Kids + work
Whine like a baby, now with 500% more drama!
- Thread starter strawman
- Start date
Child labor? Brilliant idea!
Always lol! I meant that it was the equation to stress.
GasBandit
Staff member
I'm back at the county courthouse. It was "Super duper important" for me to drop what I was doing and come here at 11 because there was a bug that needed to be addressed when court went into recess for lunch.
It's 12:47 and they still haven't broken for lunch. I'm just sitting here twiddling my thumbs. I mean, I'm hourly, so I get paid either way... but there is SO much waiting on me to do back at the shop.
It's 12:47 and they still haven't broken for lunch. I'm just sitting here twiddling my thumbs. I mean, I'm hourly, so I get paid either way... but there is SO much waiting on me to do back at the shop.
I have a final paper due next Thursday.
The previous draft was due last Thursday.
I submitted said previous draft over a month ago!
The paper due next week is to be graded based almost exclusively upon how we respond to the feedback provided by the prof to that previous draft.
As of today, I have no feedback, and have heard nothing from the prof in well over a month.
I'm also waiting on getting feedback on my big project proposal that I submitted earlier this week that had 3 tiny bits to be changed/added. I've had a good bit of back-and-forth with one of the reviewers, and they were supposed to get back to me for the final edit yesterday... and nothing.
So I'm in a general holding pattern, waiting on people to do their damn jobs so I can do mine! And I will be judged based on how well I do that job in an ever decreasing time frame, but those I'm waiting on will not be judged on their lack of alacrity.
sigh.
The previous draft was due last Thursday.
I submitted said previous draft over a month ago!
The paper due next week is to be graded based almost exclusively upon how we respond to the feedback provided by the prof to that previous draft.
As of today, I have no feedback, and have heard nothing from the prof in well over a month.
I'm also waiting on getting feedback on my big project proposal that I submitted earlier this week that had 3 tiny bits to be changed/added. I've had a good bit of back-and-forth with one of the reviewers, and they were supposed to get back to me for the final edit yesterday... and nothing.
So I'm in a general holding pattern, waiting on people to do their damn jobs so I can do mine! And I will be judged based on how well I do that job in an ever decreasing time frame, but those I'm waiting on will not be judged on their lack of alacrity.
sigh.
GasBandit
Staff member
I feel this so much.
Sales and Project Management are always griping about "why does it take so long for a project to come back from design so we can send the customer a quote"
Because the clock starts running the instant they "hand off" the project, even if all the info they were supposed to gather hasn't been gathered, and any time we ask for more information it's met with a BIG SIGH and a "SO BUSY can't do that til next week" etc etc.
Ok dude, I can't even START on the work you want me to do until you finish doing the work you were supposed to do before I got involved. You want wall elevations but took no pictures or measurements of any of the walls. You want reflected ceiling plans, but took no pictures or measurements of the ceiling. You want a line drawing and schematic, but didn't document all the existing equipment. You want a rack elevation but didn't take any pictures of the customer's equipment rack.
But they face ZERO accountability for that, whereas my department gets the blame for everything because we're the last ones to touch a project.
Starting today, we opened up a new webform at work for major customers to contact us (IT) directly, rather than having them jump through hoops with Customer Service and having them create a callback request etc etc.
To avoid problems, this has been made available only to major customers who actually USE our automation solutions.
The webform itself clearly states ONLY FOR TECHNICAL ISSUES WITH ADVANCED AUTOMATION.
The e-mail they got to be invited into this new system clearly states "this form is only intended for technical issues with software or the APIs, and is NOT to be used for tracking issues, login issues, any website issue, ...".
So, I got 8 cases through this webform today. Come on, folks, can you guess how many of those 8 cases actually had anything to do with automation, and how many of them were for "I lost my package", "I can't ship to 90210 New York and I don't understand why", "I'm trying to track a package but I don't know how yo use your site" or similar issues?
Everyone who has ever worked in customer care, retail, hospitality, or similar will no doubt get this right on the first go.
To avoid problems, this has been made available only to major customers who actually USE our automation solutions.
The webform itself clearly states ONLY FOR TECHNICAL ISSUES WITH ADVANCED AUTOMATION.
The e-mail they got to be invited into this new system clearly states "this form is only intended for technical issues with software or the APIs, and is NOT to be used for tracking issues, login issues, any website issue, ...".
So, I got 8 cases through this webform today. Come on, folks, can you guess how many of those 8 cases actually had anything to do with automation, and how many of them were for "I lost my package", "I can't ship to 90210 New York and I don't understand why", "I'm trying to track a package but I don't know how yo use your site" or similar issues?
Everyone who has ever worked in customer care, retail, hospitality, or similar will no doubt get this right on the first go.
Second rating would be laughing uncontrollably because I’ve dealt with those people.
There's an organizational culture shift that we're right in the middle of where some segments (older generations in particular) believe that a form is used to hide behind and it lacks the accountability inherent to a face-to-face interaction so they're reluctant to use them for their intended purpose. Also, people don't read instructions. Demonstrating that using the form right actually speeds up time-to-resolution is a continual work-in-progress.
Dear Lord, this. So very much this. The number of assignments I have edited that had no basis in the requirements is painful - and not just for first year undergrads, but like, doctoral students! And it's just as bad in the real world too - I remember a number of support calls that I went out to about the electronic health record system we had just installed and had literally trained everyone on how to use, and oof, I thought nurses and doctors were supposed to be smart and detail oriented.
Working in healthcare, I can say that this is categorically untrue outside their scope of training. (My wife is a great nurse, don't get me wrong.)
And from my own current experience in Master's level courses, in a communication program no less, there's a real deficit in how to communicate instructions effectively. One bloody professor put the instructions in a web video, including word counts and other technical requirements, but didn't put them in text anywhere else in the portal. The web video was blocked for a lot of students because of where it was hosted, so not only did a lot of people submit way over the technical requirements (Yours truly included) but the professor had the nerve to blame us for not seeing the video that we were unable to see. That solicited a nastagram email that my class cohort got a front row view to...
GasBandit
Staff member
Some of the most difficult and impatient clients I have had are university faculty.
By FAR the most were the faculty of the SHSU College of Osteopathic Medicine.
They are Doctors (sometimes in both sense of the word) AND they are professors.
When being trained for their new AV system, some of them literally and explicitly said that they did not have time nor patience for it. Despite it being rather simple and not that time consuming.
Some people think that because they know a lot about something, they shouldn't be expected to even attempt to know the slightest bit about anything else.
One of the rudest parents I've ever had the misfortune of meeting with was a doctor. I know this, because he went out of his way to mention it 3 times. He did not want to hear any explanation from me as to why his son had a B+ in my class instead of an A; he just wanted to tell me over and over how much smarter he was and imply I was so dumb that I must not know how to teach. I remember one specific quote was "As I told you already, I'm a doctor. And if *I* explained things to children as poorly as you do, I wouldn't be very good at my job."
I'm still not 100% clear on what that meant or how it was justified, but it's probably because I'm a stupid non-doctor person who should just give him whatever he wants immediately.
Mostly the reasons I don't notice the humble doctors are because they don't volunteer the fact that they are a
...does whatever a spider-doc does...
--Patrick
That is a big part of it, yes. But the magnitude of arrogance does seem to be higher in individuals with highly specialized and valuable educations.
EDIT: And again, that could be confirmation bias.
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We had this live chat thing at my retail job, and as a manager I regularly reviewed closed tickets to make sure the right information was being relayed, etc. I read through this one conversation and it was a customer who wanted to know if we had considered carrying knives (we sold kitchen knives) that played a musical note as you cut with them. And he acknowledged such a thing didn't exist, but could we consider having some blacksmiths design such a thing?
It's like, dude, we are just here to help you track your package and explain what Rockwell hardness is.
I should say, the employee who answered him was more patient and polite than I would have been.
One of my favorite customers is a orthopedic surgeon, He is one of the nicest people I know. I asked him about covid and he told me he knew nothing about it, he said that all he does is use power tools to put people back together.
My cat was sitting on my computer desk while I was working. That's normal. She gets frequent head scratches and belly rubs whenever I take a break. She started grooming herself and got into one of those yoga poses. Then she ripped a massive, fish-smelling fart all across my workspace. It smelled like rancid nachos that had marinated in canned tuna water. I didn't think such a small creature could vent so much gas.
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Bah. House hunting in today's market is a pain.
Houses that were 125,000-ish pre-pandemic are running 310-350K now. I just looked at a house that had 28 offers on it, and it wasn't even that good of a house.
So, my choices at the moment are:
Houses that were 125,000-ish pre-pandemic are running 310-350K now. I just looked at a house that had 28 offers on it, and it wasn't even that good of a house.
So, my choices at the moment are:
- Wait. Interest rates will go up, and no guarantee that house inventory will improve for a couple of years.
- Downside here is I'm 17 years til retirement. the longer I wait, the closer to that I'll be. I'd prefer to have more equity at retirement than less.
- Fight for an overpriced house
- Downside is the market may turn and I have a house that has 200K more loan on it than it's worth in the future.
- Look in Tyler. House prices here are more reasonable and less fighting over them.
- Downside: It's freaking Tyler. All the things I like to do are at least 2.5 hours away.
GasBandit
Staff member
I feel you. I have an interview with a DFW company tomorrow, and I dread the prospect of trying to find a house there. Seems like everything is a straight up 50% increase over BCS, or more, by square foot.
If you move to DFW, we can hang out
I think she deflated.
This fart had an aftertaste too. It circled back and hit my olfactory receptors all over again.
This, right here, is what keeps me up at night.
I'm getting to the point where I may get a great job offer sometime in the next three years, but I'm SO worried it's going to come with a move requirement that'll tie several hundred grand of worthless bloat around my neck.
--Patrick