shadowlight | Entries tagged with work

Make no mistake, people: the school that insists upon making eagles run and fish climb trees is intended to create workers for the company that hires a fish to be a swimmer, for swimmers' wages, but expects the fish to climb and run whenever they demand it.. sometimes because they failed to hire any runners, sometimes just to make sure this fish is earning his pay. If the fish feels bad that he can't climb the tree that he has to climb every friday, all the better as the Managers see it. They want the fish to 'know his place' and not try for anything better or ask for anything more. If the budget doesn't allow for enough flyers, they can always try picking up the fish and throwing it, telling it how grateful they are that it's a team player. (Their gratitude has no monetary value, but they use it sparingly anyway, just in case.)
I work for a company that would rather everyone do any given procedure the same way, even if the method was chosen arbitrarily and without any real-world testing and doesn't actually work, rather than letting people do things their own way and possibly thereby figure out a better way. (I'm amazed we haven't been displaced yet by a up-from-the-roots crowdsourcing does-everything-the-opposite competitor, but efficiency and actually treating people right doesn't have a level playing field against already-successful-and-pushy. not on this playing field, anyway.)
I work as hard as I can at my job, and it is only-to-be-expected. When I find a way to work a little faster, push a littler harder, they just ask for more, and more after that. I always meet expectations but I never exceed expectations, because they don't really have expectations, they just want every drop of blood and sweat they can get from me.

(no subject)
August 30th, 2010
I haven't posted much to this emo blog lately, because I've been trying so hard to see the good side, count my blessings... but my workplace becomes more and more abusive. The mass skullf# that was Inventory slid almost seamlessly into the mass skull# that is Remodel, and then it'll be time for our endless Xmas shopping season, hard as it is to believe as I sweat like a pig in the equatorial heat that somehow does so little to prove Global Warming, the way a cold day in f#ing January so easily disproves it in the common mind. I feel like work (and/or the unseen bugs in my bed; and/or the heat and/or unknown factors) are sucking the vitality from me, leaving little gumption with which to deal with the rest of my life, which consequently, is falling apart at the edges. I've been sleeping on a sleeping bag on the floor because my mattress makes me itch... except now, even the floor is making me itch, so soon I'll need a Plan C. My apartment is a mess. I still haven't put away most of the precious junk I grabbed from camp several months back. My car needs work done to pass inspection, my dental crown on my back leftmost tooth is falling apart, piece by piece. I'm preparing my games for Con, the final Con of its type, and already Frifts is so complicated I doubt any of my regular players will play it... and I might not even get those days off from work, at this rate. My church will be bankrupt in two years unless they double their attendance. The girl I love says we should just be friends. ...and I say, sure, baby, I'm good at that. I'm the ultimate Friend Man. What else can I say?

Today was a cascade of saving throws.
March 5th, 2010
Current Mood:frustrated frustrated
Forgot to set alarm. Late for work. Crowded place. managed to finish last week's paperwork in time to copy off next week's paperwork. fairly few spills but one of them was in the middle of trying to clean the front end ladies' room, and the 'spill' (in Toys) ...smelled like exactly what it was, to a much stronger degree than usual. (thought to myself: perhaps I really should look for a less disgusting line of work) quite hungry and tired by the time I managed my lunch break. broke the breakroom coffee pot accidentally, just as 10 cups of fresh hot coffee began pouring out of the machine. fortunately, there were other people who helped me contain the flow. 15 minutes late going back to work because the breakroom clock does not reflect the actual time, perhaps due to last week's repeated brownouts. On my way out for the evening, I checked my schedule to discover I'm either off tomorrow, or I'm due in at 8am to cover for a coworker, as per vague oral discussions conducted separately amongst me & him, and each of us and our supervisor, who did not reflect this change on the official Schedule Master Printout. so...yeah. (Hey, Deadcat, if they tell me to go home, should I grab my dice and head up your way, or is this overly short notice?)

Archival Note: As I recall, I showed up the next day early to cover for my co-worker and the manager who had to fix things on the computer to let me in (when they didn't expect me there at all)said, "you both did this the exact wrong way." but they changed things to let me work since I was there and the co-worker was not.

Anger: Frontier Justice in the Modern Age
December 4th, 2009
Current Location:Cheyenne, Wyoming
I get my temper from my Dad. That sounds like a paradox. He almost never got mad, but when he did... yikes. The sheer rarity of it was a shock, but it wasn't at all halfway or pansy. It was full strength. There is a tendency to assume that those you admire are somehow more perfect than you, less subject to the murky undercurrents of human nature. Living the life I have these last five years, holding down a job in the real world, dealing with the public, I frequently feel these flares of anger at people who just don't seem to get it... the shoplifting, vandalizing punks who think they're smarter than the rest of us because they don't care about anyone else; the ones who spray invisible lubricant on the floor in the middle of the store, apparently just for fun; the ones who think they shouldn't have to follow the rules; the people who want to shame me into not doing what I don't have any choice but to do because the rules I need to follow don't make any sense and don't really work. I get angry. often. more than I have since I was a teenager. After a few minutes, I get a grip on myself and don't really do any of the things I thought about doing. Did Dad feel flares like these, and simply didn't express them? I don't know. It wasn't something I was comfortable talking to him about. After all he did, how hard he tried, to keep his children safe from corrupting influences... how could I ever let him see what a monster I really was? Maybe he got angry. maybe. Either way, the sentiment behind my fantasies of beating up shoplifters is very much what he taught me, his John Wayne sense of morality, that some are innocents that need to be protected, but some people are scum, that need to be punished, or they'll never stop exploiting everyone else. Rationally, abstractly, I'm more liberal and forgiving than that. Maybe vigilante fantasies come naturally to those who are relatively powerless in a given circumstance, a natural psychological imperative. Maybe there's just something about getting your hands dirty that makes you want to curl them into fists.

Thank God It's Black Friday No Longer
November 28th, 2009
They are cutting hours at work, my dept of three men, anyway. during the holiday season. This evening, I spent 45 minutes trying to find merchandise that various customers wanted to buy that wasn't on the shelves, because at 8pm on Black Friday, we had _no one_ working in Grocery. I'm not even in Sales or Stocking. I'm a janitor...but I've got a work ethic that says that if someone needs powdered sugar to leave the store happy, I should see if it's within my power to make that happen. (Less luck with Danactive Strawberry Yogurt Drink that we apparently really were out of...I think. The Dairy Cooler was packed, and there was only so much I could dig through without making a mess of the place. )
Amazed how quickly(?) 'Black Friday' has become the publicly known/accepted name of the day after Thanksgiving, as if it were its own holiday, like Fat Tuesday or Easter Sunday. Are there holidays that don't stand for anything? Are there holidays that stand for bad things like greed and gluttony? Are there rules for what can be a holiday, or just whatever you can sucker the majority into celebrating?

Luck of the Irate
November 2nd, 2009
Current Location:Dublin, Ireland
Current Mood:annoyed annoyed
I was having a fairly good day at work tonight (despite having been cut three and half hours today) until some punk kid co-worker (whom I know only by face, not name) comes up to me and asks when I'm out, how many hours I'm working today. I assume this is small talk (read: empty social ritual the normals feel better if you engage in. It's like Facebook, but in person.) Then he hits me with "I've got you beat. I'm here until seven. You're lucky, you get to go home in three hours, while I'll be slaving away all night."
Outwardly, I let it slide. Inwardly, though, I'm very pissed off by this passive-aggressive social sucker punch. The "You're Lucky" line is a pet peeve with me, probably because I'm both lawful enough to care and smart enough to know how stupid the statement is. The Whinier-than-thou is generally protesting the unfairness of a world where their cupcake is gone (because they ate it) while my cupcake is still there (because I haven't had time to eat it). "I'm lucky" (and therefore somehow culpable or supposed to feel bad) because I'm working less hours or because I usually don't get my hours cut or because I'm going home sooner because I came in earlier (different whiners, different days).
I saw the punk kid in the breakroom twentysomething minutes later. He didn't clock in until at least ten, which meant his oh-so-long day was a regular 8-hour shift like I've done 5 days a week for years... and one of the few times I'm not working a full shift, this moron pops up out of Central Casting to call me lazy. I debated an attempt at enlightening the benighted sod, but ultimately decided he'd just see wisdom as an attack. The problem is, most people nowadays are stupid because they want to be. It's so hard to tell which ones would catch a clue if you tossed them one.
When I was a full-time caregiver for my Dad, some of the other patients at the Dialysis Ward would tell Dad he was "lucky" because he only had to have dialysis twice a week (He still had 10% kidney function.) I would always look at them like they'd just declared Gerald Ford as their Personal Lord and Savior, but I never said out loud what I thought about that: 1. Dad was also younger than two-thirds of the patients in there. 2. Dad had other problems in his life which were certainly not symptoms of 'good luck'. and, primarily, 3. If he was 'lucky', he wouldn't need dialysis at all.

Today started out rough. I had to throw out my morning coffee because it tasted like an old ashtray. On my way to work, a car zoomed across where I needed to be, forcing me onto the wrong road, so I had to turn around. However, we finally got a shipment of paper towels for the restroom dispensers, after over a week without any, and the public's reverse-thrist for them being insatiable the whole time. My sense of humor returned with my lunchtime coffee (after the paper towels turned up, and I arranged for a game on Friday at Bastet's Place's place.)
Also, I went to the bookstore after work and have now in my ownership a copy of _Icons_. I sat in the bookstore cafe, skimming and petting* it for more than an hour. (*It only looks like petting. Actually, I refer to the librarian's trick of folding down the pages / loosening the binding so the book lasts longer in a functional condition. I suspect this book will see lots of use over the years, unless it's stolen or incinerated before that happens.) It seems to be aimed at a just-slightly looser/simpler superhero aesthetic, a funnier, almost self-referential type of superhero story than M&M. If M&M aims to emulate the modern Batman comicbook, Icons is more like Batman: the Animated Series. It makes no secret of its ancestry in the assorted Marvel rpgs, Fudge, FATE, and to some degree, even V&V. I also noticed that the copyright notice lists all the rules and stats, sans characters/setting, as "Open Game Content". This makes me wonder if building a version for a different setting (*ahem*) would yield a project I could freely release into the Open Source Wilds to earn myself some professional cred. (Also? I found and bookmarked Steve Kenson's lj blog. Good reading for the gamer-inclined.)
Very tempted to test-run Fudge Rifts for my Friday players, but I'd need to finish at least four pregens who now exist as diffuse clouds of information. If not, I can still do the right thing and run the conclusion of 'President Evil', a Marvel Fudge story-arc that's been dangling in pieces since Howard Dean was a frontrunner. Someday, of course, I will run Icons for them. I know what the premise will be, and how it will start. and they won't roll up their characters until after the first scene.

Current Mood: geeky

Honestly, work today wasn't too bad-- I had an hour or so before it got busy, I didn't get called for a single spill all day, not too much fighting with the customers. ....but it was a morning shift, so I came home, zoned out for several hours in front of the comp (my watch fell off my wrist and I didn't bother picking it up.) Eventually, I realized my phone was in the pants I'd switched for shorts as soon as I got home. Thymewind had called. I called him back, asked him for help with my A/C. Ultimately, we decided we couldn't get the big antique A/C that Shadow Lady had found me as a replacement up either set of stairs. So Thymewind set out to see if he could fix my old one. He got some tools from his car, I dug out my box of random hardware stuff, I couldn't find a flashlight so we used a small table lamp made out of driftwood. ... However, he was ultimately successful in finding and reconnecting what was loose. My air conditioner is in my window, conditioning air! Afterwards, I noticed I'd lost one of the lenses out of my glasses. Right now, I'm wearing them anyway, but tomorrow, I'll figure what to do about those, get my anti-lock brake system fixed, ...ummm. and some other stuff. I made a list.

Today, a customer actually bumped into me. He was looking around, walking slowly, and I thought he saw me. a little light tap as his basket touches me. He looks at me, wide-eyed, and walks off in the direction he was already going in. *shrugs* There weren't any calls for me to go anywhere until after lunch, so I did my regular tasks, plus some extra spot mopping to stay ahead of likely calls. After lunch, of course, I got calls to be in three places at once, plus one to clean up the spill I was already cleaning up. It was a sugar trail. A bag of sugar in a customer's cart gets a hole in it, and it pours out wherever their cart goes, all over multiple aisles, creating a traction hazard that's plainly visible from a distance but nearly invisible if you're right on top of it. Plus other customers can't see it so they track through and spread it with their carts. (It was Saturday. It was bound to get busy like that sooner or later.)
When I came in to work this morning, the Ladies' Room deadbolt had already been torn off. (It had been affixed to the door with something akin to rubber cement.) When I was leaving after my shift, DG was re-attaching the lock with steel carriage bolts drilled all the way through the door to the outside. I would've tried superglue, if I'd had time to attempt it, but I approve of his more Binnford Tools approach.
I also spoke with another of my named leads for the Convention, but while he was interested in attending, he wasn't interested in running anything. He said he _played_ games but didn't _run_ them, claiming relative inexperience at rpgs and ccgs compared to others in the store. (He suggested (name), and I said, 'but that's the person who sent me to you', so he gave me a different name, who I'll definitely try, as it's someone who's already shown themselves to be cool and friendly.) Also today, the geek I spoke to yesterday told someone else about the Convention. So, yeah. Momentum.

Ok, so today I worked morning shift again. Spot mopping (the removal of dirt blotches from the floor) seems to have again risen in priority among those in charge, so I did quite a bit of that, mostly upon request. I saw a co-worker who's been out sick (who has been rumored to not be coming back) come in for his paycheck, and he smiled and said the ladies in Personnel were going to do what they could to let him come back. Also, Coworker DG installed a deadbolt to act as a lock for the Ladies' room (from yesterday's post). I gave him heartfelt thanks. I spoke with one of yesterday's leads about FoxCon, and he gave me two more names to ask, and said if I kept reminding him, he could find some manner of event-runners or at least staff for the con. I spoke with one of the new names after work. He smiled and said that, just by chance, he already had that weekend off. We talked about rpgs. He told me some anecdotes about playing Top Secret back when he was in school, and he sung the praises of his new favorite system, _Savage Worlds_. He said it was easier to play than Gurps, you can create a character in ten minutes, combats are fast and smooth, even with car chases, and the core rulebook only costs $10. (duuude... ok, so I looked it up on wikpedia when I got home.) I knew these people were geeks, but it's still slightly surreal to be talking to them about geek stuff. I'm pleased at the positive responses I'm getting. Also today, I finished the manga I borrowed from Eku: _Maison Ikkoku_ is a straightforward romantic comedy about a college student in love with the semi-unavailable woman who acts as the superintendent of his boarding house. _Sexy Voice and Robo_ is more complicated, a comedy/action/drama-something about Nico, a perceptive, resourceful, (but manipulative) 14-year-old girl who performs vaguely espionage-like missions for an mysterious elderly patron, with the assistance of her friend/hapless pawn, Sudo, a lonely 20-something geek with a collection of toy robots. (I think I felt sorry for the geek more than was intended, but nonetheless they were very engaging and entertaining stories. Although set in modern Tokyo, I was reminded of 'Shadowrun'. The Old Man is an excellent example of what cyberpunk stories call a 'fixer'.)

Current Location: Omotesando Street, Tokyo, Japan

Ok, so since I wind up telling Miss K and/or Sweetnfat (aka Eku) and/or Shadow Lady how my day went every day, I might as well actually use my blog and tell everyone. Brevity, as always, is the challenge. I worked morning shift today, which makes me tired since it's tricky for me to remember to go to bed early enough the night before. I was assertive about something at work (I'll put details in the comments). I got some leads on who to ask about getting geeks from work to run events at FoxCon in October. I had a funny comicbook-related idea, but I don't know what the best medium of expression for it is (game scenario? fanfic? blog post? a humorous photomanipulated jpg?). I might've lost my health insurance. (Right now, I am too tired to deal with that, too tired to shop around for car repair or air conditioner repair, but also too tired to get upset about any of it. I can get by until I can make things right.) I got the vacation time approved that I asked for, and things with Miss K are still going great, so I've got things to look forward to.

Current Mood: mellow

Physical Exam last week: bp 122 over 82; wt 174 lbs; ht 5'11 and a half" (am I getting shorter still?) Doctor was actually a Nurse, suggested Prilosec for my stomach trouble, seemed unable to see past that to notice any other minor problems, which hopefully means all other problems really are that minor.

asked a girl (for your records, call her "Miss M") at work out, after days of prep. result: I'm "sweet" but she has a boyfriend. *sigh* my prep kept it from being awkward, but it still feels like being kicked in the chest. Almost asked another girl out a day later just to get back on the proverbial horse while I was still sore.

Let's not talk work. Someone I trusted got fired. Those I don't trust didn't.

Finally submitted poems to 'Breath & Shadow'. 3 days later, they write back, saying they got the poems, love them, will take all three, ... "meager payment" (their words. I'm okay about the size as long it's money coming to me instead of away) and business / legal niceties to follow when they can fit it into their publication queue, which might take 6 months. They like publishing authors from Maine but "seldom get submissions of such high quality". Like, dude. accepted in less than a week. wow. Now I've got to write more.

audioreading Dan Brown's _Angels & Demons_. 15 min in, he's already bashing the Catholics, and I can tolerate that, but... y'know, the guy can't write... unless he was going for a melodrama with less realism than a Spider-Man comic. kind of a cross between Herbworld and something I read in a workshopped novella by a housewife at the Writers' Anonymous meetings back in Milltown. I've got to write more. I'll bet a novel about an elven love goddess would sell.

going to visit the blind rebel scholar tommorrow. gone early.

By the way, I passed my yearly evaluation at work. I should soon be receiving a 40-cent raise, bringing me up to $7.55 an hour. One of these days maybe I'll post some of the anecdotes of my life among the Blue-Vested People. Collectively, I call such anecdotes 'The Janitor Diaries'. I'm not sure whether I can get a realistic novel out of these tales, or if it would wind up being a 200 page book with 150 pages of women trying to get into bathrooms.

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Everybody's a Genius, but We Get Treated Like Morons
Greycleaner V (is for the Vanishing Veneer of Vitality, lost to vermin and vapidity)
Greycleaner T (for Today was Terrible)
Greycleaner P (is for Protectors, Punishment, and Powerlessness)
Greycleaner 0 (is for Overworked and Overwhelmed)
Greycleaner K (is for knowing better)
Today was an uphill battle, but at least I'm up the hill at the end of it.
A Manly, (yet faintly absurd) Post
(no subject)
Today was promising...
Today, I was assertive (at least slightly)
Up and Down
News: no, wait, I had some good news around here somewhere...

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Shadowlight's Lighthouse

upon the coast of the sea of dreams

Entries tagged with work

Everybody's a Genius, but We Get Treated Like Morons

Greycleaner V (is for the Vanishing Veneer of Vitality, lost to vermin and vapidity)

Greycleaner T (for Today was Terrible)

Greycleaner P (is for Protectors, Punishment, and Powerlessness)

Greycleaner 0 (is for Overworked and Overwhelmed)

Greycleaner K (is for knowing better)

Today was an uphill battle, but at least I'm up the hill at the end of it.

A Manly, (yet faintly absurd) Post

(no subject)

Today was promising...

Today, I was assertive (at least slightly)

Up and Down

News: no, wait, I had some good news around here somewhere...