Originally Posted by golden_eve

I'm a little pissed off about something, but I have to let it go, in understanding that this is the kind of crap that happens at work. But really, here we go again?? Seriously?

We have company meetings periodically whereby kudos are given to those who have worked hard and/or achieved something big. Awards or gift cards are given to those who are nominated for achievement recognition.

Well, I had achieved something pretty major. My boss told me he would mention it in the next company meeting. We had a talk about it the day before, and I mentioned again the specifics around those achievements.

Well, when it came to my boss's turn to speak about our team and to give a shout out to specific members, he mentioned me and one of my smaller achievements, but he didn't even mention the biggest and most important of all. I got a client's website to rank on page 1 of Google for a very high volume search term (74,000 searches/month) that they had lost ranking for a year ago, contributing to a major loss of web traffic and subsequently revenue for the last year. Well, my boss didn't even mention this part!!!!! And I had even reminded him of it the day before!

Now, my colleague who was just promoted had been on this same client account before me, and he did not resolve that ranking loss himself. Nor did he bring in more revenue and traffic for this client, like I have achieved. So I am thinking that this was purely political on my boss's part, to avoid any conflict. Not only that but potentially it shows favoritism and is unprofessional, which concerns me a little.

So I am upset that the acknowledgement was seriously watered down. That was a big deal, to regain that one ranking, which now has brought traffic and revenue near to its level from last year. The website has struggled for an entire year with massive revenue and traffic losses, and I am helping to resolve that now. This colleague is also friends with my boss & drove him to the airport the other day.

I guess what upsets me the most is that this is a pattern in my life whereby bosses don't want to acknowledge, celebrate and nurture my talents and successes. In fact, many bosses have tried to squash my success. It really angers me. And I feel my current boss is doing something similar.

I may approach him next week to casually ask him why he did not mention this ranking gain. I won't be confrontational at all, but I want to ask him and let him know that it did not slip my attention.

Luckily, I had thought to inform the company CEO myself of this achievement prior to this meeting. If my boss won't celebrate or acknowledge it, then I will have to toot my own horn. A hard lesson I've had to learn in the work environment.

Thanks for listening. I really needed to vent!!!

I think what this may mean and point to is me working for myself again. I cannot keep going through this torture again and again with bosses who won't recognize my talents and successes. What the hell?

I am not ready now, but I may be again in a few years. Maybe two years.

[Mountaindewed]

I’m not looking forward to work at all tomorrow. But who does after being off all weekend?

[rechu]

I completely understand you Golden Eve. Several of us in my department are feeling totally unappreciated and unrecognized for our work. Our boss only likes the people that suck up to her. With me, she has become hypercritical over issues when the problem is really her not undestanding things. It is so demoralizing. I honestly don't respect her and think she's a terrible manager.

She has some sort of health problem that has her going out on long medical leaves at times. It sort of follows this pattern of her becoming more and more dense and difficult to deal with, then she takes some time off for doctor appts and then leave is announced. I wonder if her issue is neurological. My husband had a boss that showed similar behavior and she had been diagnosed with a neurological problem. I am really hoping we will be hearing that she is going on leave soon. I can't take much more. Like you, I sort of would like to freelance again. But my husband and I just bought a house, so we need this income for now.

[seesaw]

I am trying to deal with this client that is a fairly easy gig but they tend to take up a large portion of my time and I have actually tried to quit them a couple of times. I think what's most annoying is that I'm finding it hard to deal with a client who is so comfortable being so small time. Not committed to excellence in any of their marketing or communications or anything, and it sort of is starting to reflect poorly on me, I feel. Like people come to me about stuff I don't consult for them on and ask my why there are mistakes or why things are left out or why it's poorly designed. And so it affiliates me with this poor quality. They are a chamber ensemble and the musical quality is fantastic, it's just that they seem to not care too highly about the quality of how they present themselves as an organization. Sigh...I just need to bear it out a little while longer then I can probably safely and kindly extricate myself at the end of the season. The biggest problem is that I could do a lot of things for them but our contract is not set up to allow me to do those things. I think I will actually communicate that to them, and why it's becoming a problem for me. Asking me for things outside my scope of work that I can't/won't get paid for, etc. I want them to succeed; I love their little organization, but we have to work out a different consulting scope of work and payment for this to keep working for me.

Okay...time to get going...

Originally Posted by rechu

I completely understand you Golden Eve. Several of us in my department are feeling totally unappreciated and unrecognized for our work. Our boss only likes the people that suck up to her. With me, she has become hypercritical over issues when the problem is really her not undestanding things. It is so demoralizing. I honestly don't respect her and think she's a terrible manager.

She has some sort of health problem that has her going out on long medical leaves at times. It sort of follows this pattern of her becoming more and more dense and difficult to deal with, then she takes some time off for doctor appts and then leave is announced. I wonder if her issue is neurological. My husband had a boss that showed similar behavior and she had been diagnosed with a neurological problem. I am really hoping we will be hearing that she is going on leave soon. I can't take much more. Like you, I sort of would like to freelance again. But my husband and I just bought a house, so we need this income for now.

Hi Rechu, I'm so sorry to hear this. That IS demoralizing. It impacts employee morale greatly, dealing with a boss you don't respect. I've been there too many times in my life, so I can fully relate and empathize! ARGH.

I despise suck ups and don't do well with that myself. I am not a suck up, nor am I a fake. When sucks ups receive favoritism, it's just not right. What about those who work hard and earn their way?

I hope your boss goes on leave, for your sake. It sounds like she needs to, if she's out of work so frequently.

I wish I had better words of comfort for you, or even some good advice. It just sucks when you have a crappy boss. (((((((((hugs))))))))

Originally Posted by seesaw

I am trying to deal with this client that is a fairly easy gig but they tend to take up a large portion of my time and I have actually tried to quit them a couple of times. I think what's most annoying is that I'm finding it hard to deal with a client who is so comfortable being so small time. Not committed to excellence in any of their marketing or communications or anything, and it sort of is starting to reflect poorly on me, I feel. Like people come to me about stuff I don't consult for them on and ask my why there are mistakes or why things are left out or why it's poorly designed. And so it affiliates me with this poor quality. They are a chamber ensemble and the musical quality is fantastic, it's just that they seem to not care too highly about the quality of how they present themselves as an organization. Sigh...I just need to bear it out a little while longer then I can probably safely and kindly extricate myself at the end of the season. The biggest problem is that I could do a lot of things for them but our contract is not set up to allow me to do those things. I think I will actually communicate that to them, and why it's becoming a problem for me. Asking me for things outside my scope of work that I can't/won't get paid for, etc. I want them to succeed; I love their little organization, but we have to work out a different consulting scope of work and payment for this to keep working for me.

Okay...time to get going...

Oh I hear you on that!!!

Why do so many organizations settle for mediocre? I just don't get it.

I feel for you and know that feeling of not wanting to be associated with poor quality work, especially when with your own work, you strive for excellence. I get it. At least you have an end date in site, or you negotiate a different scope of work. That sounds promising. Yes, make it work for you. Sounds wise!

[seesaw]

Originally Posted by golden_eve

Oh I hear you on that!!!

Why do so many organizations settle for mediocre? I just don't get it.

I feel for you and know that feeling of not wanting to be associated with poor quality work, especially when with your own work, you strive for excellence. I get it. At least you have an end date in site, or you negotiate a different scope of work. That sounds promising. Yes, make it work for you. Sounds wise!

Yeah, I actually had my monthly call with them and they are so sweet, and I'm like, oh maybe I'll keep helping them...I'm such a sucker. Doh!

Originally Posted by seesaw

Yeah, I actually had my monthly call with them and they are so sweet, and I'm like, oh maybe I'll keep helping them...I'm such a sucker. Doh!

LOL. That's understandable. Maybe think about how best you can help them, like you said above, and aim to expand beyond your contract with them, if I understood correctly.

[Mountaindewed]

A manager pulled a coworker aside to do something else and didn’t fill her position. So the work was piling up and the manager was yelling at us like it was our fault. We were griping to ourselves and saying “Put someone in her spot if you want us to keep up.”

Also it was kind of weird but when we were cleaning up it was like she was telling us to stay later. I kept telling her it was time to go. And she wasn’t listening and she was saying “15 more minutes” and just talking over me. I want to say she just didn’t hear me. She’s not usually the manger working with us. But finally she said “oh what time is it?” My coworker was thanking me for standing my ground because she was clamming up. Work was just a mess today but I figured it would be.

[Mountaindewed]

My coworker is kind of being a jerk to me. I asked the manager for something and the coworker mocked me. I just shrugged it off. Then today she put the pen we use to clock in in her pocket and walked off with it. I think she did it on purpose because she glanced back at me. I can see where she’s coming from because I am more accepted in the work place by other coworkers and management and I’ve been told that. I get more hours than her and I get to do better tasks because I perform them better. I’ve always been an easy target too. I’m just blowing it off and not letting it bug me. She’s just a jerk.

[rechu]

Originally Posted by golden_eve

Hi Rechu, I'm so sorry to hear this. That IS demoralizing. It impacts employee morale greatly, dealing with a boss you don't respect. I've been there too many times in my life, so I can fully relate and empathize! ARGH.

I despise suck ups and don't do well with that myself. I am not a suck up, nor am I a fake. When sucks ups receive favoritism, it's just not right. What about those who work hard and earn their way?

I hope your boss goes on leave, for your sake. It sounds like she needs to, if she's out of work so frequently.

I wish I had better words of comfort for you, or even some good advice. It just sucks when you have a crappy boss. (((((((((hugs))))))))

Thanks Eve. I really hope she takes leave. She is more unbearable every day.
Usually she doesn’t do much editing, but yesterday she decided to edit everything I sent to editing and nitpick constantly. More than half the time I actually was right. I add notes to explain anything I worry may not be understood by an editor or someone else that works on the project later, as per her instructions. But, she wasn’t reading the notes. She was asking about things that were explained in the notes I had added. Lovely, she always tells others to add/read notes but doesn’t bother with it herself and I end up having to waste time re-explaining stuff. I did in the end copy/paste the notes and send them to her, sort of saying, if you had looked, you wouldn’t need to ask me. She just wanted to jump all over anything I did.
She also did things like add text to what I have written that you are not supposed to. For example, we have a field for the description of a project. That is only supposed to include things that don’t have their own designated field. She added the location to the description. There is a designated field for that. Had I done that, you know I would hear about it.
I really think she wants me to quit. She’s done this to others. Sours on them and either fires them or becomes overly critical so they quit. I have been there a while, so they will owe me a decent severance package. If she says she wants to fire me, upper management will not be happy about having to pay. If she wants me gone, they can pay me. I don’t have anything lined up right now, and I need the job. So for the time being I will stick it out. At least we have this space to vent.

[rechu]

And another annoyance. Some of the projects I have worked on lately are things that were way out of date because none of my co-workers could get information. I was able to get info and update them. Do I get as much as a "well done" for being able to do that? I think you know the answer, of course not!!

[Mountaindewed]

It turns out I was most likely having a reaction to my antibiotic. I have stopped the antibiotic and am taking Allegra now. I was in distress yesterday at work and my coworkers could tell. I hope tomorrow goes smoother. Also I have to leave work 50 minutes early next Tuesday for my doctors appointment. It was all he had and I was told today he defiantly wants to see me. I hope work doesn’t give me a hard time about it.

I’m worried the workload is just going to keep piling on. I’m at my limit and don’t know how much more I can take.

[Mountaindewed]

Work wasn’t too bad today. It’s just because we are closed on Easter that people are freaking out.

[seesaw]

I'm totally irritated. My client/boss hired this PR firm to help do media relations for this project we launched. I'm the lead on the project. Totally excited to have this PR firm working for us EXCEPT they are rude to me, don't respond to my messages, get offended when I very politely and simply ask for the status of a variety of tasks they agreed to do, or when I ask about things they said they'd do or tasks they said they'd complete by a certain day/time and it's now overdue. They refuse to tell us at all what exactly they are doing, and so far, a week in, they have garnered no results. I know that's not very long, but I do not think they have even sent any pitches out.

Then when they do respond to our emails, they tell us things that were wrong, I think in an attempt to excuse themselves from responsibility, but instead my question is, well, if you knew that was an issue then why didn't you raise that issue before we went live? Literally that's your job. And you said nothing.

And today they said in so many words that basically other clients are more important than us right now. And I made a request of one of them to do some research on something and make a recommendation, and she basically told me that it would be a low priority because of the other things she is doing for us, except we don't know what those "other things" are because they won't update us or tell us what exactly they are doing.

I am a consultant, and I would never respond to a client, even if I'm busy, with anything that made me think they weren't important to me as a client. Especially if I cancel meetings at the last minute, miss meetings I agreed to, come late and leave early to meetings I agreed to, and don't respond to emails, text messages, or phone calls.

My client is sort of like, well just let them sink or swim. If they get us some press then great, they can continue to work how they do, if not, we won't work with them anymore. And that would be fine except that she (my client/boss) keeps asking me to assign work to them or ask them to assist us and I CANNOT do that since they will not complete work or respond to requests.

If my boss/client brings it up again, I'm going to flat out tell her that I cannot make requests of them because they do not respond or argue with me when I make a request, and that they have been rude, not just to me, but to other staff members, a number of times. I do not think she should continue to waste money on them. I don't think they are doing anything. They haven't given us enough information to believe they are doing anything. And they are not acting like people of integrity. If you can't make meetings with your ****ing client then how can I count on you to do the work?

I've looked up a number of articles on working with PR firms, and, no surprise, all the articles say this is a sign to ditch the PR firm. And it makes sense. If I treated my clients this way, the relationship would be over. I think we're paying them like $20,000 total for like 4-5 months of work. Seems like if they aren't doing anything we could just save that money.

I think a few ground rules need to be laid down or they can take a hike. But I don't write the check, so my client/boss has to get behind this. I was so excited to have PR firm on board, but I'm very soured on it now, since these two are just such flakes and frauds.

Unfortunately I wasn't involved in the hiring of this firm because it happened while I was moving. I don't think this firm has any real experience in our industry so they are really not the right firm for us. Ug...and now I will have to deal with this for such at least 12 weeks.

Seesaw

[Mountaindewed]

I had a longer shift today and I didn’t have anything to eat for break so it was kind of difficult. Luckily I’m off this weekend.

[Mountaindewed]

I don’t understand why everyone has to take things so personally at work. One of my coworkers got so upset because of a comment a manager made and I didn’t really take it that way. I was in a helluva lot of pain all day today so I wasn’t paying much attention to anything or anyone though.

[Turtle_Rider]

I think my gripe is silly, but I need to vent or I'm going crazy.

Today I "took" back my old usb drive from the IT guy. It's my personal USB, not company's properties so it contains important apps and some personal files. I lent him last year and he never returned it because, "I still need it" he said. Yesterday, I asked him again and he agreed to return it. I was sure it was mine, but when we checked it, it has a virus and cannot be opened. Then, he made a story about how he lent it to an absent-minded manager (without my permission ofc) and blamed her for losing it.

I snuck to his desk today since he's absent. Took me 15 minutes to: googled the recovery method, recovered the files, and cleaned it from virus. I can confirm it was mine. Proved that I'm smarter than the IT guy. And that's one of my problem with this company.

[Mountaindewed]

I did call into work this morning for terrible pain. I guess they were nice about it when I called in. I called later today and offered to come in tomorrow on my day off. They said yeah they’d have me work. So, whatever I guess.

So frustrated with my boss. He straight up refuses to do work. So for the entire year I have cleared the deck to get work done... He hasn't done it. Now people are asking and he wants to do things to stall like have meetings. These stalling tactics require me to do work to set up the meetings.

So then, we are going into our busy time and he keeps trying to set down these meetings during the busy time. This will make things extremely difficult on me.

Further, my entire job is scheduling things. So he has a discussion with the idiots upstairs who are supposed to be producing work and they come up with an unrealistic time for the meeting that will make things difficult on me and when I object he is like upset with me. No I am in charge of scheduling. The way it is supposed to work is that you say "I want a meeting" Emily set that up.. and I set it up. You don't say, Emily set up a meeting on june 1 at 9:00 am. Then I am useless. I know how long these meetings will take. I know what members of the meeting will get upset if you keep them late. The idiots up stairs do not. That is why I am in charge of scheduling.

Then I am super sick of this... I try to take time off when he isn't around but he is around all the time. And if he is in and I am not, he tries to do as much work as humanly possible so I have to get someone to cover. He keeps acting like that is no big deal but it is. And I don't understand why he seems to be the most productive without me around. Like he is simply unable to do work when I am actually working. So when I am at work nothing happens but the moment I leave he is getting things out left and right for another co worker to do.

[rechu]

Ugh, my boss is absolutely useless. She's been out the last few days. No long leave has been announced yet ,but I imagine it's only a matter of time. Anyways, these days we only have one full-time editor and a freelancer who works as much/little as she wants. Our boss has typically picked up the slack. That has its own annoyances since she tries to find fault with everything I do, but at least my work gets edited/published and counts towards my monthly stats.

There is really no contingency plan for when she can't help pick up the slack. She hires and hires researchers when what we really need is another editor, at least part-time.


I was looking at the editing queue. I've sent maybe 20 things to be edited since late last week. NOTHING of mine has been edited in the last three work days while others have had 5-15 things edited. Only the full-time editor is editing. The other person who is having this problem is F, the other veteran of the team - she's been at the job nearly as long as me. I feel a bit suspicious when these things happen. It's not the first time, and it's always my work and hers that is not being looked at. She's another who is not in the boss' favorite clique. Of course if you bring it up, you are told there's nothing to be done and that there will be no lenience in calculating stats due to this. Absolute BS.

[Medusax]

I've been on vacation since last Thursday. I have to go back tomorrow. I have a half day due to a docs appt. Then Friday, then off again for the weekend. This does nothing to assuage my disgust at having to go back to work. I TRY to tell myself that "I have no choice so make the best of it". "This job is paying your house off 19 years early so quit whining". "Everyone has to work why do you think you are special?" "Think of your excellent 401k" On and on. Doesn't help. I H-A-T-E it.....

[Mountaindewed]

Work was really nice about me calling in yesterday. But they were kind of cranky for other reasons not related to me. They were busy trying to get the store in order for someone so they were a bit testy.

[SMRY]

I had plenty of work gripes over the decades, but thankful everyday that I was able to retire 2 years ago and done with all that drama. I had so many AWFUL bosses that made my life hell! I do feel everyone's pain dealing with work woes.