Well, now we know how that kid who claims to love to live in the urban wilderness is going to wind up. Thanks for the update on SG.
… in his new boss’s yard? Yeah, I don’t think he’s going to be in that job for much longer!
Thanks for the update **flatlined **
Flatlined, I’ve been following your adventures of SG tale for awhile now…part of me wants to laugh at his current situation, but OTOH, for some reason I can’t.
But you HAVE to. Or you’ll cry.
Hmm, I’m thinking that’s flatlined’s spiritual gift: to be able to show us the humor in the pathos.
You are a kind and caring person. You are probably someone who would make an extra food to share with a hungry coworker.
Over the years, I learned about SG’s financial situation. SG spent 4 years in the Army, so gets his medical care from the VA. SG worked 20 years and retired with a good pension, then started working for the county. He retired there and started double dipping as SG AND got his old pay rate when he did. While he was working for me, his 20 hours a week paid better than my 40.
SG is making about 60 grand a year.
I understand that addictions suck. I smoked a menthol cigarette today. (OMG, did that suck. I coughed and got dizzy, but I smoked that thing to the filter anyhow)
SG has a gambling addiction. I am fighting mine. SG chooses to steal cheap toilet paper so he can save the money for lottery tickets.
I used to have a lot of sympathy for him. I don’t anymore.
My job is perfect. My career is perfect. I make 6figures and I’m the smartest one on my team. I have a beautiful office with a window view of the woods, a keurig, and a Bose sounddock for my iPod. My secretary is incredible and I ride my bike to work. I just started and I can retire in a few years with a beautiful pension.
Wait what was this thread about again?
Don’t threadshit by not feeling shitty in this thread.
(Seriously, you’ve been dismissive of posters in other threads. Hope you don’t start that everywhere.)
(Pssst I’m guessing that whether or not the aforementioned is true, about my job, my coworkers’ dysfunction tops everything in every other workplace combined.)
Apparently you really haven’t been paying attention to this thread. Unless SG is your new coworker sorry dude but you’re SOOOO beat.
Then spill! Tell all. We live for those stories
My sweet part time clerk is a little OCD. She checks and rechecks locks all the time. On doors that close and lock automatically. This doesn’t bother me. Like me, if she is only taking one handtruck of boxes out the back, she just bounces it down the stairs. I’m the one who showed her how to do that, I can’t complain. HOWEVER, when bouncing a handtruck that weighs at least 90 lbs down the stairs, its not a good idea to try to stop to check that the door is closed and locked properly.
I’ve managed to save her so far, but she is going to start doing this alone soon. She is going to learn what mass and momention mean and I’ll have to be the one to do the paperwork and explain to my boss why I let her bounce the handtruck down the stairs.
I’m still alone in my office. We interviewed a few candidates. Fucking hire someone already. (Personal to our first pick in case you’re still waffling: Fucking take the job, or turn down the job; I no longer care which at this point.)
Also, to a pharma company sponsor: Quit querying me on stupid shit; train your monitors better. I know you guys are new to this particular field, but when your forms have a question that is a single box that is only to be checked if a person meets a particular diagnosis, and suddenly I get queries for every single visit for our study subjects claiming that an answer is required… no, you suck. It’s not a “this box for yes, that box for no,” it’s a “check it if yes, leave blank if no.” How does requiring me to check that single box every time make sense?
I’m a SAS programmer, not a monitor, PI, or anything like that, but I’ve played with the data from a lot of clinical trials and my immediate reaction to seeing that was “Are you referring to an inclusion criterion?”. If so, then it makes sense that assuming a formal protocol exception was not made for a given patient, having a check mark in that box may be the one and only sensible answer (i.e. confirming that the patient is eligible). If you’re not referring to an inclusion criterion, then just ignore me. 
PS And yes, my edit checks would query you every time.
Nope, not inclusion/exclusion criterion. This is asked at every visit, and the sponsor designed it as a single checkbox to be checked off if the answer (as to whether the subject has a particular condition - basically, having an artificial lens in the eye) is affirmative, skipped otherwise, and a human offsite monitor apparently doesn’t understand their own skip patterns. The study’s been going on for over a year and suddenly, boom, flood of queries.
I opened a really simple ticket with an external helpdesk on March 6th. It should have taken a couple of days. They responded within 4 hours saying they were done and there was much rejoicing…until we tested and verified that they were full of shit.
Followups (after the late March 6th email saying um…nice try please try again) via a mixture of phone and email on the 12th, 14th, 16th, 21, 23 and then today they OPEN A NEW TICKET. They have promised me a call back and I shall endeavor to not kill the messenger. It’s REALLY FREAKING TEMPTING though.
Further boring info that only data entry/database/research people would give a damn about: That “check if yes, skip if no” question is intended to work as a branch for a skip pattern on that form. If it is not checked, you continue and answer questions on the condition of the eye’s natural lens. If checked, that means the lens is artificial and the following questions are instead locked out from being answered in the database. (The really funny thing is that they don’t take into account the relatively rare cases in which the patient has no lens - and lack of any lens is not an exclusion criteria, either.)
My guess: Insufficiently-trained newbie got turned loose on doing queries.
We’re hiring housekeepers at work. Goddammit, I hate it when we’re hiring housekeepers. It’s an endless parade of nigh-inappropriately dressed people who come in, ask for an application, and then ask for a pen. :smack: One lady asked me for a clipboard. 
:smack::smack: We’re going to be out of pens at the desk by Thursday. I need to remember to put out a request for them tomorrow so I’ll have some stashed away.
Oh well. Bright side is no one’s come in to fill out their application with kid in tow. Yet.
Hint: get a box of the cheap stick-type pens, and take the caps off, and keep them hidden in a drawer. When it’s just the pen, with no cap, people usually don’t put them in their pocket.
I do this a lot at political convention registration. I think it’s mostly habit – after using a pen to sign in, people just automatically stick it back in their pocket. But with no cap on the pen, they don’t, they remember that it’s our pen and put it back on the table.
I haven’t had anyone bring their kid in with them yet either. What I have had a lot of is people who can’t drive coming in to apply. We ask for a driver’s license if we’re interested in interviewing someone so we can run a background check. They say they don’t have one, and wonder why we need it. We explain that you have to be able to drive to do this job. People are shocked and sometimes pissed off to find out that a job at a parking garage might involve some driving.
No pen at the desk has a cap on it. I took them off a year ago when I realized someone was chewing on the caps. (Where’s that barfy smiley?) Even without the caps our pen attrition level is high. Some people think complementary = take with impunity.
I also hide the pens from guests. Just yesterday I forgot to tuck my reservation computer pen under the phone tray and some guy wandered by and leaned over the high part of the desk to grab it. :mad: At least he put it back so I could hide it properly. If you want to grab something off **my **desk, you **ask **first.
Around here, it’s pretty common for businesses to duct tape something to the top of pens, like plastic spoons or artificial flowers (the bigger and gaudier, the better!). Makes it harder to put in a pocket or purse, accidentally or not!