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Had a banger August for my work, but I'm starting to feel run down again as the weekend approaches. I have 3-4 major projects due 9/7, which means I have to have everything done Thursday night. I have to board a 6am flight on Friday, and I. Am. Fried.
Nevermind the sorcery I'll have to conjure to get my ass to an airport at 5am. Thankfully I have trusted traveler status and can sail through security.
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some news: the position closed last Friday and I had the exact same experience as last time where the questions that were asked as part of the automated selection process (basically the computer says "a score <X is automatic DQ") and then HR has to compare your responses to your resume to see if your answers bear out. Due to this I was slightly miffed that I wasn't going to get the job again. I mean, the universe is telling you something after a certain point in time, yeah? Had a work meeting* that afternoon with both of my supervisors and we talked about it. They both said that if I didn't get the job then it was on them** to figure out how to translate what they want from the position to HR so that my experience that they want for the position is reflected in the announcement.
Monday afternoon I checked my email after being heavily hinted at by my upper boss and it said "You have been referred for the position". So Tuesday they went in and took care of the selection and HR called me late Wednesday*** to make a tentative offer and then sent me an email to accept because it's (almost) all automated now. "It's going to take me longer to explain the next steps than it will for you to complete them" she said and wasn't wrong. I have the next two weeks to be excited and terrified about this change before it actually takes affect. Something about they couldn't get it done in the remaining days of this pay period so it will have to be the one after.
So I'm excited and terrified, yeah. Going to have to learn a lot more because as my new direct supervisor says "if you're making that much money I shouldn't have to tell you what to do or track it, you should just do it and show me." I mean I'm already doing that but he's an indirect boss at this time so he indirectly asks me to do things.
* it's actually at the local Shari's where we spend two hours talking shop and shit over pie. with the pandemic and no one in the office but me it's been a huge morale booster for everyone to be in the same space instead of over a computer screen.
** it was very refreshing to hear both of them sincerely tell me that they would go to those lengths to find out what was wrong. I work for a great set of people and I hope that doesn't change soon. (Spoiler: I have inside knowledge that it will but I'm hoping not that soon.)
***The one who was supposed to approve the paperwork didn't hit all 12 of the selection buttons so HR said "you need to hit #08 for us to be able to call him and make the offer". When he told me that I told him that I had to answer every single phone call that day because HR is all over the country so I can't even think "oh that's definitely spam". So I got to tell a lot of people that their mother is very disappointed in their choice of career.
EDIT: got the final firm offer today so it's official and I start on Monday. whew flop sweat.
Last edited by allegate; 10-06-2021 at 02:59 PM.
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That is great news!! Stoked for you.Originally Posted by allegate
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Thanks. It's really just the same ol' with better pay for now. The meeting to divest myself of duties is later in the week but I know the supervisors (or at least the one supervisor) and that I'll be helping with this stuff for awhile. Which isn't meant to sound like a dig, I've just worked with them long enough to know certain quirks.
The weird thing is that now I'm 'higher' in the chain I can maybe actually effect some change on some things. I went over some brief ideas with my new boss and he's really excited about the potential. I just need to pace myself so I don't knock it all out of the park and then in year 2...crickets.
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Yah, don't throw all your ideas in one go.But better pay is always good!
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I told him as much in the call we just had and he agreed, said he'd rather one project get done well than several projects vying for attention.
Also I found out today that I have a Yellow Belt project due shortly - very long story there since the class was three years ago! - so I guess I know what I'm working on for it. I honestly thought they had cancelled the whole thing due to lack of communication but oh well.
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How I'm currently feeling about work.
The backstory is that I do "technical sales" for a particular trade in construction. With steel and fiberglass pricing bouncing and completely unstable, not to mention supply chains are shit right now, it makes my work.....a lot more difficult. Exhibit A) We use primarily one manufacturer, and have two vendors for this company. We're instructed to price projects with x,y and z escalators with the idea that our pricing will be held. And the manufacturer has reneged on that, to the tune of us losing HALF of our profit. So a lot of our time is now spent sourcing other manufacturers, then jumping through the hoops to get the architect to approve it, etc.
Then today was a fun moment. I bid project X and stipulated that our pricing expires 9/30/21. We receive the contract on 10/5, and I have to submit revised pricing to the general contractor. The GC owner comes back, and pleads for help. I shave a little off and resubmit. I then get a call from the GC Project Manager, who is ticked that he has to re-issue his contract instead of issuing a change order. And he's being nasty about it. I was about | | this close from telling him to go fuck himself, and my pricing on 10/5 stands.
Instead, I'm going to call the owner tomorrow and tell him to have their PMs be nicer - I could have told him to fuck off and find another subcontractor willing to do the work. And that was just 15 minutes of my day.
she/her/hers
starting an IT helpdesk position on monday the 1st! it's salaried! it's work from home! hopefully i never have to go back to the foodservice industry!
Bite me
Mae, that is AWESOME news! Congratulations!
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yeah congrats on that, that's going to be huge for you.
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Ugh, customer service sucks! A parent just ripped my head off because one of teacher's fucked up. Is it 5pm yet?
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Yesterday just got worse and worse as the day progressed - total day from hell. First parents yelling at me on the phone, then they drop their children off for class - the dad continues to yell at me in front of the children. I had to tell the dad to get out of the classroom because his behavior was innapropriate. Dad finally leaves, then the kid starts acting out all psycho. Broke two plastic forks stabbing them down on the table Michael Myers-style and screaming "THIS IS SO SATISFYING!" Class is finally over. Later on get an email from another student that the kids were supposed to be quarantining because one of them sat next to another kid who had Covid.
FUCK THIS FAMILY!
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Last week I heard someone cough this realllllyyyyy nasty cough. I actually thought it was a dude because it was all deep and low, lol - but it was only my female coworker in the office across from me. I asked her, "Was that you?!" and she goes, "Yeah, I'm sick." and I'm like, "Then what the hell are you doing here then?! Go home!" and she's like, "But I have to work." and I just shake my head and tell her it's so stupid of her to be here. She goes home, and I get email from my boss later in the evening - she emailed him directly saying that she just found out her roomate tested positive for Covid and that she was going to go get tested. I'm super pissed!! I've been texting her this weekend and she said she took two rapid home tests and they both came out negative - but she's going to quarantine and stay home through Christmas. Now I have to pick up her work for the remainder of this week. Fuckin' a!
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I need to learn how to do data analysis, anyone have some books they might recommend? I can throw numerators and denominators at the software all day but bad data = bad analysis and I would like to stay away from that.
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You could try looking on Udemy? I used that when I had to prep for my PM certification. They generally have a sale on all the time, and you can pay $9.99 for a course.
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Will do. We have a school with a PM course so I’m trying to apply to that as well. Getting an account is proving frustrating however.
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currently in my power BI training the instructors are communicating amongst themselves about how weird it is that it's not working the way they think it should. And they're MS employees. so this is a riveting 15-20 minutes. "Hmm." keeps getting hmmed.
she/her/hers
i had my "three month" review like...two weeks ago(?) and they had literally NOTHING negative to say. not even constructive criticism. just like...all compliments, and then they asked me about concerns or ideas for the company. pretty fucking sweet.
I was nobody. Nothing.
Word.
Can't go wrong with that! Good to see you back around, too.
I still don't have any damn income.
This telehealth company where I get my suboxone: I sort of pitched the dude when I realized it was a one man operation, the idea being that I could call providers and offer them his telehealth service.
Now, I could sell fire in hell, but I'm not exactly sure I can talk an NP or MD into changing their business model, over the phone.
But, fuck it. I'm gonna give it a shot. I'm a natural born salesman, with a fuckton of training and experience.
I'm also applying for this part time inbound thing, with an established company.
Inbound with hourly plus commission sounds niiiiiiice.
Just tickles my balls!
I’m imagining you saying “I could sell faaaire in Heyyyul!” with a thick Texan accent and lolling. The avatar of Daryl only enhances it. lmao
I was nobody. Nothing.
That's seriously how you think I talk?Jesus fuck!
"Crikey! Get onya boike or wea gonna havva go, ya mug! Wea gonna have some coldies in tha nuddie, but we gotta woatch aout fo boities and oaldies! Moaichal, throw anotha roo on the bahbie!" : )
(I don't talk like that. Also, Daryl is doing a Georgia accent, which is about 1200 miles from where I live).
Last edited by elevenism; 04-13-2022 at 09:23 PM.
Just tickles my balls!
hahahaha no I didn’t think you spoke like that, but the salesman part made me picture someone speaking like that, Simpsons-style or something.
Onya mate.
I was nobody. Nothing.
fair enough...and i'm sure i have more of a texas accent than i THINK i do. :P
So, regarding work: i took an oral swab drug test for this suboxone provider, and it came up positive for oxy, meth, and PCP.
Oh, and i was NEGATiVE for xanax (i take 4mg, aka 4 footballs, aka 2 bars a day).
I was fucking furious. I pretty much DEMANDED that this fucker fill my prescription.
Then, i messaged him and asked if i could by my OWN, HIGHER QUALITY drug tests. He got all pissy and said no.
SO. It's the business strategist who is offering me money to be the sales force: NOT the provider.
If it can be sold, i can fucking sell it. Period. But I have morals.
In other words, i'm not pitching something that will potentially cause some OTHER poor bastard to go into violent, painful withdrawals, because the business model includes cheap, broke dick drug tests.
It's not that i WON'T sell something fucked up. Rather, it's that i physically CAN'T. I CANNOT put my heart and mind into it.
I've been through shit like this before. I was "raising money for charity" once, in a pinch, and realized that 90% of the donation does NOT go to charity, which IS legal, but is also ridiculous. Also, i was meant to sort of make it SOUND like i was a sheriff's deputy-the pitch was written that way. Nobody ever asked.
The manager was rocking a big ass cuban link chain made out of platinum or white gold and bragging about how rich he was, and they had me pitching CHURCHES to donate money to take CHILDREN who were victims of HORRIFIC BURNS to see the fucking CIRCUS. No shit.
I walked out of that joint, straight up.
Last edited by elevenism; 04-14-2022 at 04:11 PM.
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Contrary to what I thought, having refugees from Ukraine in class isn't making it harder to speak about war, international politics or human rights with my students. In fact, they even asked me to talk about what's going on in Russia and Ukraine. So...
Matador de Froot Loops
I'm starting the very same job this monday, funny i read your post a few days ago!
she/her/hers
good luck today!
advocating for yourself in these kinds of jobs can be really hard but make sure you do it, otherwise they'll run you ragged.
Matador de Froot Loops
Thanks for the tip!
Have a great week!
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Earlier this week a chief at one of our satellite sites asked me if there was a memo or something with some specific information on it regarding our site visit scores. I said no, that's not a thing, and that unless my supervisor said it was value-added it would not be forthcoming.
He just sent me another email, this time phrased as a request for the information I said I would not provide.
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A little background first:
The position I was hired into has a bunch of stuff in it that I've never done before but both of my supervisors said "you'll do great, we won't let you fail" while trying to get me apply for it. It's a pay bump and a responsibility bump but hey they were very insistent that I'd do great and that they would help.
flash forward to yesterday. I've been having issues learning the job because the position doesn't really exist at the level I work - it's a site job, not an HQ job - but we've been making a go of it with various projects. The two supervisors I mentioned previously are both detailed into one-step-higher positions so my new direct supervisor is also a detail. She used to do this job at a site so I figured, hey, olive branch time. Let's ask her some tips and tricks.
Spoiler alert: I should not have done that.
It can be boiled down to "wow, this is a lot of stuff you aren't doing. should I talk to HR about this?" while also saying "if we take away the things you're doing for us right now I'll have to start doing it myself and I don't want that."
There's a thing at work called a desk audit. Ostensibly what that means is Big HR comes in and takes a look at everything you do and decides if you are doing the work you should be or if you're doing more work and should get a higher pay. What usually happens - like 99.9% of the time - is you get less pay because you opened your mouth and no one does everything in their position description so you're always doing less work. This is what she basically threatened me with by saying "should I talk to HR".
To say I'm depressed would be an understatement. I was already depressed from...things - waves hand at the world - but this just topped me out.
On Tuesday I found out that the all-hands meeting that was cancelled by my supervisor so that the temp one could run the event was rescheduled. How did I find out? By someone asking me why I wasn't there. I looked at the calendar invite and it had everyone on it - twice for some of them! - but not me. I'm the only person who actually comes into the office, I'm sitting in a space for 20-plus people and I'm the only one here. It's damn lonely and now I'm forgotten? And then a day later I find out I'm looked down on basically?
If I could just get the energy to cry I'm sure I would but I just feel so dead.
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ugh that totally sucks @allegate ! could you reach out to those two supervisors and be like what the hell?!
maybe you should reach out to HR first before they go to you.
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