Post about your worst workplace experiences.

It sounds like the pay difference will be offset by having the time for your projects.

And hopefully the company you used to work for will
painfully miss you.

 

I did get a text from my former manager stating that he knows the hours aren't ideal, but I should reconsider coming back. One of my co-workers used to run my department, and he said (I told him I was leaving earlier this week) if I left, the company would be hurting.

I wish I could take satisfaction from knowing that, but the mandatory overtime was really the only reason I left. It wasn't the most awesome job, but it was miles ahead of the last few places I worked. I also told a few other co-workers about the staffing agency (it's located literally next door to our warehouse) and they should check it out.

I wish the upper management would learn from this (two temps and one other regular employee left in the three weeks before I did) about how to treat people, but they never will. We're not machines, and we need rest and relaxation time.

 

Somewhere we had a thread devoted to co-workers; I was going to resurrect it but couldn't find it, even through the search function.

Well, whatever- this thread is just as good (if not superior!)

Anyway, I get along with just about all my co-workers at the new place, but there's just one who gets on my nerves. It's not just me, two other co-workers have commented on the guy, so I feel safe in believing HE'S the issue.

He just doesn't seem to "get it." He frequently asks the same questions over and over again even though you've answered them before. When we first started talking, I explained that I took the job here because I no longer wished to work overtime.

(At this company, overtime occurs on a regular basis (early starts and/or Saturdays) and it is always optional. Saying no is no big deal to management.)

Despite this knowledge, he continues to ask me if I worked overtime or plan to work overtime. I've stated numerous times my original reasons, but lately I just say "no" and leave it at that. Further elaborations would be fruitless.

He asked me if $19 an hour was a good deal for a part-time caregiver job. I replied that I have no experience with being a paid caregiver, so I cannot answer that question. So of course, he's asked me a few times about whether or not he should take on the extra work if it's decent pay.

Whenever we get assigned to the same line in the mornings, my heart just sinks at the thought of having to endure him. He's not a bad guy, but conversations with him try my patience.

 

What did you say the problem with your co-worker was?

I had a co-worker who would go into great detail about everything he did away from work, none of which was interesting (not that I have room to talk...so I didn't). I didn't think he did he a good job at work (he thought, incorrectly, that he was a key employee), didn't particularly like him in general, & did NOT want to hear about any aspect of his life. My neutral looks, concentration on doing my job, & moving away from him never registered with him. He acted like we were long term buds.

I might as well tell this while I'm at it. Clueless worked one weekend when nobody was in the office, which was actually an older house. We had a large, very complicated, & very expensive copier that WAS key to our work. Clueless brought his "boom box" to work so he could listed to music. The high dollar copier was plugged into the outlet with about 10 layers of electrical tape covering the outlet. Yes, you guessed it, Clueless removed the tape so he could plug in his "boom box."

When the copier turned off it lost many important settings, & it took nearly a full day to get them redone.

And Clueless reprinted, from a microfilm machine, the wrong document, not the one our client needed. I had to find the right one and print it out.

Clueless was so obtuse he couldn't understand why everybody questioned why he would remove 10 layers of tape (tape clearly there so people would not use the copier outlet). I wondered how low long it took dumbass to remove all that tape, & why he didn't realize it was there for a reason.

 

It's been 17 years since I worked at this job, so I have finally healed enough to tell a little about the worst job I ever had.

After failing to land a good entry level job after graduating college I settled for a job at an automotive extended warranty call center. handling claims. What a shitshow, I should have quit in the first thirty days, but it took me five years to get the courage and money in the bank to walk away. A few of the lowlights:

Worst coworker I have ever had. Rude, lazy, incompetent, irresponsible, abrasive, unprofessional. Would screw stuff up then expect someone else whether it be someone within the company, or an external vendor to cover for him at their expense. Then he would become belligerent when they wouldn't absorb his mistake. Or he would throw other people under the bus for his mistakes. I always wondered what kompromat he had on someone there to not ever get fired. I've had coworkers before and after that that were his equal in one or two of his negative attributes, but never someone who was such a totally worthless package. He was so bad that if they had fired him it would have been like adding another employee since we spent so much time fixing his screwups, that just not having to deal with his screwups would have lightened our overall workload.

Worst bosses ever. Incompetent, greasy ass used car salesmen. Unprofessional, lazy, know nothings. Our call times were taking too long since we were understaffed and half the staff we did have was incompetent. So the dealerships that sold our contracts were complaining about how much time their service advisors were spending on the phone trying to get through to us. Instead of doing the correct thing, hiring more people and firing the incompetent ones, they decided to install a strobe light that would flash anytime there was a caller in the queue, which was basically all day long. A low cost feel good "solution" they could go to their customers with. When the economy took a dump at the end of 2008 they laid off one person in each department. In each case instead of laying off one of the most incompetent people the criteria they chose was "this person is competent at their job, but they are single with no kids, where this incompetent coworker is married, has kids, or both, so the single person doesn't need their job as much so we are letting the single person go"

Worst customers ever. By customers I am referring to both the dealerships that sold our contracts and the end users who bought our contracts when they bought their cars. Just horrible people all around. The abuse and stress I took so that rich dealership owners could get even richer really did a number on my physical and mental health.

It wasn't the lowest paying job ever, but it paid just enough to cover my bills but not enough to prepare for my future.

 

This made me think of the movie Glencarry Glen Ross.


I didn't know Amazon had an automotive extended warranty division.

 

A story about the worst coworker I mentioned earlier. His name was Steve.

We had dealerships around the country that sold our extended warranties, both new and used car dealers. One of the worst dealers was a big used car lot in Denver that is no longer in business now, thank goodness. The owner of that dealer was the greasiest of the greasy. He personally reviewed every claim monthly and my manager had to call him up and review every claim over a fairly low dollar threshold before he would approve it, which was completely ridiculous. (I just looked up what happened to that dealer owner and found out the owner passed away a couple years ago. Rot in piss, asshole. Its actually heartwarming for me to know he is presently getting butt fucked by Satan. But I digress) Anyway, the dealer owner felt any dollar spent on a claim wasn't us honoring our obligations, but rather us stealing from him since he got a cut of the back end profit. So he made it difficult for us and we took a lot of crap from end customers and repair shops. We were not allowed to point the blame at him where it belonged, we were supposed to just take the abuse so he could have a bigger mansion. One of the anti-customer practices he did was directing customers to specific asshole approved shops, since those shops, while taking weeks to get around to working on customers cars and doing a shitty job when they finally worked on a car were usually either quite cheap or perhaps gave him a kickback for the referral. For the rest of this story I'll refer to the dealership and its owner as GreasyAsshole.

Anyhow that sets the background for the worst coworker story. One day a customer who had bought his truck from a dealer in Missouri but had since moved to Colorado called up saying he had a transmission problem and wanted to know where to take his vehicle to be repaired. I referred him to a National Chain that we had a fleet account with, as for the most part their stores did decent work and the fleet pricing and warranty was very good. GreasyAsshole had let it be known National Chain was not approved for working on vehicles that were sold by GreasyAsshole since they were more expensive than the cheapskate shops GreasyAsshole preferred. But that didn't matter in this case since the guy bought his truck from a dealer in Missouri.

Once the guy brought his truck to the National Chain store I referred him to they did a preliminary diagnosis and called us to start a claim. Steve got the call and colossally fucked up. He told the shop he had absolutely no idea whatsoever why I would tell the vehicle owner they could take his truck to National Chain but National Chain was not an approved shop and the customer would need to call us and take his truck elsewhere. Steve had an obnoxiously loud voice so I could hear him on the call. I immediately recognized the mistake he was making. I wanted to yell out to him to check the selling dealer, hey it wasn't sold by GreasyAsshole car and doesn't need to go to a GreasyAsshole approved shop. But I was occupied at that moment with getting my ass chewed by a customer from another claim that Steve fucked up. So as soon as Steve got off the phone he got up and immediately ran the ten feet to our boss Randy's cubicle and blurted out "Randy, Bill sent a GreasyAsshole car to National Chain instead of GreasyAsshole's approved shop! Bill can't do that! Bill Can't Do That! What are you going to do?! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO!" I had just got finished receiving an ass chewing for a different Steve fuckup so when Randy called out "Bill, get over here!" I got up and walked over. At this point I was smarting from the needless ass chewing I had just been subjected to but I was also excited. This stupid motherfucker just set his own trap and I was going to watch him walk into it and I was gonna love it!

So I go "whats up Randy" and Randy goes "Why did you send a GreasyAsshole car to National Chain Store! You know you can't do that! GreasyAsshole's gonna chew my ass for this!" I saw Randy's computer screen showed he hadn't even looked at the claim yet, he was just going off Steve's word. So I said "I haven't sent any GreasyAsshole cars to National Chain, what do my notes say?" I said this because I knew Steve didn't document his calls correctly, which I suspected was one of the reasons he got away with his severe incompetence. I suspected my boss had a hard time catching Steve's failure to document calls correctly because he didn't document calls correctly, thus no evidence of his fuckups. Yeah, perversely his incompetence was one of the very things that hid his incompetence. So this was a great chance to catch him in the act. So Steve gets the contract number, Randy pulls it up, looks at it and turns to and says "Bill, your notes say you sent the truck to National Chain! Why would you send a GreasyAsshole truck to National Chain!" I was incredulous! Randy completely missed that 1) it wasn't sold by GreasyAsshole so it didn't need to go to a GreasyAsshole approved shop 2)The dealer in Missouri that did sell it was a cancelled dealer so we were supposed to take extra steps to keep cost down on claims from vehicles sold at cancelled dealer, so I did right to steer it away from a franchised dealer, and 3) Steve didn't document the call at all where he told the shop to tell the customer to take it elsewhere. We frequently had angry customers call because of Steve's fuckups and many times since he didn't document his calls it caused confusion for us. As I mentioned earlier Steve's incompetence in a way served to hide his incompetence, but it also created headaches for the rest of us.

So I finally frustratedly said "Randy,pay attention! Look at the selling dealer! GreasyAsshole didn't sell it! It can go to National Chain! Look, the selling dealer is cancelled! They're in Missouri! The customer is in Colorado now! Where are Steve's notes! Why doesn't Steve have any notes!" Randy looks, sees that I'm 100% right and goes "oh, thats ok I guess". So Steve slinks back to his cubicle, I go back to mine smarting that I got chewed out for nothing and Steve got away scot free with his bullshit. But it wasn't over yet. The first call I got was from the now irate customer who was pissed that he did everything he was supposed to do and was now going to be stuck with a diagnostic charge from National Chain. So after being berated by him for a bit I apologized for the misunderstanding and advised I would call the shop for him to clear it up. I then called the shop and proceeded to receive an ass chewing from them for not having our shit together and wasting their time. So all in all I got chewed out three times for Steve's incompetence while Steve got away scot free. Infuriating.

 

^
Some people are Teflon coated.