Enjablog

A few work-related stories today.

I was in the elevator with a pile of CAD drawings going through the QA process. There were a few questions I needed answered, so I was flipping through the pages to double check everything before bothering people. A guy in the elevator looks at me, looks at my stack of ship arrangements, looks at me again and asks, “Are you an architect or an interior designer?”

Right, because those are the only two options? I’ll grant him that maybe he’s not familiar with CAD and didn’t realize that the structure I was looking at was decidedly shaped like a ship. But it’s definitely odd-looking for a house or an office building, what with it being pointy on one end. In any case, my jaw dropped and I gave him a stupid look before answering that I am a naval architect and walked out of the elevator.

To preface the next story, I’ll explain that ship hulls are typically symmetrical along their length. Pretty obvious, right? Anyway, the first 3-D model of a design is usually only half a ship to save time/work. People who studied naval architecture in school should be aware of that by the end of their first intro class.

New guy walks into the interns’ office and complains, “[He] left me with this model, but only gave me half the ship. What am I supposed to do with it?”

And the intern replies, “Which half? The front or the back?”

And just because I was so annoyed with people last week:

Ways to Annoy me at Work

1. Touching my monitor and leaving fingerprints.

2. Asking for help and then coming back 5 minutes later to get me to do the work for you. I used to try that one on my mom. She didn’t fall for it either.

3. Asking a question and not listening to the answer, just to re-ask the same question as soon as I’m done talking.
“How do I find this weight?”
“Open the file here, then go to this sheet, and add these values together.”
“Right, but how do I get *this* number?”
Add! I *just* did it for you.

4. Not listening to an explanation and then asking how to do what was just explained.
“Use this command to output the graphs.”
*Open output file and look at graphs.*
‘How did you get those graphs!?”

5. Taking notes on what I explain and returning 5 minutes later to ask me to decipher your chicken scratch. Not to ask me to re-explain what you need to know. No, to decipher what you wrote down.

6. Walking out of a meeting and immediately turning to me to ask, “So what did all that mean?” That you should pay more attention.

7. Walking into my office while I’m in the middle of a discussion with someone else, and interrupting to ask, “So what does all this mean?” It’s not like we’re having a philosophical discussion here. We’re already saying what we mean.

8. Looking at a list of step-by-step instructions, then asking me what to do after finishing step 4. “Step 5.” WTF? (Of course this happened after the meeting explaining the step-by-step instructions. See #6.)

9. Drinking so much caffeine that you can’t stand still during a meeting and then elbowing me in the process of *falling over.*

10. Staring at my chest when you talk to me. Seriously, did you learn nothing from high school? At least make an attempt to be discreet.