Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Loud Whispers]

Christ I thought I had it bad. Clinician, doing......finance? How fucked is your office if finance needs you to cross those boundaries to do their job.

Spoiler: They called it "developing my hybrid role" (click to show/hide)

 which is a very fancy way of saying "we want you to do the previous trial manager's job but we just won't give you their job title or pay grade also keep seeing patients." To put things in context, of the previous five trial managers, 3 used the research institute to get their qualifications paid for then immediately quit when they got them. Of the other two, one of them was paid £72k and the other paid £45k. The one on £72k had previously run a research unit for another NHS trust... Into the ground. Now it's possible the bankruptcy of the previous unit had nothing to do with her, however the fact that she managed to drive our research unit into a £2.3 million pound deficit by not invoicing 3 years of work nor telling anyone else they had not done it suggests that they were in fact, the reason the previous unit went bankrupt. The £72k manager also did brilliant things like max out our company credit card on private dinners with NHS chiefs, went to the opera 3 times a week instead of showing up to work, and was technically my line manager but I saw them a grant total of once when I joined, and once when she left. Armed with delusions of mediocrity that she continually failed to live up to, she left our unit on the verge of collapse to become a strategic lead director for the NHS. The £45k one people rumour are releated to one of the executives somehow, as they kept throwing work at her she could not do, that she would never refuse despite not being able to do it. She no longer works here yet the COO tried to bring her in to audit our pharmacy despite her lack of experience/qualifications in auditing, pharmacy, labs or really anything. To top it all off, she was low-key racist and kept sending the wrong contracts to our staff because she couldn't seem to tell who you were unless you were English. Their solution was just to have me and one of the study coordinators do the work but not give either of us the manager title or pay grade :|

The real horrendous thing she did was fucking up the contracts for me and the rest of the cohort who joined during covid-19. We were all supposed to join on grade 4 (around £32k) permanent contracts, but instead joined on grade 2 (22k) temporary rolling contracts. All she had to do was submit the applications for our contracts but kept forgetting to do it for 14 months. Even after she quit, the consequences of her fuckups have cost some of our most vulnerable staff tens of thousands of pounds of lost income. One of my colleagues is still stuck on grade 2 to this day because she wasn't willing to argue with the £45k manager, as she was pregnant at the time and just needed any permanent contract so she would be covered for maternity leave. Now they're telling her that unless she has a degree they can't move her to grade 3, but they won't sponsor her for a degree and there's no way she can afford one on grade 2, effectively calcifiying her career plateau despite her being vastly capable. They tried to do the same with my philippino nurses, abusing their work-visa status to argue them down, but we managed to get them up at least. But it leaves a bitter taste when the big cheese talk all this good shit about how diverse and inclusive they are and I honestly want them to shut the fuck up because they deliberately target women and ethnic minorities with their work policies to keep labour costs down. It's no surprise all of the top level directors and managers are all WASP. I have to compete for my own job post every year but no one is allowed to compete for their job post.

In hilarious staff surveys, more than 3/4 of staff say they hate it here and want to quit, but 3/5 staff say they expect they'll still be working here in 5 years. So there's a significant overlap between "I fucking hate it here, it fucking sucks" and "yeah but it's the best I've got." On Monday I'm going to sit in on one of my colleague's work tribunals as an impartial witness since HR are accusing him of bullying whilst he's accusing HR of being racist and discriminatory (notably, HR's accusations only began against him when he reported an abusive workplace relationship going on between two other people + he got handed his job notice whilst on annual leave after he had just had an operation to remove a cancerous tumour). He warned me HR might try retaliate against me for helping him but idgaf.

A Modern Male Rants About Modern Business Life]The whole "read the email chain" I know that one well. "Please, I'm overwhelmed, do all the intellectual legwork of getting up to speed so you can give me an answer." I really try to avoid doing that to people at work, it's such a giant FU.

I always tell them keep it actionable. Every day I get some horrendous request to sort out "the file" or "the note" or "the query." No identifiable nouns whatsoever. And when I ask for clarification they get snappy saying I should know what they're talking about instead of simply specifying "study protocol -> patient id -> problem -> request."

I've repeated myself so many fucking times, verbally and in email, about 1) why things are happening the way they are 2) how to avoid having things happen this way 3) what everyone's options are in the event something like, oh, reopening a 2022 invoice in 2023 and making changes and what that means from an accounting perspective, that it's come to the point where I believe no one is reading and taking responsibility for any decision making. The CPA is in her early 60s. Nice lady, but she's sick of this shit and so am I. But I just can't get her to interact practically with what I say, and her meaning is hard to understand when it's half broken sentences and I need really specific clarity before I go shove my hands wrist deep in their data for the 30th time. What kicked all this "mildly upsetness" off was an email where, just a casual examination of what the CPA said was a problem didn't line up with the reality in the data.

Ah yes. Everyone's senior but no one's in charge

I'm out there slaying demons every day by the dozen, and more just keep erupting from the ground around me.

I can't drown my demons, they wear floaties

This is why I am very careful who I give my phone number to at work. In China my boss absolutely demanded my phone number so I gave him the number I had on my ancient, broken phone that never worked

Did she cone from the private sector? Because I'm having similar struggles with a coworker who volunteers her work (and occasionally mine) randomly

We had a recent scuffle because she basically told me some other team was going to follow a patient, and then she went behind my back and made arrangements for me to follow that patient which I didnt know existed. She said she did it to ensure the patient didnt fall between the cracks. But what she did ENSURED the patient fell between the cracks

Yup from private sector. Though they're not the only one who used to try volunteer my work; when I was more junior after I told my trial manager that I would not be able to spare them two days a week to do the books, my nurse manager told my trial manager that actually yes I could do two days a week. So I told my nurse manager they would have to run the studies then, at which point they told me I shouldn't be prioritising the trial manager over the studies... Despite her being the one who volunteered my work time...

Thankfully after that my PI told the director and both nurse managers I work for him and threatened to relocate all of his team (including me) to a site 4 miles away. Absolutely love him

[scriver]

I'm with you GO. Male pattern baldness is a terrible curse, I'd say its the number one proof that the garden of Eden story is true

Pain in the arse being a trans woman with it though. It wouldn't be so much of a problem if women got it too, but right now I might as well have TRANS shaved into my hair.

I'm hoping this works, if not it's wigs and trying to save up for a hair transplant.

It's absolutely a complete pain in the arse for cis men too, I assure you, it's the absolute number one thing I feel bad about about myself. But yeah, I also understand that it's more so for you – I originally wanted to write something like "it's bad enough for men as it is" in response but it felt too single outey so I chickened out and generised it :S

Regardless mate I really feel you and hope it works. Do not go gently into that bald spot

[McTraveller]

Someone was going way too fast on the road behind our house last night - the sound made me go "wow that's fast."  But then there was some extreme crash sounds and bright flashes.

They managed to break a powerline in half.

We live in a small-ish town and I've not been able to find any real news on it yet.

Based on the number of emergency vehicles, I hope those involved are not suffering.  I mean, as annoying as it is to have sirens and power cuts interrupt your sleep, there are much worse things.

Please folks... if you drive, please be mindful.

[Frumple]

Hopefully the murderous nit only hurt themselves, blech.

Even if you can't be mindful, at least don't be bloody homicidal, which is what driving like that is

[None]

woke up melancholy

brain just does this

[nenjin]

Hearing the professional behavior of some people that break the $50k/year mark really boils my blood. Imagine, if you will, a world where the amount of money people make is directly proportional to how much they actually do.

Shit I felt bad enough about 4 overpriced drinks at the hotel for me and my coworker, $65 after tip, that I put it on my personal credit card rather than the business card so the client didn't get billed for it.

[None]

we have lead software developers who couldn't fucking read a report from an automated test on how to do the bare goddamn minimum to do what our software does, and other lead software developers who don't know that 'internal server error' is error 500

we have developers who have been there for ten years who figure it's okay for a modem to read as being incompatible for service if it CAN provide voice service, but DOES NOT for the order, and who stand by this for FIVE rounds of back-and-forth bug reports

we have developers who test their functionality using highest-permissions admin accounts who get super perplexed when shit doesn't work at the ordinary human level

we have program managers who literally do not or cannot read our ticket tracking system and ask inane questions about the statuses of things when that information is immediately available

Ah yes. Everyone's senior but no one's in charge

this is literally our software testing team after we got dissolved, and when we brought it up, the other managers were all 'the solution to your problem is to find a solution to your problem, you're not getting more resources, or management, you're all in charge of advocating for yourself and producing the metrics that prove not being a team is not working, but none of you are managerial data wizards so good fuckin' luck lol

anyways yeah nobody gets paid proportionally to what they do and it's all very stupid

[Magmacube_tr]

I got through the first exam of the season. It had two questions, 1st was 40 points and 2nd was 60.

The second question went fine. But the first... ugh. The question was "what are the two benefits of instructional technology in language teaching?" Upon seeing the question, I thought to myself: "What is instructional technology? That isn't in the book. I wonder if it means 'teaching technology'? Nah, that can't be it. She surely won't ask such a trivial question!"

Spoiler; She did ask such a trivial question. Instructional technology is synonymous with teaching technology.

The answers probably still count, but it could be better if the teacher didn't use the uncommon synonym.

[Frumple]

blech

message on checking email it's phasing out the basic html version at some point in the next few months

Sucks, because the non-html version is just... worse. On every level, from layout to especially performance.

Having a similar issue at work with fedex, them gearing up to leave a perfectly serviceable, relatively quick, mostly functional website for a less serviceable, slower, actually non-functioning on multiple levels, steaming pile of shite.

It's, just. I know corpo brainrot means it'll never happen. But good goddamn, when you have something that just works, let the damn thing just work. You don't need to make it (arguably, usually not really) prettier at the cost of core aspects of functionality -- and that is basically always the tradeoff that happens. You never see websites turn back to something slimmer and simpler when this mess happens. It's never to add substantive functionality that people that actually use the website would benefit. It's always some idiot CEO's idea of fancy, to everyone else's detriment. Sucks.

[dragdeler]

YOU WILL LOVE THE DEAD SPACE.


We've been through it so long now, try and use the web at 1360x768 and weep... most sites won't be able to show you anything meaningful without scrollwheel, if you're super lucky you get a dropdown menu that extends past the taskbar. But at least it loads slower so you know you loose some, and then you loose some more.

[Magmacube_tr]

This exam season's going to kill me.

After fucking up three extremely easy questions on two exams in a row (Don't worry. I am most certainly passing.), this time the Translation exam is causing problems.

Each time someone asks the teacher about it, it gets more and more convoluted. It started as a simple text translation worksheet, then turned into two of those where you did the first by yourself, and the second with a partner. Now there is this answer key stuff we need to write down and the teacher decided to send us the pdf of the thing just now tonight and we have to DO IT TOMORROW, WHEN THE SEND DATE IS. BEFORE 3PM, BETWEEN TWO OTHER EXAMS!!!

ugh

[Frumple]

Each time someone asks the teacher about it, it gets more and more convoluted.

I see your class is losing points on the "pattern recognition" portion of the exam :V

... though I joke, asking for clarification in cases like that is 100% the correct thing to do.

Still. At some point you'd think your class would cotton on to what's happening, heh.

[Schmaven]

Thermostats on cars...  Instead of simply picking the temperature of air that comes out of the vents, I have to pick just the right temperature setpoint compared to whatever the car thinks the temperature is in the cab, but won't tell me what that is.  It thinks it's cold? Well setting it as low as it goes will still blow warm air at you.  It thinks it's hot?  Setting it super high will still blow cool air.  Can't feel your fingers but find the right setting for maximum but not too hot air that your fingers can stand?  Well in a few minutes, it will turn that right down so you have to fiddle with the knobs some more.  It's like the show 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' where the setpoints don't matter, and even the control system has lost control.

[McTraveller]

Thermostats on cars...  Instead of simply picking the temperature of air that comes out of the vents, I have to pick just the right temperature setpoint compared to whatever the car thinks the temperature is in the cab, but won't tell me what that is.  It thinks it's cold? Well setting it as low as it goes will still blow warm air at you.  It thinks it's hot?  Setting it super high will still blow cool air.  Can't feel your fingers but find the right setting for maximum but not too hot air that your fingers can stand?  Well in a few minutes, it will turn that right down so you have to fiddle with the knobs some more.  It's like the show 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' where the setpoints don't matter, and even the control system has lost control.

Totally agree.  Needless complexity. Same thing with "automatic" windshield wipers. Just give me "hotter/colder" and "faster/slower" please. None of this "try to hit a setpoint" nonsense.

[scriver]

But you don't know what you want! You can't get to decide!