Office Stories By KNYTE

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Oct 29, 2004
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First off: I considered making this thread under the "blog" heading but I decided I'd prefer it OTO. This is the only thread I plan on replying and posting in for the time being, and it is "mine". If you have some stupid crappy comment about Zeus knows what, or some other offtopic lunacy take it elsewhere. This is not, and will not be the place for it.

Secondly: Nothing at work prevents me from posting. I chose to stop. This is my attempt at making this forum interesting again. I'm going to try to make threads that actually have a point and purpose to them, because that is what once made this forum a great place to be.

What this thread is: This is where I will be posting the on-going and somewhat funny tales that I experience working at a new place with some odd people. Please post similiar stories here if you can do so in a somewhat intelligent manner. This is not a thread for stupid crap like "omg so today my coworkrr sended me this so funy youtube video and we all laft, here it is guyz!", take that crap to the random thread and fornicate yourself with some splintery balsa wood on your way there. Since this thread is OTO if you don't like the content don't even bother hitting the reply button, just go somewhere else.

And now on to the actual content....

I need to start out by once again publicly thanking Fly, specifically for getting me this job and for all intents and purposes turning around the crappiest year this decade (2007) into so far what has been an extremely rewarding and fun new year (2008). I am fortunate enough to now work with Zac (albiet in different states) and have found him to be one of the most useful, creative, and intelligent co-workers that I've ever had, and I have to chalk up at least some of my success at this job to him and his being an available resource for me when I get stuck.

Thanks buddy.

Now to introduce the players in these stories...

Ernie - 40-something, overweight, balding, no self-esteem, terrible with money, and divorced (no kids). Ernie has a good heart but I'm disappointed to say that he suffers from a horrible case of just being a pussy. He slumps his shoulders when he walks and generally acts like the world's doormat. People commonly walk all over him, and I'd feel bad for him if he didn't bring it upon himself. Much to the surprise of everyone he was promoted to "Windows Server Admin" late last year, and is always ready to tell anyone who will listen what his job title is. He likes to talk, a lot. He rambles on for days at a time about things he commonly has absolutely no understanding of. I find myself trying to politely cut him off and occasionally saying "Get to the point, Ernie." He's a horrible speller and couldn't draft a professional-sounding email to save his life. A few weeks ago he asked me to spell "status" for him, and then had me create a sentence using it so he could send it off to his boss. Somewhere along the line he picked up the misguided conception that "admin" translates to "KNYTE's boss", which it does not. He's now in a separate department and for all intents and purposes only one promotion above me, and not my superior, and he's 12+ year's older than I am. He makes stupid mistakes, takes long lunches, and has gotten complacent 6 months into his new position. If administration was what I wanted to go into, I'd know exactly who to gun for.

Ben - 50-something, tall, skiny (gangly?), divorced (one kid, a 23 year old girl who is hot actually), inwardly angry, short-tempered. Ben used to work in asphalt. I know this because he reminds me at least weekly. I do not know why he reminds me of such a thing, but he does. He used to make parking lots for office buildings, and has the aged skin and poor sense of what one should, and should not say at work to show for it. Ben doesn't handle stress well, and is terrified of change. He's been doing things the same way around here for years and will fight tooth and nail to preserve those methods. If presented with a new, better, and faster process he immediately tries to try to find fault in it. He will spend more time in a day trying to find something wrong with something new than actually doing something productive. I am not exaggerating that statement in the least bit. Ben has this bizarre office interaction/problem resolution policy that involves starting arguments on the floor for all to see and hear. I made the mistake of allowing him to pull me into one once and told him never do it again, ever. Ben is old, almost 50 from what I understand, and ironically I could actually see myself becoming him if I continued to make career mistakes and hadn't changed my attitude towards work. Ben and I are both Network Analysts, peers if you will, but due to the fact that Ben has been here 5 years he also has generated this idea that he is my boss, which he is not. For the purpose of maintaining the peace I appear to humor his constant pseudo-orders and insistence that things be done his (old) way, but in reality I continue to go about my business with whatever new tools are at my disposal. Honestly I really am concerned that one day he's going to find out that I do things differently and lose his freaking mind.

Lonny – 40-something, whiny, divorced (no kids), sometimes condescending, panicky. Lonny is "the boss”. I use quotes because he isn't officially a manager, yet. He's on probation as a manager while the bigwigs try him out or find someone better. Lonny regularly says things like “when they make me manager” before going on a tirade about he's going to change things. What I've been unable to determine is why he isn't trying to change things RIGHT NOW while on probation to prove that he's capable of doing so. Lonny worked for “the phone company” for longer than I've been alive, climbing up phone poles and such, I guess. He's nice enough, but has a mean and condescending streak that will appear out of nowhere almost instantly. Lonny will occasionally respond to perfectly reasonable questions with a smart-ass and sometimes venomous response for no discernible reason. The first few times this happened I chalked it up to a bad day or something, but since have realized that it really is just how he is. Lonny also whines, a lot. He whines about problems with the budget, he whines about problems with other managers, he whines about problems with the phones and computers, he whines about lunch not being long enough to play a “real” game of World Of Warcraft. I'm not joking about that, at all. Lonny and I had a few misunderstandings initially because he's very short in what he asks for. He says “Go do this”, but expects you to do that and 5 other things that he thought of after the conversation was over. I've overcome this barrier by routinely asking more questions than I should have to so I stay ahead of him. Lonny likes me because I keep my mouth shut, I'm nice to people on the floor, and I get things done.

Me – The new and improved KNYTE, now with pull-string polite phrases like “Sure thing, boss”, “Anything I can do to help?”, and “Good morning!”. Over the last year I came to the conclusion that no matter how good I am at my job I will never make it in the corporate world with just merit on my side. I now know that I have to “play the game”. I have to shake hands, kiss babies, clean up messes, be polite, and make friends with as many people as I can. When I first started doing this whole routine I would go home each night feeling sick to my stomach. It was not me, I was being fake, and I hated it. But after 3 months I'm quite terrified and disgusted to say that I'm actually starting to like being nice to people *shudder. I call total strangers on the phone and act like we've been friends for years, I pretend to care about sports, TV, and even NASCAR on occasion. I stop people in the hall that I barely know and ask how their day is going. Again, the worst and most terrifying part of it all, is that I actually sort of like it. The absolutely bizarre part for me is seeing how much of a difference it makes. People smile at me and do things for me quickly, co-workers talk about me warmly to each other, bosses who I have never personally met know my name and hear of my good deeds from the people underneath them. If I had known years ago that the difference would be so stark in contrast I would have probably made the change sooner. I hear from a good friend that people are pleased with my performance and consider me someone to be depended upon and trusted. In some of the cases the things I hear portray me as being the only person in IT in this office who (his words) “knows what he's doing”. I guess change is a good thing.

Zac - You know him as Fly, I don't need to introduce that fgt any further.
 
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Story #1 - The Pixie Situation -

Since I started here the guys have had an archaic and horrible Ghost server to "speed up" new PC builds. The process commonly involved putting in a replacement network card because "they don't have drivers for the new ones". I got tired of this pretty early on and called Zac for help, who was kind enough to teach me about the already in place PXE system. Zac had built an extremely slick system of PC imaging which was basically set it and forget it. It did not require me to babysit multiple PCs and click "Next" a thousand times during sysprep, and honestly I loved him greatly for it. Ben however did NOT love him for it. From day one that I tried to teach Ben to use the PXE interface he wanted nothing to do with it. He created phantom problems with the image it used (which neither Zac nor myself were ever able to duplicate) and then would make his own superior image. Ben, Zac, and myself went back and forth numerous times and the one day Ben finally lost it. For about a week he had been trying to convince me of a new flaw that he had found in Zac's image, but I told him I couldn't replicate it. Zac exhaustively investigated it and one morning asked me to plug in a newly imaged PC so that he could check it out, which I of course did. After checking out the new PC Zac gave Ben a call and proved to him that the issue he reported simply was not there, they went back and forth for a few minutes and when Ben hung he came to me and said "Did you change that PC before you called me over?" I of course told him that I had not (which is absolutely true), to which he responded "So Zac must've fixed it before he showed it to me. Whatever, his image is broken, I'm not using it." And stormed off. He then proceeded to spend the next four hours making his own new image (which didn't work) and then the next day made a new one which actually causes the PC to lose network connectivity when it is placed at a desk.

I'd laugh if it wasn't so frustrating.

The other guys here really do have a sense and belief of "us versus them" for almost everything you can come up with. A server goes down, the Florida office did it to screw us. Our budget is cut (just like everyone else's in the company), and the Florida office did it to screw us. It's been absolutely maddening to see it from the outside as it goes on, it really is like watching a gang of angsty teenagers come up with reasons to hate the guys "in the other hood".
 
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Rated 5. Don't fuck this thread up, because some truly great stories will come of it. These PHX people are fucking crazy. I hope he adds the Ernie SCSI story, as a quickie to show the depth of idiocy that lies within him.
 
That is a lot of drama coming from a group of men. Here I sit upset at my current and last position because I felt that working with other chicks has caused me to be angsty and unhappy because all we would do is gossip and say negative and hateful things.

I'm done with it. I tried to be the happy April at the current company and feel dragged down again. Put in my two weeks without another job lined up (again) and hoping for the best.

It doesn't help that Zac has the dream relationships at his company. That place is badass.

Great post. I hope to hear more stories. They are fun to relate to. :)
 
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Me – The new and improved KNYTE, now with pull-string polite phrases like “Sure thing, boss”, “Anything I can do to help?”, and “Good morning!”. Over the last year I came to the conclusion that no matter how good I am at my job I will never make it in the corporate world with just merit on my side. I now know that I have to “play the game”. I have to shake hands, kiss babies, clean up messes, be polite, and make friends with as many people as I can. When I first started doing this whole routine I would go home each night feeling sick to my stomach. It was not me, I was being fake, and I hated it. But after 3 months I'm quite terrified and disgusted to say that I'm actually starting to like being nice to people *shudder. I call total strangers on the phone and act like we've been friends for years, I pretend to care about sports, TV, and even NASCAR on occasion. I stop people in the hall that I barely know and ask how their day is going. Again, the worst and most terrifying part of it all, is that I actually sort of like it. The absolutely bizarre part for me is seeing how much of a difference it makes. People smile at me and do things for me quickly, co-workers talk about me warmly to each other, bosses who I have never personally met know my name and hear of my good deeds from the people underneath them. If I had known years ago that the difference would be so stark in contrast I would have probably made the change sooner. I hear from a good friend that people are pleased with my performance and consider me someone to be depended upon and trusted. In some of the cases the things I hear portray me as being the only person in IT in this office who (his words) “knows what he's doing”. I guess change is a good thing.

Man, I realized some time ago that "playing the game", and acting like you care about what some menial administrative assistants kids are up too will get you farthur than actually doing work. One of the worst employee's in our office is thought of VERY highly outside of the engineering group to which he belongs becuase he TELLS everyone he's good and is overly friendly with everyone. Granted he's an easily likeable person, but it amazes me how the perception of people that have no idea what he even does think of how good he is at his job becuase he TELLS them he's good at it.

I still can't force myself to even pretend like I care... over the past year I've gotten far enough along to say "morning" back to people when they say it to me, but outside of that... how do you do it? What's the secret here?

You really kiss babies?

And if you don't mind me asking, what exactly do you do? (In detail, "analyze networks" doesn't mean much to me)
 
Story #2 - PC Load Letter? WTF does that mean? -

About 2 months ago I was at my desk when Lonny came over and said "Hey, go re-install Adobe Reader on so-and-so's PC please." I got up, gave him a "Sure thing, boss", and went on my merry way. I got to the rep's desk, re-installed Adobe and ran a few .pdf's from the internet to make sure it was working, then went back about my business, assuming I'd done the deed, and done it well. Several hours passed and a visibly angry Lonny stormed over to my desk "Why didn't you fix the printing on that PC???" he said. Stunned to the point of near-speechlessness I meekly replied "I'm sorry Lonny, I didn't know that there was a printing problem. The only thing you asked me to do was re-install Adobe Reader". A red-faced Lonny glared at me and sharply said "Well yeah, that's what I told you to do, but you need to check everything else on the PC and make sure there isn't some other kind of problem with it before you leave." By now my brain had recovered from the initial shock and was now processing the usual "Kill boss, burn down building, flee country, bring wife+kids if possible" scenario, but instead I switched back to political mode and said "Sorry about that Lonny, I'll get it sorted out." and took off to fix whatever this new problem was. It turns out that the rep needed to have a printer added for the other side of the office for some unknown reason, Adobe had been giving her fits, but the printer she needed added was the initial reason she'd called Lonny. On my way there I was going over what had happened in my head and couldn't make sense of it, but knew something had to be done in my defense otherwise Lonny would walk all over me in the future as he does to Ernie. I gathered my thoughts and went to his desk, making the decision on my there to be polite but resolute in what I said. I explained to Lonny firmly that I felt like we'd had a misunderstanding and while I was sorry for not checking the PC for unforseen issues, I didn't think that it was entirely my fault. Lonny apologized and said that he "may" have been unclear with his instructions and I returned to my desk, pleased with how things had turned out after-the-fact.

The next day I was back at work doing my thing when Ben asked me to take care of something for him, and out of nowhere Lonny piped up with "Hey Ben, make sure you're EXTRA clear with instructions for KNYTE so he doesn't get confused" and he, Ben, and Ernie burst into symphonic laughter.

I was laughing too, but only because I was thinking about kerosene and road flares.
 
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Man, I realized some time ago that "playing the game", and acting like you care about what some menial administrative assistants kids are up too will get you farthur than actually doing work. One of the worst employee's in our office is thought of VERY highly outside of the engineering group to which he belongs becuase he TELLS everyone he's good and is overly friendly with everyone. Granted he's an easily likeable person, but it amazes me how the perception of people that have no idea what he even does think of how good he is at his job becuase he TELLS them he's good at it.

I still can't force myself to even pretend like I care... over the past year I've gotten far enough along to say "morning" back to people when they say it to me, but outside of that... how do you do it? What's the secret here?

You really kiss babies?

And if you don't mind me asking, what exactly do you do? (In detail, "analyze networks" doesn't mean much to me)

Technically I rarely get to analyze networks not because I can't, but because I'm not allowed to, as Ernie puts it "that's ADMIN stuff". Basically I just fix random problems that pop up with computers, and the people who use them.
 
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Story #3 - Us versus them -

Arizona doesn't change for daylight savings like the rest of the country. Because of this our Florida office is now 3 full hours ahead of us and it makes scheduling meetings and communication a little tricky. Apparently this morning there was a general IT staff meeting that was scheduled at 6AM our time, and none of us were here for it. No big deal to me, it's one less meeting that I don't have to sit through. Ernie however feels differently, when he found out that he missed the meeting he called one of his peers in Florida and let them know that it is their responsibility to adhere to OUR schedule, not theirs. THEY need to remember that we're three hours behind on the clock and plan appropriately, or else. I listened to his end of the phone call and was somewhat amazed at how brash he was to a co-worker who is just as valuable, if not more so, to what we do here. Ernie hung up the phone and then turned to Ben to brag about how he told so-and-so off and that it won't happen again. Ben thought that was pretty freaking cool and congratulated Ernie on his successful attack on our common Florida enemies.

How and why do people act this way? Even before I changed my work attitude I never called someone up just to chew them up about something so small and ultimately irrelevant. The truly aggravating part is that now we have yet another person in Florida who I will have to eventually suck up to twice as hard to gain any ground with because Ernie chose something idiotic to be pisssed about. A simple and fairly worded email would've been just as effective, and would've done the job without adding extra emotional baggage to the mix. I tried to politely mention these concerns to Ernie and was rewarded with a “I don't care, they need to schedule their meetings better.”, and a blank and angry stare from Ben.

Things are off to a good start this morning, I think.
 
Story #4 – Certificate of Authenticity...of being extremely stubborn -

Our network has a fairly elaborate security feature which will kill a port if a PC connecting on it does not have the proper security certificate to clear it. This requires the PC to be properly setup and formatted in order for it to have its own correct certificate. If you don't set it up correctly it will, without fail, kill the port and the PC will not connect, and then a call to the network group is required to fix it, which bothers the network guys severely. After looking at the differences between the PHX computers and the Florida computers I realized that due to the way we name things here (a policy that like everything else has existed here for years) it would always kill the ports upon connection. So I put my head together with Zac (open communication and spit-swapping FTW) and he suggested deleting the existing certificate and getting a new one (a process that up to that point I was not familiar with), and guess what? It fixes the problem with extreme prejudice. Going through this method I'm now able to fix the certificate issue in seconds instead of 10-15 minutes using Ben's method (which only occasionally works anyway). For the last couple of days I've setup 5 or 6 PCs without any problems at all, Ben hasn't been as lucky unfortunately. I'd be happy to tell Ben my new secret, except that it is HE who is more or less responsible for the problem. Because of the hack-job PC image that he made and decided to use on a large number of the stocked PCs we have the certificate assumes that the PC always carries the same name as the first PC he imaged. In other words every PC he has made from a certificate standpoint is now a clone of the original, and that is why the port authority which authenticates these certificates is killing the port. I know I should tell him, but watching he and Ernie run around and curse the world (and more specifically the Florida guys) for their trouble is just too much fun. While Ernie and Ben were talking to Zac demanding he fix the problem I was two desks away repairing the certificates and getting my PCs ready to go out to the floor. Not telling them kinda goes against my “work first!” attitude, but honestly it's too much free entertainment to give up. I am a bad man.
 
The funny part to me is that the guys in PHX are high fiving each other for yelling at us, and no one here even notices. :lol:
it's like canadians and americans. ever hear of the war of 1812? I didn't think so.

I'm sooooooo glad everyone in my office relatively cool. That sounds like shite.
 
The only really strange office guy we had was the old guy that farted constantly.
He finally quit showing up, and no ones sure if he got transferred or quit or what.
No one wants to use the chair that he had tho, I can tell you that.

He was replaced about a month later by a young guy who is a bit too enthusiastic about his job. His first day here he kept telling us his job was to "help us move product". Move product? Were a fucking machine shop. We build and assemble stuff. So Ive labeled the guy "douche face" until he proves otherwise, which hasnt happened in the week hes been here.