or didn't realize you could change it and don't care enough to figure out how
@thatguythere Club Lazy.
@calindra
I would high five but well you know that is effort. 
This bears a striking similarity to the reason I can now pick up all manner of things effectively with my toes. And I have really short toes.
@surreality My father used to make fun of me because I, too, could practically grab anything with my toes.
Gotta love that flexibility. Ayyye.
@calindra When it hit the level of 'picking up small beads and dimes from a hardwood floor' my husband officially got scared.
It was adorable. 
I'm super great at finding things with my feet. Like nails, needles, lego, the exact corner of a wall, small pets laying in the dark...
He/Him
@tinuviel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I'm super great at finding things with my feet. Like nails, needles, lego, the exact corner of a wall, small pets laying in the dark...
My feet are glass magnets.
Glass can break (wood floor, carpeting, etc...) and be cleaned up. Thoroughly. Six months can pass of foot traffic, parties, etc etc..... and I will amble past the spot one evening and end up with a shard of glass in my heel.
It is to the point where friends and family will often not even allow me to clean up broken glass (it is a v. fortunate thing I have not broken any glass since living alone).
"Y'all did amazing yesterday! ...so we're turning the heat up! Do better tomorrow!"
(All excellence shall be punished with added demands.)
Also:
"Hey if you finish this task that hasn't been done in FOREVER, you can leave an hour early!"
stare dead-eyed as, they also pull away the person who was supposed to be helping me do that task.
@cobaltasaurus said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
"Y'all did amazing yesterday! ...so we're turning the heat up! Do better tomorrow!"
This is actually the core of everything Verizon is built around. Like no shit, their motto internally is 'Today we did good, tomorrow we'll do better.'
So it never matter how good a job you do... they expect tomorrow you'll do better. AND THEY THINK THAT'S JUST SWELL.
Which is why you meet so many ex-Verizon employees who suffered the same mental break I did when I worked there. The "We were told we were #1 in the <region/city/country/etc>, but it wasn't good enough" spiel. It's legit what went down with me: #1 team in tech support in the country at the time (that quarter), but every weekly stand up meeting we had, we were being berated that it wasn't good enough and we can do better
and one day I just couldn't leave my house. I just snapped. It took two months, then extensive therapy, then baby steps (walks, short trips to nearby stores, and I'm still p fucking hermity)... to be able to go outside again.
And I know a lot of people like that.
Yet companies keep fucking do it and it just makes me really fucking angry.
No. You reward your employees with shit like pizza parties or company outings or even shit so simple as goddamn company merch ('cause we know it's never with PTO or raises). Not more work while you, upper management, cut out early and/or give yourself a raise.
Saying the quiet parts out loud since 1996.
@auspice This is a very common thing amongst any and all telecommunications companies. The last one I worked for (Cox Communications) flat out lied to it's new hires, claiming it wasn't a sales position, and then demanding sales quota's be met.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
@lithium said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@auspice This is a very common thing amongst any and all telecommunications companies. The last one I worked for (Cox Communications) flat out lied to it's new hires, claiming it wasn't a sales position, and then demanding sales quota's be met.
About six months in to my job at Verizon, they wanted us to try to upsell to people and then wouldn't even do commission. It was '....and then if they agree, hand it off to sales so they can wrap it up!'
"Do we get commission?"
"Oh no, no, only sales does."
And then they wondered why not a single person in tech ever bothered to upsell even once.
@auspice Every single meeting so far (and every shift starts with a meeting), has been "you guys aren't doing good enough" and our manager going "i've over staffed myself on purpose, if y'all don't start performing better i'm going to start cutting your hours" (mind you this is me working there like a month, so I'm a new hire, with her saying shit like that) "i overstaffed myself on purpose of i gotta replace you with someone else... <shrug>" (super uncomfortable).
And yet, apparently, the days we do fantastic? Our reward? Work harder today! Granted, today was pretty fucking light. It was just the way it was phrased was all: Are you fucking kidding me?
"Y'all're gonna go work grocery until my grocery cart is 100% done, and then you're going to zone grocery. You're not doing GM at all today."
(Normally I'm in cosmetics, hair, heatlh, bath, etc. But nope, today was grocery. And lots of "uh... I don't know" when people wanted to know where anything was.)
@cobaltasaurus That's a red flag. Get a new job ASAP. Nobody overstaffs, ever. The whole 'do this or I cut hours/positions' thing is a sign they plan to do that anyways, and want to justify it so they don't look like the bad guy.
@admiral said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
@cobaltasaurus That's a red flag. Get a new job ASAP. Nobody overstaffs, ever. The whole 'do this or I cut hours/positions' thing is a sign they plan to do that anyways, and want to justify it so they don't look like the bad guy.
Or just a blatant threat to keep you scared of losing your job. Either way, yeah. Not a good place to be.
Some years ago I worked for a company that was growing exponentially, we kept hitting 10% growth and 15% profit every year and business was booming. Every year nobody in the entire company apart from the executives and salespeople would get a cost of living increase in wages but we would be thrown a paltry bonus. Also Human Resources would give the same spiel about how we could not get raises this year because we might not do as well next year, also no, it was taking far too much effort to introduce any kind of wage transparency.
Also for some reason men who managed projects would be 'Project Managers' whilst women could only be 'Project Coordinators' who were paid a lot less, this apparently had no bearing on the size or quantity of projects managed.
Then one year they made 1/4 of the company redundant and the Finance Director drove into work the next day in a new Porsche Spyder, a million dollar supercar. Obviously there was no money for any pay rises six years running and they were legitimately sad about not being able to provide such.
My company avoids raises by having wage transparency.....for everyone below Project Manager status. So team leads, tier two types, employee, contractor... All wage transparency.
Thus: "we don't see the need for raises when there's wage transparency!"
Everyone else? "Salary dependent on experience"
And if the way below market or cost of living wages comes up in the office, management will laugh and go "we barely make enough to live either!
Except almost every single one of them have taken roughly 2-3 weeks of paid time off each since October. No one who isn't salary gets even paid sick leave. Don't work? Don't get paid. Sick? You'll get forced to stay home (so that the office doesn't get sick). I mean sure, no one wants to be sick. But I kind of like being able to pay my bills and affording groceries, which I can't unless I work every single hour and beg for the occasional overtime.
The company has been around 10 years. I've been with them for 7. The furthest I've made it is team lead.
I've never gotten any recognition. Never a bonus. Never any acknowledgement but verbal from my project managers. I've never had any disciplinary action taken against me.
Most companies, after 7 years, you're getting time in service raises, an extra week of vacation, etc.
I have nothing.
When I got asked, after my interview on Friday, if I need to give a full 2 weeks because they're starting their next class on the 23rd (if they decide to hire me)... I thought for a moment (because I usually do) and finally decided: No. No I don't.
After all... TX is a right to work state and my current job has done absolutely nothing to earn my loyalty. My current project just lost two people. After cutting hours and letting people go. My PM is panicking over filling those hours.
I am more than ready to hit them where it hurts. I am the only person closing that office five nights a week.
Fucking bring it.
@auspice That kind of bullshit is why I have never felt the urge to go and work in the USA even when opportunities have come up. I do not care if the cost of living is lower or if I could get higher wages, or lower taxes.
I get thirty days of paid leave a year and up to six months of fully paid sick time, along with private health care to go on top of the National Health Service to ensure I do not need to wait if I need physiotherapy or something. If I lose my job for anything other than legally provable malfeasance? I have to be given months of notice and a substantial payout that would ensure I have plenty of grace period to find new employment and move.
Admittedly I am management but I doubt I would get all or even most of those perks if I was in the states, certainly not after factoring in the cost of private health insurance which would still be nothing like as comprehensive and stress free as what I get right now.
But I do look with unutterable envy at the kind of house I could afford in most of the USA. My 650 sq ft apartment here is worth a quarter of a million dollars.
@packrat said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I do look with unutterable envy at the kind of house I could afford in most of the USA. My 650 sq ft apartment here is worth a quarter of a million dollars.
The living space thing is a huge difference.
I mean my apartment is like, 800-something square feet and I pay just under $800/mo for it. I like having space. I lived in Cincinnati for a while (I use it as a reference because one of my best friends is a Brit and he visited me while I lived there and has said it is the city in the US that most reminds him of the UK; in infrastructure, 'flats,' etc)... And everywhere I lived there, save one place (and it was the brand-new-apartment) was just cramped. The flats (because it's what they were: older, larger homes broken down into flats) of friends were just tiny.
I have room for my king-sized bed in my bedroom, plus space for a writing desk (once I get one). I have room in my living room for a second (small) sofa or a couple chairs (once I can afford them) and my exercise bike. I can either get more bookshelves in the dining room area or a dining table down the road. And I still have plenty of space for the large art projects and shit I do.
I like space.
@auspice The worst part? Unless you are actively rich you cannot get anywhere here in the UK with really big rooms unless you get particularly lucky, even if you have the budget for a larger home. If you buy a bigger house then that generally means just more fairly cramped bedrooms that are about large enough for a double bed.
Twenty foot across rooms are generally limited to high end luxury housing or huge prestige Victorian homes that tend to run in the three quarter of a million dollar range. You cannot buy something the size of a 3 or 4 bedroom family home that has two bedrooms and more space instead.
@auspice This is a very common thing amongst any and all telecommunications companies. The last one I worked for (Cox Communications) flat out lied to it's new hires, claiming it wasn't a sales position, and then demanding sales quota's be met.
