogether because I want proof that this thing is holding on to these emails.

Anyway the guy who is helping me now literally just suggested that perhaps I should update to the latest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader and that might help. And that, my friends, is when I got sorta nasty and talked to him like he is an idiot. Really? You're tech support and you are telling me that if I have the latest version of Acrobat Reader that I will be able to somehow magically retrieve these attachments from some mystical email server where they've been sequestered away? Let me just shoot off a FANTASTIC JOB email to Adobe because fuck I knew they were good but I didn't know they were THAT good.

Thank god I'm on hold and I can type this angry missive (on my laptop, not the machine the guy is connected to, though wouldn't THAT be funny) because otherwise I might pull out all of my hair while waiting for this numbnuts to figure shit out.

by **Jamie** on Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:22 am

I'm too busy posting Gay Days stuff to go on a lunchtime mani-pedi with everyone else. Boo.

by **Jana** on Sun Jun 07, 2009 3:36 pm

Moving across town is the biggest pain in the ass ever. I don't have nearly enough boxes and I am really trying to avoid buying boxes since I'm losing all my storage space and I can't afford to spend much money on this move. And in theory, I don't need many boxes since I can just throw my stuff in the back of my car and go, but seriously, I need some goddamned boxes and some assistance with getting things down out of the high cabinets and tall shelves.

Thankfully, the women who live in my new apartment now are being super accommodating (which is awesome since one of them is my new boss) but I am frustrated by the fact that I am relocating for work and they are totally resisting paying for moving assistance or providing me with any sort of support that will make this easier for me. And of course this is hitting me when I have less than two weeks to pack up my entire apartment while it is also being shown a few times a week to prospective employees during their on-campus interviews. AND, I have to use vacation days to actually move. Ugh.

by **Jamie** on Tue Jun 09, 2009 12:38 pm

I do not like that some people want me to teach them how to use their facebook accounts.

by **KarenD** on Tue Jun 09, 2009 4:05 pm

Fortunately this sort of thing is a tiny part of my job: I have to read something titled "Understanding Codification Update 2008-004 to FASB ASC 810-10 (SFAS No. 160), Noncontrolling Interests in Consolidated Financial Statements".

by **bonkrood** on Tue Jun 09, 2009 5:52 pm

Jamie wrote:I do not like that some people want me to teach them how to use their facebook accounts.

Guess who has a meeting to teach her bosses how to do this next week? Along with twitter and the like.....

LUCKY ME!

by **Adrienna** on Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:38 pm

I have the "privilege" of teaching Facebook and Twitter too. Blech.

I also hate how bored I sometimes am at work. It's hard to push through the boring tasks to cross them off my list.

by **bonkrood** on Sat Jun 13, 2009 10:06 pm

Ugh the meeting was pretty horrible. The men kept asking me why would you want to do twitter or facebook and who even cares? The only thing they remotely seemed interested in was LinkedIn.

by **Jamie** on Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:09 pm

I have to touch the toilet seat every freaking time I pee.

Rockin' the suburbs · by **Heather** on Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:16 pm

Oh, yuck. I hate that!

by **Jamie** on Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:20 pm

And I'm so outnumbered, it's not even worth trying to change things.

by **Jana** on Fri Sep 25, 2009 8:36 pm

Jamie wrote:And I'm so outnumbered, it's not even worth trying to change things.

Same here. I share my office bathroom with 2 dudes full-time. And my most frequent visitors who are around long enough to need the bathroom, all the facilities staff and campus police officers, are men. Since I think it is just as gross for a man to lift the seat as it is for a woman to put it down (and therefore not worth even discussing), I retaliate by purchasing fancy hand soap that smells delicious.

by **Jamie** on Mon Sep 28, 2009 9:49 am

Jana wrote:tors who are around long enough to need the bathroom, all the facilities staff and campus police officers, are men. Since I think it is just as gross for a man to lift the seat as it is for a woman to put it down (and therefore not worth even discussing), I retaliate by purchasing fancy hand soap that smells delicious.

That is... not so much a retaliation, in my office. Coincidentally, someone gave me one of those girly hand soap/lotion sets for my birthday this weekend, so I brought it in this morning.

by **Jamie** on Tue Oct 06, 2009 2:30 pm

I spent another headachey day at the fucking Holy Land Experience. Today involved me sitting in traffic twice, me listening to babies scream through the entire passion drama, and me lying to a cop. I will never go to that place again. I'm not kidding. I don't care if they hang a sign that says "WE HATE FAGS," if it's a Holy Land Experience story, I'M NOT DOING IT.

by **Teena** on Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:02 pm

First of all, I resent meetings where we learn "new" ways of teaching that are NEVER new, they are just back again with a fancy new name. Second, I really resent being told that if I haven't been teaching this way all along, basically I suck and now have to be handheld until I get with the program.

I am a good teacher. Just because I was not ahead of the curve and I didn't jump on the bandwagon before most people even knew said bandwagon even existed doesn't change that fact. But sometimes that is hard to hold on to.

by **Teena** on Fri Oct 30, 2009 10:22 am

When I get two phone calls within minutes of each other, one from a person angry because I have Halloween picture books in my classroom library (which, by the way, I don't force kids to pick up and read) and the other from a person angry because I'm not having a Halloween party today.

by **Jamie** on Wed Dec 09, 2009 5:04 pm

Oh my god the banner manager plugin is SO F'N SLOW.

Rockin' the suburbs · by **Heather** on Thu Dec 10, 2009 1:09 pm

I just found out that my second school (the one I'm at on Tuesdays) is adding another first grade class, so guess where they are going? Of course, the music room! Great. So the only room that I had at all is now being taken away and the music room will have to share with the art room. There is another music teacher that goes to that school also that is there on Thursdays and Fridays and she just emailed me and told me that we have to have all of our stuff out of the room by the end of the first week of January. That's just awesome. The art room is so not ideal for many reasons. There isn't carpet, so it will be super loud in there, and the kids can't sit on the floor. There are tables, so no room to do any dancing or movement. It's right across the hall from other classrooms so we have to be quiet. The music room that we currently have is kind of by itself near the gym, so we can be as loud as we want. There is no storage for all of our instruments and equipment. Also when the art teachers are there, the kids will be in there with all of our very expensive instruments and equipment. This is when shit gets broken and stolen.

GAHHH. I am just so pissed about it. Why add another class in the middle of the year? And why is music always the first fucking thing to go or get screwed around with?? We are just as important as other subjects, damnit.

by **Teena** on Mon Dec 14, 2009 6:57 pm

I can't even talk about the phone call I just got, except to say that it's bad form to call up a teacher and casually insult the school at which she works (and yes, she knows where I work). And then wonder why I am suddenly not so friendly anymore. My school ROCKS and she can bite me.

(This is in Why I Hate My Job because this phone call was part of my liaison duties.)

by **tapestrygirl** on Tue Dec 15, 2009 12:40 pm

I hate my job this week because I am sick and tired of dealing with one of my lower level managers. I want to scream at him "you're terrible at this job and you dont fit in and would you just quit already so I can promote someone else." Jesus. Also my boss, the only one who can actually fire him, won't. She feels its her fault he isn't succeeding, and wants to give him more attention. Only she wants me to be the one helping him, not her. GRRRRRRR.

by **Jamie** on Fri Dec 18, 2009 10:49 am

Apparently this is the week where kooks call me and ramble on and on about things they think must be news but are actually vague aspects of their personal lives and Not A Story.

by **Teena** on Wed Jan 06, 2010 12:10 pm

Oh my GOD I have GOT to learn to say NO. Even when someone comes to me crying because the origami teacher is out of the country and nobody else will take the class and there's already so many kids signed up for it and I'm her ONLY HOPE... because I really, really don't want to do it. I don't know how to do any origami but a hopping frog (yes, I can get books, yes there's the Internet but it's FRIDAY and I'm already stressed out so much I don't need this on top of everything else).

But she cried, and I said yes. Off to learn some origami, I guess.

by **Jamie** on Wed Jan 20, 2010 4:09 pm

OMG, fuck today.

I have to get the entire newspaper online, a feat that usually takes me more than a day, plus

edit & create our annual sex poll plus

code the winter arts guide.

Why am I on WN? I've already accepted that I'll be here till after sundown, so what the hell?

by **tapestrygirl** on Wed Jan 20, 2010 6:15 pm

I hate my job because my boss is going through menapause and is the biggest bitch in the world to me. Constantly. For the last two months. And I am so OVER IT.

On Monday she told me and another manager that we had to take care of XYZ task this week for her because there was no way she was going to be able to do it. Sure, no problemo we say. We spend a couple minutes Monday coming up with a game plan, and decide that Thursday will be the best day to tackle said task.

Today I walk into her office and she is working on said task!!! I'm all, hey, Julie and I got that all under control, don't worry about it. And she goes "well its done. I took care of it yesterday." I was dumbfounded. I said "you really didn't need to, we had a plan." And she goes "yeah well I need it done now, before inventory." I answered with "yes, we were going to get it done tomorrow when Julie and I are both here."

She smirked at me and shooed me out of her office without another word!!! Are you joking?!? I've never been so humiliated. A totally different manager, who knew the task had been assigned to me, was in the office the whole time.

I just dont get it! Ugh. I need a vacation. Stat!

by **Jamie** on Mon Feb 01, 2010 2:06 pm

"So I have a client who I'd like to buy a web ad, but before he'll do it, he wants to know stats on cost... per... um, cost per whatever. Do you know what he means?"

No. I do not.

by **Teena** on Mon Feb 08, 2010 3:23 pm

I am hating every damn minute of my job right now, for reasons I cannot discuss (it's not all Crazy Coworker, although she never does go away). This has been going on for weeks and weeks now and it's only getting worse, not better, and it's nothing I can control, and I'm about to go insane.

by **Jamie** on Wed Apr 21, 2010 10:13 am

The developer and I have been trying to help the site limp along on its current hosting plan but it looks like it's time to upgrade - we're talking double/month, here.

It hurts to be so popular.

by **Jamie** on Fri Apr 30, 2010 8:51 am

I'm going to have LET ME GOOGLE THAT FOR YOU tattooed across my forehead, I swear.

by **bonkrood** on Mon May 03, 2010 4:39 pm

My boss just came in to let me know that there is a guy here repairing some of our in-room TVs that are having problems. The one in one of our rooms was only showing a picture on half the screen and as he was looking into what the problem was, he found that IT HAD BEEN SHOT. Someone shot our fucking TV. Lucky the bullet lodged in the TV instead of going through the wall and killing someone. We don't even know how long ago the problems were reported (they are pulling paperwork now) or who was the person who last stayed in there with the TV functional. The "shooter" wouldn't likely report the problem, and if someone stayed in there after them and didn't notice an issue because they aren't a TV watcher, we could be looking at any number of people who may be responsible.

What the hell possesses someone to do something like that? How scary! My office is right next to a guest room, now I guess I have to worry about bullets flying though the wall?! Yikes!

Edited to update:

Further investigation determined that the bullet was shot through the floor of the room above and went straight down through the top of the TV. This is fucked up.

by **bonkrood** on Wed May 05, 2010 1:17 pm

Alrighty. I am listening to a recorded webinar right now and I kind of want to book a flight to Atlanta to punch this lady in the throat. SWEET JESUS this is #2 of like 15 or 20 I have to do this month. I think she is the trainer on all of them. I think I may die.

by **Jamie** on Wed May 05, 2010 1:32 pm

I can't believe I didn't comment on the bullet post, so here's a very belated: YIKES.

by **KarenD** on Wed May 05, 2010 3:48 pm

Yikes, indeed. I guess the people in that room must have been out when their tv got shot--surely that's the sort of thing one would notice at the time (though I agree not necessarily after--I don't always turn on the tv in hotels).

by **bonkrood** on Wed May 05, 2010 4:19 pm

It's our shoulder season right now and that is one of our lesser-occupied rooms. So the possibility is that the room where the TV was damaged was empty for who-knows-how-long (it was only rented 3 times in April, and so was the room above it, although only 1 night overlaps.)

I was sick yesterday and so catching up today and I don't know what, if anything has been found out.

Rockin' the suburbs · by **Heather** on Thu May 06, 2010 7:51 am

That is insane and really scary. Now when I go to a hotel I'm going to be thinking about that.

Rockin' the suburbs · by **Heather** on Fri May 21, 2010 10:41 am

I hate the end of the year because all of my wonderful, nice, sweet, well-behaved children all turn into fucking lunatics. They all lose their minds and start acting like assholes and I am soooo over it. My 4th graders, who are normally awesome, quiet, great participators and listen really well, were just horendous. The ones who are always bad are even worse. I don't know if I can make it the last few weeks!

by **Teena** on Fri May 21, 2010 11:04 am

What she said. My kids are FALLING APART, and we still have to make it to June 15th. The kids are getting wild and downright mean, yet they are needier than ever, too. One of my coworkers likes to say that the kids try to "divorce" us at the end of the year, especially the ones that LIKE us, trying to make themselves feel better about having to leave us, etc. I go out and walk the track with whoever wants to come with me ("Walking Club") during last recess on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and yesterday I made it only two laps before I couldn't stand another minute with my needy, rude kids and told them I had to go do something important in the office just to get the hell away from them for five minutes.