Rhyan\djay » work

Working From Home

rhyandjay — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:46:04 +0000

So, as I’ve mentioned before, I work from home now. I wish I could say this means it doesn’t matter when I wake up, or that it doesn’t matter if I shower and put on pants, but the truth is, I do still have to be awake and aware at 9am (notice I didn’t mention the pants).
For many years now, it’s been a dream of mine to work from home. I really wasn’t comfortable working in corporate situations, and, truth be told, it’s a big reason why I don’t work in that situation anymore. When I left my last corporate gig, I made it a goal to never wear khaki pants again. To me, they symbolized the oppression I felt during my tenure as a phone monkey. So for the last few years, my work wardrobe has consisted of jeans and a t-shirt most of the time. And now that I work from home, I even spend a good part of my day in pajamas.
Based on this alone, one might assume I don’t do shit all day. The truth is, though, that I do more work during a 24-hour period than most people do in a regular 8-hour work day.
Which is why it’s now quarter-to-three A.M. and I’m still awake. For the last four hours, I’ve been working on getting about 4GB worth of data moved from one computer to another. And that’s after spending my entire 9-to-5 work day today doing the same thing. So my total hours spent working today is 12 hours.
And it was the same yesterday.
And the day before that.
And, during the weekend, which should, by all rights, be a completely work-free zone, I spent another good 8 or 10 hours working on client’s computers.
If you were to count in the time I spent familiarizing myself with iPhoto’s new features (read: tagging people in my pictures), as work-related activiity, I’ve only had about 15 hours of non-working, non-sleeping hours in the last three days.

But, still, it’s awesome! I love the fact that I don’t have to drive somewhere every morning. I love that I don’t have sit and listen to coworkers babble about themselves all day (I swear this has made the most difference in my productivity—I feel like I should be allowed to do nothing for about 4 hours every workday, because if I were in an office with other people, that’s how much time I’d lose to random bullshitting). And, of course, most of all, I love working in pajama pants.

Cards

rhyandjay — Thu, 12 Aug 2004 23:26:49 +0000

I don’t like signing cards for people at work; you know, birthday cards, get well cards, congratulations on your new wart cards…
This just doesn’t seem to me to be an appropriate thing for the work enviroment.
People send around this card leading up to some event, most often a birthday. Each person includes the appropriates sentiment (“Happy B-Day!”, “Feel Better!”, “Get Fucked Ya Bastard!”) and then sends the card on to the next person. Generally, there’s about .0001 seconds of thought put into whatever is written on the card.
Then the card is delivered to the person on the appropriate day, they glance at it (I’m assuming this part) and maybe set it up on their desk.
I understand and appreciate the idea behind this; I really do. Work is a crappy place to be, and it would be nice for it to feel a little more home-y. And, of course, if someone we know from work is ill, we do want them to get better (both because we don’t wish ill upon anyone, in general, and because we want that person to get back to work).
However, because of the method in which this is most often performed, the whole thing just falls to to crap, and the intended recipient generally ends up getting a card with what is essentially gibberish written all over it.
I, having recently had a birthday, currently have one of those cards sitting at my desk. On the front is a little kid dressed up in a duck costume, and on the inside it says “Getting to the age where it’s just not amusing?”
An oddly appropriate sentiment.
In it are 25 signatures. I only know one person at my work that would know my birthday without having been notified about it by an e-mail culled from employment records. And I think maybe about 2 others might actually care whether or not I have a happy birthday, beyond the general sense of “You’re a person, and I acknowledge your right to exist.”
One person didn’t even write the appropriate sentiment. They just wrote their name, as if to say, “I was here.” I think I respect this person the most. They’re not faking it. Another person wrote “Happy B-Day!” without signing their name; I’m not sure what to think of that; it’s certainly a selfless act, I’ll give them that.
The only card I can think of that’s truly appropriate in a work setting is a congratulatory card regarding a promotion. This makes sense to me. It’s work-related, and the person’s co-workers almost certainly have some feelings one way or another about it.
Of course, I don’t recall ever seeing one. People seem to think that that is none of their business.

Of course the main reason this is all on my mind at the moment is because a little while ago, someone came by with one of these cards and told me it was for so-and-so and asked me to sign it. So I started writing “Happy B-Day!” like the trained monkey I am, only to be told it’s a Get Well card.
Doh!

Okay, well that was weird.

rhyandjay — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 23:34:41 +0000

I woke up this morning feeling really good and ready to kick ass at work. Well, circumstances beyond my control made my ass-kicking potential for the day decrease significantly, and I became quite grumpy.

Until about one minute ago. Now I feel fine. Not, like, uber-excited to be at work or anything, but no different than most other days.
I can’t really identify why, either.

Unlesse ite reallye wase the olde englishe stylee.

I’m looking forward to watching some Alias tonight.

Oofta!

rhyandjay — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 16:38:22 +0000

Time is going by way, way, WAY too fast!!
The time between when I left work on Friday and got back to work on Monday morning felt like a 10 minute break when I was at work. Which sucks, because I had a good weekend!
Friday night I got to see Meghan’s new place with none of the furniture in it yet. It’s a nice little one-bedroom condo on the second floor. The balcony is cool, and the whole grounds look fantastic (fountains and trees, and the architecture).
Saturday I headed up to my parents’ for the weekend. We basically just hung out at home all weekend, since the weather was crappy. It is, to date, the most time at once that I’ve spent with my nephew, Keegan. He’s so derned cute. He did a lot of poopin’ and eatin’ and sleepin’. ;^D
My mom has torn apart a good chunk of the main floor of their house. It used to be covered in carpet, but now she’s ripped all that up to reveal the original hardwood flooring. Also, she’s taken down all the wallpaper in one of the rooms.
My sister is staying there through today or tomorrow.
As often happens when I visit my parents, I came home with a bunch more stuff than I had when I went there. This time I inherited two end tables that my mom was getting rid of; also, I got a Vikings jersey from my sister and her husband for my birthday, a gift certificate to Best Buy (another birthday present), and I found several old t-shirts that cracked me up enough to want to bring them home. My favorite of which so far is a white t-shirt with an old school Prong logo on the front:

I also found an Esko Pep Band shirt that for some reason makes me look like some kind of bruiser, even though it’s one of the dorkiest things a person could possibly wear.
I also found a 1991 Minnesota North Stars shirt that I’ll probably never wear, but it seemed like a pretty cool shirt. Maybe I could sell it on eBay!
Sunday night after I got home, I went over and hung out with Meghan at her new place (now fully furnished), and we watched Stuck On You. It was pretty funny. Some of the sports-related things were hilarious, simply because they were basically just cheating at everything. The ending seemed a little long, though (seems to be a common theme with movies Meghan & I watch together… weird).

The past two days of work have been two of crappiest in a long time.
For some reason, the powers that be decided that it’s a good idea to train our department to another departments job in addition to the work we already do. The idea being that the customer won’t have to be transferred around too much if they happen to have a question for each of the two departments (and, of course, to try and save money). Of course, people don’t really seem to mind getting transferred to a different department to get their question answered.
So now, our department will get like 80% of one type of call and 20% of the other. I wonder how well we’ll know the material covered in that 20%…? So then customers will get less quality service, because we won’t know the material as well as someone who only handles that type of issue. Is that why the two duties were departmentalized in the first place?
Anyway, they also decided to train groups of 6 people at time, when we only have something like 30 people in our department. So 20% of our workforce is off on a side project while the rest of us are picking up their portion of the work. So now customers get to talk to frustrated representatives when they call, too, and we only get a 15 minute lunch on Monday & Tuesday.
To make matters even better, they’re trying to get reps to complete another little training course that we each do on our own. So they’re randomly taking additional people off the phone to sit for an hour watching a cartoon about our business model. So, even though we’re required to work overtime to keep the service levels up, some of us get to take an hour off to watch a cartoon.
Mind you, I blame upper management for their poor planning on this. If I was one of the people in the training (which I could have been–and that irks me most; I turned it down because I’m dumb), I’d probably be complaining about how boring it is, and wouldn’t feel bad for any of the people taking calls.

At least I’ve had free lunches the past two days. And the overtime pay will be nice.

This is my 200th entry

rhyandjay — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:13:54 +0000

Since starting with the blogger system.

I’ve officially been working at my ‘new’ job for an entire year as of yesterday. Now there’s a year that flew by really fast!
As crappy as all that stuff that went down in May of last year was… I think it was all for the better. I’m certainly a lot happier now that I was in February last year. Not to mention far better off financially.Life is good. :^)

The Internet

rhyandjay — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 23:04:10 +0000

The internet is failing to entertain me to my satisfaction. Come on, IntarWebb, you can do better!!

Phishhook is turning into an utter cesspool of filth and stupidity (nothing terribly surprising there).
The Jabberboard has been pretty quiet in general.
The online comics have brought all the entertainment they’re going to for the day.
Homestar Runner did come through with a funny bit today, but it’s used up now.

The work day has 23 minutes left, and I already accidentally said Hi to Meghan’s mom… whatever shall I do?!
(before you say ‘work’, I will point out that there is no work to be done… the calls just stop comin’ at 5pm)

I watched a bunch of South Park last night. Comedy Central has been running the ’25 Most Outrageous Episodes’ for the past few days. I saw a couple on Saturday night, too, but last night I watched about 6 in a row. You know what I discovered? Too much South Park can make one physically ill… of course, it probably didn’t help that I was getting pure concentrated WTF-style South Park (the #1 Most Outrageous episode (or at least, the last one they showed last night before switching to a really bad special on the making of South Park) involved Cartman seeking revenge on an 8th grader for selling him worthless pubes for $16.12. Cartman failed miserably several times, before finally succeeding by getting the kids parents killed, and then feeding them to him in a bowl of chili… and while I appreciate the references to Titus, it was almost too sick to be funny–and that’s something you would rarely hear me say).
Of course, the really crappy ‘making-of’ special didn’t help the overall effect either. Trey & Matt’s schtick of sitting in a hot-tub being faux-pretentious stopped being funny after about 45 seconds.f

Oh well; it’s my own fault for not being able to tear myself away from the TV.

My iPod’s batteries died about 20 minutes ago. Now I’m defenseless against the ramblings of the wedding-bound girl and recent divorcee behind me. Bah!

GABBBYYYY’S!!!
(and disc golf!!!)

Milla dolla

rhyandjay — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:03:08 +0000

I wonder what ‘milla dolla’ means in Spanish.

I love it when Spanish-speaking customers call; being filtered by an interpreter is a great joy in my line of work.
I’ve had a guy on the phone for 27 minutes, and he’s been arguing about his huge deductible, etc…

And I don’t have to deal with any of it. MUAHAAHAA!!!

Those poor left boobies

rhyandjay — Thu, 08 Jul 2004 23:04:58 +0000

I’ve noticed from various phone calls that left breast biopsies seem to be more common than right breast biopsies.
I wonder if this is because the driver’s side of the car is on the left, so that side of the body gets more UV rays from the sun.

Irish

rhyandjay — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 22:40:22 +0000

I think it would be cool to be on the all-Irish-callers queue.