I know shopping is not supposed to be difficult. You park, you go in, you get what you need, you get in line, you get out. Simple. Easy. Everything is different again. The boxes of toasters were fine where they were. What does a cube of pillows next to a cube of mingled tupperware and stamped artisanal pepper shakers supposed to mean? I should buy some hats. The jeans are just as good, if not better at Goodwill. If the mouse pads are in the photography department I will cry inside for a few minutes. There has to be a way to predict market fluctuations on the price of Nerf assault weapons. I cannot play Cribbage on a sheet of paper again, I'm better than that, you're better than that! Grow up! Let's build one. That's a lot of holes to drill. Not too many. I love customer service, but the air is impossibly dry. Uniforms and no tinted glasses and no facial hair and no headphones or earplugs or even earmuffs to help abate the halls echoing and that idle siren public address system. I was bound to be fired, and then quit, and then quit, and then simply stop going, and then be fired the final time I gave it a run. Breathing it sounds like a gale through a mesa canyon. The taste is hospital and hostile with so many confused and irritated and little kid lungs sucking and blowing. Draped cobwebs full of ants. I do not understand why the lights have to be so. The air pressure is all wrong. Leaving is expulsion from a mouth of a fossil, still throbbing with life, and ages dead. I head home with a few bags of things I've torn off of its sides and tips and joints, maybe a truck bed's worth now and then to help me survive in my wilderness and it's over. Bang, boom, piece of cake. I hate shopping. It is incredibly difficult and staying calm is key. Throw in too many people and the math begins "do I really, absolutely, need?"
///Moderat - "Sick With It"
Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
Showing posts with label management. Show all posts
Showing posts with label management. Show all posts
4/21/16
12/24/15
Prior To the Holidays
I want a tank for Christmas. Or a giant robot decked out in yellow, orange, and pink and black. Or a Gulf blue and orange Z car. Or a plot of land on which to build my miniature fortress.
I am not staying up or threatening Santa again this year. He knows what he did. Imagining a rolling and roiling knife fight with Santa Claus. Robo Claus. I imagine it going something like trying to fight Mad Pierrot. I don't need or want Christmas gifts from Santa. That dude. That guy. Nuke the North Pole. I am already drawing up the campaign posters. That's the only way we can put an end to his tyranny. The light reflected from converting the North Pole and several more latitudes to glass will balance out the weather changes from melting all of the ice. It'll save the world. A few decades later, nuke the South Pole. Just in case he pulled a super villain escape the first time. You have to let the planet rest for a minute or we'll all end up in Fallout 6.
It doesn't really feel like Christmas. I haven't talked much about holidays. We live in a different world now. The changes have crept in and grown to pillars and foundations from cells and seeds. I took a lot of time to see and understand the new world and I still am. It's been a bit of a strange year with a certain amount of disconnection and decoupling from holidays. I am pretty sure I have not delivered a single gift to anyone, including myself, on time. I guess as you get older, a certain amount of disconnection can be expected. A certain amount of migration. Not really a certain amount of migration, but certain migration in a measurable amount. There's a massive difference.
For the first time I have put up evergreens! The sensation and scent is wonderful. Not a tree. I haven't put up a tree since I made my first permanent home all my own. I've begun with a wreath hanging in front of a window. I want to put lights on it, but the hazards to myself and my cats running around with the lights off and finding games and ways to play with them are a little too great and will require more planning than I have put into it for this year. Next year we will add some layers to the design. Ornaments too. It will be pretty spectacular. By the standards of rediscovering Christmas.
I think that is what may have been happening this year. A rediscovery of the holidays, each and every one, and their redefinition as singular life has begun to solidify into a definite, if not unpredictable, course. Redefining relationships and reaffirming others and watching people change and change how they interact with you and how I interact with them. All of the elements of the galaxy and their interdependence is brought forth and thrown into sharp relief over holidays, along with how those elements are measured and quantified.
The year end look will have to be started well before the year actually ends to get everything into something resembling a timeline. I'm up for the challenge. I believe I am up for the challenge. It's not like the holidays bear no significance in this new world. It's that I am trying to better understand what their significance is. A lot like a kid trying to understand what the significance of breaking a lamp is, or drawing on the walls, or going to work, or playing in the street, or not talking to strangers, or the sun coming up, or clouds in the same sky moving in different directions, or being tired the day after staying up all night.
I'm trying to get into the Christmas spirit and think about what I want to change and affect in the next year of life. It's not my new year. Calculating what my actual age is (I haven't been celebrating my birthdays like I should): I am 30 going on 31. My thirty first birthday in my 30th iteration of life may actually be the day after Christmas. An odd alignment of perspectives I guess. I can't help chuckling. It is an odd confluence of parameters. At the intersection of sixth street and sixth street, you are at the nexus of the universe.
I do not hate the holidays. All gifts to be sent out are on a four to five week delay. Life has been exceptionally demanding; your patience is appreciated. Actually, I love them. Still ten years out from being a real boy, at the least. Those ten years will fly.
///Peanuts - "The Christmas Dance" when you've got yourself about as together as you possibly can without tampering.
I am not staying up or threatening Santa again this year. He knows what he did. Imagining a rolling and roiling knife fight with Santa Claus. Robo Claus. I imagine it going something like trying to fight Mad Pierrot. I don't need or want Christmas gifts from Santa. That dude. That guy. Nuke the North Pole. I am already drawing up the campaign posters. That's the only way we can put an end to his tyranny. The light reflected from converting the North Pole and several more latitudes to glass will balance out the weather changes from melting all of the ice. It'll save the world. A few decades later, nuke the South Pole. Just in case he pulled a super villain escape the first time. You have to let the planet rest for a minute or we'll all end up in Fallout 6.
It doesn't really feel like Christmas. I haven't talked much about holidays. We live in a different world now. The changes have crept in and grown to pillars and foundations from cells and seeds. I took a lot of time to see and understand the new world and I still am. It's been a bit of a strange year with a certain amount of disconnection and decoupling from holidays. I am pretty sure I have not delivered a single gift to anyone, including myself, on time. I guess as you get older, a certain amount of disconnection can be expected. A certain amount of migration. Not really a certain amount of migration, but certain migration in a measurable amount. There's a massive difference.
For the first time I have put up evergreens! The sensation and scent is wonderful. Not a tree. I haven't put up a tree since I made my first permanent home all my own. I've begun with a wreath hanging in front of a window. I want to put lights on it, but the hazards to myself and my cats running around with the lights off and finding games and ways to play with them are a little too great and will require more planning than I have put into it for this year. Next year we will add some layers to the design. Ornaments too. It will be pretty spectacular. By the standards of rediscovering Christmas.
I think that is what may have been happening this year. A rediscovery of the holidays, each and every one, and their redefinition as singular life has begun to solidify into a definite, if not unpredictable, course. Redefining relationships and reaffirming others and watching people change and change how they interact with you and how I interact with them. All of the elements of the galaxy and their interdependence is brought forth and thrown into sharp relief over holidays, along with how those elements are measured and quantified.
The year end look will have to be started well before the year actually ends to get everything into something resembling a timeline. I'm up for the challenge. I believe I am up for the challenge. It's not like the holidays bear no significance in this new world. It's that I am trying to better understand what their significance is. A lot like a kid trying to understand what the significance of breaking a lamp is, or drawing on the walls, or going to work, or playing in the street, or not talking to strangers, or the sun coming up, or clouds in the same sky moving in different directions, or being tired the day after staying up all night.
I'm trying to get into the Christmas spirit and think about what I want to change and affect in the next year of life. It's not my new year. Calculating what my actual age is (I haven't been celebrating my birthdays like I should): I am 30 going on 31. My thirty first birthday in my 30th iteration of life may actually be the day after Christmas. An odd alignment of perspectives I guess. I can't help chuckling. It is an odd confluence of parameters. At the intersection of sixth street and sixth street, you are at the nexus of the universe.
I do not hate the holidays. All gifts to be sent out are on a four to five week delay. Life has been exceptionally demanding; your patience is appreciated. Actually, I love them. Still ten years out from being a real boy, at the least. Those ten years will fly.
///Peanuts - "The Christmas Dance" when you've got yourself about as together as you possibly can without tampering.
3/14/15
Bah
Engage the suppo meta super chim gank ja ja ja hahaha ckck la la la jhjh gohgoh fukjj aooao uiw way of looking at things. Or make a hard break, no?
It's been a very long time, we know. All of us know. It's been a long time for a reason and we support that reason whatever that reason may be and however that reason came to be. We support it. It has taken a lot of force to bring everyone to the table. Hell, it's taken a lot of brute force simply to bring us all to the table, let alone a table.
Some of us want to wave around our individuals flags. I am fighting, as the selected individual to represent our collective passport, to wave a single one, but everyone wants to be heard so, I guess I will step away for the song, it's a rarity, but feels appropriate:
well that did not take long to fail. As soon as the spotlight descended they scattered like cockroaches. Big surprise. Machinations of my brain. Faults and artifacts you say. I say. Could it be that the prices I would have to pay should they be named may be so high that I cannot let their names loose anymore or must erase the names as soon as I have let them loose should they be known and summoned on an account other than my own I and I alone should feel the repercussions or should I say that even having mentioned them I should now fall under their disgrace and suffer the consequences in utter paranoia and I should I now tell you that having disclosed that much information the knowledge alone will tell the body and mind collective to brace for impact that other worldly souls should be (this is all in a Britton accent) coming down upon my head?
No. Some of that's true. Most of it's not. I know a lot of what happens inside my head is my own fault. I know a lot of it is not and if I could pluck your eye balls out of your head and implant them into mine you'd want to kill yourself to. Every day. Maybe not every hour. Sometimes some hours people you surround yourself with help you to forget what is all around.
You can all laugh and drink and I drink to forget but not to forget my circumstances or anything like that. I get it. I didn't do good in school and I missed out on trade school by going to learning school and I couldve jumped out of it if I'd known or had the balls to do it instead of taking everything I was force fed, because being a mechanic is tip top, but I didn't so... whatever.
Look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's whatever man! Rimshot.
I drink to forget my father and the senseless beatings and I drink to forget the fact that I can't see straight into a vagina and I drink that I cant see straight at children because they give me the heebee jeebees every time I'm alone with them and I can't stop imagining what a giant penis feels like in a tiny weewee or if a tiny wenis gets hard or if they know or if I knew back then if someone was cleaning me or just being fucking weird or if there's someone who should be on my end of days "I'm going to scoop your motherfucking eyeball out with a margerine plastic knife" or not or if patting one of them bastards on the back is too much contact or too little or if I should shuffle on down to Maryland and kill my father and just have it out, take my time, and have a happy weird time with a kid of my own eventually and explain to him or her that you'll never meet your father because he's dead because I killed him.
Look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's whatever man! Rimshot.
A friend of mine keeps saying "bah" and I think he's doing it in part because I told him saying "it is what it is" is the Pittsburgher, PAer, way of saying "I dunno" northeaster-ish. Northeaster shit. You could just say ellipsis but that's too many penstrokes, yeah? Yeah is an ellipsis too. Dot dot doooooooooooooooooooooooooooot. To other thoughts along the same train, not quite a hard break, however hard enough to change the frames position along the wall to be noticeable. Hard enough to be, should someone visit, a highlight in the tour to the tune of "you've changed."
So we're here and we've arrived and I will borrow in the meantime a "bah."
I cannot tell you how much I've loved you but I can tell you how much I've missed you.
It's good to work. It's good to work at what you love. It's better when the work brings me closer to you.
Breaking trail. Breaking silence. Breaking my heart for you. I miss you every day. You have no idea how much I wish multitasking was an actual thing.
Keep streamlined. Stay feathered. The wind is screaming aginst your nose and mine too. Feather through the days and weeks.
///Unkle & Sparklehorse - (Maria Gur Cover [Insane Lullaby]) ....upon a podium.... you're charming and you're brave
It's been a very long time, we know. All of us know. It's been a long time for a reason and we support that reason whatever that reason may be and however that reason came to be. We support it. It has taken a lot of force to bring everyone to the table. Hell, it's taken a lot of brute force simply to bring us all to the table, let alone a table.
Some of us want to wave around our individuals flags. I am fighting, as the selected individual to represent our collective passport, to wave a single one, but everyone wants to be heard so, I guess I will step away for the song, it's a rarity, but feels appropriate:
well that did not take long to fail. As soon as the spotlight descended they scattered like cockroaches. Big surprise. Machinations of my brain. Faults and artifacts you say. I say. Could it be that the prices I would have to pay should they be named may be so high that I cannot let their names loose anymore or must erase the names as soon as I have let them loose should they be known and summoned on an account other than my own I and I alone should feel the repercussions or should I say that even having mentioned them I should now fall under their disgrace and suffer the consequences in utter paranoia and I should I now tell you that having disclosed that much information the knowledge alone will tell the body and mind collective to brace for impact that other worldly souls should be (this is all in a Britton accent) coming down upon my head?
No. Some of that's true. Most of it's not. I know a lot of what happens inside my head is my own fault. I know a lot of it is not and if I could pluck your eye balls out of your head and implant them into mine you'd want to kill yourself to. Every day. Maybe not every hour. Sometimes some hours people you surround yourself with help you to forget what is all around.
You can all laugh and drink and I drink to forget but not to forget my circumstances or anything like that. I get it. I didn't do good in school and I missed out on trade school by going to learning school and I couldve jumped out of it if I'd known or had the balls to do it instead of taking everything I was force fed, because being a mechanic is tip top, but I didn't so... whatever.
Look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's whatever man! Rimshot.
I drink to forget my father and the senseless beatings and I drink to forget the fact that I can't see straight into a vagina and I drink that I cant see straight at children because they give me the heebee jeebees every time I'm alone with them and I can't stop imagining what a giant penis feels like in a tiny weewee or if a tiny wenis gets hard or if they know or if I knew back then if someone was cleaning me or just being fucking weird or if there's someone who should be on my end of days "I'm going to scoop your motherfucking eyeball out with a margerine plastic knife" or not or if patting one of them bastards on the back is too much contact or too little or if I should shuffle on down to Maryland and kill my father and just have it out, take my time, and have a happy weird time with a kid of my own eventually and explain to him or her that you'll never meet your father because he's dead because I killed him.
Look up in the sky, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's whatever man! Rimshot.
A friend of mine keeps saying "bah" and I think he's doing it in part because I told him saying "it is what it is" is the Pittsburgher, PAer, way of saying "I dunno" northeaster-ish. Northeaster shit. You could just say ellipsis but that's too many penstrokes, yeah? Yeah is an ellipsis too. Dot dot doooooooooooooooooooooooooooot. To other thoughts along the same train, not quite a hard break, however hard enough to change the frames position along the wall to be noticeable. Hard enough to be, should someone visit, a highlight in the tour to the tune of "you've changed."
So we're here and we've arrived and I will borrow in the meantime a "bah."
I cannot tell you how much I've loved you but I can tell you how much I've missed you.
It's good to work. It's good to work at what you love. It's better when the work brings me closer to you.
Breaking trail. Breaking silence. Breaking my heart for you. I miss you every day. You have no idea how much I wish multitasking was an actual thing.
Keep streamlined. Stay feathered. The wind is screaming aginst your nose and mine too. Feather through the days and weeks.
///Unkle & Sparklehorse - (Maria Gur Cover [Insane Lullaby]) ....upon a podium.... you're charming and you're brave
3/17/14
Sequencer
It's been a very long time. I have no apologies (I do). The growing distance was daunting and becoming a thing alive all it's own. Retreating crash zoom, but we're safe again. Contained. Able to love and much more importantly to pick up threads of circuits and lay them new against the board and chips that have melted, over heated beyond recovery, and reached the end of their service lives and that's good. It's a beautiful thing to open the panel and watch sunlight dazzle every which way against the gold and green and know every thing, multicolored, bent, pinched, blackened, and water seized can go directly to the heap for recycling or trash.
What kept me? What kept you! We've been here forever. If you didn't want me to slam reverse for ten feet and then floor it while you sped ahead to the first hairpin, you shouldn't have said the first one to cross the finish line wins. You could've mentioned... ah whatever, it's a joke, but I'm not funny.
Control is not my strong point, but I try to make it a stronger point and that's something. I'm beginning to understand anew that I will never reach a point where we all agree on anything on a consistent basis. I'm not okay with that. Are you?
I saw him again today. I am not happy about it. I have to be more careful. I think I may have slipped up before and mentioned him by name to a friend again after I told him it would never happen again. He was not happy about it. If I'm not careful we will have to pay for it. I will be. Let's kick things forward. Snap the key off in the ignition. What are you waiting for? You creep me out when you stand still. You look like you're not breathing. You look like you're drowning and I can't swim, hon'. I'm sorry. I should know by now and I don't. It's not going to be alright. Can I snap a photo of my face on the water atop your head? I'll get the angle right so my phone is not visible and it'll be me with Thursday's overcast over my shoulder. I'll make it look good this time around. Not like the first time you made my skin crawl away from my ribs like a window shade when I had to touch your face to be sure you were still there and not a fried up bit of my retina.
Let's enter the sequencer. Let's wind it up. If not now, when? Forget the God damned mission for a minute. Never forget, but do not let it overwhelm you. These are very key pieces. These are very important stages in construction and becoming and missteps will cost, but not more than ghost steps. Engage the sequencer and do not fear yourself. Fear is the mind killer and aboard a destroyer as capable as yours, fear cannot be afforded safe passage.
///El-P - "A Christmas Fucking Miracle" they can never take away what you were born with
What kept me? What kept you! We've been here forever. If you didn't want me to slam reverse for ten feet and then floor it while you sped ahead to the first hairpin, you shouldn't have said the first one to cross the finish line wins. You could've mentioned... ah whatever, it's a joke, but I'm not funny.
Control is not my strong point, but I try to make it a stronger point and that's something. I'm beginning to understand anew that I will never reach a point where we all agree on anything on a consistent basis. I'm not okay with that. Are you?
I saw him again today. I am not happy about it. I have to be more careful. I think I may have slipped up before and mentioned him by name to a friend again after I told him it would never happen again. He was not happy about it. If I'm not careful we will have to pay for it. I will be. Let's kick things forward. Snap the key off in the ignition. What are you waiting for? You creep me out when you stand still. You look like you're not breathing. You look like you're drowning and I can't swim, hon'. I'm sorry. I should know by now and I don't. It's not going to be alright. Can I snap a photo of my face on the water atop your head? I'll get the angle right so my phone is not visible and it'll be me with Thursday's overcast over my shoulder. I'll make it look good this time around. Not like the first time you made my skin crawl away from my ribs like a window shade when I had to touch your face to be sure you were still there and not a fried up bit of my retina.
Let's enter the sequencer. Let's wind it up. If not now, when? Forget the God damned mission for a minute. Never forget, but do not let it overwhelm you. These are very key pieces. These are very important stages in construction and becoming and missteps will cost, but not more than ghost steps. Engage the sequencer and do not fear yourself. Fear is the mind killer and aboard a destroyer as capable as yours, fear cannot be afforded safe passage.
///El-P - "A Christmas Fucking Miracle" they can never take away what you were born with
2/24/14
The Difficulty With Plural Being
There is a stark difficulty that faces harsh light when existing on multiple planes, the first being sudden hunger and damn near undeniable sleepiness that strikes at inopportune hours. You can't remember with reliable accuracy the last time you ate, so you make up stories to keep the rest of the story in line. Sometimes, though, they're accurate memories of eating denied with the fullsomeness of passion that denotes some kind of dedication to the farce and the enforced and necessary truth.
Social media contributes to the complication, making sign posts more difficult to spot, but they are there. Multiple accounts in multiple names. A multiplying outlet of personas allowing for better and more extensive development of those personas. When does it operate to a fault? Active contribution toward managing split personalities becoming a game of musical chairs?
Limit the number of chairs? Add definition and resolution? Or take the pills. Fastidious compartmentalization. And further compartmentalization and specialization. To be called upon at will or at least with some prefabrication, editing, summoning, and purpose, because that is the difference between the ill and the capable. The ability to select, observe, compensate, and respond in a reasonable and human fashion.
Everyone is plural, their "plural" being unanimous instead of fractured.
What happens when dominance is completely unpredictable, highly divided, and deeply embattled one against the other and prone, all the while, toward miscommunication? Are there special exceptions? Is there an "out"? When do you have to press the hand dealt and keep the game going, come whatever consequences, and when do you have the right to put the cards down and say "this is what is here, they add up to nonsense in terms of what the rules of the game dictate, and I do not want to play with them, have no heart in them, and would like to be dealt a new set or at least counted out of this particular round, but not necessarily the game."
I think the long sentence is probably the grounds for the answer. No matter how difficult or nonsensical the answer seems to me, the majority is fairly straightforward and a lot easier to comprehend. It does not hurt that they are alike too. I think that is one of the things that continues to vex me.
///The Echo Friendly - "Same Mistakes"
Social media contributes to the complication, making sign posts more difficult to spot, but they are there. Multiple accounts in multiple names. A multiplying outlet of personas allowing for better and more extensive development of those personas. When does it operate to a fault? Active contribution toward managing split personalities becoming a game of musical chairs?
Limit the number of chairs? Add definition and resolution? Or take the pills. Fastidious compartmentalization. And further compartmentalization and specialization. To be called upon at will or at least with some prefabrication, editing, summoning, and purpose, because that is the difference between the ill and the capable. The ability to select, observe, compensate, and respond in a reasonable and human fashion.
Everyone is plural, their "plural" being unanimous instead of fractured.
What happens when dominance is completely unpredictable, highly divided, and deeply embattled one against the other and prone, all the while, toward miscommunication? Are there special exceptions? Is there an "out"? When do you have to press the hand dealt and keep the game going, come whatever consequences, and when do you have the right to put the cards down and say "this is what is here, they add up to nonsense in terms of what the rules of the game dictate, and I do not want to play with them, have no heart in them, and would like to be dealt a new set or at least counted out of this particular round, but not necessarily the game."
I think the long sentence is probably the grounds for the answer. No matter how difficult or nonsensical the answer seems to me, the majority is fairly straightforward and a lot easier to comprehend. It does not hurt that they are alike too. I think that is one of the things that continues to vex me.
///The Echo Friendly - "Same Mistakes"
11/14/11
Work and Workarounds
Cued: writing music and word inducing fluids to maybe produce some super fluidity. So lets get through this in one piece, because time is precious and hacks do two takes. I kid. But seriously, there's a lot less to worry about when you know your nose keeps bleeding because you've been snuffling coke. There's a lot more to worry about when your nose keeps bleeding and as far as you know you've kept it clean. So maybe it's just the winter crush I've been sucking into my lungs and things will balance up. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just prone to nose bleeds. Maybe I've just been sniffing too much paint. Maybe I shouldn't keep sleeping at 48 degrees. Maybe I should stop worrying because at the end of the day, if I finish up with as many body parts and organs as I started with, things are pretty much as good as it gets.
Slugging my way through another work day I got to making conversation. There's only so many times you can walk by the people you don't want to talk to or have anything to do without having to say something. As I walked in the manager shook my hand. Both managers did. And I was immediately accosted by a union lifer suggesting I was buddy buddy with management. By itself laughable. Apparently the managers have never shaken hands with him first thing in the morning in all his 34 years. Which really makes me wonder: am I that much better than them? I've done nothing untoward to provoke a positive response from the high ups. I just do my shit and go home. Apparently having that much work ethic puts me at odds with my fellows and in the good graces of the up and ups. Which is hilarious. When you think about how inefficient things can be, how many times people can spin around in a circle to collect a paycheck instead of doing their jobs, it probably doesn't occur to you that having the ability to walk in a straight line could ever be that much of an asset. I laughed, shrugged, and went on doing my shit. I'm not concerned in the slightest. If anything, I know that if I show up I'm already ahead of most of the pack.
Which brings me to another conversation. I was talking to a guy who is apparently the heir apparent or at least the stop gap when managerial shifts are changing. The guy who's supposed to keep the ship righted, but everyone's been on the ship more than long enough to know what they're supposed to do and get it done without any supervision to speak of. He's "that guy" who's been around long enough to know what's up, but is absolutely incapable of leading effectively for any length of time, and so has been thrown a bone so he doesn't realize he is exactly the same for all of his time and would be better served doing something else entirely that pays better. Probably the reason they don't out right promote me (because I will immediately leverage that shit into a better position elsewhere), but anyway...
...I was talking about a coworker whose name I did not know and talked about him being the guy who makes the dirty jokes. To which, I will refer to him here as the fucking mook, the mook responded before I could finish my thought, "ah yes, you are talking about so and so. I'm the one who makes the good clean jokes." I literally had to stop what I was doing to close and rub my eyes out of frustration and disbelief. The jokes he makes are terrible. I mention off hand that time flies, he rejoins with a long diatribe about scientific principles and a crock of other fragments that essentially end two minutes later with the punch line "time can never actually fly." I had to pause to weigh punching his lights out and the satisfaction that would bring versus the satisfaction of having a job and getting a paycheck. Pros and cons floated around for a few silent moments and I shook my head and walked away.
First of all, the fact that he would not understand that his sense of humor is absolutely terrible and steeped in enough dungeons and dragons dice rolling logic to make me want to hang myself on the hour every hour we occupy the same space is tough to deal with, but I do. Can't get paid if I'm dead. Second of all, the mook didn't even let me finish my thought. I paused for maybe five seconds to move some boxes while he stood around whining about how hard work is, citing examples of exertion fractions of what I did on the regular at my other job (holding my tongue so he could feel good about himself, because I like people to feel good around me), and he chimes in about being more valuable to me because he is the "good joke teller." My thought finished with "and the sex jokes are totally hilarious." They are. That's the thing about associating with older people. They've got smut, slut, muck in the rut down right filthy jokes you've never heard before and hearing these jokes in the family oriented brightly lit grocery store instead of a dark dive bar makes them all the more side splitting. Thirdly, few things pet me the wrong way harder than people that think they're funny. If you've got some albums recorded and played comedy central or some night clubs with success, then maybe you can say that. It's one of those things. How are you going to tell me that you are funny to me? That laugh coming out of my mouth is not directed to what you said, it's directed to what everyone else around me said about what you said. Sometimes it's in line, if you are actually funny to us. But if you are not funny at all, there's a real good chance I'm laughing at their heckling more than anything else.
It just makes me laugh most of all though that this mook tries to posture like he knows whats up. I've been on the new job for a week and already they all know I get shit done faster, more efficiently, and with higher fidelity than anyone there right now who is not also a manager. He asks me to do things and I do them, because I could care less who is actually in charge. I just do my eight and go home. The people I respect are the people that do it as well or better than me. He's not one of them. I'm not trying to start anything. We're breaking down pallets of products to carts and everything is being separated out to the finest scale, wasting huge amounts of time. Things are being left on pallets because "they're too heavy" to move. And I'm laughing the whole way. It takes this dude the entire day to shuffle five pallets. I was doing that in 1 and 2/3 hours where I was working before. People are hunching to catch their breath and rest their limbs and I am dumbfound by how weak they are. Dude is taller and heavier than me, but apparently he just wears his clothes well because he's all dough and his helper is made out of lightly whipped fluff. Tell me this isn't the average fitness level of 22 year olds these days. Seriously, if I got into a fight with someone in the backroom, the entire daytime crew couldn't stop me from killing him if they all fought against me together. I'm not saying I'm super human. I'm saying they're about as functional as cardboard cutouts with souls duct taped to them.
Then he keeps asking me if I need a hand with X and Y and I said yes at first because I thought he wanted to be helpful, until I realized he was using me to dodge doing anything actual. Because I work at a relatively high octane he was basically sucking around in my wake to put in face time. So the next time he asked and said "I would offer to give you a hand but the space you're working in is pretty small" (I intentionally walled myself into the pallets a good foot taller than me with no elbow room so I could get shit done without having to deal with bullshitting this idiot with small talk) I said "you don't need to offer me a hand ever, and yes, there's enough space for me and my thoughts and nothing else." Not trying to be rude, but I get blunt when I'm trying to get things done. Nevertheless, the mook follows me out into the aisles and starts touching the stuff I loaded up and I just walk away. If he wants to work my shit that badly then fine. Have at it. One thing I can't tolerate is people nipping at my work and then claiming it was all them when it's time to hand out kudos. Sure I could step up and say "hey he didn't do shit", but I'm much more the sort of person who prefers to let work speak for itself and hope the people up top can make that distinction on their own: "hey so and so doesnt get a damn thing done when person X isn't here too. Maybe it's all person X?"
Does that actually ever happen? I don't know if they ever do, but I guess I'm just soft spoken. Let the work speak. Like if I get an 85 on my final paper DONT FUCKING FAIL ME BECAUSE I MISSED CLASS TOO MANY TIMES YOU FUCKKKK!@#@##%!!@%!@#. Yeah, that TA phd student who wore the skinny jeans and faux hawk in my media studies class back in 2008 is still on the list of people who are going to be strangled to death with my hands if civilization and law and order give out. Maybe not. Maybe just when I have nothing else to do besides dodge the law and balance the karmic checkbook that is still pretty far out of whack. But thats years off (if I win the lottery, dodging the law is expensive) or decades. Depends on how much I actually get done. Let the work speak for itself.
I realized today that my internal conversations were seeping out when I heard someone say "you unconscionable fat bastard" in my voice while I was walking behind someone. Definitely need to restore some volume control there. People shouldn't have to feel awful just for being coincident with me in space and time. That's just not fair to chance and circumstance. Plus it's not like they made me late for something. Not like the woman driving in front of me on a one lane one way road with cars parked on both sides who cruised at seven miles per hour. I was about ready to ride my bike over her back bumper, right over the roof, and down the hood of her car while flipping her double barreled fuck yous. I was about twenty minutes in to a conversation with myself when I reached the conclusion that I had to go take a dump. What I didn't realize was that I said that out loud, in mumbling tones no less, but someone caught enough of it and absolutely shot me the meanest 60 year old sour face ever. I laughed. At how lemon juiced her face looked. She flipped her cart around and strut away. Point taken, though. Need to guard my gates a little tighter. I can't always control what goes on in the compound, but I can at least try to control who and what goes in and out. Work around it, na mean?
///Four Tet - "A Joy" consciousness is noisy
Slugging my way through another work day I got to making conversation. There's only so many times you can walk by the people you don't want to talk to or have anything to do without having to say something. As I walked in the manager shook my hand. Both managers did. And I was immediately accosted by a union lifer suggesting I was buddy buddy with management. By itself laughable. Apparently the managers have never shaken hands with him first thing in the morning in all his 34 years. Which really makes me wonder: am I that much better than them? I've done nothing untoward to provoke a positive response from the high ups. I just do my shit and go home. Apparently having that much work ethic puts me at odds with my fellows and in the good graces of the up and ups. Which is hilarious. When you think about how inefficient things can be, how many times people can spin around in a circle to collect a paycheck instead of doing their jobs, it probably doesn't occur to you that having the ability to walk in a straight line could ever be that much of an asset. I laughed, shrugged, and went on doing my shit. I'm not concerned in the slightest. If anything, I know that if I show up I'm already ahead of most of the pack.
Which brings me to another conversation. I was talking to a guy who is apparently the heir apparent or at least the stop gap when managerial shifts are changing. The guy who's supposed to keep the ship righted, but everyone's been on the ship more than long enough to know what they're supposed to do and get it done without any supervision to speak of. He's "that guy" who's been around long enough to know what's up, but is absolutely incapable of leading effectively for any length of time, and so has been thrown a bone so he doesn't realize he is exactly the same for all of his time and would be better served doing something else entirely that pays better. Probably the reason they don't out right promote me (because I will immediately leverage that shit into a better position elsewhere), but anyway...
...I was talking about a coworker whose name I did not know and talked about him being the guy who makes the dirty jokes. To which, I will refer to him here as the fucking mook, the mook responded before I could finish my thought, "ah yes, you are talking about so and so. I'm the one who makes the good clean jokes." I literally had to stop what I was doing to close and rub my eyes out of frustration and disbelief. The jokes he makes are terrible. I mention off hand that time flies, he rejoins with a long diatribe about scientific principles and a crock of other fragments that essentially end two minutes later with the punch line "time can never actually fly." I had to pause to weigh punching his lights out and the satisfaction that would bring versus the satisfaction of having a job and getting a paycheck. Pros and cons floated around for a few silent moments and I shook my head and walked away.
First of all, the fact that he would not understand that his sense of humor is absolutely terrible and steeped in enough dungeons and dragons dice rolling logic to make me want to hang myself on the hour every hour we occupy the same space is tough to deal with, but I do. Can't get paid if I'm dead. Second of all, the mook didn't even let me finish my thought. I paused for maybe five seconds to move some boxes while he stood around whining about how hard work is, citing examples of exertion fractions of what I did on the regular at my other job (holding my tongue so he could feel good about himself, because I like people to feel good around me), and he chimes in about being more valuable to me because he is the "good joke teller." My thought finished with "and the sex jokes are totally hilarious." They are. That's the thing about associating with older people. They've got smut, slut, muck in the rut down right filthy jokes you've never heard before and hearing these jokes in the family oriented brightly lit grocery store instead of a dark dive bar makes them all the more side splitting. Thirdly, few things pet me the wrong way harder than people that think they're funny. If you've got some albums recorded and played comedy central or some night clubs with success, then maybe you can say that. It's one of those things. How are you going to tell me that you are funny to me? That laugh coming out of my mouth is not directed to what you said, it's directed to what everyone else around me said about what you said. Sometimes it's in line, if you are actually funny to us. But if you are not funny at all, there's a real good chance I'm laughing at their heckling more than anything else.
It just makes me laugh most of all though that this mook tries to posture like he knows whats up. I've been on the new job for a week and already they all know I get shit done faster, more efficiently, and with higher fidelity than anyone there right now who is not also a manager. He asks me to do things and I do them, because I could care less who is actually in charge. I just do my eight and go home. The people I respect are the people that do it as well or better than me. He's not one of them. I'm not trying to start anything. We're breaking down pallets of products to carts and everything is being separated out to the finest scale, wasting huge amounts of time. Things are being left on pallets because "they're too heavy" to move. And I'm laughing the whole way. It takes this dude the entire day to shuffle five pallets. I was doing that in 1 and 2/3 hours where I was working before. People are hunching to catch their breath and rest their limbs and I am dumbfound by how weak they are. Dude is taller and heavier than me, but apparently he just wears his clothes well because he's all dough and his helper is made out of lightly whipped fluff. Tell me this isn't the average fitness level of 22 year olds these days. Seriously, if I got into a fight with someone in the backroom, the entire daytime crew couldn't stop me from killing him if they all fought against me together. I'm not saying I'm super human. I'm saying they're about as functional as cardboard cutouts with souls duct taped to them.
Then he keeps asking me if I need a hand with X and Y and I said yes at first because I thought he wanted to be helpful, until I realized he was using me to dodge doing anything actual. Because I work at a relatively high octane he was basically sucking around in my wake to put in face time. So the next time he asked and said "I would offer to give you a hand but the space you're working in is pretty small" (I intentionally walled myself into the pallets a good foot taller than me with no elbow room so I could get shit done without having to deal with bullshitting this idiot with small talk) I said "you don't need to offer me a hand ever, and yes, there's enough space for me and my thoughts and nothing else." Not trying to be rude, but I get blunt when I'm trying to get things done. Nevertheless, the mook follows me out into the aisles and starts touching the stuff I loaded up and I just walk away. If he wants to work my shit that badly then fine. Have at it. One thing I can't tolerate is people nipping at my work and then claiming it was all them when it's time to hand out kudos. Sure I could step up and say "hey he didn't do shit", but I'm much more the sort of person who prefers to let work speak for itself and hope the people up top can make that distinction on their own: "hey so and so doesnt get a damn thing done when person X isn't here too. Maybe it's all person X?"
Does that actually ever happen? I don't know if they ever do, but I guess I'm just soft spoken. Let the work speak. Like if I get an 85 on my final paper DONT FUCKING FAIL ME BECAUSE I MISSED CLASS TOO MANY TIMES YOU FUCKKKK!@#@##%!!@%!@#. Yeah, that TA phd student who wore the skinny jeans and faux hawk in my media studies class back in 2008 is still on the list of people who are going to be strangled to death with my hands if civilization and law and order give out. Maybe not. Maybe just when I have nothing else to do besides dodge the law and balance the karmic checkbook that is still pretty far out of whack. But thats years off (if I win the lottery, dodging the law is expensive) or decades. Depends on how much I actually get done. Let the work speak for itself.
I realized today that my internal conversations were seeping out when I heard someone say "you unconscionable fat bastard" in my voice while I was walking behind someone. Definitely need to restore some volume control there. People shouldn't have to feel awful just for being coincident with me in space and time. That's just not fair to chance and circumstance. Plus it's not like they made me late for something. Not like the woman driving in front of me on a one lane one way road with cars parked on both sides who cruised at seven miles per hour. I was about ready to ride my bike over her back bumper, right over the roof, and down the hood of her car while flipping her double barreled fuck yous. I was about twenty minutes in to a conversation with myself when I reached the conclusion that I had to go take a dump. What I didn't realize was that I said that out loud, in mumbling tones no less, but someone caught enough of it and absolutely shot me the meanest 60 year old sour face ever. I laughed. At how lemon juiced her face looked. She flipped her cart around and strut away. Point taken, though. Need to guard my gates a little tighter. I can't always control what goes on in the compound, but I can at least try to control who and what goes in and out. Work around it, na mean?
///Four Tet - "A Joy" consciousness is noisy
10/30/11
Cheesus Christ, Does Nothing Work?
I'm sorry I've been away. Less sorry than usual. Only because I've been away because I've been working and not because I've been furiously masturbating. It's been hard. The living. The being aliveness of breathing. Not the breathing part. That part is easy. What's been hard is trying to have a continuous thought when bells go off every fifteen minutes. Remember that book about that society that suppressed creativity by fitting every person with an apparatus that sounded a chime every five minutes to interrupt thought and render it's populace unable to create new ideas? No? Well that's what it's been like. A lot of "gotta put bread on the table" things interrupting the "gotta put bread into my skull so I don't check out of this world on some aneurysm shiz".
I've had one of those days. Not really one of those days, but one of those days stretched across an entire week. One of those days where you come down the break room stairs after sitting for fifteen minutes that flew by in a blink because you fell asleep in your chair watching infomercials about magic brassieres and magic belts that will force your body to do things you haven't taught and practiced or considered that maybe your body just wasn't meant to do for any length of time and you go to get back to work and realize, picking up your box cutter that you left your mug of tea upstairs. And it's going to take you another five minutes to go back and get it and your legs are too dead for yet another trip up those damned stairs, but you are already dead thirsty and have to weigh which death is more unpleasant.
One of those days where the fattest jar of the smelliest pickled peppers in piss yellow juice slips out of your clutches because your hands are cramping and every single paper towel dispenser is empty because the people responsible for keeping them filled never do their jobs as well as you do yours. The mop bucket is at the other end of the store, another five minute round trip on sleeping hooves, and when you get there to fill the mop bucket there is no floor soap and the other fluids available would take up the spill and stink right along with the wax finish. You take the bucket and get halfway across the store before you realize its got a flat and you are utterly baffled as to how a plastic wheeled yellow tank of a bucket could have a flat before you realize a thread of the mop came loose and lodged in the wheel and, instead of plucking it out, the bucket was filled and dragged around for weeks, maybe months until the wheel turned into a plastic orange wedge, and since you were too tired to notice it sooner you've left a scratch on the floor several dozen yards long.
You walk the bucket back and have to pick it up and hug it's black stained, deli grease streaked body to yours because walking it back on the floor would double your error. Selecting a new bucket you walk it across the store to the opposite slop sink and find that while there is cleaning solution appropriate for the task, someone was so kind as to snap off the knob, rendering the sink into something more like a flushless urinal, and so you walk the bucket with soap back to the other end of the store with the working sink and wonder why they would bolt the soap to the wall instead of making it possible for you to take the soap to the working sink and prevent having to do the routine all over again, and why the hell you would need a manager to sign off on throwing out a broken bucket in the first place when they so rarely use them they wouldn't know if it was broken or not and can you really not be trusted to make a simple judgement like "a three wheeled bucket is no longer useful."
=sigh= sometimes nothing's working for ya. And by the time you get back to the shattered jar it's been tracked up and down the aisle. By your coworkers. And you wonder how much time you'd do if you just killed them all and called it a day and a win for humanity.
///The Chemical Brothers - "Surface to Air" take flight and forget the world even exists... what i want to do. but its the only outpost in this sector of the galaxy and my ship can't take me far enough to reach the next one. so we keep in touch.
I've had one of those days. Not really one of those days, but one of those days stretched across an entire week. One of those days where you come down the break room stairs after sitting for fifteen minutes that flew by in a blink because you fell asleep in your chair watching infomercials about magic brassieres and magic belts that will force your body to do things you haven't taught and practiced or considered that maybe your body just wasn't meant to do for any length of time and you go to get back to work and realize, picking up your box cutter that you left your mug of tea upstairs. And it's going to take you another five minutes to go back and get it and your legs are too dead for yet another trip up those damned stairs, but you are already dead thirsty and have to weigh which death is more unpleasant.
One of those days where the fattest jar of the smelliest pickled peppers in piss yellow juice slips out of your clutches because your hands are cramping and every single paper towel dispenser is empty because the people responsible for keeping them filled never do their jobs as well as you do yours. The mop bucket is at the other end of the store, another five minute round trip on sleeping hooves, and when you get there to fill the mop bucket there is no floor soap and the other fluids available would take up the spill and stink right along with the wax finish. You take the bucket and get halfway across the store before you realize its got a flat and you are utterly baffled as to how a plastic wheeled yellow tank of a bucket could have a flat before you realize a thread of the mop came loose and lodged in the wheel and, instead of plucking it out, the bucket was filled and dragged around for weeks, maybe months until the wheel turned into a plastic orange wedge, and since you were too tired to notice it sooner you've left a scratch on the floor several dozen yards long.
You walk the bucket back and have to pick it up and hug it's black stained, deli grease streaked body to yours because walking it back on the floor would double your error. Selecting a new bucket you walk it across the store to the opposite slop sink and find that while there is cleaning solution appropriate for the task, someone was so kind as to snap off the knob, rendering the sink into something more like a flushless urinal, and so you walk the bucket with soap back to the other end of the store with the working sink and wonder why they would bolt the soap to the wall instead of making it possible for you to take the soap to the working sink and prevent having to do the routine all over again, and why the hell you would need a manager to sign off on throwing out a broken bucket in the first place when they so rarely use them they wouldn't know if it was broken or not and can you really not be trusted to make a simple judgement like "a three wheeled bucket is no longer useful."
=sigh= sometimes nothing's working for ya. And by the time you get back to the shattered jar it's been tracked up and down the aisle. By your coworkers. And you wonder how much time you'd do if you just killed them all and called it a day and a win for humanity.
///The Chemical Brothers - "Surface to Air" take flight and forget the world even exists... what i want to do. but its the only outpost in this sector of the galaxy and my ship can't take me far enough to reach the next one. so we keep in touch.
8/12/09
approaches
so i'm learning to approach things from the other side of the counter. i've been in the customer service industry for forever and im so used to being blank and open and receptive when it comes to business transactions that im having a hard time shifting into my managerial retail position. im not used to making declarative statements. im not used to making demands. im not used to asking people when i can expect them in my office. and im not used to trying to provide the best service at the lowest price possible.
that last one is the hardest part. if i cut my profit margins as slim as possible i wont be able to afford to keep the store open and people employed. its just that simple. breaking even on merchandise only covers the cost of merchandise! when its all sold and the register closes for the day what's left to turn the lights on tomorrow, buy my groceries for dinner, pay the window washer, and pay for the internet access and software licenses ill need tomorrow is nothing. nothing is left.
so i need to get used to telling people what something will cost THEM instead of what it will cost ME to make it. Let THEM decide if they like the price before trying to cut out corners (and make things more difficult for myself) to deliver them the same thing except cheaper.
Sure. Thats the kind of thinking that probably fucked GM but it didnt help that GMs customers were fucking idiots who swallowed whatever they shat out. Not so, in my little shop. My customers are sharp and frugal. So I welcome the price bending and look forward to figuring out better ways to do things to keep my work load down, my profits up, and quality high as ever... but if i start off cutting rates ill be out of business before i learn anything. ;P
///dntel - "fear of corners" ironically this song was on when the owner and i had a discussion about how to price an order. unfortunately because i started off cutting so many corners in the labor to produce the shirts the owner advised me that i could not offer a discount on the shirt itself. the price quote doubled. the customers walked out on me (but promised to return... i hope they do!). generally an unsatisfactory resolution. but a learning moment i dont intend to squander. the training continues.
that last one is the hardest part. if i cut my profit margins as slim as possible i wont be able to afford to keep the store open and people employed. its just that simple. breaking even on merchandise only covers the cost of merchandise! when its all sold and the register closes for the day what's left to turn the lights on tomorrow, buy my groceries for dinner, pay the window washer, and pay for the internet access and software licenses ill need tomorrow is nothing. nothing is left.
so i need to get used to telling people what something will cost THEM instead of what it will cost ME to make it. Let THEM decide if they like the price before trying to cut out corners (and make things more difficult for myself) to deliver them the same thing except cheaper.
Sure. Thats the kind of thinking that probably fucked GM but it didnt help that GMs customers were fucking idiots who swallowed whatever they shat out. Not so, in my little shop. My customers are sharp and frugal. So I welcome the price bending and look forward to figuring out better ways to do things to keep my work load down, my profits up, and quality high as ever... but if i start off cutting rates ill be out of business before i learn anything. ;P
///dntel - "fear of corners" ironically this song was on when the owner and i had a discussion about how to price an order. unfortunately because i started off cutting so many corners in the labor to produce the shirts the owner advised me that i could not offer a discount on the shirt itself. the price quote doubled. the customers walked out on me (but promised to return... i hope they do!). generally an unsatisfactory resolution. but a learning moment i dont intend to squander. the training continues.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)