work

And that’s facts

Extreme closeup of an stage. There's half a human in there, and what looks to be the top end of a bass?

🎶 today was a good day. We think.

We’ve been at musicbarJerb for just over a month. It’s been pretty good other than the physical layer (aka “my body”) suffering under the stresses of long-thought-gone abuse, for we are a mere runner. We run to help the bar, help the servers, help the kitchen.

Our bosses didn’t think the job was so physical, but hey, here we are, the only hourly employee to actually get full time hours. We kinda know the food, we kinda know the drinks, we kinda know when to fuck off and let people make out uninhibited instead of refilling their water glasses.

Maybe, in time, we’ll move up. We don’t expect it. It’s not Minnesota culture to have people like me serve you, or make you drinks.

And that’s facts Read More »

Being employed keeps me out of trouble. Keep me employed

“This is the beginning of the end,” Yoo said last week. “It’s already just a midsize business in San Antonio. This is not a company that’s on a trajectory of growth. They’re on a trajectory of death. It will not be around.”

Source: Rackspace ‘on trajectory of death,’ founder Richard Yoo says

I work at a small datacenter. We’re… having some issues with customer retention and customer acquisition cos everyone wants that cloud hotness, even if they’re going to pay through the nose for it. What are we to do??? If Rackspace, one of the first names you think of when you need colocation, what is a small datacenter business in Minnesota to do?

A lot of people keep saying to avoid the cloud and whatnot, but then they end up going with aws, google cloud, or azure. That’s not putting your money where your mouth is.

If they get hacked, you get hacked. This is proven. All of these platforms, in their efforts to make it easy to get onboarded make it super easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot with insecure defaults.

Right now they’re making money, sure… But what happens when they don’t? Looking at you, google. But the others aren’t that much better. Do your part and support small and local businesses that can, and will, lend you their expertise.

Being employed keeps me out of trouble. Keep me employed Read More »

We’ve been avoiding thinking about work for the past two weeks. Why? Cos we had a jerb interview! Codename hrJerb.

Glorified receptionist but gets us out of the IT sector. We’d be able to get some actual experience working outside of the crypt.

IT Crowd - Hello IT

This would be a full time job. That’s in addition to sysadminJerb, itself a full-time job; and hostJerb, which is a part-time job. We’d have no time for ourselves other than basic system (human) maintenance. We’d be working an average of 85 hours per week— I checked. But we’ll take it if we have to. There is no path forward but pain.

It all came about cos when we got off work today I hit up Inbound Brewing, chatted with a couple friends, and on the way to Nightingale two songs came on just as a decision erupted from my subconscious.

This first one hit hard:

It played just as I was thinking about all the effort I’ve put into hostJerb only to be told “we don’t need your help” when management are clearly underequipped, underprepared, and clearly overtaken by the job.

We’ve tried chasing this kind of thing in the past and it never ends well. We learned.

And just as we were about to feel sorry for ourselves for… Coming up short for people that don’t appreciate us, this song played.

Sure it’s a love song but right there and then it felt like a balm. Like… “oh wow, other workplaces can actually be nice? I don’t have to chase people around?” and “huh we do love ourselves” and “we love this one beer and it’s not her fault the people who make her suck at their jobs”.

It’s Celia Cruz too so that helps.

All we need do is wait. Play capilalists off against one another; one set know what they can do but they don’t want to own up to it, the other coming in blind with cash and benefits. And extra seasoning! Cos all the people at hostJerb who can challenge what hrJerb might offer are out of town, and they are competing with people who are known to not care about their employees. In a competition like this everyone loses.


Then there’s also the fact we’re addicted to this fucken industry.

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For shame! For shame!

Well guess what, here’s an actual blog post. For the past few years we’ve been putting stuff on twitter cos it’s easier to get stuff off the cuff, y’know? But we’ve realize that for a lot of things we want to do a bit more thought. Hence the following.


We’d noticed over the past couple weeks a coworker was downright hostile to us. Earlier we finally got the chance to ask her:

“Hey, is there anything we did to make you angry or annoyed?”

Yes

You don’t listen to anyone
You do whatever you feel like
And you drink too much at work

Which, fair.

  1. We listen to people who can actually impinge on our tasks, i.e. management or shift leads. If you want me to go clean tables cos you’d rather get hit on by the hot guy at the bar then no.
  2. We do whatever needs doing right then and there. Food needs doing and you’re busy getting hit on? We’ll run food. Guests in line and you’re busy chatting up a table of men? We’ll ring those guests right up. I’m not at your beck and call. I’m at the business’ beck and call. We’ve told the GM to fuck off cos we’re busy doing things they’d rather not do. We’ve told the fucken CEO off. You’re a mere peon just like me.
  3. This one actually threw us for a loop. We’re currently averaging .9 beers per hour, while the KM is doing about 2 beers/hour, the sous chef is doing 1 weed joint/hour. We believe the issue you have with our drinking is that we start making conversation with the men hitting on you, which means you then have to go and do actual work.

Now, we only found out cos we asked. She wasn’t going to let us know she had a problem, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let management know there was a problem cos then they’ll look at her work performance.

(Management loves us, by the way. They can find no fault with our work, which is how we like it.)

But it is annoying. When they say that it’s hard to make friends in Minnesota they didn’t say anything about people who can’t deal with their own emotions in a healthy way.

For shame! For shame! Read More »

A week of self-discovery

  • We went from three jobs down to two jobs back in March and somehow… our schedule got worse? Perhaps the kitchen job at hostJerb should be counted as a third job, honestly. We’ve been telling people we work like an elemental demon to live like a mortal peasant. No one gets it :(

  • It’s becoming almost impossible to sleep at home. All the neighbors are working on their yards, their cars, their houses. There’s a bit more traffic than at the old apartment. The landlord company are working on the house. The light is bad enough, but the uneven noise is really messing our already chaotic sleep schedule even more.

  • Purchased a Nintendo Switch. I’m not buying any video games until I’ve exhausted Link’s Awakening. Love this game. Trying to figure out how to get an online membership for it without giving Nintendo any more personal data— or our credit card number.

    Screen capture from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

  • Decided to schedule gym sessions. It’s easier than just going there on a lark. It helps with keeping full awareness of our schedule too. We need to find a good resource for guided gym workouts.

  • The biggest change of the summer? Definitely our biking around. We decided calories are cheap and that’s really helped in getting us out of bed as long as we can get 6 hours or more of sleep between jobs. I’m not going out to party or mingle, sleep is far more important! But we’re making more of an effort to bike around instead of using rideshares or the bus, particularly at night.

    Gotta take advantage of the weather while we can. Once winter is here getting around is going to be that much harder.

Now, to find something to eat…

A week of self-discovery Read More »

It’s done, thank Chaos

This past week was truly a week from fucken hell. Six nights in row at sysadmin jerb, three doubles in a row , then another two doubles in a row.

I’m fucken tired but with the fucken pigs doing curfews in Minneapolis and firing off emergency alerts at all hours of the day it hasn’t been easy to actually get any fucken sleep after they killed a Black guy in Brooklin Center and protests started.

Google Calendar from April 4 until April 17

I think I only survived thanks to the free coffee I get at my barista job and napping at my sysadmin job— which we try not to do because then we’re groggy the rest of the night and when the job is thinking that leads to problems.

I’m going to bed in an occupied territory. Fuck the police.

For Third Night After Daunte Wright’s Killing, Protesters And Law Enforcement Clash Outside Brooklyn Center Police HQ

It’s done, thank Chaos Read More »

I’d like to not stress about money kthx

I started working at SysadminJerb about… six months ago or so. I’m looking to pickup a second job hosting at a finer restaurant since I’d like to be able to talk to more people on a regular basis; Working by yourself in a datacenter is not conducive to long conversations in person.

So why is it that I’m having a hell of a time budgeting my money? I’m realizing I’m spending more than I really want to and right now I’m not sure… why. This isn’t a problem I had to face when I was working in a restaurant full time, so now I’m just spinning my wheels trying to figure out why this is happening, and more importantly, how.

I think I’ve got the why figured out: Since I have loads more free time than I ever did before, I now have that much more time available to spend the money I’m making even when I don’t mean to be spending that money.

The how it’s a bit harder but I think that, over the past few months, the average amount of money I spend in small transactions has gone up along with the amount of transactions that I do during a pay period, which follows the fact I have more time to be out and about than I did before.

So now I’m on the search for a budgeting tool that will help me with this. I’ve tried using Mint before but… at this point in time they haven’t added any new features in a while and I’ve had a devil of a time connecting it to my auto-pay accounts, so it let’s me track only some things instead of everything. I’ll try it again since it’s free but if it doesn’t work out I’ll just let it go and never look back.

I’m also looking at other tools like You Need a Budget and Financial Gym. Right now I’m thinking those are nice but… they’re paid and I would prefer to not add more pressure to my wallet.

So as a first step I’ll try Mint, then if that doesn’t work look around for a spreadsheet I can use on google sheets, then if that doesn’t work I’ll try YNAB and the rest. I don’t have a need to track everything but it would be nice to have a better overview than the stuff my bank has for me.

Right, this all reminds me: I can actually use these tools because my income is more or less stable now compared to what it was before: I can count on a solid 40 hour work-week month after month, and before I had to actively fight for working hours. So that’s a big change.

I probably just need to cut a few services here and there that I have not been using to their full potential, or ramp them up so I do use their full potential.

Going to be habit changing, to say the least…

I’d like to not stress about money kthx Read More »

Start of daytime week

Bit of a status update.

Typing this at Bachelor Farmer Cafe. Expensive but there’s good wifi and the chairs are comfy. It’s becoming a bit of a habit after a shift at SysadminJerb but somehow the vibe here lets me think, which is nice. I can then go home and sleep and still feel productive about my night at work.

It’s getting cold. Got me a cool leather jacket but I will definitely need more heavy winter gear.

Still working at merBOHjob… which makes for long shifts when there are days when I have to work at both places at once. Staying up 30 hours or more is now a common occurrence and it would seem my psyche has stabilized enough to be able to do this and not feel like I’m losing myself anymore.

Chuckling as I type this cos one of the barists totally looks like she doesn’t want to be here, and she looks like the old GM at 112 that is a… colorful character, to me.

Oh right, I got kicked out of 112 this past Sunday. First time I’ve been kicked out of a restaurant. Just walked out, didn’t fight it. At least now I know for sure they don’t want my business, nor any business I might send their way. Guess I could send people to bFOHjob but I’m pretty sure they also fucken hate me.

Guess I’ll have to send people to Bachelor Farmer.

Start of daytime week Read More »

Back into the aether

Well, I just done and got me an IT job again. To actually keep it I:

  • Quit at tKitchenJob.
  • Ended up walking out at pbFOHjob. This place is a shithole and I don’t think I’ll ever see a paycheck from it; in the event I do I will probably never see my actual tips.
  • Reducing hours at merBOHjob. They don’t like it but what’cha gonna do? You can’t pay me.

I think I’ll call this IT job… honeyJerb. Jen would be proud.

Back into the aether Read More »

Dark liminality

Well, here we are again. Another week from hell done:

  • Walked out on bFOHjob; I make the GM nervous.
  • Reduced my hours at tKitchenJob because I’m starting at…
  • merBOHjob, doing the same thing as tKitchenJob but at a higher wage.
  • Going to try and give it a week before starting to look for another FOH job.

Lost the job, lost the girl, and I’m pretty sure I’ll get an eviction notice tomorrow Monday because… why not? It’s how the universe seems to work for me.

Anyway, as I now seem to have plenty of free time on the calendar I’ll try to make better use of it and spending re-learning how to code as I never have learned to do it properly. Or so I’m saying right now. But before I do that I’m going to get some reading material on personal finance and learn how to do forecasting; merely having a budget doesn’t cut it for me.

Hopefully I’ll also be able to sleep better tonight. Last night I was caught between being too tired to sleep and a mind racing to figure out a path forward.

Dark liminality Read More »

GM was very good at telling me I did not belong

Over time I was told a few things at the last job I had:

  1. “You’re an intense person. You may have trouble here.” This happened right during my hiring interview.
  2. “Maybe you just don’t fit in.”
  3. “You’re perceived as a dishonest person.”
  4. “I think you’re insubordinate as an employee because you don’t talk.”

Given those circumstances I thought it best to leave. I should have timed it better cos now I’m going to have a hell of a time actually making rent.

GM was very good at telling me I did not belong Read More »

Ugh, doubles. My personal scourge.

Due to scheduling vagaries at my two jobs I end up working doubles three times a week at the least. And not just regular doubles, but “clopenings”; that is, when you close the night and then open the next day. Never any fun to be had during those days… Specially in the weekends.

I work brunch.

FML.

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Sooo I guess I’m back on my bullshit

I just picked up another full-time job at a kitchen in downtown. Went and staged today and by the end of it got offered the job. I took it.

That means I now have FOHjob, in which I’m just a wait assistant with nary a chance of moving up the chain; and BOHjob, in which I’m supposed to show up at ungodly hours of the morning and… Do kitchen stuff? I’m not even sure what I’m going to be doing yet.

loud sigh

My issue is going to be scheduling. Oftentimes I end up closing at FOHjob, which will cut into my sleeping time and increases the risk I’ll be late to BOHjob. It’s not a nice feeling…

Never grow up, kids. It leads to situations like these.

Sooo I guess I’m back on my bullshit Read More »