Don’t forget we moved!
https://brandmu.day/
Gotta Work For a Living
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You guys are my safe place to talk about my work where it is unlikely to be connected to me IRL and then I don’t have someone coming after me.
I’m a mentor this year for new hires, and with any job, there’s an HR process to go through. A new mentee just asked, “Hey, I’m having problems with some of my paperwork and the person, I can’t remember their name…,” and they didn’t even have to ask before myself and another person went, “It’s X isn’t it?” To which they blinked and went, “Yeah, how did you know?”
Because they were terrible at their job when //I// was hired 6 years ago to the district, and have been terrible ever since. If you get directed this particular person it’s GUARANTEED to take a month and //repeated// emails (calls are never answered) to get whatever is done, done.
The only thing we can come up with is nepotism, and our district is good at that.
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I’m sorry, do you work in the same district I do?!
We had an entire admin staff hired through nepotism and we’re still clinging on to some of them that were brought in 8 years ago.
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So, Gross. During COVID there were some nasty rumors going around about our then AP (she) and then Dean (he) regarding a relationship they may or may not have been having. I chalked that up to the general nasty vibe of that impossible 2020-2021 school year.
The AP was promoted to principal at another building and the dean became our AP. Problem solved right? 2021-2022 was even harder. Dean and family lost their house in the wildfires that decimated the area nearby. I saw him and former AP together a few times at district meetings, once before school hugging not long after he lost his house. Honestly didn’t think about it past friends-helping-friends. The district did a shuffle and all the APs changed in the buildings district wide. He is now AP at another building (not she-AP building.)
This is a blessing because it just came out that there WAS an inappropriate relationship happening and now both are getting divorces from their perspective spouces. I couldn’t have looked him in the eye or respected him this year knowing about this.
I’m just shaking my head so hard because this is the third time in my school’s history that this kind of thing has happened. Former principal with a teacher, and former mental health with a teacher. What is even in the water?! Also makes me have a firm ‘NO NEVER’ on going to ~any~ staff events.
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Dismissing staff is a long and painful process (unless an at-will employment arrangement) which requires devotion on the manager’s side to pursue. Especially as no business wants to end up in an employment tribunal or wrongful dismissal case. Just starting a poor performance process is time and effort, sticking to it even harder.
Also with public sector budgets what they are, i.e. absolutely nothing, there is little to no guarantee to get the headcount back. So we end up tolerating crap and incompetent over nothing.
Which is all incredibly frustrating, leading to a general malaise with others who see incompetence and a general lowering of standards. Vicious cycle.
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In my field, if you’re not constantly reinventing yourself, you’re falling behind. That puts a lot of pressure on finding new technologies and championing those systems to an often disinterested leadership team.
My actual peeve is the fact that whenever I seem to find something that will be an improvement for the company that I work for, I end up as the subject matter expert. This means that every single time I successfully do my job, I increase the scope of my job without getting a raise, because I am the ‘subject matter expert’. Now I am supporting more and more products, and having less and less free time to do things like chat with my colleagues and catch up on their days.
It’s not like it’s the total end of the world, but it’s pretty damn demoralizing that every time I do my job well, I get rewarded with another, bigger proverbial stack of papers on my desk.
Reverse incentive systems, yay.
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This is REAL. I finally had to put my foot down this year and go, “Someone else has to learn this, I can’t be the only expert any more.”
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@blu said in Gotta Work For a Living:
I’m sorry, do you work in the same district I do?!
We had an entire admin staff hired through nepotism and we’re still clinging on to some of them that were brought in 8 years ago.
When I was working in a K-12 school district in a small town, for some reason the district level personnel hated the counselors in general, and our school’s counselors in specific (the district hated our school just in general, because it split the football team when it was created…10 years before I arrived), and so would actively lie about state mandates/trainings to us so that we would miss deadlines and get into trouble.
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@Solstice So, I feel this so much. I work in a heavily scientific field, and I’d like my job to more or less ‘first exposure quality control’. As Covid testing was introduced into our work, this has made my job far more complicated than it used to be, so putting extra responsibilities into what I do because ‘Testament’s team are the all the trouble shooters’. It’s made me a SME in things that even I don’t wholly understand, and yet, somehow I know more about than others. So there’s often a ‘slightly blind leading the fully blind’ feeling going on.
I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@Testament said in Gotta Work For a Living:
So there’s often a ‘slightly blind leading the fully blind’ feeling going on.
Indeed. Ask me anything about VOIP Phone Systems! I’ll definitely know what I’m talking about. T-the entire time.
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I don’t know if this is the right place, BUT.
@Evilgrayson has a twitch!
You should follow it.
https://www.twitch.tv/auntiegrayson
That’s all!
I draw things! http://www.mahaldoodles.com
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@Pyrephox said in Gotta Work For a Living:
@blu said in Gotta Work For a Living:
I’m sorry, do you work in the same district I do?!
We had an entire admin staff hired through nepotism and we’re still clinging on to some of them that were brought in 8 years ago.
When I was working in a K-12 school district in a small town, for some reason the district level personnel hated the counselors in general, and our school’s counselors in specific (the district hated our school just in general, because it split the football team when it was created…10 years before I arrived), and so would actively lie about state mandates/trainings to us so that we would miss deadlines and get into trouble.
just upvoting in the spirit of wtf, not because i LIKE this
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@crawfish PHARAOH AND CLEOPATRA? I’m in.
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@Solstice said in Gotta Work For a Living:
@Testament said in Gotta Work For a Living:
So there’s often a ‘slightly blind leading the fully blind’ feeling going on.
Indeed. Ask me anything about VOIP Phone Systems! I’ll definitely know what I’m talking about. T-the entire time.
The only benefit is that in my position, I’m able to say “Let me think about it.” and no one questions it. Meanwhile, I’m going to go have a headache because I’m cursing my life choices.
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I am on the edge of either doing some unethical shit to get rid of some of my asshole co-workers (I have tried the ethical methods, no success), or like… taking out a loan and getting a commercial pilot license (this IS an incredibly weird choice, yes, but it is what the Facebook and YouTube algorithms have decided; for some reason, 90% of the ads I’ve seen have been for flight and/or ground school).
Plz explain why my goblin brain is like this?
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
She/her -
@Jennkryst said in Gotta Work For a Living:
I am on the edge of either doing some unethical shit to get rid of some of my asshole co-workers (I have tried the ethical methods, no success), or like… taking out a loan and getting a commercial pilot license (this IS an incredibly weird choice, yes, but it is what the Facebook and YouTube algorithms have decided; for some reason, 90% of the ads I’ve seen have been for flight and/or ground school).
Plz explain why my goblin brain is like this?
Literal fight or flight.
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I don't know what I'm doing. Poke at Seven Nations sevennations.aresmush.com port 2021
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@shit-piss-love said in Gotta Work For a Living:
@Jennkryst said in Gotta Work For a Living:
I am on the edge of either doing some unethical shit to get rid of some of my asshole co-workers (I have tried the ethical methods, no success), or like… taking out a loan and getting a commercial pilot license (this IS an incredibly weird choice, yes, but it is what the Facebook and YouTube algorithms have decided; for some reason, 90% of the ads I’ve seen have been for flight and/or ground school).
Plz explain why my goblin brain is like this?
Literal fight or flight.
Honestly I might just choose both. At some point I will probably vent about all the bullshit, but I’m going to wait until I figure out how to incorporate the other two Fs (Feeding and Fucking) to my options.
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The company I work for went pretty much full remote back at the beginning of the pandemic. Now and then when the situation allows/demands it some teams return to the office for a day or two, and on such occasions we all see each other. In some cases it has been years we haven’t seen each other in real life, but only worked together over Zoom meetings and Jira tickets.
I must say this. People look better these days. They look healthier; some lost weight, others got more time for themselves, or to spend with their families. They all had stories of gardening, renovating their homes (to some that meant ‘new decks’ and others ‘I learned how to make shelves and built them for my living room’), or hiking trails walking their dogs - and of new dogs they got to actually hang out with during that time.
All of this because they no longer had to spend two hours every day commuting back and forth. Because for lunch they got to sit on their couch and eat home-made food instead of grabbing a candy bar from the work fridge or going for a Big Mac across the street simply because they had no time for anything else. And because if they had ten minutes to kill between meetings they could spend them with people they love rather than work-friends who wanted to talk about their projects anyway.
Working from home isn’t always great but it’s so much better than the alternative.
Of course YMMV.
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@Arkandel said in Gotta Work For a Living:
The company I work for went pretty much full remote back at the beginning of the pandemic. Now and then when the situation allows/demands it some teams return to the office for a day or two, and on such occasions we all see each other after. In some cases it has been years we haven’t seen each other in real life, but only worked together over Zoom meetings and Jira tickets.
I must say this. People look better these days. They look healthier; some lost weight, others got more time for themselves, or to spend with their families. They all had stories of gardening, renovating their homes (to some that meant ‘new decks’ and others ‘I learned how to make shelves and built them for my living room’), or hiking trails walking their dogs - and of new dogs they got to actually hang out with during that time.
All of this because they no longer had to spend two hours every day commuting back and forth. Because for lunch they got to sit on their couch and eat home-made food instead of grabbing a candy bar from the work fridge or going for a Big Mac across the street simply because they had no time for anything else. And because if they had ten minutes to kill between meetings they could spend them with people they love rather than work-friends who wanted to talk about their projects anyway.
Working from home isn’t always great but it’s so much better than the alternative.
Of course YMMV.
Amazon and Meta both reached out to me in the past month. I told them to hit me up when they have committed to permanent remote work policies.
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This is a general bump of solidarity to everyone else who works in the education sector (on the technical side of things, but guess who kept the lights on for the last couple of years).
I started writing a lengthy rant on how everything sucks right now and I’ve been doing 50+ hour weeks due to cascading mismanagement and the screaming entitlement of a few people who should just take a nice walk outside and how management just scheduled a HUGE project over the top of a vacation I had reserved months prior in advance (plus they’re a little restricted on vacations).
But I lost this post. Whoops.
I’ll console myself with the fact that this city school district is nowhere near the higher-ed trash fire I was at previously.
