Annoyances

  • george sibbald (3/28/2009)


    people who send me messages on the companies internal instant messenger system that say:

    Hi.............

    and then awaits my reply.

    I know they just want me to do something for them. I have to try and calculate if it's going to be quick and simple or is my day about to fall apart.

    I'm the SQL server DBA. I get that constantly from the Oracle DBA. He sits two cubes from me and it drives me insane - or he'll put me on speaker and it's stereovision..... Just walk over and tell me what you need/want!!!!

    -- You can't be late until you show up.

  • I work in a very small office where people are very close in proximity. Most of us eat at our desks and some make awful noises while doing it! Very hard to concentrate!

  • tosscrosby (3/30/2009)


    george sibbald (3/28/2009)


    people who send me messages on the companies internal instant messenger system that say:

    Hi.............

    and then awaits my reply.

    I know they just want me to do something for them. I have to try and calculate if it's going to be quick and simple or is my day about to fall apart.

    I'm the SQL server DBA. I get that constantly from the Oracle DBA. He sits two cubes from me and it drives me insane - or he'll put me on speaker and it's stereovision..... Just walk over and tell me what you need/want!!!!

    I feel for you brother 🙂

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------

  • dphillips (3/27/2009)


    Grumpy DBA (3/27/2009)


    There's too many to list and not enough time...

    Is that a picture of you on your avatar or Kramer?

    That would be The Kramer.

  • We have an interesting chap here...

    For some ungodly reason he ALWAYS composes his emails as follows. In the little box that says subject, he'll type:

    "Topic: Some meaningless thing (Thursday, March 12, 2009 7:18 AM) "

    The "Topic" part is necessary?? And the date time isn't stamped on all our $#@! emails.

    Then just to rub it in some more. He repeats the address line, subject (including the "TOPIC" and the date time bit), PLUS he adds a separate date time message.

    Then what burns me, and I unfortunately lost it once, he writes every email insinuating the "challenges" he's facing as if our group did something to break their code. The last one (where I blew up), was a problem with THEIR code assuming a certain datatype when using a SELECT ColumnA, 0, ... INTO TableX. No need to explicitly define that zero, eh?

    Then to finish it off, he end it with something like: " Have a scintillating and sapient day and week."

    ------------------

    Now that I've got that off my chest. I guess I should keep my mouth shut. I'm more on the offending side, than not. One of the things that bothers me is we have a large number of fish eaters here. Tuna, Salmon, etc. And it's microwaved to death. Sometimes the stench here make me leave, otherwise I'm gonna heave.

    I'm sure some might say the same thing about some of my lunches, with the hot sauces and what not.

    Loud conversations? Every morning a group of people goes to the coffee machine and proceeds to chat it up. which is 15 feet from my cell. If I went over to their area and made 1/2 the noise they did, I'd get pulled into HR for re-education.

    All and all, I shouldn't complain. I've been in far worse environments.

    Thank-you, venting is nice. But I recall;

    "I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him." paraphrased from "I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." -BT Washington

    Honor Super Omnia-
    Jason Miller

  • Grumpy DBA (3/30/2009)


    dphillips (3/27/2009)


    Grumpy DBA (3/27/2009)


    There's too many to list and not enough time...

    Is that a picture of you on your avatar or Kramer?

    That would be The Kramer.

    So your favorite line must be, "Will you STOP it man?! You're freakin' me OUT!!" Given of course your nick name, Grumpy and all. 😀

  • Father, forgive me for I have sinned. I sing, whistle, talk and make all sorts of noises when I work. I talk loud on the phone especially when I try to make a point and the other person don't quite get it. I put my phone on speaker phone when I call someone and let it ring till they answer before I pick up the receiver. I especially speak loud when I write code and I have to concentrate very hard. In my defense I'd like to say that I normally do that when I try to drown other noise. I don't like to complain when people annoy me because I know I also annoy others. One day I talked to myself so loud that somebody closed my office door. I got the hint.

    Fortunately we do not have a coffee pot, you must make your own coffee per cup (Nescafe Classic Instant Coffee). The water can gets filled by the cleaner and when it goes empty you get him/her to fill it up. We have a kitchen and gets a cooked dinner (or cold meats, hot dogs, burgers) everyday and no smells in the offices.

    I carry my cell phone with me all the time in a pouch on my belt for fear of someone stealing it (I live in Johannesburg, South Africa). My cell is either on silent or the ring tone is very discreet. I don't see anything wrong with a different ring tone for each contact then at least I can know when to ignore it (just joking!!!).

    The last thing I'd like to say is if you are annoyed by someone's bad habits, YOU are suffering not them. Try to ignore it. It's not easy but get yourself to switch off. Don't let them control you! Some people are spiteful when they see you get annoyed then they do it even more . :smooooth: :smooooth: :smooooth: :smooooth: :smooooth: :smooooth:

    :-PManie Verster
    Developer
    Johannesburg
    South Africa

    I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. - Holy Bible
    I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times. - Everett Mckinley Dirkson (Well, I am trying. - Manie Verster)

  • I love that someone actually closed the door!!

    awesome!

  • I just wish I had a door that someone could close. I'd keep mine closed. You'd have to see our space, but we have a hall with 4 offices and the one on the end has a door and 3 don't. When I meet with the other developer at the end of the hall and we have a guy that closes the door all the time. Of course he doesn't think to do it when he is having a meeting.

  • My 2 main peeves are:

    We have a network engineer is truly does not comprehend his duties and responsibilities. Lack of knowledge is not the problem - it is that he has no desire to learn or accept his responsibilities. He pushes his workload on others (not me as I am in a different section of the department) and the management does not hold his feet to the fire.

    Next is a secretary who is a control freak. Simple problems could be solved in 30 seconds from someone more knowledgeable but she takes 15 minutes to run through every possibility often ignoring the real solution because she doesn't have the technical skills to address it. Don't you dare step on her conversation!

    While these to are peeves and do seem pretty bad, the rest of the office is the greatest place I have ever worked. Even these 2 individuals are good to work with under some circumstances. The other 11 personnel that we have are SUPERB!

    Man did that feel good to get off my chest - Thanks for the topic Steve - feel better already! 😎

  • I also have 2 peeves. This happened to me today. A user (they can be the pits!) asked me today if there is a problem with the server because she could not log in to the system. I said no but what is the problem? Whenever she logs in she gets a message saying the server is unavailable. I went to her office and she showed me how she logs in. The message she got was: "Login failed for ". Nothing to do with the server. I checked the SQL Error logs and saw that she attempted no less than 10 times to log in. Now her account was locked out. I WANTED TO SCREAM!!!! To top it off my client is in the middle of financial year end and new financial year actions. The stress is building and the users make me MAD!!!

    The other one is also a user but she is a manager and thinks that when she requests something everything else must be dropped and she must be helped.

    I nearly lost it today but I said tomyself: "Self, don't let yourself be controlled" and I unlocked the account and the day went by smoothly.:hehe::hehe::w00t::w00t::-D:-D

    :-PManie Verster
    Developer
    Johannesburg
    South Africa

    I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. - Holy Bible
    I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times. - Everett Mckinley Dirkson (Well, I am trying. - Manie Verster)

  • Manie, you have just reminded me how annoying it is to have a user say something doesn't work but not tell you the error message or what they were doing when they got the error, even after asking for the exact error message repeatedly. They still expect you to wave the magic wand though and fix the problem instantly. Note to user: we don't work at Hogwarts, there are no magic wands!

    Nicole Bowman

    Nothing is forever.

  • Manie Verster (3/31/2009)


    I nearly lost it today but I said tomyself: "Self, don't let yourself be controlled" and I unlocked the account and the day went by smoothly.:hehe::hehe::w00t::w00t::-D:-D

    Manie, you crack me up. 😀 Hope your day is going better.

  • Manie,

    You reminded me of a time, years ago, when I was working for a power company. We handled the Novell network, DOS/Windows 3.1 clients, computers new to people (90/91). One of my interns answered the phone one day, person having an issue. Machine frozen, couldn't do anything.

    Tech: "OK, turn the computer off and on again"

    few seconds later

    Tech: "What do you mean you see the same thing. You should see the login box."

    few seconds later

    Tech (louder): "Turn the COMPUTER off"

    few seconds later

    Tech (yelling): "No, not the monitor, the computer, turn the computer off!!! You...never mind, I'll be right over."

    The other 3 of us were laughing, and managed to calm the kid down before he walked over there. Since we supported 3 sq miles of buildings, not fun to walk to someone's desk when you didn't need to, but it was funny. I'd encountered the same thing a few months earlier.

  • My favorite help desk question was the one where I got a call that the nurse's computer coffee cup holder had closed and spilled coffee all over her keyboard. I hesitated and said excuse me, did you say your computer's coffee cup holder? And she said yes. I responded that the computer doesn't have a coffee cup holder. She said yes it does, the black tray with a hole in it. I had to ask her to hold for a second while I broke out in laughter. Once I calmed down, and I told her that it wasn't a coffee cup holder but rather the CD drive and I would appreciate it in the future if she didn't use it as a coffee cup holder.

    The other good one was when a nurse plugged the power strip into itself and it took me 20 minutes of asking her questions to figure it out.

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