things i don’t like about my job right now
I generally have a good job. My boss is great, most of my coworkers are good, I am good at the actual tasks, and I can set my own pace and priorities (within a limit). It pays reasonably well for my needs. But there are things that really exhaust me about it. Let me complain today.
- Every 6 months, we have to change our Windows password. I am (among other things) tech support for one of our databases that is logged into (manually) via Windows login data. So every 6 months, I get panicked calls and emails that they can’t access the database anymore. They never learn, they never remember. It’s happening right now!
- There are employees that blatantly lie and don’t care for the consequences. Yesterday for example, someone called me because they couldn’t get into the database and I helped them. Afterwards, they called my coworker saying they couldn’t reach me and to please get a document from the database for them. All because they couldn’t be arsed to search for it themselves.
- I have to work with some external parties or use their services, and it’s horrible. Their services are frequently down, don’t work, emails do not get sent or aren’t received and the personnel there has a high turnover, so they often don’t know the proper procedure of things and it falls on me and my coworkers to teach them what their predecessor did. Wild!
- The external services I have to use are set up so badly that I have to clear the browser cache every day to be able to use them or even log in. The bad setup doesn’t end here, because due to bugs and other issues, the SSO stuff seldom works, and keeping logged in doesn’t work, so I have days when I have to enter a 2FA code 10 times in 8 hours. It drives me nuts.
- Some employees here are always looking to offload more work to other people, even if it’s their job. They get an excel sheet with personal deadlines for projects, and they’ll do things like email me (who is not generating these Excel sheets, someone else does it) and ask me to please delete a row or color a specific cell for them. I wish I was joking. These are people with PhDs reading complicated papers and writing scientific reports, but some of them absolutely refuse to do the bare minimum in Excel for their own time management.
- Some of the people I have to work with cannot tell the difference between the Windows login and the different databases we use, and it’s exceptionally hard to deal with them and their tech issues because they’re missing all the vocabulary and understanding to even communicate what the problem is and where.
- The occasions when I send an email, but instead of replying back, I get a call so I have no paper trail of the reply. I then need to go out of my way to summarize our call and once again send an email to confirm and have one.
- Bonus annoyance points if I can tell the person hasn’t thought about what to say on the call until I picked up. Why are you calling me due to an email and then “uhhh ummm wait….” me? You initiated this. You could have just waited to call me until you had an answer.
- People accept commitments, like a trainee or intern, and refuse to put it in their calendar. Then when the trainee or intern is there, they say “Oh no. We forgot. Sorry, but we can’t do it, we all took time off.” or some shit. Leaves other people to scramble and step up. One of them is me.
- I work with some people who septuple email me. They write a response, send it, then think of something else and send another reply, and so on. Up to 7 times, without waiting for an answer back. Within like 20 minutes.
- I sometimes get calls for tech issues I can absolutely not help with - I do one database, that’s it. But they’ll tell me about laptop issues, about browser issues, about issues with external services (like the ones above), about other databases… and I say who they need to contact for these issues, and after a brief pause they just repeat the same thing they already said, as if now I would be more able to help.
- The insistence by some to dictate 20 characters of letters and numbers to me on the phone instead of sending me an email about it where I can clearly see and copy the number. Sometimes when I am in the office, people knock and give me a post-it with these. I wish I was joking.
- Someone I have to work with is really harsh on other people and always judging how hard or not hard other people work or mistakes others make, but refuses to work how it is mandated, down to file names, documents, email templates and everything, and makes the most mistakes of us all and frequently loses important files of mine when they fill in for me. The reason nothing happens about that is “We tried but it’s no use. That’s just how they are. They retire soon, just try and stick it out.”
- I cannot trust people to read or acknowledge emails. People delete emails without opening them (and proudly say so!) and then act like they’re not responsible for missing that vital info. I also frequently get responses to emails with questions that are already answered in the email.
- The building’s wiring and electronics systems are faulty and too old to have replacement parts, so usually our lights don’t properly work and don’t react or turn on and off randomly. The electronic windows can usually not be opened and the electronic shutters also don’t work most of the time. This sucks at 36 degrees Celsius and up!
- Leadership says office culture and not losing connection to each other is important, but is barely in the office and sequestered away in a special area of the building away from us general peasants. They say real life collaboration so important for productivity, but have no problem taking most meetings remotely via Teams while everyone else in the call is in the office. They imply communication is worse with WFH but all communication in-office is done via emails, Teams and calls as well (except the post-it situation from above). They say employees need to spread out our 2-3 days WFH per week so the office isn’t so empty on Mondays and Fridays, but upper management’s WFH is officially usually on Monday and Friday. Rules for thee, not for me.
I would appreciate it if more people tried to figure things out for themselves before making it other people’s problems. We have a huge issue with learned helplessness and weaponized incompetence here, and enablers of that, too. It just chips away at me one by one. I’ve been here 4 years now and this is roughly just half of what I deal with.
Every job can be annoying and working with other people isn’t always easy, but still. I increasingly think “This is not the experience I wanna have. I really need to leave”. I need a different environment, and I wouldn’t mind having a little more people around me that have a different attitude about work, self-organization and responsibilities, plus tools that work a little more reliably.
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