{Starts crowd chant} TAN-GENT! TAN-GENT!
I would like to inform TPTB of the brand that they do not employ seven-year-olds to staff their business. They are employing grown people. Grown people who do not like being treated like seven-year-olds when they have work to do.
Okay, so today our gladhander (chief of sales) came by to inform us that tomorrow we will not be having our morning meeting at the usual time. We will be having it an hour and fifteen minutes later so that we can go on a conference call with all the businesses in the brand and the head of the brand for…wait for it…
Wait for it…
Wait for it…
Coloring time!
Each department has been given a puzzle piece that we have to color and design to show how we help improve service to our guests and how that increases sales. Hey, how’s about this for an idea: how about we improve service by *actually doing our jobs *and increase sales by having the sales department do their own damn job instead of asking all of us to look for leads for them! That’s their job! Not mine! (Even though I did once find a lead–a very obvious one, I thought–that did get us a lot of temporary business and led to me getting a paid day off BUT STILL.)
And then, the gladhander came up to me and asked me if I was thinking about the design for my puzzle piece. I pointed out to him that the CEO of our franchise’s father’s funeral is tomorrow and Big Boss has to go to that. I have to hold down the fort while he’s gone. Gladhander countered that Big Boss is only going to the visitation and will be back in time for the scheduled foolishness. Big Boss backed me up by saying I will still have to be at the desk holding down the fort. Gladhander, clearly a Ph.D. in “never take no for an answer,” replied that I can still think of a design. (Oh, I’m thinking of a design all right.) It’s been decided to push this off on the afternoon lady who is known to be artistic.
What I wanted to say to gladhander follows. I did not say it because I do not use this kind of language at work because I am professional:
Motherfucker, look. I am here to work. I get paid to work. I am the one keeping the organization on track. These sonsabitches can’t even keep the damn office *plant *alive if I’m not here. The second I step away from the desk–and this is documented–the phone rings off the hook, everyone and their third cousin comes down to check in or out, and the power goes off. If I wanted coloring time, I would have become an elementary or preschool teacher. I am not that. I want to be able to do my job and get paid for it. I am a grown woman, thirty-goddamn-three years old, and I am past coloring time. I treat you as an adult and I expect the same in return. You find whoever’s idiot idea this was and ask them how dragging us off our jobs and causing a clusterfuck later in the day will help us improve sales and service. I guarantee you won’t have an answer because the mouthbreathing fucktard who thought of it is probably a gladhander like you who doesn’t think of long-term consequences.
Seriously, this will cause a clusterfuck when it comes to getting rooms turned over tomorrow. The second-in-command will be doing the food order and thus unavailable for a few hours and I’m only working five hours due to this being the slow season.
Sorry about the length, but I really do not like being treated like a child when I am performing grown-up tasks.
MORE RON! MORE RON!
Wait, that’s another thread.
TAN-GENT! TAN-GENT!
OK, OK, since you ask, but I do think I mentioned the story before…
There is a certain provincial capital in Spain where you may occasionally hear extremely-angry parents tell their misbehaving children “do not be a William!” It is not a reference to Just William, to William the Conqueror, or to any other William of history and literature. It is a reference to a certain cousin of mine who at age 4 figured that pulling down the rear of people’s bathing suits was Great Fun. This, when the Generalisimo was still alive and in a town that was as staid as staid can be.
His elder brothers and three elder cousins (including yours truly), ages 7-9, were supposed to prevent the airing of more butts, but it was kind of difficult to do so when we were also supposed to keep up to thirty other toddlers and little kids from jumping into the Olympic pool, jumping into the L-pool, climbing the chestnut tree after the eldest of us (who just never seemed to understand that the little ones would attempt anything he did), climbing the brick walls separating the grounds from the rest of the city (and from the corresponding streets, including one of the town’s widest avenues), killing each other, jumping into an empty pool, pulling each others’ arms off and all those other things which toddlers like to do, or at least attempt. William’s responsible brother would be in one of the trees, handing stuck toddlers down to me, and meanwhile William would be blazing a trail of bare butts around the grounds. Hence, the Summer of Butts - and “do not be a William!”
Dammit, is every job listing on Craigslist a fucking scam?
Don’t answer that, I already know… :smack:
facepalm
Why do people even bother looking at Craigslist for anything legitimate? :dubious:
You know, this is going to be an almost complete detour from workplace ranting, but it is workplace related, so there is that.
I have worked for newspapers for the past 35+ years. Where I am now, Craigslist ate our lunch for classified advertising by giving most of it away and only charging (but not very much) for help wanted advertising. A newspaper can’t compete with free.
Plus the founder was interviewed so often and seemed to me rather smug about the whole thing.
But I’ll bet you that there are damn few people who would say this today:
“Why do people even bother looking at the newspaper for anything legitimate?”
So maybe it’s true that you get what you pay for.
Sorry, end of detour. And pardon my schadenfreude at Craig T Nelson’s expense (is he still the owner? I haven’t tried very hard to keep up with their current events).
Roddy
Holy Jaysus. I have a sudden urge to write a grovelling thank-you letter to every single one of the people who make it possible for me to be self-employed.
Yeah, that was a nasty surprise. They were vendor drawings, so I guess my company didn’t have much say in how they were produced. My company used mylar or vellum paper back in the day; while both materials have yellowed considerably over time, the sheets are still intact. Plus, the combination of heavy ink with a transparent surface means that they scan beautifully (with the correct settings).
Oh, I forgot to mention that this particular batch of drawings still had the hang tabs intact. Not only does this make rolling up the drawings hard as hell by creating too much bulk, it also causes the sheets to stick together in spots where the adhesive has separated from the tabs.
Wanna bet that the genius who thought up the coloring program was the gladhander himself?
Personally, I rather enjoy coloring and doodling and sometimes I come up with some interesting ideas. However, this project seems to be at best very poorly thought out. One or two people might come up with a workable idea, but in the meantime this is going to put EVERYONE behind schedule. Some people are just not very good at coming up with creative ideas, but they are whizzes at counting beans, or whatever. So let those people count beans, because it will make the company money.
I used to work for a woman who loved going to sales seminars. She had bipolar disease, too. At any rate, if she attended a seminar while she was manic, she would love whatever idiot idea was being touted, and she’d insist that the whole chain (she and her husband owned a small chain) had to immediately implement the idea. For instance, she got the notion that the whole chain should highlight the old price on the price tags, and hand write in a new, lower discounted price. Starting in the last week in November…you know, the one month when we could count on selling stuff with both hands. We knew that she’d likely show up at the store and demand to see how many racks we’d marked down. So, instead of helping customers find stuff and upselling, we were busy playing with price tags. I had suggested that we wait until January, because that month was always dead, dead, dead, and we had lots of time on our hands. Nope, she needed this done YESTERDAY.
You are making this archivist cry!
I need a minion. I have my choice between hiring someone or taking a very nice tall male person from someone else.
The reason the nice tall male person was offered was because he pretty gormless. I can use him, but I can’t trust him to do the right thing unsupervised. Think happy, helpful golden retriever. He won’t be fired if I don’t take him.
If I hire someone, I will have to ignore the fact that a tall strong person would be handy and hire the best qualified person.
I have to make my decision by Monday.
No, this level of idiocy can only be corporate.
Goddamn, this is why I want to work as an archivist again. I did that for a couple of years in college and I loved it. Loved, loved, loved it. I need to break back into that field. I would gladly deal with a Shredder Guy just so I didn’t have to deal with gladhanding idiots.
Is very nice tall male person a potential Shredder Guy?
'Cos you know, if he is, you HAVE to hire him…
And some (hi, Littlebro) are good at coming up with better ways to count beans, but they can’t draw anything that will be recognizable by anybody other than their own brother.
In my experience*, it’s invariably a penis.
*(art teacher)
Its kinda scary to hear of all the Dopers who want to hide in warehouses and never talk to anyone again.
Me being one of them, I will never mention this again…but it rocks. I’m serious, it just flipping rocks. You get to spend your days being sure that your precious papers are protected and findable and you don’t have to deal with people. It just flipping rocks!!!
I’m really thinking about stealing him, but he’s a polar opposite from SG. If I pointed 5 boxes and told SG to put them on the shelf and turned around, SG would put 2 boxes on the shelf and then go raid the break area.
If I tell Gormless to put those 5 boxes on the shelf and turn around, he would put all of the boxes on the floor on the shelves.
This could be entertaining as well…but I’m pretty sure that it would be a bad idea to steal him just to entertain all of you.
Seriously thinking about it, though. 
This is where you’re wrong. And being totally selfish, I might add.
The one that’s got us completely stumped is the plane*, I think Middlebro knows it’s the plane simply from the way Littlebro turns the paper around while trying to figure out how to draw a plane. Or maybe they’re actually using their own version of sign language, because how the fuck does Middlebro know that the answer is “plane” when all Littlebro has done is turn the paper around and start a curve is waaaaay beyond me.
*(Pictionary with SiL, who might have needed emergencies called if she happened to see a drawing of a penis outside of her anatomy books. No penises!)
Wait. What?
There are nieces, nephews, no?
Thank you, Nava. I’m pretty sure I had not read that story before.
In my dull but frustrating job: my coworker has wandered away leaving his cell phone on his desk. Again.