Stop helping me! (Share your stories)

[Julian]

Housemate tries to help me in the kitchen.  Now, the kitchen is my domain.  I cook, and I really hate having an 'overseer' in the kitchen.

When I'm putting groceries away, she's always standing right in front of the cupboard I need.

When I'm dishing up dinner, she stands right where I need to be.  Sigh...

I've told her, no help needed, sit down, blah blah, which works for a while but not long.

One night last month I had her and three dogs 'helping' me in the kitchen.  Now, I have a biiiiiig kitchen.  Lots of space.  But not when three furry munchkins and one large adult human are all milling around - literally, in the case of the dogs, right under my feet.  After I tripped on one dog a fourth time and bumped into Housemate a third time I had a tanty...      A foot stomping, spoon weilding tanty.  They all got chased out.  I'm not proud of it.  But I have the kitchen mostly to myself these days.

[MommyPenguin]

I've heard of teenagers pulling out so much food to eat that Mom didn't spend nearly as much time putting food away as she'd expected.  Only to find that they had eaten all the stuff she'd brought home for a party and Mom had to go back to the store before her bridge (card game) party started - all the "snacks" were gone. 

She said it was much cheaper to bring it all in and put it away herself...because that way the "party" food got put into the "do not open at risk of serious bodily harm if Mom finds THIS stuff missing before the party" shelves instead of the "open season - snacks for hungry family members" shelves.  I think that she mentioned being Catholic and having eight children - so there was usually more than one shopping trip a week to the grocery store.  She did try to avoid having to make a trip every DAY, though.

I've only got 4, but they're starting to get voracious appetites and I can't seem to keep us in bananas, oranges, milk, and yogurt.  I feel like I'm going to the store every few days for those!  And making bread constantly, as we use a loaf a day.  I can only imagine what the teenage years will be like... and mine are all girls!  I'm developing all new sympathy for my grandmother, who had 8 kids, 5 of whom were boys.  They must have gone through insane amounts of food.

[starry diadem]

Housemate tries to help me in the kitchen.  Now, the kitchen is my domain.  I cook, and I really hate having an 'overseer' in the kitchen.

When I'm putting groceries away, she's always standing right in front of the cupboard I need.

When I'm dishing up dinner, she stands right where I need to be.  Sigh...

I've told her, no help needed, sit down, blah blah, which works for a while but not long.

One night last month I had her and three dogs 'helping' me in the kitchen.  Now, I have a biiiiiig kitchen.  Lots of space.  But not when three furry munchkins and one large adult human are all milling around - literally, in the case of the dogs, right under my feet.  After I tripped on one dog a fourth time and bumped into Housemate a third time I had a tanty...      A foot stomping, spoon weilding tanty.  They all got chased out.  I'm not proud of it.  But I have the kitchen mostly to myself these days.

You have my mother as your housemate?

She broke her hip nine weeks ago, and is still hobbling around using a frame walker. She can't move quickly. And yet, she insisted the other night on empyting the dish washer of clean plates etc *just* as I was trying to dish up supper. So I'm dodging around her with pans of boiling water and potatoes and carrots, trying desperately to keep my temper (she's down about not being able to help as much as usual) and internally wishing I could do your foot stomping spoon wielding tanty. Infuriating!

[Piratelvr1121]

I've heard of teenagers pulling out so much food to eat that Mom didn't spend nearly as much time putting food away as she'd expected.  Only to find that they had eaten all the stuff she'd brought home for a party and Mom had to go back to the store before her bridge (card game) party started - all the "snacks" were gone. 

She said it was much cheaper to bring it all in and put it away herself...because that way the "party" food got put into the "do not open at risk of serious bodily harm if Mom finds THIS stuff missing before the party" shelves instead of the "open season - snacks for hungry family members" shelves.  I think that she mentioned being Catholic and having eight children - so there was usually more than one shopping trip a week to the grocery store.  She did try to avoid having to make a trip every DAY, though.

I've only got 4, but they're starting to get voracious appetites and I can't seem to keep us in bananas, oranges, milk, and yogurt.  I feel like I'm going to the store every few days for those!  And making bread constantly, as we use a loaf a day.  I can only imagine what the teenage years will be like... and mine are all girls!  I'm developing all new sympathy for my grandmother, who had 8 kids, 5 of whom were boys.  They must have gone through insane amounts of food.

Same here. I have 3 boys, one who has a hollow leg ALL the time, it seems and the other it comes and goes.  Snacks don't last very long in this house, I'm afraid and it's not just them either. DH wanted to get these chocolate coated goji berries at the store, and we got two packs of them.  I went to go look for them Sunday, I think it was, and they were gone.  DH had eaten them ALL and said "I'm sorry! But you stash sweets too!" YEAH, cause I know if I don't they'll disappear before I get any!

[faithlessone]

I'm an admin assistant at a smallish building contractor office.

One of my co-workers has recently decided to be "helpful" and group all the delivery notes/invoices etc. by job number. NOT HELPFUL. We process them in alphabetical order by company, which he knows, but he thinks this is a more "efficient" way to do it. It's really not. It just makes more work for me and my counterpart, resorting everything.

But he is a 40-something man, and we are 20-something girls, so obviously he's right and we're wrong. *facepalm*

[Elfmama]

I'm an admin assistant at a smallish building contractor office.

One of my co-workers has recently decided to be "helpful" and group all the delivery notes/invoices etc. by job number. NOT HELPFUL. We process them in alphabetical order by company, which he knows, but he thinks this is a more "efficient" way to do it. It's really not. It just makes more work for me and my counterpart, resorting everything.

But he is a 40-something man, and we are 20-something girls, so obviously he's right and we're wrong. *facepalm*

  So it's "more efficient" to have to thumb through them AFTER he's helpfully grouped them by number and resort them into alphabetical order? What does your supervisor say about him wasting your time AND his?

[faithlessone]

I'm an admin assistant at a smallish building contractor office.

One of my co-workers has recently decided to be "helpful" and group all the delivery notes/invoices etc. by job number. NOT HELPFUL. We process them in alphabetical order by company, which he knows, but he thinks this is a more "efficient" way to do it. It's really not. It just makes more work for me and my counterpart, resorting everything.

But he is a 40-something man, and we are 20-something girls, so obviously he's right and we're wrong. *facepalm*

  So it's "more efficient" to have to thumb through them AFTER he's helpfully grouped them by number and resort them into alphabetical order? What does your supervisor say about him wasting your time AND his?

Co-Worker thinks it would be more efficient for us to process them in job number order as well. (It wouldn't.) The boss has reminded him several times that it's not helpful, and has started giving the documents back to Co-Worker to re-sort if he does it. As it's only a recent habit (the last 2 months or so) we're hoping he'll get it into his head that he's wasting his own time and stop.

[Seraphia]

Co-workers who want to make things as easy as possible...for themselves.

I'm on a project at work that's slowly winding down. People are rolling off in twos and threes, and we're supposed to be as well. Co-Worker and I were expecting that this week would be mostly completing things for Audit, filling out documentation - wrap-up stuff. Unfortunately, a Problem came up, and since we're now down to three people on the team, there isn't a lot of manpower to go around to deal with Problem.

Problem cropped up at 4:45 on Tuesday, when it was still just a small issue. Ok, sure, we'll get started first thing Wednesday. Wednesday, we start plugging away, when all of a sudden, an angry email comes through. Problem has now tripled in size, and needs to be done tomorrow STAT. Uh oh. CW and I start working as fast as we can, and make pretty good progress. We're about 3/4s done at 4:45 Wednesday when Counterpart sends us a conference request.

Counterpart wants to know: "Why are you solving Problem with X way? We did it Y way back in January and it's much faster!" (Please note, Counterpart does not do any actual solving of Problems - he is there to check our work.) We spent almost an hour arguing with him about this. We did use Y process back then. But, it was with the help of someone who's now gone, and we're on a pretty tight timeline to try and fix this now. "But Y way means that we (meaning him) don't have to do as much documenting! I'm not trying to throw a wrench in things, but I just think Y would be much better."

Counterpart is right. Y method would be much better..... IF we had time, IF we had the person who knew how to do it, IF we weren't already mostly done with X, and IF it weren't already 5:30PM!

Argh. We wound up staying until almost 7:30 until we could pass Problem back to Counterpart, by which time, he was long gone. Apparently trying to help speed things up "for us" didn't mean he would actually be willing to work OT to get Problem fixed quickly.

[gmatoy]

You know, I hate to be a "Debbie Downer", but I have had friends tell me that their daughters ate as much as their sons in the teen years. And one friend told me that if her son ate out, he would still have a snack at home. But if her daughter ate out, then later, at home she would have both another meal and then a snack.  She thought it was because girls don't want the others in the party to know how much they can eat.

[Lady Snowdon]

Helpful Coworker has decided that, as I'm 20 years younger than her, I will be grateful for her helpful bits of advice and information.  Said "helpful" bits of advice and information have ranged from her informing me that I can't be afraid of dogs when I mentioned that my uncle's dog doesn't like me (I've had dogs since I was 3 years old, and love them.  No fear here!) to telling me I should do x, y, or z with my side business - all things that are pretty much impossible with what I do.  She took the cake today though, when she to horn in on two conversations I was having with other people. 

First, I'm talking to Boss about an issue that I have.  A company has processed something incorrectly, and as a result they are overpaying us by something like 3x.  Putting that into the system is screwing things up, naturally, and we're discussing how to input it, what I need to do as far as notifying the company that screwed up, etc.  Helpful Coworker hears something about "I can't unapply the payment in the system..." and calls out, "If you just click okay, it'll let you unapply it".  Boss looks at me, I tell her I already tried this and it wouldn't go through.  I call out to Helpful Coworker, "Nope, tried that, doesn't work.".  Helpful Coworker comes over and spends 5 minutes telling us how she thinks we should solve our issue.  Only problem is she doesn't know what our issue is.  She assumed it was a completely different issue and was giving us tips for solving that.  Once she stopped talking, Boss said in a very annoyed tone, "That's not what we're working on".  Helpful Coworker says, "oh, okay" and wanders off.  Totally clueless. 

Second, I'm talking to Other Coworker about a payment issue she's having (all our bank deposits came in today for some reason, so we had tons of payments we were working to match up with our system).  The company is telling Other Coworker that A and Y should be billed together, so they're not going to pay for A.  Helpful Coworker comes over and says, "No, those two are billed together, so you need to void one."  Other Coworker and I look at her in confusion and Other Coworker says, "No they're not, that doesn't make any sense!".  Helpful Coworker says, "Those two are always billed together.  If you see X and Y together, you have to void Y!"  I said, "But we didn't bill X and Y, we billed A and Y."  Helpful Coworker blinks and says, "Well, of course those aren't billed together.  You need to get that fixed!".   

She needs to stop trying to "help" everyone and just do her own stuff.  Gah!

[Piratelvr1121]

You know, I hate to be a "Debbie Downer", but I have had friends tell me that their daughters ate as much as their sons in the teen years. And one friend told me that if her son ate out, he would still have a snack at home. But if her daughter ate out, then later, at home she would have both another meal and then a snack.  She thought it was because girls don't want the others in the party to know how much they can eat.

I'll attest to that.  In high school I ran cross country and as a result I swear I was ALWAYS hungry.

[VorFemme]

DD was on swim team.  Swimming in cool to cold water for well over an hour a day will leave a teenager ravenous.  I would have hated to be the one trying to buy and fix enough food for siblings on a swim team....

As it was, my mother had to feed three siblings in the junior high & high school marching bands - after I got married and Lil Sis went off to college, my brothers started growing taller.  The grocery bills stayed the same for the family of four as they had been for a family of six.  Until Lil Sis came home from college for the summer...then the bills went up.

[weeblewobble]

Helpful Coworker has decided that, as I'm 20 years younger than her, I will be grateful for her helpful bits of advice and information.  Said "helpful" bits of advice and information have ranged from her informing me that I can't be afraid of dogs when I mentioned that my uncle's dog doesn't like me (I've had dogs since I was 3 years old, and love them.  No fear here!) to telling me I should do x, y, or z with my side business - all things that are pretty much impossible with what I do. 

I feel your pain.  I have a job in a  specialized artistic field, in which people really have no idea how my job works, but believe they know exactly what I should be doing and how. I can't tell you how many times I've received advice from laymen that would literally end my career if I followed it.

[Cherry91]

You know, I hate to be a "Debbie Downer", but I have had friends tell me that their daughters ate as much as their sons in the teen years. And one friend told me that if her son ate out, he would still have a snack at home. But if her daughter ate out, then later, at home she would have both another meal and then a snack.  She thought it was because girls don't want the others in the party to know how much they can eat.

I'll attest to that.  In high school I ran cross country and as a result I swear I was ALWAYS hungry.

I did martial arts two to three times a week from age 14 - 19 and while I was doing so, I could out eat most of my male friends and family members.

And to also be on topic, I still got people telling me i was "too skinny" and giving me unsolicited advice on "loving myself and my body" and "learning how to have a healthy relationship with food". When in reality, if I could have married food, I would have!

[Piratelvr1121]

My middle child has ADD but isn't medicated due to him usually being able to manage it and getting decent grades, as well as just not finding anything that really works for him, med wise.

Now, I don't mind him bringing something to fidget with in church if it truly did help him to pay attention as he claims it does. But when I give him little quizzes as to what the gospel was about, he can't answer them.  Not to mention he makes it really obvious at times that he's not paying attention. Like today, making tiny sculptures out of clay and lining them up along the back of the pew in front of us.

I was talking to him after the service about this when a woman came up and started praising him for his creativity and making excuses for him left and right. "He's just being a boy!"