Holy shit I had no idea
Source: here, queer, and full of fear — shirosredknight: boogiewoogiebuglegal: …
This is probably the most helpful post I’ve ever seen when it comes to work interviews.
Well, here we are again. Another week from hell done:
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.
Over time I was told a few things at the last job I had:
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.
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.
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.
I fucking hate my job now.
It was okay for a long, long while. Certainly less stressful than working at the biting squad but it certainly had its share of trouble.
But now all of the low lying brush-fires that consume the company are threatening my very sanity. I dread going to work so much I try to sleep as much as possible, which is the opposite of me staying up until 0300 on teh twitter derp corn or playing videogames.
Hopefully something good will pop-up soon because THIS IS SO, SO BAD.
How bad, you ask? We have clients who are literal nazi sympathizers. I asked my Pa about it and he says that technically makes me a nazi collaborator. The kicker? The boss is Jewish.
Hopefully next job I’ll actually be given a chance to move up? Either way, I’m over this place.
In my view, the main reason for the uneven management sex ratio is our inability to discern between confidence and competence.
Source: Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?
The most capable person at work is the executive assistant. A woman.
I’m stuck in a rut. I thought it would take me longer to get to this point, but looks like that is not the case. I realized this fact after reading this article.
I have two jobs and both of them share
Started writing this, then I got fired from one of them. They would rather keep a bad white employee than a good brown one. You do you, Bite Squad.
I’ll tell you all stories of my adventures there.
Now that I’m actually working at two separate “office” jobs, I’ve noticed one thing.
Nobody wants to train you anymore, for anything at all. No matter how easy or complicated the job is, no matter how many issues might be prevented by spending an extra few hours of learning (and this goes for both employees and customers), no one wants to do it.
This is why you see jobs with insane requirements like:
They want people who already know how to do the job so they don’t have to spend money training them.
That’s before we even bring out non-legal issues like transportation, demeanor, clothing… and legal ones, like religion, race, and country of origin. Yes, companies will _never_ admit it but sometimes they don’t hire someone because they happen to be the wrong skin color for the company, whatever the reason
So on the training front it usually becomes the issue of having someone formally take charge of the training process. A lot of companies don’t do this. If there is a knowledge base that new employees can refer to, sure, but if the knowledge is locked away inside of people’s brains or in documents they won’t have access to.
This is what I’m dealing with now, and it sucks. It leaves everyone in a bad place. A lot of people have ideas on how to fix it, but until the actual company decision-makers actually change nothing will come of it.
After a while you just figure out how to do the job, this is forgotten, then the cycle starts over elsewhere.
“Can I get someone who speaks English?”
I do believe I am speaking in English. What can I do for you?
Just because you’re calling customer service doesn’t mean I’m outside the US.
“I want to speak with a manager”
Sure thing. Can I have your order so I can tell my manager what you’re calling about?
“No I want a manager now because I don’t want to talk to you”
Unless I obtain this information I cannot transfer you to a manager. Anything else?
Give me something so I can help you. Otherwise I’ll tell you to fuck off.
“I want a cut”
We all want things. Do one more order and you’ll get your cut.
“NO I WANT A CUT NOW”
You already accepted the order. Finish it and you get cut. Otherwise you get written up.
These people are the ones doing the work, but really, most of them are idiots.
“Your menu is out of date and all the prices are wrong”
I can fix the prices on this order, have you sent your menu in?
“WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT”
Do. Not. Yell. At. Me.
There’s a reason why people don’t order from you anymore, dear restaurant owner.
At work we use the G Suite for most everything and it works okay — for the most part. The problem is that we’re starting to have so much documentation that is just frozen in a spreadsheet or document that is just… out of sight, where no one pays it attention ever again.
I’m having a devil of a time convincing someone, anyone that having something other than the mess of documents we have shared between all of us is something worth having. Our current system simply doesn’t allow for detailed notes to be kept on all the parties involved for what we do: The sellers, the customers, the employees, so we end up just having the knowledge be stored on someone’s mind, where it can’t be efficiently shared.
And when that person leaves the knowledge is lost.
So now I’m wracking my brains to figure something out that we can all share because what we currently have is simply not working. A wiki is starting to look like the best idea but I can’t simply go and run it off a server somewhere. I want it to be at least be allowed, because I don’t want to lose my job trying to improve the company. It is confidential information, after all.
I’ve seen people lose their jobs for less than that.
Last year I turned off all my notifications. I stopped booking meetings. I started living asynchronously.
Source: Live asynchronously.
My job (and that of my coworkers) is being constantly stopped from finishing the task we are working on. I’m told that I’m really, really good at it, but I only got that way by working in the kitchen, where the job is, again, being interrupted.
But the cognitive load is immense, and intense. I often get home feeling more tired from working at the office job for 6 hours than from working in the kitchen for 12 hours.
And no, I don’t get breaks at either job unless it’s slow.
Shifts on the phone just… wear you down, humans. They wear you down, hard, no matter how fit you think you can take the damage.
You never see the person. You usually never even know what they look like (we have social media for that nowadays) but they sure wear you down, call after call.
Doesn’t matter if you’re apologizing to someone or if you’re apologizing for someone. The mere fact that you have to talk to someone is enough to grate on you.
This is why there is so much turnover at call centers. Talking to other humans is just hard. Because no matter what you’re calling about or why you’re calling about, they usually resent it.
The internet has not made this better. It has made this worse.
There was a tweet from @findchaos that made me remember a conversation I had with a coworker at my kitchen job a few days ago.
The gist of it was “I’m looking for a new computer that’s good for everything and has lots of gigs to do what I want because I don’t want to spend a grand on an apple laptop“. Cue the questions regarding use (“Are you going to use for facebook? Youtube? Are you going to play on it?”) and connectivity (“Do you have WiFi at home? No? Are you going to use a hotspot from your phone then? No? So how are you going to get online???”)
This guy is from a poor part of Mexico. Whenever I ask specifics I just get grunts or non-answers, because he gets embarrassed. He knows he’s in over his head on these matters and I am understanding, but there’s so much I can do without kissing his ass which I will not do.
So with that said, I recommended a few models from the Dell XPS line, the Lenovo Thinkpad line and a couple of Samsung laptops I saw for cheap on Amazon. The guy was quite insistent that he wanted a “Sony laptop” if he couldn’t get a cheap Apple laptop. It didn’t matter what the sub-brand was since Sony has a few, most of them with the esoteric model names so favored by this manufacturer. I kept asking if he wanted a Vaio, but he just answered “I want a Sony laptop if I can’t get a cheap Apple laptop”.
After a while of circular arguments on his part I eventually ended the conversation with “If you don’t want to pay over a grand for a computer from Apple and you don’t like what Sony or Dell or Lenovo or Samsung or anyone else has to offer then I can’t help you. You have to decide what you want and all of it costs over 500 dollars from what you say you want.”
That shut him up.
From this I get a few things:
In writing this I forgot the original point of the post, but that’s okay. At least this is now out there since it happens somewhat often. People ask me something, I try to obtain more information to provide better advice, then they clam up because they realize they don’t even know what they want or what the person that wants the thing wants.
I’ll just go along with it.
There are a few things that I have to make clear, though, as the entire conversation was conducted in Spanish:
So knowing to disclose deeply personal information about yourself—the best stories are not necessarily why you want to be a banker at Goldman Sachs, but how you reached the summit of Mount Everest—knowing that’s what interviewers value creates a disadvantage for individuals who don’t have those types of stories, or don’t know how to tell them.
Source: Recruitment, Resumes, Interviews: How the Hiring Process Favors Elites – The Atlantic
This is me. I don’t have stories about crazy adventures while young — I much preferred to be alone. I don’t have epic tales of surviving an extremely busy shift in the kitchen — at the end of those days usually you just want to go home and pass out.
While I am fortunate enough to know how to tell these stories when pressed, the fact is most of these stories are not something the interviewer would appreciate listening to, nor appreciate if they have no way to identify with me given my employment history: car washer/valet, cybercafe attendant, call center rep, sysadmin, barista, cook, server. If they’ve never been one of these it will be almost impossible to imagine the situations you live.
Meritocracy is a myth and it is high time people realize this.
I’m tired of cleaning. Can someone else clean for a change? I’m always the one who cleans for everyone else cos they don’t really care.
This year I’m conflicted about the holiday season.
I have two families with which I’ll happily spend time with alongside the Jägerin. Problem is both of us are working a hell of a lot and having a hard time finding time to see each other.
Oh, I have a girlfriend now. Catch up.
Why oh why do I work so much? It’s not like I truly need the funds.
Part of me thinks I just do it for the company. Otherwise I’d see no one at all, since I do tend to stay at home sleeping or reading.
On the upside, since I have to wake up early there won’t be any more late night drinks after work. Saves more money.
If only I were working in IT instead of food service… then I’d be making real money.
