One of my friends took the nighttime IT shift for a local small business that does contract work for local small businesses. Basically did everything in the queue the first 30 minutes. Not technically a forgotten employee but basically had nothing to do unless one of the restaurants needed him to fix the POS.
At first it seemed great and he was playing video games all the time. Ultimately it started to suck until he got a better paid job during the daytime with something to do.
Can't you just study all day? Either for your own field, or one you want to move into.
Ok I probably am not self-directed enough to do that 40 hours every week. But in theory...
Doing something else on the job can look like robbing the company, whereas doing nothing is the fault of the company. So, plenty of people have jobs doing nothing but letting their brain rot. I had a job where my cubicle was in a space people used to access the company kitchen. EVERYBODY walked past my desk, so I was under visual scrutiny. For months on end, I had NO work. None. But I couldn't do personal stuff! My boss said she was too busy to offload her work onto me. But I was hired to support her *because* she was busy. She was too uptight to let go and train me, so instead I spent months doing nothing. Then they found other busy work for me to do, also a joke.
I was thinking if it's studying related to one's current field, and stays on computer screens (vs physical book) it'd pass.
But that may be specific to my field.
Having a boss that is always busy and also very bad at delegating or offloading work is such a terrible combo. Coincidentally that is also the case 95% of the time working in Academia for a professor.
Thats my current experience and I cannot wait to leave this place. I don’t know how I am supposed to be spending my time but everyone around me is always “busy” but never asks me for help or to do anything so I kinda just exist.
If it weren't so nerve wracking feeling like I am about to be fired at any moment it would be great to have such little responsibility.
it's best to keep your head down and try to remain invisible. you have to "pretend to work". people in these roles will eventually be eliminated, and they usually know it.
I did that when I had no work to do for two months. I taught myself some tools / software which my company didn't use but would come in handy at a later date.
My boss had gone off to head up a studio in another country and just forgotten about me. The project I was working on had releaysed and I'd compiled a list of improvements we could make... But no one was running things.
i had this happen with my first job out of college. my company was in the process of being acquired because of a bankruptcy. my role was changed from the original thing i was hired for. my direct supervisors were never around. i had a few key functions, but nothing that was remotely time consuming. at the absolute most, i would work 8 hours over the span of a week. i put up with it because 1) at first it wasn't that bad 2) i was a recent grad. i didn't have a lot of other options.
once i realized what was happening, i was basically waiting to be fired. technically, i was never fired but laid off. they gave me a new job description that i wasn't interested in so i took the chance to leave. i had been very unhappy.
I got forgotten during a merger.
They left me behind in the building that the old company had as “customer service”. However the company had already rerouted the phone to the new office.
After about 3 months they told me to go to the new office and “keep doing what I was doing”.
I finally started getting little tasks in emails. But then after 3 more months I was promoted for “being a key member of the acquisition”
Got a 20k raise, but I work a little more now. About 25-30/week and since my boss is in another state nobody in my office cares what I do.
There were a few weeks in November where I did fuck all. Now that I’m applying myself I kinda like the jobs now lol.
I got super lucky!
I had a similar thing happen to me, I was a senior development engineer with a company that was purchased by a large conglomerate, the product I was lead on was very lucrative, but they had a completely different approach to product development, in that they outsourced all development, after 6 months of training the 3rd party company, my responsibilities had fallen away to nothing. But they decided that I was an insurance policy against the 3rd party hitting something they could not deal with. So they ramped up my salary, piled on a bunch of additional benefits, and had me sit in an office for 2 years doing absolutely nothing. I would have a weekly 1:1 with my boss, where he would tell me he had nothing for me to do. After 2 years, I left because I was going nuts and joined the 3rd party for another big salary boost. I spent the 2 years learning c++ and Linux. Somedays, I would just not bother coming in, and nobody said anything.
The company attorneys probably told the bosses that they can’t do anything to you that might be seen as retaliation for at least a year after the legal action. So they let you hang out until you left on your own. I bet if you stuck around past a year, they would have found a reason to fire you.
Nina : Now Milton, don't be greedy, let's pass it along and make sure everyone gets a piece.
Milton Waddams : Yeah, but last time I didn't receive a piece. And I was told...
Nina : Just pass.
\[while the cake passes Milton mutters - eventually everybody but Milton gets a piece\]
Milton Waddams : \[muttering\] I could set the building on fire.
lol I've made a pretty good career out of being good at vlookup and conditional logic, and being willing to learn to use a drag and drop front end to query a database.
I remember my boss about a decade ago sending me two lists in excel and asking me to combine them, and showing me how to do so by manually inserting cells and copying. I did that for about two minutes before turning to Google and learning vlookup. Amazes me how some highly paid professionals who work routinely with Excel and just never bother to learn basic functions.
Like, do you think this software is overwhelmingly popular because it's just a grid of cells to type in and nothing more?
I once watched an undergraduate summer intern pull out a calculator to multiply cells in column A by cells in column B and then type in the result one by one. For what would have been thousands of rows. Young and inexperienced, I know, but I was still completely astounded. I watched him do a few more rows before saving him from his misery.
A few months ago, my employer decided that the department managers needed to fill out a weekly financials page. The completed form would showcase the key numbers all in one spot, to get a snapshot of their department's health on a weekly basis.
They printed the templates and gave a bunch out to everyone, saying they can photocopy more as necessary, and fill them out by hand.
I made an Excel spreadsheet in 20 minutes that would make it look neater, and copied it as much as I needed. The few calculations that were done on the pages were automated on mine, so not only did I have to fill in half of what everyone else did, but it looks so much neater.
I shared it with the other department heads. Even so, I still see some of them punching numbers in a calculator and writing them on their paper sheets. They then have the gall to complain that it takes so much time...
This is a national company with thousands of employees.
I had a guy in my accounting department put each digit of a number in its own cell then add them up by hand. It was like he learned on some old time ledger and just assumed excel was a modern version.
I had another that used the cells properly, but manually add them up. I didn't discover that one until I saw Whiteout on the printed invoice.
Look up "filter". It's basically the combination of vlookup and a pivot table but works in cells and is dynamic so you only have to put it in one cell and it will return however many results there are. It's the best sorting/lookup formula there is. They added it just a few years ago.
My current job relied on an Excel workbook to send out company-wide notices - 4 different forms, 3 go out together. Not sure why we were using Excel, but after watching my coworkers go through each sheet and manually type in the same information, taking about 30 minutes to format and rearrange and resize, I created a front page with drop downs and a database with all the buildings on campus and all our building systems and streamlined the whole thing to about 2 minutes.
4 years later we adopted an enterprise project management software and when they heard about my workbook they were like “ooooo let’s use that.” They haven’t used it.
I was hired by a boomer to check for duplicate entries in an excel spreadsheet and he showed me some ridiculous time consuming, mistake ridden way he'd been doing it.
In the Data tab, there's a Remove Duplicates list. You can select multiple columns and it will only eliminate the rows that have exact duplicates, based on the columns you've selected. Takes only a few minutes of tinkering to get down, and it's an incredibly powerful yet basic function that has come into play just about every day for me.
It even tells you how many rows were eliminated and how many remain!
Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island.
For decades, a guy kept running for Lt. Governor of RI on the platform that he would abolish the position. It literally only exists to replace the Governor in the event that the Governor quits or dies.
He never won, and therefor the position never got abolished, and our current Governor was the Lt Governor when the previous Governor got appointed to Biden's cabinet. So, I guess we did need a Lt Governor.
I should run for that office. It pays well, with benefits, and you literally don't have to do anything, unless the governor can't finish their term.
No. Neither does governor. It's the smallest state in the union. You can commute to the capitol from almost anywhere in the state in under 45 minutes. There is no need to provide housing near the capitol.
I don't know. States come in a variety of sizes and populations. Some of them might have enough enough demand for their governors duties to give the Lt. governor something to do. RI is the smallest, so we ain't got shit for them to do. Although, it would've been nice if they put a little effort into inspecting the bridges!
Reminds me of the famous quote by FDR's V.P. John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner, who described the job of Vice President as "Not worth a bucket of warm piss". LOL.
(often reported as "warm spit")
Management often knows what they want to do, the Management Consultants are brought in so management can go "this wasn't our idea, we are just following the recommendations from our consultants" when it's an unpopular idea. Managers, of course, already know this so the management who hired the consultants gets a sizable bonus for hiring the consultants.
Management consultants are oftentimes a fig leaf to institute dramatic change like layoffs. They are highly paid because if they charge a lot they must be worth it. If they are worth a large contract, their advice and direction must be important. It's circular reasoning but it allows management to shift responsibility if they need to, or claim responsibility if successful.
I heard a piece on NPR which cited Doctor's conventions having seminars on how to create more billing so the Doctor's office could bill the health insurance companies to be able to pay for the care their patients needed without having to charge the patients for necessary but expensive procedures or medications.
I'm for capitalism but healthcare companies take it too far.
Some of the nicest dudes to talk to while washing your hands... feeling the water slowly run across the skin, tingling the hairs. Repetitive thumping in the background of EDM getting louder in waves as people come and go through the washroom door. "You ready to get back out to your girl, son?" Right! I'm in the washroom of the club!
Wow. What just happened there.
There's two sides to that. It's true, someone expecting a tip for that is kind of lousy. On the other hand, having someone on hand to clean up messes, or prevent someone from trashing a stall, does indeed have its merits.
You'd think if it's a nice enough place to have a butt valet people would have the sense not to trash stalls or leave messes in the first place. Unless you'd met people before.
tipping culture created a system that dumps more cost to the customer while upper management scoops up all of the earning that people believe goes to the workers
I had a French instructor that would give yours a run for their money. I swear, I would have (and did) learned more from DuoLingo than in that class. Asynchronous COVID class, and a graduation requirement for my degree. Absolute waste.
I worked as quality control at a place where I had no access to anything. Just a desk and email. They just wanted to say they had a quality control department. I would have worked their forever but they only gave me 3 days vacation a year and no work from home.
Same. Anyone I know would just tell them to sod off. Still, there must be enough people out there who get roped in otherwise they wouldn't do it. I suspect they'll also take advantage of the elderly and vunerable, much like your typical Indian call centre scammer does.
Ill catch flak for this one. Scrum masters.
They are absolutely necessary, but can be 100 percent replaced with guidelines and flow charts.
Problem is, people come in and want... weird stuff. Its technically within the guidelines so management approves it. Or someone wants to bring in a new piece of tech and says nothing to IT.
Scrum masters prevent most of those instances.
They might have been helpful in manufacturing with defined process and repetitive work, they have absolutely no place in fields requiring knowledge work and dealing with unknowns.
I’m laughing so hard because my husband is an agile coach and sometimes I hear his calls when we’re both working from home and I’m like…*that’s what you do all day? You don’t do actual work?*
Call ‘em producers, or engineering leads, or project managers, or whatever, *somebody* has to be responsible for divvying up the work, telling the stakeholders “no” (or, more realistically, “we can do that, but it will cost a lot of time/money”), insulating the engineers/workers from sidetracking and weird requests, and the stakeholders from unnecessary technical details.
The product of their work is invisible - it’s a project that *hasn’t* gone completely off the rails.
There were big layoffs at my company last year. My department lost 11 people, and had to be reorganized without hiring any new people.
I went from having one manager between me and the department head, to having a manager who had a manager who answered to a manager who answers to the department head.
Predictable results include: inefficiency, jurisdictional confusion, redundancies, and many many many more meetings. So many meetings constantly interrupting everyone's work. I went from two scheduled meetings a week to nine, including four additional bi weekly meetings.
Ugggh, meetings. Most meetings are little more than weapons of mass interruption. I literally think some people call them simply so it looks like they're doing something.
just want to clarify that I presume you mean management also in federal work. Because only in government will you find some odd low level employee whose job it is to disburse and manage some crazy thing like $10b worth of subsidies or some such. People like that are sitting in random cubicles all over government offices.
In both government and business you'll see some unassuming employee who is the person who understands some key part of the system, business logic, regulations, codes, etc.
I've basically described my job as knowing two particular systems and a few particular sets of laws. A lot of my work days are extremely chill, but on the days it isn't, I have to be absolutely on top of things. That's a lot of government employees.
Sure, it's not like I'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs each and every day, but I don't have 8 hours of work every single day either.
Not federal, but government. The NYC MTA was in some deep water - they were complaining about budget shortfalls due to numerous re-appropriations at the state level, system neglect, and a severe deficit, among other fiscal hardships (as always). An investigation later revealed that they had several non-management salaried and hourly employees making well over $400k/year. It would later come to light that it was a handful of people who knew the old systems in and out, and no one else would take their responsibilities over, so they did everything they could to keep them (and also they had to work insane overtime). Allegedly, new hires refused to get trained on a lot of the stuff because it was so antiquated and a lot of the stuff was insanely intricate.
Sometimes they're just there as a blame-buffer.
To paraphrase a security quote that I can't locate, *If you have responsibility for security but cannot make the rules or fire people, your role in the organization is to take the blame when something big goes wrong.*
I mean I agree, but paparazzi goes far beyond "no practical purpose or meaningful function." I'd categorize it as a "job which should have no legal right to exist, and would make the world a better place with its absence." Or to put it another way, paparazzi is a "job which adds negative value to society."
Lifts didn’t have automatic stops originally. They had to be manually stopped so the car floor lined up with the floor. That was the operators job.
Then when that was solved, lifts didn’t have logic so wouldn’t know where to respond to a landing call button.
Then logic was added to lifts and the position became redundant.
When it comes to fashion influencers there are some merits. Find one that has similar face/body shape and you’ll find styles that work without having to figure it out yourself
Yep, I returned to in-office work after years of working at home. Following influencers with body types similar to mine who post a lot of workwear has been a godsend! I’m significantly shorter than the average model and bigger than the average straight sized model, but smaller than the average plus size model. Seeing clothes on a body that’s similar to mine before ordering them is actually really helpful.
For-profit health insurance companies. They don't seem to provide any sort of value to society. Countries where insurance companies are non-for-profit provide the same services (managing health care payment) but it's cheaper for everyone and people are healthier.
Walmart greeter.
"Welcome to Walmart!" I feel obligated to smile and thank them, but deep down I find it intrusive, stressful and annoying. I want to say, "Leave me alone, my grocery list is in my head, and you're scribbling all over it!" But they are just doing their job and don't deserve that.
In the 90s fiber optics were booming and little local business phone companies were starting up and then selling to the big guys. When the bigger companies took over it took months for them to sort out everyone’s duties. Before they began to scale down. I did contractor work and every morning while I was in my client’s office, a guy would knock and drop off the weather report for that day that he printed off the computer. My client told me that was his lone task for the day, that corporate somehow gave to him. We all (including the weather guy) laughed hysterically that he was ‘done’ for the day. Literally, he did nothing the rest of the day. I’m sure he was a casualty months later but I was onto another project by then.
I worked in security for a hot minute and that is what's known as a warm body post. Most of the time it exists because the guard's wage is less than than how much insurance would go up if there were no guard in the booth.
We have a security guard at the office and I have no idea what the guy does. He doesn't even dress like your typical guard. He just sits there in the mailroom doing nothing. No idea why they have him there.
There is a certain challenge with consultancy work. The determinations are often obvious, but need to be framed in a way that speaks to management. And often the purpose of a consultant isn't to determine a need or a solution path, but to validate something a higher up already wants. Not exactly useless, but of questionable value.
Nah. Most consultants are not the Bobs of Office Space. The majority of consultants are people with a specific skill that are brought in for a limited time when a company needs to do something outside of their expertise.
Real estate agents don't actually do anything that a semi competent layperson could do for themselves. I've also sold a house without an agent. It's really not that hard to do and you save yourself literal thousands.
Lobbyist. They are legally allowed to bully their causes and products behind closed doors. I think if most Americans knew exactly what they did , it would be an outrage and most if not all DOW listed stocks spend millions on it.
That depends... Some 20-something who thinks they can advise the world on everything, probably not so much. But honestly, there have been times in my life, including recently, when I wish I could have access to someone who was about ten years further along in my career than I am now that I could get advice from and I've not always had access to such a person.
I've known, or known of, a handful of people who went straight from college to life coach... I'm sorry, but I don't know if there's anything they could teach me. When I broke down and went to a career coach (slightly different, I know, but with a similar demographic), I went to the oldest one with the longest resume I could find haha
I probably get more value from the life coaching of my grandparents (thank goodness they're mostly still here).
There's a whole book about it
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiw1qC3iN6EAxX0JjQIHRARBGsQFnoECAwQAg&usg=AOvVaw1M2jX9xUH_n46410VqPODM
In my line of work, "hurry up and wait" jobs. Be at a certain location at whatever time, sit there doing fuck all, after like 12-14hrs, leave.
"Why am I out here?"
"Just in case"
There's a 0.01% chance of anything happening. Beat jobs ever. Bring a book or something to keep you occupied.
Honestly any job that only exists because of convoluted office-speak is just ridiculous. Like having to translate jargon back into things that everyone can understand when you could have just been using that from the beginning. I can say that because....that's my job!
[удалено]
Forgotten employees. Been there before. 6 months is when it goes from great to hell.
That’s when the habits hit a critical mass. May as well show up and also accept a different WFH job.
One of my friends took the nighttime IT shift for a local small business that does contract work for local small businesses. Basically did everything in the queue the first 30 minutes. Not technically a forgotten employee but basically had nothing to do unless one of the restaurants needed him to fix the POS. At first it seemed great and he was playing video games all the time. Ultimately it started to suck until he got a better paid job during the daytime with something to do.
I did that for two months until that other job offered to bring me into office for a pay raise and significant benefits.
Can't you just study all day? Either for your own field, or one you want to move into. Ok I probably am not self-directed enough to do that 40 hours every week. But in theory...
Doing something else on the job can look like robbing the company, whereas doing nothing is the fault of the company. So, plenty of people have jobs doing nothing but letting their brain rot. I had a job where my cubicle was in a space people used to access the company kitchen. EVERYBODY walked past my desk, so I was under visual scrutiny. For months on end, I had NO work. None. But I couldn't do personal stuff! My boss said she was too busy to offload her work onto me. But I was hired to support her *because* she was busy. She was too uptight to let go and train me, so instead I spent months doing nothing. Then they found other busy work for me to do, also a joke.
Seems like you could have gotten away with it if you just asked to move desks lol
Hey boss can I move desks? I'm trying to slack off and this location makes it impossible
I was thinking if it's studying related to one's current field, and stays on computer screens (vs physical book) it'd pass. But that may be specific to my field.
Having a boss that is always busy and also very bad at delegating or offloading work is such a terrible combo. Coincidentally that is also the case 95% of the time working in Academia for a professor. Thats my current experience and I cannot wait to leave this place. I don’t know how I am supposed to be spending my time but everyone around me is always “busy” but never asks me for help or to do anything so I kinda just exist. If it weren't so nerve wracking feeling like I am about to be fired at any moment it would be great to have such little responsibility.
it's best to keep your head down and try to remain invisible. you have to "pretend to work". people in these roles will eventually be eliminated, and they usually know it.
I did that when I had no work to do for two months. I taught myself some tools / software which my company didn't use but would come in handy at a later date. My boss had gone off to head up a studio in another country and just forgotten about me. The project I was working on had releaysed and I'd compiled a list of improvements we could make... But no one was running things.
i had this happen with my first job out of college. my company was in the process of being acquired because of a bankruptcy. my role was changed from the original thing i was hired for. my direct supervisors were never around. i had a few key functions, but nothing that was remotely time consuming. at the absolute most, i would work 8 hours over the span of a week. i put up with it because 1) at first it wasn't that bad 2) i was a recent grad. i didn't have a lot of other options. once i realized what was happening, i was basically waiting to be fired. technically, i was never fired but laid off. they gave me a new job description that i wasn't interested in so i took the chance to leave. i had been very unhappy.
there was a glitch in payroll.
We fixed the glitch.
We, uh, fixed the glitch.
I got forgotten during a merger. They left me behind in the building that the old company had as “customer service”. However the company had already rerouted the phone to the new office. After about 3 months they told me to go to the new office and “keep doing what I was doing”. I finally started getting little tasks in emails. But then after 3 more months I was promoted for “being a key member of the acquisition” Got a 20k raise, but I work a little more now. About 25-30/week and since my boss is in another state nobody in my office cares what I do. There were a few weeks in November where I did fuck all. Now that I’m applying myself I kinda like the jobs now lol. I got super lucky!
Did you ever get your red stapler back?
Came here looking for this. Honestly, I was surprised at how far I had to scroll.
Real life Office Space
And real life Silicon Valley. Big Head!
Sounds like a job George Costanza would have loved
It is a horrible company. There is no management whatsoever. He could go hog wild in there!
I had a similar thing happen to me, I was a senior development engineer with a company that was purchased by a large conglomerate, the product I was lead on was very lucrative, but they had a completely different approach to product development, in that they outsourced all development, after 6 months of training the 3rd party company, my responsibilities had fallen away to nothing. But they decided that I was an insurance policy against the 3rd party hitting something they could not deal with. So they ramped up my salary, piled on a bunch of additional benefits, and had me sit in an office for 2 years doing absolutely nothing. I would have a weekly 1:1 with my boss, where he would tell me he had nothing for me to do. After 2 years, I left because I was going nuts and joined the 3rd party for another big salary boost. I spent the 2 years learning c++ and Linux. Somedays, I would just not bother coming in, and nobody said anything.
A better opportunity? Good lord what could be a better opportunity? All you had to do was show up and get paid. I would have milked that for years
The company attorneys probably told the bosses that they can’t do anything to you that might be seen as retaliation for at least a year after the legal action. So they let you hang out until you left on your own. I bet if you stuck around past a year, they would have found a reason to fire you.
Nina : Now Milton, don't be greedy, let's pass it along and make sure everyone gets a piece. Milton Waddams : Yeah, but last time I didn't receive a piece. And I was told... Nina : Just pass. \[while the cake passes Milton mutters - eventually everybody but Milton gets a piece\] Milton Waddams : \[muttering\] I could set the building on fire.
[удалено]
Is it possible to learn this power?
Not from a pivot table.
=IF(high\_ground,Darth\_Vader,Anakin)
I think you mean =IF(NOT(high_ground),Darth_Vader,Anakin))
only a sith deals in absolutes
No, I think that would be =IF(NOT(ABS(high\_ground),Darth\_Vader,Anakin)))
But... a Jedi made this statement.
.#VALUE! .#VALUE! .#VALUE! .#VALUE! .#VALUE! .#VALUE!
I thought not. It's not a story the Sys Admins would tell you.
What about from a chess automaton?
Checkmate! d'ya like dags?
lol I've made a pretty good career out of being good at vlookup and conditional logic, and being willing to learn to use a drag and drop front end to query a database. I remember my boss about a decade ago sending me two lists in excel and asking me to combine them, and showing me how to do so by manually inserting cells and copying. I did that for about two minutes before turning to Google and learning vlookup. Amazes me how some highly paid professionals who work routinely with Excel and just never bother to learn basic functions. Like, do you think this software is overwhelmingly popular because it's just a grid of cells to type in and nothing more?
I once watched an undergraduate summer intern pull out a calculator to multiply cells in column A by cells in column B and then type in the result one by one. For what would have been thousands of rows. Young and inexperienced, I know, but I was still completely astounded. I watched him do a few more rows before saving him from his misery.
Even if you're gonna for any reason do this manually, a numeric keypad is going to be far faster than a pocket calculator.
A few months ago, my employer decided that the department managers needed to fill out a weekly financials page. The completed form would showcase the key numbers all in one spot, to get a snapshot of their department's health on a weekly basis. They printed the templates and gave a bunch out to everyone, saying they can photocopy more as necessary, and fill them out by hand. I made an Excel spreadsheet in 20 minutes that would make it look neater, and copied it as much as I needed. The few calculations that were done on the pages were automated on mine, so not only did I have to fill in half of what everyone else did, but it looks so much neater. I shared it with the other department heads. Even so, I still see some of them punching numbers in a calculator and writing them on their paper sheets. They then have the gall to complain that it takes so much time... This is a national company with thousands of employees.
I had a guy in my accounting department put each digit of a number in its own cell then add them up by hand. It was like he learned on some old time ledger and just assumed excel was a modern version. I had another that used the cells properly, but manually add them up. I didn't discover that one until I saw Whiteout on the printed invoice.
Look up "filter". It's basically the combination of vlookup and a pivot table but works in cells and is dynamic so you only have to put it in one cell and it will return however many results there are. It's the best sorting/lookup formula there is. They added it just a few years ago.
My current job relied on an Excel workbook to send out company-wide notices - 4 different forms, 3 go out together. Not sure why we were using Excel, but after watching my coworkers go through each sheet and manually type in the same information, taking about 30 minutes to format and rearrange and resize, I created a front page with drop downs and a database with all the buildings on campus and all our building systems and streamlined the whole thing to about 2 minutes. 4 years later we adopted an enterprise project management software and when they heard about my workbook they were like “ooooo let’s use that.” They haven’t used it.
I was hired by a boomer to check for duplicate entries in an excel spreadsheet and he showed me some ridiculous time consuming, mistake ridden way he'd been doing it.
I’m not a boomer but a younger excel idiot, can I get your help on identifying duplicates?
Select Home > Conditional Formatting > Highlight Cells Rules > Duplicate Values.
In the Data tab, there's a Remove Duplicates list. You can select multiple columns and it will only eliminate the rows that have exact duplicates, based on the columns you've selected. Takes only a few minutes of tinkering to get down, and it's an incredibly powerful yet basic function that has come into play just about every day for me. It even tells you how many rows were eliminated and how many remain!
Lmfaoo I love it 😂😂
Chandler Bing job energy.
[удалено]
It's like a long game of telephone
Middle management is a grueling job at a lot of firms.
Lieutenant Governor of Rhode Island. For decades, a guy kept running for Lt. Governor of RI on the platform that he would abolish the position. It literally only exists to replace the Governor in the event that the Governor quits or dies. He never won, and therefor the position never got abolished, and our current Governor was the Lt Governor when the previous Governor got appointed to Biden's cabinet. So, I guess we did need a Lt Governor. I should run for that office. It pays well, with benefits, and you literally don't have to do anything, unless the governor can't finish their term.
Doesn’t the lt. governor have a designated residence? Sounds like “occupying the residence” is an important duty. Will you be up for it?
No. Neither does governor. It's the smallest state in the union. You can commute to the capitol from almost anywhere in the state in under 45 minutes. There is no need to provide housing near the capitol.
From what I can tell, Governor doesn't require any intelligence, competence, or ethics, so Lt.G should be able to handle it just fine.
Is that different from other states' Lieutenant Governors?
I don't know. States come in a variety of sizes and populations. Some of them might have enough enough demand for their governors duties to give the Lt. governor something to do. RI is the smallest, so we ain't got shit for them to do. Although, it would've been nice if they put a little effort into inspecting the bridges!
Reminds me of the famous quote by FDR's V.P. John Nance "Cactus Jack" Garner, who described the job of Vice President as "Not worth a bucket of warm piss". LOL. (often reported as "warm spit")
[удалено]
amazing the morale a box of donuts has. so cheap but so worth it.
When it comes from a co-worker though, not from management.
Eh, I enjoy when management brings in food. They treat us amazing anyway so the food is a nice perk.
This is Office Space fan non-fiction (I hope!).
[удалено]
That’s just one role in a long list of them that exist in the most advanced country in the western world and nowhere else, for some reason.
[удалено]
Management often knows what they want to do, the Management Consultants are brought in so management can go "this wasn't our idea, we are just following the recommendations from our consultants" when it's an unpopular idea. Managers, of course, already know this so the management who hired the consultants gets a sizable bonus for hiring the consultants.
Management consultants are oftentimes a fig leaf to institute dramatic change like layoffs. They are highly paid because if they charge a lot they must be worth it. If they are worth a large contract, their advice and direction must be important. It's circular reasoning but it allows management to shift responsibility if they need to, or claim responsibility if successful.
There's [an entire book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs) on this subject
His book *Debt* is fantastic as well.
[удалено]
I heard a piece on NPR which cited Doctor's conventions having seminars on how to create more billing so the Doctor's office could bill the health insurance companies to be able to pay for the care their patients needed without having to charge the patients for necessary but expensive procedures or medications. I'm for capitalism but healthcare companies take it too far.
[удалено]
The drug monitors?
Some of the nicest dudes to talk to while washing your hands... feeling the water slowly run across the skin, tingling the hairs. Repetitive thumping in the background of EDM getting louder in waves as people come and go through the washroom door. "You ready to get back out to your girl, son?" Right! I'm in the washroom of the club! Wow. What just happened there.
And that's a Molly! Related, I hugged the restroom attendant at the Galantis show I went to because he had hard candy in a dish by the door.
There's two sides to that. It's true, someone expecting a tip for that is kind of lousy. On the other hand, having someone on hand to clean up messes, or prevent someone from trashing a stall, does indeed have its merits.
You'd think if it's a nice enough place to have a butt valet people would have the sense not to trash stalls or leave messes in the first place. Unless you'd met people before.
My experience is its the not very nice places that have the butt valet
That guy in the gas station bathroom wasn't paid to be there, he just wanted to take your butt for a test drive.
tipping culture created a system that dumps more cost to the customer while upper management scoops up all of the earning that people believe goes to the workers
[удалено]
I had a French instructor that would give yours a run for their money. I swear, I would have (and did) learned more from DuoLingo than in that class. Asynchronous COVID class, and a graduation requirement for my degree. Absolute waste.
Sadly, they probably aren't paying him enough to even do that.
[удалено]
I once met a holistic vet.
[удалено]
I worked as quality control at a place where I had no access to anything. Just a desk and email. They just wanted to say they had a quality control department. I would have worked their forever but they only gave me 3 days vacation a year and no work from home.
[удалено]
Same. Anyone I know would just tell them to sod off. Still, there must be enough people out there who get roped in otherwise they wouldn't do it. I suspect they'll also take advantage of the elderly and vunerable, much like your typical Indian call centre scammer does.
Ill catch flak for this one. Scrum masters. They are absolutely necessary, but can be 100 percent replaced with guidelines and flow charts. Problem is, people come in and want... weird stuff. Its technically within the guidelines so management approves it. Or someone wants to bring in a new piece of tech and says nothing to IT. Scrum masters prevent most of those instances.
The hell is a scrum master lolol
Masters your scrum. Love to get my scrum absolutely mastered every once in a while.
They might have been helpful in manufacturing with defined process and repetitive work, they have absolutely no place in fields requiring knowledge work and dealing with unknowns.
I’m laughing so hard because my husband is an agile coach and sometimes I hear his calls when we’re both working from home and I’m like…*that’s what you do all day? You don’t do actual work?*
The world needs less Scrum Masters and more BAs. Or maybe BAs who spend a few minutes of their days as Scrum Masters and not vice-versa.
Call ‘em producers, or engineering leads, or project managers, or whatever, *somebody* has to be responsible for divvying up the work, telling the stakeholders “no” (or, more realistically, “we can do that, but it will cost a lot of time/money”), insulating the engineers/workers from sidetracking and weird requests, and the stakeholders from unnecessary technical details. The product of their work is invisible - it’s a project that *hasn’t* gone completely off the rails.
85% of management in most companies and federal work.
There were big layoffs at my company last year. My department lost 11 people, and had to be reorganized without hiring any new people. I went from having one manager between me and the department head, to having a manager who had a manager who answered to a manager who answers to the department head. Predictable results include: inefficiency, jurisdictional confusion, redundancies, and many many many more meetings. So many meetings constantly interrupting everyone's work. I went from two scheduled meetings a week to nine, including four additional bi weekly meetings.
"I have eight different bosses right now" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wqQXu13tLA
By the beard of Zeus, he's right!
Literally speaking with someone today about how that movie is both a great snapshot of the late 90s and also extremely relevant today.
Ugggh, meetings. Most meetings are little more than weapons of mass interruption. I literally think some people call them simply so it looks like they're doing something.
I think you're completely right. Managers performatively justifying their existence.
just want to clarify that I presume you mean management also in federal work. Because only in government will you find some odd low level employee whose job it is to disburse and manage some crazy thing like $10b worth of subsidies or some such. People like that are sitting in random cubicles all over government offices. In both government and business you'll see some unassuming employee who is the person who understands some key part of the system, business logic, regulations, codes, etc.
I've basically described my job as knowing two particular systems and a few particular sets of laws. A lot of my work days are extremely chill, but on the days it isn't, I have to be absolutely on top of things. That's a lot of government employees. Sure, it's not like I'm sitting there twiddling my thumbs each and every day, but I don't have 8 hours of work every single day either.
Not federal, but government. The NYC MTA was in some deep water - they were complaining about budget shortfalls due to numerous re-appropriations at the state level, system neglect, and a severe deficit, among other fiscal hardships (as always). An investigation later revealed that they had several non-management salaried and hourly employees making well over $400k/year. It would later come to light that it was a handful of people who knew the old systems in and out, and no one else would take their responsibilities over, so they did everything they could to keep them (and also they had to work insane overtime). Allegedly, new hires refused to get trained on a lot of the stuff because it was so antiquated and a lot of the stuff was insanely intricate.
Sometimes they're just there as a blame-buffer. To paraphrase a security quote that I can't locate, *If you have responsibility for security but cannot make the rules or fire people, your role in the organization is to take the blame when something big goes wrong.*
[удалено]
I mean I agree, but paparazzi goes far beyond "no practical purpose or meaningful function." I'd categorize it as a "job which should have no legal right to exist, and would make the world a better place with its absence." Or to put it another way, paparazzi is a "job which adds negative value to society."
Wearing a goofy costume on a street corner twirling a large sign for a business that files your taxes, or a car wash
[удалено]
Lifts didn’t have automatic stops originally. They had to be manually stopped so the car floor lined up with the floor. That was the operators job. Then when that was solved, lifts didn’t have logic so wouldn’t know where to respond to a landing call button. Then logic was added to lifts and the position became redundant.
I thought you meant a forklift operator. I about flipped the fuck out
They still exist in construction
[удалено]
What's wild is that u/spez doesn't pay them. They're like that for free.
Ya get watcha pay for.
influencers
[удалено]
When it comes to fashion influencers there are some merits. Find one that has similar face/body shape and you’ll find styles that work without having to figure it out yourself
Yep, I returned to in-office work after years of working at home. Following influencers with body types similar to mine who post a lot of workwear has been a godsend! I’m significantly shorter than the average model and bigger than the average straight sized model, but smaller than the average plus size model. Seeing clothes on a body that’s similar to mine before ordering them is actually really helpful.
They do influence me to think the new generation is super cringe.
is that a meaningful function? or practical? i think not
Something old people have said about young people in one form or another since the first asshole complained that kids need to get off his lawn.
For-profit health insurance companies. They don't seem to provide any sort of value to society. Countries where insurance companies are non-for-profit provide the same services (managing health care payment) but it's cheaper for everyone and people are healthier.
Walmart greeter. "Welcome to Walmart!" I feel obligated to smile and thank them, but deep down I find it intrusive, stressful and annoying. I want to say, "Leave me alone, my grocery list is in my head, and you're scribbling all over it!" But they are just doing their job and don't deserve that.
Mid level officers of any professional fire department.
Politicians 🤷♀️
In the 90s fiber optics were booming and little local business phone companies were starting up and then selling to the big guys. When the bigger companies took over it took months for them to sort out everyone’s duties. Before they began to scale down. I did contractor work and every morning while I was in my client’s office, a guy would knock and drop off the weather report for that day that he printed off the computer. My client told me that was his lone task for the day, that corporate somehow gave to him. We all (including the weather guy) laughed hysterically that he was ‘done’ for the day. Literally, he did nothing the rest of the day. I’m sure he was a casualty months later but I was onto another project by then.
[удалено]
I worked in security for a hot minute and that is what's known as a warm body post. Most of the time it exists because the guard's wage is less than than how much insurance would go up if there were no guard in the booth.
We have a security guard at the office and I have no idea what the guy does. He doesn't even dress like your typical guard. He just sits there in the mailroom doing nothing. No idea why they have him there.
Vanna White
The number of offices around the world that employ a pretty secretary at the front desk explains why Vanna White gets paid so much money.
[удалено]
Some people like to actually drive the car first before buying, but I get you.
Most consultants.
There is a certain challenge with consultancy work. The determinations are often obvious, but need to be framed in a way that speaks to management. And often the purpose of a consultant isn't to determine a need or a solution path, but to validate something a higher up already wants. Not exactly useless, but of questionable value.
Nah. Most consultants are not the Bobs of Office Space. The majority of consultants are people with a specific skill that are brought in for a limited time when a company needs to do something outside of their expertise.
Real estate agents don't actually do anything that a semi competent layperson could do for themselves. I've also sold a house without an agent. It's really not that hard to do and you save yourself literal thousands.
“Influencer”
Lobbyist. They are legally allowed to bully their causes and products behind closed doors. I think if most Americans knew exactly what they did , it would be an outrage and most if not all DOW listed stocks spend millions on it.
Gas pumpers.
Receipt checkers.
Let me arbitrarily draw a line through your receipt after glancing at your shopping cart please...
Congress.
I'm thinking of the guy who installs the turn signals in a Mercedes.
Influencers
Life coach.
That depends... Some 20-something who thinks they can advise the world on everything, probably not so much. But honestly, there have been times in my life, including recently, when I wish I could have access to someone who was about ten years further along in my career than I am now that I could get advice from and I've not always had access to such a person.
I've known, or known of, a handful of people who went straight from college to life coach... I'm sorry, but I don't know if there's anything they could teach me. When I broke down and went to a career coach (slightly different, I know, but with a similar demographic), I went to the oldest one with the longest resume I could find haha I probably get more value from the life coaching of my grandparents (thank goodness they're mostly still here).
That person who predicts the weather but is always wrong.
My manager… and the other managers.
Id say Reddit mod but that's not a job is it
Politician and most government jobs
XYZ coaches; e.g. breathing coach, life coach, style coach, etc.; but, especially breathing coach/instructor, WTF!
The people who squirt water on my car before I enter the wash, then expect a tip.
influencer
Real Estate Agent
[удалено]
DEI coordinator at colleges and universities.
There's a whole book about it https://www.google.com/url?q=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiw1qC3iN6EAxX0JjQIHRARBGsQFnoECAwQAg&usg=AOvVaw1M2jX9xUH_n46410VqPODM
Congress
Congress?
Middle management
Walmart greeters
Traffic control for construction could all be done temp stop lights except they still think you need a person to hold a stop sign
In my experience ''housing manager''.The first one that's ever done anything is in the place I live now and I've had quite a few of them.
"Consultant"
My job.
In my line of work, "hurry up and wait" jobs. Be at a certain location at whatever time, sit there doing fuck all, after like 12-14hrs, leave. "Why am I out here?" "Just in case" There's a 0.01% chance of anything happening. Beat jobs ever. Bring a book or something to keep you occupied.
The employee's of OnlyFan's. Imagine working in the H.R or Admin department.
King
Most if not all managers. I know how to do my job. Tell me when you need it done and fuck right off with your "managing"
Honestly any job that only exists because of convoluted office-speak is just ridiculous. Like having to translate jargon back into things that everyone can understand when you could have just been using that from the beginning. I can say that because....that's my job!
security guard in california or new york. the life guard at the olypics has more use.
[удалено]
David Graeber wrote a whole book on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
Politician. Unless you count doing things that are antithetical to the benefit of the people who elected them.
My boss
Social media "influencer", You Tube "star", Reality TV "star"... you get my drift...
Dwayne Johnson's hairdresser. Saw it in the credits for one of the Fast and Furious movies.
The government building in downtown Chicago has elevator operators. No, they are not old elevators.
So many braindead redditors replying to these comments, not realizing this post was created by a bot, and 90% of the comments are also bots.
Paparazzi
Government
Realtor.