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

[NQ 952]

A representative of my parent company:

"After 15 years of research, we believe live video is fundamentally different than non live video."

Jesus Christ.

 

[XYZpdq]

A representative of my parent company:

"After 15 years of research, we believe live video is fundamentally different than non live video."

Jesus Christ.

Could be worse. It could have been 15 years to determine they're the same.

 

[Ginger Piglet]

So, way back when, when I was a trainee solicitor, I had this client who was facing imminent eviction from her council flat (i.e. bailiffs approaching within the next few days) and wanted me to use my super lawyer powers to get a Court hearing to avert this. (I was in legal aid at the time).

I look through all the paperwork. The arrears aren't insurmountable (as in, she could pay them off in a reasonable timeframe) but the Court order allowing the eviction to go ahead was made in her absence.

Fair enough. Sometimes Courts, especially where I was at the time, lose or fuck up paperwork routinely. I ask her if she knew of this hearing. This turns out to be a silly question because the order listing the hearing was also in her possession.

I ask her why she couldn't go to the hearing.

"It was raining," she says.

What.

Fucking what.

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

So, way back when, when I was a trainee solicitor, I had this client who was facing imminent eviction from her council flat (i.e. bailiffs approaching within the next few days) and wanted me to use my super lawyer powers to get a Court hearing to avert this. (I was in legal aid at the time).

I look through all the paperwork. The arrears aren't insurmountable (as in, she could pay them off in a reasonable timeframe) but the Court order allowing the eviction to go ahead was made in her absence.

Fair enough. Sometimes Courts, especially where I was at the time, lose or fuck up paperwork routinely. I ask her if she knew of this hearing. This turns out to be a silly question because the order listing the hearing was also in her possession.

I ask her why she couldn't go to the hearing.

"It was raining," she says.

What.

Fucking what.

Sometimes the lazy and ignorant of this world need a wakeup call like that.

 

[AnOminous]

I ask her why she couldn't go to the hearing.

"It was raining," she says.

What.

Fucking what.

She apparently didn't realize it also rains when you're homeless.

 

[BatNapalm]

I'm a technical writer and for one dark, terrible period of my life where I was so desperate to get out of my job at the time that I actually considered doing contract tech writing gigs (i.e. garbage 3-month jobs with "potential for hire" ) and the companies who bring in these freelance tech writers do so through a middleman staffing firm. And I must say: technical recruiters from staffing firms are the dumbest, laziest human beings to ever draw breath.

I'd get calls in the middle of the day, sometimes from an Indian who was clearly reading off of a sheet that he or she was sounding out phonetically like Bela Lugosi and blissfully unaware of what your answers were (seriously, you could call them a cunt and they'd respond with "ok good" and move on to the next question). And sometimes from an American retard whose last job was selling phones at a mall kiosk. These calls usually started with "We've reviewed your resume on ____." Immediately followed by a bunch of questions that could easily be answered by taking one glance at my resume. One slow-talking mongoloid from a Pittsburgh-based staffing firm legit asked me if I had any technical writing experience.....my resume at the time listed 4 jobs and 3 of them were technical writing jobs. I'm 99.9% convinced that most technical recruiters from these 3rd party staffing firms are borderline illiterate and those are just the Americans.

Another winner called me about a job that was 3-months temp to permanent (again ) and I told him I wasn't interested for that very reason and wanted something more long-term. He left me a voicemail several days later wanting to let me know that he followed up with the company as if he made some major breakthrough, only to restate that it was 3-month temp to permanent and to call him back if I was interested. Does the training for being a technical staffing recruiter include lessons on how to act like a broken AI or something?

 

[NQ 952]

"You have to create a new form in sharepoint for us"

Welp, there goes my weekend.

 

[Bassomatic]

I could fill this thread with antics.

But so far my favorite was, I was doing corp loans at the time, rather new to it and much like anything else clients shop around. I out of the blue from an employee at another bank get a death threat for "stealing" his client.

I have no idea how he got my info either, that's the creepy part. If he thought I was a jerk at the time, I'm sure he really loved me when I exploded on his boss for allowing that conduct in the office and having our corp consul call them about it. Clearly I then did the mature thing and drop his personal info to Dynastia who raped and murdered him in prison.

 

[Rabbit Bones]

I was new at the vet clinic, and I was helping one of the vets perform surgery (I think it was a fatty lymphoma removal - something simple) . He had just made the first incision and I was putting on my gloves. And he said "You're already doing better than the girl you replaced. She stuck her bare hands into the animal. On two different occasions "

 

[GingerDixie]

Not really a horror, but apparently to the average civilian, any white truck with a yellow "state vehicle" license plate and with the state seal on the sides means that you do literally every job in the county. I do field collection for an entomologist as part of a state-funded phorid fly breeding program (that specifically targets fire ants...my job is to get the fire ants) and me and my coworkers have been asked when roads are going to get fixed, to pick up roadkill, to respond to power outages...

Yes, I'll get back in my vehicle with Department of Agriculture emblazoned on the side and take care of that downed traffic light for you ma'am. Also, let me just pull my electrician's toolbox straight out of my ass, excuse me.

 

[NQ 952]

Client is streaming video to us at 512kbit. We are restreaming that at 512kbit.

Client requests that we increase the bitrate.

We continue to increase the bitrate of our streams up to our cap at 3mbit.

Client wants to know why he stream looks like shit.

"Well, you're only using us video at 512kbit"

"Yeah, we know what we're sending at, but why does it look like shit? Don't you guys decompress that?"

 

[Damocles_Sword]

Get called out to replace a motor starter with a VFD, a computerized motor starter, open up the motor control panel, nothing but unmarked black wires. joy. Start looking around for a set of drawings, lolno. Panel has a local engineering firm sticker, call number, disconnected. Firm's been out of business for years. Change order? Put it in a bid for phase 2, but for now get that VFD wired up and programmed. So, an 8 hour ticket becomes a week long project as I have to trace and label 1500 wires.

 

[sparklemilhouse]

"It was raining," she says

I have an old bitty coworker who is obsessed with rain. She announces to the entire office when there's going to be rain coming or a thunderstorm watch. It rained Thursday and she was just staring out the window watching it.

I have more stories about her. Thankfully she's retiring at the end of the year.

 

[yasscat]

I have more stories about her.

 

[POWER IN MISERY]

had a coworker that would only shit in my office bathroom and carry on strange phonecalls while on the can

 

[OtterParty]

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

Spoiler: huge

 

[Jan_Hus]

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...

 

[XYZpdq]

"old timers disease"

People who make that mistake are a diamond dozen.

 

[yasscat]

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...

Oh, that's nothing. Wait until you have to grade freshman level English papers. "Firstable" in place of "first of all."

People who make that mistake are a diamond dozen.

why would you

 

[Picklechu]

I used to proofread my fraternity brothers' papers for beer money. I had to stop after a semester. I'm not sure if grammar PTSD is a thing, but if it is, I have it.