Topic: Your Job: The Movie (Read 177954 times)

Brentai · « **Reply #1860 on:** October 20, 2011, 01:36:45 PM »

Six training sessions scheduled throughout the week. Just finished my third and I feel like I've gone three rounds with Tyson. I could never be any kind of instructor full-time and have nothing but respect for people who can.

(Though most people aren't naturally social-avoidant, I guess.)

Mothra · « **Reply #1861 on:** October 20, 2011, 02:36:49 PM »

I did a good amount of this when they were having us train up our replacements, and it is... I'm really not used to being the sole center of attention and sole point of interest for eight straight hours, five times a week. The amount of time you need to fill, talking you need to do, and review over old material necessary to get these people to where they can again rely on common sense is something else.

It is kind of fun coming up with metaphors to explain abstract technology to old people, though. This one lady I was training had no idea what the internet was. Imagine trying to explain what the internet is exactly, in useful terms, to someone who barely knows how to use her computer. They look at you like you're making this up as you go.

Joxam · « **Reply #1862 on:** October 20, 2011, 03:50:42 PM »

In fairness, if you're using metaphors, you are.

Büge · « **Reply #1863 on:** October 20, 2011, 03:55:44 PM »

Quote from: Brentai on October 20, 2011, 01:36:45 PM

Six training sessions scheduled throughout the week. Just finished my third and I feel like I've gone three rounds with Tyson.

Punch-Out Tyson or I Wanna Be The Guy Tyson?

Classic · « **Reply #1864 on:** October 20, 2011, 08:37:16 PM »

Real has-a-history-of-unregulated-violence Tyson?

Ted Belmont · « **Reply #1865 on:** October 28, 2011, 04:55:25 PM »

Tonight at work, I overheard a kid at the fish with his mom tell her, "I'm looking for a dead one!"

Serial killers are so cute when they're little.

Brentai · « **Reply #1866 on:** October 31, 2011, 03:07:26 PM »

God damn it, I'm a de facto middle manager again.

Classic · « **Reply #1867 on:** October 31, 2011, 03:15:21 PM »

Do you regard Scott Adams with more or less disdain than you did previously?

Thad · « **Reply #1868 on:** October 31, 2011, 03:27:08 PM »

More, but I'm pretty sure that says more about Adams than anything.

Ziiro · « **Reply #1869 on:** October 31, 2011, 03:29:59 PM »

A job which I thought was going to be temporary has become full employment. I had signed on originally to help them for a few months ago while someone on maternity leave. It was a job I had done previously, and It was good timing, because I had just quit my job at phone support/sales at a call center. (If you want to know why, re-read the previous sentence.) The person who was on maternity leave came back, but the company has enough that needs to be done that I have been hired on as a full time employee... again.

Again, you ask? Well, funny you should wonder that. It's a job I walked out of the office and quit on the spot about a year ago because of my loathing I have for other employees, processes, and general feeling they have here.

Nothing has been fixed. Some things have become worse, in fact.

Yet in this economy/situation I really can't turn this down. I considered all the options and possible outcomes of each and realized if I didn't take this job, the odds of me working in the next year or so would be absolutely null.

Brentai · « **Reply #1870 on:** October 31, 2011, 03:32:16 PM »

Er, yeah, what he said.

Also that strip IS pretty spot-on about how development works in a large corporation but it never really addresses the root causes of the typical dysfunction or even the fact that there are any. Without looking at his biography I'm going to guess that Adams has never really had a position that involved directs.

EDIT: Pre-strip, obviously. Once he started hiring people is when you suddenly see the strip shift its tone from The Office to Seinfeld.

Thad · « **Reply #1871 on:** October 31, 2011, 07:53:31 PM »

See, I read it quite a lot in the 1990's and read it as starting out with a lot of wacky settings, stories, and situations and then turning into generic workplace comedy. Like most other strips (Peanuts, Garfield, ...) it started out weird and interesting and then found its rut and kept digging.

Adams himself is a petulant, socially-maladjusted, misogynistic nerd all grown up. The read I get from him is a guy who never got over being picked on in junior high -- ESPECIALLY by the girls. He's gone from bragging about his IQ through sock-puppet comments on articles that criticize him to openly mocking women who want equal pay as petulant children.

I'm not sure if he makes other grownup nerds look bad by association or good by comparison, but one way or another he embodies pretty much every negative stereotype about us.

R^2 · « **Reply #1872 on:** November 03, 2011, 03:19:38 PM »

So today the restaurant ran out of eggs. So I had to go across the street to a store to buy some. Two dozen, as a matter of fact.

It turned out to be cheaper to buy one package of eighteen and a package of six than it was to buy two packages of twelve. So that's what I did.

Some people I work with were seriously baffled that I reached 24 via 18+6 rather than 12+12.

Personally I think they were

* R^2 avatar

Ova-reacting.

Ziiro · « **Reply #1873 on:** November 03, 2011, 03:50:02 PM »

"Hey do you remember that job you did when you were here the first time/the one you quit over? Can you do that job again? Thanks."

Mongrel · « **Reply #1874 on:** November 05, 2011, 03:55:43 PM »

I won't go into exactly why, but today at work I had the opportunity to loudly sing the following lines:

When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs
Ev'ry morning to help me get large
And now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs
So I'm roughly the size of a barge!

Mongrel · « **Reply #1875 on:** November 06, 2011, 11:10:08 AM »

Okay...

The weekend Supervisior (Sea Bass, as described previously) was joking he was going to give us all alternate names.

He said - and I swear I am not making this up - my altenate name would be Gaston.

I asked him flat out "Is this because of the disney song I was singing yesterday?" "You were singing yesterday? Who's Gaston? I just figured that would be a good name for you."

Büge · « **Reply #1876 on:** November 06, 2011, 11:16:52 AM »

Quote from: Büge on September 11, 2010, 07:10:00 PM

Ziiro · « **Reply #1877 on:** November 07, 2011, 01:26:26 PM »

"Weird Happenings".

Mongrel · « **Reply #1878 on:** November 07, 2011, 02:53:53 PM »

Today we had a three-hour meeting. The opening ramble was actually the CFO as guest speaker.

It is... extremely unsettling to watch the CFO of a 30,000-employee corporation have a minor meltdown in front of an entire division.

~~High~~ Lowlights included:

"But... uhhhhh... that's not my job. That'syourjob!" *extremely nervous laughter.

Several variations on "But I don't really know anything about that."

"So... how do you guys think we're doing on a scale of one to ten?" Deafening silence. "So uh, never mind 1-10, let's just say, um, 5-8, yeah... yeah. And uh, just pick the one or the other, 5 or 8."

"We're ah... we're doing quite... well, not badly, but uhhhh certainly not as good as we were. And ah, I guess we don't quite know what to do."

Many variations on "I guess we don't really have anything that we're better at than the competition anymore. It's uhhh, it's gotten tougher."

It was quite possibly the least inspiring corporate speech I've heard in a long time, if ever. The company's in decent shape, it's just been a bit learderless since the ole' iron-fisted founder died. But if you listened to this guy, you'd think we were going to be bankrupt tomorrow.

There's nothing wrong with being honest about reduced prospects, but this guy's delivery was TERRIBLE. He avoided involvement (your problem, not mine) had no plan, was nervous, and just generally sounded hopeless and clueless.

It was just incredibly awkward.

Ziiro · « **Reply #1879 on:** November 07, 2011, 03:18:22 PM »

Can't think of what to do here, but you can fill in the blanks I'm sure.

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Author Topic: Your Job: The Movie (Read 177954 times)