Tag: job

The year-end post, circa 2025

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[Originally written on December 9th, but held off until end of year due to personal neuroticism]

Today, I took a half day off work.  I originally wanted to take a full day off on account of the fact that I’m sitting on nearly six days’ worth of PTO hours that I haven’t used, and my company has a use it or lose it policy, and I’m more than likely going to take an L on some hours.  But the way I see it, or at least the way I try to rationalize it to myself is that it’s a little bit of give and take on the sick hours, since there’s probably been several days in which I should’ve just taken the day, but I “worked from home” on those days but whatever, I took a half day off when I wanted to take a full day off, primarily because there was a big monthly meeting at 8 fucking AM that I felt that I needed to attend because I had several projects being shown and it was probably for the best that I be there.

So, as far as the rest of my day went, instead of punting and logging on from home after the 8 AM meeting, I decided to just head into the office since I tend to be more productive there.  And yes, I was pretty productive in the two hours that I was there, determined to hard stop at 11:45, but the dearth of work I’ve had throughout the year has been pretty mundane and often aggravating in nature, mostly because most all the work is like that at my company because of project management that can’t ever seem to stabilize due to rapid employee churn and turnover.

Plus, there were some concerning layoffs that happened a week prior, and naturally everyone at the office is on high-alert and on their best behavior, lest they become victims of another spontaneous workforce reduction initiative.

Anyway, I left the office and headed down toward the vicinity of the airport because I have to pick mythical wife up, and everyone knows just how much fun a trip to Atlanta Hartsfield Latoya Jackson Intergalactic Spaceport, Nail Salon and Hot Wing Express is, even for a pick-up job, but I saw it as an opportunity to at least treat myself to some Willy’s and loaf in the parking lot to do my daily Duolingo.

But by the time I get back from the airport, any chance at any sort of personal endeavors are pretty much gone, since my kids are just getting off school, and despite being off the clock, there’s another meeting that I felt that I should at least listen in on because again, tryna be indispensable.

So, I try to be productive with my day, since I’m a weird fuck who finds satisfaction in productivity, despite it being completely counter-culture to the notion of taking PTO in order to relax.  But since I’m off the clock, I take the time to set up some outdoor Christmas decorating that fell to the wayside because of all the babysitting I’ve had to do for my dad, being under the weather a week ago, and that I just generally never have any fucking time.

I get the lights set up, and then I come inside and set up the second Christmas tree, which sounds like a complete waste of time setting up a second one, but y’all need to understand that this is my tree, aptly called the jihad tree, because it is cheap and small, but it houses all of the tacky and fun and ridiculous and mostly broken and unwanted Christmas ornaments that I’ve been accumulating over the years.  I love this tree and what it represents, and it’s important to me that it goes up and gets its time to shine and display as much as the show tree does.

And then it’s time to get dinner prepped for the kids, and the point of all this is that despite the fact that I took a half day off, absolutely zero minutes of my entire day were really spent in any sort of blow off, fuck responsibility kind of way that PTO should be spent on, and such is kind of a snapshot of just about every day of my life, in 2025, as well as god knows how much longer since.

I had to actually stop and think about it, how I felt about how the year has gone, because I really don’t always have the time to stop and think about things unless they’re usually critical, but I think it’s safe to say that as a whole, 2025 really has stunk.  Yes, I know how curmudgeon and pessimistic that sounds, which is probably what most people think of my personal brand being, but when I stop and think about the general day-to-day and minutiae of living in 2025, and very little of it is notably good.

I’m stressed out and depressed more often than I’m not, and every single day I feel taken for granted, ignored, taken for granted, deprioritized and of course, taken for granted.  I always feel as I have to hard carry the vast majority of aspects of my life, nobody helps out, everyone takes but nobody gives.  I have to take care of everyone, and nobody ever seems to be available to take care of me.

A tremendous amount of angst stems from my financial position, and I genuinely can’t remember ever being in as much debt in my entire life as I am now.  Absolutely nothing I do can dig out of the holes that I’m falling deeper and deeper into, and just when I manage to feel like I get a win somewhere in my finances, something inevitably always shows up and I end up in a worse position than I was previously.  Again, nobody is helping me, and everyone around me is making things worse, and I know it sounds shitty to say, but families are fucking expensive, and I feel like nobody is willing to make any sacrifices or changes in my world except for me, and it shows, because I’m living paycheck to paycheck right now and not doing a very good job of keeping my head above water and this has a massive bearing to my general state of being.

In fact, it was just a few days ago in which I was having a completely normal day without incident, but then I got that ticket in the mail that was a $1,000 fine.  Something I didn’t do, but still something that I am responsible for rectifying.  And then to add insult to injury, there was a $6,500 expense that I was not expecting to show up, just the following day.

I’m not suicidal, but it was definitely one of those moments where I wanted to say that I wanted to just blow my head off, because this shit is fucking ridiculous.

But this really was the pivotal moment in which I realized, man, 2025 really has fucking blew.  And usually I end up writing my year-end post closer to the New Year, but honestly I don’t think three fucking weeks left in the month is going to change anything because I basically have had to cancel Christmas because of $7,500 out the window that I have no earthly idea how I’m going to pay it.

On top of feeling like one of the world’s biggest punching bags is the babysitting I’ve been doing for my dad, in trying to get him to move down to Georgia.  If it’s not clear, I live a tremendously high-stress life as it is, but adding him and all of his resistant to change bullshit and communication issues because he never learned any fucking English and my parents never pushed me to learn more Korean, has really done a number to my health this year.

I’m 43, but for the first time in my life, I’ve really felt old, with my hereditary blood pressure issues seemingly escalating, presumably from all the increases in stress, leading to signs of feeling old like deteriorating eyesight, increased bathroom usage, and tension headaches.  And again, I know what all my stressors are, but nobody in my world seems to give a fuck about remotely helping me, so I’m just left feeling like I’m on an island, getting worse on a daily basis.

Needless to say, I know how dismal and insufferable this post must come off, if any of my zero readers has managed to make it this far.  I know I’m not alone in the world in feeling depression, despair and a general dissatisfaction with life.  I love my family and my kids, and they still manage to bring occasional moments of peace and happiness, handfuls they can all be at times.  But on an overall aggregate state of being scorecard, I’ve been pretty miserable all throughout 2025, and what really sucks is that I’m not sure how much better things are really going to get in the ensuing year, because a lot of the things that are killing me now, probably aren’t going to be going away any time soon in the future either.

One day at a time, I guess.  Try and enjoy little things, and try to not drag too many people down with my actual sourness and hide it behind a mask and keep more of my true thinking to the brog that nobody fucking reads.

Good lord, man.  I just want everything to get better, but I just don’t know if, when or how that’s ever going to happen sometimes.

Must suck for all the career photographers out there

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Recently, I saw some content on the scroll of famed gymnast, Simone Biles, taking photographs on the sidelines of a Sunday Night Football game.  I didn’t really care to dig deeper beyond the surface of the post that I saw, but apparently she was quoted saying something along the lines of how it was a fun little side-gig for her.

Over the last few years, I’ve seen stories about how other retired professional athletes have gotten into photography as well; Ken Griffey, Jr. and Randy Johnson come to mind immediately.  And presumably because of who they are, they’ve been typically easily able to get onto the sidelines of countless major sporting events, and there have been quite a number of cheeky coincidences and posts about them doing photography at these things.

Like how Ken Griffey, Jr. doing photography at a home run derby, and how many participants and spectators have no idea that one of the greatest derby performers was on the field the whole time.  Randy Johnson has parlayed one of his most infamous moments in history into his personal logo, eliciting some chuckles among those, whom IYKYK.

In all fairness, the photography of all of these former athletes aren’t necessarily always bad, but at the same time, when retired professional athletes with basically unlimited money are capable of acquiring the best gear possible, with money not being an obstacle, they absolutely should be capable of producing high-quality photography, since their equipment would be capable of overcoming any of the numerous shortcomings they’d have as relatively novice photographers.

However, the thing is, going back to the title of this post, it must really suck for all the lifetime career photographers out there that don’t get the major gigs out there whenever a retired professional athlete with a side hobby, top-tier gear and connections solely because of their name gets them instead.  It’s really not fair when the Super Bowl rolls around, and photographers with decades of experience, who have been hustling their whole careers, and have been kicking and scratching for every connection and networking opportunity, gets pushed aside because Simone Biles or Randy Johnson are available, and it would be a fun story for their own social feeds to have these legends doing the photography for their event instead of people whom might really need the gig, its paycheck, and its potential to boost their own portfolios and perpetuate the cycle in a positive direction.

It’s classic rich getting richer, and those in control being too shortsighted to realize that their desperation for relevance and validation is really fucking people who really need the work and wages more than a bunch of bored rich retired professional athletes who think it’s a fun hobby to take pictures.  I smirk and take a modicum of enjoyment of seeing legends having fun in retirement, but it doesn’t take long for me to also realize that their retirement hobbies are also putting the screws to career working professionals out there, that need the work way more than they do, and that, really isn’t that cool.

This shit gets ridiculous sometimes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A few months ago, I chronicled how the week in which I was on a cruise with my family, was a week in which the whole fucking universe decided that they needed to get in touch with me, there were emergencies, there were fraud alerts, and I had no less than 69,000 emails, messages, chats and other alerts that took an inconvenient amount of time to sift through and deal with the most critical of issues.

Since I realized that the world most certainly does revolve around me, it’s been comical at just how predictably reliable it’s been that basically, when I am indisposed, unavailable, busy, or just plain not in a position to communicate, is when the whole fucking planet wants to communicate with me.

Case in point, I’m on a flight, connected to shitty WiFi.  I can receive texts and check email, but most all else is woefully unreliable, and I feel like I’m on the 2400baud modem that my old 486 was equipped with.  While on this flight, my boss DMs me despite my out of office being on, and since I’m not as smart as I think I am, I haven’t disabled notifications from Teams so I’m seeing them come through; additionally, there’s a ping for an impromptu business meeting, to which this sudden nature means something substantial, like someone critical leaving or having gotten shit-canned.  I don’t know and won’t know until I get back to the office but I am curious, but not curious enough to reach out to a colleague on a day off to find out.

A voicemail comes through, and it’s apparently my doctor’s office wanting to reschedule my annual that’s in two months, scheduled a month ago, because the American medical system is completely fucked, and I have to figure out what shitty appointment time probably three more months out I can get in on and hope the doc doesn’t schedule an out of office then too. 

And then I get a text from my sister telling me to call when I can, which is honestly these days tantamount to ask me to cure cancer as much of an aggrandizingly obnoxious ask to make of me.  But I can only imagine it pertains to my dad whom I just left after a fucking week of babysitting, so now I’m curious but can’t call because although I have shitty WiFi, making calls is still not something we do in the air.

It’s been like this fairly regularly since I realized that I control the universe.  No matter what I do, it’s when I try to take some time for myself is when everyone in my world starts trying to get in touch with me.

When I’m at my desk, available, ready, and willing to communicate?  Fucking crickets

Hit the gym during lunch?  Ping
Go out for a run on WFH Fridays?  Ding
Spending time with my kids?  Bing
Driving anywhere, any distance?  Be-doop
Running errands with an objective?  Boop-boop

And so on and so on.  It’s one of those things that sure, nobody knows what I’m doing at any given time but all the same I still feel that fucking everyone needs to give my time some more respect and just leave me the fuck alone.

One of these days if I ever get to have a single god damn day sabbatical, I think I need to hole up in a hotel room all by myself and just sleep, shotgun a show, eat whatever I want to eat, and put my phone the fuck away except for to do shit that I want to do, because the conclusion I’m coming to while I’m blathering all this shit out in that I need to just not be so god damn plugged into so much shit.

Would you narc on a cop?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Context: when I go running, I run through the parking lot of a closed-down drugstore as my turn around point; over the last year or so, I have noticed that a police vehicle parks their car under the awning of the drive-thru.  This was not an isolated incident, and given the fact that I’m fairly schedule oriented, I have seen this cop parked out here at roughly the same time ranges, and I would go so far as to say that it’s north of a 50% chance that I’ll see the car whenever I go for a run.  And like I said “year,” this has been the case for the better part of the span of the last year.

One time, I saw the office sitting with his door open trimming a cigar, so it’s clear that the cop isn’t just hiding out to kill time or take a breather, but to be giving himself a little daily vacation on company time, fairly regularly.  The fact that I’ve run past numerous butts and remnants of cigars in the lot indicates that this probably happens more than he wants people to be aware of.

Now before I continue, I don’t know definitively that it is the same officer that’s doing this on the regular, but I do definitively know that it’s the same vehicle I’m seeing every single time.  I’m not in law enforcement so I don’t know if every officer has their own vehicle, or if they have to share with others, but if it is the former, then it leads to believe that it’s the same cop who’s loafing on company time on the regular.

Anyway, on this particular morning where I’ve decided to finally pose this question, I had the opportunity to get out and run early, and I decided to capitalize, because fewer things bring me joy like getting to knock out certain self-imposed daily tasks like Duolingo and exercise, so I was out of the house and running by like 9 am, before I would log into work on my weekly remote day.

Typically, whenever I see the lazy cop car, it’s at around 12-1 pm, when I’m either taking a lunch break when I’m working remotely, or the kids are in their rooms for quiet time, and I have the opportunity to get out and run.  And like I mentioned earlier, the rate in which I see the cop car when I run is pretty high, and frankly I’m at the point where I’m more surprised when I don’t see them.

However on this morning when I’m approaching my turning point at around 9:15-ish, the thought crossed my mind on whether or not I’d see the lazy cop car, seeing as how it’s nearly three hours earlier than I normally run.  But sure as the sun rises, there was the cop car, same five-digit vehicle number on the rear hatch as I’ve grown to recognize.  Door was ajar, legs sticking out of the driver’s seat, human being very much present and alive.

And this is where I began to ponder, if this guy is here at 9:15 am and often seen at 12-1 pm, is this cop just parking here and hanging out for his entire shift?  Is he coming and going at intermittent intervals?  Did I just happen to catch him completely coincidentally at an odd time?  Is this cop really that much of a lazy pig, completely complacent by the sheer lack of job accountability?

Which brings us back to the original query of this entire post – would you narc on a cop?

Full disclosure, I don’t hate the police.  I know I identify more as leaning liberally, but I don’t hate the police.  A few bad cops don’t paint the whole picture of the entire occupation of law enforcement, and sure I think that there are some places in the country where the police have too much funding and it could be scale back some, but by and large, I support law enforcement, and want to give benefit of the doubt that most cops are good cops.

But like I said, I’m writing all this after nearly a year’s worth of observations of what appears to be a singular cop taking way too many liberties with his job, and I’m curious to know on whether you, my non-existent reader, would narc on them or not.

And by narc, I’m thinking of taking pictures and putting up on social media and tagging the agency in which the officer works for, and pointing the finger, because most everyone probably knows that cops do have a culture or protecting each other, and I don’t imagine a phone call to a precinct would result in anything more than a good laugh from those on the inside, as well as a marking on the source, as, an enemy to law enforcement, for daring to take action against a cop.

Not like putting them on blast on social media wouldn’t result in the same risk of retaliation, but at least the intel would be made immediately public, and put the officer in question as well as the agency they work for in self-defense mode first, and muddy up the waters on how they’d be able to retaliate without there being any scrutiny.

And it sucks that this is where we the people are with law enforcement, where it definitively feels like engaging in a manner that is accusing the police would result in some form of retaliation, because I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that law enforcement has the resources necessary to trace an image, a post or a be able to scrape metadata better than most armchair sleuths and pretty efficiently be able to identify those who act against them regardless of how warranted it might be.

But anyway, no matter how much it irks me to see a sworn officer of the law behaving in a manner that’s anything but a respectable police officer, I’m not doing anything.  I try to operate my general life as low-key and devoid of any legal scrutiny as possible, and I’d rather there not be a note next to my identification that I’m some opponent to the police that deserves the book at the slightest infraction should there ever be a time, and I don’t want to increase the risk of that ever happening.

That’s just me though; would you?

Gunther treating the WWE like a day job makes me like him more

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

During an appearance, former WWE world champion Gunther was met by a fan who proclaimed to have driven nine hours in order to meet him.  Usually a lot of workers, regardless of if they’re a face or a heel would probably say something along the lines of ehhh that’s an honor or ehhh I really appreciate that or at the very least, thank you. 

I mean, I’m pretty self-deprecating and am really uncomfortable when any sort of praise is lavished onto me, but even I’d probably say something to express my gratitude and how humbled I am that anyone would want to travel a great distance to see me, and of course, thank you.

But nah, Gunther claims to have told this fan:

Do something better with your time.  Do something that actually benefits you.

And the thing is, I don’t get the impression that he’s playing the heel that he is supposed to be in the WWE character alignment chart.  I genuinely feel like that that’s precisely how he felt about the information, regardless of how well-intentioned it was.  Sure, there’s some murky waters on where this quote is coming from, but if I’m a betting man, I’d wager that this is the real Walter Hahn coming through, and that it’s not that he’s probably not appreciative and grateful that people want to see him, but he genuinely believes that there are more beneficial things out there for people to want to do with their time rather than seek him out for a quick meet and greet.

I’ve read/watched some interviews with him in the past, and if there’s one thing that has remained consistent is how often he has voluntarily opined that he was always dubious that he and the WWE would pair together, because he makes no secret that the general WWE style and his style didn’t necessarily align in the past.  He always credits Japan, specifically strong style as being more of an inspiration to him than anyone in the WWE ecosystem, but he seems intelligent enough to know that for the sake of his future and future well-being, there’s no better place to go than the WWE.

The point is, it’s as if he treats his WWE career like a day job, where sure, he will give his best efforts to the company, do whatever it is that he’s told in order to make as much money as he can in the time that his body can perform, but when the day is over, he will not bleed WWE and be the kind of guy that will be synonymous with the company, ten or twenty years down the line.

Don’t get me wrong, I am a high on Gunther, and I admit that I was not on board when he first showed up in NXT UK, as Walter, looking all doughy and with man tits, and I was not on board with him ending Pete Dunne’s UK championship reign.  I thought his style was excessively stiff, and I couldn’t get over the physical eye test, that this guy was being booked as such hot shit as he was.

But then he had matches with Tyler Bate, carried the fuck out of Joe Coffey, and then the match with Ilja Dragunov in an empty COVID-era BT studios, changed my mind, at just how talented of a worker he was.  He showed up to NXT in America and had great matches with Tommaso Ciampa, and then eventually passed the torch to Dragunov in the highly anticipated rematch.  Then he arrived on the main roster, but in much better shape, and over the months, would improve physically as well as find his groove working main roster.  He won the Intercontinental blet, held it for over 600 days, and proved that he could have a good match with pretty much anyone and I was already a fan by now, and has further ascended in the company hierarchy, where he’s just barely removed from having lost the World heavyweight championship for the second time.

And the whole time, he’s been treating it like a day job, and absolutely nothing more than that, and I really love that that’s the vibe he gives me, because for some reason, I really appreciate guys who operate like that.

One commenter, than more commenters as the story began to circulate, said one thing that stuck with me, and served as the impetus to this whole post, was along the lines of how Gunther was the WWE’s equivalent to Nikola Jokic, the Denver Nuggets’ wunder center, whom it’s so obvious that the NBA is his day job, and that he wants nothing more than to be home in Serbia, raising his horses.  A ton of jokes were had within the last two weeks where footage of him sobbing with happiness at one of his horses winning a race, compared to when he won the NBA championship for the Nuggets, and then basically asked at the press conference when he could go home.

Andrew Luck is another guy that treated his career, as an NFL quarterback, as a tedious day job, that I loved the way he conducted business.  He clearly sat down with mom and dad with a tall glass of milk at the kitchen table, and drew Venn diagrams and wrote down career pros and cons lists and landed on NFL quarterback at being the most fiscally beneficial for the long term.  Otherwise, when not playing football, he was far the fuck away from the sport.

But yeah, Gunther is totally just like Jokic and Luck in the sense that he might be an outstanding wrestler and does give his full effort to the business, but when the day is over, it’s not his passion, it’s not his end-all, and he probably has some interests he’s way more into than wrestling.

A while back, I remember seeing a video of Gunther dancing at his wedding, doing an Indian dance (Bhangra?); of course an athlete of his talent is probably doing it correctly and not looking like an idiot, but the most notable thing about it is the massive smile on his face.  Now I’ve seen a lot of Gunther over the last few years, and he’s had some heel-ish smirks and smiles in his promo work, but there ain’t ever been an instance where he’s had such a genuine or happy looking look on his face as he is dancing with his new bride. 

Man didn’t give in to any sense of elation at winning the NXT UK championship, or when he won the Intercontinental championship, or even when he defeated Damian Priest for his first WWE World title.

WWE Superstar truly is his day job, and the fact that this attitude bleeds out into how he interacts with fans, I fucking love it.  This whole mentality of his only serves to make me like and appreciate him more, and I can imagine that he’s definitely going to be one of those guys that retires way earlier than he would be physically capable of doing, and we will absolutely not see him again, except during his Hall of Fame induction, or any overseas shows where you also know the E had forked over a hefty fee in order to entice him to show up.

So if we are Gunther fans, aside from the fact that we should probably be doing some more productive things with our lives, we should probably appreciate him to the fullest while we have him, because I have a feeling he’s definitely going to retire earlier than lots of balls-to-the-wall professional wrestlers will.

Imagine if your work bonus were based on how much you ran

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

BI: Chinese paper company bases annual bonuses on running milestones

Apparently this is a story back from winter 2023 that came across my radar recently, but it doesn’t matter.  My knee-jerk reaction was that this was something I would probably dominate pretty easily, and I could become rich on bonuses, but after reading through the article a little more thoroughly, I come out this with more mixed feelings.

The TL;DR is that in order for the employees of this paper company to get the maximum bonus of 130% of their annual salary, they basically have to run about two miles a day.  Extrapolated to a month, that’s 62 miles, which means in a year, they’re at around 744 miles. 

I have confidence that I could tackle two miles a day, since I basically did that when I was at my probably physical fitness peak, and was running around 3-3.5 miles a day five days a week.  I don’t run nearly as much as I used to, but when I do, it’s more than two miles, and I think if I set a goal of two miles daily, I could probably do it, but then there’s something about obligating myself to such a thing because there’s an incentive at the end of a very long annual road, that makes me feel like I’d probably get sick of it eventually, and really begin to resent running more than I already do at times, because it’s no longer about my health, but it’s also in order to gain a measure of financial benefit.

And as much as I came into this post full of confidence and cockiness that I’d absolutely slay it, the reality is that 744 miles a year is really quite lofty.  I’m pretty sure it was only at my peak did I ever come close to hitting that mark in a single calendar year, and this also leaves very little margin of error for sicknesses, emergencies, the general business of life at times, and if you miss a day or three, then the backlog becomes daunting, and then everything falls apart in the end.

There are secondary and third-tier bonuses, but they’re not nearly as lucrative as nailing the primary bonus, and I have to imagine nothing would be more demoralizing if any of these Chinese guys finished out their year with like 735 miles logged, and fell short of the big bonus on account of a vacation, injury, or some other variable that the whole challenge doesn’t leave much room for, Chinese work ethic not withstanding

Yeah, I think I could probably do it, maybe once, but then be all sour and not wanting to do it again another year, because it would have killed my general sense of importance of running.  But the thing is, this isn’t something that I would have to do, because at my current, American job, I already get an annual bonus that maybe wasn’t exactly 130% of my monthly intake, but it was close, and I got it simply for, doing my job.

I didn’t have to run 62 miles a month and 744 miles a year in order to gain it, and frankly I think that’s the whole point of a bonus is to reward those who do the grind with a little bit of coin at a set time of year, to where people could feel like they have some discretionary income for once.  Making employees have to do something they might not be open-minded to in the first place seems cruel and well, very Chinese, as far as expecting extra effort in order to receive incentive, as opposed to more American ideals of rewarding those who put in the work daily.

Digging deeper into this story, there’s all sorts of gray area as far as the requirements go; sure, the information is tracked presumably through fitness trackers and watches, but those things can be easily manipulated, especially in a cheating-friendly culture like China.  There’s also no clarification if walking is allowed, or if it specifically has to be running.  Unless there are specific running zones or treadmills in which the running has to occur, I have to imagine these employees are probably all cheating like motherfuckers in order to meet their mileage requirements and they’re all succeeding at meeting their marks.

I also love how the article’s choice of words make sure to point out that the boss of this company, as far as his own physical prowess:

My business can only endure if my employees are healthy,” said Lin, who claims to have scaled Mount Everest twice — once in 2022, and another time in 2023.

“Claims” as in even the writer of the article doesn’t believe his own physical capabilities and the slight shade implied that he is subjecting his employees to monetary hostage-held physical activity while not being held to the same standards himself, seeing as how he’s the owner of the company.

It’s funny that it’s a paper company that all this happening with, because it seems very much like a Chinese version of The Office kind of thing that Michael Scott would subject his team to incentive-based physical activities, all under the guise of, healthy employees are happier employees, not while realizing he’s making their lives miserable.

But on the flip side of things, the snark they’re getting from Weibo users, makes me understand why companies like this probably create initiatives as such:

You’d have to run two miles a day to meet the monthly target of 62 miles. So the company wants their staff to be track athletes?”

Say you’ve never run in your life without saying it – two miles a day in the grand spectrum of things isn’t really much.  If people still utilized step counters, they’d probably realize that most able-bodied people probably clear 3+ miles a day just with ordinary activities; again, not sure what the specific criteria is on the bonus challenge, but clearing two miles a day isn’t that difficult.  I’m basically living proof that two miles a day doesn’t make a person a track athlete.

These requirements would be considered excessive even for sporting school students. It will hurt their knees. Depending on one’s age and physical condition, it could also trigger acute heart failure,”

Disagree.  Two miles a day would be frankly pretty minimum for those focused on athletics.  I mean look at Manny Pacquiao, man probably ran upwards of 10 miles a day during his boxing peak, and that was in the tropical Philippines no less.  Sure, depending on age and physical condition there are risks, but in that case, don’t do it.  It’s for a bonus, and not for actual wages.  But I do think it’s funny how this user specifically zeroed in acute heart failure as the primary concern, and not exhaustion, dehydration, or any sort of tears or breaks, very typical Chinese worst-case scenario mentality there.

Either way, it’s not a perfect system, but at the same time, I don’t hate it.  If this, or any company offered a physical activity bonus on top of existing annual bonuses, I would definitely be all over it and be in it to win it, but if I also didn’t want to burn myself out, the secondary +30% your monthly wages for half the distance doesn’t seem so bad, and would be a sorely welcome bump in pay that I’d definitely be all about.

I think companies should be more zero tolerance about security breaches

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little while ago, I was having a stressful morning at the office.  My workload has been quite high over the last few weeks and the quality of the projects I’m on have been leaving a lot to be desired as far as the competency of those I’m required to collaborate with, and I spent more time in meetings than I do actually working on most days of the week.

But to top it all off, my company’s IT department sent out a company-wide mandate about sweeping security changes, with a little less than 48 hours of lead time.  My first thought was, when the fuck am I going to have time to go through any of this bullshit when I can barely, actually cannot, get through my own preexisting workload on a regular basis?

I prioritized this less than the importance of finding a quiet bathroom to take a breather in and went on with my days, but unlike a lot of the bluffs that IT sends out, on Wednesday morning, I finally hit a point where all my authentications had expired, and it was now time to reauthenticate onto the network and all the shit controlled by our SSO procedures.

Naturally, since I had neglected to address it when initially notified, I had to scramble to get back on the network, and unsurprisingly the instructions that were sent by IT on what we needed to do weren’t working.  I’m no engineer, but I’m technically competent enough to be able to follow directions, and when shit wasn’t working, I had to go down to our IT floor, which is the pain in the ass I don’t want to do it equivalent to mythical wife’s feelings about needing to speak to someone on the phone.

Turns out there was still something that IT had to do with each and every user, which wasn’t mentioned, and within five minutes of having to get some face time with IT, my issues are resolved, and I could be on my merry way, but not without having derailed my entire morning and frankly, all future instances of where I need to reauthenticate my credentials.

All I could think of after this stupid ordeal, was how shit like this became a necessity on account of one or a few isolated incidents of some dumbasses within the company that probably fell for a phish or continuously have failed our periodic security checks.  No security protocols are as secure as the intelligence of the dumbest end user, and the prevailing thought in my mind is that I think that companies should be more zero tolerance when it comes to their employees failing security checks, and fire them on the spot for getting busted for being weak links in the fence.

Now full disclosure, I have failed a phish test once, on account of a moment of weakness where the company clearly managed to pique to my Asian love of name brands, claiming to have company apparel made by UnderArmour.  Since then, I haven’t bitten on a phish test, and am probably one of the more obnoxious end users who reports emails as possible phishing attempts on a regular basis, even when I’m 99% sure it’s legitimate.  And sometimes, I’ll use the report phish button as passive aggression, reporting things I just don’t want to see from the company as phishing attempts, but the point remains despite my own early-tenure discretion, I’ve been pretty exemplary when it comes to not getting phished.

I feel like if companies were a little more draconian and zero tolerance when it comes to security protocols, the more stimulating of a workforce we’d be in.  It would help weed out all the olds who won’t fucking retire and allow for the advancement of more competent employees, and it would naturally help filter out all of the unqualified goons who lied or affirmative action’d their way into their roles. 

Companies shore up their security, and those who have been axed for their shortcomings have a chance to learn, grow and with the sheer amount of job fluctuation in the workforce, allows the entire marketplace to be stimulated and fresh, with people moving around at a rapid rate.

And then there would be lesser needs for companies like mine to do massive, reactionary, wide-sweeping IT initiatives like my company had to do, and there would be less wasted time on massive scales.  Everyone wins!