August, 2001:

Going to F-Town with foxyred.

I am mad at myself because I didn’t truly discover Ben Folds Five until this morning. Thank you farrisgoldstein>, and for pointing me in this direction.

When it was least expected,
the very stars we sat under
and wished upon
turned
like the family dog
gone rabid.

My words,
selected with painful caution,
were too careless for your
silent heart.

The rain beats harder still
upon the metal chimney
by my window,
but it will
not
be
washing
tonight.
My barriers, alongside yours,
will remain,
so
many
inches
away.

When every part of your mind and soul and heart tells you not to do something, don’t do it.

I will never do that again. I have learned my lesson.

Since new account sign ups are currently turned off, I decided to use one of the several usernames I signed up, but have never used in order to keep track of the injustices served to my be my employer. For those of you who are interested:

t is for TORTURE.

I will post a bio and some beginning remarks some time later today.

After publishing that tardiness document I started thinking about a time when I arrived at work, late as usual, to find a note on my desk from my boss telling me to go see him. After I sat down in his office he proceeded to pull up records of all of my lateness. It really pissed me off that he would keep such records, at yet not bother to include all the overtime I work, the late hours I stay, the working from home I do, and the extra bullshit I put up with in order to make sure my job is done and done right.

And just now, today, a wonderful idea hit me. If companies keep records of all the shit I do that they don’t like, I should keep similar records in regard to them. I should document the following things:

working late
weekend work
doing bullshit that isn’t part of my job description
feeling underpaid
feeling overworked
working on a project that I cannot stand
filling in for someone else and continuing to do my job
my boss leaving early
my boss taking a 3 hour lunch to play golf
coworkers screwing off
doing someone else’s job to meet a deadline
paying for shit out of pocket and not being reimbursed
skipping lunch in order to work more
getting passed over for promotions due to my age
feeling unappreciated when other company’s get benefits I don’t
not having the equipment I need to do something
working without training

and any other small thing that adds up to a reason to quit a job.

I think I’ll create a LiveJournal account to keep track of it all. This could be an interesting project.

Thanks to Tony‘s packrat like skills, I have a document (converted to web format) from my past that may be of some interest to you. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
joiseyguy>’s packrat like skills, I have a document (converted to web format) from my past that may be of some interest to you. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

---

[Same Damn Company I Work For Now]



Employee Counseling

Verbal Warning:	2/7/98
Written Notice:	4/13/98
Termination:

To: [Reverend Jim]



Your attendance is unacceptable and currently exceeds the [Crap Company] target cap rate of 2%. The following information lists your occurrences of absenteeism.

Date	Code	Amount	Reason for Absence
2-Jul	LATE		late 5 minutes
23-Jul	LATE		late 10 minutes
19-Aug	LATE		Late 41 minutes
20-Aug	OUT	8	Sick
4-Oct	OUT	8	sick
3-Nov	LATE		Late 5 minutes
5-Nov	LATE		Late 14 minutes
8-Nov	LATE		Late 6 minutes
12-Nov	LATE		Late 28 minutes
18-Nov	LATE		Late 83 minutes
12-Jan	OUT	8	Sick
13-Jan	OUT	8	Sick
24-Jan	LATE		Late 20 minutes
2-Feb	OUT	8	Sick
21-Feb	LATE		Late 15 minutes
24-Feb	LATE		Late 105 minutes
9-Mar	LATE		Late 13 minutes
16-Mar	LATE		Late 5 minutes
11-Apr	LATE		late 17 minutes

Improve. You can correct your performance by being at work as scheduled, signed into the phone tracking system as instructed and ready to assume your duties, perform your work and remain at work until the end of your designated shift. Additional lateness/absenteeism may result in further disciplinary action up to and including termination.



You will be reviewed again in thirty days to re-assess your performance and at that time another review date will be set.



There is no additional training required to change this behavior.



Please be aware that any further performance issues will result in further disciplinary action up to and including termination of your employment with [This Fucking Company].



                  

Employee’s Signature



Your signature indicates that you have seen this document. It does not imply that you agree with the contents. Signing indicates that you fully understand that a future performance problem of any kind may result in termination of assignment.

---

If I remember correctly, Tony didn’t include a BUNCH of the small shit to help keep me from getting fired. Therefore, the real world statistics were (are) MUCH worse than that.
joiseyguy> didn’t include a BUNCH of the small shit to help keep me from getting fired. Therefore, the real world statistics were (are) MUCH worse than that.


I guess I too just don’t like 71% of my life being scheduled for me.

More often than not I hear women make statements like “Don’t look at my breasts, look at me” or, “He didn’t look in my eyes the entire time we were talking”. The truth is, your eyes are not that impressive. On the other hand, your tits are huge, you’re not wearing a bra, and they are practically falling out of that thing you have wrapped around your chest and sometimes refer to as a shirt.

Wouldn’t you think something was odd if you went to the Washington Monument to find crowds of people starring in awe at the gardener’s shed? Of course you would.

If I were walking around with a hard-on showing through my pants, don’t tell me you wouldn’t stare. In fact, you would probably nudge your friend in the ribs and say “Look. That guy has a huge hard-on.” And then, of course, you would cover your ass by saying “and he was starring at my tits just five minutes ago.”

So the next time you feel the need to comment, take a look at yourself and tell me what your most outstanding feature is. After you realize that your tits are about the only thing you have to offer, shake them a little. We like that.

From: Bitch
To: revjim
Subject: RE: Hello

The only thing I’ve been doing is planning my wedding, did I tell you about that? If not, it’s next June, in Vegas. Should be lots of fun.

Some day, Daniel. Some day.

I am so fed up with companies who buy in to some proprietary piece of shit software because that software claims to fufill all their business needs, make them margaritas every morning, and stay well hidden under their desk when the wife comes into the office unannounced.

This little excerpt is from my place of employments official documentation on VPN access:

What operating systems does the Nortel (Extranet-VPN) client support?

[...list of 8,000,000 proprietary systems that are in bed with Nortel...]

There is not a Linux client, but several Unix clients and a Macintosh client are currently being tested.

In addition, I had a talk with our helpless-desk this morning in regard to the restoration of direct (through the firewall) internet access from my workstation, as opposed to having to use the slow, cumbersome, and constantly failing proxy servers my company has set up. The man on the other end of the phone told me that the firewall is back up and that it is being used. In a flash of lightening make yet another request to get out. It fails. I inform him of this. He asks me if I have the correct “firewall” address in my browser. I tell him that I am not using a browser, nor do I wish to use the proxy. He informs me that when I plug an address into the big settings window for my browser named “proxies” that that is setting up a firewall, not a proxy server. I don’t bother to argue with him. I ask him what services the proxy is willing to pass for me. He has no clue. I ask him how I am expected to access FTP servers. He informs me that the proxy will handle this (which I knew it did). I ask him what authentication method the proxy server uses for FTP. He has no clue. I ask him if the proxy server will handle SSH, or pserver requests. He has no clue. I ask him if there is a method that I can use to script proxy access into applications that used to work (without a proxy) without having to hardcode a proxy username and password. He has no clue. He starts typing. All though he is very annoyed with me, he would rather submit a ticket and get me off his back then to continue speaking to me on the phone. Just as I hear him finishing up the ticket I tell him,”You know what… I’ll find my own way around it. Thanks for the help. There is no need to submit a ticket.”

How can my company consider that a helpdesk when the people who man it know less than I do?