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[Aklyon]

Can't tell if serious of belated april fools.

[SalmonGod]

Here goes.  Venting about my workplace again.

Spoiler: Rage (click to show/hide)

So now that I've been working under this new manager for a couple months, it seems like my fears were justified.

A lot of people didn't like our old manager, and I can understand why.  He had some serious social problems.  He didn't relate to people very well.  He liked to toy with people.  It wasn't ever intrusive or anything.  He just liked to make people squirm.  He may have pushed boundaries sometimes, and it was definitely annoying.  He liked to play mind games with people.  Keep them confused.  Never give them a straight answer to a question.  Sometimes there'd be some passive aggressive aspects involved.  Whatever.  It's a relief not to have to deal with that anymore.

But one thing I liked about him is that we had one very clear understanding.  Neither of us approved of bullshit office politics or control freaks in general.  He knew our senior manager is a megalomaniac, and he never played along with her power trips any more than he had to.  Our senior manager does not like human beings.  She wants everybody to be an automaton in the workplace.  Any human-like behavior gets punished.  He protected us from that.  He told us he didn't care as long as we got the job done, and he meant it.  He also understood that punishment or threat did nothing but demoralize me, and wouldn't use those things if he could avoid it.

If he ever got on my case, I knew it was because I was doing something that was going to get me in trouble with a power higher than him, or he had been specifically told to and the interaction was going to be documented, or because he was being watched and had to put on a show.  I really appreciated this - enough to put up with his weird games.  I cannot cope with this job without that kind of freedom.  It's such mind-numbing work.  I need constant distraction to keep my mind awake, or I can't work.  When I try to focus 100% on work, it lasts about 40 minutes before I just shut down.  I go into a catatonic state, where I can stare blankly off into space for a long time without realizing it... or I'll just fall asleep.  The only means available to me to prevent this without drawing attention to myself is to browse the internet.

New manager comes in and she's really cool.  She's very straightforward and good-natured.  She's actually a really interesting person with tons of cool stories about things she's done and seen.  I talk to her very frankly about how I relate to this job - what the work and environment do to me, how I cope, and what happens if I'm not allowed to cope.  She seems to understand and promises she'll be on my side in all that.  She totally isn't.  She says that being distracted every once in a while is ok, and she mainly cares about the work getting done.  Her actions say otherwise.  She says something anytime she sees me distracted, no matter what the distraction is or how long I've been distracted (if she even knows) or how productive I've been that way or if there's even anyone else around to care.  If I try to reason with her, she feeds me the same lines that my previous manager would straight let me know that he was instructed to recite to me.  I totally understand if she's being put under pressure, but that doesn't explain why she'd get on my case at times when, for instance, there is literally nobody else in the office who would care (as on Saturdays when it is only a few people from only our shift staffed and every single one of them feels the same as I do about this stuff and openly says so) and I am keeping up with my work.  Fuck this shit so much.  I am not a fucking robot.  I can't pretend to be one for 8 straight ours five days out of every week for the entire foresee-able future. 

[Flying Dice]

That makes me really appreciate some of the people I've worked under; "Do the work that needs to be done in a timely manner.", "I will always help with the work when possible." and "If there isn't work to be done, just relax while appearing to work in case a higher-up comes by." are a combination of attitudes that made me genuinely respect the guy in a way I don't often do.

[SalmonGod]

well, to anyone in charge of a company, the best workers are quiet, busy ones that have no contact with the outside world.

wonder why people get replaced by robots?

Well if the world made any sense, being replaced by robots would be a good thing.  Less work to be done, right?  But that's another discussion entirely.

As for your first statement... not necessarily.  When left to my own devices, I'm actually very productive.  Before some politics got me put under the senior manager's microscope...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(Someone developed a vendetta against my previous manager and accused him of corrupt hiring practices.  An investigation was launched against everyone who he hired that shared roughly his age range and interests.  That included me.  Senior manager decided that she didn't like our type.  I and three other late-20's geek types have been frying under her administrative magnifying glass ever since, and I've been told that she's been doing everything she can to get us to quit.

I was turning into one of the most productive employees in the office.  Processing 50 shipments a day is considered a good solid performance, and I was surpassing that.  When I'm really motivated, I get up into the 80s.  It doesn't matter.  The most productive person in the office processes about 120 shipments a day, but he also takes an on-the-clock hour long break ever day and is on the verge of losing his job for it.

It's not about being a good worker or good at the job or good for the company.  It's about her damn ego.  She wants to look out her office door and see a perfectly straight row of perfectly identical people typing in a perfectly synchronous rhythm without any interruption or shred of human emotion.  She's a control freak workaholic and she behaves like she's royalty.  Just the way she walks looks like it was designed by a cartoonist to caricature her personality (just one feature of her fantastic walk includes wearing a gigantic set of keys in exactly the right spot on her hip [which she swaggers quite exaggeratedly] that causes them to jingle the maximum amount to draw attention to herself).  She has never taken a sick day in her life and gets angry at people who do (to the verge of verbal abuse).  Supposedly the only times she's been absent were when she gave birth to her kids, when she took exactly two days off each time.  She has a list of dress code criteria a fucking mile long, which is not a corporate thing because there was a period of a few months where I had a war with her over jackets/sweaters.  I would bring in something for when I was cold, get it approved by my manager, and then a week later some specific feature of that garment would be banned in the workplace.  Eventually I just brought in a blanket and she ruled that wrapping yourself in a blanket was ok, but only below the waist.....  There is no doubt in my mind that this woman would destroy the entire operation if it were necessary for her to maintain her delusions of royalty.

[applesauce machine]

Spoiler: Spoiler'd for (unintentionally) wall of text (click to show/hide)

My new laptop has been asking to restart itself for days now, which I haven't done because I have no internet at my house, and I want to have a way to pass the time during the day (Steam games and other games, music located on the internet that I didn't steal, etc.). I get my internet from the car parked near the neighbor's house, as the connection sucks so bad from my house that it may as well not even exist. In fact, it usually doesn't.
I finally got everything I needed to finish with/record saved and closed down and shut it down. I quickly went back to my house to charge it, as it was really really low on power, and it hibernates automatically when it gets extremely low. I turned it on and it won't boot up properly-- I get two options: launch system repair or start it up normally. The latter makes it continue to the second startup screen that appears before the login screen, but then instead of the login screen, it goes back to the screen you see when you first turn it on, and then to the screen that has the two options.
I tried choosing the system repair option, and long story short(er), it doesn't do shit. There's system restore, but when I choose any of the three possible restore points and click the "Next" button, then what happens next doesn't fucking matter because then the "Next" button greys out and I'm stuck with not being able to system restore. Fan-fucking-tastic.
I don't know if it's because I chose the "force restart" option, which I did because I didn't want it to run out of power while restarting, or hibernate while restarting, because who knows, that might fuck something up. But apparently, despite my efforts, something did get fucked up.
I'm on my old, shitty netbook, which is slow and has AVG popups often and has this frustrating screen problem that strikes whenever it goddamn feels like it and I'm using the wifi from the parking lot at the store because it won't connect to the neighbor's main network OR guest network, even though the connection strength is PERFECTLY FINE from the car and I HAVE THE PASSWORDS TO BOTH NETWORKS. I was THERE when the networks were set up, and the neighbor gave me the passwords again herself. I see no reason for it not to connect.
Screaming, tears of furious frustration, and occasional bursts of short sentences that almost always included the word "fuck" ensued for minutes at a time whenever I went back to the car and tried to get shit to work, but I gave up and now I'm in the parking lot with a half-full battery in my shitty laptop. Man, I thought I was done with bullshit involving laptops as soon as I got my new one. I have shitty temporal perception, so based on some files in my flash drive, I'd say I got my new laptop like 3 weeks ago.
There's one more thing I could do, which it reset it to how it was before I ever touched the thing, and it'll save my files in another folder, but then there's some potential complications involving networks because the network was set up on that laptop and that's the only way to change any settings, and I don't know if a) the settings will be changeable if I reinstall the Cisco Connect thing, b) It'll need to be set up with certain information from the customer service (or whatever it is) people, or c) I'll even be ABLE to connect to either of the networks at all, 'cause this one sure as hell wouldn't, and after resetting the other one, it may as well be brand new from my understanding. I don't wanna risk fucking things up with networks because since I don't know about them, then who knows what I could fuck up. If I do fuck something up, I'll have no one to blame but myself, which means endless frustration, and God knows I've had enough of that today.

I'm not even gonna reread this all and do any thorough editing. I wanna pause life right now. Just... just everything.

[nenjin]

applesauce machine, I had that happen to my work lap top, more or less. After restarting it, Windows booted normally. One of the recent updates they released screwed up quite a few people's computers, but it wasn't a terminal issue. And it certainly wasn't anything you did. So while I can't really help you with most of your issue, I can at least tell you it wasn't your fault.

Salmon...... That's some rage! I can sympathize, I really can. Data entry and transcription is an endless track of sitting at the PC typing, where truly staying on task for more than 30 minutes is damn near impossible. I had bosses who understood that concept though, to the point where we could get up and walk around every 20 to 30 minutes if we needed to, break up the tedium, have music playing in headphones, even browse the internet a little. That must be hell there, that shit wears your body and your mind out.

And enough with the spoilers though folks, this is one place an un-formated block of poorly-spelled text and emotion is acceptable. Just don't have a stroke while doing it or break the forum rules :p

[SalmonGod]

I had bosses who understood that concept though, to the point where we could get up and walk around every 20 to 30 minutes if we needed to, break up the tedium, have music playing in headphones, even browse the internet a little. That must be hell there, that shit wears your body and your mind out.

We can go to the break room if we're actually going there for a reason, like to get something from the vending machines or answer a phone call.  Otherwise, we get to walk a maximum of four laps around the office once a night as a group, and only if we're generously on track for meeting our team productivity goal for the day.  We're allowed headphones for music, but after 5-6 hours of listening every day for 5 years, it just doesn't do anything for me anymore but lull me to sleep faster.  It's the only distraction we're officially allowed.  Technically we're still supposed to leave one ear open, but that's the only rule in the office that nobody cares about enforcing.

And yeah... it's a very personalized hell for me.  There are some types of people who can handle this work and environment just fine -- people who are not prone to daydreaming or tangential thinking, aren't bothered by any amount of micromanaging or unnecessary structure, and can completely shut down and become automatons whenever they need to.  I am as much the opposite of that type of person as it is possible to be.  I've been doing everything I can for the last 3 years to prevent myself from falling into deep depression or permanent bitterness.

[Truean]

For whatever it's worth Salmon, I'm sorry. I was once managing an apartment where my immediate supervisor wanted me to enter in information for hundreds of tenants in an hour, perhaps three at the most, literally. She expected me to do ten lines of entry in 30 seconds for hundreds of entries and I finally just told her that wasn't happening and had to just quit for that and the foolishly illegal shit she was pulling. She also didn't want me to follow the instructions for setting up the software and inputting the data while expecting everything to run perfectly....

I know it's not the same and I'm not trying to compare but to console. Hopefully I'm managing to do that.

[The Fool]

I now know why I can never find a shirt that fits me properly. As it turns out I have a mesomorph bone structure (broad shoulders and smaller waist), which is fine and to some people an ideal apparently. I really don't care, and here's why. My problem is buying clothing, absolutely any clothing at all. When I buy shirts there is always a lot of loose material at the sides. This is especially obvious with dress shirts where I can't really drop a size because my neck isn't as small as other people that the shirt fits. Pants are too loose at the waist and too tight everywhere else. I'm also tall, so I need to find something that comes in tall sizes or has a 36 inch inseam for pants. Did I mention that I also have size 14-15 shoes? It sucks to find clothes that fit well in stores and in the case of shoes I've given up searching stores and buy all my shoes online. Finding pants involves driving everywhere around town and settling on something that doesn't fit how you would want it to.

Once I lose a bit more weight I'll basically have to have throw everything I have in the trash and have everything tailor made. My shoulders are an XL and if I lose weight I'll be down to a medium in my body with the same shoulders since my bones won't shrink. That is going to eat up my money like nothing else pretty soon, because my metabolism decided to kick in and I'm losing weight too fast to keep things that fit in my closet whenever I excercise. It doesn't help that need to pay off a student LOC as well.

In all seriousness last year I wore 44x36 pants, now I would wear 38x36 if the pants fit properly in the leg, but they don't so it's a 40x36 that feels loose everywhere but the thighs. That was one year of weightloss without trying. I'm now only slightly overweight, but I'm sure that nothing will fit me by New Years. I'm going to be so broke this year.

I like the fact that I'm losing weight, but I'll be damned if I don't hate it as well.

[jc6036]

That feeling when lost weight means buying a new wardrobe...

Bittersweet, is it not?

[The Fool]

It isn't so much that. It's the fact that I will be way too far out from standard sizes to buy anything off a shelf. Pants already don't fit well, and I have large thighs. I run a lot, so I have a lot of muscle there (I jump a bit more than a meter as a standing jump. Running lets me jump higher). Once I lose weight the waist will be so far off that I'll have to have those tailored.

Shirts already are bad, but it'll get worse. I'll need those tailored as well.

It might get to the point in which I just pay a tailor to make me clothes instead of bringing things in. I have no idea if that'll be cheaper or not.

[Bauglir]

So, the hospital's instituting a new clock-in system. We're moving over from paper forms to an electronic badge-in system, which is fine, except the program they've got for managing it that all employees have to use for schedule changes and crap has absolutely the most bizarre terminology I've ever seen in my life (apparently, a schedule change request is a "calendar"?), and its interface is far from intuitive. More importantly, though, is the way it's being handled from the administrative position. We have a 6 minute window to sign in or out; 3 minutes before we're scheduled to start, 3 minutes after. If we sign in late or out early, we get docked pay and chewed out by our supervisors for laziness. If we sign in early or out late, we get paid for it and chewed out by our supervisors for making them go over budget. Furthermore, if we don't use a specific terminal to do this, we get chewed out by our supervisors (because they don't want us doing something like walking across the building and signing out on the side of the building we leave from, rather than where we work, because that's something like 50 whole cents they have to pay us). The end result of this is that I'm going to wind up adding about 15 minutes to every work day from paranoia forcing me to show up early and just wait to badge in, and from no longer being able to do my last set of deliveries efficiently on my way out (meaning an extra 10 minute round trip of walking), which isn't a lot from any objective perspective, but is still annoying as fuck and going to add a disproportionate amount of stress.

The only silver lining here is that they're doing this to the pharmacists, too. I don't have anything against the pharmacists, and in fact I love those guys. But here's the thing; each and every one of them routinely does 1 to 2 hours of overtime every shift, but doesn't request pay for it because it's not worth the hassle. This new system makes it a hassle to NOT get paid for it. It costs over a dollar a minute to pay them, and there's about 15 or so pharmacist shifts every day. I know this is actually a bad thing for my job security, but there's a sadistic part of me that is filled with glee at the knowledge that soon, very soon, the budget the supervisors are implementing this whole thing to improve is going to get metaphorically impaled on a rusty spike.

[SalmonGod]

I know it's not the same and I'm not trying to compare but to console. Hopefully I'm managing to do that.

I appreciate it (you too, nenjin).  I'd appreciate it even if no one commented.  When most people hear these complaints, I get told I'm spoiled or don't know my place and should be happy just to have a job, or that I should be working harder to find a different one.  I'm aware of both those things and feel bad enough about them.  It does me no good when that passing comment from the manager walking by ("Watcha doing?  That work related?  Doesn't look like it.") just crushes me with its inherent condescension, and I turn into a non-working pile of smoldering embers with no freedom to express itself for the rest of the day.  So it's the best thing I could ask for to have this outlet that I know will be read by people who won't pile even more condescension on me.

Edit:

Ugh.  My workplace uses a similar system, Bauglir... except we use our badge to get in the building, and then our digital punch-clock is a web page we have to sign into.  We basically have to be at our desk at least 2 minutes early in order to clock in on time.  We're allowed to clock in 5 minutes early, but we get zero leniency on lateness.  Being a single second late is treated exactly the same as being 3 hours late.  Drives me crazy.  Take traffic into consideration, and I basically have to be here 15 minutes early every day, and then sit around for 10.  Our warning system is fucked up too.  If I'm late enough times, I get put on "Verbal Warning" and then I can't be late a single time for six months or it gets upped to "Written Warning" and then "Fired".  The really fucked up part about this is that the warning is said to have expired after those six months... but not really, because if you're late again over the next six months (by a single second), you're put back on the exact same warning level you were at before.  You have to be perfect for an entire year.  I've been in that position twice 

[Bauglir]

Dude, you're working directly beneath somebody who finds it acceptable to sabotage her own ability to do her job (which is to improve your productivity) for a quick emotional high, and does so by accusing you of doing the same without realizing that what you're doing is improving your own productivity. Which is to say, doing her job for her. In short, I feel for you, buddy.

It's a rough situation, and not something you, or anyone else, should have to put up with. It's certainly not something people should be guilting you over.

[scriver]

When most people hear these complaints, I get told I'm spoiled or don't know my place and should be happy just to have a job, or that I should be working harder to find a different one.  I'm aware of both those things and feel bad enough about them.

Well, you should be happy about having a job, but you sure shouldn't be happy about that job sucking. Especially since you're in the position of making the money for the company while getting the least for it yourself (because the bosses wouldn't have any money to "reward" themselves with without people like you), and the above mentioned reasons of your bosses sabotaging their own actual intention and business while/because of not understanding your position. So don't feel guilty about it, whoever says something like that is being fallacious and irrelevant. I so feel you should be looking for another job, though, but that's only because I get worried about your health.

Also, you (inclueing Bauglir) need better unions. Those clock in/out requirements are ridiculous.