The Room 101 thread - for things you hate or just having a bloody good moan

[Snowy]

Who would you matcha with him as the female lead though?

[Animalmother]

Tea-na Fey?

[Wrathbone]

Lady Grey?

[Can't think of one]

This movie is going to be pukka!

[Alan]

Just spent 90+mins trying to fix an external HDD. Couldnt get it to show, downloaded two disk management programs, plugged it into my macbook. Nothing! It should work but its not..... Oh wait, the USB cord is slightly out at the back of the drive.









Works great now!

[Wrathbone]

Just tripped near the top of the stairs while going up. Cup of tea in one hand went over the pile of neatly-folded laundry in the other hand, as I went face-first into the landing.

I've never liked Tuesdays.

[Animalmother]

The few times I've really hurt myself have been on stairs, bastarding things.

[Sly Boots]

Just tripped near the top of the stairs while going up. Cup of tea in one hand went over the pile of neatly-folded laundry in the other hand, as I went face-first into the landing.

I've never liked Tuesdays.

I've done that, but instead of tea imagine a big bowl of Heinz tomato soup...

[Wrathbone]

I don't know how commonplace this is (it's only started happening at my place in the last year or so, and I've been there for 13 years), but sales people peacocking around, emailing everyone under the sun to let them know about a big sale they've closed, patting each other on the back and neglecting to mention the chumps like me who spent months/years developing, implementing and supporting the damn product they're selling. We get one of these emails maybe once a month, and frankly it's really demotivating to see the sales bastards getting singled out for their contribution, when actually what they've usually done is promised that the product does things that it actually doesn't, meaning us devs have to scramble and make it work like they said it worked, or we get blamed for sinking a deal. Seriously, fuck those guys.

A couple of my closest friends are in software sales, and while most of the time they're decent people, I've seen them transform into sales mode. They think they're Alec Baldwin from Glengarry Glen Ross.

[Rossell]

Happy to report I don't get that. Any sales are normally reported in company updates which I'm cool with. Still get the "sold on the promise of something we haven't got yet" shtick but doesn't affect me that badly.

[Sly Boots]

I've never worked in an office with salespeople who I didn't violently dislike.

[Drarok]

sales people peacocking around, emailing everyone under the sun to let them know about a big sale they've closed, patting each other on the back

Well that just sounds vulgar.

promised that the product does things that it actually doesn't, meaning us devs have to scramble and make it work like they said it worked, or we get blamed for sinking a deal

Blamed by who? The sales guys? Fuck 'em. Management? Quit. You're in a toxic relationship.

I worked a place where the sales folk would do similar, and say "we need to have the product doing <feature> by <ridiculous time scale>", and we'd push back with "that's easily six months' work", and then we'd have to try to bodge some piece of shit halfway house that can sort-of look like what was promised if you squint sideways at it through a snow storm, giving us extra time to "understand the needs" of the company that had been duped!

It's no way to live. Fuck that sort of shit, and fuck that job.

[Wrathbone]

Yeah, there’s probably some level of institutionalisation going on as to why I’m still there.

To be fair, there are enough factors that make it worth staying, especially in the middle of a pandemic, and our part of the business is small enough that as long as we don’t ruffle too many feathers we tend to stay under the radar of corporate insanity. We’re fairly autonomous, but occasionally we get told from the powers that be to fix sales’ daft promises, so we half-arse the bare minimum together to appease everyone. It’d be nice if sales didn’t parade about their efforts, though.

[Snowy]

I worked a place where the sales folk would do similar, and say "we need to have the product doing <feature> by <ridiculous time scale>", and we'd push back with "that's easily six months' work", and then we'd have to try to bodge some piece of shit halfway house that can sort-of look like what was promised if you squint sideways at it through a snow storm, giving us extra time to "understand the needs" of the company that had been duped!

It's no way to live. Fuck that sort of shit, and fuck that job.

Yup, story of my life too - it isn't just sales though, marketing are just as bad. Someone has a reasonable idea that gets funding and a project team gets stood up, then instantly the marketing bunch aligned with the project start scope-galloping like it is running out of fashion. As a PM the words "It would be great if..." presage me grinding my teeth and wondering how pleasantly I can manage to tell them to fuck off.

I am an ex-salesman and sales manager btw

[Wrathbone]

Thankfully our marketing team are just hapless rather than actively annoying. Years ago we were creating a major new product and marketing paid £10k to outsource the new logo to someone else - literally paid externally to do their jobs. The logo was shit and one of our managers knocked one up in a couple of hours that was far better and ended up being used in the final release.

We also had a big rebrand a few years ago, and marketing's proudest contribution was keeping the font of our corporate title the same while giving it a Word-Art style colour gradient. Not so much Mad Men as primary school ICT.