Annoying Things Your Co-workers Do

[Levian]

I've just started in a new job, so I guess if anything it's my newbieness that's annoying to other people. Although I do find it annoying when the person before me hasn't checked the e-mail so I have to go through and respond to everything. It makes a hectic day a bit more hectic.

[Yeargdribble]

Our choir/band director is an incompetent putz. He taught some clarinet players to hold their instruments wrong (right hand on top). He had a kid playing on a messed up trumpet (in the key of B rather than Bb) for a year without noticing it. He had a horn player using a double horn on which only the Bb side worked and the F side was completely screwed... for a year without noticing. He can't play hardly any instruments passably well. He can't even play his primary instrument (trumpet) much better than most of his middle-school kids. It's embarrassing. I usually end up demonstrating all of the instruments for kids or helping with particular issues because he's just not that informed about his job. I'm supposed to be the accompanist for goodness sake. Why the hell am I wearing a saxophone around my take while picking up trombones, trumpets and clarinets to demonstrate things to the kids. Hell, I shouldn't even be in the band hall during band. I'm supposed to be there to play friggin' piano...



He constantly tries to get the basses in the choir to sing in tenor 1 range (because he is a tenor). He doesn't warn me about performances, doesn't get me music until very late, and generally doesn't pick music his choirs can do nor does he consult with me about the craziness of some of the accompaniments he throws at me. He likes to go ridiculously faster than written to the point that my parts are literally impossible at times (parallel triads/7th chords, in sixteenth notes.... at 180+ bpm... physically beyond the powers of man).

He also is aware he's going to ask you to do something you don't want to do, so he very passively lies about it. "Let's go do inventory, should take 10 minutes." He full well knows it will take hours. Why insult my intelligence by lying to me? It's not like I'm not going to do it if he tells me the truth. Of course this actually becomes a liability when he doesn't want to tell me that we're doing some ridiculous hard music for a concert. I guess he's afraid he'll upset me so he makes the situation worse by giving me the music (or telling me we'll play a piece he'd previously canceled) at the last second... often literally days before a concert.


Worst of all... he's a very nice, likable guy. He's very pleasant to be around socially and I almost could like him except that every time he makes me feel good about being around I have to deal with his professional incompetence.

[~*~Celes~*~]

He taught some clarinet players to hold their instruments wrong (right hand on top).

I was taught that way. I think it may be a matter of right handed vs left handed, perhaps.

EDIT: Thinking about it, the callous from the rest is on my right hand so never mind, my left hand was on top. Carry on.

[Raistlin]

My coworkers send me work. What the hell is up with that.

Actually my coworkers at my last job were great. But I suppose I could talk about the high school basketball official's board I'm apart of, where there are a lot of great people, but also some major league douchebags. Last year the commissioner (a jerk) lost the election to a challenger (great guy), and then proceeded to mutiny and pull off members to form his own association instead. My email inbox this summer (while I was away for work) was filled with drama.

[Yeargdribble]

He taught some clarinet players to hold their instruments wrong (right hand on top).

I was taught that way. I think it may be a matter of right handed vs left handed, perhaps.

If you're playing it hands backward then there are keys you will never be able to hit. Many of your trill keys and such are positioned on the left side of the top joint so that learning to play right hand on top would make you never be able to play.

Since clarinet takes both hands, I'm pretty sure they don't make left handed versions the way they do for trumpets (which are rare anyway since people don't make right handed horns even those most horn players are right handed).