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

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NQ 952

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I've been working in the "professional" world for a while now, both in offices and for myself, and I've learned something very important: human beings are fucking stupid.

Circa 2015. I am a customer facing engineer in a B2B business, and by customer facing I mean I'm the guy that has to talk to other professionals and tell them that they're really dumb, but in the nicest way possible. One of our customers cannot get their headset to work with our product.

The following conversation took place:

Me: "Have you tried restarting the browser?"
Her: "Restart the browser? How do you do THAT?"
Me: "You close it and open it again."
Her: "Oh. How do you close it? Is there a button for that?"
Me: "... the little red X at the top-right of your screen."
Her: "Oh ok. Your product went away though!"
Me: "Yes ma'am. Now open the browser again and go to our page, you'll be able to log in again."
Her: "OK, so what's 'the broswer'?"
Me: "Google Chrome?"
Her: "Yeah it's the program we were using before to access our website."
Her: "Oh, hang on."
*banging noises, like someone is hitting something with a small hammer*
Her: "Ok, I got it open and I'm on your website."
Me: "O... k... now does your headset work?"
Her: "No, it's not working. I can't hear myself in the program."
Me: "... you're not supposed to be able to, but I can't hear you speaking on the program. Let's try unplugging the headset and plugging it back in."
Her: "Oh that sounds like a great idea. One second."
*more banging*
Her: (barely audible) "is that supposed to be there? hm..."
Her: "OK I've unplugged it and plugged it back in!"
Me: "Great, still not audio though, that's a tough one."
Her: "Yeah, what's weird is that this works on the other computer, but not this one. I can't even see the headset as an option on this machine."
[note: I will never be able to confirm but yes, I think the headset was plugged into the other computer the whole time]
Me: "Other computer? We're running short on time, would it be easier to just use the other computer?"
Her: "Oh, sure, it's right next to me."
Her: "OK, I'm on the other computer, can you hear me?"
Me: "No. I don't actually see you logged in from the other machine. Did you open Chrome on that new computer?"
Her: "Oh ... no, I'm just sitting at it."
Me: "... ok. I think in order to further diagnose this, we're going to need to bring in a member from your IT department to help out."

After saying the universal business codewords for "you're fucking dumb, get away from that machine" the following line was said:

Her: "I am the IT."

:stress::stress::stress::stress::stress::stress:
 
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I'm a computer scientist and the IT industry makes me hate computers a lot
In fact this is mostly why I dislike using libraries/frameworks and write my own software from scratch. I really don't trust a single person on this planet to write a working library (and usually they don't).

I don't even have to tell a story, I just have to say one word: Oracle
 
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Oh god where to start! I guess a good one is our 'highly trained' staff of technicians (800 people) STILL perpetuate the rumor that overvolting a LiON cell using a desktop power supply will instantly charge the cell and save the tech a ten minute wait for a charged cell from stores. New techs tend to fall for this hook line and sinker. As one of the sites H&S supervisors I have had at least three engineers dismissed for gross misconduct over this. It makes fire, lots and lots of fire.
 
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I'm a full-stack web developer, which basically is a fancy way of saying I'm the only engineer at a small company who's entire business is based off six different websites I manage. Recently, one of the partners was bought out, and our company's marketing guy bought in and replaced him. Unfortunately, the guy who was bought out controlled the money, and the marketing guy took over control of the purse. That means the marketing guy is now my direct boss, and I have to take orders from him.

The problem is that he's not an engineer and understands fuck all about computers, programming or how websites work. We're (meaning I'm) going through a major redesign of the site's front-end, and he's "directing" me through this process. "Directing" means emailing me PNG files from a designer who doesn't know CSS and telling me to "make it look like this", or sending me requests for functionality that are about as detailed as "make it work like it does on Facebook". When I tell him some of the things he's asking for aren't realistic, he gets mad and threatens to dock my pay.

My warning for all technical people:

NEVER WORK UNDER A NON-TECHNICAL MANAGER
 
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0xDEADBEEF said:
I'm a full-stack web developer, which basically is a fancy way of saying I'm the only engineer at a small company who's entire business is based off six different websites I manage. Recently, one of the partners was bought out, and our company's marketing guy bought in and replaced him. Unfortunately, the guy who was bought out controlled the money, and the marketing guy took over control of the purse. That means the marketing guy is now my direct boss, and I have to take orders from him.

The problem is that he's not an engineer and understands fuck all about computers, programming or how websites work. We're (meaning I'm) going through a major redesign of the site's front-end, and he's "directing" me through this process. "Directing" means emailing me PNG files from a designer who doesn't know CSS and telling me to "make it look like this", or sending me requests for functionality that are about as detailed as "make it work like it does on Facebook". When I tell him some of the things he's asking for aren't realistic, he gets mad and threatens to dock my pay.

My warning for all technical people:

NEVER WORK UNDER A NON-TECHNICAL MANAGER
Click to expand...

The last time a manager threatened to dock my pay, I left him a dead fish on his desk the next morning.

He never, ever spoke to me again.
 
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> Be me.
> Oh, why isn't this ABR stream working?
> Investigate.
> Why is the onsite tech not noticing a problem?
> Contact tech
> Oh I'll fix it.
> 3 minutes before event goes live.
> Tech is using two computers to stream high and low bitrate streams on two different internet connections
> You can't sync keyframes properly if you're doing this, you need both ABR streams on one machine
> Tech was told this numerous times during the day
> Tech is fired on the spot
>I'm fucking stuck with the work now.
> tl;dr: don't fuck with a system that already works.
 
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Another one from me, some of our engineers were receiving static shocks from a divider on a conveyor belt as they were picking product from it. I immediately solved the problem by deciding to make and fit grounding straps, expedited by the fact that when I went to look I got a shock myself and it was less than pleasant. Out of idle curiosity I put a fieldmeter onto the divider and found it to be carrying a healthy 4.5kv of charge which once grounded built up again over a period of about three minutes. Now as we know 4.5kv of static isn't dangerous, taking a woolly jumper off occasionally generates shocks of that magnitude HOWEVER I was then in a race against time to build the straps because a tech saw the reading over my shoulder and yelled "Oi there's fuckin' four and a half thousand volts in that! That can kill you!" This caused the rest of the gibbering lemmings to down tools and huddle in an angry, scared group until I'd finished. Even their manager couldn't talk them down.
 
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6 months ago: coworkerA- "hey is anybody tracking the sales data and correlating to where we advertise?" coworkerB- "yeah not sure who's doing it"

many millions of dollars of advertising and six months later: coworkerC- "hey I've been assigned to track the sales data and correlate to where we advertise"
 
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Abilene said:
tl; dr: nepotism and/or blowjob. Simple.

One of my bosses was an incoherent cuck. Completely dismissive and short-tempered. Insecure as fuck and useless on the long-run. It got boring really fast. If you don't give a shit about this things, remain sane and think about the money, work becomes more bearable.
Click to expand...

Not that I'm blaming you, but this entire work ethic America is founded on is why everything is broken. It's a perpetual cycle of not caring.
 
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I used to work for a company called Vector Arms where I built semi-auto AKs and UZIs for the civilian market. We had a guy whose job was to build clones of Heckler and Koch rifles like the HK G3, G33, and MP5 in both rifle and pistol variations. He had just finished assembling a G33 pistol which is chambered for the 5.56x45mm rifle cartridge, took it to the bullet trap to test fire it, then came back to the bench to finish up before boxing it up to be shipped out. Apparently he did not check the weapon to make sure it was clear, because when he set it down on the work bench there was a round in the chamber and it went off. Luckily the muzzle was pointed up and the only thing he shot was the ceiling, but if he had been leaning over it he could have shot himself. From what I was told it was the third time he had done that since working there, but since he was the only guy they knew who could build HK style weapons they wouldn't fire him.

This is why firearms safety is so important kids.
 
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The Dude said:
From what I was told it was the third time he had done that since working there, but since he was the only guy they knew who could build HK style weapons they wouldn't fire him.
Click to expand...

Three times. Ridiculous.

Reminds me of someone I knew who hired machinists. When he interviewed experienced people, his only real question was he wanted to see your hands, and if you had any scars you couldn't explain, you were out of there.
 
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Job posting, two different people conducting three interviews: "This job will be great for you! You'll be working on various projects which will enable you to at least somewhat use all of your fancy, expensive degrees, and you'll be able to make the connections you'll need to move into a more relevant field!"

Day one of job: "LOL, no, you're a secretary."

And that is why I quit after six months.
 
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Picklechu said:
Job posting, two different people conducting three interviews: "This job will be great for you! You'll be working on various projects which will enable you to at least somewhat use all of your fancy, expensive degrees, and you'll be able to make the connections you'll need to move into a more relevant field!"

Day one of job: "LOL, no, you're a secretary."

And that is why I quit after six months.
Click to expand...

This is essentially my life. Though over the past three months I've been here, I'm apparently the only one who knows how to work the copier and how to access key files, so they've given me healthy bonuses and wage increases to stay. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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