Thought a topic like this might be a great place to help the young professional "grow some tough skin" for the future.
I would think any stories of absolute horror or office idiocy would be appropriate.
I worked at a place once where the principal drooled all over the one cad operator.
Does anyone remember the scene in Ghostbusters were Bill Murray is testing the male and female and the male gets shocked even if he answers the question right and the female doesn't get shocked once?
That was the dynamic created in this office. Me and two other interns got blamed for all the mistakes, got no attention and watched the crush get promoted and introduced to all the clients and building officials etc. We ended up getting to pick up her redmarks that usually weren't thought over and redone again and again and again.
During Staff meetings the principal would almost act as if we didn't exist or weren't worthy of attention as he barely broke eye contact with the young girl.
I have never seen anything so pathetic as seeing the principal whom was married act this way towards the cad operator that was 30 years younger then him.
I worked closely with two other employees (in a seven-person firm) to finish an exhibit piece. We worked long, long hours for a week, culminating in delivering the piece to the exhibition set-up in the mid-afternoon of the day the exhibit was due to open.
Since we had all 3 worked equally on it, we all 3 went over to do the install then poked around for a few minutes looking at all the other pieces by other firms. Then we went back to the office for the couple hours left in the day.
During an office meeting later that month, all three of us were severely brow-beaten and held up as an example of inefficiency and goofing off - in front of the whole staff - by the office manager, who happened to be the founding principal's wife. Said she, who was pregnant and thus counting every penny of the firm's expenses: "Why did it take all THREE of you to deliver it? Only one of you should have gone!".
Within a few months all three of us had left the firm for far greener pastures. where our efforts relative to our break time were appreciated.
you have to love the draconian measures that do way more harm than good. I have seen many times firms and employees that just do not grow near the rate they could because of the draconian measures and the fact that one of the principals will treat employees like shit.
Or the uneven dynamics with in an office will prevent employees from sharing their tips and secrets at efficient modeling, documenting etc. I had quite a few tips that cut drawing times down by hours that I never shared due to the fact that I wanted to preserve my "value" to the firm.
more funny than horror...but i was slightly late to a lunch-n-learn one day so as i hustled to get my sandwish, chips, soda, etc and scurried into the conference room with my hands full i ran smack into the glass door that was closed. POW...just like a bird hitting a window i totally did not see it coming and suddenly had lunch all over myself with with cola dripping down the glass. of course because i was late, the entire conference room was full and the whole office was able to witness my clumsiness and break out into a roar of laughter.
A corporate firm I worked at was run by the principal and his wife... which was a recent move due to his affair with a secretary... and she joined to keep an eye on him, so you know off the bat it was a sheisty situation. She also had a short temper to say the least. I was once forced to drop everything I was doing (preparing for a client presentation) and make an invitation for her daughter's Bat Mitzvah party, which if i remember right involved me photoshopping a kitten into a hand basket while she watched over my shoulder and yelled. No one could ever second guess her either, it was usually her way or no way. The couple would often fight in front of the office making everyone feel uncomfortable. I didn't stay there too long.
'Office Manager'= Owners Wife Story: Our office manager was always on the look out for bargains. She would always buy at the big discount stores in bulk. One day I go into the bathroom and discover
her latest purchase was Paper Towels in Bulk. I don't have a problem with Paper Towels in Bulk but I do have a problem with it being one continous roll of paper towel without the perforations. Her solution was put a pair of sissors on the back of the toilet. She never even thought about taking them back to the place and asking for a replacement.
'Different Office Manager'= Different Owners Wife Story: Owner decides we have to downsize so gets rid of office manager capable of typing 120 words per minute, without mistakes, does all the books, has the guts to tell the owner he needs to quit ordering pizza for dinner everynight and putting it on a credit card. Oh ya and she was a hottie! Owner's wife comes in and crashes the office accounting program really bad. This didn't happen once but twice.
flip side of the office manager/wife, long one sorry.
We hired a new Senior architect that thought he was hot shit.
He buddies up with the principals and then grows email muscles where he berates the lower level staff and in particular the office manager who was really good at her job. Well mister hot shit not only takes calls from his mistress, he also takes calls from his wife all the time for hour long phone conversations.
once upon a time, Hot shit goes into the conference room for a meeting one day and rudely tells the office manager to tell anyone calling he is out of the office...
During the meeting the "girlfriend" calls and insists its an emergency. When the office manager humbly pages hot shit he tells the developer/friend he is meeting with "That stupid bitch can't process simple instructons."
So he takes the call and a minute into it...the wife calls. The office manager was so pissed she patched the wife in for a conference call.
It gets better or pathetically worse. So the "girlfriend" was mentioning that she thought she was pregnant just as the wife was patched through. Hot shit now looked like hot shit with hemmoroids if you catch my drift.
After that we all treated him like a piece of shit including the other principals. He ended up leaving 3 weeks later
for you oldsters that remember when we drew by hand on mylar -
a new hire was told to pick up the redlines on a review set and use a highlighter to mark which ones were complete ... and he used the yellow highlighter all over the mylars.
Here's one for the new schoolers: first project I had worked on in Revit, only been in the office two months. The day we're sending the DD set to the printer, I sit down to make a sheet list. Revit is great for making lists of things you've already got, and listing the architectural sheets was easy.
The consultant drawings were being gathered from all over the place, though, and they were all PDFs. For some reason, probably some blood feud between Adobe and Autodesk, it's impossible to bring a PDF into Revit. And Revit is so bloody literal minded that it won't let you make a list of things that don't exist. No such thing as a simple blank spreadsheet, the fields have to tie back into some named quality of some existing object. Revit Ontology: the Name is the Thing.
Fiddling around with the sheet list, I eventually somehow created a new one with some blank fields that I called 'Drawing Name' and 'Drawing Number' (I didn't know at the time that I had just created new parameters for the already existing sheets).
I filled in all the consultant drawing names and numbers, then I went 'hey, I've got too many items in this list, I'll just delete the blank ones that I don't need!'. I was doing that for about a minute or so when I glanced over at our architectural drawing list and noticed that it seemed to be getting shorter. 'Um,' I asked the Project Architect 'How many plans have we got?' 'Twelve, why?' 'No we don't.' 'What?! How many have we got??!' 'Five.'
I had been inadvertantly deleting the actual drawing sheets, when I thought I was just deleting blank fields in the list: The Name is the Thing. Remember this is about a half hour before they have to go to the printer. The Project Architect goes 'Don't save to central!' and I shut down the file without saving. Opened it up from the central file again and everything was fine, I did the consultant list in a dumb text field instead and we got it out in time.
I thought this was pretty horrible: I was invited to be on a steering commitee, but a few weeks after we were supposed to start meeting, I wondered why I hadn't gotten the kick-off e-mail with the meeting invites. I called an acquaintance (a peer) who was also on the committee, and she told me that yes, they had already begun meeting, and didn't know why I didn't get my e-mail and that she would talk to the director and see what was going on for me.
A day or so later, at work, one of the principals comes up to me to explain that he felt that he was better suited to being on the steering committee than me, and there was no room for both of us. He basically used his connections to get me off the list and get himself on it.
Architectue "Horrorfest/Funny Stories"
Thought a topic like this might be a great place to help the young professional "grow some tough skin" for the future.
I would think any stories of absolute horror or office idiocy would be appropriate.
I worked at a place once where the principal drooled all over the one cad operator.
Does anyone remember the scene in Ghostbusters were Bill Murray is testing the male and female and the male gets shocked even if he answers the question right and the female doesn't get shocked once?
That was the dynamic created in this office. Me and two other interns got blamed for all the mistakes, got no attention and watched the crush get promoted and introduced to all the clients and building officials etc. We ended up getting to pick up her redmarks that usually weren't thought over and redone again and again and again.
During Staff meetings the principal would almost act as if we didn't exist or weren't worthy of attention as he barely broke eye contact with the young girl.
I have never seen anything so pathetic as seeing the principal whom was married act this way towards the cad operator that was 30 years younger then him.
I worked closely with two other employees (in a seven-person firm) to finish an exhibit piece. We worked long, long hours for a week, culminating in delivering the piece to the exhibition set-up in the mid-afternoon of the day the exhibit was due to open.
Since we had all 3 worked equally on it, we all 3 went over to do the install then poked around for a few minutes looking at all the other pieces by other firms. Then we went back to the office for the couple hours left in the day.
During an office meeting later that month, all three of us were severely brow-beaten and held up as an example of inefficiency and goofing off - in front of the whole staff - by the office manager, who happened to be the founding principal's wife. Said she, who was pregnant and thus counting every penny of the firm's expenses: "Why did it take all THREE of you to deliver it? Only one of you should have gone!".
Within a few months all three of us had left the firm for far greener pastures. where our efforts relative to our break time were appreciated.
lol,
you have to love the draconian measures that do way more harm than good. I have seen many times firms and employees that just do not grow near the rate they could because of the draconian measures and the fact that one of the principals will treat employees like shit.
Or the uneven dynamics with in an office will prevent employees from sharing their tips and secrets at efficient modeling, documenting etc. I had quite a few tips that cut drawing times down by hours that I never shared due to the fact that I wanted to preserve my "value" to the firm.
more funny than horror...but i was slightly late to a lunch-n-learn one day so as i hustled to get my sandwish, chips, soda, etc and scurried into the conference room with my hands full i ran smack into the glass door that was closed. POW...just like a bird hitting a window i totally did not see it coming and suddenly had lunch all over myself with with cola dripping down the glass. of course because i was late, the entire conference room was full and the whole office was able to witness my clumsiness and break out into a roar of laughter.
A corporate firm I worked at was run by the principal and his wife... which was a recent move due to his affair with a secretary... and she joined to keep an eye on him, so you know off the bat it was a sheisty situation. She also had a short temper to say the least. I was once forced to drop everything I was doing (preparing for a client presentation) and make an invitation for her daughter's Bat Mitzvah party, which if i remember right involved me photoshopping a kitten into a hand basket while she watched over my shoulder and yelled. No one could ever second guess her either, it was usually her way or no way. The couple would often fight in front of the office making everyone feel uncomfortable. I didn't stay there too long.
'Office Manager'= Owners Wife Story: Our office manager was always on the look out for bargains. She would always buy at the big discount stores in bulk. One day I go into the bathroom and discover
her latest purchase was Paper Towels in Bulk. I don't have a problem with Paper Towels in Bulk but I do have a problem with it being one continous roll of paper towel without the perforations. Her solution was put a pair of sissors on the back of the toilet. She never even thought about taking them back to the place and asking for a replacement.
'Different Office Manager'= Different Owners Wife Story: Owner decides we have to downsize so gets rid of office manager capable of typing 120 words per minute, without mistakes, does all the books, has the guts to tell the owner he needs to quit ordering pizza for dinner everynight and putting it on a credit card. Oh ya and she was a hottie! Owner's wife comes in and crashes the office accounting program really bad. This didn't happen once but twice.
flip side of the office manager/wife, long one sorry.
We hired a new Senior architect that thought he was hot shit.
He buddies up with the principals and then grows email muscles where he berates the lower level staff and in particular the office manager who was really good at her job. Well mister hot shit not only takes calls from his mistress, he also takes calls from his wife all the time for hour long phone conversations.
once upon a time, Hot shit goes into the conference room for a meeting one day and rudely tells the office manager to tell anyone calling he is out of the office...
During the meeting the "girlfriend" calls and insists its an emergency. When the office manager humbly pages hot shit he tells the developer/friend he is meeting with "That stupid bitch can't process simple instructons."
So he takes the call and a minute into it...the wife calls. The office manager was so pissed she patched the wife in for a conference call.
It gets better or pathetically worse. So the "girlfriend" was mentioning that she thought she was pregnant just as the wife was patched through. Hot shit now looked like hot shit with hemmoroids if you catch my drift.
After that we all treated him like a piece of shit including the other principals. He ended up leaving 3 weeks later
Sorry nothing to add but laughter after that story. Just made my afternoon!
thx
No kidding, Pishta wins with that one. I wish I'd been there to see that!
yeah, that's a good one!
Oh...that's a horrible story. The office manager should have been fired for a mistake like that
puddles, I can totally picture you standing dumbfounded in front of soda-coverd glasd door - I seriously luaghed out loud at your story!
I just hope you didn't hurt your...self...when you ran into the glass, since I'm sure you weren't wearing pants at the time!
for you oldsters that remember when we drew by hand on mylar -
a new hire was told to pick up the redlines on a review set and use a highlighter to mark which ones were complete ... and he used the yellow highlighter all over the mylars.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! Puddles and Pishta those are the most awesome stories. Thanks for giving me a hardy chuckle.
Here's one for the new schoolers: first project I had worked on in Revit, only been in the office two months. The day we're sending the DD set to the printer, I sit down to make a sheet list. Revit is great for making lists of things you've already got, and listing the architectural sheets was easy.
The consultant drawings were being gathered from all over the place, though, and they were all PDFs. For some reason, probably some blood feud between Adobe and Autodesk, it's impossible to bring a PDF into Revit. And Revit is so bloody literal minded that it won't let you make a list of things that don't exist. No such thing as a simple blank spreadsheet, the fields have to tie back into some named quality of some existing object. Revit Ontology: the Name is the Thing.
Fiddling around with the sheet list, I eventually somehow created a new one with some blank fields that I called 'Drawing Name' and 'Drawing Number' (I didn't know at the time that I had just created new parameters for the already existing sheets).
I filled in all the consultant drawing names and numbers, then I went 'hey, I've got too many items in this list, I'll just delete the blank ones that I don't need!'. I was doing that for about a minute or so when I glanced over at our architectural drawing list and noticed that it seemed to be getting shorter. 'Um,' I asked the Project Architect 'How many plans have we got?' 'Twelve, why?' 'No we don't.' 'What?! How many have we got??!' 'Five.'
I had been inadvertantly deleting the actual drawing sheets, when I thought I was just deleting blank fields in the list: The Name is the Thing. Remember this is about a half hour before they have to go to the printer. The Project Architect goes 'Don't save to central!' and I shut down the file without saving. Opened it up from the central file again and everything was fine, I did the consultant list in a dumb text field instead and we got it out in time.
I thought this was pretty horrible: I was invited to be on a steering commitee, but a few weeks after we were supposed to start meeting, I wondered why I hadn't gotten the kick-off e-mail with the meeting invites. I called an acquaintance (a peer) who was also on the committee, and she told me that yes, they had already begun meeting, and didn't know why I didn't get my e-mail and that she would talk to the director and see what was going on for me.
A day or so later, at work, one of the principals comes up to me to explain that he felt that he was better suited to being on the steering committee than me, and there was no room for both of us. He basically used his connections to get me off the list and get himself on it.
a schematic design was finally agreed upon?
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