work stupidity

i am about to declare stupidity contest at work. the previous holder of the winning title was fired and the position is vacant. there are quite a few nominees. the race is tight.

here is the top 10 list of stupid things that happened on my current job throughout my employment:

10. a high level individual at the company tells my coworker he is not being productive. the coworker emails me the 100th question for the day asking why things don’t work for him. i don’t have access to see neither his data nor his processes. i tell him to check few basic settings. he replies with hurt feelings. he asks why do i mention basic settings like these. he tells me i make him not productive.

9. i am going to maternity leave. i am the only user of a one-person license to an expensive data modeling software. the software is actually registered under the name of my previous boss. i am in another department now. my new boss orders another license to give to my temp replacement in order to avoid communicating with my old boss.

8. a coworker feels she deserves to be promoted. she asks for the promotion but does not get it. she is frustrated and sad. she emails a memorandum to quite a lot of people that she will not do the part of her daily work that she believes should require manager’s title. she states that she will only do the basic work as her title suggests. she sends the cell phone number of her boss to everyone as a number to call in case they have any questions about our product. she gets fired the same day.

7. a coworkers emails the following text: “changes to the staging database seems as though it would greatly ease the burden of mapping to the new data model in certain areas like ‘terms’. maintaining the nomenclature of semesters as the application is moving towards terms appears counterproductive”. this is the 1st email i ever received from this coworker. i have a physical need to run to the bathroom upon receiving his emails ever since.

6. a crazy coworker who really struggles with basic english adds “corporate headquarters” title in her email signature because another coworker made a joke on her and told her to do it.

5. the same coworker starts laughing hysterically upon hearing that her other male coworker has a boyfriend even after she was explicitly explained the situation and the sexual orientation or this coworker.

4. i am pregnant. my stomach is too large to see the bag on the floor that my absentminded boss threw in the middle of the room. i trip over the bag and fall down. my foot hurts throughout the rest of my pregnancy.

3. i accidentally do not highlight the where clause of an update query and overwrite prod data for a whole table instead of one record.

2. my little daughter gets a hold of my keyboard and violently hits some keystrokes. the next day all the production jobs fail. i look into it and find out she moved a certain prod folder.

1. i ask a coworker for a spreadsheet with two columns – student code and file name relating to the student. the coworker sends back a blank spreadsheet with two title columns – student code and file name.