What three thing I won't miss after I FIRE

[Marquette]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziggy29 Ah, yes. Don't get me started on the tight-fisted, unbelievably *stupid* practice of not being willing to spend a dollar today to save ten dollars next year. We see that all the time in terms of IT projects that would increase productivity by an order of magnitude if only the company would spend a few bucks and a couple of months of IT work to get it done. So each year hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent because they won't commit to a one-time $20-50K project to streamline and automate operations.

Frankly, I'm surprised that I survived 2007. We had a pretty busy 2006... well, I was able to consistantly work 35 hours a week at least. For all of 2007 we were told that more work was coming. We kept spinning up projects to bring new sales channels online only to have things stall in contract or we'd put things on hold because they were no longer aligned with company vision (whatever that means).

And, through it all, we were told to sit on our hands, basically. There were several areas that could have used our help and plenty of innovative things we could have tried, but either our boss (an otherwise rational person) would put a stop to (he didn't want us working on projects outside of the team charter in the event that it'd either break the team up or would cause us to bring on other work that he didn't want to hold on to long-term) or, even better, we couldn't do the work because that'd require a project and we didn't have money to fund new projects. They were happy to pay me to do nothing but couldn't fathom a way to pay me to actually work.

Ah well, at least the second half of 2008 is shaping up a little better. And, any bad day here is still better than my best day at my old job.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

Eh, your boss may have been pretty smart. I often did other peoples/groups work when they seemed reticent to do so or they claimed resource problems and I needed the work done to conclude something I was working on.

This was rarely rewarded in a positive manner.

[Marquette]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny Eh, your boss may have been pretty smart. I often did other peoples/groups work when they seemed reticent to do so or they claimed resource problems and I needed the work done to conclude something I was working on. This was rarely rewarded in a positive manner.

Totally agreed on not stepping up to do another group's work. But, for example, we had plenty of opportunities to bring on new work that no one else was doing and it would have been highly received by senior leadership on the business side. It's a tough call on what goes from being a favor for the senior vp of distribution to turning into your new delivery job, but all of us would have preferred to err on the side of having too much work than not enough.

It's all a moot point now, my boss quit, we went from first place in the industry to third and they're busy laying off enough of us to get us to be busy again (well, those of us not lucky enough to get laid off... I keep asking but no one loves me)

[Nords]

1. Weekend duty.
1a. Weekend duty with a Monday-morning underway.

2. Midwatches.

3. Department-head meetings. I don't know why they're called "DH meetings" if the XO is the one doing all the talking...

[M Paquette]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nords 1. Weekend duty. 1a. Weekend duty with a Monday-morning underway.

Weekend duty in a plant that's shutdown, cold, with a Monday morning underway. With fine quality shipyard shore power. No rest for the weary...

"Shutdown Rover, 2JV (doo-da, doo-da...)"
"Rover, Shutdown RO. Could you reset the pressurizer heater breakers again?"

After SRO, guess who's got Startup watch? And Maneuvering Stations?

I bet I dream tonight. Gack.

[retiringat50]

1 childrens librarian
2 childrens librarian
3 childrens librarian
4 childrens librarian
5 childrens librarian

(oh ya guess who was my boss?!)

[Khan]

Being an IT person with a PHB who dislikes computers.

Retired officers who come back as GS employees and don't think they have to change their style.

Working in a large building with several thousand people and all the noise and light and smells adherent thereto.

Alarm clocks.

Venturing out in dark/cold/wet at 0500.

Reorganizing/moving every year or so.

[Moemg]

1- taking call
2- spending all night in an OR and report to duty again at 7:am
3-working 12 -13 hour shifts with no breaks
4- having to spend endless hours on the needle stick commitee
5- setting the alarm for 5:15 to be at work for 6:15

but truthfully I liked my job stress and all !

[BOBOT]

...I don't miss a paycheck.

[Khan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BOBOT ...I don't miss a paycheck.

One of the few things I do miss.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by M Paquette "Shutdown Rover, 2JV (doo-da, doo-da...)"

I'm guessing your Engineer never had the bright idea to put a voice-activated recorder on his stateroom 2JV connection and then replay the tapes for Engineering Department training. Of course that's just the story I heard, I was never personally involved in anything on the 2MC other than official IC Manual vocabulary...

Quote:

Originally Posted by M Paquette After SRO, guess who's got Startup watch? And Maneuvering Stations? I bet I dream tonight. Gack.

Gonna be nightmares for me. I just flashed on the five-hour surface transit from Holy Loch out to the Irish Sea, where we'd be shivering on the bridge in exposure suits while praying for the wind to shift the diesel exhaust to blow on us and warm us up... take the sub way to work indeed.

[USK Coastie]

Clearing the Golden Gate and headed north in 35 ft seas and 40 mph wind. Another day at work in the Guard. Get off the 8-12 watch and hit the showers at 0030. At 0035 lights out dead in water and the emg generator fails to start. Oh yeah all the fun, all the memories.

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I got a wicked paper cut from an interoffice mail envelope once.

[retire@40]

One word: Deadlines

[Steve O]

Well I worked in a steel forge shop for 19 years.

I wont miss getting up at 4:30 5-6 days a week, 48-60 hrs. Spending an hour in traffic in the morning, and 1-2 hours to get home...

Sweating doing hard physical labor all day.

Breathing in diesel fumes and steel dust all day.

The constant noise, I was a blacksmith on a 4000 lb steam hammer.

There were 5 other bigger hammers in the shop, every time these things give a blow it shakes the ground and each blow was loud up to 140 decibels.

The furnaces run at 2350 degrees, in the summer on a hot day it was HOT!!! try 140 degrees.

Quite possibly the worst place in the world to be with a hangover, and that kind of work makes a man thirsty at the end of the day...

Thank god I was well paid, I did my time and now Im living my dream

I saw a lot of guys work there 35-40 years and retire in bad health and die young

Its a 100% employee owned company, when the ESOP quadrupled in 4 years it made many of the people there multi millionaires, me included

Thats why I got out at 39 still young and good looking

There's some guys there that are older than me that have a lot more $$$ and will probably work there until they die

No I dont and wont miss that sweatshop!!!

[Sarah in SC]

Whoa, Steve, good for you to save and retire while still young and good looking! I remember spending summers working in my dad's tea factory, about 98% humidity, with a 250 degree tea dryer blowing in your face all day, and thinking how bad it sucked. Made me dream of getting what we called "an ac (air conditioned) job". Your job makes that sound like a cakewalk! Whew!

[Notmuchlonger]

I wont miss getting up early. Breathing in coolant. Getting cuts from metal chips.

Talk about some horrible flashbacks I just had.

[ziggy29]

Quote:

Originally Posted by cute fuzzy bunny Orrrrr...the customer groups who think central IT is a bunch of incompetent jagoffs and secretly implement their own "solutions", which inevitably screws up some major system somewhere. Which takes twice as long to fix when the cowboys claim they didnt do anything.

Or more likely in our case, the customer groups get tired of waiting for IT to get around to doing something they need done -- because IT never has the resources or the so-called "bandwidth" to do it -- so they develop their own "rogue" applications which aren't centrally managed or proficiently administered. And typically IT looks the other way, because they know the business needs this ASAP, and if they balked the only other alternative would be for IT to actually do it now -- and not in a couple years.

[Helen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ziggy29 Or more likely in our case, the customer groups get tired of waiting for IT to get around to doing something they need done -- because IT never has the resources or the so-called "bandwidth" to do it -- so they develop their own "rogue" applications which aren't centrally managed or proficiently administered. And typically IT looks the other way, because they know the business needs this ASAP, and if they balked the only other alternative would be for IT to actually do it now -- and not in a couple years.

Yes, it's amazing how the complexities grow with each upgrade, yet the resources to do it seem to shrink every years.

My coworker and I are about to hit the breaking point. She can retire in 2 - 3 years and I can go in 5 - 6. I'll really dread it when she leaves, I wish we could both bail at the same time.

[Marquette]

So I worked at a company that outsourced to a large service provider to cut costs.

I bailed, but for other reasons.

Then they found out that most of us that were working there only booked 40 hours a week since we were salary. Now that the flipped people were being paid hourly, they started booking everything.

My wife now works at that same company on the business side as a DBA. She runs a workstation under her desk that houses data this Fortune 100 company uses for logistics. She's tried to move it in the data center several times but this outsourcing company won't charge less than $1 million a year to host a small (50 GB) database.

At my current company we're outsourcing IT to an offshore service provider. Along with that, we eliminated a bunch of positions with a hefty severance package and then management was shocked when the majority of those people didn't want to forgo the severance and apply for new jobs. So, we're short-staffed. The business isn't happy. They've started hiring their own contractors to work on the line of business apps because they can't wait for us.

I love this field.