inadequately rewarded endeavors

inspired by my Secret Santa

While I was in college, I worked for a brilliant professor of chemistry. He was invited to submit an article to an incredibly prestigious scientific encylopedia. This was an enormous honor, and we worked our butts off (he writing the article, me producing a pixel-perfect formatted manuscript). The honor was so great that there was no thought of his being paid for the work.
However, following the article’s submission, the publisher sent him a check for $150. This was a bit insulting (sort of like if the U.S. had sent France $50,000 for the Statue of Liberty). We went out and had a $150 lunch at a very nice restaurant.

(or Why Lainaf Got a Slinky for Christmas)

Back in 1999, I was part of a massive computer migration at a manufacturing plant. We were replacing DOS PC’s with Windows based ones, but we still had to keep some DOS-based applications on them. Also, most of the people who worked there had to be trained. Since this was a 24 hour a day, three shift operation, we wanted to give people on all three shifts a chance to talk to a real live IS person, which is why I spent a few weeks going in to work at 6:00 am. To give you an idea of why this was necessary, there was one morning when I spent some time with a fellow showing him exactly how to use Alt+Tab to switch between programs. He didn’t own a computer of his own, and this was the first time he’d encountered it. Oh yes, there was also the time we finally dragged the head of maintenance into the lab to verify that we had set up his new PC correctly when he abruptly had to leave because there was a small fire. No damage was done, but sheesh! It was hard enough tracking him down in the first place! :rolleyes: In other words, for about three months, we went nuts.

When all the computerss were swapped out and all the users safely set up and running, our IS manager decided to reward us. Now, the budget was tight, and a fair amount of it was going for a certain over-priced contractor known as cjhoworth to you folks,:wink: but a stop at the dollar store gave her a way to show her appreciation. That, friends, is why a plastic slinky sits on my desk to this day!

Now, if you really want to get into “Inadequately Rewarded Endeavors”, there was the time I had 17 tourists to check into 5 hotels with the next batch due to arrive in 15 minutes, but that was one I couldn’t quite pull of. Sometimes, the hat simply doesn’t contain any more rabbits.

CJ

I have worked assiduously for over 60 years to try to straighten out everybody else’s thinking and have never received a dime for it. I don’t even get any thanks. And furthermore, you guys don’t even follow my advice.

I’m about ready to give it all up.

You guys really need to learn something about gratitude. I’d suggest consulting with Nightime or Doghouse Reilly in Eve’s locked thread about the sniper kid.

:smiley:

Let’s see…hmmm?

Being a MOD?