man, i have a co-worker stealing my thunder!!!
 

ok, i am a civil eng. i have been in the "zone" lately and really putting up some great math. mostly survey stuff...boring. but my co-worker takes all the credit...i try not to let it bother me, but not only is he doing this to my bosses, but also to a cute, young, smart civil engineer on the contractors' side. she calls with a question, somehow we do the math, he calls her back with a, "hey, i figured it out". honestly, me and another smart dude does all the hard stuff. he hosed himself yesterday. me and smartdude,(call him the professor) called in sick yesterday. thunderstealer needed some data, so he emailed the cutie, with a "hey my numbers are not coming out, can you send me what you have?" i would have never known, but he forgot and showed me the email to see if my calcs matched hers. thunderstealer did not expect me to make it back to work today. so i think he just wanted to take her data, and call it his own. then he could just tell her, "hey, that is what i got". this guy couldnt calc his way to any numbers.


sorry if this makes no sense, but my rants usually never do....thanks for the vent.

Vash,

Promise the SOB if he continues to take credit for other people's work you will one day slip him a major line of BS and make him look like the jerk he is.

Don't put up with it.

Les

I'm in the same situation. Every time i try to kiss my bosses a$$, I hit the back of my co-workers head...

Stop sharing with the jerk.

Alternative is give him some incorrect data and let him fall on his face.

That sucks, Could be worse, it's not unheard of for a manager to put their names on designs or even patents and leave out the engineer who did the actual work.
-Chris

BTDT

You need to figure out a way to feed him bad data and let him hang himself with it. http://www.pelicanparts.com/support/...amingdevil.gif

I did this to a sysadmin co-worker once, one of my best BOFH moments. He would ask me how to solve a problem, then hijack the associated call out of my queue, fix it with the solution I just gave him, then close the call, thus taking credit for the fix. One day when he came by, I showed him how to fix a complex issue and to do so, I created a small script in a shared directory and showed him how to run it. Between the time he left my desk and got back to his, I tweaked the script subtly in a manner that would break the target system in a dramatic fashion. Sure enough, he copies the script to the target system, runs it and closes the call before realizing that he's actually shot himself in the foot. Meanwhile, I undo my change and touch(1) the script with an earlier timestamp. When he comes back *****ing "dude, your script didn't work!" I was able to run it on another system perfectly: "I guess you screwed something up when you ran it!"

LOL, you are a BOFH.

BOFH?

welcome to the corporate world... you do all the work, someone else gets the credit. now stop complaining.

that's how one of my ex-bosses ended up with 4 patents in his name. ****** white collar criminal !! !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOFH

LOL @ Thom...I want you on my side, BTW. ;)

wikipedia rules :)

Put some Polonium-210 in his salad...if not available locally, try some Cesium-137.

i always copied off the asian kids' work in school too cliff.

Not sure what to say. Why don't you tell them to f*ck off? You try and pull that crap in my office, it would not fly an inch.

We have a saying, DYOG (Do your own googling). Its what you say when some lazy ass does not want to research a problem and trys to dump it on you.

Not so sure I like the idea of civil eng. giving each other incorrect data! :D

You wouldn't do that to another pilot, would you Joe?

(note to self, never trust joe to give me coordinates... :p )

Yeah, that's grade school advice. :rolleyes:

Either:

(1) confront the coworker on this and tell him to stop or be cut off of information from you. Not always possible to do this. Also creates more immediate tension in the office.

or, my preference:

(2) use email to show the information trail, with your boss cc'd every time. Where it's acceptable to your company, also cc the cute civil engineer (contractor) on your calculations. Make sure to let your dick co-worker know, and the contractor civil engineer know, that dick may feel free to present your calculations and if they have any questions, you'll be glad to answer them. The boss will soon have the real picture of who's doing the work and has the technical capabilities, and who's the pretender, all without noticable drama. Same for the cute civil engineer contractor. :)

HD,

I would do it something like Thom did it, and let it bite HIM in the buns and not mess with anyone else.

I do it all the time to other pilots. When I am instructing and someone gets that "know it all" look or attitude its time to let them blunder right to the edge of doing something stoopid then have a talk with them.

Joe clearly doesn't understand Civil Engineering.

BTW vash, are you a licensed PE?

It concerns me that people like this are doing licensed engineering work. Please report him to his supervisor before he stamps a design for bridge that collapses on someone.

The only thing worse than an equivalent or lower grade co-worker stealing your thunder is having a boss who steals your thunder.

yup, i am licensed.

OK, you know you need to tread carefully then.

Use the email trail to make sure everyone involved knows the calculations are coming from you. Your boss knowing it is the most important, as the dick can't then claim your results as his, only misrepresent them in front of others. Even then, the email trail can nip this in the bud. You don't even need to tell the dick what you're doing...just start doing it. Whenever he asks for something, just reply "I email you this information." If he presses you, just tell him, "I prefer email, as it's easier for me to keep track of what I've told people. I hate to make mistakes." If he still presses you, just ask him "Why are you pressing me on this?" That should get him to back off as he'll really have no valid reason.

Good luck and I hope you get this resolved to your satisfaction. :)

Re: man, i have a co-worker stealing my thunder!!!
 

I can't believe no one has said this yet...

this thread is worthless without pictures.

:D

+1,000

what where we (not) thinking? :o

Engineers.....

:)

This guy is essentially stealing food from your family. You are paid for what you produce. Your future promotions and raises are largely based on what you produce. If this guy is taking credit for what you produced it is akin to reducing your future promotion, raises, and standard of living.

Absolutely do NOT put up with this kind of behavior AT ALL.

Cliff, can you put all the sheets in .pdf? Your sig on the sheets can't be modified, can it? Neither can the data, or anyone else's name added. Am I correct here?

That would be a subtle way to claim the work as yours.

BTW, and I mean this in the most kindhearted and helpful way, I would try to improve grammar before communicating in emails beyond the actual data. Most people see a grammatical error and assume you're not the brightest bulb on the tree. That's the problem with generalizations, something I'm acutely guilty of.