Tag: job

Happy Moloch Day 2019

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Anyone who’s been reading my brog with any regularity knows what this is all about.  Frankly, I’m not particularly feeling like going through the whole spiel again about how and why MLK is pronounced “Moloch” in Aramaic, and how Moloch, the ancient demon god most certainly came before Martin Luther King, Jr. and therefore had the grandfather clause rights to use MLK over Martin Luther King, Jr.

Really though, the whole point of this post is the fact that I’m currently locked in a training session at work for a software that is basically the equivalent of using bamboo chopsticks to try to put a car together.  Those people who are unfortunate enough to be around my person have heard diatribes and long-ass rants about my feelings about this, so I’ll try to be less verbose about it in a brog post, but the bottom line is that due to the Benny Hill-cueing music-needed training session that I’m in that’s in a laughable state of disarray, with the leadership that’s mandating all this happening, I have the time to write this.

Teammates are dumbfounded and bewildered at the disorganization of this, and I’ve been keeping notes of just how pathetically bad things are, with how the IT monkeys are running around without leadership, trying to keep on an agenda that doesn’t exist.  The third-party representative of this software is twiddling his thumbs doing jack shit on his phone while people on other teams are trying to figure out what comes next. 

But hey, this has helped chew up some of the time until the end of the training session, to which because of just how unorganized things have been, my boss decided to throw in the towel on the rest of the session, and now I’ve written a lot less than I had anticipated.

Whatever though.  Happy Moloch Day!

I try to not talk about work too much

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

But I’m fairly sure that I’m about to embark on the roughest patch of my professional career as of today.  For how long?  That has yet to be determined, but if the past year has been any indication, it’s probably not going to end as soon as I’d hope it would.

The funny thing is that back in November, I almost drafted a post about how it felt like I was doing less work but making more money after my promotion in September.  How I didn’t really feel like I felt like I knew what I was doing in my new managerial role, and that I felt a little bit of labor guilt on how I was doing actual less labor, but going to more meetings, and delegating tasks, but I was in fact, making more money in the process.

But almost as if channeling Murphy’s Law, as quick as I began having these thoughts, things began changing very fast, and a long-looming black cloud over my career had begun pouring its initial drops of rain onto the landscape, and a few weeks later, here I am, feeling like I’m about to be starting the roughest patch of my professional career.

Obviously, I’m not going to go too in-depth with the context of everything, because one, nobody really cares at the end of the day, and two, work is one of those topics that I try to be deliberately vague and keep some things private if possible.

But long story short, since I’ve found that this situation is often times best described and explained through analogies: my entire team of graphic designers, copyrighters and coordinators have been mandated to change to this new suite of internally-made software, despite the fact that our current existing process is a perfectly well-oiled machine and has warranted the slightest need for change.

Except all of the software is garbage; hastily-made, constantly being updated and tinkered with while trying to be test driven at the same time, making it nearly impossible to really beta test.  Furthermore, the entire project is being helmed by an IT guy, who unfortunately sits at a higher paygrade than I do, and subsequently has the pull to force this onto us, without anyone really knowing why an IT guy has any say on how a creative department operates on a day-to-day basis.

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Did Atlanta really lose the HQ2 sweepstakes?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In case you missed it, Amazon finally ended their year-long goose chase of deciding on what city was going to win the privilege and exalted honor of being home to HQ2.  And because contests don’t really need to have rules or hold true initial claims anymore, not just one city, but two, were picked to split HQ2 into what I guess might be HQ2 and HQ2-2 or HQ3 or whatever they choose to call it, but the bottom line is that there wasn’t just one winner, but two co-winners: Crystal City in Virginia, and Long Island City in New York.

Admittedly, in the start of the whole HQ2 saga, I was actually hopeful that Atlanta would end up being the winner, especially after it made it past the first few rounds of cuts, and bettors were actually placing odds on the whole thing, placing Atlanta along with Austin, Texas, as the odds-on favorites to be where Amazon decided to go.

I think a part of that was just kind of the sports fan in me, that is pretty eager to see Atlanta, or the state of Georgia get any sort of win, that even a competition like where a major corporation is deciding to go, would’ve been sufficient enough to be able to declare that Atlanta came out with a major win.  And the knee-jerk thoughts of what a company like Amazon would be capable of doing with its arrival, like jettisoning property values, infusing the city with fresh new people that might be able to break the norm and shape something new, and the outlandish thought that being home to HQ2 might just supercharge Prime deliveries for the hometown immediately came to mind.

But then as time passed, and the saga drug on and on and on, with more cuts and more bullshit happening, where Atlanta kept moving on, but kept dumping more and more money into trying to impress Jeff Bezos and Co. to come to Atlanta, it began to get old hat really fast.  Skeptics were quick to point out that a place in the DC/VA/MD would have the inside track, since Bezos owned the Washington Post, and why wouldn’t he want to base his primary business near the major media outlet he owned?

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Ben Affleck hair

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s no secret that I make a lot of observations at the gym; it’s one of the great settings for the observation of mankind to occur, as it’s at the gym and the ensuing locker room in which the male species has a tendency to strip away societal norms to their truest selves, whether it’s extreme narcissism, misogyny, douchebaggery, or all of the above.

At my current gym, it’s unmistakable that the vast majority of the members are about as white as Paul Ryan’s interns, so naturally this doesn’t just open the door, it kicks it open for ridicule and judgment at how insufferably white it is.  And I’ve already pointed out whether in writing or not, many of the so-white behaviors of the locker room, whether it’s bitching about European vacations, tariffs affecting their businesses, or my recent favorite, the fact that there are quite a number of them who show up to the gym, don’t work out, but still take a shower; and then lie about what they did at the gym today to any colleagues that happen to be present.

However, I have noticed another thing recently that’s caught my fascination, and that’s the immense precision that Ben Afflecks put forth towards styling their hair.  The way my gym locker room is set up, the toilets, urinals, sinks and the accompanying mirrors are like in this separate alcove away from the rest of the lockers and showers.  So when I’m done dressing out, and I want to go fix my own hair in the mirror, there’s always a good chance that I’ll turn the corner into the sink/toilet alcove and then every sink will have Ben Affleck standing in front them, with them very precisely working on their hair.

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My first-ever official promotion

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Effective today, I’ve just received my first ever promotion at work.  It sounds like something that probably should have happened at least a few times in my career, given the fact that I’ve been working as a graphic designer for nearly two decades, but seriously, this is the first time that I’ve ever received a promotion.

Typically in the past, if I ever wanted to pursue more money or actually advance my career out of complacency, the onus has really been on me to usually leave a place and seek out employment somewhere else, where I’d make more money and/or get a better title along the way.  I’ve never really taken titles seriously nor have I ever really feared about starting at the ground level, so despite my long career, I’ve bounced around a good bit, needless to say.

But considering that I like my job, the company I work for and (generally) the team I’m on, when an opportunity arose for me to advance internally, I thought about it for a minute and had one of those brief moments of soul-searching and realization that this was the perfect opportunity to actually-really-truly take my career seriously in a long-term and sustainable manner.  It took a little bit of time going through the interviewing and selection process, but I was pretty stoked when it turned out that I was the guy chosen to advance up the ladder.

So today marks the first day of work; in a new role.  It’s a new experience for me as instead of an office full of new faces, it’s an office full of familiar faces, except that I’m under a different title, new role, and actually have reports that I’ll eventually be fully responsible for.  I know there are a lot more meetings and emails and other Office Space-y things that go along with a corporate gig, but I’m also making more money, have some better benefits, and at a point in my life where I realize that I’m not getting any younger and should probably start taking the future seriously, I feel like I’ve taken a positive step in the right direction.

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Going to chalk this up as a white people thing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Gyms on Fridays are pretty much the best time in the world to go to the gym.  Mondays are often times the worst, because it’s the one day when everyone feels guilty for the shit they do to themselves over the weekend, and they overcompensate by making it a point to go to the gym on Mondays, thinking a single day of exercise will absolve them of whatever booze and/or junk food they plowed into their bodies the three nights prior, so the gyms are obnoxiously packed and I want to kill every motherfucker who impedes my ability to have a routine workout.

On the flipside, Fridays are pretty much dead.  Be it pleebs falling back into their usual routines of giving up, giving themselves a little bit of an extended weekend, or any other weak reason, by Friday, gyms are nice and empty, and I’m more often capable of having a nice relaxed workout, without many if any people, interfering with my routine.  And today was no exception, as I was able to have my pick of the benches, never had to look for a single weight, and proceed with my entire routine without any interruptions.

I was in a good mood after finishing up my last lifts.  And then I went into the locker room.

And it was fucking slammed.  Motherfuckers all over the fucking place like cockroaches scattering when you walk into a dark room and turn off the lights.  Everyone in varying states of undress, but just about all getting ready to hop into the shower, to which there are only six of at my particular gym.  When I gathered my effects to shower, I turned the corner into the shower area, and was luckier than a leprechaun at the end of the rainbow that there was one left, resulting in me not needing to wait.  But the point was that, for some unknown reason there were way more people in the locker room preparing to shower, than there were dudes that actually worked out, and actually earned their shower.

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When changing the terminology makes things acceptable

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not long ago, my department at work sent out emails for people to sign up for the departmental Slack channel.  Prior to starting working here, I’d never even heard of Slack.  I figured out quickly that it was a chat client, but the most substantial use for it that I’d heard of it prior to receiving my own invitation to join was that people on campus had a specific channel that sent notifications if there were any free leftover food up for grabs anywhere on site.

I didn’t feel that a chat client was remotely conducive to work productivity, so I ignored the invitation and didn’t have any intention of signing up.  Frankly, in my career, I’d been admonished in the past and conditioned to think that chat clients were counterproductive in the workplace.  Seeing as how I like my job these days, I decided to not join in on something that I thought would be counterproductive, so I just let the invitation go ignored.

And then I got a follow-up email a few days later from management, that was sent directly to only the individuals who had not yet signed up for the departmental Slack channel, imploring them to do so.

This was my reaction to being told that I was supposed to join Slack.

Upon logging into the client, I started toggling around the work-sanctioned channels to see what all the fuss was all about.

I saw more gifs than I did human-written words.

I logged off Slack, and haven’t opened it since.  I do not feel at all that I’ve missed out in any capacity of essential information or anything pertinent for me to do my job.

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