Or leave it at her desk.
Hide it under her desk.
(Your office has a dishwasher?? Cool!)
You know, just today I figured out part of the problem between me and my half-my-age boss: I have absolutely nothing in common with this guy outside of the fact that we’re both cooks.
When we work together, there is very little conversation between us beyond what is necessary to get the work done. Meanwhile, everybody else I work with, including everybody that he has hired … I have all sorts of interesting conversations with them. Even the most recent hire, a Mexican-American legal immigrant, the #3 cook here. We have great conversations, and have a great time working together.
My boss? I mean, he’s a nice guy, nothing about him that I can object to. Well, except that he’s into reggae, and plugs his phone into a speaker and blasts the reggae in the kitchen. As a musician, one of the precepts I’ve always lived by is, “Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean that it sucks”. That is, I recognize that my stylistic preferences are irrelevant when it comes to judging the quality of a band’s/artist’s music. Just because I don’t like the music doesn’t mean that the musicians aren’t good. As a musician, I know I’m good, but I also recognize that some people aren’t going to enjoy what I play. That’s their prerogative, and taste is subjective.
That said, is there any form of music more boring and simplistic than reggae?
Dear Og, I enjoy so many different genres of music (hell, I go to my favorite karaoke bar and sing some AC/DC and then turn around and sing some George Jones), and I find something to love in every single genre. Except … reggae. Fucking simplistic, repetitious, boring as all hell. At least the stuff my boss plays. I can’t even listen to it and say, “Well, that guitarist is all right”. Because the guitarist fucking sucks. He just keeps playing the same boring thing over and over and over …
ahem
But, yeah, my boss and I just … don’t … in 32 years in the workforce, I’ve never worked with anybody before that I couldn’t make some connection with. Until this guy.
Ask him to convert you into a lover of reggae.
Maybe he likes it just because it forms a sort of background noise that he doesn’t have to worry will distract him from his duties. If that’s the case, he might be open to a line of conversation that leads him to realize that a background noise that you detest can be just as distracting as a background noise that has you humming along with it.
Or, he could convert you into someone who appreciates reggae. 
Background:
Being from Spain, I get to have two lastnames in my ID. Like most Spaniards, what I do when dealing with people whose own social customs involve one lastname is drop the second one.
I’m a consultant, and work as a subcontractor. There are some agencies I’ve been in contact with for years, but I also get a lot of hooks from LinkedIn.
My LinkedIn is in Spanish, as a first filter for the headhunters. Having it in Spanish I get about as many hits from agents who don’t speak Spanish as from ones who do; I had it in English for a while and my inbox just got silly - I kept getting hooks from the US, Australia… I can work in most of Europe and most of Latin America without one, so no, I’m not interested in a one-month project in Springville. No, I don’t want to go to Dubai either, if I’m going to roast I’d rather do it en español. And that account has my two lastnames, being in Spanish.
OK, so. When I got hired by my current client, my boss and her boss looked for my LinkedIn before the interview. And they got my full name. And instead of accepting the name in my CV damnit, the one listed by the agent in their contract with the client, they created all my company accounts under my second lastname.
That took about a month and a half to correct.
Who is the halfbrained moron who reset my corrected name to the wrong form on Thursday? Can I strangle him, can I, can I, can I? I won’t choke him all the way, I’ll stop early enough to be able to gut him alive! And why are the fucks from IThelpdesk not answering my ticket? I’m guessing I’ll need to ask a coworker to open one for me… :smack:
I got a fun little bureaucratic surprise on my new job. First off, they don’t hire anyone of the street. To work there, you sign up with a temp agency they use and you work for them - if you do well, they ask you to transition to work for the company. The company itself is very finicky about attendance and productivity numbers, so there are temps that have been there almost a year hoping to be made permanent when their numbers are good enough.
My numbers met or exceeded their expectations from my second week onward, so withing a month I was asked to transition and did. The day after my all-day orientation, I was given a written warning - literally my second day with the company. There are times when a little-used word is the only one that fits, and that day the word was nonplussed.
Why was I written up? My productivity numbers were below standard my first week as a temp, and they track them by 4 week intervals so the warning would stay in my file but would “scroll off” after a week as I’d then have 4 weeks of acceptable performance. This normally isn’t an issue because they’d never had someone catch on so quickly that their training numbers came into play when they transitioned. They could have waited a bit to transition me but orientation is only done every other week and they didn’t want to wait to get me working for them. So the same qualities that made me desirable got me written up, and there’s no avoiding it because, hey, it’s policy. :dubious:
Not the most auspicious way to start our relationship…
Ah, maybe you guys got Her, after and if She ever got fired…
She was in charge of helping people move. She had a ton of policies, each of them written around the needs of the specific individual who had first been slotted into that specific pigeonhole. So for example, if you were moving anywhere for more than 12 months, you were ordered to purchase a house… “uhhhhh… why? It’s a 14 months assignment and my family is staying back in Chicago!” (quote from a coworker).
She claimed that the policy could not be changed because it was the policy. She was in charge of the policy, nobody else could use the policy, those of us to whom the policies were being applied did not have the right to get the policies being applied to us, and the policy could not be changed because it was the policy.
I’m still wondering which version of the Bible is the one where Moses came down from a meeting atop Mount Sinai bearing [del]copies of[/del] the Corporate Policies.
One more in the long list of things I hate about my job:
My supervisor likes to delete things. She can’t be bothered with knowing how things actually work, so she deletes files or information that we need to do our jobs. I get nervous when I put things in our shared folders, because I know that either she’s going to delete a file because she doesn’t think we need it, or she’s going to delete some information out of a document. Then when she finds out we need that information, she’ll blame me for deleting it. :rolleyes:
Thursday I got told that my job had been expanded to include managing not one but two departments. Plan to business to division head ASAP. No promotion.:smack:
Friday I got asked to build out a program that is the responsibility of a Sr. Dir. He’s not doing it, so I was asked to do it. No promotion. :smack:
Well, he is apparently a practicing Rastafarian (though I assume he doesn’t smoke weed, since that would get him fired).
I will take back a little bit of my distaste for reggae, as I think part of the problem is that little tiny speaker he plays it through. That little speaker is unable to broadcast the subtleties of the genre. I remembered one of the songs I’ve heard so many times, and decided to look it up on YouTube: Ziggy Marley’s “Love Is My Religion”. Hearing it through some proper speakers (I have my computer’s sound output run into my stereo), I now have to say, “That ain’t bad”. It’s still not something I would go out of my way to seek out and listen to, but finally hearing it properly has changed my opinion somewhat.
At work we’re in the middle of testing the new processes. We’ve written the scripts, we’ve written the manuals, now the key users are supposed to Go In There And Do Stuff. Most of mine are doing quite well, thank you.
Today was Maintenance’s turn. So, the key user walks in, bearing a 2"-thick folder and a backpack. Takes off the backpack and takes two more folders out of it.
And then he sits down. We look at him. I ask “did you bring your laptop?”
Maintenance: “No…”
The Finance superuser: “All the invitations said ‘bring your laptops’.”
Maintenance: “Yes…”
Finance: “So why didn’t you bring your laptop?”
Maintenance: “I thought maybe I could borrow one?”
Finance, hugging his laptop close: “Not this one, and not theirs either! People need their laptops. Go get your laptop.”
After Maintenance-guy had left the building, Finance: “Last week his boss did the same in the budgetting test.”
Yeah, that department is a bit delayed. About three months behind at this point, which isn’t bad considering it used to be four.
So have they really caught up, or are actually 5 months behind, they just found two months of work they thought they could ignore / “will deal with it when it comes up”?
I’m so flippin annoyed right now. I was supposed to start my new contract job last Monday. Then they told me Wednesday. Then they told me Friday. Friday came, no papers to start. Now we’re at Monday again and still not even a peep out of them as to what’s going on! I sent them emails asking. I was told that they would tell me when they heard back.
I was working on another assignment! I closed that one out, with 2 weeks left, so I could take this one. Now it turns out, I could have finished that assignment at FULL PAY instead of sitting here at home with my thumbs up my a$$ collecting a pittance on unemployment.
Now, they are also contracting a few others I know. They are starting tomorrow according to their deals. Why have I not gotten a call saying, “you start tomorrow”, too?
Arrggghhh!
In our community office today. I do like being here, for the most part.
I see any and all clients that walk ing requesting to see a worker in my division. It can get hairy, as I am not familiar with all aspects of our division, but I muddle through pretty well.
Unfortunately, all my clients today have been non-English speaking.
I worked it through with the Spanish client okay. The Hmong, Somali and Russian, not so much. So, I did according to the manual and called our interpretive service.
NO ONE IS EVER AVAILABLE!!
Called the state language line. Again, NO ONE WAS AVAILABLE!
I tell the clients the can go to our main office and they will find an interpreter on site, but who knows how well they understood me.
Please remind me how being out in the community rather than in a centralized office is good for ALL of our clients? Three lost out, one is probably laughing at the high school Spanish I probably mangled.
They have been pushed forward violently, because we were finally able to bypass some of their blocks, get extracts of some data which had previously been denied, analyze that data and ask questions pointed enough to warrant bandaging afterwards.
And we have permission in writing, from their bosses and mine, to make Executive Decisions if certain questions aren’t answered. It’s for things which don’t really block the process (little text fields you can use to help filter work orders, things like that; if they don’t fill the excel file, that field will just have the same value everywhere) but which the Maintenance manager and his boss have been refusing to answer on account of “we must need understand the system better”. I’m asking “do you have only one person deciding what work gets done, or more than one?”, how does that need “understanding the system”? It’s a procedural question, not a system question!
It’s not them who controls the calendar, it’s us. They’re the only department that keeps saying “oh if it’s not in SAP we will use the old system”. We don’t even need to answer that one, it’s their coworkers and managers who say “you will not have the old system any more”.
Update.
Got a call last night at 11:30 pm (I’m Pennsylvania and they’re in Oregon) while I was sound asleep. Woke up just enough to get “laptop’s not done yet. No work tomorrow”.
Still don’t know when I start and have an annoyed client who wanted me in weeks ago.
And how does anyone who works in a global world NOT look at the clock to see the time of the person they’re calling?
I turn on the Do Not Disturb function on my iPhone from 10pm to 7am. Then set to allow my favorited contacts (family and my direct manager’s number just in case) so they can still get through in an emergency.
It’s fortunate for one of my co-irkers that workplaces and legal authorities generally frown on wrapping someone’s head in duct tape, especially if it’s placed to keep the owner of the (empty) head from being able to speak.
Which this bitch does. Constantly. At high volume. Every single [bleep]ing thing that crosses her excuse for a mind, including thinking we’re all just fascinated with how she spent over $200 on hair when she works part-time for minimum wage (at this job) and has two teens, one of whom she claims is special-needs (autism). Add to that the fact that a department that used to work decently together is degenerating into high-school Mean Girls clique games with QueenBeeThatWas (cheerleader 25 years ago, refuses to admit that time in her life is over) doing her best to push everyone else around, while refusing to follow policy on quality standards for donated goods that get put out for sale.
Her “reasoning” on that? “This is a thrift store, not Macy’s.” OK, so the customers, who are generally lower-income (including your own co-workers), or the needy who are getting goods given to them on a humanitarian-aid basis don’t deserve anything decent if they can’t afford to shop at overpriced mall stores? They should just be thrilled with anything, even if it’s stained and faded and worn and bally and ratty?
Bitch.
I had a debate about tipping, recently, with a guy who seemed like a complete asshole. And he reminded me of why I ceased to be a waiter.
I was a waiter, once. And I made CRAZY money.
It was an upscale restaurant. I had to wear a special waiter suit. And the people who ate there were your nouveau rich types, the ones who invariably send the steak back twice because that’s what rich people DO, regardless of how the steak is cooked; the cooks often wanted to send it out raw the first time, because these people ALWAYS sent it back, NO MATTER HOW THEY WANTED IT COOKED, as opposed to REAL rich people, your old money types, who will be satisfied on the first bounce, if you got it right … but I digress.
The other thing about the nouveau rich is that they tend to overtip. And when they’re looking to impress each other – which is often – they overtip lavishly. I liked those tips. I made a dollar sixty an hour back then, so tips mattered. Back then, tips didn’t go on the tab; they were left on the table in cash, and I didn’t have to share them. My lord, how the money rolled in. It was the richest job I had ever had up until then, and not the hardest.
And I quit after a month and a half. Because of assholes.
I’ve always said that when you work with customers, 99 of them will simply transact business with you, pay you, and be on their way. It’s that hundredth one that will put a razor sharp hook in your soul and convince you that the entire human race needs to die by fire for its multitude of evils and sins. And restaurant customers are really no different.
At this particular restaurant, twice a week or so, I would deal with a customer would range from “I am a major, major asshole, just because” to* “I must fuck with you relentlessly, leading up to trying to get you fired.”* Seriously. This one woman had us all stressing whenever she walked in, because she INVARIABLY demanded to speak to the manager, no matter WHO was waiting on her. She’d tried to get everyone in the place fired at least once, and often bitched about how the manager didn’t seem at ALL interested in pleasing the customers, since we were all still employed, despite our myriad crimes against her, the customer.
I saw a waitress literally reduced to tears once by a customer who latched onto her like a lamprey and berated her until she broke. And then got all self righteous. And then complained that she’d spoiled his family’s meal, first with her horrible, horrible service, and then by bursting into tears after he’d literally spent ten minutes first upbraiding her for her failures as a waitress, and then determining from this her failures in life itself, refusing to allow her to leave, manage her other tables, or explain anything, under pain of being RUDE!
Never saw her again after that. He didn’t insist that she be fired, but I don’t blame her for leaving. I did, myself, not long after that. Not because of the money. Not because of the tips; hell, even the assholes usually tipped pretty well. Even the crazy bitch who tried to get us all fired at one point or another usually left a twenty under the plate.
No, I left because I NEEDED to believe that there were good people in the world… I wanted to have some faith in humanity… and in this place, the scum of the earth insisted on coming in and serving up shit sandwiches to all and sundry, for reasons I do not pretend to understand. Apparently, there are people who NEED, in some way, for some reason, to VENT THEIR POISONS upon the undeserving, and apparently, there is no better, sweeter way to do this than to enter a place where your target depends on this job to survive and dares not strike back or say boo in any way…and then gleefully crap all over 'em.
When the urge to spit in someone’s Shrimp Scampi is a physical need, as strong as hunger or the urge for a cigarette? It’s time to get OUT. And I did. Got another job as a bartender shortly after, and for some reason, people don’t seem to want to annoy bartenders, unless they screw up your drink order. You know, like, REASONS.
I don’t remember the ones that didn’t tip. I guess I wasn’t hard up enough, not like the single mom working at Denny’s to feed the kids; I could clear hundreds of dollars on a good week, and that was back in the eighties. I wasn’t hard up at all.
I didn’t take it personally when someone didn’t tip.
I didn’t take it personally if they were mad when I fucked up. I* did* fuck up on occasion; it happens. Sometimes the cook would fuck up the order, and I would be subject to the customer’s wrath; I do remember a couple of those, because the customer’s attitude would be “I am going to piss on SOMEONE, and you’re closer than the cook is!”
But I learned an important lesson:* there are people out there who are just evil.*
There are people out there who apparently generate poison and evil and wrongness in their souls, and must apparently vent it periodically, or drown in their own ugliness. And they’re smart enough not to do it on the street to someone who can walk away or punch them in the chops. No, they seek VICTIMS… and they delight in harming the helpless.
And yes, it is HARM. It’s harm when you can’t walk away without losing your job, and you’re depending on that job, people. And it’s harm when you have to put up with it again and again and again. And there are people who do this every day.
I don’t want to hear about “people have a right not to tip.” Yes, people have a right not to tip. They don’t have a right to be a poisonous asshole.
I don’t want to hear about “if they don’t like it, they should get better jobs.” I did, sure. But I had the option, and the freedom, and the cushion of saved money to carry me until I did. Plenty of people lack those options.
I hear about people who wanna get rid of gay folks. I hear about people who want to get rid of liberals. I hear about people who want to get rid of conservatives, of non-vegetarians, of transsexuals, of the ethnic group of your choice, get rid of them, ban them, marginalize them, deny them any rights, drive them underground where I don’t have to look at them or acknowledge their existence. I have a prejudice, and I mean to make it the LAW!
Well, I have a prejudice, and I mean to exercise it. I’m tired of being gracious, and I’m tired of being polite. I am now discriminating against the assholes.
Because you have a right to be gay if you want to, you have a right to be conservative, liberal, vegetarian, or whatever. And due to freedom of speech, you can even talk about it if you want…but I don’t see a goddamn thing in the Constitution or anywhere else that says you have a right to be an asshole about it.
Have a little courtesy, and a little regard for your fellow man, be she gay or liberal or whatever, people. Spreading poison might make you feel good, if you’re the kind of person who gets off on that. But it does the rest of your society no good at all. And when you crap in the nest like that, it WILL come back to you.
And the rest of us don’t need the grief while we wait for your karma to run you down.
Master Wang-Ka–say hello to the American Rich.