Out! Out You Demons of Stupidity!

Thank you, Dilbert, for you stupidity protective desktop background, but I am afraid even you cannot help me now.


So I give a project to an employee. It’s a fairly large project and I have immediate work to be done so I only give the first part and mention several times that when this part is done to let me know and we will go over the letters for the second part.


At the end of the day I come across another job for said employee to work on, as projects are desperately needed at the moment because the boss is out of the office on vacation… did I forget to mention that?... So I label it with a large bright yellow post-it that says “Do after ……… letters” which was the next part of the project that she was supposed to let me know when she was ready for it.


So about 3/4 of the way through the next day, when she had not gotten the letters (part two) of the project from me I decided to give the other letter that she was supposed to do afterward to another employee who is low on work. When I went to get it, I saw it was sitting on the employees letter stand, and as she informed me she was almost done with it I stared dumbfounded at the large bright yellow post-it still stuck to the middle of said document. I could not even look at her as I asked “What about the other project”. I kid you not--she actually said “Well, you didn’t give me the letters.” So I explained to her again that I told her to come get the letters when she was ready for them. I then explained that the large bright yellow note stuck to the letter telling her to do AFTER the other project should have been enough to let her know she needed to do that letter AFTER the other project.


Yay! Work!
Anybody looking for a housekeeper? I could do that.

Try, try again.

So, naming employees for tv/movie/book characters they remind me of seemed like a great idea at the time, but is proving more difficult than I thought. So I will just jump into this and hopefully people will catch on.


Legal secretary #2 prepared an order and placed original of order loose in file, as she was told to do. You might be thinking that is a good thing, however, she was told to do more than that. “Make three copies; 1 gets stamped copy and paperclipped to original, 1 gets punched and filed with paperclip on bottom of last page to indicate needs signature, and 1 gets put in drawer”. What happened to the rest you ask? That’s what I said. I brought the file to her, asked where the copy stamped document was to give to the other attorney and mentioned that I did not see file copy, but she needs to check file more closely and if it is in there it is filed wrong as it should be on very top. I had to explain 4…. yes 4 times… what she needed to do, and then she still walked out to the copier, looked at me, and said “How many copies do I need?”
She gave me the file back, indicating that she made the copies and she did not know she needed so many and she would write this down somewhere. I have been through this enough times to know that my next step is to check her work. Copies paperclipped to original were not stamped copy, but I noticed that the file copies were punched and paperclipped. My brief moment of happiness that she managed part of the task faded quickly as I realized that she did not check to see if she had already filed copies in the wrong place. Two copies of the same documents separated by other documents proved she did not even check.

Beginning Again

I'm back. The amazing stories of incompetency are back. My stressful days as an Office Manager never left.

I do regret not keeping some of my original postings, as it laid background that I now have to recreate. Be patient, sometimes it is too stressful to relive the day until a few days have past, but I assure you that anything I post will be actual happenings. You just can't make some of this stuff up. Also, please feel free to post replies or your own stories.