I get paid by the hour. Murder is illegal. I get paid by the hour. Murder is illegal. I get paid by the hour. Murder is illegal. Deep breaths.
Chuckles from the staff level people and protests from the managers. “We’re not passing the buck!”
It wasn’t really that subversive in our culture. Another example: One of the managers was talking to a co-worker about meeting at 6:00 am on saturday. The co-worker gave a derisive laugh and said “I’m not doing that.” Cue blank stare from the manager. I looked at the co-worker and said “You are the wind beneath my wings.”
Tell me again why I can’t kill annoying co-worker?
There is no internet in prison.
That’s why my plan if I ever go to prison includes volunteering to teach other inmates “how to use internet to improve your typing skills”, “how to use internet to improve your language skills” and “how to use internet to search for jobs”.
The February edition of " Would it kill you to work the schedule you were assigned?"
Mon-Wed in my department, I counted no fewer than 7 people who opted not to work scheduled shifts, or showed up hours late, or showed up for shifts when they weren’t scheduled.
No, there were no illnesses involved. Although a co-worker from a neighboring department missed 2 days due to migraine.
If we include Saturday, I get to add another co-worker who had something more “important” than working her assigned shifts take place.
Actually, some of the people who adjusted their schedules, did so for legitimate reasons. And some of the others may have done so and just didn’t keep me in the loop.
But the high number of schedule adjustments this week is making me crazy.
Especially this one:
Kid and I were scheduled at 4 am on Monday-- the day after the Super Bowl.
I, being a responsible adult (or perhaps being a woman, or being not especially a sport fan), went to bed before Half Time, and was at work at 4 am.
Kid watched the Half Time Show-- and probably the rest of the game, though I didn’t hear him discussing anything I know was after Half Time. He made it to work after 7, I think. He’s often a little late for 4 am shifts.
Our responsibilities are mostly independent enough that this is no big deal-- with a definite side of exasperating. Especially the part where it’s a habit for him.
And in other news, I’ll be so happy when the New Year Management Carousel quits turning. (While new members of Store management can show up at any time, they are especially likely between December and March. This year’s Carousel is worse than usual, because in addition to rest of the management departures, we had one die suddenly. No big deal, with a side of now there’s extra uncertainty about who is staying or leaving and the timing of it all.)
Oh, and while I’m griping-- the new paper towels in the new paper towel dispensers suck. The new toilet paper dispensers are perfectly serviceable, although I’m not sure why we needed new ones. But the new paper towels are useless. And the detect hands function works differently than the old ones.
My previous cellphone provider has been absorbed by The Monster. So, when I got a call from my ISP I verified that the offer included voice and data roaming and jumped ship.
The data roaming is limited to 5mB/month and, if the asshole I just got was correct, there is no way to increase it.
In the last 12 months I’ve been for business reasons in Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, the UK and France. What, am I supposed to get a local pre-pay and keep pre-paying SIM in each location? Even if the suppliers aren’t as lousy as the Swedish ones (you can’t pre-pay via internet without a Swedish bank account and Swedish tax ID), it would make for an interesting game of SIM cards…
last week’s schedule mix-ups were annoying but not actually inconvenient for me.
this week, we had 4 call-ins on Sunday. Fortunately, the neighboring department all showed up for their shifts, so one or more of them did my least favorite chore, rather than me being stuck with it.
Had I had to do my least favorite chore, it would have been a really, really sucky day. As it was, it was just a somewhat sucky day.
(have I mentioned lately that I don’t like working on sunday mornings out of general principle? And two of the call-ins were because two guys went out partying late Saturday evening, and at least one wasn’t sober yet by the time he was scheduled to go in on Sunday.)
Note to self: Not that a better job is definitely out there, but it might be worth at least trying for one.
Normally, I work on an oil rig, but when things are quiet I get to work in the office. The office isn’t a bad place to work, just very boring. There’s pretty much only one rule. Just show up every day. No one minds the two hour lunch break. It’s actually OK to not turn up - just call in sick. All you’ll lose a day’s pay.
The office is a pretty sweet deal
I have one co-worker. Just before Christmas, he’s working in the office. He’s supposed to be doing some very mundane paperwork when the boss walks in. He’s with his boss.
They are with Big Bosses from the Corporate Office.
And co-worker is completely wasted. Fall down drunk. At ten in the morning.
Bye Bye Coworker. Bye Bye his career.
So fast forward to today. New co-worker is on the oil rig. He’s been there less than two days. The morning procedure is for him to QC two third parties, write a report and make a phone call to head office.
Third party reports haven’t been QCd.
No report done.
No phone call made.
And the we get a call from the rig. There’s been a fight. Coworker started it.
So if anyone wants to work with me, just give me a call on 555…
I couldn’t resist posting.
I’m a software developer/analyst. An old-timer too, but not stuck in the past as far as technologies go. And, I’m one of the go-to people that my manager relies on. I’ve always received excellent reviews.
I was given a rather stern critique this year about spending too much time testing results and over-analyzing data before deploying changes. “You’re a perfectionist. We are moving to an agile concept. The business folks will do the testing, we just need you to push things through.”
Ok. I can get on board with that. I know I’m anal (root word of “analyze”) about minimizing risk and not compromising data, but if the business is going to take more responsibility and be more thorough, that takes a load off of my shoulders and I can spend time being more productive in my own tasks.
It turns out that he said the same thing to some of the other developers. We are all very conscientious because we know that most of the business folks don’t test thoroughly and holistically, so we end up doing a lot of testing on our own. We’ve been burned before. But, we need to change all that. Fine.
Not a week later, in a team meeting, he delivers the following:
“We need to work more closely with the business (I agree with this, btw). The business side says that they can’t do in-depth testing. What I need everyone to do is create before-and-after test cases, then, after writing all of the code and getting it ready for the deployment process, hold a meeting with their contacts on the business side to explain the test cases.”
Huh? WTF? Why not leave them out of the loop entirely, since we’ll be doing our jobs, their jobs, and they will be doing little more than rubber-stamping whatever we give them? It would save time and headaches to cut out the middleman, as they add no value. The whole point of testing by other stakeholders is to have another set of semi-knowledgeable and independent eyes on the product to spot problems as pieces are developed and/or fixed.
Developers tend to be myopic and literal; sometimes we don’t see the errors in what we’ve done because (A) we are deep in the details for too long and the big picture fades away, we think we understand what is needed and we think we are doing things correctly; and (B) after a while we don’t see our own mistakes. Instead, we see what we expect to see because we’ve been looking at it so long and the discrepancies no longer appear obvious.
How will this help with my new goal of spending less time testing data, especially if I have to do the business testing from A to Z for them while they abdicate? I’m still in disbelief.
I guess this should be no surprise, considering the types of trouble tickets that many business people create. Such informative ones as “check the lesser of logic for the calculations in Project XYZ”.
Ok. Why? Is there some problem you want to tell me about, or is this just some sort of exercise?
Then, instead of providing a descriptive blurb about the problem, they attach a chain of cryptic emails from another person who barely speaks English. This person, the client, who is very smart but English challenged, just attaches screen shots of spreadsheets she has created with highlighted columns and you’re supposed to figure out the problem she is trying to convey.
I know the business person knows what is wrong because he stays in contact with the English-challenged customer and has developed a good rapport with her but, instead of elucidating the problem, he figures he’s done his duty by saying “check XYZ” and here are the emails. Really?!?!?! Help me out here. What are you talking about? Give me a hint.
Well folks, the Crazyland Express leaves every morning at 8:00 am. It never makes return trips.
Sorry, forgot I owed you guys:
We have a list of machines and groups of machines. In order to be able to use them in the new system, they should be structured. To build this “machines tree”, we have to know which machine is the parent of each other machine (the factory is the parent of each production line, etc.). This kind of info was supposed to be defined in their current system too, but it’s only defined for 22 of the 25 highest-level groups and for a handful which apparently was created by a particularly detail-oriented operator (this handful are all part of the same group, and the only items which were created by that particular person).
So, back in September, mo-Ron was asked to please take [this list] of machines, and fill column D (Parent) with the appropriate codes from column C (code in current system).
He finally sent a different file, proudly proclaiming and copying six people, “here is all the mother data” (in Swedish, of course). I open it. It has 3 columns, none of which is the codes. It is not the file he was given. I’m going to need to Vlookup descriptions against descriptions, and btw some of them aren’t written the same way. And out of more than 1000 machines, he has found the mother of 25. Of which we already knew the mother of 22, bringing his total to 3 (three) foundlings. Way to go, dude.
Simul-emails: from me in English and google-Swedish, from Nice in English and from Gully in Swedish, telling him to use the file he was given [link to the file] and to finish filling the other 1000+ lines kthxbye.
Response: “this is not acceptable!! Nava must scedule a meeting and explain what this is! Must explain!”
I let the Swedes handle the responses. You know how the quiet ones also tend to be the ones with the most spectacular explosions? We aren’t quite there yet, but the sparks are shiny.
Maybe it’s us? I wonder about this sometimes. After all, 50,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong!
There seems to be a lot of crazy or stupid people out there. Of course, people can be both stupid and crazy, and it’s hard to tell if there’s any functional difference between the 2 when it comes to the workplace.
Sometimes I think that there is “stupid” to the right of me and “crazy” to the left of me. Trapped in their devious pincer maneuver! Well, except I doubt that they are capable of forming a devious maneuver intentionally; there are just so many of them that you are frequently surrounded as a result of being swamped by them.
It would be easier to just surrender and go towards the light of mediocrity (at best). Just settle for less and don’t overachieve or be too conscientious. I have my stupid moments too, but I try to correct for them. It seems that too many folks just offer stupid and don’t go through any self-correction cycle. They are content with that. Maybe we have to learn to be content with it too.
I’ve got a fairly minor rant for this morning.
Dude, I’m trying to support you across 10 time zones, so if you want my help one or the other of us is going to have to adjust our schedules, and since you’re the one asking for help …
Also, saying, “The data is on the server” is not a big help. It’s a .bin file. Wonderful. What is the data format? How did you create this file?
Also, I know that using cracked software is customary in your part of the world, but admitting to a felony in a corporate email is probably not a good idea.
It’s kind of sad really. I have a job that I find interesting, has good wages, and decent benefits. I basically fell into the position without really trying or even knowing that such a job even existed. All in all it’s the kind of situation that many here would give their second favorite appendage for, and every day I give serious thought to walking out and never looking back. All because of one person. One bastard who absolutely refuses to pull his head out of his own ass even for one second. One motherfucker that leaves me daydreaming of a life of alcoholism.
It really is sad that something that should be great is instead a steaming pile of shit.
Thanks. Things are starting to look up.
I have an addendum to getting laid off. I was working there through a staffing agency. Today I got a call and email from the staffing agency that my former assignment claimed a pair of my uniform pants were missing and please bring them by asap. I emailed back that I was pretty sure I didn’t bring any home that I hadn’t worn in and that I had double checked everywhere they might be anyway and no pants. Got an email back that “they still feel like I have them” and it would be best if I called them. So I give the cunt receptionist (it was always clear that she thought the contractors were lower than pond scum) a call as directed and let her know that I don’t have the damn pants. It didn’t sound like she was convinced that I am not a liar, but she seemed willing to let the matter drop.
While I was writing the previous post, I got an email that they found my pants! How about that?
Now, hopefully, the twit who “checked in” with me and then quickly switched to asking if I walked off with his phone charger will find it, so I can be cleared of that crime as well.
Just spent the last half hour getting to listen to an extremely loud conversation in the office across from mine. According to one of my fellow engineers, a woman’s nether regions are comparable to cheap roast beef if she’s been with more than a few guys, and it’s morally wrong for a woman to have multiple partners because she might encounter one of her exes while out in public with her new guy, and this would make the new guy feel bad. This charming fellow even said he would start puking all over the place if his wife confessed to having many partners prior to marriage (but he wouldn’t divorce her, because he’s a good Catholic). Doesn’t seem to have the same disgust toward men who have multiple partners before marriage.
>.<
To their credit, the other engineers in the office seemed to have either shocked or mocking reactions to this guy’s comments…
I have a couple of funny stories from my checkered past in the IT industry that you may enjoy:
First job out of college as a real actual computer programmer; this was back in the days when companies bought software that came with the source code and had to hire their own internal team of programmers to support and modify the software. At one point we were reorganized to report to the VP of operations in this manufacturing facility, and needless to say, that VP was clueless about computers. Since we reported to him, he had to function like a CIO… to comedic but frustrating effect.
One of my coworkers was asked by the VP to redesign our most complex manufacturing report, to specs that he laid out. She fussed with the program and fussed with it for a few more weeks, and tweaked it and poked, prodded, turned knobs and pushed buttons and could NOT get the results he wanted. Finally, she met with him and tried to explain that what he wanted wasn’t possible. An answer which was unacceptable to him. After returning from her meeting with him, she told us that he had advised her she was making it harder than it needed to be with the immortal words: “the data is in there, just let it out!”
The epilogue to that story also has a pretty good punchline. When she managed to get something that met his approval, she discontinued the old report and put the new version into distribution. The manufacturing floor supervisors HATED it. We ended up restoring distribution of the old version for all the supervisors and sending the new version only to the idiot VP. He was none the wiser, but it was a metric crap-ton of wasted work.
My other funny story was from this same asshat VP. We were running the manufacturing systems on a DEC Vax, anybody remember those? Long after we’d noticed it was slowing down, we got permission to call in DEC to analyze it’s performance to see if it needed to be tuned. The report they sent us stated that the CPU was, on average, 95% busy. On AVERAGE. If you guessed that Mr. Smartiepants VP told us to squeeze the last 5% of processing out of the CPU before he’d consider an upgrade, you’re right!
Yeah, I’m not convinced this VP was an asshat. By your description, he was a VP of operations in a factory, who got saddled with a computer programming department when he had no background or understanding for it, at a time when computers were still esoteric and mysterious to most people. I’d rather pit the idiots who made that assignment and who gave him nothing to help him except a bunch of smarther-than-thou programmers. It seems your main complaint with him was that he did not trust your expertise and advice. There are better ways of dealing with a manager like that than sneering and laughing and complaining. At least that has been my experience.
You guys are all pikers. THIS is workplace griping at its finest!
Not very specific about the nuts-and-bolts of what he’s bitching about, is he?