Tag: job

Secrecy can only create curiosity

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There are three women in my office who have put blackout screen protectors on their monitors.  Y’know, the sheets of film that make screens visible pretty much solely to the user, as looking at them from the slightest angle makes them appear black and impossible to see through.  What most people put on their laptops, from when they really don’t want people near them to see what they’re doing on planes or coffee shops; shielding their personal devices in public places.

But yeah, there are a few people in my office who have put these screen shields on their work machines.  Since we all work in a cubicle jungle, what this says is that they do not want random people, passing through, to be able to see what they are doing.  The question I have to that is, what exactly would they be doing that requires the need for such extreme security measures?

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I think I love this woman

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not just because Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo looks like total wifey material, but primarily for her actions, namely the one that has got her in the most childishly stupid of hot water. I can assume that most people have heard about it by now, but if you’ve been living under a rock, Mayer has pretty much told all Yahoo employees that working from home is no longer an option, and that they have to show up to work, or quit. Naturally, this has caused a monumental uproar from all of the Yahoo employees who abused the option to work from home, and they’re up in arms, and bringing everyone they can with them to fight the pointless fight.

I am unequivocally, 100% on Marissa Mayer’s side on this argument. The concept of “working from home” is one of the biggest crocks in the history of mankind, and there is absolutely nothing that could convince me that someone working from home, unsupervised and immersed in all of their worldly possessions and distractions, could actually be more productive than someone actually present in the workplace. I just don’t think it’s possible at all. I would really like to see each and every one of these Yahoo employees who are crying foul on this whole thing to try and prove otherwise, because already many have already fallen flat on their faces in attempting to do such.

Some of the biggest fail challenges are the people who claim that this completely screws up their parenting. That having to go to the office and do their job interferes with them being to stay home and well, not do their job, in favor of parenting, and all other job-irrelevant tasks and activities. Oh, I’m sorry Yahoo employee, that you have to GO to work and DO YOUR JOB. I guess you’ll have to be like all the other plebeians, and hire a babysitter or a nanny to care for your kids while you GO DO YOUR JOB.

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The homeless co-worker

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m pretty sure that he’s not actually homeless, but honestly there is reason for me to joke about making this claim.  But I work with a guy that if he weren’t such a blabbermouth at times talking about his living situation, there would likely be legitimate reason to believe that he might actually be homeless.

It’s not uncommon for people who work in offices to bring a sweatshirt, a hoodie, or some sort of house coat to wear while in an office environment, because everyone’s temperature gauge is different, but there can typically only be one temperature for an office.  That being said, Mr. Homeless in my office has this sweatshirt that he hasn’t taken off since his second day of starting here.  I wish I were kidding too; the day he was introduced into the office, he was wearing a typically office-complaint dress shirt, but I guess it was decided that the office was far too cold for his internal thermometer, and the sweatshirt was brought in and there hasn’t been a single minute since that I had no seen him in it since.

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The most obvious of “I give up on life” cars

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s funny whenever I think about cars that belong in the I give up on life category, Saturns never really crossed my mind.  But in a way, it’s fittingly appropriate in several ways; one, because Saturns are the most forgettable car manufacturer in history, and two, Saturn as a car company is dead, and has been dead for going on three years now.  Unfortunately, three years isn’t enough time to wipe them from existence as their turds on wheels are still being capably driven on roads across America as we speak.

Saturn was essentially a joint venture between General Motors and Rubbermaid (not actually true) that put out mediocre plastic (mostly) cars that were cheap to buy, cheaper to maintain, and supposedly cheap to repair when necessary (often, being a GM), in exchange for your dignity (factually accurate).  But after twenty years of sucking souls, Liu Kang and the automotive industry had enough of Saturn Tsung’s soul-sucking tendencies and putting an end to the Saturn brand, hopefully for good.

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One of those weighing-the-options moments

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

So I was sitting on a rocking horsey at a party recently, sipping on a Miller High Life.  I can’t say this line of thinking was a result of the aforementioned scenario, because I do know it’s been on my mind for a little while now.  I was people watching, and thinking about just how fascinating some people really can be, but also thinking that I don’t know any of these people.  How would I get to know these people?

Obviously, I’m not exactly the most socially graceful person on the planet, and I lack the charisma to be able to inject myself into others’ conversations and interactions without being completely paranoid that I’m coming off as a creep-o or feeling unwelcome.  So most of the times, I don’t make an effort at all, and probably give off the impression that I’m anti-social or ambivalent to others.

To get to the point, lately I’m feeling like my line of work is kind of socially inhibiting.  I look around at the people I know, and so many of them work for cool places, or at least, places where they can potentially meet like-minded people, relatable people, and people who might have even the potential to be cool and worth knowing aside from an at-work relationship.

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This is not how business is conducted

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There is this guy at my office that doesn’t like me.  Now I’m not saying that in that teenage kind of way in which I’m just speculating, because I have every reason to believe that this guy just does not like me.  He’s significantly older than I am, and kind of symbolizes the old world.  He was once in a position of managerial power, but was demoted at some point.  My peers here who remember his regime of management cite that he was the utmost of micro-managers, and describe the kind of authority that would have made me quit, had I been present during that time.

But anyway, it’s very obvious he doesn’t care much for me.  On the hierarchy of the office, he and I are essentially on the same plateau, and that has to bother him a great deal.  He has his own office solely based on tenure, but the truth of the matter is that doesn’t really do much different work than I do; if anything at all, he gets more shit work than I do.  But if that’s not enough justification, the fact that he won’t ever look me in the eye, and on several instances, in the office and at the one out-of-town work conference I attended, he flat out refused to get on the same elevator as I was on.  As in, he is waiting for an elevator, but when he sees me show up, he will not board the elevator if it means having to share it with me alone, and will blatantly stand put and wait for the next one.

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How do people get employment?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not like I try to go around my life thinking I’m smarter than everyone else, but when you work with people like this, who can’t get the grasp of correct spelling for pluralizing words, something taught in the second grade, it’s not really trying.

What really gets me is that the instruction is to take the correct spelling of “responsibilities,” and re-spelling it, replacing I-E-S with Y-S.  It’s like, there are occasionally words that I see that I’m not 100% sure on how it’s spelled; typically I’ll use the billion dollar spell-checker, Google, and nail it down.  But even if I didn’t have internet access, I would at least be able to understand the rules of I-E-S versus Y-S.

This is really kind of incredible, but at the same time, I’m not entirely shocked by it, when I think about just how many unqualified, borderline-illiterate people there are that have jobs due to shit like affirmative action, or some other screwy loophole in the system.