How's work been?

Just had a work Chinese new year party... The Chinese know how to have a party. So much food and drink. And dragons, did I mention dragons? It's very interesting when your principle investor base is another culture.

Certis wrote:
Druidpeak wrote:

Let my supervisors know I'm not going back for another season in Yellowstone. It was my dream job, and I loved it, but spending time with the wife and kiddo is more important to me. The park service and my wifes career don't mesh at all, so taking another position that doesn't have me so remote for extended periods of time isn't an option. I'm not interested in doing Law Enforcement on a city or county level, so the last 10 years of training and education are out the window.

Kinda floating with the big, "What now?" swirling in my head. It may be time I go back to school.

Exciting and scary! Why not move the family to the woods?

I'm with Certis on this one, it is a big deal when kids and family are involved in the mix. I share your possible trepidation, and know that you will get through this just fine.

I'm fully aware that this is most likely the LAST thing on your mind, but will be seeing you pop up more here and in game?

I'm really conflicted. Work is good. It's challenging, interesting and productive. I won an award and am liaising with international departments and being selected to head up teams that decide things in the whole business...

However, I'm worried about long term. The pay is fine if I don't think about long term. On the pay I'm on now I live a comfortable life - I don't go on holidays or eat out every week but I'm comfortable. But I can't save. I'm constantly repaying my university loans and they're a Female Doggo - especially with the currency exchange. The problem is that this company doesn't do retirement plans. It considers you "as is". Because I've moved country I don't have a pension in either one as I haven't contributed enough in either. Plus I'm continuously renting property so I'm paying off other people's mortgages whilst being denied a mortgage because they require 10-20% up-front (not to mention other costs) and I can't save up €10,000+ because I don't earn enough to be able to save much - even if I really scaled back my already pretty frugal living arrangements.

It pisses me off that married people and people with children get so many benefits when I'm scraping-by just trying to live as a single person and yet I will just end up being alone and destitute in my old age - despite working hard every day.

My friend tells me the answer is to get into online stuff. The only things I have are my blogs and he says (without knowing the market) that I should turn my video games blog into a marketing/revenue associate (say, with amazon) "thing".... The only thing he doesn't understand is that this is the most saturated market. There's no room and barely enough money for people to make it IN the market. Even if I did that I can't work any more hours a day. I'm already spending 10 hours of mind-intensive work in the R&D sector of pharmaceuticals and I get home and flop. I can't even imagine getting home and trying to manage business relationships (if they even would after 18:00) or write a fresh and insightful blog post every day.

There's no career advancement opportunities for me in my current work place as it'd be if one of the managers retired and they're not near retirement and there are people "in line" in front of me who have more experience and knowledge than I do. There's no jobs back home in the UK and no other places that pay as well and have as good conditions in this country as the current job has.

I'm doing well but I'm simultaneously feeling lost and helpless because I'm seeing a gaping maw opening up in front of me and I feel powerless to do anything about it. Life feels unfair. Privileged, but unfair.

Two promotions in two months. In separate jobs, natch, but it's nice to feel appreciated. Now I have to work like I deserve another one. In both jobs! I'm a little worried for my game time.

There is glitter all over one of the chairs and the floor around it. Either someone bought one of those obnoxious birthday cards, or a clown was murdered here.

And for reasons that are well beyond me, cleaning the goddamn floors falls outside the purview of this particular housekeeper tonight.

Struggling with doing work that I and most people in my group know is well done but is not viewed as such by my immediate management chain due to a difference in approach. I don't think my internal wiring would make me successful if I switched over to their approach, they couldn't switch over to my approach, and so we have this uneasy coexistence for as long as I can continue to think up good ideas that make us all look good. Makes me nervous and wakes me up at night.

Today was a tough day. there were 2 of us doing the work of 5. Saw 86 clients and got a couple of people into jobs. But as far as quality of service goes divide up 8 hours across 86 clients and work out how much face time everyone got.

Lately it feels like the whole reason we are there, getting people into work, has taken a back seat as management's directives are all about generating internal revenue to the detriment of our clients. If it wasn't for the mortgage I would be so out of there.

The CEO took the development team out to lunch last week to a nice restaurant. The reason was because he wants the latest release of our software out this year, and there's still a ton to do, so it was a combination of asking us can it be done and giving us a pep talk to motivate us to get it done. I started here in October and previously it's been pretty easy-going, but it looks like their expecting everyone to work harder and possibly put in extra hours if necessary. Can't say i'm looking forward to that too much. I like this job, as it's downtown and the people are nice, but I'm not in love with it, so I don't feel particularly excited to give up extra hours of my life to do some crunch time.

Round 2 of our office renovations will start next week, which means I get to set up shop somewhere else in the building for the next couple of weeks until the newsroom cube farm is taken apart and reassembled.

Seems the spot they wanted to put me wasn't as unoccupied as they thought. So my choices at this point are between an office with no phone or Internet access or a former office now being used as paper storage.

Tomorrow, my coworkers will start calling me Milton and I'll develop strange feelings toward my red Swingline ...

Yeah, if you could just go ahead and take care of the roach problem, that'd be great, yeah.

Is this where I Female Doggo about a client who won't listen to sense?
Like being so focused on rentable floor area that he won't give up enough to make an entrance and a corridor.
A building with no front door.

This is the first job that I've had to decide whether or not to walk away from, and it looks like I'm out.

Ghostship wrote:

Is this where I Female Doggo about a client who won't listen to sense?

I think we understood the latter when you said "client."

I would say, unless it violates the law say a building code. Let him obsess about the floor area, at the expense of useability, and move on. There are a lot of stupid clients, and their money still fits in your bank account. And make sure your insurance is paid for.

KingGorilla wrote:
Ghostship wrote:

Is this where I Female Doggo about a client who won't listen to sense?

I think we understood the latter when you said "client."

I would say, unless it violates the law say a building code. Let him obsess about the floor area, at the expense of useability, and move on. There are a lot of stupid clients, and their money still fits in your bank account. And make sure your insurance is paid for.

I've looked at it that way. I try. The side effect is that I force myself to work on a job I can't care about. I half ass everything and it ruins my reputation for service and quality. On top of that I have to go before planners, and colleagues and represent it as my design, when I disagree with everything about it. I get a bad reputation as a hack, and a whore (excuse the industry term for - "production house").

In the end, I'm a bit of an idealist. I have a bit of an ethical responsibility to avoid involvement in this sort of thing. There is a reason that the building code requires an Architect for this type and size of building.

There is an over-running responsibility to the community and the built environment to make a building that is sustainable, functional, and unlikely to turn into a student slum. I think that it takes advantage of needy demographic, instead of serving it.

I think I've convinced myself. I just need to figure out a tactful way to back out.
Legally I'm OK. I was counter offered, and never accepted. I've done some work and given some advice on it, but that amounts to making attempts to change the design to something that works. That was met with refusal. Having worked on it is the only thing, I think, that could get me in trouble, but I've never actually heard of anyone going after a professional for denying service.

One of our long-time cranks (every newsroom has a few) called me this morning to rant about a story I wrote in today's Daily Bugle. He wasn't so amped up about the story itself; rather, he wanted to share in excruciating detail an earlier he had once had with the subject of the story.

When I didn't feign the proper level of interest, he told me to go f**k myself and hung up.

Just yesterday one of my co-workers asked why we didn't work in the better-paying world of telemarketing.

Well, this, for one.

Enix wrote:

One of our long-time cranks (every newsroom has a few) called me this morning to rant about a story I wrote in today's Daily Bugle. He wasn't so amped up about the story itself; rather, he wanted to share in excruciating detail an earlier he had once had with the subject of the story.

When I didn't feign the proper level of interest, he told me to go f**k myself and hung up.

Just yesterday one of my co-workers asked why we didn't work in the better-paying world of telemarketing.

Well, this, for one.

Until I saw Page One: Inside the New york Times, I hadn't realised how obnoxiously in-your-face one could afford to be as a journalist. Suddenly the prospect of a career in the press acquired an entirely new flavour.

Work is hectic for me at the moment - I'm not earning anything right now, so that's scary, but I have minimal overheads, and my situation should change for the better soon. I'm a filmmaker by trade, with a little bit of everything on the side to keep me going when producing small, uncommercial films somehow fails to make me a living wage.

I produced a short film at the start of last year, not my biggest project, but one of my most personal ones. We're now sending it out to festivals and waiting for it to catch fire. If you're interested in seeing a little about it, here's the trailer:

I'm spending all of my time sending screeners and applications to film festivals, while also rebranding our production company so we can go for more commercial work. On top of that, I shot a documentary in Colombia and am currently cutting it together. The last couple of weeks have been spent trying to get a short film made, but after a Lost In La Mancha-esque series of disasters, we are making it as an animation instead.

In short, I'm feeling a little too busy at the moment, especially since none of the extra work is bringing money in, but this business is about investing in yourself and others, as well as in ideas and making bets on what will work, so this is to be expected from time to time.

LarryC wrote:

Two promotions in two months. In separate jobs, natch, but it's nice to feel appreciated. Now I have to work like I deserve another one. In both jobs! I'm a little worried for my game time.

Congratulations! That's awesome - game time will come, I'm sure.

Apparently there's a very short list for who gets promoted when the senior technician on my shift retires at the end of April.

Like one name kind of short. Because it's me and there's no real competition.

Given that I've basically spent the last three years doing most of said senior tech's work anyway it will be nice to finally have the pay to go with it.

Granted, the way our site works the site manager will probably sit on it for three months before doing anything, but it should be a pretty sure thing.

I spend most days winding through 10 years of accumulated spaghetti code to figure out what confluence of planetary alignment caused the latest customer problem. And since our customers are hospitals, they're very determined to know exactly what happened.

I'm training my manager today on how to do his job. I'm half his age and experience and I have to show him how to do his job? What the hell.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I spend most days winding through 10 years of accumulated spaghetti code to figure out what confluence of planetary alignment caused the latest customer problem. And since our customers are hospitals, they're very determined to know exactly what happened.

git blame -w | sed 's/Q-Stone/Minion/g'

Wish I could blame him, but he hasn't been here near 10 years.

My boss came into my office today to point out that 9:30 to 5:30 is only 7 hours when I take an hour lunch. Said as long as the work got done it didn't matter to him, but my coworkers had been noticing, so....

Should've told him I only put in 7 hour days because I can't bear to be here a full 8 hours.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

My boss came into my office today to point out that 9:30 to 5:30 is only 7 hours when I take an hour lunch. Said as long as the work got done it didn't matter to him, but my coworkers had been noticing, so....

Should've told him I only put in 7 hour days because I can't bear to be here a full 8 hours.

If they get their jobs done, it shouldn't really matter then. Methinks someone is dead weight around the ole water cooler.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

My boss came into my office today to point out that 9:30 to 5:30 is only 7 hours when I take an hour lunch. Said as long as the work got done it didn't matter to him, but my coworkers had been noticing, so....

Should've told him I only put in 7 hour days because I can't bear to be here a full 8 hours.

Does he know that you work off the clock at night? Does he know you are the night?

I am going on holidays in 8 days. I should be excited except my work just informed me that they are hiring 3 new people and I have to somehow create them new spaces to work... in a building where we ran out of space 2 years ago... the photocopier is in a closet to give you an idea of how little space we have. Oh and the icing on top of the cake is that they all start in different cities so I have to go to three seperate buildings to measure and calculate space, place the order, pick it up, assemble the desks, install computers and still manage to do my regular job. :S

Today we were informed we are laid-off in 9 months time.

The worst part was having to deal with everyone crying. I'm fine but I hate seeing people hurt and in pain. Especially those who've just taken out home loans and with children...

Duoae wrote:

Today we were informed we are laid-off in 9 months time.

The worst part was having to deal with everyone crying. I'm fine but I hate seeing people hurt and in pain. Especially those who've just taken out home loans and with children...

Whoadang. Sorry to hear that man. At least you have some time to figure out what to do next.

T-Prime wrote:
Duoae wrote:

Today we were informed we are laid-off in 9 months time.

The worst part was having to deal with everyone crying. I'm fine but I hate seeing people hurt and in pain. Especially those who've just taken out home loans and with children...

Whoadang. Sorry to hear that man. At least you have some time to figure out what to do next.

Yeah, thanks. It's a blessing we weren't all laid off with immediate effect but, to be honest, the company needs us to transition all our valuable info and resources to the remaining sites...

It's been sh*t.