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Years ago I was an application developer at a medium sized corporation and was also responsible for support for an HR department. This occurred early one morning shortly after I arrived at work.
User: My app doesn't work.
Me: What's wrong with it?
User: I just get a blank screen.
Me: A blank screen? What happens when you hit a key?
User: Nothing.
Me: Do any apps work?
User: No, I just get a blank screen.
Me: Is your monitor on?
User: Yes, I turned it on.
This type of witty banter went on for several minutes when the answer suddenly hit me.
Me: Is your computer turned on?
User: Do I need to turn it on?
Me: Did you turn it off before you went home last night?
User: Yes.
Me: And do you normally turn it on in the morning when you come in?
User: Yes.
Me: Then why didn't you turn it on this morning when you came in?
User: I didn't know I needed to.
It was at this point I heard the programmer over the cubicle wall from me burst out laughing. He had been listening to the conversation and couldn't take it anymore.
The really sad part is that this was not an isolated incident. This kind of stuff occurred on a semi-regular basis with this individual's department.10 -
So was first day at new job ... Boss takes me around meeting everyone. One employee stuck editing file by typing in new records data, calls boss for help.
Boss to me: "I like to get handsy with data from time to time. "
*me smiling, watch how he copies and paste the new records*
ME to boss:"why don't you just write the script to update all the records?"
Boss:"I don't trust the automation of input. "
Me:" what about human error?"
*crowd of other employees gather around awaiting answer*
Boss:"we include margin of errors in our disclaimer to the client... "
*He hears himself*
Boss:"... and we bill by the hour why would we work faster for less money?"
*me grinning, going to remember that line next time I need extension of deadline*
Me*murmurs*:" Master has presented dobby with a sock"
*Girl in next cubicle snickers clearly caught the reference "
Going to love it here.3 -
There is a group of ladies who work in the accounting department at my job who have made it their mission to decorate the cubicle of whoever has a birthday on a given day. They come in at 6 am on someones birthday and decorate, leaving a mess of balloons and streamers, which is a nice surprise the first time it happens (they do it every year). Well, we in the IT office decided it would be fun to booby trap one of our cubicles so that when our birthday rolled in, they would receive a surprise of their own. So we set up a webcam as a motion detector, and had the computer speakers turned up as loud as possible, so that when motion was detected, the honorable Admiral Akbar would yell "It's A Trap!". We succeeded in scaring the pants off of them, and also annoying them because the sound did not stop until the program was exited, so they had to listen to it the entire time they did their setup. It was priceless xD4
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More sysadmin focused but y’all get this stuff and I need a rant.
TLDR: Got the wrong internship.
Start working as a sysadmin/dev intern/man-of-many-hats at a small finance company (I’m still in school). Day 1: “Oh new IT guy? Just grab a PC from an empty cubicle and here’s a flash drive with Fedora, go ahead and manually install your operating system. Oh shit also your desktop has 2g of ram, a core2 duo, and we scavenged your hard drive for another dev so just go find one in the server room. And also your monitor is broken so just take one from another cubicle.”
Am shown our server room and see that someone is storing random personal shit in there (golf clubs propped against the server racks with heads mixed into the cabling, etc.). Ask why the golf clubs etc. are mixed in with the cabling and server racks and am given the silent treatment. Learn later that my boss is the owners son, and he is storing his personal stuff in our server room.
Do desktop support for end users. Another manager asks for her employees to receive copies of office 2010 (they’re running 2003 an 2007). Ask boss about licensing plans in place and upgrade schedules, he says he’ll get back to me. I explain to other manager we are working on a licensing scheme and I will keep her informed.
Next day other manager tells me (*the intern*) that she spoke with a rich business friend whose company uses fake/cracked license keys and we should do the same to keep costs down. I nod and smile. IT manager tells me we have no upgrade schedule or licensing agreement. I suggest purchasing an Office 365 subscription. Boss says $150 a year per employee is too expensive (Company pulls good money, has ~25 employees, owner is just cheap) I suggest freeware alternatives. Other manager refuses to use anything other than office 2010 as that is what she is familiar with. Boss refuses to spend any money on license keys. Learn other manager is owners wife and mother of my boss. Stalemate. No upgrades happen.
Company is running an active directory Windows Server 2003 instance that needs upgrading. I suggest 2012R2. Boss says “sure”. I ask how he will purchase the license key and he tells me he won’t.
I suggest running an Ubuntu server with LDAP functionality instead with the understanding that this will add IT employee hours for maintenance. Bosses eyes glaze over at the mention of Linux. The upgrade is put off.
Start cleaning out server room of the personal junk, labeling server racks and cables, and creating a network map. Boss asks what I’m doing. I show him the organized side of the server room and he says “okay but don’t do any more”.
... *sigh* ...20 -
Phone in my cubicle goes straight to voicemail when someone calls. Boss wants me to get it fixed so clients and he can reach me.
Yeah, I'll get right on that. 👌2 -
There are people in my workplace who ask "why did you set your IDE to dark theme?". How do I convince them that turning off the lights above my cubicle, lowering the screen brightness and having a dark theme is the best thing ever to concentrate?
Not to mention earbuds and a hoodie.
How do I convince them that once you turn to the Dark Side, there's no coming back?6 -
Got laid off on Friday because of a workforce reduction. When I was in the office with my boss, someone went into my cubicle and confiscated my laptop. My badge was immediately revoked as was my access to network resources such as email and file storage. I then had to pack up my cubicle, which filled up the entire bed of my pickup truck, with a chaperone from Human Resources looking suspiciously over my shoulder the whole time. They promised to get me a thumb drive of my personal data. This all happens before the Holidays are over. I feel like I was speed-raped by the Flash and am only just now starting to feel less sick to the stomach. I wanted to stay with this company for the long haul, but I guess in the software engineering world, there is no such thing as job security and things are constantly shifting. Anyone have stories/tips to make me feel better? Perhaps how you have gotten through it? 😔😑😐14
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> In office for first time in awhile
> Run into group of 4 people I don’t recognize in far cubicle corning laughing in hushed voices eating of an impressive spread of food
> See me and immediately look at each other with panicked expressions
> Confused, I put my hands up to indicate I come in peace
> They relax a little and say they thought I was from HR since they didn’t recognize me
> Ask why HR seeing them would be such a big deal
> They say their potluck is not “sanctioned”
> …?
So apparently HR just could resist ruining one of the only good things about coming into the office and one of the coolest things about the company’s culture. At least once a month there would be a giant potluck where everyone would bring some home cooked dish and share it. I can’t tell you how amazing these are in Canada, 50+ plates of authentic food from all over the world.
Unfortunately HR didn’t agree as 1. They didn’t cook so felt bad taking food. 2. Nobody asked them permission to put on these events they just happened organically. 3. Some people were bringing in food that they felt was culturally inappropriate (ie. caucasian guy bringing in homemade sushi).
HR recently banned all “unsanctioned” potlucks and all future potlucks needed to be approved through them with the following stipulations. 1. You could participate without bringing something by donating to HR $10 2. If you brought something you still had to give HR $10. 3. Things you brought in had to be approved by HR
Naturally the first and only potluck under these rules only 4 people brought something in as many couldn’t get their dishes approved because HR didn’t like what they were planning to bring (started out as being because culture and turned into HR just being picky), most just brought $10 so there wasn’t enough food to go around and so after HR took a giant group photo to post on the company’s social media accounts to show off how good the company’s culture is most everyone had to go out for lunch. HR sent out an email later that day exclaiming what a huge success for charity and the company brand the potluck was and they can’t wait for the next one. (I have the HR communications email marked as spam so I never saw the email). Nobody ever organized a sanctioned potluck after that.
However people still missed cooking and sharing their favourite recipes with one another so potlucks still occur but they are now very small, secret, invite-only, hush-hush affairs.
…What in the ever loving fuck22 -
On your first day of work, when you're being shown around, the employer always says, "We encourage our employees to think outside the box".
This statement usually coincides with them showing you your cubicle.2 -
I don’t work without rest. In fact, I rest during the work. I was once got caught by the director(3 level above me) while sleeping in my cubicle.5
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So, now that companies are used to "WFH", maybe we can agree upon a better office for tech companies?
I do actually think the more "ideal" tech company office wouldn't have to be expensive.
It can be smaller. Any tech company worth it's salt should have discovered in the last few months that it's not just devs who can work from home. Sales, support, management — you really don't need to fight your way through highway traffic or cram yourself into a sweaty subway every day.
There's value in having an office. Not everyone can fit a good workspace in their apartment.
But we could at least center it around:
1. A bunch of small, completely soundproof isolation booths, for those who need a focus space, and can't find a silent spot at home.
2. A social lounge space, a communal living room with couches, a bar, creative relaxing stuff, whiteboards, etc. WFH can become depressing even for the most antisocial employees, chilling on a couch with some coworkers to brainstorm ideas or chat about random tech is valuable for building good relationships with your team.
The "open plan office" with rows of desks and monitors, no matter how luxuriously decorated with vertical gardens and hipster desks from reclaimed wood, can go die a fiery painful death.
I either want to work, or socialize.
Open plan offices (and it's even more dystopian suicide-inducing cousin, the cubicle) are like being unable to choose between fucking and a blowjob, so you end up humping a navel.
Oh, and conference rooms, go fuck yourself as well. I want to be able to minimize your ugly face if you plan to talk about company financial reports for 2 hours.2 -
Inappropriate experience at work? All very old experiences, this is one of many:
The IS department manager 'John' would poke is butt in a cubicle, fart, walk away laughing and/or say "That'll wake you up".1 -
Fuuuuck this corporate bullshit. I'm basically sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for some jackass to grant me access to the server that my boss moved my code over to. Why the hell did you put my app on a production server that runs every 30 minutes...THAT I DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO?? Now there's a critical bug and a $50K order in limbo because I can't push any fixes. Fuck me. The worst part will be in the next hour or so when dozens of people are calling, emailing, and attacking my cubicle like rabid animals about why orders aren't moving and I'll have to explain that production is a train wreck because reasons. Just end me.2
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Just read a comment on rant that stated "You’d be surprised as how disgusting people are especially in the work setting.". In regard to bathrooms. This reads true, for my current place of work
I was about to reply to that, but I thought this is worthy of a rant of its own. Allow me to quote some emails...
"We have had reports of excrement being left on toilet seats, which surely could be seen by the person responsible before they left the cubicle. "
"very poor toilet hygiene in some the ladies toilets.
Firstly, someone person should I say.... has used a toilet brush to clear a blockage in the Ladies loo nearest [removed]. They obviously couldn't unblock the toilet due to the density of the blockage and therefore.. returned the brush to it's holder full of the blockage!! "
"The phantom "snot" wiper is back and is using the back of the toilet door nearest the [removed] as a tissue! Again.. the poor Cleaner has had to clean this up... "
"Toilet paper being put in the Urinal blocking the system in [removed] and faeces being left on the toilet floor in [removed]. This goes without saying that this can't go on and it's not the cleaners job to be cleaning such messes! "
Its ever worse in our other office that contains a call centre. A lady was fired for leaving shit in the stairwells on multiple instances. She had been fired from her last role for the same thing.
There were also reports of subway subs been left in the toilet bowl.
You also find the most curious items in the waste bins (they have no lid, we're not search through them - just to make that clear) everything from half eaten sandwiches to watermelon.15 -
Goddamn! Take a shower! You smell dank as fuck!
People coming into my cubicle smelling this way piss me off! I know it's possible for you to find time to shower.
Jesus12 -
Cheap computer, Broken AC, Fresh coat of off-white/grey paint, Torn chair with ciggy burns in it, non-adjustable cubicle desk that is wayyyy too high, people from unrelated departments popping by every 15mins to give me an update I didn’t ask for on their inconsequential lives or their opinion on whatever the fuck is the biggest trending hashtag right now.
May I never go back into the office again.
#thoughtsandprayers4 -
My coworker (the safety officer of our department) came into my cubicle today and after standing there a few minutes with his phone out, I asked him what he was doing. He responded by saying "I noticed theres a Caterpie in your cubicle. As the safety officer, it is my duty to remove it, as it is causing a tripping hazard". I thanked him and we both went back to what we were doing.
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I was being interviewed by a tenured Java Dev for a position of android Dev in a big company. it was a glass walled cubicle, and I could see in the reflection that he was browsing stack overflow and asking me the questions. My answers, although correct, didn't match with the accepted answer in stack overflow. sigh. felt good to be rejected.1
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I have now turned the name board in my cubicle to hide my name.
Why you ask? Not because I don't like my name, or dislike my name board (there's this little design on it which is just delightful).
It is to make it a bit more difficult for new morons who don't know who I am or where I sit. Can't do much more than that because I have a desktop.
5 -
I don't know how to feel about it. What story it tells? Python is so easy that even vandals use it or maybe someone bleed on the wall how much she/he hates python. Or maybe it is scream of inner Vandal closed in cubicle who works with AI and blockchain for life's. What is the story behind this?
6 -
Fuck-a-doodle-do Fuck Fuck Fuck what a fucking dipshit. Scared the god damn shit out of me.
So I am deep in code, listening to my music pounding out some code and Drupal configurations and I feel a shadowy draft over my right side like someone is watching me.
I work with a guy that will not for the fucking life of me use Slack to send me a message when I have my headphones on or at all for that matter.
He gets up and walks to my cubicle and just stares with a goofy fucking grin on his face. You know the one. LIke a retarded fucking dog eating shit out of a wire brush. Yeah that's the grin. Silently derping with his fucking derp ass Derp McDerpington face waiting on you to turn around an notice him there instead of knocking on the cubicle wall or waving to get your attention.
The FUCK dude? CreepyPasta
2 -
When our colleague got twins we put two out of everything into his cubicle: two chairs, two keyboards, two mouses, two lamps, two plants, etc... and two "welcome back" signs too
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The Sorry State of Web programming (and who should be punished for it)
"And if you’re really lucky, and your following grows to scientology-levels of fanaticism you may get your own con. Yes con. Like DockerCon, or JsCon, or LongConJs, because thats exactly what all this is — and it’s exactly what we need: more excuses to meet up for the already sterile pollination of bedfellows, the unwashed, unvarnished masses of guys in their 30s, obsessively stroking their perfectly manicured beards and arguing over the comparative differences between vim versus emacs while completely oblivious about things like how you’re supposed to wear an undershirt with your button up. If not for hackathons, and ted talks, and sxsw, and conferences, and SomethingCons, and ‘retreats’, and dozens of other pointless synonyms for ‘people just meeting up’, most of us would still be in our cubicle, office, or room, typing away instead of socializing like normal people."
Full post here because I like to insert pictures because like all normie fucking simpletons I like pictures in my books.
https://medium.com/@swcs/...15 -
Had a new co-worker I was responsible for training. I am several years his junior, but he is working with a new language/framework I'm fluent in. Day 4 into training, he walks into my cubicle, sidles up next to me, I look up at him, he farts loudly, then (without seeming to realize what he's done) he proceeds to launch into a long-winded question about coding best practices.
If this were an isolated incident, I'd have written it off, but the dude did it again when he came to my desk and asked me to open a jar of pickles for him, and many times over during casual conversation.1 -
Somebody stole Ed's nuts...
Was moving my office a month or so ago and had to occupy a temporary cubicle for 2 weeks. In this cube I found a previous employee had left a jar of specialty peanuts. I thought: "You know who needs these specialty nuts? Ed." So I put them in Ed's office. He was gone that week. A coworker says "You know Ed is allergic to peanuts." Me: "Oh yeah, I forgot. That makes it even better!" Ed did get a good laugh about this.
Today I went into Ed's office with same coworker. I noticed the nuts were gone. I said, "Ed, where are your nuts?" He said: "Somebody stole them." So somebody did in fact steal Ed's nuts.
Ed is also the guy who had 3 US quarters on his desk. Someone replaced them with 3 Canadian quarters. Never did find out who did that. Legend.2 -
Just want to put it out here... reading this will waste ur time. :(
Having a serious crush on co-worker. I tried not to have a crush on him initially because he’s a colleague and he seems to be much older(max 10 yrs I guess). Age isn’t an issue but ppl say it’s not good to like someone from work.
But then he kept on glancing at me and caught him turning back to look into my cubicle at several occasions. Saw him looking at my direction across the room, hall, turning back to look when he was waiting at lobby, and all the way from smoking corner as well. Could be possible that he just happened to be looking in my direction several times.
Now, haven’t seen him since early feb because of the quarantine. Luckily, I chanced upon his number when everyone in the dept was put into the same chat channel for the Covid19 news. I had this urge to ask what was it all about because we’ve been told to wfh till further notice. Who knows what could happen to us during these period.
So tried to be brave and asked abt why he was looking into my cubicles several times, without coming out weird (I hope). His reply was “dont know”. I don’t know what to make of it. Could have been anything else but how could someone just reply don’t know.
Then came yesterday, my friend was telling me about her experience on tinder. Apparently she’s been using it for fun and she got funny texts from the guys there. So I decided to give it a try. Man, it was so fun swiping left all the way (cuz they couldnt be compared with work crush) till I swiped right for this older guy. We matched!
He was the first one to match, probably abt 5-10mins after I’ve finished setting up profile and all that. It was totally a new experience for me. I forgot abt my work crush in that moment. He had this minimalistic vibe. Didn’t smile much in his photos, gave me calm feeling and looked so cool. He put “Everything is good in moderation” in the bio. He’s the only one comparable for that work crush. Not sure who’s supposed to start saying hi. My friends said wait for the guy, so I waited.
Got a few other matches after him but didn’t like them as much as him. I finally decided to say hi. No respond till today. Given that he put Doctor for his occupation, I assumed he’d be busy. So I waited. Then sent another in late afternoon asking if he plays LoL often (he’s wearing LoL land yard in one of the photos). No reply.
I started to feel weird because this is supposed to be light and fun because who takes things seriously on tinder, right. They’re there to flirt and kill the boredom especially because of the lockdown. And I started to have serious feelings for this one guy whom didn’t even bother to reply. So decided to delete tinder for good. Sent him one final msg that I really wanted to get to know him and I thought he’s a really cool handsome dude. But now that I’ve deleted my acc, he wouldn’t even see my msg anymore.
His profile name is Randolf. I want to get to know him in real life. But is it illegal? :(
Thank u for read this far. I just didn’t know where to put all those feelings. And sorry for wasting your time with nonsense.17 -
HR is a dead role in modern tech recruitment. You can pay programmers to do tech interviews and the rest is already automatable. Nobody needs large swarms of cubicle fucks sitting around all day poring through resumes they don’t understand pretending to add value.
Change my mind.10 -
More emarassing than frustrating..But I was applying to a couple internal positions recently and decided to bring in a sample package to demonstrate some of what I had been working on in my current team. They seemed to like the example and the interview seemed to go well...A couple hours later one of the managers came by my cubicle and asked "is that the real password?" and pointed to a line in the code. Sure enough, I had left a plain text password in the script I had just handed out to 10 panelists at 2 interviews..proceeded to collect the packets back. In the future I'll be paying closer attention to what I include lol.
Still frustrated we keep the passwords in the script though >.> any suggestions for better storage of passwords and the like in Perl scripts?3 -
I am at the meeting and I keep hearing bird signing, wind humming, sounds of spring. It seems boss is in a forest's cabin right now while every other dev is in a cubicle...5
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To all fellow Java devs out there. Remember the Java life: "We code hard in the cubicle"
https://youtu.be/b-Cr0EWwaTk -
I don’t recall why but a project was in need of an all-nighter and I was the only programmer available to do it. I even brought a sleeping bag and, about 2 hours before people started arriving for work the next morning, I slept in a gap between my cubicle and a wall. I brought a shaving kit and everything. For some reason I didn’t want people to know I had pulled the all-nighter so I had to make sure to get up and look presentable before the first person got there.
When my kids get the mistaken notion that they’ll be able to be like me right out of school and be able to make the money I make and have the flexible schedule I have and work from home and choose projects I like, I tell them my war stories about how I had to work 23 years of some hellish stuff to gain that privilege. -
I sit in a cubicle and I update bank software for the 2000 switch. You see, they wrote all this bank software and to save space, they put 98 instead of 1998. So I go through these thousands of lines of code and uh, it doesn't really matter. I, uh, I don't like my job. I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.1
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I don't wanna work 😭. My company is making me work like a donkey. I have to commute for a total of 4 hours (to and fro). I get hella tired when i reach home. I don't have any energy or life. I feel lifeless and everything makes me irritated. They are paying me $5300 in a year( i am from india) with a bond. It just seems like they are exploiting me. 😭 I can concentrate on preparing for DSA and make projects in order to switch my job. I just can't keep working, working and working at the same place with the same people inside the same cubicle. I feel so fucking irritated, lifeless and sleep deprived. They are recruiting freshers and paying more salary to them who doesn't even know how to code! And here i have been working straight for 1 year(including internship) with very good feedbacks from everyone. When i asked if i could get wfh permanently, manager said no but at the same time gave permanent wfh to the other team member having much greater experience. I feel so so sad. I finish all my work on time no matter where i am and always gets good feedback. 😭21
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Based on the current trend of show-your-workspace pictures doing the rounds, let me ask this...
How important is your workspace to you, specifically in an office environment, i.e. type of setup, amount of desk space, open plan/cubicle/office, number of colleagues on your proximity, noise pollution, etc., to your overall productivity and performance? And have you/are you able to do anything about?6 -
Someone tagged PEBCAK on here the other day and it reminded me that I have this printed and hanging in my cubicle. It helps me not break my computer when someone comes to me to help them with stupid things.
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Best way to not get distracted by the one(s) sitting in nearby cubicle(s) and talking loudly on a multi-hour teleconference: HANS ZIMMER
P.S: Over-the-ear headphones & any of Hans soundtrack will work, esply Inception & Dark Knight !! -
My first internship.
The webdev department for a engineering company is in the basement. I was given a cubicle near the middle by the wall. The ceiling light was broken so I had to work in the dark... It was a 7-4 with no pay nor do they cover any expenses. I did manage to use the experience and got a job offer at a 'proper' software company in the end. -
Why did I ever move to a cubicle in a more densely populated area? (>_<)
So many people constantly talking. It's like it's a requirement to be loud to be on this floor!2 -
Context: Working in a small IT department of an SME that sells wine during my uni placement year.
Having the MD come into the office cubicle without notice or even knocking and always expecting people to work long hours (when his dad was more of a _work efficiently 3h per day_ type of person) and not hold his promise on getting me to work on projects relevant to my degree and the initial contract (where I was also paid less than promised). -
My manager's manager doesn't know I exist.
How do I make my presence known to him, after all he controls how much raises and bonuses I get.
Tried scheduling an appointment with him weeks ago that he hasn't responded to. Saw him around my cubicle today and things became awkward3 -
Never had stickers until I got my first sticker set from devRant, till I had laptop skin :)
So of course devRant stickers are my favorite stickers and that cubicle sticker is my most favorite.2 -
I got a request on LinkedIn to endorse a past hard-working colleague of mine, but honestly, the only thing I remember about them is that they used to hang a hand-written sign over their cubicle that simply said:
if (!pain){
gain = null;
}
Is writing this a compliment?6 -
So I was moved into a smaller Cubicle until my new one was built. There was some brown stuff on the side, and my third monitor won't fit.
But at least I found a working keyboard.
2 -
http://syntheti.cc/van-build/
"Even at the very least of curing your boredom, temporarily, while you sit in your cubicle and pretend to work."
I hate this guy :|1
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