Rational Irationalizations.... with 6ixStringJack by 6IXSTRINGJACK

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Rational Irationalizations.... with 6ixStringJack

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Friday, September 13, 2013 19:02
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Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:38 AM

Saturday, July 27th, 2013

First Entry.....

If you work with somebody much older than you, who's obvious lack of intelligence and even common sense is seemingly only surpassed by their ability to come to work everyday with a smile on their face and even the ability to talk about negative goings on in their life with what appears to be a care free attitude, don't be the asshole who goes out of their way to pick on that person for being different. This, I feel, especially holds true if you're just another mindless lemming in the same minimum wage/shitty economy boat.

This person has obviously figured out the meaning of life, or maybe they've figured out that life actually has no meaning, or maybe they're just truly content with their lot in life and they don't ask any questions at all. Chances are maybe you could learn something from them, whatever the case may be.

Maybe people will throw around to each other that when talking close with him that his breath reeks of death. Well... that's likely the compound effects of a lifetime of a less than stellar diet, an over indulgence in drinking, a less than optimal work out and flossing regimen, and MOST currently a complete lack of a good health care package that included dental work.

From what I hear, a lot of things around me at work smell like shit, but I don't notice them. I removed a basement full of mold that made the house smell like a thousand cats shit everywhere when I bought the house, so I know what BAD smells like. Even the most astute noses can't smell a trace of it now.

My advice to anyone who can't stand to have a conversation with what in ANY other way would be one of the most awesome people in the world is to take up smoking. Kill your sense of smell.

That's right. Light 'em up Bitches.....

Humans have all but outgrown their need for a sense of smell anyhow.

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Saturday, July 27, 2013 12:59 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
"There can't possibly be any meaning in this world. But isn't that wonderful in its own right? Because if there isn't any, we can find our own."
-2LT Filicia Heidemann, Sound of the Sky

You're still an asshole, Jack.

-F

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Saturday, July 27, 2013 9:25 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

So I'm at a new job, a bit over three months in, and I've been made the shift lead for the second-shift team (yup, Frem - I'm now a Nightwalker). I've got a great team with me, with only one real weak link and only a bit of drama on a regular basis. My weak link is a whiner - he finds problems when I ask him for solutions, he complains about any work I ask him to do, and he pushes back when I point out that he's being outworked by literally everybody else on the team, including the two noobs who've been there less than a week.

This guy started a week after I did. It's frustrating, because he takes more than twice the micromanagement and supervision of the rest of the team combined. I end up babysitting him most of the time, which means that instead of one person getting his work done in half the time, two of us are shepherding the process in twice the time. He missed three days with a stomach bug, and I swear we got as much done, if not more, and it went much more smoothly.

The pisser of it is, he *IS* learning, and growing, but at a glacial pace, so I hesitate to get rid of him; if there was no growth at all, it would be a no-brainer, and he'd be gone yesterday. I've seen glimmers of promise. I've seen what he's capable of if he applies himself. I keep coming back to the idea that it's a learning disability, because I find myself having the exact same conversations with him over and over again, and he's unable to effectively globalize the lessons and apply them broadly over similar situations.

And having gone through these kinds of struggles with an abused dog, I figured out that the key isn't that he doesn't want to learn; it's that I haven't found the way to conceptualize the lesson in a way that he can process and apply more broadly. It's a failure of training, in other words - MY failure.

So I realized that to just give up and boot this kid from the team would be giving up on myself as well, saying I couldn't help him, couldn't put in the effort, and I don't think that's fair to either of us. So I have to slow down, take a breath, get a grip on my Asperger's moments when I start to stress because things aren't a certain way... and I have to chill a bit.

He was getting very frustrated, and I could see it escalating into a tightening spiral where the more frustrated he got with things not working, the more they wouldn't work because he was doing them wrong in his frustration, so I quietly pulled him outside where we had a chat. I told him that this was unacceptable behavior in the workplace, it was having a negative effect on team morale, and we needed to fix it. He said it was the "stupid system" making him mess up, to which I calmly explained that we cannot change the work, we cannot change the nature of the job, and the only thing we can control is how we react to it.

And that was all it took, at least for now - he realizes that his reactions to problems are creating problems. I explained that you can hit a wall, see a problem, or see a challenge - it's all up to you in how you perceive it. I explained that my whole day now revolves around putting out fires, so to speak - solving small issues BEFORE they become major problems - and that my day is one challenge on top of another, but that's the job. I might not fix every issue, I might not stomp out every fire, but I can contain the damage and keep them from blowing up.

By the way, for the sake of comparison, my last job was warehouse/fulfillment for a small company. I think my biggest day I shipped out 365 individual shipments from a 1200 square foot warehouse where I was the sole warehouse employee and the only male in the company. The new gig is currently 60,000 square feet, four levels of racking, expanding to another 30,000 square feet as we speak, a dozen people answering to me, and our busiest day so far we shipped out more than 23,000 shipments. So yes, very much bigger. Where I had to fight tooth and nail to justify buying a used $50 pallet jack at the last job, the new place just ordered me four brand new ones because I told them we were having a hard time keeping them handy when we need them. Oh, and they threw in a new forklift (this makes two) and a new hydraulic picker (this makes three), as well as three Big-Ass Fans. Yes, that is their real name. It's a ceiling fan for industrial warehouses. It is twenty-four feet in diameter. It's nearly a fucking helicopter rotor! We've now got three, where a week ago we had none.

The volume of air those things push is stunning - you feel it when you round the corner, like hitting a wall of air. The only downside is that with those giant blades slicing the air, they tend to swing across some of the lighting, which means that at night the place looks like a Ridley Scott movie, what with all the shadows and silhouettes of slowly-spinning fans being thrown all over the warehouse!

Oh, and the workout in that job is amazing. Figure thirty pallets of shirts, 25 cases per pallet, 45 pounds per case, and they all have to be checked in, received, separated, and restacked. So my reps involve around 30,000 pounds. I downloaded a pedometer app for my iThing, and it says I average 17,500 steps per shift, for 7.5 to 8.5 miles walking - and all of it pushing, pulling, or carrying something.

Needless to say, it's gotten me into quite a bit better physical shape. I've lost 45 pounds since I started, gained muscle, and gained strength and endurance.

And yes, in true Asperger's fashion, I find myself cataloging my Asperger's triggers and symptoms, because I notice that it starts amping up considerably when I hit certain stress triggers. I like my receive dock a certain way, and when it gets to be a jumbled mess, when there are multiple people working on "my" projects and seeming to do so in an unorganized way, I find myself going into Rain Man mode, where I start shuffling back and forth from one foot to the other, muttering under my breath, doing mental calculus in the air with my fingers, and damn near telling everyone that these aren't my K-mart underwear. But yes, I'm learning to deal with that, too. I've started seeing the signs earlier, and taking a minute to breathe and realize that it's just my brain's reaction to disorder and chaos, and it's not real. I notice it at the grocery store as well - my wife added some new things to the grocery list, and my brain looks at the list and makes logical pathways for where in the store that stuff will be, which is all well and good until it's not there. One thing I was supposed to look for was a certain kind of Greek yogurt dip. I figured the dip section was the closest to where I come into the store, so that's the first logical choice to check. Not there. "No biggie," says my brain, "It must be in the dairy section with the rest of the yogurt."

Until it wasn't. I found myself frustrated, worriedly looking back and forth at EVERY. SINGLE. KIND. OF. YOGURT. - and not finding what I was looking for. And instead of just saying "Hey, it's new, they don't have it yet," my brain was just misfiring - "Wha- Who? Why? How?" It was nearly an anxiety attack, and required me to walk away and take a minute to get it together. Just because they didn't have something I was looking for.

It wasn't the first time that kind of thing has happened, but it was one of the first times I really took stock of my reaction to it. It happens at work as well - the warehouse is all predicated on numbers - bin numbers, item numbers, and locations - and as long as the digital and the physical match, we're perfect. When they DON'T match, though, all hell breaks loose. If goods aren't where the system says they should be, they are effectively lost, as if they were the Lost Ark of the Covenant in that nondescript wooden crate in the back of a massive warehouse. It stresses me, but my Asperger's brain also tends to remember where I last saw them, so it helps me track down a lot of stuff that way. And coworkers throw math problems at me just for giggles, because I tend to spit out the answers before they can even fire up their calculator apps on their phones to check my math. I can't explain it; I just see the numbers and the solutions. My wife says it's because I'm a "math-hole"; I cannot disprove that hypothesis. :)

So that's my update. Now back to your regularly-scheduled meltdown.

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I was wrong" - Hero, 2012

Mitt Romney, introducing his running mate: "Join me in welcoming the next President of the United States, Paul Ryan!"

Rappy's response? "You're lying, gullible ( believing in some BS you heard on msnbc ) or hard of hearing."

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Saturday, July 27, 2013 9:36 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Is this the grumpy work thread.

We've recently been restructured to within an inch of our lives. We've got half the admin support, less than half of the line managers but double the executive team and consultants like flies are crawling all over the place. Our workload has increased exponentially, while our support has being slashed. I now do what an admin person would have done, while doing the rest of my job to the best of my ability.

When I get home, I'm so tired that I can do very little but the basic chores and crawl into bed. Weekends are the same.

What kind of life is this? I'm close to burn out, but haven't got the energy to change jobs.

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Sunday, July 28, 2013 2:01 AM

FREMDFIRMA

I'd hand you a wooden shoe, but I am doubtful vengefulness will help the situation, Magons - always makes ME feel better though, when an employer enters the deathspiral and starts circling the drain, too many of em wind up taking it out on the employees...

I was with a security company what did that once, cut us down to BARELY enough people to staff the gates 24-7, with NO backups or infielders, so we had to leave MAIN ENTRANCES unstaffed to do rounds, and this at a very freakin dangerous chem plant with lots of valuable and/or dangerous stuff laying around - like as in someone could have just skipped in, jacked some hydrogen sulfide and skipped right back out, hows that for a thought ?

And then it was "So can we do it with 12 ?" CHOP! "Can we do it with 8 ?" CHOP!, and the amount of work needin to be done is still the same - this is foregone conclusion, this is death spiral, when an employer starts pulling this.. BAIL THE FUCK OUT, before the crash and burn, okay ?

I do wonder how long it took them to get those gates open again, since nobody else left with the company knew the codes to do so, cause I locked em all down solid, right after popping off all the Detex key boxes and placing them in the most ridiculous, obscure locations imagineable...

Currently my only main work hassle is declining health, and a shift to using mobile camera boxes as support and looking into remote piloted UAVs, ground or hover based - the worst of it is the mental decline though, I got "lost" out there on Friday night and for a few moments quite literally had no IDEA where I was or what I was doing... I let reflex take over and start moving me towards the next key and it all came back to me, and from the clock I couldn't have been out of commission for more than 4-5 minutes, but it was seriously horrifying, and a few minutes in that mental place seems like a damn eternity.

-Frem

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Thursday, August 1, 2013 8:35 AM