#49

Right, guessing it’s a very simple task that doesn’t require more than 2 sides of instructions.

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#50

It’s not massively simple in fairness (as in it’s not particularly intuitive), but it doesn’t need more than two sides of instructions, no. Hence why I get frustrated about people constantly asking about it when all they have to do is read the guide.

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#51

what are you guys talking about? can you give me a quick recap?

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#52

Should just make a sign to tap

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#53

Instructional documents in the workplace.

#54

I work with someone who always starts indignantly and long-windedly answering what they assume my question is before I’ve finished asking it, usually with a condescending namecheck (“as I was telling the marketing director this morning”) thrown in. It is a delightful trait for a colleague to have.

#55

I worked with a guy who was like the worst version of that for a week in the summer. He clearly had some kind of issue with hearing or processing what he hears, but didn’t want to deal with it or admit it or ask for any way round it like writing instructions.

So he’d not take in anything of even simple things that you’d say, and then argue with you about what you said. And his interpretation was often really bizarre. And he didn’t understand why he wound people up so much.

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#56

My favourite example of this was when we had an old PC that always kicked out the cd drive when it was booting up for some reason. This loud mouth sales guy who only only came in about once a week sat down and put his cup of coffee directly in front of the cd drive “you need to move that or it’ll get knocked over” I helpfully told him, explaining why. He said “oh right, thanks!”, turned back to the computer powered it on, whereupon the coffee was sent flying everywhere. He got very angry at this, loudly shouting about his terrible plight and pulling the computer’s power lead out in a fury (??) before retiring to the kitchen to make a replacement cup. On his return he put the cup in the exact same place, re-plugged in the computer and the exact same thing happened again.

I was just staring at him in disbelief that anyone could be that stupid.

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#57

misread this to mean you worked with an old police constable who kicked the drive whenever he was booting the computer up :frowning:

#58

Side point: did you mean ‘minefield’ there? Mine maybe? My brain is reading it and sort of doing that screwed up eye look that DiCaprio does in Inception.

#59

I did but maybe I shouldn’t have.

You all understood what I meant.

#60

goldminefield

#61

Fucking hundreds. They all work in sales.

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#62

This is also me, I really don’t like communication where the actual root issues are buried somewhere under loads of waffle. A manager used to have me on those sorts of calls all the time until I finally explained to him that I don’t really do that well in those sorts of situations. Thankfully he actually acquiesced and starting sending summaries of meetings to me in emails.

#63

That’s actually incredible.

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#64

Example:

We were teaching kids, with a swapping rota so each group got two classes from each of the three teachers per day. We had agreed all the topics/activities beforehand in a meeting and made a plan of who taught what per class. As you normally do. It’s not rocket science.

I go into class and start my activity. The kids say “we did this last lesson with Matt”.

I go and find Matt- for some reason he’s in the corridor rather than his class.

Me- Matt, did you teach my activity with group one?
M- Whoah, calm down there, we don’t need to make this like a rigid thing
Me- actually yeah we do need to stick to what was agreed because I just walked in and the kids say you did my class with them rather than the thing you were supposed to teach
M acts like I’m being really unreasonable and then says basically he taught a really half-arsed version of my class, so I have to change everything I had planned on the spot, which is stressful and also means the time I spent planning was wasted.

#65

The regular English teacher at the school that was hosting the course was a gem. She had a kitty for buying us cakes and for a meal out, and took us in her car to see some local places.

In the car:
Teacher- Steffi Graf comes from this town, so does Boris Becker. Perhaps I should get my son playing tennis instead of football.
Matt-who?
Everyone else- the tennis players
Matt- how am I supposed to know that

The teacher invites us out for dinner. It’s not quite clear if she is paying or what, but it’s a cheap place and we get given an allowance in euros each week for stuff like that so it doesn’t really matter. This is a normal occurance in this job.

Matt asks beforehand if she is paying, and we both say we don’t know, so bring some cash. He acts like this is new information. When we get to the restaurant before the teacher arrives he asks us again and then goes “shit I only have five euros” and then tells us he “doesn’t like” to carry a card. Luckily it turned out the teacher was paying out of the school kitty.

Third one:
On the first day working with this guy when we were reviewing the course info before meeting the kids
Me- this class are the lowest stream in the German system so they might struggle a bit with this topic
Him- what’s the worst bit in the English system? State schools?
Me- (pointedly) Excuse me? State schools are not "the worst bit"
Him- whoah whoah how would I know! Don’t get arsey

He is English and has only ever lived in England.

#66

Is he a qualified teacher? I don’t understand how you can go through training and not know about the different school systems or what streaming is.

#67

Apparently.

Judging from his ability to absorb information he has probably been told about this stuff a million times.

He was also not a new employee. You get very familiar with the Austrian/German school system in this job. It’s not a particularly complicated system.

#68

I know exactly what this means, but in my mind I’m still picturing an extraordinarily useful cat.

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