Weird Rants To Help Keep You Sane!

My wife works in community services (local government) the unit she works in runs quite well except for a newer worker who just wont do the things she is actually there to do, instead she decides she will do ..... what she thinks needs doing and when she does that she stuffs it up.

One worker is activly looking for alternative employment, 2 others are on the verge. Their unit manager knows and is doing his best to get this girl on the straight and narrow but failing miserably (hes looking for other work too).

One memorable quote from the problem worker was "Well I'm a team player but nobody else is!"

Its hard to find good staff. Its even harder to get rid of poor ones.


Oh and all mature women in the unit but they make up for that by organising the baby showers and social ocasions for the rest of the workplace.

heh!

I do a lot of "active listening" at home.

It's a hell of a lot easier in the private sector.

When I was working in the public sector I slacked mightily -- and still achieved considerably more than most of my co-workers. Especially, it seemed, than those who worked diligently and mightily but with the vision and finesse of an unsecured piano on a steep street.

Here is a rant that will have my fellow Australians in stitches!


It's about:









TELSTRA!!!!



You guessed, didn't you?



I have finally decided to take the plunge into high speed internet.



Got a good deal from Telstra via Big Pond.


I have agreed to the deal, and there is nothing to arrange except getting the modem.

I cannot have it delivered to my place unless I am home, which I am not at the times the courier companies they use work. If one is not home, there is no problem...they deliver it to the relevant Post Office.....and leave a card for you to go and pick it up. Thing is, the Post Office does not open at times I can get to it. There IS one nearby, which IS open on Saturday mornings, but the (private) couriers will not deliver the modem there...they are ordered to deliver it to the PO which serves the customer. So....I would have to wait until I got the card, ring the PO on the next week day, argue with them for a long time to get them to send the parcel to the PO I can access, which all takes a week or more. At least. This will take me into my next billing cycle with my current ISP, which will cost me money.

So....I confidently begin to arrange to have it delivered at work.

No problems!!!


I begin to dictate my work address.

Now...I work in a BIG place, with lots of different buildings...but all have the same street address.


So...to deliver to me, the courier needs to know:

my name
my department
the floor level
the building name
the name of the institution
the street address



"I only have room for the street address" says my sales person.


"But that won't get to me!" I exclaim.


I explain why it won't get to me at some length, and the experiences I have had to back that up.


"I can only put the street address on the form" says she


I comment that really, when it comes to a competition between spaces on a form and being able actually to provide a service to a customer, I believe the form ought to come in second.


"It's a computer form" she says "I can't make it accept words it does not have space for"

I point out that I am speaking to a telecommunications company, and I would not think it completely unreasonable to imagine that the sales people might find it possible to communicate with the modem sending people by means other than a computer form.


Consternation, and speakings to supervisor ensue, with me still blithely having confidence that this is a weeny glitch that we can all sort of figure out easily.

Sales person returns, and says that she can give me the number of the modem sending people.

"Great!" say I..."so, I will be able to give them a working delivery address?"

Sure, she says, once the modem has been returned as undeliverable.


Surprise and consternation on my end.


Well, she allows, before that, I CAN ring them, and they will, she says brightly, be able to tell me EXACTLY where the package is!!!


Will they be able to INFLUENCE where the package is, I ask?


Not as far as she knows, she says...

"So", say I..."they will be able to tell me all the places the package is and I am not, but I will not be able to get the package and myself to intersect, despite all this knowledge, until the package has been a whole lot of places where we know I am unable to obtain it?"


"Yes" she admits, sadly.

I say I have decided that this will all be too hard on the package and me, and I shall buy the service from another company....one with a bigger form.

Deb querida, We live in a strange world. This would have had me sputtering. In fact, it has me sputtering, and it didn't happen to me.

Sput, sput.

Oh!

This is a GOOD rant!



I have just gone to cable (with attendant grrrrs as expressed on the grimace and grit thread HERE )....


However, it has remained on today, although slowing down to almost nothing from time to time......and I have downloaded music!!!


Currently listening to an acid jazz album, which I have wanted for ages!


Oh my!!!!!!


And I have been able to watch some news videos!!!!


This is a new life!!!!

I'm a freelance editor. I work on all manner of books except fiction. I usually get the "troubled" manuscripts. I was surprised and delighted to be assigned a fourth edition. Usually the more editions there are, the fewer problems there are. Granted the messier books take me longer, so I get paid more, but I'm tired. I could use a breezy fouth edition.

This is a book about international trade.

I get started and notice right off the bat that the author didn't work off the published version of the last edition. He worked off his manuscript for the last edition. This means that everything the last editor did was down the toilet. And he or she did a lot.

I get through the first few chapters with only a few minor rumblings. There's a discussion of the Internet that sounds as if the thing were just invented. Not good. I'm still muttering about the colossal waste of time, effort, and money in working off a manuscript that's already been edited but with all the editing tossed out. Then I get to the part about South America. Nothing major here. Ok, so the author spells the country of Colombia with a u where the second o should be. No big deal. I'm noticing, though, that statistical and numeric info about the countries in South America is exactly the same as in the previous edition. Not good. I query suspect info and move on.

I get to Europe. I'm a suspicious type, so I download info about the European Union before I start editing. There are currently 27 countries in the EU. According to this book, there are 24 or 25, depending on what page you look at. Not good again. Also, all the data from the last edition remains unchanged. Further not good. I again request updates and ask whether info is current.

I complain to the editor who assigned me the project. The editor who was responsible for the project is no longer on staff. Her replacement has given the manuscript a cursory glance. The editor I'm working with can only pass along the info.

I'm getting steamed. I'm envisioning that everything I'm doing will be tossed because of all the needed updates. I tell myself it's not my problem. I'm being paid, right? What do I care if everything I do is thrown in the garbage. It's true, but I'm pissed anyway. I'm tired.

I move on to Africa. Before I start, I print out a list of current countries in Africa along with some general info. Nothing has been updated. NOTHING. The population of the continent, the average annual earnings, etc. NOTHING. Countries that didn't exist when the last edition was written are not mentioned. Countries that have changed their names are mentioned with the old names. Wars and droughts that occurred ten years ago are referred to in the present tense. I'm going nuts. When an editor doesn't know what tense to use, this is a problem. I get to a section of the chapter that seems new. I'm suspicious. I look around and find that the entire new section is lifted word for word from somewhere. The author didn't even bother to change the pronouns from we to they. Now I'm furious.

I complain to the editor again. Her hands are tied.

I move on to China and India. More old info. More plagiarism.

And on and on. I'm in a state. But the end is in sight. Two appendixes and two glossaries are within my reach. It's now apparent that I'm going to be late on the project. I'm NEVER late. This time I am.

I send in the last chapter and get to the appendixes. One is no big deal. The other is a list of countries, each of which is supposed to be accompanied by a code. About two-thirds have the code. The rest don't. I move on. The end is in sight.

I finish one glossary and turn to the last. I usually breeze through glossaries. This is a long one, but the end is in sight. Do I care that all the terms are presented in all capital letters and that I have to make them all lowercase? Nope. Do I care that between the term and the definition is a great variety of things--periods, dashes, spaces, colons? Nope. Do I care that at least half the terms are not in alphabetic order? YES!!!!! This has pushed me over the edge. This has made me insane. Wild. And furious. This is the last straw.

I entered the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. I'd better win.

Oh my!!!!!!!



That is an EXCELLENT rant!!!!!





Here dollink, have some chicken soup.


You want some nice alcohol mit?







*******************************************************




We have had a wild week here.......an arrest just outside my door, one of our staff nearly got clobbered in the ER......mutiple badly injured wee folk.....and it is 10 pm and all my procrastinating about writing the training I am giving tomorrow has had to cease....

I'd love the soup, but it's almost bedtime for me. I don't drink alcohol, although I might reconsider with the time I'm having. I'll have milk and cookies. I'll save the soup for later. Thanks.

Sorry to hear about your bad week. Hey (or oy), it's only Wednesday (here). For me, still Tuesday. You have the a drink on me, kid.

I finished the mf glossary.

I'll have the soup now thanks.

Coitainly.



Is mf short for motherfucking?

yup

I've got one I want to get off my chest lately (and have for some time) and get back to my cramming...

Out here in the midwest of the USA -- I've noticed this living in Chicago and in Madison -- drivers do the damnedest things. I mean, they're generally pretty inept/clumsy/inattentive across the board, but this one thing drives me batshit.

The typical midwestern driver approaches a stoplight or a stopped car at a stoplight, and, for whatever reason, stops well short of their target. Usually at least 10 feet, sometimes a full 1.5 to 2 or more car lengths short. Then, as they wait for the light to change, they'll creep forward until they're more or less at a normal stopping position.

Why do they do this? Why do they not just stop at the line or a few feet short of the car in front of them? Why do they feel the need to give themselves this outrageous cushion and then lurch forward in a series of foot-lifted-from-brake-pedal-of-car-with-automatic-transmission moments? Why not just get where you're going and chill?

Certainly, I suppose, there is a certain restlessness there -- one that might suggest a decidedly non-midwestern impatience. Apparent attempts by the driver in front to try and time the green light would seem to confirm this. As the light gets stale, the driver in front will generally start to inch out into the intersection. Sometimes this occurs well before there is even a yellow light for the cross traffic. It definitely looks, in these instances, like the driver is looking to GO GO GO as soon as the light turns green.

But they don't GO GO GO when the light turns green. There is a suite of behavior suggesting readiness that completely belies the driver's intention, which is to start fiddling with the car radio knobs or the pile of fried food on the passenger seat or go rooting around in the mess on the floor for a cigarette or (shudder) flip open the cell phone and start to dial as soon as the light turns green.





So they've got these quirks. Which I suppose should be forgiven. But I come from CA, where we drive fast and with a purpose and where freeway shootings were invented, so I can't let it go. Don't worry, though, I've found ways to justify my irritation: these things that bother me* are discourteous to every other driver on the road. In heavy traffic, every inch of road space is of value. I have seen many instances of a driver stopping 25 feet short of the car in front of them, while two cars behind them someone else gets stuck in the intersection on the red light, subjected to the wrath of an entire line of cars waiting to get across. These drivers (perhaps they're visiting from somewhere else) reasonably assumed that there was plenty of room in the coming block for all the cars there and themselves, but these selfish short-stopping bastards need the extra room for -- for what exactly? -- so every poor bastard behind them can just rot. (Of course, it's not so malicious as this. Nobody here ever looks in their rearview, so likely they are simply unaware that there actually are people behind them who are being inconvenienced by their unaccountable quirkiness.

Of course, the same goes for the people who fail to GO when the light turns green. Every second they wait is another car that will not make it through on that particular light. Pure laziness of thought and action and utter disregard of cooperative social action. Can't we all just get along with purpose, alacrity, and attention to detail?







* The poet Steven Jesse Bernstein said, some length of time before he stabbed himself repeatedly in the chest, "These things that disturb me, I like to think that they are important, that they are meaningful." Or very nearly that, anyway...

Witless bastids!!!!!


Have a nice juicy bone, Patio.

I don't swing that way, wabbit.

Not a boner, you perplexed pooch.....THIS sort of bone:

Good rant P/dawg.
catterpillering is something I have noticed in city traffic here. Stop short of target /car in front then ease up to within a few feet causing a chain reaction all along the line of traffic behind.

I try to avoid visiting the city as zealously as possible.

Only ever noticed it in midwestern cities. NY, SF, LA -- there's just not enough room to waste it like that...

I just spent an insanely frustrating half hour trying to make my credit card account and checking account (both with the same institution) accessible at the same time (trying to use one set of usernames and passwords and then be given an option between account 1 and account 2). I was almost in tears.

Awwwwww..........but did you succeed?

No! Now I have two pages that I need to navigate to individually. At least they have the same password username set.