Posts Tagged ‘rant’

• Award Winning Stupid

  Date: 2010.03.23 | Category: desert, rants, shenanigans, work | Response: 0

  I work for three stupid people. They aren’t any brand of stupid, they are award winning stupid. I’ll refer to them as R, S, and O. (they might search the inter webs thus the anonymity).

  O wants everything done immediately and doesn’t understand that we cannot do everything at once. He screams mission at all times.

  S is a complete and total tool. He doesn’t have a clue as to what is going on and spends an overwhelming majority of his time up O’s ass.

  R has a standard answer for everything. Mission. He fails to realize that there are competent people in his workforce that are capable of running their own operation. They will break when necessary and do what they must to complete their work on time. They do not have the time available to take two hour lunch breaks that leave anywhere from 5-40 minutes late. They do not have the time to wait while everyone else wastes time. They want to leave, eat, pick up documents, and return. They can do all of this in less than an hour.

  R and S saw us at lunch and didn’t think that we could be competent people so they mandated that we take the bus. Starting tomorrow we will simply lock the doors at lunch time and all go. If it takes two hours it takes two hours. When we return, we can take our vehicle on a 35 minute round trip so pick up documents. So – for the people that scream mission – they’ve mandated that we waste 1 hour and 35 minutes.

  Award winning stupid… I can’t wait to be done with this career field. The smart ones leave and the morons are left behind. Miraculously they make rank… and their names are O, S, and R.

• Remain calm and don’t make any sudden movements

  Date: 2010.01.23 | Category: desert, rants, work | Response: 0

  The new crew has arrived and I could be in for a massive share of the workload. The new guy has been in less time than I have but has more inspection experience so he will be the senior inspector. I, on the other hand, outrank him and have much more experience in running all of the programs required to keep us out of trouble. The new management seems to be in high ping mode so I’m going to do what I can to keep them out of our hair. If I run through a few self inspection checklists before they even ask – they should be duly impressed and stay out of our way.

  Did I mention new guy (singular) – there is only one person to replace the three that are leaving. I’ve been told they plan on shifting things around but things aren’t looking good.

  Things could turn around in a week or two after everyone calms down – I can only hope that they calm down. If not, I’ll keep my blinders on and grit my teeth. It sounds like a trip to the desert is a vacation for most of the new guys. They’ve been working 12′s for the past 6-8 months. There is no reason to work 12′s unless there is so much work that you have to cancel all leave and have people sleep at the shop so they can get back to the task at hand as soon as they wake. In my opinion, they are horribly managed. I can only hope they left all of their “back home we do this” crap behind them.

  I haven’t been able to get a decent workout in for the past few days. I’ve got to go to the clinic and get some meds to kill some inflammation in the bottom of my foot/heel. I know what it is and I’ve been doing everything I can do prevent/heal the problem. I’m going to need a little pharmaceutical help. If it doesn’t clear up my mood is going to head quickly south – I need the gym. I need the endorphins.

• Mistakes

  Date: 2009.01.06 | Category: rants | Response: 0

  Holy f’ing hell.

  I care deeply about my work quality and what I do. I have been known to rush through a job to try and get everything done. Once in a while I make a mistake that can be easily fixed – a typo, a count error etc. I normally catch these mistakes before anyone knows about it.

  I find mistakes that have been made by other people. I try to fix them if possible and let the other individual know that there was a problem. If I can’t fix the problem I will let other people know that can fix the problem. Apparently, calling attention to our weaknesses and mistakes is not a quality that they want me to have. I came back from deployment in May to find our Maintenance bay had problems. I don’t know why the problems existed nor where they came from. I simply knew that something was wrong and that it needed to be corrected. I fixed the problem.

  What I learned today is that they don’t want problem solvers. They expect things to go without error and they have no resolution in mind when a problem appears. If you are the one calling attention to a problem you must be a problem. What they want is for me to sit quietly when something goes wrong and ignore the issue. I can do that – but I don’t want to.

  I’m going try and not let this get to me because I do care about my work. Its a shame they don’t.

• Democratic convention preempts my fun

  Date: 2008.08.26 | Category: Life as we know it, ahh the news | Response: 0

  Its eight o’clock and I want to watch TV. The Olympics, along with some obscure and nearly unwatchable sports, are gone and back is the regular television schedule. Unfortunately, on the second night on Olympics free television I’ve found that everything that I want to watch has been preempted by the Democratic National Convention. Hillary is jabbering at the moment about blue collared Americans – she hasn’t really mentioned wall street employees and members of the financial sector – how odd for a Democrat to make such a major gaffe. Uh oh… here comes the let’s think about the children line. What a trite and tired line – I love politics but come on. This is why I love the internet. I can get a full transcript of this speech in a couple of hours when I’ll have the time to properly dissect it. Most of us are only watching this because there is nothing else on at the moment – we really don’t care. In fact, the overwhelming majority of us are already decided and only a minority can be considered swing voters. As a swing voter I think they’re making a mistake. They really don’t want to piss off a potential voter by preempting my regular television schedule. It’s time to pack it up DNC – go to bed – I’ve got some TV to watch.

• When political correctness has gone too far

  Date: 2008.08.12 | Category: ahh the news, links!, rants | Response: 1

  Political correctness has been on a rampage for years and it’s time to give it a rest. Giants of industry have been sued for their description or portrayal of minorities or individuals with disabilities. It’s high time that these people stop wearing their hearts on their sleeves and start growing a backbone. What has drawn my ire today? The Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles and the Disability Rights Coalition is up in arms about the upcoming Ben Stiller flick ‘Tropic Thunder.’
  

  
  
  

  Tropic Thunder

  In the movie, Stiller’s character makes reference to a movie where he portrayed a retard in a fake movie called Simple Jack. (note: at one point there was a spoof movie site – the hubub has caused someone to think twice and remove it) The coalition isn’t too happy with Stiller’s portrayal. It’s a shame when people are born with disabilities and it downright sucks – but – the movie wasn’t making fun of disabilities. There were making light of how actors will attempt to gain favor with Oscar and Emmy voters by taking a challenging role of a disabled person. Has anyone ever seen Rainman?

  Their demands are quite extensive – they want free screenings, public apologies, film editing, removal of specific film promotions, specifically created trailers, a national educational and advertising campaign, and a film studio summit.

  This situation is just ridiculous. Feel free to read all of the gory details at Film School Rejects

  I’ll give you a second to let all of that sink in. You’re probably wondering what I was when I first heard about this – uhh…. what happened to free speech? They aren’t exactly yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater. People aren’t being hurt by the movie. If you don’t like it, don’t watch it.

• Iowa – I can’t even think of a great tagline

  Date: 2008.08.07 | Category: Life as we know it, ahh the news, links!, rants | Response: 0

  

  This particular post was not inspired by some random urge to write about the state that for the longest time I knew as my home. In fact, I’m only writing about Iowa because someone else did all of the hard work for me.

  The Iowa State Fair is probably going full swing right now and it’s quite an event if you should ever happen to be stuck in the midwest in the hottest (and muggiest) part of the year. The fair, as far as I know, is probably the largest and most iconic in America – I may be incorrect but I’m not going to bother a google search to find out if I’m wrong – I’m going to rely on someone leaving a comment and pointing out the error of my ways. What you may not know about the state fair, aside from where you can find Iowa on a US map (when someone is unable to name a state based upon the shape alone I get annoyed – don’t they teach geography anymore? I can probably still name all of the state capitals to a 80% accuracy and I doubt that I will ever travel to Montpelier (the capital of VT)), is that they love to hold contests of all sorts – some of them quite bizarre. If you’re traveling to the fair from the east via I-80 you’re bound to pass another Iowa oddity – the worlds largest truck stop

  I love Iowa – I just don’t think I could live there and maintain my sanity – I do like to visit when I’ve got a chance – They have great pies (thank you Amana colony pie lady), great vegetables (hooray for corn!), fantastic thunderstorms (the damn mountains greatly diminish the odds of thunderstorms in this part of the country), and…. oh yeah, most of my family still resides in Iowa.

• The idiot next to me

  Date: 2008.04.16 | Category: Life as we know it, desert, rants | Response: 2

  We have the option of using headsets and talking to anyone we desire via VOIP with the computers in the internet “cafe”. Normally, I can blank out any other conversations but the guy next to me is a complete and total idiot. The person on the other end of the conversation has got to be slightly retarded. He spends most of the time explaining, in intricate detail, the most mundane and commonly known things. He has talked about how phones are great because you can call anywhere in the world (duh), he has cried about mortar attacks (whiner – there aren’t that many), and how hard it is over here (it isn’t). I’m surprised that he hasn’t yet discussed how the sun tends to heat the middle east to seasonably warmer temperatures due to its proximity to the equator. Maybe after that he’ll talk about how consuming water will keep you alive. If nothing else, he might talk about how dropping heavy objects on your foot can be painful.

  If there were justice someone – me maybe – would punch him in the back of the skull and tell him to think before he utters another word. Maybe I’m in a bad mood, maybe I sound like this on the phone – but, then again, this guy could be the biggest tool in Iraq. No, let me take that back – he is more than a tool, more than a tool box, more than a tool shed. I think this guy qualifies as a tool emporium.

  Odds are is that he is an officer – oh well