Rant Thread

Not only are there guys who don’t wash their hands after going to the shitter, there’s guys who act that way IN TIMES OF CORONA VIRUS. Damn, how much can somebody suck!?
 
Saapanael said:
Not only are there guys who don’t wash their hands after going to the shitter, there’s guys who act that way IN TIMES OF CORONA VIRUS. Damn, how much can somebody suck!?
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Oh, people will constantly surprise you how much more they can suck than you thought possible.
 
The thing about Covid-19 that annoys me the most is the following conversation that I've just had far too often by now:

Somebody: How's your research going?
Me: It went well until I got stumped because I don't have access to this one book I need. It's frustrating because I know where it is and I would just have to read two paragraphs from it, but there you go.
Somebody: Have you checked if it's online?

Like, really? You think that wouldn't be the first thing I'd think of? I usually spend about two hours a week going through all available online resources and download whatever I think could come in handy at some point. I think that by now, in a narrow field such as mine, I'd be aware of any book available digitally. I may not know what Tik Tok is, but I'm not exactly a digital illiterate.
 
Perun said:
The thing about Covid-19 that annoys me the most is the following conversation that I've just had far too often by now:

Somebody: How's your research going?
Me: It went well until I got stumped because I don't have access to this one book I need. It's frustrating because I know where it is and I would just have to read two paragraphs from it, but there you go.
Somebody: Have you checked if it's online?

Like, really? You think that wouldn't be the first thing I'd think of? I usually spend about two hours a week going through all available online resources and download whatever I think could come in handy at some point. I think that by now, in a narrow field such as mine, I'd be aware of any book available digitally. I may not know what Tik Tok is, but I'm not exactly a digital illiterate.
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This sounds like a variant of the old "have you tried switching it off and on again?" that you get for any tech issue :D
 
I really hate working from home - it's so inefficient and bloody stressful. I've got a massive backlog of jobs that absolutely have to be filed by Thursday, which have been pushed back this far due to a massive additional workload that just got dropped on us with no warning (btw Boris and HMRC are the culprits here, not my employers). And I'm continually slowed by a constant stream of messages (which would ordinarily be just quick conversations) - some of which are enquiring after the progress of jobs I don't even have time to think about starting yet.

I've already put in 12 hours overtime this week and it's only Monday ...
 
That's poor distance management. Managers should learn how and when to make contact with staff working remotely. I had a bit of this when I worked from home for the newspaper. You'd either hear nothing at all and be completely out of the loop (and then suddenly get a bollocking for not knowing what was happening and producing work for an alterered deadline), or get constantly bombarded with messages giving multiple instuctions then immediately asking if you'd made progress on anything yet.
 
Brigantium said:
That's poor distance management. Managers should learn how and when to make contact with staff working remotely. I had a bit of this when I worked from home for the newspaper. You'd either hear nothing at all and be completely out of the loop (and then suddenly get a bollocking for not knowing what was happening and producing work for an alterered deadline), or get constantly bombarded with messages giving multiple instuctions then immediately asking if you'd made progress on anything yet.
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Well, my line manager is helping by trying to get everyone to direct the queries to her (she can't do much when it's the clients though). And to be fair they didn't have any real warning that this was coming. We weren't really set up for working remotely, except for remote access to the system (which was fine when it was just the odd day snowed in/hungover/whatever). They didn't have much time to work out how the communication was going to work and then suddenly we had to hit the ground running. You need a few weeks, at least, to unhurriedly test run a new system like that and make sure everything works to the satisfaction of all. It's not much good trying to start that when the govt is already trying to lock the door behind everyone.

So the net result is, we're having to work it out as we go along. I'm not blaming anyone (well maybe I say "fuck you Boris!" a bit more often than I used to ...)
 
Meanwhile I still don't have my work computer. I'm thinking of accepting a PC this week, now my landline has finally been fixed, but god knows where it's going to go in the house, and goodness knows what I'll spend on the phone to IT support trying to get it set up.
 
The thing is, I don't actually mind putting in the extra time. In some of my previous jobs I would have minded very much, but not here. I have good colleagues (who I miss very much) and the work I do is valued. I'd just rather be working from the office, where I have nice big monitors and a proper sized desk, and I can speak to people in a normal fashion.
 
 
God I really do live near some stupid people. They've invited some friends over for a party, and following their performance of last week where they set their decking on fire with a chiminea, have just started a roaring fire in their chiminea, which is on the decking again.
 
Speaking of working from home. Last Saturday was the last class of the Saturday course I've been teaching online. We had to review, do oral exams and the final. I also had to fill out their report cards and give them to the students. All within the 4 hours of the course. As well as take screenshots as "evidence". Well.... EVERYTHING that could go wrong went wrong. First my internet connection went out for 5 minutes. Total time lost was about 15. My laptop has been having an interesting issue in which it doesn't charge as soon as I plug it in. I don't know if it's the battery or the charger, but i have to close it or turn it off for it to charge. I was in the middle of orals when it was about to die. I told the students to hold on while I dealt with it.... another 15 or so minutes, because it is VERY slow, therefore after it started charging, it took forever to come back online after opening it.

We usually fill out the report cards by hand and it goes fairly quick. This time, we were sent PDF files which had to be edited. Click and fill out 5 seperate boxes per report card... I had 28. Then take a screenshot of each to send it to the student. The only way I know how to do that is to take the screenshot, open up PAINT, paste and crop to make sure it doesn't have another students report card on it, save it and THEN send it. Rinse and repeat TWENTY EIGHT TIMES. And all of this to be done within one hour as we were to review the first hour, do orals the second, do the final the third hour and fill out the report cards the last hour. But we also need to calculate their average!

Normally we fill out the attendance sheet with all their grades (by hand) and use a calculator. THIS time I said FUCK IT and used a spreadshit on the computer to add it for me to make it quicker. Even with that it took FOREVER!

How did I deal with this? simple, as I said above I decided to say FUCK IT, not stress, and take my time. we're working from home for god's sake, who gives a shit about deadlines? Seriously? Essentially I worked from the moment I woke up at 7am all the way to like 11pm. I took maybe a two hour break to eat, but aside from that I was glued to my computer and those fucking PDF files.
 
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