Posts made by Aria

@Arkandel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Aria said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Apparently, they have a tendency to wait until the new hire has settled in for a few weeks before bothering to cut the other candidates loose.

Not justifying this practice at all, but it's because turnover in the first few weeks tends to be high. In fact there's a percentage of applicants who accept a position then use it as leverage to secure better compensation at their current job.

Sometimes corporate policy is to hire then see if the person shows up and they're competent before letting anyone else know.

Ohh, I know. I once worked at a place where I was training my backfill for a temp-to-perm role after they decided to hire someone with 'more qualifications' (read: better schooling/certificates on paper, but zero experience doing the actual job). He came in, worked for a day, said he had no idea how I managed the workload, then promptly quit. The manager decided this must be my fault.

A year later, he applied for a position at the place I was working at the time and while I was breaking the supposed confidentiality of the hiring process in our department, I had to let my boss know about it as soon as I saw his name show up on the interview schedule because I suspected he might do it again, given that the roles weren't much different.

So I get why companies do it. They're covering their bases and honestly, that's fine. The problem is that they treat people like shit in the process, when a direct statement of "We decided to go with another candidate for this role, but we also really, really liked you. Would you want us to keep your resume on file in case it doesn't work out or if we have another position open up?" would probably net them a yes and an expanded network of future candidates they could reach out to before even advertising newly opened positions.

I think the worst one of those that I ever dealt with was at a local university where I had applied for a position that is so, so, soooooooooo much closer to my house than the companies I've worked at for the last 9 years.

They had a phone interview, an in person interview with the direct manager, a skills test, interviews with several other managers in the department, and in my case -- as I was told it was down to me and one other candidate -- interviews with the next two reporting chains up from the position. All in all? I lost three days of work, without pay, and had it confirmed from multiple people that I would be hearing back from them within the week.

I think I called two or three times over the next month because I've worked at universities before and they're notoriously slow, so I didn't give up hope. (At one ivy league, I applied in September and started in January, FFS.) By the time I received a "thanks but no thanks" from the hiring manager, I'd already gotten the form rejection letter from their HR department -- three weeks earlier. It took her two and a half months to reply with an 'encouraging' note about how great a candidate I was and she'd keep me in mind for future positions, which at that point is really just insulting.

Apparently, they have a tendency to wait until the new hire has settled in for a few weeks before bothering to cut the other candidates loose.

Fun Fact: Their graduate school programs have tried to recruit me HARD for a couple of different Master's degrees since, especially after finding out that I tend to work for very large corporations that end up partnering with local schools for various MBA and MS programs and spend a lot of money to do it. Every time they call, I politely inform their recruiters that I'm not willing to attend a university that treats their prospective employees so poorly, shows so little professionalism, and give them that hiring manager's name.

This is the point of tax season where I basically have all of our stuff entered.....

Save for our mortgage information, because our mortgage company's website sucks and works on exactly no browsers despite what they say, and one piece of paper from my retirement investments that won't come until more than halfway through February.

Fuck you guys. I want my refund.

@Ghost You get an upvote because Danny Briere is, in fact, completely fucking awesome.

@Auspice said in Good TV:

Who else gonna be binging season 3 of Sabrina this weekend?!

Me! I have an SCA thing on Saturday, but Sunday is going to be watching Netflix, bullet journaling, and hanging out with the dog.

Given how much y'all love to crap on my team, I'm stunned it took you a full day to find this.

No excuses for slacking off.

I've been watching Pandemic with the same horrified fascination that is proverbially associated with "trainwrecks".

(JFC,pleasevaccinateyourkids. 0_o)

So.

Bad news: Looks like someone broke into the trunk of my car.
Good news: Looks like I had so much shit in there they couldn't be bothered going through too much of it for stuff to steal.

Yay, me?

@Auspice I think that's what really killed me. I had done everything in my power to help her, including trying to position her for my job, which would've been a promotion. My role still exists, is a level up from where she had been, and has executive access. There's C-suite executives at a $5 trillion company who will chat with me in the lunch line and the ladies' room instead of looking at their buzzing phones because of the work I did in that job.....

But instead she decided to turn it not just into a comparison, but a direct competition. I even pointed out to my boss -- who agreed -- that I got more done and did better work. That she was better perceived. And that in both cases, it was because I did my job and she spent most of her time socializing.

If she'd put in the effort towards her book of business that she'd put into pushing a narrative about how "she just wasn't getting a chance to shine because Aria", she'd still be employed and making more money. Instead, she's got 45 days to find something before she'd out the door and honestly, I'm okay with that. <shrug>

Sooooooo....

I spent three years in my last department, two of them looking for another role at my company before finally transitioning in June. While most of that was wanting to utilize my expanded skill set in a more challenging job, I'm NGL -- a big part of that was also getting away from another coworker.

She started as a temp, not reporting to me but as my junior partner on my little team of two. I liked her and I needed help, so I busted my butt training her, ceding some of my (then overwhelming) responsibilities to her role, helping her network. Taught her tricks for cutting through red tape. Helped her negotiate a better salary when she was finally hired. We hung out outside of work. I thought we were friends!

...until the post-hire politicking began. And not just politicking, but girl-world style. Doing subpar work, but getting away with it because she was the social butterfly who was "nice" to everyone and just needed extra help. Flirting with some of the male managers. Making mistakes that I had to fix repeatedly and then refusing the training refreshers I offered her. Taking credit for my work, regularly. When I would get frustrated by it, suggesting that I wasn't a "team player". Once, she even went into my boss' office and burst into blathering tears about how I was mean to her because I thought she was prettier. (Yes, really.)

It was pretty damned obvious she was gunning for my job -- a narrative that eventually was adopted by the leadership team as the reason I was "bullying" her, despite me having told them all on more than one occasion that I was looking elsewhere and had originally been hoping to groom her as my successor. I'd even told her. Apparently, she just didn't want to wait.

Well. Of the seven managers on that team, four have retired or left. The person now filling my manager's job has decided to reorganize the department.

....guess who's job just got eliminated?

Karma's a bitch, kid.

As someone who has worked with animal shelters on and off for almost twenty years and has a house full of rescues/strays.....

You do not "get" a cat. Cats happen to you. It's a scientific fact.

^ Mia and an alt that I've been languishing on for ages.

@TheOnceler said in Good or New Movies Review:

What was it? Literally the only thing I can think of is Melissa McCarthy in Spy.

Double-post because I wanted to add that I absolutely adore Melissa McCarthy and Rebel Wilson, who are both insanely funny, but it's only been a more recent thing that the characters they're playing are just.... that size because that's the size the actresses are, and not something that's made a regular joke of in whatever they're doing. (Looking at you, Bridesmaids and Pitch Perfect.)

Even sitting down and really thinking about it, the only exception that comes to mind is McCarthy's role as Sookie St. James in Gilmore Girls, but bear in mind that her character in that show is:

a) the quirky, crazy best friend and not a lead role
b) literally a chef
c) has exactly one romantic relationship.... with her produce supplier

Plus McCarthy was significantly thinner then than she was during the majority of her recognized film roles. Sooooo.... Sookie's a great character, but even so, she's a funny sidekick whose life revolves around food and is rarely taken seriously by the people around her.

@TheOnceler said in Good or New Movies Review:

What was it? Literally the only thing I can think of is Melissa McCarthy in Spy.

Dietland based on the novel by Sarai Walker. Sadly, they didn't renew it for another season -- which I kind of understand given its premise and how some things really just did convert well to the screen.. The book was wonderful, to the point that I bought three extra copies and just foisted them off on other women I know who have felt that same sort of "I have never seen someone who looks like me on screen that wasn't a joke" experience.

@Apos said in Arx Alts:

I'm Apostate on there

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

@Aria said in Good or New Movies Review:

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

I think one of the few cases in recent years where a company truly made strides as opposed to 'just slap a rainbow on it and make us some $$$' was Target. Because they took a holistic approach to inclusivity. You can find cards at a Target specifically for gay or lesbian relationships, not just 'eh, put some neutral cards out; those will work' type stuff. They acknowledged 'A wife may want a card for her wife' or 'People may want to wish both grooms congratulations' and saw it through.

I think, for a lot of people, that's the sort of thing they want to see. Sure, it's fun to have rainbow mouse ears if you go to Disney, but if that's all they have to offer, it sort of stings too to know that it wasn't worth the effort of putting any more thought into it than 'rainbow stuff = $$$'

As someone who spent years working in marketing organizations, the inclusivity of Target's advertisements was a big deal in the industry. Like, even though I worked at pharmaceutical and financial companies for ten years, it was pretty standard for Target to drop their Christmas toy catalog and find copies of it floating around my office within a few days, with every page that depicted people with physical disabilities, interracial relationships, a nod to their ethnicity, plus sized models, or families headed by same-sex couples with their pages turned down for people to look at -- and not just to steal ideas, but because they honestly enjoyed looking at the catalog.

Honestly, it's probably one of the most wholesome things I've ever seen in a business context because people wanted to improve our advertisements not just for the $$$, but because they were sincerely emotional every time one of their coworkers got all worked up and excited about seeing someone in that book that looked like them and their family. And if you do that enough, it stops feeling like a throwaway and starts looking like real life.

In the same vein, when Aerie/AE made their announcement that they would no longer photoshop their models... their catalogs looked twenty times better. Like, GASP, you could see belly rolls on girls sitting (damn near everyone's belly folds when they sit, it's anatomy, but teenage me thought differently due to models in advertising), you see girls covered in FRECKLES (fuck the people in the advertising industry who thought freckles were bad and began THAT trend), and even larger girls. I absolutely make Aerie/AE one of my stops when I need to shop for new stuff.

(The pants I am wearing rn are actually from them and they are black/red plaid and my favorite pants.)

As someone who is plus-sized, I go out of my way to spend money at stores that don't put all of their clothes on models who are a 5'11" and US size 12 (fuck you, that's still smaller than the average woman's size in the States and at that height is just called 'proportional') and who stopped airbrushing out any hints of a stretchmark or cellulite.

My MIL watched me burst into tears the first time I saw a TV show where there was a plus-sized female protagonist that was neither a middle-aged mother or the butt of someone's joke, but just, y'know.... my size.

Representation that isn't tokenism matters so goddamn much.

@Auspice said in Good or New Movies Review:

I think one of the few cases in recent years where a company truly made strides as opposed to 'just slap a rainbow on it and make us some $$$' was Target. Because they took a holistic approach to inclusivity. You can find cards at a Target specifically for gay or lesbian relationships, not just 'eh, put some neutral cards out; those will work' type stuff. They acknowledged 'A wife may want a card for her wife' or 'People may want to wish both grooms congratulations' and saw it through.

I think, for a lot of people, that's the sort of thing they want to see. Sure, it's fun to have rainbow mouse ears if you go to Disney, but if that's all they have to offer, it sort of stings too to know that it wasn't worth the effort of putting any more thought into it than 'rainbow stuff = $$$'

As someone who spent years working in marketing organizations, the inclusivity of Target's advertisements was a big deal in the industry. Like, even though I worked at pharmaceutical and financial companies for ten years, it was pretty standard for Target to drop their Christmas toy catalog and find copies of it floating around my office within a few days, with every page that depicted people with physical disabilities, interracial relationships, a nod to their ethnicity, plus sized models, or families headed by same-sex couples with their pages turned down for people to look at -- and not just to steal ideas, but because they honestly enjoyed looking at the catalog.

Honestly, it's probably one of the most wholesome things I've ever seen in a business context because people wanted to improve our advertisements not just for the $$$, but because they were sincerely emotional every time one of their coworkers got all worked up and excited about seeing someone in that book that looked like them and their family. And if you do that enough, it stops feeling like a throwaway and starts looking like real life.

Pet more dogs.
Use my fucking bullet journal.
Buy less, and also get rid of, crap I don't need.

A Christmas morning conversation with @insomniac7809

I: "Your present should be in your inbox."
A: "Wait, my inbox?"
I: "Yeah."
A: ".....BPAL gift card, huh?"
I: "You didn't even look!"
A: "Well, it was that or the elephant sanctuary."
I: "....That's in there, too."

Saw Rise of Skywalker with my husband tonight.

My desire to punch J.J. Abrams in his stupid fucking face remains intact.