Random School/Work-Venting Post

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midterms tuesday, crap what am i gonna do????

 

Crap. My bay partner called in sick on Wednesday (our Monday). She didn't show up on Thursday either, so I went to my boss to see what was going on...apparently, she's taking an LOA (Leave Of Absence) and won't be back until after the end of February! We also lost another guy in our department this month, so we were already short handed and my boss isn't going to be hiring anyone new...and he won't call in overtime people to help us out either.

So to keep me from loosing my mind by working all alone in a bay that requires 2 people, the 2 guys in the bay next to me have worked something out so all 3 of us are running 2 bays together. While it's a temporary fix, it seriously screws over my breaks.

To make things worse...I have a gut feeling that the reason she's on a LOA is to find a new job in another state. She was in Hawaii in November, California in December, and she just got back from Texas about 2 weeks ago and every time she got back, she would talk about how much her friends and family wanted her to live with them, and then she would go on and on about how living here sucks (I agree). To be honest, I couldn't care less if she quits. I just don't want her to call in one day and say that she's never coming in again. I want her to put in her two weeks, and actually *work* those two weeks so my boss can hire someone new. I just hope my boss hires someone who doesn't like "top-40" pop music.

 

midterms tomorrow. so much stuff to do. argh.

 

I'm being a little prick at work. I just have to go shove it in my co-workers faces that I'm really really good at finding the books and whatnots that need to be found. Zang! I'm like a speedy robot: relentless, efficient and devoid of compassion. Somebody please take my arrogance-chip off before I'm upgraded to upstart a-hole 2.0

Luckily even I make mistakes, hopefully they make me a little more human. I'll just have to rub them in so I can be the workplace mascot instead of the snotty-nosed brat upstart. Harmless, fuzzy and enternaining, pending on funny...

 

Stupid PEOPLE! I'd really like my job if it weren't for all the annoying customers!

Yesterday I had a wide variety of stuff to cook for the hot case, and had it all worked out in a nice smooth routine (when it was done, customers WERE speaking complimentary of it ).

Then at ten-fifteen, a customer places an order for fifty wings to be picked up at twelve-thirty...just as I've finished battering up the last of our wings. I have to cook this batch right now, but if I take fifty out of the batch, a) they'll be somewhat dried out by the time 12:30 rolls around, and b) there won't be very many left for the hotcase - that pan'll look kinda empty and titchy.

Well, we don't have any more wings here and our poultry shipment doesn't come in until the next day. I guess I'll have to stroll over to the meat dep't and 'steal' a box of wings out of their display case (and ring them up as store supplies charged to the deli)...but their wings are frozen - I CAN thaw them in the sink with running water with time to spare, but I'll have to divide my attention between cooking the rest of the hotcase's stuff and this, and that means I'll have to start THINKING instead of just working perfectly on auto-pilot, dangit!

Then, as I'm pouring out some tubs of wing sauce the order is for, a customer steps up to the counter to ask something trivial; no one else is around, so I take care of it, then step back to place a 'medium' label on one of the sauce containers...and press my thumb and the label into the sauce since I hadn't put the clear lid on yet. Yeah, don't talk to me while I work, or I'll forget stuff!

 

Thanks to a stupid public transport strike I today had to walk to work for approx 45 minutes in addition to having to by train to dodge the strike — end result: I got to work at 10:05, I left home at 8:20, for a trip that normally takes me 35min. Bleh. I urgently need a bike in this town.

 

If ever there was a time I felt like ripping off heads and evacuating my bowels down necks it was tonight...the lady working in the Change Bar tonight was supposed to finish her shift at 530pm...the Sub-Assistant manager - he's in charge of the rostering - rings up at 520pm to find out who was taking over from her because he'd forgotten to roster anyone on...guess who was the one they asked...

Ended up turning my day into a frickin 10 hour shift with only about 40 minutes in breaks...

OMFG how stupid are these people???

edit - and how lucky are they that I was there and willing to help...

 

crap, scored less than 50% on my midterms?! i gotta haul ass for my final on monday...

 

Hmm...the new quarter at school starts tomorrow. I still don't know what grades I got for last quarter, but they're going to probably be in the 80% to 70% range. Meh, as long as I get a 'C' (70%) or better, I don't care. Anything lower and I have to pay my work back.
This new quarter is going to suck big time - in addition to a difficult electronics class, I have calculus. I struggled though trig, and I know my brain is going to get fried by calculus.

Speaking of quarters, I wish the 2nd financial quarter at work would hurry up and get here while the stock prices are way low! The company takes 5% of my check every week, and at the end of every quarter, it buys stock for me at a 15% discount. Most of the year the stock price is between $16 - $21. Right now, it's at a measly $11 due in part to the post-holiday slump most manufacturers we supply go though and the recent recession.

 

Today two of my colleagues, very nice, pretty, young ladies, were agonising over the attempt to save two files into a different folder. All in all it took them 45 minutes. First they struggled hard to find the files they had worked with the week before. Eventually I couldn't bear their confused desparation anymore and found them the file. And after they then failed to save it into a different folder for half an hour I saved the files, so they could start their new task before lunch. But now all is well, and luckily, none of them broke a nail.

 

Today I worked on an old collection of verdicts on building law from 1949. One of the things that were mentioned was a law, a decree, or 'Verordnung' Nr.165 - and we needed to have a look at that law.

What an unknown researcher, who had prepared and supposedly read that verdict, had brought up was decree 2001/165/EC, about BSE and animal feed, from 2001 - obviously unrelated, and clearly and visibly so - from the title, if not already from the decree numbering, or the fact that the European Community didn't even exist in 1949
But the numbers match!
When I read such nonsense, I always wonder what the person who wrote that thought - and wince in disbelief and horror at the obvious answer - nothing at all. Nothing wrong with not knowing something, then you ask, or look the stuff up. But people who can't bring themselves to ask, or who just bumble along, that's zombies at work!

 

Ho hum, between jobs in that weird limbo of one gig ending and another yet to begin. It'll be at least two or three years before I can consider getting a permanent job...

 

i got stuck running the mill last night. it's a very old manual machine, not like the nice cnc machine i should be running. they always shaft the new guy. not that i really mind running it, it's just like getting to drive a cadillac for a while, then being put back into a pinto. and i'm sick of overtime. i just heard the government is giving extra money to states for bridges, so overtime might not end any time soon

 

I'm going through a motivation crisis at my faculty. I've lost interest in most of my (obligatory) lectures, and don't really care, which frightens me, to be honest. I'm constantly late and behind schedule.

Having a time devouring organic chemistry project isn't helping either, but I brought that one on me myself, so I can't complain.

I guess what bugs me most is that the extra effort doesn't really count. I do all that I'm supposed to, and some people skip all or most of the lectures, party all the time, and in the end, get the same results, at least in grades. They have a lot more time, and a lot more fun.

Sometimes I'm jealous when they stroll into the amphitheatre around 14:00, laughing and carrying coffee, only to leave around 16:00, and I've been at the faculty since 8:00, and will only leave around 18:00.

I get angry and later I'm ashamed of myself.

I'm tired of overachieving. I'm tired of people taking my every exam success for granted. No one takes me seriously when I complain. I hate it.

Sometimes, I want to just lay back and stop trying. But I can't. Too proud of my reputation.

 

Stay in there Loreseeker, I know the feeling. At the start of the third year, after a pair of C's at the end of a large string of A's and B's I just stopped caring. I lost the pride in my grades since I lost my confidence in the school faculty. Apparently they decided to reshift focus from technical stuff to process management, while I was in the last year at this college(!). So now I am being graded for stuff I was never trained for.
I could quit college now, but since education is *free* here, I would end up with a huge debt if I quit before graduation.

Since I gave up my pride I stopped being defensive and became less snobbish about my achievements. This way I was able to find more friends amongst fellow students. I made the move from *that nerd* to *that nice guy who knows a lot about programming*

 

Thanks, Morgoth, you've just made me smile, which is quite a feat on a Sunday evening before school.

As for your classification, I hope I'm at *the weird, but nice girl who is nuts about gaming and organic chemistry*, but who knows.

Also, friendship isn't really an issue. I'm quite open and talkative, and I like assisting people with their studies. I have tons of acquaintances and some great friends at my faculty, I'm just uncomfortable complaining to them about this, because they'll think I'm whining.

I'm sorry about your college, Morgoth, and thanks for listening. (You are nice.)

 

My former coworker sent me this.

 

@Loreseeker: Find a "distraction". Spread out those tendrils, but of course don't spread out too thin. That is to say that just take any course and do whatever you find interesting and don't worry about too much of the obligatory courses. I've always had a huge issue with going to the obligatory courses, it just rubs me the wrong way how they stuff all the things that you must know into those courses and expect everyone to memorize everything by heart whereas I'm always interested in specific problems.

One way to look at it might be that just fiddle with the things that you like and what interest you and don't worry about the general results. Sure, a solid base of knowledge is important, but there's only so much that is humanly possible to know. Making connections is just as important as getting those grades, talking with the staff and other students about the subjects that you find interesting. It's the connections that count, not just interpersonal, but the informational as well and considering chemistry...connections...that's what really counts, right?

@DoTW:

So that that would mean that you'd definitely not find yourself working in sanitation

 

Here's yet ANOTHER performance evaluation, this time from my former BOSS.