Skip to main content

Co Workers Are Awesome, Too

At work, the team of which I'm a part asks that you let everyone else know if you're going to be out on a certain day. The idea is that it's easier to figure out when we have schedule conflicts and no one sits around waiting for you if you're not around. We have a group calendar, but often times, people forget about it. Really, the de facto way of doing this is by sending out an email to the group saying, "I'll be out of the office on day X for reason Y. I'll be back on day Z, if you need to reach someone, do Q."

Now, you're under no obligation to tell everyone your business. You can say, "I need to take care of some personal matters" and that's that. However, most of the time the reasons are benign: doctor's appointments, obligations with kids, vacations. That means that people get in the habit of writing emails with the real reason why they're out.

This has led me to laugh out loud on more than one occasion. Some of the best reasons I've heard for people not coming in to the office include:
  • My neighbors were noisy last night, so I couldn't sleep. I overslept and missed the company carpool, so I'm not coming in today.
  • I'm taking a "working" vacation day. Depending on my mood, I'll fluctuate between 0% work/100% vacation and 100% work/0% vacation.
  • I pulled a muscle sneezing, and it hurts to move. I'm not coming in to the office today.
  • I have a doctor's appointment in 15 minutes, not going to make it to the office.
  • I finally got the neighbors to negotiate about this fence. I won't be in today.
  • I was going to work from home today, but I couldn't connect. The laptop wouldn't read my badge, no matter what I tried. A couple of hours later, I realized the badge reader wasn't hooked up to the laptop (to be fair, this wasn't someone who is directly on my team).
Remember, these are adults, and most of them have been with the company for a while. It's not like I'm talking about the brand new intern that doesn't know any better. These people (should) know better.

I will say, though, it makes for an interesting read. Heck, I almost get excited when I see those "my schedule" emails. Hopefully someone will have to miss some time this week ...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New York City Trip (Day 3)

By the third day of the trip, I was tired enough from the previous day's adventures/subway rides that I felt like sleeping in. And sleep in I did. I think I woke up at something like 11:30 or noon. Of course, that meant that a later start to the day, which started the vicious cycle all over again. By the time we rolled into Manhattan, it was about two in the afternoon. I had tentatively set aside Sunday to see something on Broadway, so we headed over to the tkts booth for discount tickets. There were actually various 3PM options, and after mulling our options, we figured it'd be a good idea to catch one of those. We settled on The Toxic Avenger , which was actually an off-Broadway option. However, we hadn't eaten yet, and the show started about 15 minutes after we got our tickets. Enter the food carts. There happened to be one right outside the theater, and the guy charged a little bit of a premium for the convenience. Still, I was hungry, and I had yet to try...
1 comment
Read more

Sick Days 2

I've mentioned before that getting sick is a source of amusement for me, largely because of the kids and the reactions I get from people at work. Well, it looks like I underestimated just how much laughter illness can cause. Yup, the whole process of getting sick managed to generate some (mild) amusement. First of all, my brother got a pretty bad case of strep throat, so he had to miss some time at work. He is also around kids quite a bit, so it's not uncommon for one of those "vectors of infection" he works with to get him sick in some way, shape, or form. In this case, he managed to contract a case of strep throat. His supervisor, however, was far more concerned about the work schedule than the fact that he had a really high fever and could not keep himself out of bed. She said she was going to make him come in later that day (to which he roughly said, "you're not understanding. I cannot come in to work today."), and then she insisted on a doctor...
Post a Comment
Read more

Where Do I Go?

As the days of COVID-19 are dragging on, we are having to make more adjustments to our usual routines. Some of these changes are so mundane that I haven't mentioned them at all in this blog, while others have lead to some pretty funny anecdotes . That's probably par for the course, since you wouldn't expect a global pandemic to be all giggles. As it turns out, however, not all of the anecdotes happen to us directly. Having to socially distance and remotely do things has actually led to at least one goofy episode that we found out from afar. You see, it was our niece's birthday recently, but we couldn't visit her because of the aforementioned social distancing. So, we figured we'd ship her a present and call her on her birthday. We couldn't be there in person, but we could still wish her well and try to make her feel special on her birthday. Given that shipping times have been erratic the last few months, we ordered the present with plenty of time, and it arr...
Post a Comment
Read more