The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Hey!

I don't even know for sure what the protocol is for posting these things, as I've never done one, but I see there isn't one for today, and I felt like talking about today. Here goes.

Today is Monday, June the 2nd, and this morning I dropped by office to fill out some final pre-employment paperwork (this was a one hour meeting, with a two hour roundtrip commute)... and tomorrow morning I officially am starting my new job.

I will be working in the Accounts Payable office of Equitable Resources (natural gas company). I felt it sounded like a good opportunity since gas and oil folks seem to be the only ones making money these days. Also now I can quit spending so much time searching for a job, and therefore have more time left over for listening (and reviewing) songs! Also maybe submitting one, one of these days.

qOTd -- I'm a little apprehensive, I guess, going into a whole new environment and everything... I'd like to ask anybody out there if they'd like to share an interesting story (either good or bad) about the first day of a new job (or school, or any other new situation). Thanks!

DRC: busy busy day

qotd: Right when I started this job (tech support for a VOIP company) I was working at traffic.com. (a real time traffic information gathering operation.

I was working all kinds of wacky hours over there and was way behind on my bills because it was only part time. So I needed all the shifts I could get and was working overnights on the weekend. As it turns out I had to work 9pm-5am the night/morning before I started my new job here.

I got off work at 5am and was arriving here for my first day @ 9am, 4 hours after I got off from my 8 hour over night shift. I was terrified I'd not be able to do it. All I have to say is that those 5 hour energy drinks pulled through for me.

It was still a long day though. LONG DAY.

-Hoblit

Eric Y. wrote:qOTd -- I'm a little apprehensive, I guess, going into a whole new environment and everything... I'd like to ask anybody out there if they'd like to share an interesting story (either good or bad) about the first day of a new job (or school, or any other new situation). Thanks!

It was the first day of my first real teaching job, which was in the Bronx. It wasn't the SOUTH-south Bronx, but it wasn't Riverdale either. One of the things I did on the first day was to brainstorm classroom rules with the students: rules that would make class a place where they could focus on work. I was asking kids for suggestions, and this one kid, Christian, had been quiet for nearly the whole time, but he raises his hand and offers up this Confucius-like pearl of wisdom, which I will now pass on to you.

NEVER SHARPEN A PENCIL TO USE AS A WEAPON.

I bet that this rule makes as much sense for a 6th grade Math class as it does in the Accounts Payable office of a gas company. Good luck on your first day!

My first job out of graduate school.

I was shown to my desk and introduced to my boss by the receptionist. He didn't talk to me for at least four days. I had no idea what the project was, or what I was supposed to be working on. He would just shoo me off whenever I tried to talk to him. On the fourth day, he came over and told me that there was a meeting tomorrow morning, and I had better have something to talk to the engineers about.

I got supplies from the guys in the print room and asked around the office about what project my boss was working on. I eventually found out, and I DID have something to talk to the engineers about the next day.

Turns out that guy had a real chip on his shoulder about guys from ivy league schools, since he didn't go to one. It was like, "OK, Harvard guy, show me how smart you are". I did, and eventually got him fired.

SPUD

p.s this is for hoblit: )

spud, you went to harvard?

Yes, sir.

Just walk into the office on your first day and with a loud commanding voice ask, OK, who just passed the gas! Then laugh loudly and pat one of your co-workers on the back so hard that you almost knock them over, whilst saying.....am I right?...am I right? Ahh ohh!

Harvard.

So in December of 2006, I signed up for a MySpace Music page, just to leave a message at a friends space. I hadn't used it until today, on a whim, and saw a couple of friend requests. So, here is my page and if you want to be 'my friend' I'll let you in. In what, I'm not sure, but everyone's welcome! http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu ... =139116159

Paco Del Stinko wrote:http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu ... =139116159

So I contacted you with whom I was currently logged in as. Nows as good time as any to mention that my band Ghost Town Gridlock is back together with a couple of new members. However, its back seat to the band I play bass for, The Funeral Dazies.

QotD: The first day I worked at my current job (grocery sacker) I was being trained by the other 3 guys who were morning sackers. The reason this is interesting at all is that 1 of those guys like a month later got fired and he went home, got drunk, came back and acted like an ass, and then slammed into some carts I was brining back from the parking lot on his way out!

I am finallys tarting to lose some weight from Wii Fit. By which I mean I'm back down to the weight at which I started (as always I gained a bit of muscle before starting to burn off fat, which is normal). It's all downhill from here, baby!

Also I am working on an album.

Oh and I am also buying a condo.

So, qotd: perhaps the most memorably bad job I had, ever, was working for an insane professor at NMSU named Dr. Cecil. He was in the Industrial Engineering department and wanted someone who could work on graphics and distributed programming stuff for some ill-defined research project. He was extremely abusive towards his grad students, most of whom were foreign and here on a student visa so they were very afraid of losing their visa and being deported (because Dr. Cecil claimed that he'd be able to get them deported if they didn't comply). I wasn't one of his students (I worked in his lab, which is somewhat different of an arrangement) but I still got to see all sorts of terrible stuff where he'd yell at them, throw things at them, curse them out for not being completely subservient and solving all of his problems in the insanely short time periods he expected, and so on. Then he'd storm out of the lab and his students would be left crying. I kept trying to explain their rights to them but they were just completely afraid of him. I went to the department head on their behalf but the dean said that the students themselves had to come to him (which I couldn't get them to do), and even if they did, without actual proof of ethics violations there wasn't anything the department could do (which I thought was bullshit because what he was doing certainly would have been illegal if it were a traditional employer/employee relationship).

Eventually Dr. Cecil figured out that I was trying to convince his grad students to talk to the department head and said we'd be "taking a break" from my project "as we agreed to when started." Which I didn't remember at all, of course, but then I wrote him a very polite resignation letter saying that after the break I would not be returning, and his response was that he only said that it was a break as a courtesy and he didn't want me back at all to begin with. (i.e. "You can't quit, you're fired.") Okay, whatever.

So, a few months later, he sent me an email demanding that I come in to work for him for free to complete the project which I was working on. I told him no, and also finally told him what I felt about him and his complete lack of ethics. A few days later, one of the grad students emailed me thanking me for saying whatever it is I said to him because he's been "talking about quitting" and so on. And that's the last I heard of it for about a month, when I got a very long ranty pseudo-legal (i.e. "INTERNET LAWSUITE"-type) email from Dr. Cecil claiming that I was defaming his character and trying to get him fired from the university, made several vague threats about contacting my department head to get me expelled based on things which were entirely untrue, and claimed that I was clearly a racist for doing this (never mind that his grad students weren't white, I'm an ethnic Jew which is historically perhaps *the* most marginalized race in the history of Europe, and I have absolutely nothing against Indians). The ending of the letter stated that I was to never ever contact him again, which suited me just fine.

As an ass-covering measure I did forward it to my adviser and department head in case Dr. Cecil wanted to follow through on his threats. My adviser, who I'd been sharing the ongoing saga with while I was working for Dr. Cecil, said, "Wait, the way you've been talking about himi I didn't even have any idea this guy wasn't white."

I've had objectively worse job experiences since then (like my brief stint as an IT contractor in Albuquerque, and most of my time at Ubisoft) but I pretty much still measure my job stress level in the fictional unit of "µCecils."

Paco Del Stinko wrote:Harvard.

So in December of 2006, I signed up for a MySpace Music page, just to leave a message at a friends space. I hadn't used it until today, on a whim, and saw a couple of friend requests. So, here is my page and if you want to be 'my friend' I'll let you in. In what, I'm not sure, but everyone's welcome! http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fu ... =139116159

I sent you a "be my friend" thingy.

Spud wrote:On the fourth day, he came over and told me that there was a meeting tomorrow morning, and I had better have something to talk to the engineers about.

I got supplies from the guys in the print room and asked around the office about what project my boss was working on. I eventually found out, and I DID have something to talk to the engineers about the next day.

Ha ha ha !

You shouldn't have wasted your time. Harvard or not - I don't think any architect has ever had anything to say that any self-respecting engineer would want to listen to. I know I switch off as soon as I see their silly little beards and asymmetric haircuts....

First day at work is great. No one knows you, they don't expect much of you and think you're their savior. Until the second day at work when they find out you're just like everyone else. You're there because you needed a job and somehow this one worked out.

Make the best of it.

QotD:
Just a tip - always take your own coffee mug on your first day at a new job. Otherwise, come 10 am or so, you'll be wanting a cup of coffee and when you go into the office kitchen you will see a cupboard full of various coffee mugs and you will have no idea which ones you can use, or which ones are jealously guarded prized personal possessions of your more anal new co-workers.

I have never mistakenly used another persons personal mug - but I will hold a lifelong grudge against anyone that uses mine.

fluffy wrote:and claimed that I was clearly a racist for doing this (never mind that his grad students weren't white, I'm an ethnic Jew which is historically perhaps *the* most marginalized race in the history of Europe, and I have absolutely nothing against Indians). The ending of the letter stated that I was to never ever contact him again, which suited me just fine.

I'm not racist, not even a little bit. However, I got accused of being racist by an Indian once as well. A friend and I were working at a very small lunch cafe but we were having trouble with two other employees there. Apparently our work ethic was cramping their style...making their job more like...you know, work. It came to a head and the owner wouldn't own up to the problem and so we quit.

Well, not even a week goes by and the owner (Indian) wants us to come in and negotiate. He was very smooth and calm while talking. We just didn't like the terms and we were already tired of the situation so it just didn't seem worth it to us. We calmly told him that we just weren't interested. Up until this point everything was professional and we even felt bad for him because we knew the pickle he was in.

However, once he realized it wasn't going to happen the way he envisioned, he blew up. He called us white devils (or something similar) and yelled at us while calling us other names as well. He told us that we could burn in our Christian hells and told us to get out.

-Hoblit
Post Script: Never mind that his wife was a very petite and frail white woman.

fluffy wrote:I've had objectively worse job experiences since then (like my brief stint as an IT contractor in Albuquerque, and most of my time at Ubisoft) but I pretty much still measure my job stress level in the fictional unit of "µCecils."

I liked your story, but I was more intrigued to find out you worked at Ubisoft. What did you do for them, and for how long?

Caravan Ray wrote:

Spud wrote: I don't think any architect has ever had anything to say that any self-respecting engineer would want to listen to.

You would think it would be sufficiently ego-boosting that we basically come to them for help figuring out how to do stuff we don't know how to do. Apparently not. You're out of the fucking band, dude.

SPUD

Spud wrote:

Caravan Ray wrote:

Spud wrote: I don't think any architect has ever had anything to say that any self-respecting engineer would want to listen to.

You would think it would be sufficiently ego-boosting that we basically come to them for help figuring out how to do stuff we don't know how to do. Apparently not. You're out of the fucking band, dude.

SPUD

Is this Akin to the classic Sales VS Tech Support scenario?

Reïst wrote:

fluffy wrote:I've had objectively worse job experiences since then (like my brief stint as an IT contractor in Albuquerque, and most of my time at Ubisoft) but I pretty much still measure my job stress level in the fictional unit of "µCecils."

I liked your story, but I was more intrigued to find out you worked at Ubisoft. What did you do for them, and for how long?

I worked there for 9 months. I only worked on Sprung and Love Triangle Dating Challenge (the latter of which was released after the studio was spun off as a separate company).

fluffy wrote:

Reïst wrote:

fluffy wrote:I've had objectively worse job experiences since then (like my brief stint as an IT contractor in Albuquerque, and most of my time at Ubisoft) but I pretty much still measure my job stress level in the fictional unit of "µCecils."

I liked your story, but I was more intrigued to find out you worked at Ubisoft. What did you do for them, and for how long?

I worked there for 9 months. I only worked on Sprung and Love Triangle Dating Challenge (the latter of which was released after the studio was spun off as a separate company).

That's an unfortunate lineup. I guess you do what you can do, right? I was crossing my fingers that you had worked on Rayman or something. Was your experience with them alright?

Hoblit wrote:Is this Akin to the classic Sales VS Tech Support scenario?

I suppose is it, Hoblit, to the extent that sales is trying to figure out the customer's needs and sell them a product that meets that need (the architect), but once they have, tech support has to figure out how to configure the product to do what the sales guys said it would (the engineer).

Of course, tech support wishes that sales would have sold them a pre-packaged, non-configurable solution, and despises sales for caving in to the customer's demands for something that actually meets their needs.