I work at a place where bulbery abounds. Here is a compendium of some of the most belm-tastic occurrences. Newest things go on the top.

Instances of bulbery:

1. Why did this random person have the register; why did the trainer let them walk off with it?
2. What did random person think they were doing?
3. Why did cow-irker sign it?
4. Why did the Dickstretching Trainer sign off on the register when it had the signature on it of a person who didn't attend?

We have 2 fridges in the work kitchen: left and right. The door seals on Right Fridge broke, so someone helpfully moved all the fridge contents to Left Fridge, and put a sign on Right Fridge saying 'out of order, door won't close, milk in left fridge'. So far, so sensible.

Someone crossed out 'left' and wrote 'right'. I peeked inside Right Fridge, thinking someone just got left and right confused. Nope, milk.

I made a spreadsheet that auto-calculates some stuff ('cos that's what spreadsheets are for). Instead of using it properly, the person who uses it (who is a department manager) prints it and then manually does it on a calculator, checking each calculation 3 times. He does this because the spreadsheet isn't 'verified' so we don't 'know' if it's giving the right answers.

I've tried explaining to him and to my manager that Excel is a calculator, and maths is still maths whether you punch it into a calculator or an Excel formula bar, and he's just making busy work for himself. But they're both concerned the spreadsheet might 'glitch' and we can't 'prove' it's correct. I've tried explaining that it's made by friggin Microsoft and we can trust their software to do noddy calculations.

I wrote a 9-page document explaining what each formula in the spreadsheet does. It's nothing complicated; it's just some divisions and percentages. You can see how it works if you've ever seen maths written down. I included breakdowns of each part of every formula, with links to the relevant pages on Microsoft's official site, and how we'd know if the formula was incorrect. I don't know how much more you can 'verify' this shit.

...Nearly a year later of doing manual calculations on paper, Cow-irker is finally writing a protocol to 'validate' the spreadsheet. He's going to 'calibrate' a calculator using paper log tables, then use the calibrated calculator to check that the spreadsheet gives the same answers. It remains to be seen how he will verify that the log tables are correct.

(Dude reckons that this is actually a requirement of the government agency that audits us. I looked into it and I'm pretty sure that's bullshit.)

Christ. Just say that. Literally all you had to do was ping me on Slack saying "Please can you print out some [folder] labels for me, saying 'Shit', 'Fuck', 'Wanker', 'Tit', and 'Bum'?" instead of making me play What the Greasy Poop am I Supposed to Do?

And did they? Did they fuck.

I know! That’s what I’m trying to do!

I’m trying to!

Eh? You know where the document is. You know which fucker it’s gotta go to. YOU fuckin send it!

Also, said fucker is in our team. Just ping them on Slack with the location! Christ.

There are some tasks at work that only I know how to do. (They're not that hard; I'm just the only person with the ability 'Read what is on the screen'.) This obviously gives me a high bus factor, so I suggested to my team leader that I document them in an SOP.

They vetoed this, saying they don't want to 'proceduralise' them.

Well, whatever. Instead of writing an official SOP, I wrote my own little manual for my team, so they'll know how to do the tasks in my absence. I proudly showed it to my team leader.

"It’s too much text for us to read. Can you make a presentation so we can take notes?"

But… I already wrote everything down for you…

(For the avoidance of doubt: this is a rubber date stamp. You turn the wheels to the date you want, then thump your documents with it.)

I got confused when a cow-irker talked about the 'header' on a document when she meant 'watermark'. Once we'd deduced the cause of my confusion, she laughed and said 'I have to be so specific with you!' That’s because words mean things!

I don’t know. You wrote the fucker.

Another department used some defective parts, knowing they were defective, because 'we knew that if we reported it to Voybridge's team we’d have to raise a deviation'. That's part of your job! Cunts!

This question was asked by a cow-irker, showing me an email I sent, which literally had headings saying 'What to do next' and 'What to do on Friday'.

I sent an email to my manager saying "I’d like to change the header of this document because [reasons why the new header is better]", followed by the pasted current version and proposed version of the header, with the differences highlighted in cyan.

She phoned my cow-irker (not me?) to ask what the differences were because she 'can’t see them'.

Then she sent an email to me, wittering about a different document entirely. How the fuck did she get an interview at this place??

The Finance Director had a spreadsheet of product prices, and a spreadsheet of product expiry dates. He declared it 'impossible' to combine the spreadsheets to get a list of prices of the products expiring soon.

Please note that this person is the Finance Director.

Reader, I combined the spreadsheets.

Our ‘license server’ at work is a laptop. It’s not even in a cage; it’s just a normal laptop that any fucker can turn off or accidentally drop.

This might have something to do with the fact that the IT guy somehow made SAP stop escaping commas when exporting to CSV, and his solution was to tell people to never type commas in SAP.