Workplace griping, anyone?

The BBQ Pit
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The administration was silent today.

My wife found two jobs for me, one 250 miles away, another 400 miles away. The one headhunter who is communicating with me sent me a list of jobs, unfortunately none of which I’m qualified for yet and most of which were even farther out anyway. I did hear from an old colleague from the old country, and she’d hire me if she could, but she realizes that she’s not going to convince her company to do a visa-neutral job description. This is the curse of working in a small field. I know it’s probably time to change fields but at this stage in my life I don’t even know how to start. But anyway.

And today I found a big hole in our database that will require…oh, 8-10 hours of work before tomorrow morning. Sleep’s going to have to wait. And I’m already the last one here.

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Can’t you just pretend you didn’t see that hole, at least until tomorrow morning?

The problem with being a miracle worker is that pretty soon, everyone thinks miracles are the norm and start getting snarky if you don’t perform at that level every single minute. You can kill yourself with overwork and lack of appreciation that way.

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Character is finding such things and doing them regardless of the shit transpiring around you.

However, there does come a time when despite words to the contrary, the actions of management show that you aren’t anywhere near as valued and appreciated as they say. At which point putting yourself first becomes more important.

I’d probably have come in the next morning, spent about 15 minutes waking up and checking shit out, THEN announcing there was a big issue you needed to fix right then and there and you would not be available all day because you were fixing it.

Doing it in front of their faces, at times, is more valuable than doing it unnoticed late at night.

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Can’t help with the distance thing, but unless those qualifications need specific diplomas, most companies are perfectly happy to get someone who’s “almost qualified”. Best wishes.

Last Friday, my clients sent yet another pile of files to be test-uploaded. Out of 36 tables, 1 was missing and 20 had duplicate lines (in some cases, every single line was present several times). I sent back the list of errors.

Their programmer sent a new pile yesterday. I asked for the functional people to verify that the errors have been corrected. I’ve also checked myself for about ten seconds: the missing table is present but the first table, which had duplicates, still has them. What the serious fuck, people! Pity spreadsheets can’t be spread on potted-plant soil, with manure of this quality my mother’s geraniums would be glorious this year…

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I work for the most self-congratulatory company in the world.

Every morning, a series of emails pop into our inboxes proclaiming how my company is redefining productivity, adding enormous value to our clients, keeping the employees deliriously happy, eliminating world poverty and hunger, yada yada. Not to mention rewriting the rules of management, and displaying ground-breaking technology innovation. Yes, every single day.

Twice or thrice a month my company comes up with catchy alphabet-soup programs it considers profoundly important to our lives. So the company recently rolled-out FIRE, LIMIT, ACE, and even VICTORY. Dont ask me what they stand for. I dont care and I dont think anybody else cares. But my company does. It thinks bombarding us with cheap marketing and HR gimmicks keeps us happy and motivated.

If it were just cheap fun I wouldn’t mind it. But often, these catchy, colorful “programs” are facades for darker developments that would actually compromise employee morale, benefits or well-being. For example, years ago the company came up with TILE, a program that supposedly “transforms the way my company measures employee productivity”. Fucking nonsense. That was meant to increase our working hours from 40 to 45 hours a week for no additional compensation. If that “program” made any difference at all to anything, I cannot see it.

More recently, my company seems to be moving in the direction of treating its junior programmers posted with its clients to scout for new business. Like, we are supposed to become marketers too, snoop around the client’s IT landscape, and pass on “qualified opportunities” to our managers, in a complete inversion of the chain of responsibility. So, not only we get to do our work under gruelling deadlines, we also get to play onsite marketers, source leads to our managers, who will then give us hell until the company makes some money out of it. The company promises us a cut in the profits: if I source a contract for $5 million, I get a princely $5K. That’s 0.1%. And it could take months before it materializes.

Fucking awesome.

Never join my company. It sucks.

Note: Some acronyms changed to protect my ass.

6467

Oh, lord, far too late for that. I am seriously beginning to think I am responsible for everything in the company and if anything goes wrong, the first person who is contacted is me. For example:

  1. Someone in my office needed the account number and contact details for a brokerage. I had the latest statement filed away so I took it to her desk. A couple minutes later I get a phone call…“I think this account number (that is ON THE STATEMENT) is wrong, can you call the broker to check?” You know, using the phone number that is on the statement that is ON HER DESK RIGHT NOW? I actually did tear into her for that.

  2. Another phone call from another department. “Do you remember the conversation we had six months ago…” Look, I can’t remember what I was doing six minutes ago, can you fill me in on this? “Well someone transferred money from one account to another and I don’t know which account had the money and which account got the money but I thought you might know.” So helpful! Keep in mind my job involves in no way the transfer of money in any form other than from my wallet to the vending machine. But I’m supposed to know what happened in another office six months ago!

  3. H comes to my office. “I need you to help me reach my sales goal.” Oh no, sunshine, you need you to help you reach your sales goal. “Well I thought you could (15 solid minutes of blathering, hypotheticals, and appeals to magical thinking)”. Me: “Let me see if I can fit that into my calendar at some point in the next three months.”

So this hole in the database. Without going into detail, it needs to be fixed asap. I have a report…no, make that two reports after somebody e-mailed me at 9 pm, which was fortunate because I was here…that depends on the db working correctly. So I’m here. I am more than halfway done now and I know it will be fixed. Will anyone else in the office care? Of course not. I’ve had to pull many nights like this, some other people have had to work consecutive long nights on big projects, and for all this everyone gets a big fat nothing other than “well you still have your job, right?”

Although I am amused by the idea of our HR implementing employee “incentive” plans like FIRE, LIMIT, and VICTORY. Our last employee incentive program was a bit of a damp squib and I think the next program absolutely needs a macho, Top Gun-type name to succeed.

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I feel for you dude. Been there, done that. I have worked many times over the past 10 years, usually slogging away at code that is not doing what we want it to. At least you have air-conditioning. Our cooling used to shut off at 9 PM, leaving us sweltering in the Indian summer heat (I was in India back then). Every hour we would slip out for some cool air. This all through the night.

I never ever got anything at all for my exertions. Not even a word of thanks. My company thinks if it pays you a salary it owns you. :smack:

6469

To the people smoking weed outside our building:

Look, I have no problem with what you’re doing. You don’t work with me, you work in the restaurant adjacent to us, and as a one-time customer I know the fact that you were baked didn’t hinder your excellent service. Heck, you’ve even got a fool-proof system for the mid-work toke: use a one hitter that looks like a cigarette and smoke in the area between two tall buildings that act as a wind tunnel so the smell goes away fast. Easy to fool any cops staring from a distance.

That being said, stop trying to hide it from me. You must believe I’m an idiot if you don’t think I’ve picked up on what you’re doing.

6470

Duuude, that’s part of the experience…

the sneaky fun part.

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They just don’t want to share.

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You know, boss man, when several people (myself included) tell you that one member of our team is being unprofessionally confrontational about issues and goes so far as to call our team lead and argue with him when we say we’re doing something the way he told us to do it, the correct answer is not “She has a responsibility to mentor junior members of the team”.

Being an abusive jerk on a regular basis and arguing with the team lead is not “mentoring” anyone.

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Please read this again. YES. If they don’t feel the hurt of it not being fixed, you get no credit. Stop. Seriously. Stop.

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I had a long post written and then my phone died. Technology.

A coworker of mine made the same point to me today. I asked her, “remember what it was like when my predecessor had no idea how to administer the database? How you complained so much that reports were never right, that information was wrong, that it took weeks to get a simple data pull from the administrator?” She had to agree with that. “And things are better now, right?” Yes, she said. “Do you think I snapped my fingers and made that happen? I did not wish this database better. And if all I did was work on the database, I wouldn’t be pulling nights until 1:30. But during work hours I have so many other things to do–supervise my employees, work with the accounting office, administer three separate websites, even do the lion’s share of data entry (we dumped our only data entry person some time ago because “she did not add value to the office”). So there are going to be late nights. Database repair isn’t something you can do in 15-minute chunks here or there and that’s all I get during the day.” I don’t think she understood, either.

The point is, our office suffered, badly, through “the hurt of (the database) not being fixed”, for years. They’re numb to it, frankly. The only thing I feel I can do is to show them what a clean database can actually do for the office. But it’s going to take time. Especially after our data entry person left, our database turned into the Augean Stables of data, just a horrible mess. In the short time I’ve been in the position I’ve started to get somewhere–I’ve got our reports reconciling with accounting on a regular and easy basis, I’ve even got our sales people using the database to file reports correctly. But it’s taking time, and sometimes the duct tape and bailing wire I have to use aren’t enough. And then come the late nights. And yes, I hate them. But sometimes they’re inevitable, and I know I will get no credit for them, but I know I would catch great hell for not doing it.

Most executives I’ve ever known do not care at all how things are done, only that they are done. If I had claimed to have contracted a witch doctor to fix the database, all my VP would have asked is “do we have an account number for that kind of thing?” And if our building had been destroyed by an earthquake at 1:31 last night, the VP would have asked “but you did get the database fixed before that, right?” So if staying until 1:30 is what’s needed in our office, that’s what happens. And that’s why other people can sometimes be seen working 60-70 weeks too. Because in our office…we are a means to an end. And yes, morale is so high.

6475

I have a large, prominent infected spot on my face. Probably a pimple gone really wrong. I’ve been doing everything in my power to make it go away (short of seeing a doctor), but without success.

What does this have to do with work? Well, Not just yesterday, but today, my boss actually commented on my infected spot. It annoys the fuck out of me, not only to have this problem, but to have people both notice AND comment on it, and more than once too! It embarrasses and annoys the fucking living hell out of me!

I snapped at my boss today. Though I did stop short of saying “fuck off,” partially because I don’t want to get in trouble, and partially because I don’t know how to say “fuck off” in French.

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Three weeks now since the failed presentation. Still not a word about the personnel issues. Yesterday the coworker who claimed on Friday that “changes were coming” was remonstrating with V, who seemed torn between being mad at the VP/HR/H/CEO/Title IX/everyone else crew for not doing anything and being mad at coworker for reporting a rumor which seemed to be false. V was weighing going to HR for an explanation. The coworker thought maybe after an important meeting held today there would be an announcement. There was none and V didn’t show up for work today. So we wait, again.

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Your boss is a clueless asshole - we all get zits, and to keep on commenting on someone’s big, inflamed zit is just gauche beyond words.

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Wore a Doctor Who t-shirt to work today. My boss was in the office, which he is about once a week. He tells me I can’t wear it, too casual, and if one of the senior management people see it, they’ll have a talk to me about it.

Nearby is a senior management person’s office. Two levels above my boss, different org. She walks by, sees it, smiles and says “Doctor Who!”. And keeps right on going.

:stuck_out_tongue:

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Well, at least after I snapped at her today, I don’t think she’ll be commenting on it again. I’m not saying snapping at someone is ever a recommended way of communicating, but I think I got my point across (without getting into too much trouble.)

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For the first time in my life, I was fired today. Ever since my first job at 15, I have always been the one who chose to leave. We have a mortgage, two car payments, my student loans, credit cards, and three kids. I’m giving myself two days to rest before slamming into job hunting.

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Sorry to hear that - hears hoping you get what you want, when you want it.