as Cheech & Chong said.
I’m hearing the same shit from lots of different people in lots of different jobs, the bosses are talking about shortages of money, and the result is heaping more workload on the workers, sometimes for less money, never for more.
And you just know things are bad when even the desperate will simply quit rather than submit to ever greater levels of bullshit for ever less take-home from the boss.
Some are self employed courier drivers, (e.g. all courier drivers in 2013 UK) getting to the point where far from making any money, it is a case of subsidising the employer… some are still just on the government tit, looking to bail into the private sector and getting scared shitless because what jobs there are are offering maybe 60% of the government tit job wage, and they all “cannot possibly survive on 150 a week less”.
It may not be a Perfect Storm, it may not be a Great Depression, but it is the ingredients for both, and some other things besides…
I did a call today, putting a new router into a rural site which has just had an EFM circuit installed, all the employees and the MD were wimminz, and not a hot one amongst em, and they were all working in a traditionally male field, shall we say “construction”, in the project management sense, and since construction includes services, such as data services…..
I can’t show you the pictures, it would identify them, but the 8U cab was just slung on the floor on the corner (no forced or a/c cooling of any kind, no mains regulation or UPS of any kind), nearly buried by masses of cables, mains cables, USB cables, CAT5 cables, it was, frankly, a fucking disgrace.
On top of this was thrown the EFM box and cables, to which I was supposed to attach the new router… so when I turn up I get the “You’re just plugging something in, right?” spiel from the wimminz MD.
“Depends if you want it to actually work or not” is my reply… puzzled frown from the MD…
It reminded me of yesterday in a big supermarket chain, access to the rear of the racks completely blocked off by a wall of filing cabinets, one of those dumps where there are no employees or staff, just colleagues, and invariably 50% of them are useless obese wimminz, I pondered saying something but wanted to get the job done and get out of there so fuck it, just dragged one filing cabinet out of the way and left it blocking the wall so I could get access.
30 minutes later some skank walks up with the “excuse me” shit, “i need to get into that filing cabinet” she says, gesturing at one of the ones blocked in by the one I pulled out of the way.
“Go ahead” I say “just don’t block my access to the rear of the rack”
“I can’t move it” she says “I have a bad back”
I just shrugged and looked at her, fuck it, I had eaten two Nurofen not an hour earlier, having pulled a muscle in my lower back by lifting something stupidly, unlike her, I was actually waddling / limping.
So a guy who if he makes a mistake takes the whole site hard down is, in her eyes, expected to drop all that shit he is paid to do and help her lardy fugly ass out… good luck with that shit bitch.
Next job that day is another supermarket, I put them onto the new EFM circuit and new routers, and call one of the managers, another wimminz, in to run several checks from the tills to make sure everything is working, with their sales HQ on speakerphone, bitch prevaricates and makes a point of doing other shit at the same time, I tell speakerphone bitch in sales HQ that she has not made a friend there, she asks who, you or me, I say you, you should see the face on your manager…. perhaps it was my fault for neglecting to tell the manager bitch that the woman who wanted to talk to her on speakerphone was actually several rungs above her in her own company…lol
It is all entitled people, coming face to face with a situation where their constantly escalating entitlements are no longer escalating, and boy, they don’t like it one fucking bit.
When I say they don’t like it one fucking bit, that isn’t even scratching the surface of the resentment and frustration self evidently building.
Place I work for lots of people are bailing, they take the attitude they now have all their Cisco certs, I can get an offer or more money elsewhere, yeah, you can, short term, but this company has all the work, and is still getting more, and if you were half as smart as you think you are you would have played it like me from day one, being paid quite a lot less money, but for vastly less work and hassle.
It’s nearly the end of the month and travelling aside, I have done 18 jobs, most of which took an hour or less, a few of which ran to the full 2 hours allotted… when you consider some days I did 2 or even 3 separate jobs, you’re looking at basically every other day off sat at home being paid.
Of resentment and frustration I have none, I fucking *love* my job, and as a result my work is 100%, and HQ always find me pleasant and enjoyable to deal with, so they treat me pleasantly and enjoyably in return.
I also occupy the one role the company absolutely cannot cut back on, the guy who physically goes to site and liaises with the end user and service provider to do actual installs, fault find, changeovers etc.
I am also a generalist, not a specialist, no point sending a high flying every Cisco and MS certificate going type at 95% of the jobs I go to, not because the job is beneath them, but because they can’t do them, CCNx up the wazoo types don’t walk on site and FIRST check all the basics, oh yes, the site is down because some doofus moved the DSL cable into the wrong PSTN socket, or the power switch has been turned off, or the power brick died, or they can’t swap a mainboard in a server, or they can’t diagnose a thermal loading issue, and so on…..
Neurosurgeons are wonderful people, but multiskilled and experienced field medics never go out of fashion.
It was the same back in my proper engineering days, I wasn’t always getting work because I was so good at any one thing, but because there was almost no thing that I did not at least know something about, and in reality all jobs go better when you have someone on hand who knows a little about everything, and a fair bit about a lot, and a lot about a few things… on the rare occasions he has to talk to or call in someone else, they love him, because he gives them the straight shit every time.
So yeah, things are tough all over, and getting tougher, but speaking purely personally, life is goooood baby, I am as happy as a dog with two dicks, simply because I never bought into the paradigm that is now crumbling before our very eyes.
