The Horrors of the "Professional" World - Stories that will make you wonder how we exist.

[AnOminous]

I work as a chef at a certain university and today at our staff meeting we were told not to use decimals when labeling food anymore because the student employees don't understand them. It's a fucking university.

And to think, when I watched Idiocracy, I thought it was a comedy and not a documentary.

 

[Ruin]

And to think, when I watched Idiocracy, I thought it was a comedy and not a documentary.

I don't understand it either. I remember math classes being required up until at least calc or stats.

 

[Beaniebon]

Used to be a writing tutor (I want to teach) I had people ask me to correct their paper that was legit copied from Wikipedia. I had someone call Alzheimer's disease "old timers disease" in a paper. Had someone ask me where the apostrophe was on the keyboard and what it was used for...

I'm not really a professional but sometimes I'll look over other students papers (because I'm pretty much the only competent person my age apparently). I had one kid who (multiple times) used "evolve" instead of "revolve". I actually asked him if he knew what "evolve" meant and he said "to go around"

 

[NQ 952]

Sent by a sales executive trying to explain to us why one piece of equipment in an entire rack was overheating.

The problem is the rack is too full- there are no air gaps between equipment.

Not enough in the world.

 

[WlordLimes_butt_plug]

Sent by a sales executive trying to explain to us why one piece of equipment in an entire rack was overheating.



Not enough in the world.

Clean it out, buy a new one?

 

[AnOminous]

Sent by a sales executive trying to explain to us why one piece of equipment in an entire rack was overheating.

Was it correct, though? I've certainly seen this kind of thing in rack mounts where one particularly energetic inhabitant generated enough heat to cause damage to its neighbors.

And when you say "sales executive" I read "moron," but what was wrong in this case?

 

[NQ 952]

Was it correct, though? I've certainly seen this kind of thing in rack mounts where one particularly energetic inhabitant generated enough heat to cause damage to its neighbors.

And when you say "sales executive" I read "moron," but what was wrong in this case?

Everything else in the rack is fine. This one unit is overheating because the fan is spinning at 96rpm

 

[Damocles_Sword]

^Ugh, I had a client one time that had a panel full of expensive equipment melt down because the engineer didn't think to put a cooling fan or shade box on the panel.

 

[Pikimon]

I work in a paid internship for a very well known pharmaceutical company, let's call them Grocter and Pamble.

A lot of the "groundbreaking" medicine we work on was first discovered in its botanical or bacterial form 10 years ago, its components isolated and identified 6 years ago, and it will take another few years for a marketable form to be released into the public, and that's without some other company or university coming up with a much better alternative with fewer side-effects at the same time.

And if it all works well with the FDA, you get a brand spanking new heart medication for people too fucking lazy to maintain a healthy diet and regular workout routine.

 

[NQ 952]

SharePoint shit its pants again. I'm no SharePoint expert but I'm the guy that got thrown at it because I have a functional brain. I have learned the following about Sharepoint:

- By default, Sharepoint does not log outgoing e-mail failures
- There is no mechanism to detect these failures unless you write your own e-mail server DLL
- All administrative notices and alerts are sent via e-mail

Therefore, if your mail server goes down for a fraction of a second, or the network is congested for even a little bit, or the SharePoint server is just plain shit, the functionality of sending outbound e-mails fails *catastrophically*

People pay good money ($200k+/year) to maintain and manage this shit. Fucking shoot me.

 

[WlordLimes_butt_plug]

SharePoint shit its pants again. I'm no SharePoint expert but I'm the guy that got thrown at it because I have a functional brain. I have learned the following about Sharepoint:

- By default, Sharepoint does not log outgoing e-mail failures
- There is no mechanism to detect these failures unless you write your own e-mail server DLL
- All administrative notices and alerts are sent via e-mail

Therefore, if your mail server goes down for a fraction of a second, or the network is congested for even a little bit, or the SharePoint server is just plain shit, the functionality of sending outbound e-mails fails *catastrophically*

People pay good money ($200k+/year) to maintain and manage this shit. Fucking shoot me.

BANG! https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2639/4123216669_1cc96f1896_b.jpg

 

[Ruin]

They sent me a worker from a temp agency three days ago and she wore leggings to work which is a really fucking bad idea in a kitchen because you could get burned and shit. I told her that was inappropriate work wear and her response was "You can't tell me what to do!" I was like "well actually as your supervisor I kinda can." We fired her today for refusing to wear jeans and the chef coat we provided her, for bonus points this woman was in her early thirties and covered in tattoos.

 

[NQ 952]

@Ruin we interviewed someone for a client facing position. She had full facial tattoos and several noise piercings.

Surprisingly she did not get the job.

 

[Ruin]

@Ruin we interviewed someone for a client facing position. She had full facial tattoos and several noise piercings.

Surprisingly she did not get the job.

Nobody's going to see her back in the kitchen so the tattoos didn't really matter. It was more the bad attitude and the refusal to wear appropriate clothing.

 

[Goofy Logic]

My dad told me a story that was told to him at one of the Canadian sawmills in my area.

Back in the late seventies, there was a labor dispute and the entrance was picketed. A semi truck with a load of sawmill equipment pulled up to the picket line, and one of the strikers climbed up and started hollering at the driver. The driver responded by jamming a revolver in the workers face.

They said that worker didn't stop running till he got to the dry kilns, which is on the other side of the mill.

 

[GV 998]

Nothing crazy, but I have created excel documents for my company and had my boss send me an e-mail back saying something like " Thanks! Also, I need you to change this number to 34, etc, and change that column's title to 'Past employees" and then send it back to me, please"

I mean... It would have taken her LESS time to make those changes herself. It's not like the document I sent her was a read-only version. She's a pretty decent manager, otherwise.

We do have a job manager here that pretty much just goes out of town, all the time, on the company's dime no less. He is legitimately out of town every week, and doesn't need to be, because none of the other job managers who have the SAME job he has go out of town that much. Hell, some of them NEVER go out of town. ( I work for a shipping company)

There are rumors in the office that range from "he hates his wife and needs to get away from her", "he's gay and has a lover that he visits" to " He has something dirty on the owner of the company and can get away with all of this shit under the threat of blackmail."

I don't know which, if any are true, but I do hate that guy. He's lazy and probably costs the company more money than he brings in

 

[NQ 952]

Heard this at a presentation today:

"they... y'know ... and they ... then ... them ... you know what you know, you know?"

 

[yasscat]

Heard this at a presentation today:

"they... y'know ... and they ... then ... them ... you know what you know, you know?"

Such an inspiring, insightful speech.

 

[Optimus Prime]

I have to wonder how the fuck anybody even gets hired these days. Got a a degree with computers, but only a summer internship under my belt, and no matter how many job openings for entry level IT or software work I apply for, I get zero call backs. Only middlemen temp agencies and they only call the one time, to which I pass my info, and then they never call me back. And most listings that would fit in my wheelhouse I don't qualify for because I don't have years of experience.

Like, what the fuck? How the goddamn hell is this a sustainable work environment if every fucking tech company won't look at a resume unless somebody was already hired by somebody else? What the fuck good is a college degree anymore if learning about shit to do a job isn't as important as somebody else having paid you for years to do that job first?

 

[Goofy Logic]

Like, what the fuck? How the goddamn hell is this a sustainable work environment if every fucking tech company won't look at a resume unless somebody was already hired by somebody else? What the fuck good is a college degree anymore if learning about shit to do a job isn't as important as somebody else having paid you for years to do that job first?

I've heard college instructors calling that the catch 22 for students - employers want people with experience, but students need to get the job in order to get experience.

The only thing I can suggest is do a lot of networking with people in a similar job position, and their supervisors in particular. That alone seems to get employers to look at you.