Can I vent too?
Some of my "favorites" that I've encountered over my career:
I used to work in an office that had a P.A. system accessible from anyone's desk phone. Some of my coworkers would make bizarre announcements, page people to the bathroom, play music, etc. over the P.A.
With clients in the office!
I had a micromanaging client who would tell me to do something and then tell me, step by step,
how to do it - even though it was something I'd done a million times before. Then he would want to know why it had taken me so long. Um, because I had to spend twenty minutes listening to you tell me how to do something I could do in my sleep!
When I was laid off from one job, there were about 8 people laid off with me. The office's general manager and HR director didn't even have the guts to speak with each of us privately. They just hauled us all into a conference room, gave us our pink slips, and told us to go clean out our desks.
Oh, same client I mentioned above - He could have written the book on clock watching. He accused me a couple times of arriving at 9:05am, leaving at 5:00pm, and billing for a full day. (a) not true, (b) he's worried about five minutes?? And one day he asked me to stay late (about 1-1/2 hours) to finish setting something up. Naturally I billed him for the time. He then told me that I should have worked that extra time for FREE and that "If you want a good recommendation, you will put in extra hours and not bill me for them." After he pulled that one - he became a
former client.
