I'm going to have a 7 1/2 hour layover at the Dallas airport in a few days. Yay?
GasBandit
Staff member
At least it isn't Houston.
Joking aside, there are worse airports to have long layovers in. At least DFW has restaurants and free wifi.
Agreed--the Dulles airport actually isn't that bad.
Houston Hobby is freaking awful.
GasBandit
Staff member
I had an 8 hour layover at IAH a few years ago. It was pretty bad. Wifi was not free, outlets were scarce, and unlike DFW, you are very unlikely to have anywhere to eat within earshot of your gate. I try to fly through DFW for my connections whenever I can, not that I've flown anywhere in the last few years.
Granted, I managed to make something of a spectacle of myself, when I got bored enough to start playing guitar hero on my laptop right there by the gate. Got some odd looks, but hey, I had headphones.
Of course, I was completely awful at it because I can't play guitar hero for crap if I have to wear pants while doing so.
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
Sure enough, one of my co-workers just confided in me that he received a phone call last night from the Department of Labor and Industries regarding several investigations that they're running on this company. They know all about the 401k issue, and several others about which they couldn't divulge information. Apparently, we also parted ways with the company treasurer last week. I will be very surprised if this place lasts beyond the end of the year.
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
We're not a publicly traded company, so there's no worry of that.
Went to the doctor to get my sinuses cleaned out yesterday. The doctor stuck some metal implement or another through the opening to my sinus cavity, to suck out the exudate inside. He got a bit overzealous, and repeatedly scraped the metal implement against the inside of my sinus cavities. The sinuses, as I'm sure you're all aware, are hollow structures inside your skull, which usually do not come into contact with any sort of external implement, metal or otherwise.
So, basically, right now the inside of my skull is rather sore. I am literally aching in a way that I could never have fathomed aching before.
So, basically, right now the inside of my skull is rather sore. I am literally aching in a way that I could never have fathomed aching before.
That sounds awful. I had to have a tissue sample taken from my sinuses for an asthma test. It was the weirdest experience of my life. I remember telling a friend that I understood how people who were abducted by aliens felt because my nose was violated.
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
This should be an interesting afternoon. They let my boss go this morning. Today was the senior leadership meeting (it's a weekly thing). Then everyone headed into their separate offices and closed their doors. Now there's a mandatory "workforce" meeting in 15 minutes, but only for select people. The fact that they're mixing multiple departments along with both salaried and hourly employees tells me this is probably a bad thing.
Sounds like they've just about set up Madame Guillotine.
A
Anonymous
Anonymous
Well, for all that, it could have been much worse. Actually, they just wanted to let us salaried folks know that as of 11/1, we're hourly employees, which means we can apply for shared work. The alternative was to keep us all salaried and not pay us for unworked days. Also, apparently our HR person is really bad at her job and thinks that two of the people she invited are salaried, when they're not.
I can't stop watching it.
--Patrick
Things at my job keep getting wilder and wilder and my boss' new boss who won't recognize my extra duties got me to save her several times today.
Immature me wants to tell her to bite me and do just my regular job and she can do the extra she won't recognize or pay me for.
Mature me understands that this hurts my team so I won't.
Thank god for diet coke, Poutine and Thor.
Immature me wants to tell her to bite me and do just my regular job and she can do the extra she won't recognize or pay me for.
Mature me understands that this hurts my team so I won't.
Thank god for diet coke, Poutine and Thor.
I'm sick, sick, sick. My nose won't stop running, my throat hurts like a ***********, my eyes are puffy, my ears are ringing, my glands are all swollen up. And tomorrow I start a 6-day - or better, 2-day, 2-evening, 2-night - stretch of work. I feel miserable, but I know I'm far from sick enough to stay home from work...Some of my colleagues would stay home for this, but I don't...But blegh.
Particularly decisions that you are responsible for, but that no one decides to share with you.
GasBandit
Staff member
Well, I'll just stop being vague. Since they fired the old Traffic Director and split her duties among me, my underling, and the accountant, and then the accountant couldn't take it any more and quit, and it's now just me and Underling, things have been slipping through the cracks and mistakes are being made, quite understandably when 2 people are doing the work of 5. A new accountant has been hired but is training in Midland with Owner's Pet Accountant until next week, and 2 days ago in a meeting, Owner, GM and I came to an agreement that we needed more help even beyond that, so we'd give one of the weekend board-ops more hours (still just part time though, of course, god forbid they have to offer him health insurance) and basically make him my underling number 2. The plan is to get Underling 1 to train him, and let him take over some of the low-difficulty-but-highly-time-consuming tasks we have to do every week, which will free us up some and thus make us able to be more careful and make less mistakes.
Again, that was decided 2 days ago.
Yesterday an agency sends us a credit memo ("We're not paying all our bill because this part is wrong") for something that happened in September. Naturally, Owner and GM are all "TOO MANY MISTAKES BEING MADE, WE TALKED ABOUT THIS" yes, we talked two days ago and despite you having decided what we'll do about it, you haven't actually done the legwork to authorize it or even tell Underling #2 that he is now Underling #2 instead of Weekend Board-op #4, so how the fuck do you expect mistakes to stop happening yet now, much less 2 months in the past?
Again, that was decided 2 days ago.
Yesterday an agency sends us a credit memo ("We're not paying all our bill because this part is wrong") for something that happened in September. Naturally, Owner and GM are all "TOO MANY MISTAKES BEING MADE, WE TALKED ABOUT THIS" yes, we talked two days ago and despite you having decided what we'll do about it, you haven't actually done the legwork to authorize it or even tell Underling #2 that he is now Underling #2 instead of Weekend Board-op #4, so how the fuck do you expect mistakes to stop happening yet now, much less 2 months in the past?
GasBandit
Staff member
Sad thing is, even with all the credits for mistakes that have been made since march, he probably IS saving money.
He'll save himself right out of business.
But Gas, that's how things get done. All you need to do is have a few more meetings. See, what happens is that first you need a meeting to discuss the topic or topics that need to be discussed in your upcoming meeting. Then you can have a meeting to discuss who should be invited to the meeting discussing the topics brought up in the previous meeting. And then, because some of the people who are going to be invited hadn't been at the first meeting, you need to hold that original topic setting meeting again, in case the new attendees have something to contribute (because why else would you invite them, right?). Then, because the topics have changed, you need to re-evaluate who should be invited to the meeting to discuss the topics that you've discussed discussing. Only when you are absolutely certain that you have everyone that you need and all of the topics are laid out, you need to have a meeting to lay out the specific agenda for the upcoming meeting, as well as to schedule when that meeting will be held.
Now, it's only natural for a few topics to have been left off the agenda, because they weren't deemed important enough to take time discussing with everyone that's going to be attending, or because some attendees couldn't attend at the given time and date; so you'll need to reschedule a meeting to put together an agenda for the topics that were left off the original agenda, and have the requisite meetings to discuss who to invite to that meeting, and when to schedule it. By this time, hopefully, you've had the meeting to discuss the original agenda. If so, you probably spent more time talking to the attendees of the meeting about why you were having this meeting, and didn't really discuss everything that you needed to discuss during the meeting. One great strategy for how to deal with this is to add all of the people that were going to be coming to the second meeting to a follow-up meeting for the first meeting, so you can just get everything back on one agenda. However, you also need to remember that none of the people that were going to be at the second agenda meeting were at the first agenda meeting, so you'll need to make sure you go back over the presentation about why you've called a meeting to discuss the items on the agenda. Then, once all of that is done, you can have a meeting to discuss the agenda. Finally, when the last group meeting is done, each individual department involved in the meetings should go off and have their own meetings to decide what to actually do.
Along the way, you should be sure to yell, scream, throw things, break furniture, slam doors, and demean all of your employees for not getting stuff done, because that's what you're having all of these meetings about, god damn it!
Dave
Staff member
Me to friend: Hey, man! I've been sending you emails about our shared account for the entertainment company money. You blowing me off, dude?
Friend to me: Nah. I was in Kansas City. My wife's mom died and we had to plan and go to the funeral.
Me: http://www.hark.com/clips/hmxdrnwrdl-i-feel-like-the-fucking-asshole
Friend to me: Nah. I was in Kansas City. My wife's mom died and we had to plan and go to the funeral.
Me: http://www.hark.com/clips/hmxdrnwrdl-i-feel-like-the-fucking-asshole
Normally I'd offer some advice about releasing your concern... but I suspect that it might not help.I went up to the ballroom to see if they'd set up for today's events. I wish I hadn't...
Fortunately, I am now well away from there for the day.
ftfy
