Tag Archives: techteam

My boss is the biggest pain in the ass

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My boss is the biggest pain in ass. Well, that’s the problem, he’s not really my boss. He’s my punk-ass supervisor. My real boss hired Beamer because he was kinda spineless and we could all talk him into doing anything. So he hired Beamer as an enforcer.

This morning I got to work, and while I was checking my email, Beamer wandered in and asked what I was doing, and then told me he was worried that I had been there for 45 minutes and he hadn’t seen me do any work yet.

Later in the day he asks me about my “attitude, lately.” Fuck. Well if you’d quit giving me shit jobs to do, I’d quit having an attitude.

Here’s the real problem, though. I can’t actually get mad at him for being on a power trip, because even though he _is_ on a power trip, he’s technically right.

Tech workers on the whole have a casual attitude towards work. Tech teams tend to be low-key. No one really cares how you work or when you work so long as the important shit gets done. A friend of mine explained that tech workers do an average of four hours work for every eight hour shift. I disagree. I think it’s closer to 20 minutes, but the point remains. Tech workers tend to have an expectation of a certain amount of freedom to goof off, so long as they get their work done.

So in comes Big-Man-Beamer, with his expectations that I will do eight hours of work in an eight hour shift, and not take my lunch break the instant I come on shift, even if I am coming on shift during lunchtime, and demanding that I not groan and roll my eyes when he gives me shit jobs to do.

These expectations are fine in a normal job. They’re what management types like Beamer are trained to have, and in most jobs they work out fine.

So my problem is that I can’t expect to tell Beamer to lay off me because as far as he’s concerned, my saying that means that I’m not meeting expectations, and I have every reason to expect that he would fire me, since he already fired my buddy for basically the same thing.

I don’t want to get fired. I’m moving in three-four months, and this is a sweet job (except for Beamer). I’m making decent money and I can pick my hours and the work is easy. If I get fired, I’d have to find a different shit job, with lower pay just so that I could work for the next few months before I move. That would be a dumb move. The smart thing is to keep this job.

All my tech friends are telling me to stand up for myself to Beamer. That’s easy for them to say, though, since they all have programming skills and can get a better-paying job with lower expectations at the drop of a hat. I’m just a web designer. I can’t necessarily do that.

I have every reason to expect that standing up to Beamer would cost me my job. I hate the way he acts, but at the same time, technically what he demands isn’t unreasonable from a job, it’s just that most tech jobs have lower expectations, and that won’t hold up (“we have higher expectations now. that kind of behavior is no longer acceptable,” I can hear him say. CRUNCH go his teeth as I hit him in the face with his fancy telephone with all the buttons. “YOU are no longer acceptable!” I cleverly retort, as I kick his broken body).

aaaargh. Fucking Beamer.

:: hatelife is your supervisor expecting you to do your job ::

Edit – 9/8/2008: Wow, talk about cringe-inducing. I’m shocked I didn’t get fired with this attitude. I know if I had some college kid working for me today who acted like this, I’d kick his ass to the curb. I’m leaving the post up as a reminder to myself not to be a dick.

That Printer Hates Us

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TRUE STORY:

One time I walked into the tek room and Steve ran up and said “Scott! I’m glad you’re here! I have to show this to someone!!”

And he then proceeded to walk me through the entire event. He came into the tek room, sat down at his computer and tried to print something. The computer gave him some error message that made him get up and look at the printer, which had this message displayed on the little LED screen:

!!!!FUCK YOU!!!!

Notice the FOUR (4) exclamation points on EACH SIDE of the message to add emphasis.

At this point he walked me over to the printer, and there the message was, blinking happily at us. We both laughed our asses off.

You have to understand that to the best of my (and Steve’s) knowledge, there was no way to make the printer say this. I think those printer messages are stored on a little ROM chip, so you can’t edit them.

Once we stopped laughing, we decided that we had to document this, or no one would believe the story. So we ran down to the equipment check-out desk and got a digital camera for a few minutes. We took the photo and showed it to everyone, and got mouse pads printed with the message (it’s free at our school, for some reason).

It didn’t occur to us at the time that with a digital image, everyone’s first reaction was that we had doctored it, or that there was some program out there, which we found out later was true. Still,

:: hatelife is your printer swearing at you ::

Flying Karamazov Brothers

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Last night I went to see the Flying Karamazov Brothers again. They’re an amazing juggling act that started on the streets of San Francisco. They do an act that is focused on puns and expressing music visually. The last time I saw them was at the Civic with Steve, and they were amazing. They made mistakes, but they had a whole repertoire of jokes to cover themselves. It was awesome. They weren’t quite up to par last night, though. I’m not sure how much that has to do with my having seen it before, and how much was due to them not doing too well. They seemed to make a lot more mistakes, and mess up their lines, and just not cover it up nearly as well. Still, on the whole, it was a cool show. Steve and I talked Miles and Annie into coming with us, and they both seemed to get a kick out of it.

Today I cleaned the tek room. It was really a big mess, but after about four hours, it looks much better. Got the shelves cleaned off, got the equipment straightened up, and the garbage taken out. Now if they just vacuum the room, it’ll look really sharp!

That’s about all my news for now. Nothing much else going on.

37 Hours

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I was awake for 37 hours on Friday. It was pretty cool. Pulling an all-nighter on a night when you’re just goofing around is a very different experience than pulling an all-nighter desperately trying to finish a term paper in an hour that should have taken a week to write. Normally, all-nighters are such a stressful experience that the next day always feels a little off. The lighting everywhere seems strange, too bright or too dim. People all seem to be moving in slow-motion one second, and the next everyone’s in fast-forward. Everyone’s speech is very difficult to understand for some reason. And it’s always VERY hard to stay awake.

This was completely different. Friday, at work, Steve called and asked if we wanted to go to Gustav’s. Gustav’s is a German pub/restaurant in NE Portland that’s far enough away from downtown (where I live), that I’ve only been there once with Steve. But now Steve has a car! So quickly, Miles and Ang and I all agreed to meet in the tech room at 9pm (happy hour starts at 10). At 9, we all got together, plus Mark, and headed to Gustav’s. We had so much food. The bill was 50-some dollars between five guys at happy hour. Everyone ate some chicken strips and fries. We all had a large plate of sausage. We all partook of two large orders of fondue. We all had some sort of really rich chocolate dessert. The rest of the guys all had a large mug of dark beer, and I had two Cider Jacks. We all stumbled out at about 11:30, fat and happy.

On the way back downtown, Miles asked if I wanted to hang out in the tek room with him and work on Mutton Kombat (remember Mutton Kombat? from months and months ago?). I said sure, since Annie was in Tacoma for the weekend and wouldn’t care if I spent all night in the tek room geeking out.

So at about midnight, Miles and I sat down and started work. We worked really hard for awhile, then we looked up at the clock and realized it was 6AM. We paused to get breakfast from McDonald’s. Alex was supposed to show up at about Noon to talk to Miles about our other game project, Cube Fighter. Miles and I were supposed to go on shift at about 10AM. We kept working on the game through until 10, when we came on shift and did some work stuff for awhile. Alex finally showed up around 1:30, and at 2pm, I was off shift. Miles and Alex were babbling about code, so I sat down and looked for japanese fonts online. Finally, at about 4:30, we all headed for home (we all live in the same Student Housing building). At 5PM, I was sitting in my living room trying to decide if I was hungry or tired or wide awake (I wasn’t really any of them), when my Mom called and offered me dinner. She picked me up and we had a huge meal of pork chops and steak and baked potatos and salad and ice cream. it was great.

After dinner, I lay down on the couch and started reading one of my brother’s comics. 20 minutes later I woke up and realized I’d been asleep, so I got Mom to take me home to go to bed. Of course, by the time I got home, I was wide awake again, so I stayed up and watched Saturday Night Live, which was horrible. Really bad episode. Finally, at 3AM, I forced myself to go to bed, even though I still wasn’t really tired.

I had been up for 37 hours straight, going strong the whole time (except the 20min nap). It was really odd. I didn’t feel drained or out of it, or anything. A very interesting experience. Mutton Kombat is coming along well, and I hope to get some information on it posted on play.fojar.com later today.