What's your pet peeve in RL?

[cidbahamut]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

They've put chips in them now, so when we tried to use a generic brand our previous HP printer just shat itself and smeared the ink on everything we tried to print. Finally ended up having to buy a whole new printer b/c the boss tried to cheap out on ink.

I'm all in favor of scrapping the printers here at work. They are not worth the trouble they cause and people generally print off a whole bunch of shit they don't need to.

[Aksannyi]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Unfortunately, we need to print out the shift sheets every day. The schedule itself is digital but only one person can access it at a time, and none of the regular Operators have access to it. We need to the printout because the schedule itself is posted once weekly and changes about 7000 times a week, so anyone could check the posted schedule but it is probably not correct as of about 15 minutes after posting, and reposting the whole thing is tedious.

So we have the task of printing out the shift sheets and writing in - yes, writing in - every single Officer scheduled so that we know who is supposed to be where and at what time. It's tedious but doesn't take that long (about 30 minutes uninterrupted), but it's a necessary evil, for the massive waste of paper that it's become. Unfortunately, there is no better way at the moment. Programs are in development but IT is only three people and they just don't have the beta testers for such shit, so any development is a lengthy process.

So long story short, our printer is necessary. It's a nice one though, and about two months old. So it shouldn't be an issue. *knocks on wood*

[DakAttack]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Do they not have Excel in Florida?

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Most employers are too stupid to simply get OpenOffice so either use blatantly pirated versions of MS office than inevitably break or use something ancient that hasn't exsisted since the early 90's like Lotus 1-2-3 or something.

[Aksannyi]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

We do have Excel, just the way our programs work and the way our sites change hours daily (they really do, it's annoying) there really is no other way. Other programs are in development to integrate scheduling within our main program, but right now they are separate and their databases must be updated separately.

Even if we were to put the sheets onto an Excel or other spreadsheet program, they'd have to be edit-locked so that only one person could make changes at a time. The last thing I need is fifteen people jumping into my shit to change it all, that's why the schedule is restricted and why I don't mind the hard copy sheets.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Playing Super Adventure Box.

Kids thinking that it's a Minecraft reference.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[Aksannyi]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Wow, I just got put on blast to an entire e-mail list at work.

Feels awesome. Not.

[Firewind]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Playing Super Adventure Box.

Kids thinking that it's a Minecraft reference.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Actually Minecraft was the first thing to come to mind too over say Zelda.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

I have no real interest or investment in the game, but every time I see a new article for The Last of Us I'm just amazed and somewhat annoyed its not out yet.

Or maybe I'm just guilting it by association of being a "The Last" game when there's still no confirmed date for The Last Guardian, which is a totally different game that I'm just now convinced is dead and buried.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Actually Minecraft was the first thing to come to mind too over say Zelda.

Well, to be frank, how else are you going to invoke 16-bit graphics in an otherwise 3D world?

The entire thing is an homage to the SNES, and I'm loving it all.

[cidbahamut]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Researching niche software.

[Aksannyi]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

They got onto us again about overtime...

Just what do they expect us to do when someone calls off? We can't just cover down. We need a minimum of three people for the radios, ideally four. And we also need to be manned 24 hours a day. I'm not sure what they fucking want. Officer safety for a few dollars in overtime? Or not. Jesus Christ. They've got the morale in my department so low right now as it is, after having to terminate someone a few weeks ago and no one is sure they're not next. So with morale falling they want to tell us we can't bring in someone on their day off to cover when someone else is sick. The job is very stressful and taxing. Eliminating a person makes it more so. They have no concept of what we do and why we need the staffing we have. They want us to keep those Officers in the field safe but they want to cut down on staffing. Can't have one without the other, and the sooner they realize that the better off everyone will be.

Sorry, Mr. CEO. I appreciate that when we have company outings you supply the booze, but I'd rather you not be so concerned with the extra $40 it costs to bring someone in for eight hours to cover a call off. I mean seriously.

[cidbahamut]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Do they just not budget for overtime occurring or something? It seems like in that line of work you just suck it up as part of the cost of doing business. Profit margins don't trump employee safety.

[Aksannyi]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

That's what I'm saying - we lost one of our big contracts though so they're trying to cut down. Stupid, though, because it's perfectly all right to make sure all our contracts are met with Officers pulling 80 hours a week. (Which causes even more safety concerns.) The double standards are ridiculous.

HR director sent an e-mail to everyone about the dental plan. $5 and some change per paycheck. So $10 a month, totally affordable. Then two hours later office and ops staff get a second e-mail about our dental plan, $26 per paycheck, so $42 more a month than the Officers - oh, and we make less than they do, too. I mean really? That's a huge disparity. And shit like this happens all the time. She never should have sent that first one to us. They will screw Operations any way they can and then throw shinies at the Officers. And they wonder why we can't keep employees.

Then there's talk that when Obamacare comes down they'll knock us below full time. If that happens, they better be ready for people to quit immediately. I will be one of them. I hope they have a plan when the entire Ops staff up and leaves.

(Incoming tangent)
Of course, my company won't be the only ones to do it. A lot of companies will. People will get laid off or just generally not be able to make ends meet if they're forced to work less than 32 hours a week, the economy will tank and here comes the depression. Anyone who isn't afraid this is going to happen needs to wake up. I am very afraid for the future of this country, so much so that I'm seriously considering leaving the country for good.

Yeah so I'm not in a good place right now, I'm afraid for my job (even though I see no reason they would eliminate the second in command position) and I'm afraid about how much worse the economy is going to get. They've raised taxes so much this year that I'm already struggling even with a pay raise and work is cutting down overtime and possibly just cutting hours in general. I hope work won't mind when I camp out on the floor, because if they keep cutting down my hours, I'm going to be living there.

- - - Updated - - -

Blah, sorry, that got a bit more ranty than I intended. I'm just really worried about the future. I have no savings and no real place to go if I were to lose my job. Sure I could try to make my way back up north, but I'd run out of gas long before that happened. Scary future is scary.

[Armando]

Re: What's your pet peeve in RL?

Blah, sorry, that got a bit more ranty than I intended.

I don't blame you.