posted
At about 3:30PM today at my job, there was very nearly a fist fight.
We have a very small office, with only about 15-22 employees at any given time.
We have one operations support/network administrator/technical support guy who handles a lot of different functions at our company. When I first got to the company there were two people doing the job, but one was fired and the other one was given the responsibilities of both. His name is Jeremy, and he usually works 12-14 hour shifts. He claims its a one person job when the transition phase nears completion, but to me it seems like he's got too much on his plate, because there are things which have been left unresolved for months and months.
For instance, we've done a lot of reorganizing at our company, but the phones haven't been switched over yet. Its been about 6 months, which is really quite ridiculous. The number on my business cards will get you my coworker Vasuki. If you call Vasuki's number, you will get Jason. Jason can't get business cards, because he doesn't have his own number, and he's been here 5 months. If I call someone from the company on my phone, the name which shows up is someone who hasn't worked at the company for months. And there's even more screwiness.
So Jason was complaining about this whole situation to Cari, our human resources figure-head. He was quite frustrated, and was pretty adamant about expressing how frustrated he was. Nowhere did he lay blame on any person for how the situation was, but he said just how ridiculous a situation it was.
Being a very small office, Jeremy heard every word, and took it all as being a personal insult. When Cari went back to her office, he went to Jason's cube/office to confront Jason. He was cursing, and calling Jason names, and was clearly threatening violence.
Dallas, a 300+ pound body-builder, is Jason's boss and shares a cube with Jason. He tells Jeremy to knock it off, and to take it up with Cari. Jason then says "What the f*** are you going to do? Shut the f*** up, I wasn't talking to you." Dallas, being a complete hot-head himself, is ready to fight now.
Me and my cube-mate go and make sure that it doesn't escalate to blows. Jeremy steams out of the building, yelling insults and cuss words on his way out.
I just keep rolling my eyes. This is a freaking software company! We are geeks, not school-yard bullies!
And the pathetic part is that this isn't even the first time that conflicts in the company have involved one person threatening physical violence. Both Dallas and the person who had my phone, Al, have gotten near the point at times over the year I've worked here (not with each other, with other people).
I think its crazy. We're professionals. If I got really mad at a coworker, the last thing on my mind would be attempting to fight them. At very worst I would just go home for the day.
Have any of you guys witness fights, or near fights, at your company? Is this as rare an occurance as I hope it would be?
Any what's the least professional thing you've ever seen at your job?
There was a fight back when I worked at Award once.. but the argument was in manderin so I have no clue what it was about.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
I saw a customer throw some socks in the face of a retail worker.
Well, actually I saw the socks right before they smacked me in the face...
The worker was me.
I had her thrown out, and almost arrested.
I have also seen guys at work sleep with the same girl, and fight over it at work....where she worked as well. But that was as a pizza delivery guy when I was younger, so it was par for the course. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I work in Professionalismville. Last week i was talking to someone with my hands in my pockets and was given one of those "don't do that" gestures. I wonder what would have happened if I had cursed him out, threatened him with violence, and then stormed out of the building....
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
When I worked for the Federal government... Let's see. The old assistant area director didn't do much. He'd take the paper out of the break room into the bathroom and be gone for an hour. People laughed at him about it, and occassionally remarked on his horrible toupe.
Same guy used to follow one of my single friends around like a lost puppy. She shrugged it off, but it made everyone else uncomfortable. Then one day he said something about her legs, and I said, "Ooooh! That's one for my letter to EEOC!" Everybody laughed, as it was obviously a joke, but he didn't do it anymore.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
I saw a waitress going a BJ in the bathroom during the Christmas party, too. She was hammered, on the floor of the men's room when I went to go pee. We had worked together at CB for years, and Bickfords before that....
I went and got someone to take care of that situation, horrible as it was.
posted
Two other employees started the same day I did on my current job. Back then, we were a lot bigger, so we had an orientation course that new employees had to take. It was two weeks long, for more of each day. VERY, VERY boring, as a lot of it had to do with stuff I already knew (being that I'd been a customer of the company for 8 years previous). Anyway, one of the other new employees slept through every class. Slept. Not subtle sleeping, like with your head propped up on your hand, leaning forward on the desk like you're really listening but your eyes are closed. No, he would lean his chair back against the wall, tilt his head back and go straight out within 10 minutes of the beginning of the discussion. Mouth open. Snoring lightly.
Every day. For two weeks.
He was fired a month later for falling asleep in development meetings. Like we couldn't see that one coming.
Other unprofessional fun was the unholy friendship I watched form between one of our new support techs and our call coordinator, both young females. They were like the soap opera twins. If one wasn't in tears, the other one was. They were always either sick or brokenhearted or just broke, and somehow the job just didn't seem nearly as important as the latest guy they were into. This culminated in a road trip the two took together that resulted in a minor car accident which left both in dramatic (and no-work-getting-done) pain. They were both let go in the same round of layoffs.
And I have memories of my own unprofessional behavior. Like the time I yelled (with some hysterical crying) at my boss (on the phone) for giving an office to someone else instead of me, despite my seniority. Then hanging up on him. I had just had a baby several months before and that day, shortly after the incident, got my period for the first time in over a year. I apologized the next day and still look back on it as one of the worst things I've ever done in my career. He was a *really* good manager, though, and understood that my irrational behavior was not typical. He let it go.
And there was the time when I was very young and new on the job that I cried because of what a customer said to me over the phone. I hung up on her too. She was complaining about a late delivery and I couldn't think of anything better to do. I kinda laugh about that one now. I think I was only 19 and had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) awarded five new grants to fund research for the prevention of workplace violence.
. . .
According to recent data, 677 workplace homicides occurred in 2000, and 1.7 million workers are injured every year in non-fatal workplace assaults.
You should speak to the HR person. Or the person in charge of the HR person. 1.7 million non-fatal injuries. This guy is over stressed, over worked, incompetent and people are complaining. No one should be surprised when the powder keg blows up.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
A guy in my office was put on academic probation for threatening to kill a professor. He will be allowed to return, as the general feeling is that the professor was acting poorly and the department should have stepped in earlier. The professor was sleeping with his students, which is not technically against school policy, but is generally frowned upon by pretty much everyone.
Shortly after this, though, several grad students got drunk and trashed the grad office--including kicking in a trash can. They had to pay to replace the damaged items, and the police came and made a report, but nothing else happened.
Posts: 234 | Registered: Oct 2005
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I have known a great many highly technical people with zero social skills who are basically incapable of resolving conflict (either internal or external conflict).
I'm glad to see that this sort of thing is surprising to people. In my experience, it has been more the norm than the exception. Data analysts, I'm sorry to say, often suffer from severe social anxiety and sometimes this crosses over into anti-social behavior in general.
I've always thought of it as a kind of self-selection process in terms of career choices that appeal to someone who doesn't get along well with others.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
The first job I ever had was working at a dry cleaners. Part of the job was taking the clothes and pinning the number onto the lable. I was working at the counter, we had a customer come in. I was in the middle of putting pin in and as I was closing the pin one of the other girls who worked there came over and grabbed the clothes out of my hands and then asked the customer what we could do for them.
I may have been wrong to want to finish with the pin so it didn't stick someone, but I think she was very unprofessional to have done what she did.
Posts: 747 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
I think the least professional I've ever been at work was when I sat around the break room for 4 hours in the middle of a work day drinking good beer... with my boss. When I was 19. That was a good day. As far as other people go, the only time I've been subjected to unprofessional behavior was at christmas parties and the like. That kind of behavior is pretty much a given at those things, though, so I wasnt actually surprised by any of it.
Posts: 499 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I started volunteering at a museum when I was thirteen. One morning, I was assigned to the traveling exhibit, which was dinosaurs at the time. I went down there, and one of the Guest Services guys was there, too. Basically, his job was to sit in a chair and make sure that everyone who went in had a sticker saying that they'd paid admission.
It was a Tuesday morning or something, and there was absolutely NO ONE there, so he and I talked and joked around and poked the foam models of dinosaur skin that we had for people to feel. My manager happened to walk by, but she didn't say anything to me.
I should explain something about my manager. She was...kind of strange. She was very, very strict, and she thought that none of us should have any social life whatsoever. She didn't think we should date until we were done with college and ready to get married. She didn't think we should talk to friends if they stopped by at the museum, even though it was our JOB to talk to guests, and besides that, everyone on my team was between thirteen and sixteen. She told us once that if she ever found out that we had boyfriends/girlfriends, she'd fire us or something.
Well, at my lunch break, she called me into her office and totally flipped out at me for "flirting with a co-worker." She went on about how we weren't supposed to date, and we DEFINITELY weren't supposed to date anyone else who worked there. She threatened, essentially, to fire me. Then she threatened to send me home in a cab and make me pay for it. I just sort of stood there. I couldn't really figure out why she was so pissed, and it was making me really, really upset.
The guest services guy, he was a sophomore. A sophomore IN COLLEGE. I still, to this day, am completely baffled by the idea that we were flirting.
posted
I worked at Barnes & Noble a while ago. One night when it was really slow a bunch of coworkers were standing around talking. The conversation started off about exercise and then one girl started talking about how huge her butt was. Most of the people assured her it wasn't, but one smartass thought it would be funny to say it was a little on the large size but it wasn't anything that exercising wouldn't get rid of. At the time, the girl ignored it and everything stayed pleasant. That night she reported him to the manager for sexual harassment. The guy got fired despite the multiple witnesses that could clarify that what happened was definately not sexual harassment. Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by whiskysunrise: I may have been wrong to want to finish with the pin so it didn't stick someone, but I think she was very unprofessional to have done what she did.
I don't think you were. When I see someone taking good care of the previous customer's stuff, it assures me they will take good care of mine. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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It's funny, but you telling me that makes me feel better. I mean it happened over 10 years ago. I guess it's just one of those things.
Posts: 747 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Heck, we play darts regularly at work. And our corridor has a great break in it for putting. We still get our work done, but it's a good way to let off steam every few hours.
Of course, I work in a creative department. I think that kind of behavior is almost expected of us.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by cheiros do ender: Advent, I thought you worked in a gym. When and where do you get on the internet in a gym?
lol, I work at a grocery store and we have access to the internet, I just don't have time to do non work related stuff when I'm there.
I think just about every place has some sort of access...customers just don't see it.
Blockbuster does not have internet access. You know, the movie store that's facing stiff competition from online companies, and which could really use online access to things like IMDB and the company website. No internet. /sorespot
Posts: 4655 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
I once walked into the manager's office to see two managers and an employee in their boxers. That has to take my "most unprofessional" award. It was, they said, their way of protesting. I left what I had to do there for later. Posts: 2762 | Registered: Sep 1999
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quote: Have any of you guys witness fights, or near fights, at your company? Is this as rare an occurance as I hope it would be?
Any what's the least professional thing you've ever seen at your job?
Fights? On a ship? Never . Yeah, all the time. We used it to relieve stress during the 6 month deployment. No one got hurt. Just the guys wrestling around.
Where I am now? Yeah, talk about anality for professionalism. Since I work at a training command, everything is looked at. I hate it. I hate how one little mistake can lead to huge penalties.
Most unprofessional I have seen.... Do the water guns count? How about the little green army guys and halo characters we placed around the engineroom of the ship? I could list other things, but it would definately incriminate.
These didn't happen that often, but they did happen. Why? When you're locked up on a grey painted piece of steel in the middle of the ocean (and ya haven't seen land in 90 days) you try to keep yourself entertained.
Posts: 2208 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
I'm a home care nurse, and I've seen some really unprofessional behavior from some of my colleagues. I once reported to a patient's house for a day shift, and found the night shift nurse in bed with the patient's wife.
The patient was in the room, observing.
The family had no complaints about the nurse, and didn't want her taken off the case.
I had trouble doing anything with my jaw flopping on the floor.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
The most unprofessional thing I've ever witnessed was when I was still working for the government. I was working on a project with a nother younger guy on my team, and there were two other people who were brought on to work on some modules that we needed but that weren't in our area of expertise. Our short term goal was to work up a demo to show the whole team and some contractors we were working with.
The project due date came, and we had everything done but one of the modules from one of the guys brought on to help(not his fault, the whole situation was really messed up and we were all asked to do a ridiculous amount of work with software no one had ever used. he had to learn a completely new programming language to get his part done.)
The next day one of our project leaders sends us all an email(everyone on the team, plus the head of our division) ripping into us for how bad the project was. Just on and on about "How come this isn't completely finished? Do you really think this is ready to show to the contractors? what you did sucks. You didn't do this and that. This should have been ready a week ago anyway so we could review it and make copies and send out to everyone, etc..." Basically going off on us for all this stuff that we had never been informed of. And the kicker, the project due date had even been postponed, but we had never been told because our bosses didn't want to tell us, so we wouldn't slack up in our work. I mean...we are adults right?
So we got together and went over his email point by point, responding to every criticism, and asking to meet in person to go over all the specifics of the issues raised.
So our project leader then sends out an email to everyone again, not responding to any of our points and ripping into us again. Finally the division leader gathers everyone together for an emergency meeting, where our project leader goes on to say, and this is word for word, "okay...maybe i set you guys up to fail."
He had purposefully been keeping information from us concerning specifics of what should be done. He wanted us to learn the hard way, he said, about all this other stuff that needed to be done when working on a project. Instead of just telling us from the beginning what needed to be done.
The other thing that was really messed up was that we had been repeatedly told that "this is just a demo" and not to worry about making anything look nice, as long as it was all functional. So that's what we did. Half his criticisms were about how the demo didn't look professional and didn't look nice and that he was embarrased to show it to other people. It all worked perfectly fine! We just didn't worry about the look of it because we were told not to!
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
A few years ago I was assigned to plan a birthday party for my boss's girlfriend. He (a doctor) got drunk at this party and when his girlfriend when was in the other room he kissed me, tongue and all. I was so shocked and quit shortly after that.
Posts: 2064 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Speaking of unprofessionalism...I just fell asleep at my desk. My boss is out of the office and left me nothing to do. Well, she did leave me a little bit but my coworkers took it upon themselves to do it for me with the excuse, "Oh! I didn't know you were coming in today!" Why wouldn't I come in? I've been here every Friday for the past 3 months!
Posts: 2064 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
One of my previous employers once told me to work on someone else's project while he (the other employee) was on vacation, in the hopes that I would finish the project myself and thus undermine the other person, giving them an excuse to fire him. I did, and it worked, and they fired him, and I felt so incredibly awful once I realized what I'd done that I went from really enjoying the job to loathing every second I spent there until I finally escaped. That was the suck.
Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
When I worked for the Page USD grounds department (1998), in Page, AZ, I had a couple co-workers who decided to sabotage my equipment on a regular basis.
I think it might have been racially motivated. My boss had been a customer whose account I had handled (as landscape foreman) and so he told me about the job opening, with an eye to me replacing him when he retired in a year or two. Well, two of the guys had been there for a while, but one of them didn't even speak English [EDIT TO ADD: this is an issue since the Grounds Foreman position requires constant communication with all kinds of people, including vendors), only Navajo, and they both slacked off regularly on the job (2pm was their usual time to cruise to the different schools and see what we were up to. They just sat there and watched me repair sprinklers one day). I had tried repeatedly to befriend them. I knew a few Navajo terms and some of the culture. And I treated them with respect. But there was still some resentment, which escalated especially when they had snooped through my work truck and found out (check stubs) I was paid a few more dollars an hour than they were.
Everynight, I placed my radio on it's cradle to charge overnight. Every morning, it had been turned around so that it wasn't charging at all. I began to hide where I plugged in my charger.
Sometimes, when I came in, my radio antenna had been removed. I began taking the antenna out myself so that I could put it back in the morning.
Sometimes, my leaf blower was removed from the back of my truck (parked in the locked yard) hidden in the maintenance shed.
Occasionally, the sweeper that I (almost exclusively) used was tampered with so it wouldn't start. I had to call a school district mechanic from the bus yard to check it out. It took him all morning, but he finally found some wires that had been unplugged. This happened at least twice, besides other 'tampering.'
I spoke to my boss about it. During one maintenance dept meeting it was brought up and he stated that it would be firing offence. There were 2 other guys (not grounds, but maintenance) who I had always been friendly with- joked, talked, asked questions- overall, a good rapport who were at the meeting. But despite what I thought was our friendship, when my boss brought up the sabotage these 2 guys felt some sort of need to defend their fellow workers, or at least deflect criticism to me. Instead, they brought up how I worked with headphones on. Everyone, including my boss already knew that. Picking up trash, running a sweeper, or spreading fertilizer or herbicide is a rather mind-numbing job. But the point is, instead of focusing on the sabotage, it was focused on me. But I fully believe that racial resentment played a role, even in those I thought were friends. There was this sense that no matter how much I thought we were good, I was always going to be the outsider. And if there was a problem, or if they were upset, then I'd bear the brunt of it.
I had no interest in speaking to any of them again. For work, sure. But that was it. I had nothing more to say to them.
I quit to attend NAU (in Flagstaff, AZ) a few months later.
Posts: 1346 | Registered: Jun 1999
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Why wouldn't I come in? I've been here every Friday for the past 3 months!
