Gotta Work For a Living

[Testament]

@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.

[Solstice]

@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.

[crawfish]

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!

[hellfrog]

@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

[Tez]

@crawfish PHARAOH AND CLEOPATRA? I’m in.

[Testament]

@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.

[Jennkryst]

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?

[shit-piss-love]

@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.

[Testament]

@Jennkryst

[Jennkryst]

@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.

[Arkandel]

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.

[shit-piss-love]

@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.

[SpaceKhomeini]

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.

[mietze]

I’m really enjoying the subbing gig. My calendar is almost fully booked for the next two months except for the couple of weeks I have blocked out for transporting kids back to college/hubby’s biz trip. I was going to immediately start looking for a part time district job (I’ll be taking the parapro assessment soon) but now I’m torn.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@shit-piss-love As unenthused as I am about the idea of ever going back to the private sector as it is, I got enough of a taste of Amazon culture from my former job where we imported one of their execs as a CEO.

Nothanks ever.

[shit-piss-love]

@SpaceKhomeini said in Gotta Work For a Living:

@shit-piss-love As unenthused as I am about the idea of ever going back to the private sector I got enough of a taste of Amazon culture from my former job where we imported one of their execs as a CEO.

Nothanks ever.

Oh yeah I would never work for Amazon or Meta. But I do want to contribute pressure to making permanent remote work the norm.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@shit-piss-love

Yeah as of this fall Tech Department is the last group that gets permanent WFH privs. But that may be revised next year. Hmmph. Enjoy your covid, fucknuts.

As it stands, the writing is already on the wall with a very cheery email from HR stating that it will now be “enforced policy” to have your camera on at all times during meetings.

As much as I hate this I want to say, this is going to hurt everyone else more than it hurts me.

[Arkandel]

@SpaceKhomeini We have a guideline by HR to be on camera during meetings.

It’s… very loosely upheld, at best. We do when it makes sense (i.e. during scrums, semi-social occasions, etc). If there’s actual work to be done my team is well aware they should leave it off and focus on the screenshares.

There is no point to enforcing cameras. It’s all based on old-school “are you doing your job” kind of micromanagement. If I have to rely on looking at people to see if they’re busy then what good are all the other KPIs we generate for?

In any job that can be done over Zoom, if you can’t tell whether your FTEs are producing work unless you have visual contact with them then you’re probably doing something wrong.

[SpaceKhomeini]

@Arkandel

Bingo. This is only for “WFH users.” The irony is, the way our office is set up, were I at my desk in my cube I wouldn’t be able to see anyone anyway. Plus I’d be dealing with massive meeting mic echo.

[junipersky]

I feel really awful missing the first day of school. But I’m also sitting and having to take a break after folding just one basket of laundry.