Dilbert, you look upset, bro. Have you heard of Yoga? It helps.
So I’m done with work. You know this and I know this. My last day is April 10th, 2015. By now, you probably wish I’d shut up about the whole thing.
Don’t worry. The day is soon coming where I stop complaining about my experiences as an office drone.
And yet, today isn’t that day. Nope — today I’m instead going to, for the last time, devote a post exclusively to whinging about work.
Probably.
Some backstory:
Over the last couple of months, I’d halfheartedly constructed a few drafts centered around some aspect of office-existence that has, at one time or another, driven me up the wall. But they never seemed to come out right. In the end, I have a bunch of unused material that I don’t care enough about to polish up, expand, and publish. (I think this is mostly due to the fact that the hating is a) not really hating but rather intense-disliking and b) fleeting: powerful one day, but basically gone the next. So I’d read these drafts the day after writing them, when I was relaxed and at peace with the world, and think: God. I sound like a total foaming-at-the-mouth psycho. I can’t let people read that!)
Still, I can’t quite make this laundry list of things that irritate me about work disappear. Part of me wants to publish a Worst of Work compilation.
In the end, I decided to compromise, consolidating all petty annoyances into a single dump. I figure: I’ll have last hurrah, one super-whiny airing of grievances on the subject, and then it’ll all be over. It’ll go into a locked chest somewhere in my mind — accessible, but not without some effort.
So in the grandest work-sucks-balls spirit possible, I bring you the Litany of Office Hate.
Fair warning: If you haven’t figured it out by now, this is going to be an absurdly negative entry. Don’t read it if you’re easily offended or people going on rants make you squirrely. It’s anti-stoic and unfiltered bitching, the kind of thing I’d be pretty embarrassed showing to someone much worse off than me; total first-world problems of privilege.
It’s shameful, it’s gross, it’s hate-porn.
And here it comes.
The font used by lunatics everywhere: AngryText-TTF
I hate getting myself to work every morning. I hate sitting in a car, stuck in traffic, driving to a place I don’t want to be to do things I don’t care all that much about. I hate knowing I’m wasting gas, polluting the environment, and spending money in order to drive myself to a cube where I’ll spend most of the day sitting, punching buttons on a plastic rectangle.
I hate fighting for a parking space and noticing that executives have spots right next to the door. I hate that even though I have no desire for one of these status symbols, I still notice these things. I hate that I sometimes briefly consider keying the cars.
I hate pretending like I want to be there when I don’t. I hate being fake and peppy, keeping a benign smile on my face and making small-talk even if I don’t feel so hot. I hate when I notice that other people are faking it, too — I wish I could tell them that it’s OK to be real with me, that I don’t want to go through the motions, either.
I hate reviews. I hate self reviews and peer reviews, reviews of vendor products, reviews of prospective hires, and reviews of managers. I hate setting goals for myself for the following year. I hate having goals set for me. I hate how the bar always goes higher, never lower, never laterally or even in a circular motion. Just: Higher. I hate how I feel compelled to pretend that I like this ridiculous model because it’s “challenging.” I hate getting something done and seeing the ambitious glint in my manager’s eye that shows he’s thinking about how to publicize the accomplishment and capitalize on it to benefit his own career. I hate sometimes recognizing that there’s ambition in me, too, and I hate that I can’t entirely remove it.
I hate the use of jargon and Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs). I hate MBAs, MBOs, SLAs, SOAs, and having to CYA. I hate people who ask for things to be completed ASAP or, worse, fucking yesterday. I hate getting an email from someone asking for help and before I’ve even had time to read the whole thing noticing that they’re already calling me. Or they’ve shown up in my office. Or they’ve already sent a follow-up email asking for status with a single obtuse word in the message body: UPDATE?
I hate when people email me and CC my manager on the very first communication, the insinuation being that they think I’m not going to help them unless someone positioned above me in the hierarchy of command is watching over me to make sure I get Mr. Task done.
I hate having to work with people who obviously don’t want to work at all. I hate booking time to collaborate with people who possess personalities I am not compatible with and then being subjected to stumbling attempts at socialization, maybe someone arguing that How I Met Your Mother is the greatest sitcom of all time and I’m forced to admit that I’ve only seen a single episode and I have virtually no opinion on it whatsoever other than Alyson Hannigan is cute and they go on and on about why aren’t I watching it and so on until I wish I could unleash lightning on them from my hands, Emperor-style, not because I want to hurt them necessarily but rather because it’s hard to talk when you’re being electrocuted.
I hate the word collaborate. And network when used in a non-computing sense. And liaison especially when conjugated as a verb, like: I need you to liaise with Santa Claus ASAP.
I hate documenting the use of my time, filling out time-sheets that book hours against specific projects so that other people in the organization can further optimize the use of human resources. I hate that there is such scrutiny over where people are “spending their hours” as if it’s some great mystery that, when solved, will bring enlightenment to the entire department, improving efficiency by 4,000% and making the stock rise by a quadrillion orders of magnitude. I hate being angrily reminded by management to fill out these online forms out if I’ve forgotten to do it myself, as if I’ve just committed a felony.
Oh yeah, baby. That’s the stuff, right there.
I hate working with idiots in their mid-50s with teenage kids and $500 monthly bills to MegaMedia for cable, cell phones, DVRs, internet access and satellites, multiple $600 leases for big SUVs, a boat and a summer home. I hate listening to them bitch about how they’re underpaid or they just can’t make ends meet in these trying economic times and then immediately watching them go out to blow $15-20 on lunch. Every. Single. Day.
I hate going to vendor meetings and evaluating new products. I hate working on project plans. I hate coming up with lists of people we might need for any particular initiative and working with their managers to secure them. I hate coming up with estimates of hours to complete each task, especially when I know practically nothing about the effort required.
I hate Microsoft Outlook. And Microsoft Office. And Microsoft Project. And Microsoft Visio. I hate company wikis where employees all post updates about what they’re working on and share their ideas for new projects and initiatives as if it’s a grand competition, fun for the whole family, a nothing more than a jolly game of Corporate Twister.
I hate watching people scurry around obeying commands of people they’re scared of. I hate it when my manager is in a room with a bigwig who is setting unreasonable project deadlines and demands and he just bends over and takes it instead of pushing back. I hate smelling the fear and witnessing the weakness.
I hate doing things this way because they’ve always been done this way and you can’t fight city hall and any and all other dumb excuses which prevent a re-evaluation which might, god forbid, lead to improved employee happiness.
I hate the days when I don’t have enough to do because I’m then trying to figure out how to book seven or eight hours to projects when I didn’t actually work seven or eight hours. I hate having too much to do and having difficulty being able to turn off my thoughts about work even when I’m home and ostensibly relaxing. I hate being on-call. I hate the fact that people with salaried jobs are frequently asked to work unpaid overtime but when things are slower they are rarely given the opportunity to leave work early — I hate that there’s no undertime.
I hate pinging people for status updates, asking if they’re on track and listening to a list of excuses why they’re behind, then feeling compelled to prod them anyway because deadlines on projects are looming and other people are prodding me and I realize that what I really am is the final section in the world’s longest poking stick.
I hate pulling groups of people together to work on an emergency kaboom-type issue that needs to be solved. I hate being pulled into a war room by another team. I hate opening tickets with vendors and then organizing conference calls with so-called invested parties so we can have as many eyes as possible looking at any particular issue, the coordination, the web meetings, the dropped calls, the mistyped email addresses and fat-fingered phone numbers, the bad connections that lead to audio screeching on the speaker, wind in the phone, problems with signal strength, problems with people not understanding how to press mute when their dogs are going nuts or they’re trying to secretly do dishes or touch themselves around the no-no zone.
I hate being expected to come up with new projects and initiatives on my own because this shows to management how plugged into the company I am. I hate that work takes over my mind — that my thoughts become focused on solving problems or implementing projects, as though I’m a CPU added to the corporate hive’s data center. I hate that I’m expected to be part of this machine, body and soul, to utterly devote myself to it. I hate watching other people suck up and smelling the odor of human evacuation coming off of their noses. I hate it most when I realize the smell is coming off my own.
I hate that this parade of things that I hate lasts for five straight days and after two short days that usually are devoted to catch-up life and family maintenance at a breakneck pace you are back to day one of another five day cycle.
I hate the fact that even though I generally enjoy my core function, it typically constitutes only a third of my week and the remaining time is filled less-than-awesome stuff like meetings and mandated social events (team lunch! hooray!) and all sorts of other stuff that doesn’t feel important or necessary and usually isn’t fun but I somehow have to do anyway or I’m not a team player.
Most of all, I hate that it’s all the same. I hate that every week resembles every other week much more than it does not. I hate the lack of variety, and the fact that the repetition pulls at me, drags me down, suffocates my enthusiasm and results in depressing thoughts entering my head, like: I can’t believe I’m doing this shit again, please dear god, holy fuckballs, no. I hate that even if you leave your company and go to a new one you will, in short order, find new things to hate and they will be frighteningly similar to the things you hated at your previous employer because in the end, there’s not all that much differentiating one workplace prison from another.
I absolutely love the fact that being financially independent allows me to leave all of this behind.
Love, love, love.
** Feel free to add to this list in the comments. I’m sure I’ve left plenty of things out…. Believe it or not, I ran out of steam.
** This is for all of the people who say “Oh, but you have to retire TO something!!” Yeah, that’s the ideal. But if your house is burning, you don’t check the weather outside before running out the damned door.
And you don’t go back in.
Living a FI 
Great post. Anyone who shares space with other humans can commiserate.
“I hate the fact that people with salaried jobs are frequently asked to work unpaid overtime but when things are slower they are rarely given the opportunity to leave work early — I hate that there’s no undertime.”
That statement is oh so true.
Here’s my worst work pain:
I love coffee. It’s a tiny joy I get a work that takes the pain away for a few brief moments. I HATE when I open the door to the break room to find both pots 1/8th of an inch full searing away on the burner. They leave just enough to some how feel there’s no need to make more and walk out.
It’s takes less then 20 seconds to swap out the filter and dump one pre-measured bag in then press the green button.
The entitlement, the “my agenda is more important than yours” attitude, the blatant lack of consideration for your brothers in arms at the company.
It drives me crazy.
Oh yeah, thanks for leaving the stirrer on the counter too- DOUCHE!
Steve
I just feel like I’m working for the same company as Dr. Doom here… I could relate to every single thing except the car one since I don’t drive…
We are in very different fields of work, yet 98% of that stuff applied to me as well. The undertime part definitely sucks! This sounded like a transcript of Office Space the movie 🙂
One thing I could had is I hate being rated on a scale of 1 to 5 ever year for our annual raises/promotions/bonuses.
I hate when people ask for my advice or expertise, then I hear then ask everyone else… If you don’t plan to take my advice or learn from my experiences – don’t ask me. If you are just taking a fucking survey, do it by email so I can just delete it.
I hate it when people waste time shining my ass epwith insincere compliments when they know I just have to do what they are going to ask me to do anyway. Stop wasting my time, I could have been fucking done by now.
I hate committees!
I hate meetings!
I hate COTs, PMDs, IPPs, and all forms of “checklist” performance goals and review. “Still breathing?” “Yes” ” Great, ‘meets expectations’.” Done for another year.
I hate having to keep the profanity at a minimum and maintain a language standard that doesn’t allow me to properly express my irritation/frustration/anger/exasperation with enough color to satisfy me.
Wow almost everyone one of those rings true for me too! So strange to see it all written down by someone else! Now here’s something for a laugh regarding the fake/small talk…someone walked by my cube one morning and asked “how are you”…I replied that I wasn’t feeling well, and she continued walking and said “glad to hear it.” Because no one ever responds to “how are you” with something negative.
Genius post. I’m years off but still laughed at many of your points. I think talking like this puts things in perspective, and with that in mind, here are a few others that I’d like to add to the list:
*I hate all the ‘extras’ at work that aren’t really extra at all but mandatory – ‘learning’ meetings that are scheduled through lunchbreaks on purpose, team building exercises, global calls that are always scheduled before or after working hours
*I hate pep talks – especially when they are related to meeting a company new business target
*I hate colleagues with families expecting me to pick up the slack on a weekend or evening – no I do not have kids or a partner, but I have family, and friends and hobbies and fucking life outside of work that I would like to attend to – and I’d have a damn sight better chance of finding a partner and nurturing a relationship if I can leave work before 9pm
*I hate seniors leaning on me to accomplish a particular target that it is so patently obvious furthers their objectives and bonuses
*I second the earlier comment of hating being graded on a 1 to 5 scale – they have that at my company too and they can shove that score right up it.
Not buying into the BS is freeing, despite being a long way of FI. It reminds me to step back when I start caring too much, to remember to always nurture talents and interests away from work as well as at work and to never ever let my identity and self worth get too wrapped up in one area of my life.
I’ll be raising a glass to you on 10th April. Love your blog, it’s really quite inspirational – and funny!
” And Microsoft Visio.”
OMG. THIS! I hated, hated, hated (HATED!!!) Visio. Pointy Haired Boss thought flowcharts of broken processes were the actual end product. Seriously? You need a fucking map to understand GI/GO??? The FI also starts out I am just FIne now…
Fuck Visio. In the ass. With a 39 inch green donkey dick.
Who knew I had unresolved Visio venting business? Thanks for helping me out there, Doom.
“Fuck Visio. In the ass. With a 39 inch green donkey dick”
I almost pi$$ed myself
“But if your house is burning, you don’t check the weather outside before running out the damned door.”
Lovely metaphor. I would add that you also shouldn’t wait until you’ve grabbed your umbrella, sunscreen, winter-coat, hail-helmet and every other inclement-weather-protection imaginable for whatever condition you could conceivably happen to find out there, but the urge to do so is a problem we all struggle with.
Excellent summary – even if you did run out of steam. After reading that, I realized, “Huh, I really DO like my job.” BUT…
I hate acronyms, my last company loved them. PMP, CDP, PDR, TRU, and on and on. As soon as something was given a name there was a compulsion to give it an acronym. Gah!
I hate micro-manager’s. If you want to be that involved, just do it yourself, and let me get real work done. I hate “forced” fit breaks, and forced ergo breaks when I’m locked out of my computer for 12 seconds every 7 minutes, and for another 7 minutes every 70 minutes. Seriously, they do this! I really hate when I’m then told I could be more productive…
I love that I found a new job that currently has so many fewer hates about it.
I could not agree more with the non-existence of under time for the salaried professional. I am a team player to put in the hours to get things done and there are plenty of weeks where I have put in 90 hours +. It has eaten into my evenings and weekends, my me time.
Yet, when I want to leave early its like I am asking to borrow a million dollars that I never intend to payback.
Great post!
Thank you for this list because it reminds me of some of my past work hatred. Why do I want to be reminded of that, you may wonder. Well, in year 3 of my RE life, I have been feeling a bit nostalgic for my work, and irritable that I have not been head-hunted back into my field (granted I made that difficult by moving 2x and not staying in touch with the vast majority of my colleagues). I wish I had done such a list during my time. Anyhow, this list may come in handy for you in the event the work nostalgic bug overcomes you one day.
Another Lisa here. I’m a little under 9 months from RE and I am glad to be keeping a journal of how much I hate my job for the last year of working. I have a good boss, and some decent co-workers, but the rest of it makes me crazy.
We mentally play “Bullshit Bingo” at meetings. If I never hear the words “fulsome” and “enriched” and “piece” again after retiring, it will be too soon.
I hate that colleagues who are trying to advance their careers create false leadership opportunities like micro-managing who will bring what to the next potluck or officiously taking attendance at optional meetings to show management whom they think is a team player and by golly, they are the teamiest team player there is. I am not your subordinate!
Another thing I hate is the panic my co-workers feel about my leaving work before the traditional retiring age. “What will you do without benefits?” “But…but…how will you survive?” Others realize that I am frugal enough to survive well. One recently said to me that she was amazed that I could buy a house as a single mother who works part-time, but she got that I don’t spend like they do.
Love the post, Doom. You will be glad you posted it if, as Lisa says, you start to think later on that maybe things weren’t so bad during your working life. I’m glad I’ve got a record of my hate. 🙂
I just the afternoon doing errands by bike with the kids. Such a nice sunny day we budgeted a couple hours at the nearest park to that route. So pardon me if I can’t join in with the rants, but I still empathize! I get shudders still every time I hear my former boss’s voice on radio ads…
Love this post! Liaise with Santa Clause had me laughing out loud on the quiet car.
For me personally, I hate commuting. I hate when people talk on the quiet car (though I guess I’ll have to excuse the occasional audible laugh).
I hate when someone asks me to do something, when it would take less time for them to do it themselves, than to ask me to do it!
Woa this post is rugged.
I hate policys that change every 2 years just bcoz the person making the policies went to another company and the new hire thinks they have to change things up just to mix it up and make a mark and get known.
I hate I can’t be me.
I hate that I have at least 10 years left.
I love that it will end someday as long as I stick to this thing.
A-Fucking-Men! (Except for the Microsoft Office part, Excel rules!)
Just a quick note to assert that I won’t be responding directly to any comments on this post, but thanks for the additions so far — they’re terrific. Except David’s (AKA GC) because he’s already ER’d and clearly enjoying life a little too much.
Seriously though, I want the comments to stay the way they are without the extra clutter. Keep ’em coming, and if you’re a future reader, don’t let the post age stop you.
It’s so great to have F-you money so you can say good-bye to all the B.S.
Preach it brother!
This is too good.
I hate my boss and he makes me hate my job even though it’s not that bad. He adds alot of extra shit into my day that doesn’t need to be done, total micromanager ass.
How could No One mention TOO MANY EMAILS? I get 200+ a day and even though I filter them it’s crazy. Also AUTOMATED emails from systems. Alerts, pageouts. AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Sifting through them to find the ones I actually have to read is it’s own job.
I nodded along with your entire post. Couldn’t agree more. I basically hate all things about the made up world of corporate culture.
In addition:
I hate “offsites”, a ridiculous display of management’s prowess with PowerPoint and public speaking that could just as easily be sent out via email to be read in an hour or two, saving the company tens of thousands in conference center and food fees, travel expense reports, and perhaps even allowing them to keep one of those employees around for another year that they recently laid off.
I hate that they pretend our glass walled offices and cubes were put in place for team building and communication, and not so that they can keep a closer eye on us. I hate that I have to sit in one of these glass cubes when I’m in the office, staring at all the other people in their glass cubes, where none of us can even blow our nose at our desk without everyone in the vicinity seeing.
I hate that my boss has told me the only reason I cannot telecommute full time, thereby avoiding said glass cube, is because we need to keep up appearances, as if sitting in the office = hard work.
omg I can totally relate! At least you’ll be done in a few days…so jealous!
I hate that I have multiple managers. Including a manager named Bill who stops by my cube and requests status updates on my TPO reports. If you change one letter in that sentence (TPS reports), I’m a character directly out of Office Space.
Oh dear…I can so related to this post right now. I’m just coming off a significant “I hate work” month so let me add a few to the pile:
– I hate being assigned project team members from other departments that are so passive aggressive that the odds of success are almost non-existent prior to the project even starting.
– I hate the fact I can often do what needs to get done in just half my work day but I don’t get to go home early, but instead get to deal with crappy procedures and systems that make things take longer for no bloody good reason than to make more work.
– I have to say I’m so with you with the ‘bar being always set higher’ thing. You exceed objective for two years and then that becomes your baseline for just meeting objectives in year three.
-I hate how people always deal with surface level issues and look busy while ignoring the root causes of things that if you fixed once you would never have five years of bullshit work in the first place. Yet when I fix a real root cause I look like I’m doing less work.
-I hate meetings with no objective other than to discuss problem X. Define a damn outcome people!
-I hate pretending to care about my work when I know in my heart 80% of it is bullshit.
– I hate being held up as an example for asking the tough questions when in fact I feel the questions are so freaking obvious, but others are fearful to ask them. I just don’t give a crap if they fire me.
-I hate that my workplace doesn’t hold people accountable so I can get away with crap and so can others.
-I hate feeling like I’m a one eye man in the kingdom of the blind. I don’t rule anything, but I’m almost expected to make miracles happen.
Ah, thanks…I feel better for the rant.
Oh my god! You could be me…. I could be you!
Especially this:
“– I hate being held up as an example for asking the tough questions when in fact I feel the questions are so freaking obvious, but others are fearful to ask them. I just don’t give a crap if they fire me.”
And the one eyed man comment.
Do what I do now, I am currently skipping all the meetings I think are useless. I am so much gaoddamned happier. Boss hasn’t said a word to me about it, I’ve been doing it for months. I spend the time, get this movel idea,…..working! Yep, getting something done.
I am always waiting for some comment on this. Some co-workers have commented, and I tell them I am skipping the meeting. They are shocked or they laugh, but they go to the meeting.
I hate being given a massive task list with no priorities. I hate asking for priorities and being told that “everything is extremely important”. I hate the sinking realization that if “everything is equally important”, perhaps that really means none of it is.
I hate having to repeatedly ask a nice coworker to do the world’s shittiest task.
I hate that I could do amazing work and the product would still be terrible because the incompetence of others always cancels out my effort.
I hate that my younger coworkers genuinely still think there is a link between their effort and their pay.
I hate being inside on beautiful days.
In every large company at which I have worked, the CEO at LEAST once per year addresses the huddled masses and tells us that the secret to why we are successful, the reason for our ability to beat the competition, the fundamental differentiator, our biggest asset IS – our people.
And then, months later, gets rid of hundreds of those same priceless, invaluable, crucial, irreplaceable people.
Amen!
I hate new rules/policies/processes that are put in place just because the boss doesn’t have the cojones to directly address the issue with the one employee whose bad behavior triggered the change. It’s called a performance issue – deal with it!
I hate that when I’m sick I have to go to the doctor and waste his time and my time just to get a doctor’s note to prove I was sick.
I hate that I have to schedule dentist and optometrist visits and such to stay healthy on weekends because there is no time during the week.
I hate that deadlines are so arbitrarily decided.
I hate that people who work more than core working hours look down at you because you’re only working what was actually agreed upon in your contract.
I hate that if I’m not on training I should be on training because we should all be continuously learning.
I hate team lunches, team this, team that, team the other that takes place outside of working hours.
I hate that my eyes feel strained from staring at a laptop for 8 hours.
I hate that my neck feels strained from staring at a laptop for 8 hours.
I hate that I don’t do part-time personal studies at night after work because people who do look permanently exhausted.
Wonderful fing post. We office workers share a lot of the same hates.
What I hate most of all is having to be physically present in my windowless office staring at a screen from 8 to 5 every single day. Human beings just weren’t meant to work this way. Oh, I can leave my office for an hour or two if I’m going to a meeting…but I fing hate meetings. I’d rather sit here and stare at my monitor and tap little square buttons with my fingers and try to look busy (even when I’m not).
Loved your article so much I had to re-post it for my Facebook friends as I know there’s lots of them who could empathize. Totally agree and if I never have to talk to a PM or TDM again in my life, it will be too soon. And I’m someone who others might be envious of since I work from 6:30 to 3:00 (no climbing the ladder for me and increasing my workload) and can go on bike rides after work while it’s still daylight, and I only have a 15 minute commute. And yet, hard to believe, but I still hate the corporate ball and chain! It’s always just been a means to an end ever since I got my C.S. degree back in the 90’s and entered the tech field.
Within two weeks I will enter the exalted realm of ER….
I direct response to this post, I’ve been taking undertime. I’ve also been taking “paid-less-than-male-colleagues/lawyers” time.
I just found this blog yesterday. Great stuff!
Here are my work grievances:
I hate always having to pretend like I want to take on more repsonsibility than I already have.
I hate 32 page long position plans that don’t actually tell me what I’m supposed to do in that position. If you can’t tell me what I’m supposed to do in a few sentences, you need to go back to the drawing board.
I hate when I see incompetent hangers-on hanging on especially when I know they make more than me.
I hate when another step is added to an already tedious process or when something simple is made complicated so we can make it “more visible to management.”
That being said, I work at a really good company in my area. It seems like the bigger the company gets, the more BS trickles in. I’m keeping things in perspective though. I’ve had to drive farther to work in far worse conditions for far less money. Now, I have a short commute, better working conditions, better co-workers, overtime pay, and a decent 401k match. I’m finally starting to make some headway financially. If I had paid more attention to my finances when I was younger, I would have been much further along on my trip to financial independence.
I hate people that leave their conference call on speaker for all to hear when the call isn’t relevant to everyone else in the room.
Holy fuck! This post resonates with me SO much. I am an Application Developer in a corporate environment. The only thing really getting me through my days are daydreams of becoming FI. I started late (I’m in my early 40s), but I’m throwing as much cash I can into investments.
I absolutely HATE corporate buzz words like synergy and quick-win. Whenever someone utters one of these ridiculous terms I want to throat-punch them back to the stone age.
Holy shit, I’m going through the majority of this right now. I hate “360 degree coaching,” the “numbers,” how simple my bosses think things are, and ahhhhh I just hate it all.
But I love that I’m coming up with a plan so I can escape!
I hate business-speak. “Leverage the old project.” — Like, you mean, “read” it?
I despise being inside during good weather.
I hate having to Facetime the baby because I’m not there.
I hate multiple rounds of feedback on inane and never-to-be-seen presentations.
I hate waking up before my body is ready.
Eric @ Retire29
I hate when my boss says “my secretary” or “my office manager” will do this or that. My title seems to vary. And the way he says it, I can tell it makes him feel like a big shot.
This is awesome!!!
I work at a high-tech MegaCorp, in product development, with incredible inefficiencies. Every day gets worse. It’s almost like a hallween movie working there!! LOL
My gripes:
* I hate workers who hold wireless phone calls while strolling back and forth in the halls. It’s all about “look at me” time! How obnoxious.
* the fat mini-manager who walks through aisles with his nose in his iPhone, expecting all to clear the path for him.
* daily scrum meetings … really???
* the constant status meetings where you update the mgr/group on what you should be working on …. but can’t because you’re stuck in another mindless meeting talking about the things which you should be working on but, can’t because ……
* the instant formation of “tiger teams” whenever a problem pops up that can’t be solved by a spreadsheet.
* management by spreadsheet: managers are so tied up with meetings all day they have no clue what you’re doing, which forces creation of more meetings to update status and to get the team (actually him) on the same page
* the condescending talk of how quality is top priority, when each and every time the projects are driven totally by schedule.
* Managements obsession over processes. Constant creation of more process steps, with more documentation expectations, while expecting development schedules to be brought in.
* The corporate belief that quality can be “documented in” to a product. The focus in development is on the documentation, not putting time into actual test and debug.
More things I hate ….
* Coming in to work in the morning, checking your email inbox, and within 10 minutes there are hordes of people who just walk into your office and interrupt you to talk about their issue ….. like a cloud of blowflies on a fresh turd!! : )
* emailers who add every possible employee on the list, whether they need to know or not
* being told over the course of a day/week of the 3 to 5 different things that are the top priority for you to work on! LOL
* being micro-managed
OK, one more …
* I hate how every real decision needs to be done via concensus, involving a cast of thousands! It’s like every small design change is a Cecile B. D’Mille production!
It’s all about concensus … not about doing the right thing.
If a meeting was held and all ended up agreeing that the sky was orange, it would be looked at as a great success … what productivity !!!
It doesn’t matter that it was all B*** Sh**.
Most documents I write have to approved by >12 people, many who have no clue what I am working on or am writing about. Next step will to have the cafeteria cook added to the approval list. LOL
Back in the day, the company would make an effort to hire good people, so they could trust their decisions and their work.
MegaCorp now essentially treats their technical staff like they were junior new hires, who need to be constantly reviewed and their efforts blessed by the “chosen ones”. Not to be trusted unless constantly monitored.
The atmosphere is actually demeaning and just promotes disconect.
There …. I’ll stop ranting.
Actual email I received from as I was reading this post:
Hi , You will be testing tomorrow, please make sure you fill out the attached for the time allocation.
Attach this to your please remember that this MUST be filled in real-time when you are doing the test. Filling it out after testing (which would actually save time and be more efficient) defeats the purpose. Let me know if you have questions.
Things haven’t changed. 8 more years for me. Glad you got out when you did.
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