What little things drive you completely up the wall....?

[Shalamar]

This is a very little thing, but it drives me up the wall when I have to clear my throat (because something's stuck in it, for example), and someone thinks I'm trying to get their attention:

Me:  Ahem, cough-cough.
Them:  WHAT?  What do you want?

It's unfortunate that the clearing-of-the-throat has become associated with a passive-aggressive attempt to make someone pay attention to you, but there we are.

[diesel_darlin]

Wow violinp, I didn't know we shared a manager! My manager does this also. She never has to work a 2nd or 3rd shift, she always works days. If someone mentions anything about being tired, she lays into them with a spiel about how many hours she works and blah blah blah.

[Mary Lennox]

For the record, she did let me go on break at 5:30, but I was so irritated at her tone that it colored the rest of the day for me. Unfortunately, she's almost always like this with me, and gets huffy when I ask to leave a grand total of five minutes early because it's dead out there and I've collected all the tickets for the night. Gee, I'm sure 10:30 is going to be totally different from 10:25, since all the movies have now started and concessions will be closing in 15 minutes. Unless she truly needs me to help close (which I don't object to - I'd love the hours on my paycheck), I'd really like to get out and go home so I can take pain meds and relax.

Depending on how often you ask to leave early may explain why she's huffy to you. If I had an employee who was rostered until 10:30 and kept asking to leave early (even only a few minutes), I'd be annoyed too.

[violinp]

For the record, she did let me go on break at 5:30, but I was so irritated at her tone that it colored the rest of the day for me. Unfortunately, she's almost always like this with me, and gets huffy when I ask to leave a grand total of five minutes early because it's dead out there and I've collected all the tickets for the night. Gee, I'm sure 10:30 is going to be totally different from 10:25, since all the movies have now started and concessions will be closing in 15 minutes. Unless she truly needs me to help close (which I don't object to - I'd love the hours on my paycheck), I'd really like to get out and go home so I can take pain meds and relax.

Depending on how often you ask to leave early may explain why she's huffy to you. If I had an employee who was rostered until 10:30 and kept asking to leave early (even only a few minutes), I'd be annoyed too.

It's rare for me to ask off early, because generally there's always stuff to be re - stocked, etc. for the people who open the next day, and I like to get to walk around and do that stuff to help concessions out. Or, there's people who need tickets torn and need directions to the movie, because it's not always totally dead, even at 10:30 - I generally clock out a couple minutes late, if anything.

I try to help out as much as possible and make things easy on her and the other managers, but this particular manager always has something in her craw about how much she sacrifices for the job, etc., and it grates on me, because we all have to pull our weight, and I don't like feeling guilty about asking when I can take my break or if they'll need me to stay the whole time. It doesn't help my thought of her that her attitude spills over into how she treats customers - I've had to smooth things over when she walked away from customers who needed her assistance or wanted to let her know about a technical issue in an auditorium (only managers have access to the gadgetry to fix the auditoriums).

[kherbert05]

Bureaucratic stupidity
Thursday was our last day for kids. Friday was a work day. People finished packing and cleaning their rooms, checked out and had to sit around till 3:30  to leave. People started getting checked out at 1. They were bored and helped people who were finishing - especially those with domino moves Sally is leaving campus, Jane is moving to sally's room, Marco is moving to Jane's room, Sam is moving So to Marco's room.  By 2:30 we were all done. The people teaching summer school for the district, asked if they could start setting up their rooms - since it is housed at our campus this year. They were told no, for a good reason. Those rooms were first on the slate to be cleaned and the floor waxed starting at 3:30. So they would be done when the summer school teachers started moving it at 8 am Saturday. So we all sat in the cafeteria, played on our phones or tablets for an hour before we could leave. Most of us were starving because we had planned to go get something to eat but during the designated 30 min* for lunch it had poured buckets out of the sky. The type of rain were you are lucky to see the end of your hood. So no one risked the roads.

*this was insult to injury because normally we get a hour to an hour and 1/2 for lunch on work or staff development days because the area restaurants and fast food places are overwhelmed by a hundreds of teachers going out on those days.

We were better off than a neighboring district. They had a student make up day on Friday, which was supposed to be a workday. So the teachers had to pick one of two Saturdays to come in as a workday. So a friend of mine spent 8 hours sitting in her already packed room last Saturday. (She had a family wedding the other Saturday).

I get we are paid to work 180 day 8 hours a day - but the reality is we put in 100's of extra hours at home, at school, at workshops - that all go unpaid. Any other time of the year we would have divided up into grade levels, or content areas and started making plans and discussing weak points. But not the last day. If teachers ever worked to the rule - schools would collapse under the now unsupported weight.

[ladyknight1]

I live in an townhome/apartment complex where every person who is on a lease gets a magnetic swipe card for the gate. If you aren't on the lease you don't get a card. There are a few larger units, but the vast majority are two bedroom units. There is only space to park two cars at each unit.

There is a guest entrance gate, where they have the ability to look up the resident and have the gate call for access.

But every day, there is someone who waits, either blocking the card reader or the gate for those of us with cards to let them in.

[violinp]

Wow violinp, I didn't know we shared a manager! My manager does this also. She never has to work a 2nd or 3rd shift, she always works days. If someone mentions anything about being tired, she lays into them with a spiel about how many hours she works and blah blah blah.

Unfortunately, her attitude isn't just directed at me, though she'll generally be nastiest or most passive - aggressive to me. She went on break just before I did on Sunday, and said, "Well, I'll take my break, but it won't be my full break...just a walk to the pretzel shop and back...and that's all I'll get today..." It took everything I had not to roll my eyes at her. There was another person there from corporate who could have easily taken over if needed, and it wasn't even during a rush. She wasn't exactly being raked over the coals at that moment.

I will admit that I have my not - perfect moments at my job, such as when I raised my voice at two kids trying to walk into an auditorium that wasn't ready yet (not yelling, just raising my voice because I was trying to be firm, but it came across as being really cross with them), but this manager just comes to work in a terrible mood, and treats everyone like they're all beneath her, even the customers. I pride myself on having a "game face" for work, no matter what happens, and I get so frustrated that she acts that way as a manager, when I'm the lowest person on the totem pole as ticket tearer, and I have to smooth things over and deal with her attitude for hours.

[diesel_darlin]

I feel your pain. As a cashier, I'm low on the totem pole too. Hope things get better!

[siamesecat2965]

I will sometimes let the manager know, IF its not busy, and therefore don't need all of us to stay, esp since they keep harping on "saving payroll" I'm more than willing to go early. And have asked, every now and again, to leave a tad early. Again, if there isn't anything furhter to be done, and I know they are cautious about hours. So I don't see anything wrong with asking.

[Shalamar]

People who don't proof-read their e-mails before they send them, especially when their typo changes the meaning of what they intended to say.  Case in point:  I got an e-mail today that said "(Blah) is happening, and we need you to address it immediately, because this is not a problem."  I'm pretty sure they meant "this is now a problem".  I'm sorely tempted to reply "Phew!  I'm so glad it's not a problem, but why mention it in the first place?" 

[Allyson]

Yea, one of my coworkers will work her full shift and not take a lunch break, just stand and eat. Which is...really not necessary, it's very slow right now. Then she'll roll her eyes at me when I sit to eat. Some of the other coworkers will not take their full breaks, but then spend quite a bit of time on their phones during shift. The coworker once says to me "oh, well, you're the only one who actually takes a break..." Um, sorry for wanting to eat a proper meal and sit down with my food, but I take the mandated amount for a break, and because you choose not to is not my problem!

Also I'm phasing out of my old cafe job to another job as I just recently graduated a program for what I really want to do (yay) but am keeping one shift a week at my old job to pay off bills. I get *so* many comments about how much my coworkers work compared to me, etc. Also one coworker who keeps telling customers that she works every single day, 7 days a week, open to close between her two jobs, which is a total lie. I once innocently said, "Oh, I thought you had Thursdays off?" and she was not happy.

[Shalamar]

I once interviewed at a place which bragged that its employees rarely took lunch breaks.  "If they take a break at lunch, they finish eating in ten minutes and then get right back to work."  Um, yay?   I wasn't exactly heartbroken when I wasn't offered the job. 

[BeagleMommy]

Yesterday morning was trash pick up day.  Garbage me picked up the bags and left the can at the curb.  Well, DS forgot to put the can back in the garage.

DH got up this morning and said "Remind DS to put the garbage can back in the garage".  I said I would do so and actually did as we were walking out the door.

Lo and behold, there's the garbage can closerthanthis to my rear bumper.  Apparently, DH figured if the can was against my car I wouldn't forget to remind DS.   

It's this kind of passive/aggressive thing that makes me want to smack him with a frozen salmon.

[Yvaine]

I once interviewed at a place which bragged that its employees rarely took lunch breaks.  "If they take a break at lunch, they finish eating in ten minutes and then get right back to work."  Um, yay?   I wasn't exactly heartbroken when I wasn't offered the job.

Wow, great job they did of selling the place. 

[2littlemonkeys]

Being copied on random emails that have absolutely nothing to do with me.  I watched a conversation between 5 people about a certain project they're all working on that I have zero involvement in.  And since they like to sneak little things like "2LM, can you please print 12 copies of the attached document?" into the body, I have to read each one to make sure I'm not being called to action.

Today, 25 emails and not one had anything to do with me.