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

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Elaborate?

Someone in the UK sold a major event for Thanksgiving day, on the 22nd. Wouldn't matter, except this isn't just some rush event, it's a rush event that requires:

2 video bridges
4 encoders
2 VCUs
2 UK phone lines

It's also taking place in both the UK and Germany.

We also have zero technical information, other than they'll be dialing out to us via a VCU, and a German translator will dial in via phone.

Somehow we're supposed to cobble together this event.

Oh, did I mention nobody but sales has been in touch with the client?

Also, we've done zero testing. Zero. As in we don't even know if their firewall is setup properly.

Holy fuck.
 
Someone in the UK sold a major event for Thanksgiving day, on the 22nd. Wouldn't matter, except this isn't just some rush event, it's a rush event that requires:

2 video bridges
4 encoders
2 VCUs
2 UK phone lines

It's also taking place in both the UK and Germany.

We also have zero technical information, other than they'll be dialing out to us via a VCU, and a German translator will dial in via phone.

Somehow we're supposed to cobble together this event.

Oh, did I mention nobody but sales has been in touch with the client?

Also, we've done zero testing. Zero. As in we don't even know if their firewall is setup properly.

Holy fuck.
Yeah that does suck but you know, with Thanksgiving and Independence Day and all the other patriotic holidays you Yank Chappies have I'm sure you'll cope. Thanksgiving to me has always been an excuse to have two Christmas Dinners in a month anyway. Typical Americans ;p
 
They finally hired a new receptionist. Her first day was Monday. However, she's an idiot, and I still have to sit up front and do both jobs. She's either retarded, has a severe anxiety disorder, or both. So, instead of getting back to the crappy, boring job I was hired to do, I have to do it; the crappy, boring, general public facing job I wasn't hired to do; and babysit/attempt to train her.
 
I worked for a Law Firm until a few months ago when I decided to go back to studying so I could level up a bit further. While I was there, we had a reasonably steady stream of work experience people come through, mostly kids who'd just finished their GCSEs or A-Levels and were looking to get a taste of the professional world. Most of them completed the mundane tasks they were given to do with a good degree of competence, however there was one who was different. Let's call her Spoilt Bitch.

Spoilt Bitch got her work experience because she was the daughter of a good friend of one of the Senior Solicitors in my team. Now, I'm not going to decry someone getting something because of nepotism, because we had another work experience girl at the time who was the girlfriend of the Partner's son and she was very helpful. However, I am going to decry Spoilt Bitch because of what she did with her work experience.

Spoilt Bitch arrives at the firm bright and early on Monday morning for four days' work. She's introduced to the team, given a desk and told what needs to be done. She was given a fairly important (but boring) task which involved going through a list of firms which did similar (but different) work to our firm and compiling them into a spreadsheet with additional details. It's expected it'll take her most of the four days to complete.

About an hour after beginning her task, Spoilt Bitch walks over to the Senior Solicitor who'd given her the work experience in the first place and says:
"Can't I have something more interesting to do?"
The Senior Solicitor looks at her, flabbergasted, and says:
"No. It's a job that needs doing."
Spoilt Bitch goes back to her desk and keeps doing the task she's been assigned. Now, I'm sure most of you here know that if you're lucky enough to get some work experience with a company, you do whatever they tell you to do. Even if you're just shining everyone's shoes or making coffee, the fact you have something to put on your CV makes it all worth it. You certainly don't go up to the person who's been kind enough to give you a chance and say:
"I'm bored! Give me something better!"
Even kids who are barely out of school get this. I was shocked to come across someone for whom this was an alien concept.

Wednesday rolls around and we haven't had any trouble from Spoilt Bitch since that incident. I come in that morning to find the Senior Solicitor sitting at his desk looking half shocked, half angry. I ask him what's wrong and he tells me he got an email from Spoilt Bitch saying she wouldn't be in for her last two days because she's going on holiday that weekend and she'd rather spend her remaining time hanging out with her friends. The worst part was, the Senior Solicitor couldn't even send a rude reply back because she was the daughter of a family friend, so he had to settle for having a long rant to the team about the incident and swearing that if she ever asked for work experience again, or a reference from him, he'd say no. And what's worse is that I then had to complete the task Spoilt Bitch had left undone, which ended up eating a full four days of my time.

Getting work experience at a law firm is incredibly difficult, and not to brag, but this firm was a very prestigious one. There are people out there who would've killed for the opportunity Spoilt Bitch was given, so to have her throw it away like that... it made us all more than a little angry.
 
I have an office adjacent to a man that not only gets in a shouting match almost daily with his wife, like screaming top of lungs fight every fucking day. Even worse then that he calls me "big man" rather then my name, literally every time I see him "hey big man", "cold out side huh big man"...he's also my boss so there's not much I can do...kinda trivial things but I cringe whenever both happens, and they both happen every day.
 
So I work through a staffing agency that is predominantly run by people with extremely poor communication skills. By that I mean that not too long ago, for a couple days straight, I got multiple emails from a recruiter from my company stating that they saw my resume and/or LinkedIn and thought that I would be a great fit...for the exact same position except for far less pay than what they are paying me now.

Worst part? I had to tell this person three times that I already work there before the emails stopped.

The same guy emailed me again for the same position, same pay, same blanket email about a week after I left that agency for one that paid more. I've since blocked any emails coming from that @company.com.

To give you an idea of the type of stupid I dealt with at the last place, the back wall of each bathroom stall had a sign that said "Please flush after each use."
 
"Here LordKaT, fix this MP3"

distortion.png


Sure, let me just get my gun and shoot the asshole that recorded it.
 
I must be the only loser on this forum who actually likes his job, lol.
Just because you like your job, that doesn't mean that you never encounter dumb/terrifying shit.

My own: as a lot of you know, I'm in grad school, and as part of my funding, I have to TA (teaching assistant) for one of my professors. Now, I love being a TA (especially for this prof because she's literally who I want to be in 15 years), but as one of the responsibilities of the job includes tutoring and giving guidance on papers...shit gets dumb, quick.

Example: one girl used "firstable" and "secondable" in her paper, instead of using the English language and saying "first of all" and "second of all." Another good one was when this one student came to my office hours, trying to say that minutes weren't 60 seconds long, because if she pushed 1:20 on the microwave, it wouldn't cook as long as it would when she pushed the minute button twice.

Yeah, I'm not TA'ing for freshman level classes ever again.
 
Just because you like your job, that doesn't mean that you never encounter dumb/terrifying shit.
I started my new job this week, moved from Security/Maintenance dual role to full time Facilities, Maintenance and Technical Support in the same business. Anyway, first on the agenda, bench equipment calibration and compliance. Also known as dumping a shitty job on the new guy which is made all the shittier because I've known my team mates 8 years and I'm still 'the new guy'. Long story short I go to every one of the 200 work benches and check every serial number of every piece of equipment, check the resistance to ground of every piece of equipment and, test the positive and negative decay of the Ion guns (less cool than they sound). Anyway long story short inside these Ion guns (which are high pressure air guns that Ionize the air stream to discharge static on the PCBs their blowing onto to clean.) To ensure compliance I need to test them monthly by blowing them onto a charged 1kv plate and testing the decay time. Simples. Our engineers and ingenious however when it comes to fucking with equipment. I pick up a gun, hold it above the discharge plate and pull the trigger. The tip flies off exposing the coil which is charged to 14,000 volts. The coil drops out discharging the entire capacitor into my hand. This was a bad start to the day. Turns out the engineer at the bench, when bored, would fiddle with the tip DESPITE the big yellow sticker on the side of the gun that says: "Danger, do not remove tip, hazardous voltage!"
 
Sitting in a skype chatroom soely as a technical point of contact. I read the following exchange:

Q: "what about the customer hearing the music?"
A: "I think they have slow internet speed."

Ow.

Just fucking ow.
So the music was believed to be caused by slow internets?
 
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