Slightly unreasonable or frankly absolutely bloody ludicrous work requests

Would that be Liverpool waterfront? If so, you didn’t do a good job because it got chopped anyway. 😁

Wrong hemisphere.

Scale it up to about the length of Italy.

JCB: Oh, after ruining this local company we bought out, your jobs are now being outsourced to India.

Us: Great…

JCB: BTW, some Indians are coming over next week, can you show them everything you do…

Us: Er, no. Not really

We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do everything with nothing in no time at all

Amazing!!!

Too many to detail. Thankfully, I DGAF now as I wind down to retirement. I feel soooo much calmer and at peace with myself now

You can tell that you know this particular territory. I was taking all that as a given. Last minute final artwork and amends on a brief I’ve never seen before, crazy deadline, working through the night with nobody to ask any questions. No time to proof

What could possibly go wrong? 😂

Thankfully, that’s a situation I never found myself in, that was someone else’s problem!

I have found there are quite a lot of clever creative people in the industry with very little common sense.

Met a few of those over the years too; “this job is to be printed in nine spot colours, you can handle that ok?” Well, yes, but have you any idea what that’s going to cost? 😳

A local company, one of our minor but regular customers, got taken over by an American company. The American company imposed some training on staff so I got a call to the effect of could you fly out to Angola to do some training. Angola was in the news as the civil war had kicked off again so I declined and suggested sending the guys to us instead, not really expecting them to consider the idea. Over the next couple of years nearly all the staff got sent to us for a nice training holiday – our best customer.

Managers who are only trained to manage but have never done the work themselves 😔

Projects won by sales people and estimators only for them to leave the company before the project finishes just in time to not witness the project losing a fortune due to something missed from the specification at tender stage.

The serial job hopper that lasts a year at the most at any company, leaving a trail of unfinished projects all in a dire state, that others will need to sort out.

The boss that preaches that “this industry is all about building relationships” only then to ditch his morals and s&&t all over a loyal supplier when there is more money to be made.

Work colleagues that secretly accept the crappy overtime rate, working weekends whilst everyone else told management to go do one!

The co-worker who is always incredibly busy but strangely has enough time to email you a thousand word email explaining how they’re too busy to help you out and actually do what they’re paid for.

Clients that have dillusional expectations on costs and timeframes when it comes to a multimillion pound, multistory building yet will happily wait 6 months for their new car.

Companies that will take on a new member of staff at the going rate but will not approve a pay rise for everyone else in the same job position despite them earning less than the new person.

Clients who keep issuing instructions for additional works despite the project getting critically close to the contract deadline. The same client is also threatening you that you need to meet the deadline or be in breach of contract.

Boss telling me that I am not to pay agency labour for the days that they did not work because we don’t need to. The same days they were sent home by the client due to a flood, and which we will be paid for. I said that I was stll paying them. Happy times.

All the above I have experienced in my career working in the M&E industry. I tend to just work my hours these days.

Pointed out on my first day working on a city centre building project that there was a serious lack of emergency lights on the drawings. I got the usual, “what do you know, you’ve only been here for 5 minutes” We ended up working a 24 hour shift the day of handover fitting temporary emergency lights throughout the building. 😂

@ajantom

That was in Koh Phangan.

I should say that nearly everyone on the island was conscientious and careful. There were two poor shops: the one I mentioned run by a weak idiot, another owned by an incompetent posh boy – the rest were good.

I’ve also heard some horror stories, often from returning customers who couldn’t believe what they’d experienced elsewhere after I’d taken them through their open water. I had good teachers, who repeatedly drilled into me how important it was to do things the right way. I guess if you got lazy instructors who didn’t bother you’d never even know you were doing it wrong.
When I took my instructor exam there were a couple of people who passed who should never have been allowed near a novice diver. It was then I realised that as long as you pay PADI will pass you. We used to call them Put Another Dollar In.

I suffer this one

I have a line manager who has a habit of making unreasonable requests and won’t take no for an answer, or attempt to clarify priorities so other things can be shifted to make time for the bullshit request.

This one is fresh.

Dear Colleagues,   the school inset days scheduled next week have a new theme :

– The theme is PortaCabin  induction day

– collect your hard hats and hi viz tabbards at reception

– Collect your assigned lorry/crane/PortaCabin clipboard   from Mr Bean in the Science block(outside under gazebo)

• For those still waiting for flights home please schedule your Tutor groups on Teams.

–

When I think about it, a great many of the requests/orders I received were bloody ridiculous.

Where would you like me to start? 😂

Boss: We’ve had intelligence to suggest there’s a heavy machine gun in Al Hayyaniyah, we’d like you to patrol a repetitive route to try and draw fire from it, you’ll have a US Apache on overwatch to prosecute if you are engaged. Any questions?

Me: Tasking name Boss? Op Certain Death?

Boss: Don’t call it that.

Me: Op FUBAR?

Boss: Get out.

We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do everything with nothing in no time at all

Amazing!!!

I only know that from:

Excellent thread,much LOLZ .

Indeed, it’s not often I read as much of an established thread.

Makes me glad I’m in teaching where you rarely get outrageous requests. Instead it’s hundreds of minor ones, all of which are entirely reasonable individually but they add up to outrageous.

That said, a colleague has just been timetabled to have 51 kids in a classroon with 30 seats…

Of course, “engineer” is problematic in itself to those with actual engineering degrees. It should really be a protected term.

Actual engineering degress do not, in my experience of a half a lifetime in software, actually teach actual engineering…

Clients who keep issuing instructions for additional works despite the project getting critically close to the contract deadline. The same client is also threatening you that you need to meet the deadline or be in breach of contract.

Your contract needs fixing. Or rather, the spec that you’re working from needs fixing, at an early stage. For any later alterations and additions, our rates begin at £200/hr…

A TV show wanted me to source two vintage bicycles so Len Goodman and an old game show host could cycle around Swanage where they went on holiday as children.

Budget was zero.  I costed it up based on the Bikemonger workshop hourly rate, plus two modern fake vintage bikes.  I explained that he was getting paid for his work, so I will need paying for my work. Gave the guy the price and expected to never hear from him again.

a few weeks later he phoned back asking how I was getting on with the bikes… “so you are ok with the price?”   “We don’t have any budget”… “then I have no bikes”.

Many unreasonable requests in my previous role as Head of Faculty (which had had Design Tech, Food, Textiles, ICT, and Health & Social Care shoehorned in together).

I was also the only trained workshop teacher for all years (7 – 13).

– You will line manage 10 teachers and 5 technicians. Including all performance management and observations.

– Oh you don’t have a 2nd in Dept. Why? We didn’t want to pay the TLR.

– You will also be expected to teach DT to all year groups, including GCSE and A level (oh A level lessons will be on another site).

– There’s no time in your timetable? Oh we’ll just schedule some after school lessons for you then.

– Can you sort out the timetable for the faculty please, as the Deputy Head who normally dies it had gone off sick. Yes it is tricky due to multiple part-time staff.

– We’d love you to run a STEM Club, well it will be included in your PM targets, so better crack on.

– Can you take on extra break duties? Yes you will.

– Oh and budgets have been halved year on year for the last 4 years. So here’s no money to buy resources. Well just see if you can speak to local businesses. Some of them might give you wood and other resources if you ask nicely

It’s no wonder I left that school after 3 years 🤬

I am still laughing at Maccruiskeen’s tide story 😆

 I explained that he was getting paid for his work, so I will need paying for my work

This has been a fundamental principle of mine ever since I got duped into giving my time for nothing at an event others were getting paid for. It’s taking the piss, pure and simple.

A couple of fine emails from me, summarised:

“We are a prestigious UK university (who take £9.5k income per student per year and are sat on £millions of endowment, investment and property). Our 100+ Initial Teacher Education Students all need to learn about your area of expertise. Please will you come down for three days and train them all in how to do this well? We would also like full follow up and resources and perhaps a follow up online workshop when they go on placement to support specific questions.”

“That is fine, we can do that and have done before. Here is a proposal with a price on the bottom.”

“We were not expecting to pay – you are a charity are you not? So why is it not free?”

*eyes roll*.

“We were not expecting to pay – you are a charity are you not? So why is it not free?”

The flip side of this is charities wanting businesses to do stuff for free because they’re charities. We used to get a lot of requests like this when I worked at a climbing wall. ‘Can you organise an abseil event for us please?’
‘No problem, the cost is £xxxx.’
‘Oh, we thought it would be free because we’re a charity.’
‘We’re a business though.’

To be fair, the big charities never did this, it was just smaler ones.

The flip side of this is charities wanting businesses to do stuff for free because they’re charities.

Agreed.

The thing that annoyed me about it was not the cheeky request (no harm in asking!) but the utter indignation of some of the charity callers when told there would be a cost.

The serial job hopper that lasts a year at the most at any company, leaving a trail of unfinished projects all in a dire state, that others will need to sort out.

A lot of senior managers are like this. There’s a little revolving door at the top of a lot of companies where the same few dozen people go in and out over the course of 18 months or so. There are a lot of flashy press announcements about how Mr / Mrs X is a manager with a great deal of distinction in [insert area/project] and will bring expertise and business acumen to the company.

Said person stays 18 months or so – just long enough to be able to claim a new brush/clean sweep/dramatic reorganisation/costs savings but not quite long enough for it all to fall down around their ears. Then they bugger off quick before they get found out (often with a lovely golden handshake for work well done) before reappearing a few months later at another company on another 6-figure salary with the same shiny press releases.

Last employer outsourced a load of software dev work to India… Obviously went to the cheapest tender as the code was junk and our company had to reverse engineer it and rebuild it…

I wasn’t high enough up in the food chain to be privy, but it probably ended up costing twice as much as doing it in house in the first place.

Many examples of this…

The flip side of this is charities wanting businesses to do stuff for free because they’re charities. We used to get a lot of requests like this when I worked at a climbing wall.

Try being a doctor. Lots of people and organisations (charities, government agencies, hospitals) seem to think that because I’m a doctor and something benefits my patients then I should be expected to work for free.

I wasn’t high enough up in the food chain to be privy, but it probably ended up costing twice as much as doing it in house in the first place.

I would imagine “twice as much” is an optimistic estimate.

Outsourcing is a difficult thing to do right.

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it done with a better result, or a cheaper result, or a quicker result.

Last employer outsourced a load of software dev work to India…

Many examples of this…

Indeed, this has been a standard feature of my career in IT for over 20 years now.

Current place have one team with no UK people at all. During Covid management panicked as they had a high rate of absence and somebody thought ‘what if they all die?’

This led to me being recruited as manger to a new UK team (whilst still doing my other job) We got as far as doing some interviews when the panic subsided and the plug was pulled on the recruitment budget.

I was told to carry on with the knowledge transfer to the new team – without any staff. Ok…

I would imagine “twice as much” is an optimistic estimate

Me too. Starting from scratch to replicate an existing code base with significant technical debt will take four or five times as long.

my previous role as Head of Faculty (which had had Design Tech, Food, Textiles, ICT, and Health & Social Care shoehorned in together).

Doesn’t really fit the thread in terms of requests. But my dad started a new job with a Local Education Authority. He’d be in charge of Art and Design but between interview and starting the job lots of little extra responsibilities started to get pinned on. As time passed before he started it emerged that ‘Design’ included technology. Fine. Technology included Domestic Science. Fine. Oh, also Special Eduction. Really? Ok. And ….children excluded from school …and so on

At every interaction is seemed like a brief had fallen off of someone else’s desk in the department and landed on his new, but as yet unoccupied one.

His first day on the job coincided with a national education conference at which he was also a speaker. And he was introduced as Mr Macc snr. new advisor for Art, Design, Tech-Blah, Domestic-Blah, Special…. Excluded… and the intro finished with a new surprise role on the list. “… and he’s also responsible for all the pregnant teenagers in Greater Manchester”

. “… and he’s also responsible for all the pregnant teenagers in Greater Manchester”

I think I read about him.

I bet he was exhausted after that!

Gives a new definition to ‘mission creep’ doesnt it 🙂

I would imagine “twice as much” is an optimistic estimate

I’m sure that’s true, I’m not a dev,  I’m a service manager.

I’m sure it looked great on some transient PMs budget at the time, then it lands an the desk of muggins here to take a hail of bullets from the customer.

Then I get it in the neck for failing to manage the customers expectations.

So I should set the expectation we’ll sell them a pup then?

That BS is above my pay grade, or at least not my department but apparently I’m the bad guy according to senior management.

Just to clarify these are software releases for improvements to existing customers products that we produced, not fresh products.

“tough luck, the project has been signed off, it’s a service delivery issue now”.

Kiss. My a$$.

Last employer outsourced a load of software dev work to India… Obviously went to the cheapest tender as the code was junk and our company had to reverse engineer it and rebuild it…

I worked at a games company that did that for all the 3D assets for the 3rd instalment in a series of games in the early 2000s, not only were the 3D models awful looking but they also used many times more polygons so were no good for use in game. They ended up using most of the original art team to make new models from scratch so money down the drain.

I have had to charge stupid tax to clients.

Me – Do not talk to the subcntractors, talk to me

Them Oh I just asked Dave to………………

Me – That’ll be XXX.XX to fix that then

That “Not Always Right” page is worse than crack 😀

Managers who are only trained to manage but have never done the work themselves 😔

Equally, people who have been trained to do the work, and then due to either time served or ambition, have been promoted to management. Both are as bad as each other at times.

(And then there’s people like me who aren’t trained at either and have just picked both up as I go. I probably give everyone the heebie-jeebies…  😀 )

Wrong hemisphere.

Scale it up to about the length of Italy.

I’m going to go with Great Barrier Reef.