Just Me?
You ever spend hours clenching your jaw into a rictus smile because you are on the verge of telling paying customers that they should find something better to spend their money on than products that you are attempting to teach, on account of your employer can’t manage to make their own shit work for half an hour at a time in an environment that is designed and built to showcase them?
I am finding the mantra I need the insurance, I need the insurance, I need the insurance¹ to be helpful in this regard, but I am also dangerously close to telling people further up the reporting structure that they are sabotaging my ability to do my job and to either get out of the godsdamned way or else fuck off into the ocean, their choice.
As I have already submitted student comments reading If my systems failed this much I’d be fired and Glad to know I’m not the only one that can’t keep [product] running, they already think that I have an attitude problem, so I’m actually not sure speaking up would make anything worse.
This particular issue has been building for quite a while — see every missed post of the past nine months because of euphemistically-described tech issues at work — and I’m ready to burn things down as long as I take some of them with me². We’ll talk about webcomics tomorrow assuming I still have a job and haven’t taken up day drinking.
Spam of the day:
I work for Editorial PR based here in London. We have a client that is potentially looking for coverage on your site. I am currently working on a rolling 25-day budget so if you could come back as soon as possible with your terms of business it would be appreciated.
My response:
I don’t take advertising, and if you push a client at me and I cover them, the story will run under a 72-pt headline reading THIS GUY PAID ME TO RUN THIS STORY.
Rates start at US$12,782 per 500 words or fraction thereof.
No reply, curiously.
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¹ Note for overseas readers: in America, if you are not employed, you are not considered worthy of medical care and will be left to die from preventable causes, or otherwise to die poor because you spent all your money in previous attempts to not die.
Because freedom.
² For context: I finally got a response from the responsible parties assuring me that they are very interested in observing the failures that occur every Wednesday in this particular class like clockwork, just give us the details and we’ll be there to see for ourselves what you’ve been describing for most of a year.
That email was sent on Monday morning at 5:00am. I replied by 10:00am with the necessary details, only to get an autoresponse that my email won’t be read because they’re on vacation until Thursday.
No jury would convict me.
I wish you could come up with a way to let us guess what company and software you’re talking about. There is *so much* bad software. Good luck quelching your instincts.
By Mike on 11.18.20 3:23 pm
I have been very, very careful to never mention on social media or this blog where I work, ever.
In part, because doing so could give my employer a claim on my social media accounts and compel me to post on their behalf.
Yes, that’s a bullshit claim and I would fight it, but I’m don’t have to if I keep that bright, shining line.
By Gary Tyrrell on 11.19.20 3:10 pm
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