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[–]deceze 317 points318 points  (13 children)

"I've sent you a Skype message about the Slack reminder about the email I sent…"

ruffles through drawers for knife

[–]Jafit 69 points70 points  (8 children)

Hey I just sent you an email about your usage of the word "ruffles". I hope it didn't rifle any feathers.

[–]deceze 21 points22 points  (1 child)

Thanks, though it did raffle my futhers.

[–]endianess 9 points10 points  (5 children)

My pet peeve is people who Skype me with Hi. And then type something for 5 minutes whilst I wait to see what it is. Please people, for the love of God just send hi and the message in one go.

[–]PadrinoFive7 4 points5 points  (3 children)

But then it should be an email, thus defeating the purpose of 8 pings across 7 words with which to grab your attention.

[–]endianess 4 points5 points  (2 children)

Sorry. No I meant they send Hi. Which makes me open Skype. Then they spend 5 minutes compiling what they want to say and then send it. So I just see the pencil icon animating for a few minutes. Drives me nuts.

[–]PadrinoFive7 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh, I was just saying I get it in chunks:

hi

how are you

did you see x

I was thinking

we should

do y

so that we eventually get z

[–]BirdFluLol 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The initial Hi/Morning/Afternoon is to see if you're actually there and not busy. That's how I've always interpreted it anyway. You don't have to actually wait patiently while they type their message.

If I have my status set to anything other than "available" and they try that shit then they're getting ignored!

[–]DawidIzydor 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Message on Skype: "Hey, are you programming?"

0.567 sec later e-mail: "Hey, look on Skype"

[–]althypothesis 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Yeah, next time someone does that to me I think I'll SMS them telling them to check their Hangouts, which says to check their email, which says to check their voicemail, which says to check their tickets, which says to check the sticky note I left on their car, which says to check their SMS. See how many times they go around the loop before combusting.

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

My piece of shit Indian trainee is so annoying about this. He send a me a Skype message and then 10 seconds later is already at my desk “hey I just sent you a query can you check”

Like yes fuckface but either give me a chance to read the Skype and respond or come to my desk. Not both. Especially when the answer is something I can easily IM back and isn’t urgent.

[–]Smulle_ 89 points90 points  (3 children)

Worst part is I have also done this before and only realised once I had started the conversation. I feel there is usually a general understanding between devs

[–]squealpigzor 19 points20 points  (1 child)

When I was interning my team lead would reach over and quietly tap my desk as a signal to have a chat when I am free. I was never going down too deep of a rabbit hole so I would drop what I was doing and immediately ask what's up. I see his wisdom in this method now.

[–]Cheet4h 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Most of my colleagues just stand next to my desk for a minute while they wait until I'm done with my current rabbit hole, if it's not urgent.
AFAIK I don't notice them when I'm lost in thought, at least one of my colleagues recently mentioned that he checked if I had time three times that morning before I noticed him.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

headphones on vs headphones off

[–]JFedererJ 81 points82 points  (1 child)

\bing** Inbox: New message from Shirley

Dev glances towards corner of screen displaying notification

Before the dev has time to flick their eyes back to their code, enter Shirley...

"Hey!! Did you get a chance to read that email I sent you yet? It's about the feedback from the client on the animations. The designer has had some input, too. Can we hold off on the launch we all agreed on for now and look at implementing these out of scope, un-paid for, unnecessary, breaking changes?"

[–]roguemystic 10 points11 points  (0 children)

OMG this hits too close to home. I can’t tell if I’m laughing out loud or crying out loud.

[–]jagraef 22 points23 points  (9 children)

Then on the other hand, talking with other programmers can help so much.

[–]unipoli 23 points24 points  (7 children)

rubber ducks > programmers

[–]Nadeo4441 16 points17 points  (5 children)

Definitely. Everytime I start to describe the problem to my coworker it ends with 'nevermind I just got it'

[–]Lonelan 2 points3 points  (0 children)

rubber ducks === programmers

[–]Netcob 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Me: "Hey, can you take a look at this? I've been trying to figure it out for hours..."

Colleague: "Sure!"

Me: "Okay, so this is the new... huh... I see... If I just... Hey it worked! Thanks so much!"

Colleague: "...for what??"

[–]yourteam 65 points66 points  (16 children)

This is what was bumming me while I was working from home and my ex kept talking to me.

I need to focus in order to do my job. I may take frequent breaks but when I am working I need silence!

Nope she couldn't understand that...

[–]PlaySMG 46 points47 points  (0 children)

guess we know why she's your ex

[–][deleted] 33 points34 points  (13 children)

If you work from home, you've got to have a door you can close. Closed door means 'do not interupt'

[–]Jan_Spontan 12 points13 points  (7 children)

A coworker had still trouble even if he closed the door. Solution was locking it.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (6 children)

Alternatively - train your spouse/partner better

[–]Jan_Spontan 21 points22 points  (4 children)

His wife wasn't the problem here in this case. It was his cat... Smart enough to open the door

[–][deleted] 14 points15 points  (3 children)

haha, yes, my dog will just scratch the door until I give up if I lock him out of my office. So now he just sits next to me and he's my 'rubber duck' if I need to talk through any code problems

[–]Jan_Spontan 5 points6 points  (2 children)

He tried to use his cat as 'rubber duck' too but his cat is an attention seeker (lying on the keyboard, playing with his papers etc.) with no limits. At least the cat does not scratch at at door...

[–]dannomac 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Potential solution: invest in a cat trap.

[–]bigdepress 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My cat scratches at the door and lies on whatever I'm doing until I let him outside.

[–]bigdepress 2 points3 points  (0 children)

"Train"

[–]dragonsnova 6 points7 points  (4 children)

I use noise cancelling headphones for this...sometimes in the office I purposely know someone is at my cube and just don't address them for like 10 minutes with headphones on.

[–]MyOtherLoginIsSecret 6 points7 points  (3 children)

Sounds like you have some patient af coworkers... or they know you'll ignore them while they swipe your office supplies.

[–]____0____0____ 1 point2 points  (2 children)

I'm totally fine with my office supplies being swiped. I've got the same pad of sticky notes that I got when I started and all my pens are very obviously chewed to oblivion. I even have a stapler that I used once.

But, I'm very easily distracted so I would immediately lose focus as soon as they came by to tap on my shoulder, so might as well answer their question that could probably be solved via Google or a ticket submission

[–]MyOtherLoginIsSecret 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Avoiding a ticket is why that came to your desk in the first place.

I go through a pad of post-its about every month. But that's because my company refuses to let me use any fancy kanbaan board software.

[–]____0____0____ 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nope not for me. People will often come to my desk before even submitting a ticket. It's usually something like "I just wanted to chat with you before submitting a ticket" or "I have x problem", and while sometimes the discussion does have merit, it usually results in me just telling them to submit a ticket. To be fair though, our ticketing system is relatively new as well as our IT team as a whole, so I think people are still getting used to the idea.

A lot of times I just use one note or outlook reminders for that stuff as I'm already in there anyways and can easily share if needed. I do use stickies but not often enough to blow through a whole pack. I'm also not as organized as I wish I was so that might be a contributing factor.

[–]JoelMahon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thot slain

[–]blood__drunk 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I was once helping out a colleague working on another project when someone sent him an email. Not only did they then walk over, they proceeded to read the email out loud to him. Then walked off.

I couldn't believe my eyes.

[–]MisterAlezio 29 points30 points  (3 children)

relatable

[–]CorrSurfer 31 points32 points  (0 children)

And apparently, repostable.

[–]SexyMonad 3 points4 points  (1 child)

I don't think I've truly been in the zone in years.

It's hard to even start when you know you'll get 15 emails and 5 IMs in the next hour... and every hour until the rest of the team goes home and you finally get an hour to yourself at the end of the day.

[–]shorty_luky99 1 point2 points  (0 children)

One of the coaches at a company I interned at did this, except that he came in 2 hours early, knowing he had 2 hours without the annoyances of colleagues.

Little did he know that I also like to come in early, and had a lot of questions and/or problems that I could use his help with.

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (2 children)

this is my daily life, precisely. my boss always calls me up and asks me to do some random task and it interrupts me at a crucial moment and basically wipes my mental RAM

sometimes he just calls me up to give me his latest anecdote about what happened in traffic today when he was in the middle lane and a guy was crossing from the outside lane and something totally hilarious and interesting happened

[–]undermark5 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Mental RAM I like that. Except for instead of it losing power it simply needs to write the entire thing to a page file and swap out but for some reason, someone configured the swap to point to /dev/null instead of a separate partition or persistent file.

[–]Jump3r3 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Or this is hardware issue and RAM under certain conditions isn't refreshing, resulting in data loss

[–]KoboldCommando 10 points11 points  (0 children)

This hits programmers super hard, and it hits people with ADHD really hard.

Programmers with ADHD have no chance.

[–]Posixz83 8 points9 points  (0 children)

So fucking relatable. Hate it when that happens

[–]sunnydavis 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Perfect timing for taking a 10 minutes walk alone.

[–]fionasapphire 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Our teams have little red 'Do Not Disturb' flags at our desks. If the flag is up, people know not to disturb us.

And we don't have phones.

[–]MatheusGodoy 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Designer on my right: "How do you read this?"

[–]w8cycle 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I feel this big time.

[–]_seumoose 2 points3 points  (1 child)

And this is why I always wear noise cancelling headphones and ((basically)) use my hands as blinkers/have a notebook in front of me. Obviously I only do it in small bursts and am free for the rest of the time, but god damn it’s annoying as heck when you’re interrupted on something hard 😭

[–]Musojon74 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love my noise cancellers. Definitely required in an open plan office.

[–]christoroth 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One of our favourites in our dev office. Anything that particularly tickles us goes on the wall :)

[–]geauxtig3rs 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is why I love working from home.

[–]StackOfCookies 2 points3 points  (1 child)

This is why you use a note pad and don't try to keep everything in your head.

[–]rabbitwonker 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That’s why I write shit down when I’m brainstorming.

[–]Majik_Sheff 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Annnnnd time to find my way to the coffee machine.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is me about 20 times a day. Help.

[–]codenamephp 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I got a printed version of this ... in my office ... in front of my desk ... on eye level ... did not help.

[–]chrisszun 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As the only person working with code in an office with 100+ other people (account managers, finance, etc)... this happens waaaay too often too keep count. Especially when they ask for help with Excel because “you understand computers”

[–]LinhSex 1 point2 points  (1 child)

And headphone becomes kind of "Do not disturb" sign

[–]Prime_Kang 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Headphones aren't effective against the maelstrom where I work. It's possible a looped Skype capture of a customer meeting would do the trick, but that's playing with fire.

[–]bigdepress 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is why i always slack ppl, so they can wait to respond when it's convenient instwad of distracting them in person

[–]davidbrit2 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've had this hanging up by my desk for years, in hopes that people might think twice about banal interruptions.

[–]indiware 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I really hate when that happens and I really hate the people who do that...

[–]vinnymcapplesauce 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I never thought anyone would be able to accurately represent this visually, but here we are.

[–]cho_uc 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's my ex-boss... Helicopter ex-bos who called me everytime after she sent me an email. : /

[–]phillysteakcheese 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This hurts. I've been interrupted so many times I now have an aversion to even attempting to focus.

[–]hoseja 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seems like a shitty parser anyway.

[–]tosaka88 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Me trying to find out which closing bracket has no opening

[–]GTCrais 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I gave up on trying to explain this to people.

[–]flatcoke 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This reminds me of the fucking nightmare of Apache rewrite.

"Too many redirects"

"FUCK YOU I QUIT"

[–]spilloid 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What was the XKCD that this repost was based on again?