Hi, friends!
It’s almost Friday. It’s a holiday weekend for a lot of us.
What’s annoying you lately in your life?
I got a team I work with a lot who apparently have all decided that I should do their work and unfortunately their director is a pissant who doesn’t want their team to be accountable for shit. My own boss is currently in a “don’t rock the boat” perspective which is also pissing me off.
@brightersideoflife Grrrr. As I know that you do, save the receipts. Emails, project software milestones, team hours. If possible add an Easter egg to your code/plans/projects/ work that you can reference at a later date. Also, grrrr.
So what, your boss has no political capital to burn, or he just doesn’t care about his people?
I usually respond quickly, clearly, and with receipts when anyone fucks with my direct reports. Like on Tuesday. A Senior VP had at a Director, a lovely woman who won’t fight back. I slapped his fingers, as nicely as possible. (I’m sure you didn’t mean that, right?) He immediately claimed the email’s nasty sarcasm and belittling comments weren’t his intent. And apologized to the director.
Gotta have people’s backs . . .
Good bosses understand that they’re safer when their staff feels safe too.
I always felt that it was my duty to shield my folks from as much managerial bullshit as possible.
There’s a lot to be said for businesses and orgs never having managers who haven’t spent real hard time as workers in the trenches under a really bad boss.
My boss is casual friends from way back with this other person. So you know, don’t want to make waves.
Two days ago I had a confrontation with one of the meth heads in our neighborhood & she told me “don’t be surprised if your house burns down tonight”. I immediately called the cops & they arrested her 3 streets away. I had to go w/ the cop to identify her, purple hair, all black clothes, not too hard. Our cops are really cool & know the hell this house has put us through so have been very much on top of this but I haven’t slept well the last few nights. Then today my friend & I ripped out 1600 lbs of railroad ties used as a garden stairway & will be making cement stairs by next week. Some didn’t come out easy & then carrying them up the now hill & to the dump has me exhausted.
I’ve only messed with concrete about 80 pounds at a time. I can’t process the work involved in pouring a staircase.
I’ll take some pics.  Forgot to take how bad it was but took some today of the demo.  This is the biggest thing I have done w/ concrete but have poured a few stairs & walkways.  This is 8 stairs & a platform.  Pissed off some mason bees & lots of other wood eating creatures, not to mention my large hummingbird population of my feeders on the nearby deck.  Whole day sounded like a lightsaber battle w/ little wings buzzing by.
I’ve only done small stuff that were basically simple boxes, and they were ornamental so they didn’t need to deal with any serious stresses. Concrete sure gets heavy fast.1
I should post some pix I took in progress for one of them sometime.
Man that sucks. I would suggest keeping something solid like a bat or crowbar nearby. I spent several months twitching to every odd sound thinking Cokehead Narcissist or one of her minions was coming for me.
I have bear spray & a high power pellet gun & all the neighbors have cameras but I can only imagine the hell you went through!
I had a really good day with dad. The Covid warning was lifted and I took him to downtown Tarrana (Toronto in the proper Queens English) to see mom at the rehab clinic. He was happy that she recognized him. Looks like mom is finally coming back to the home next week.
Dad wasn’t that happy when some asshole in a Mercedes SUV nearly ran him down as we used a cross walk on the way to the parking garage. I yelled at the driver and flipped him off. Arrogant motherfucker.
My dad was amused that I would be very angry at someone carelessly trying to run him over. The guy who turned before Mercedes Asshole was considerate and that was why I let him turn first. I guess Mercedes Asshole thought it also applied to him.
I was kind of amused that Mercedes shithead didn’t even want to look at me as I was yelling at him.
What’s the difference between a Mercedes Benz and a Porcupine?
The Porcupine has its pricks on the outside.
Buckle up. Y’all done got me started.
I have to participate in my company book club tomorrow. We have to read Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table, which is absolutely fucking awful. It’s a weird memoir that purports to provide some business “advice,” none of which I’ve yet managed to discover. It’s a rambling ode to how fabulous he is, and it’s annoying the fuck out of me.
I am not now rich, nor have I ever been rich, so reading about him spending his childhood and adolescence and early life taking trips to Europe (rich grandfather) is irritating as hell. Yes, it’s so wonderful that you learned French and Italian as a child and visited hundreds of fabulous restaurants across the breadth of Europe. As a kid I thought fucking McDonalds was a treat, but okay, let’s read about YOU.
Hearing how his first job after college paid him $125,000 a year (grampa got him the job) enrages me. Eventually he launches his restaurants, which is such a trial for him except for the fact that he’s fucking rich. Even shit that should have landed him in jail (he gets into a brawl with a customer in his own restaurant) slides off without repercussions. I assure you, if I beat the crap out of somebody in the 90s, I’d still be in jail today. And if I weren’t, I wouldn’t be able to find a job because convict.
So why am I doing this? I actually like my job and I’m probably the only English major that works there, so I thought it would look weird if I didn’t participate. I’ve spent hours reading this crap and formulating inoffensive responses to questions so I don’t do something stupid and blurt out “THIS IS BULLSHIT RICH PEOPLE PRIVILEGE.”
Sometimes I forget that most of the people at my company are filthy rich and grew up rich and never once in their lives had to try to figure out how to pay for a car repair. And to be fair to them, these are nice people and it’s not their fault they were born rich and got to go to the best schools and have never, ever, even one time had to use a gas card to buy bread and milk at a convenience store.
And I’m bottling up all that anger except for right now I’m dumping on you guys. But tomorrow I am going to try desperately to pretend that I can extract some value from this crap that doesn’t apply to 99% of the population and certainly doesn’t apply to me.
So that’s what’s annoying ME.
That’s a bullshit vapid flex.
It’s so easy to make mistakes when you got money.
One good thing… At least he tried to make something of himself.
Yeah. I mean, he absolutely did the work. But it’s easy to take risks when Grandpop is willing to write the checks. And he legitimately knows his stuff on cooking and restaurants. It’s just that it’s so … oblivious? There’s no acknowledgement that most people don’t get raised this way. And there’s a bit of tedium about “oh, my grandfather didn’t like my father and thought my mother could do better and …” Uhh, buddy. RICH. Your attempts to make your life seem less than a fairy-tale existence are just … painful. Let me know when you work as a dockhand pumping sewage out of yachts. Then we’ll have some common ground.
From a lit-crit perspective you always want to look for how much the authors acknowledge and understand the contributions of people at a much more disadvantaged level.
Do they ignore them altogether? Or create a hopelessly glib and superficial morality play out of their lives?
If so, roast the hell out of them.
I started Roadrunner, the documentary about Anthony Bourdain on the exercise bike tonight. He was an unusual case because he grew up fairly comfortable and basically threw it all away and legitimately worked his tail off at a low level in the restaurant business before becoming a respectable chef, then hitting the jackpot with his book that led to his TV career.
He did quite a bit of the celebrity food scene and definitely created a persona that wasn’t completely different from someone like Danny Meyer. But he never hid from his time as a junkie and failure either.
He wasn’t exactly the TV guy, but he wasn’t a Danny Meyer either.
I’m reading his book, Kitchen Confidential, recommended by someone here at DS. So far an enjoyable departure from my usual Regency romance, paranormal, and mage or sci-fi genres.
It definitely gives a good sense of the business. I only worked in kitchens off and on through college during the year and summers, so I can’t say I’m an expert like Butcher. But that book sure gives a sense of the hard work and the craft involved.
Thank you!
Ugh we had to read something like that a few years back and my constructive criticism was “well I’d like to read something written by someone with economic adversity they had to overcome.”
See, I enjoy memoirs like that, although they tend to be written by food critics, not by chefs.
I can’t tell you the number of books about Julia Child I’ve read. (alright, she was a chef, the French Chef no less) but also Ruth Reichl and Gael Greene and a woman named Moira Hodgson, who was the food critic for America’s best broadsheet, the “New York Observer,” for many years until Jared Kushner’s felon-father bought it for him and he turned it into the northern New Jersey Pennysaver that it now is. That newspaper, salmon pink, used to be such a joy to receive in the mailbox. So funny and smartly written. Their writers were a who’s who of those on the way up and those who needed something to do in semi-retirement. I’m still bitter all these years later. “X Partners Ink Deal For 28,000 Acres in Parsippany” Did they. How fascinating.
is a little annoying that in a month working in logistics ive already improved my future employability more than the last 5 years of final qc did…in tangible credentials
got my reach truck license yesterday….. already had my forklift license….soooo now im very employable if i ever get sick of this job…..
also i can now hide peoples cars 3 stories high if they annoy me….so you know…