I’m actually glad for the clarification myself. I read it 3 times and was still trying to figure out why a 20 foot walk would require driving. lol I’ve only ever seen ’ and " used that way in scientific notations and such. I suppose a marathon participant may understand it that way. I’m just slow.
It’s good but it can always get better.
A tale about subtleties:
A few years back I took a graduate course in Translation. One of the things that’s still got me traumatatized is how much most of those professors relied on assumptions, often disregarding evidence when it contradicted their beloved prejudices.
The ES->EN teacher was one of several who loved saying that “it is impossible to perform a good translation into a language that’s not your native one” and that “one must always translate into one’s native language”. When it turned out that the ESL-people* as a group had done better than the EFLs in the midterms she turned all kinds of funny colors.
In the final exam the worst EFL got as good a grade as the best ESLs. There was one thing every single foreigner had gotten wrong - for some, it was the only thing marked wrong: we’d written a century using Roman numerals.
Either the bitch had been 99.9% sure that we would all have managed to miss that detail and used it to know who was which, grading us down, or she was a real bad teacher: every single ESL had a worse grade in the final than in the midterm… shouldn’t we have gotten better?
And wouldn’t it have been lovely if one of us, just one of us, had known about that detail? Because yeah, of course we’d all seen the “20th Century Fox” sign a thousand times, but for some reason none of us had ever learned to use Arabic numerals to write centuries in English :smack:
- meaning those who had English as a Second language - and who didn’t always have Spanish as their first; EFL, English as First Language
I dunno, if you only looked at the average walmart, you might just think a 20’ walk required a hoveround.
Let’s not even get started about people who use a period when giving times (eg. 7.30 pm). 
And those that use a comma for a decimal point.
Ok, I need to bitch a little about my coworker. I can’t tell if she’s really this dumb or she just wants someone else to do all of the work for her. I think it’s the latter, or maybe a combination.
But she asks us on EVERYTHING. Like the other day she came to me and said,
“I ran a list of e-mails from [our internal database]. One came up marked as ‘do not e-mail’. What should I do?”
I stared at her for a good five seconds before I said, “Uh…don’t e-mail her.”
And then our boss gave her an assignment. And she immediately went to her coworker and said, “Should I do this?” Uh, YOUR BOSS TOLD YOU TO DO IT.
It’s 3 or 4 questions like that, every day. She had to bring a cake to one of her top fundraising teams. “What should I have the cake say?” Seriously? You need to ask us that? How about “Thank you, [team]!”
Idiot.
stupid person 
: “Can I call in a claim or can my employee do it?”
me :): “Either way is fine, ma’am, anybody can report a claim”
30 seconds later
stupid person : “So, can my employee call in this claim, or do I have to?”
me :dubious:: “Yes, that would be just fine. Anybody can report a claim to us.”
30 seconds later
stupid person : “But, do I have to file this? Or can I have my employee call you to report it?”
me :rolleyes:: “As I said twice already, yes. *Anybody *can call in a claim.”
stupid person :mad:: “Well, you don’t have to be rude.”
Listen, bitch. You have the listening skills of a coconut. I don’t like repeating myself. I am a human being, not a fount of endless patience. Now get the fuck off my phone.
Bill almost raised his voice at me because I took another consultant call from my last job. Bill was upset about the tax forms that will need to be filed, he wants me to just tell them for free or just block the calls.
For the record, Bill has never raised his voice to me. His really cute accent gets much stronger when he’s passionate, though.
I want to keep on doing this because I want the gossip. The money is a stupid fee. Most of the calls are because the person in charge now is not able to remember how to do an advanced search or to find and actually read the manual. She would rather put in a “I need money” request than admit that she has the attention span of a hummingbird.
I told them so, I told them so, I told them so!!! Neener, neener!!!
Anyhow, there was someone else here who uses TRIM. If you chime in, I might ask you to take the tech support over.
TPTB have decided that I need a 2 day class on microsoft word. I’m considering stabbing myself with a pen just to help with the boredom :headdesk:
Related to my post in the March Rants thread, I didn’t get a new job I was hoping for.
Instead, some really young guy in my department got it. Despite me having more experience and all that crap. I guess he interviews better, or something.
But what pisses me off even more than the other company giving him the job, is that now in addition to all the crap I currently do, I’m going to have to spend a lot of time filling in for him when he leaves in a couple weeks.
His was positioned two hours away, so I’ll have to spend almost every other week driving down, staying in a shitty hotel (because we’re to cheap to pay for a nicer one,) and doing the job he left after being here for less than 8 months.
Christ, I’m so fucking mad about this shit right now.
Dear co-worker:
If you hate your job (and the company we work for) as much as your comments today would indicate, please quit.
I would love a two-day course on Word - if it was high-level Word, where I could actually learn some stuff that I don’t already know how to do. Two days of learning to cut and paste? Not so much.
Update on The Assignment From Hell - I have basically finished the project I was brought in to do. They’re thinking about keeping me on for another three weeks to do all kinds of other things that I did not agree to in the original terms, mostly because they refuse to appropriately staff this department. I cannot stress enough how much this is not my problem. One woman has been on what amounts to stress leave since October (she wasn’t replaced) - the other one is going to three days a week because she’s ready to quit from the other woman not being replaced for months and doing two jobs.
The temp agency tried to guilt me into staying until mid-April because, “It wouldn’t look good for us or you if you left before the project was done.” Well, it’s done, bitches, and I sent them an email this morning to alert them to the fact. 
Why the fuck do people always congregate in doorways and hallway choke points to have a conversation? I’ve had to “Excuse me!” past the same little clutch of people three times now because they insist on standing right in the entrance to the breakroom. Bitches, move!!!
Hi! It looks like you’re considering stabbing yourself! Can I offer you my own paper clip body? 
The memories inspired by this make me want to laugh, scream, cry, and break something all at once. Wow:what:
:eek:
I hate being yelled at over stuff I didn’t do. Not as in nagging over stuff I should have done, as in threatening to send people home over petty stuff I don’t generally do like chatting.
Dammit people, what part of “100 (+5, -0)” makes you think that “130” is an acceptable value??? Two people saw this and still signed off on it. :smack:
Well, I had to escalate today. Back in February, I told my temp agency that I didn’t want any more extensions on this contract - I don’t want to drive to another city to work any longer* (that was the excuse I gave them, anyway). I told them I wanted March 29th to be my last day there. They called me right away and said, “We don’t want you to leave with the project incomplete - it doesn’t look good for us or for you.” I agreed to stay for another extension after the end of March if required - as I mentioned earlier, I sent them an email today saying that the project is done now. Their response back was, “Also, depending on the work load, Deb may need you to extend the assignment longer, we will discuss this into April.”
What? Work load don’t enter into it. {Tap tap} Is this thing on? I sent a response back (once again) politely declining the extension, and reminding them that I don’t want to work there any longer. I imagine I’ll be getting a phone call at work tomorrow, telling me that I need to stay until they decide I’m done. Jerks.
*The original job I agreed to was supposed to be six days. I’ve been there ten weeks now. Driving to another city for six days is different than doing it for three months.
Our team got forced into using a brand-new system for update request tickets. Fine. Whetever. Today we’re told that if we have so much as a 10-second yes/no question about the new system, we have to:
- Fill out a multi-field form
- Submit said form to X
- X passes form to Y and Z for approval
- If approved to do so, X can answer our 10-second yes/no question
This is efficient … how?
1, 2, 1, 2, 3… tap, tap
The following song is dedicated to the paperclip sadist.
It was a day like any other day in 1984 and everything was under control… control… control.
The world keeps turning round and round,
the tick-tock of the clock does not stop,
who imposed order and wrote the law?
Imagination alone has the power
to change the color of things
and turn a slave into a king.
Chorus: Control, control,
this is a robot world,
control,
a pitiless world.
(“Control”, Orquesta Mondragón, from the record “Memorias de una vaca”; original lyrics no idea, translation mine)
Oh my fucking GOD! My last day at the Assignment from Hell was today, after a back-and-forth with the agency about how since my project is done, my assignment is also done. The agency finally agreed with me, but apparently they didn’t bother to talk to the client at all, so they think that I’m still going to be showing up there come Monday. I am so frigging sick of this agency and their incompetence - I will not be doing any more assignments for them.