Post about your worst workplace experiences.

There was this one time where I was just supposed to let a plumber into a powerplant basement, and ended up helping him fix a broken pipe whilst human feces ran down my arms.


Oh, and the time when I spent a few hours putting out a grassfire on what turned out to be a minefield.

 

[quote/] snoogans, post: 219631, member: 4114"]There was this one time where I was just supposed to let a plumber into a powerplant basement, and ended up helping him fix a broken pipe whilst human feces ran down my arms.


Oh, and the time when I spent a few hours putting out a grassfire on what turned out to be a minefield.[/quote]
The grassfire on a minefield sounds very farfetched. How does a Swedish person from a fairly pacifist nation end up in or around a minefield? Frankly, I find it unbelievable.

 

I tell only truths, sir.
It happened the week before or after(can't remember) I had lunch with HM the King of Sweden(I do realise this makes it sound even more farfetched).

I was stationed at a UN observatory outpost in the northeast of Kosovo late summer/early fall of '04. We saw a huge pillar of smoke, investigated, saved a windmill, learned about the mines we almost stepped on, got the fuck out of there.

Posted about it a week or so later actually, right here on the TFP! With photo evidence of me and HM.

 

I'm glad to hear that you survived with your limbs and life intact.

 

Working as a bagger at a large warehouse sale for a multinational household supplies company: Toilet paper, cleaning products, makeup etc...

The crush of humanity hoarding these products was overwhelming and even though it was only a single week, it was torture.

 

Did a job designed for four people in two seperate rooms that violated basically every OSHA standard I later found out existed, and wound up with an abdomen full of plastic for my troubles.

 

I got hired as a service tech for IBM when I was 21. Great job, but some interesting clients. I've repaired machines next to the death chamber at Statesville. I refused to fix a machine that had been puked in next to the drunk tank at the local county jail (they complained to my boss who thought it was hilarious). I've had all of my tires punctured when BNSF went on strike and I was there at midnight fixing something.

 

My new job is actually okay, but I think some of the upper management is in dire need of a brain transplant:


I may be exaggerating slightly with this one, but I assure you the general "feel" is quite on the mark.

 

My new Boss just turned 30, I'm 51, he is an emotional wreck. its as if he's taking steriods. 1 minute he's angry and dangerous to be around the next he's laughing to the point of tears, and yes still dangerous to be around. we are a small group and have collectively decided not to interact with him. Walking on egg shells seems to come to mind. The Job he has requires a BS, he doesn't have an hour of credits. Nobody is sure how he got appointed, and we all believe it's a bunch o BS

 

This new place is... interesting!

 

One of my bosses is pregnant. Which means she can't take her Adderall that she's been on for 18 years. Plus, she's nauseous all the time. Like puking and dry heaving. I get to hear it and hear all about it. She forwarded me an email thread with a client's nothing in which she described, in detail, her near inability to do her job. I don't want to know these things. Though I've definitely had worse experiences, this sucks. Glad I like my other boss. This one is on the other side of thin walls from me most days.

 

Door closers are required by law?

Okay, I guess fire doors need to be closed to retard fires from moving easily from one space to another.

 

I worked at Burger King franchise when I was 15, I lied about being16. The owner had several BK stores and rotated the night managers from store to store. Some of them were OK, most were not. One of them was an alcoholic latina who hired her female friend to "work" there.

Small cash thefts were common (no, not by me), but one time a large amount of cash went missing. This was after one night when the alcoholic was obviously drunk, she and her friend were behaving really strangely that night. They showed up very late that night, and made some lame excuses to stay after everyone else had left. A few days later the owner brought in a private security company to administer lie detector tests. I was answering the questions the best that I could, but eventually got fed up, stood up and told the guy, "Look, they know who took the money." And walked out.

I later found out the tests were illegal even under the best circumstances, but most especially since they involved questioning minors with no notification to the parents. My parents & I could have, and probably should have, sued the owner.

Side notes: The main day manager was a slightly overweight and very busty (she liked to display her ample cleavage) redheaded woman. She would sometimes drop in at night, with a different boyfriend each time, to check see how things were going. In retrospect, thinking about some of the conversations that we had, there a was a possibility that I could have lost my virginity at 15. However there were two problems--I was a clueless 15 year old, and she had red hair.

 

And what is your problem with gingers?
I understand being a clueless 15 year old but even at 15 I hadn't developed a 'type'.
Actually I had, any woman who would talk to me.

 

I'm not sure, but even at 15 I wasn't attracted to redheads. Hard to explain, might have something to do with a redheaded female cousin.

 

The apology thread reminded me of something, which is probably best posted in this thread.

I worked in the records department of a court reporting firm. The two owners were court reporters, and the court reporting side got top priority; the records department was definately treated like the proverbial 'red-haired stepchild.'

Some background is necessary.

Both of the co-owners would transfer crappy employees from the court reporting side to the records department, and transfer our good records dept employess to the court reporting side. They would then complain about why the records department wasn't able to "keep up."

The co-owners would hire records dept managers based on who they knew, i.e. contacts that benefitted the company... with the court reporting side being priority one.

Our clients, attorneys, would hire investigators to look into accidents, uusually several years before the litigation came close to the trial date. Our clients would wait until three, maybe even two, weeks before the trial to have us issue subpoenas for the records they wanted. You must understand that having a 'civil' subpoena for the records in no way meant that the custodians were in a hurry to provide them, esp. if it was a government agency, such as police records (the Harris County Sheriffs Office was the absolute worst about dragging ass).

Sometimes the plaintiff's attorney would refuse to waive the ten day waiting period, which gave us even less time to obtain the records. And sometimes they would execise their right to add requests for billing records on to our Notices Of Intent, which created more paperwork, more delays, more work, etc.

Sometimes the co-defendants would fight among themselves.

I was the expeditor, the person who worked the phones in order to schedule appoints to pick-up the rcords. This involved a combination of grovelling and threats, depending on who I was dealing with. It was not an easy task under the best of circumstances, and really sucked when dealing with RUSH cases.

One of the co-owners would frequently pull the field reps from the records department to run errands for the court reporting side of the company. That undermined my efforts to set the appointments to pick-up the records.

A scenario based on real events:

The owners would call me into their office, and tell me that they were receiving complaints about how long it took us to get their records. In most cases this involved last-minute rush cases. I would explain the situation, as professionally as possible.

"Our client started investigating this case over four years ago, and yes I have proof of that, but waited until three weeks before the trial to order the records through us. The plaintiffs attorney, who is very well known for being difficult, didn't waive the ten days, and one of the co-defendents also didn't waive. I did everything everything that I could do obtain as many sets of records as possible under the circumstances. Several appointments had to be rescheduled because some of the field reps were pulled to run errands for court reporting."

Loudmouthed bully-owner, "Why didn't you cover the appointments?"

"The problem with me doing so is that would've left no one to call about the other records, which would've lead to more delays. I really need to be in the office, not covering appointments in the field."

"That's bullshit!"

"No sir, it isn't. There isn't anyone to cover my job if I'm out in the field. We've been receiving many more records requests since I became expeditor, and I've previously asked for an assistant. I was also clear when I accepted the promotion* that I needed to be here making calls in order to properly do my job. At the time both of you agreed with me. My predecessor** was never asked to cover appointments."

Bully-owner, completely ignoring my comment about my predecessor, "You don't undestand how we do things. All I'm hearing are excuses."

"Everything I've said is accurate."

"Bullshit!! Go back work, I'm sick of your excuses. And don't schedule A-Certain-Field-Rep for any afternoon appointments tomorrow, I'm going to have some depositions for him to deliver."

I eventually got fired from that job because I refused to deliver some court reporting depositions. I came in early that AM to get some work done; what would've the owner done if I had showed up at my usual time? The seriously stupidshit thing is they could've used courier services for nearly all of the deliveries. The money they would've spent on the couriers was nothing compared to the money they lost by screwing up the scheduled appointments.

* At a salary much lower than what my predecessor was making.
** The guy who let the records dept turn to crap while he pursued a job in another city, and operated a side business from his office at the company. Both owners were fully aware of what he was doing.

 

Well my new 30 year old Boss on steroids, today, had is ass in a jam, and chose to get out of it by using me another co-worker as scape goats. I pointed him to the available data which was apparently disregarded, by him of course, and was given a written notice of improvement. after simmering on it all day I recalled that the part features he referred to were omitted from every step in the process which included him.
So there I am running a lathe afterword and the thoughts of my defense are streaming through my head and pointing out that he is actually to blame for the omission.
He walks up and says "no hard feelings, we're ok" and shakes my hand. Then he says "thanx buddy"
I hate being called that, he calls me sugar or sug or some other slang name likes he's attempting to diminish my manhood or ego, I think he feels threatened mostly.
So tomorrow I will wait for the right moment when his boss is around and revisit this scenario, pointing the finger of truth, the actual facts of the deviation from procedure, directly between his eyes.
I hate it when he calls me BUDDY

 

I swear there are some bosses who do that because they can't be bothered to learn your name.

 

Right, I feel like saying "my name is Chris you fucking moron"