Things I Will Not Miss

[brewer12345]

Yet another (can you tell its an ugly week?):

Walking through extremely crowded public spaces in NYC that are crawling with NYPD, cameras, cop cars, concrete barriers and National Guardsmen carrying assault rifles. No, I do not feel like a target at all...

The soldiers with automatic weapons is a great idea: a terrorist shows up in Penn Station with a pipe bomb and PFC Big-ears opens up at full auto. Which one kills more tourists and commuters?

 

[simple girl]

Having to report my productivity every single day on my time sheet.

Dealing with immature coworkers.

Seeing clients decline despite my best efforts (thankfully, not the majority of cases).

Hearing and seeing sad stories of people's lives as they age.


Hence, lots of motivation to try and FIRE and live our lives to the fullest before time slips away!

 

[Khan]

They wouldn't let me put "dead or retired" on my 5 year goal statement.

 

[rescueme]

Walking through extremely crowded public spaces in NYC that are crawling with NYPD, cameras, cop cars, concrete barriers and National Guardsmen carrying assault rifles. No, I do not feel like a target at all...

Sounds like a normal day in France ...

Of course, the Eurozone has had problems (from various groups - in southern France, it's the Algerians).

The only difference is in the Eurozone they are carring a Uzi - in the U.S. an M16 variant ...

And no - you don't use full auto (waste of ammo)...

 

[beowulf]

Consultants don't even get cubes. I have a desk in the hallway and I've created some privacy by placing large burn bins around my space. Works well - except for the person whom I am supporting, no one knows or cares who I am.

But the freedom level is a lot higher than when I was actually employed by DoD as a fed. As long as I am fully billable, my company leaves me alone - I really did put down retirement as my goal on my annual appraisal. In the box where you enter future training you need I said that I'm too old to learn anything new and that training money should be spent on the younger folks who need it. And, since I almost never spend any time at the company HQ, I have no idea what political intrigues are occurring.

It's been a good 7 years since my first retirement, but I think the next, and final one, is coming by the end of the year. Commute isn't bad, 15 minutes each way, but only because I refuse to accept longer commutes. It's very liberating to be able to say "Leave me alone, let me do my job, if you don't like it, I'll be happy to leave."

Of course, I don't have to put on a bra and high heels everyday - I would look weird in them anyway . And I never wear a jacket or tie - they hired me for my brains, not my couture.

 

[Rich_by_the_Bay]

They wouldn't let me put "dead or retired" on my 5 year goal statement.

 

[Texas Proud]

Lugging a monster laptop everywhere in the heat while wearing suit and tie. The frosting on top today is that my destination is a meeting/pinata party with the grand high poohbah who gets a dozen swings at the pinata (me and team) without a blindfold. Upside: nada. Downside: major career damage. This is why they pay me the Liliputian bucks...

LOL... I used to get looked at funny when we had to fly someplace for a group meeting... and me with NO laptop...

Someone once asked me about it and I said... 'they are heavy and I don't want to get stuck doing work after the meeting'....

Most of the people who brought them just read emails and played games... I could do without both... to save weight...

 

[Ronnieboy]

Annual reviews that have no bearing on compensation or bonus

Standing on my feet for 10 hours a day no breaks except for the 30 min lunch.

Getting bitched at for closing for a company mandated 30 min lunch break (we don't deserve lunch I guess)

Mean, rude people that no matter how pleasant or service oriented you are, they are NEVER happy. You could give them their favorite thing for free and the response would be, "Why did it take you so long, do you know how much time I've wasted here?"

Inventory

Thanksgiving through the New Year (that is when the majority of Mean Rude People show up (MRP's))

 

[travelover]

Reading through these posts reminds me of another least favorite: Forced ranking of employees. This really got interesting when it meant the bottom 10% or so were to be let go - some after 25 to 30 years of employment. Everyone had their favorites and the employees would have been amazed to see how their careers hung on the thread of subjective impressions of management that may not have had any more contact with them than a hallway nod.

 

[Khan]

From several years ago:
From 2003 September 16:
---------------------------------
Today there was a meeting scheduled to run from 2pm - 4pm (never mind that many of us leave at 3 or 3:30); it lasted 'til 4:30.

I did not know why I was there, I had no input.

I had no idea what the acronyms meant.

It reminded me of those dreams where one is scheduled to take a final exam for a class never attended; or maybe is trying to understand people who don't speak your (or each others) language.

The 'leader' has a voice set on '11', and gratingly ungrammatical (irregardless, I seen, had went).

It went on and on and on.

My blood sugar was dropping.

I found myself having fugue states, out of body experiences, hallucinations, terrorist fantasies.

One of the hallucinations was seeing all the participants as chimpanzees; dressed in suits and shuffling papers, while baring their teeth and making prelingual noises. I half expected them to run around on all fours, grunting, and throwing papers into the air.
===========================

I retired ~15 months later.

 

[MichaelB]

One of the hallucinations was seeing all the participants as chimpanzees; dressed in suits and shuffling papers, while baring their teeth and making prelingual noises. I half expected them to run around on all fours, grunting, and throwing papers into the air.
===========================

I retired ~15 months later.

Uh...are you certain that was a hallucination?

 

[mews]

From several years ago:
From 2003 September 16:
---------------------------------
My blood sugar was dropping.

I found myself having fugue states, out of body experiences, hallucinations, terrorist fantasies.

One of the hallucinations was seeing all the participants as chimpanzees; dressed in suits and shuffling papers, while baring their teeth and making prelingual noises. I half expected them to run around on all fours, grunting, and throwing papers into the air.

Khan, you have the BEST hallucinations!

(Or maybe you have met some of the folks I have worked for )


Ta,
mew

 

[Bimmerbill]

I'll just list the things I'll miss:

uh...
umm.
The paycheck?

 

[Onward]

The 'leader' has a voice set on '11'

Why doesn't he just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number?

 

[Khan]

I'll just list the things I'll miss:

uh...
umm.
The paycheck?

Only that.

 

[scrabbler1]

They wouldn't let me put "dead or retired" on my 5 year goal statement.

"dead or retired.....but not necessarily in that order!" LOL

 

[bbbamI]

One of the hallucinations was seeing all the participants as chimpanzees; dressed in suits and shuffling papers, while baring their teeth and making prelingual noises. I half expected them to run around on all fours, grunting, and throwing papers into the air.

 

[Retire2013]

I am a mother and I have had to be away on business on Mother's Day several years in a row. Meetings; Back-stabbings; Waking up to alarm clocks. Unfortunately I still have 5 more years of this before I can ER or ESR.

 

[Purron]

From several years ago:
From 2003 September 16:
---------------------------------
Today there was a meeting scheduled to run from 2pm - 4pm (never mind that many of us leave at 3 or 3:30); it lasted 'til 4:30.

I did not know why I was there, I had no input.

I had no idea what the acronyms meant.

It reminded me of those dreams where one is scheduled to take a final exam for a class never attended; or maybe is trying to understand people who don't speak your (or each others) language.

The 'leader' has a voice set on '11', and gratingly ungrammatical (irregardless, I seen, had went).

It went on and on and on.

My blood sugar was dropping.

I found myself having fugue states, out of body experiences, hallucinations, terrorist fantasies.

One of the hallucinations was seeing all the participants as chimpanzees; dressed in suits and shuffling papers, while baring their teeth and making prelingual noises. I half expected them to run around on all fours, grunting, and throwing papers into the air.
===========================

I retired ~15 months later.

And to add insult to injury, you had to endure all this while wearing uncomfortable shoes and a bra

 

[KM]

FWIW - I was going to begin writing some of my staff's midyear reviews during lunch today, but I started reading this thread instead. It was a lot more fun. Didn't get to the midyears....

All-hands meetings - I thought we were the only ones that did those. I used to have a great boss who thought they were silly and didn't care if I went or not. Then a few years ago, I got a new boss. Great guy, but was pretty adamant that my presence was required at the meetings. Not because I was missing anything - but because I was a manager and was "not setting a good example". So now I set an example and go, but I allow my staff to "use their discretion" if they have time to go or not. I am usually the only one from my department.....

Email quotas are called "Mail Jail" here. You can't send anything until you get below your quota. The higher up you are the harder it is to stay out of it, because no one sends emails to one person anymore. Nor do they make the effort to determine who they should send it to. They send it to....a "distribution list". And the higher up you are....the more "distribution lists" you are on. Sometimes I get the same email 4 times, because "distribution lists" include other "distribution lists" as addressees.

And here's one for you IT people. I understood when they locked down access to our production servers. Didn’t like it, but understood it. But test? I can’t access my test server? Nope - I need to build a “package” and then send it to someone who sits at a desk and presses a button (well-paid position that could be done by an 5th grader) that will take my “package” and put it on my test server for me. This is all because the person who made the changes cannot copy the changes to the server because……they might be doing something bad/unethical/illegal.......and someone thinks the guy sitting at the desk submitting the job to move my “package” with 100,000 lines of code will be able to prevent this…..how?


Yeah, these will be a few more things I wont miss....

 

[brewer12345]

Kool Aid guzzlers. This place is crawling with people who have memorized the company fight song and think every idiotic thing babbled by upper management is orgasmically wonderful. They also look at you like you've just said "*#@! Your soul!" When you express the view that you are sick of the crap that goes on.

 

[KM]

But I will probably will miss these kinds of emails. I mean, we all need some form of entertainment in our lives........


Email I received today
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]If you are currently using your xxxxxx license or plan on using it in the future, delete this message.Do not respond. [/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Otherwise, please let us know, as we are looking to remove people who may have left the company and no longer need XXXXX so we can reassign their license to someone else.[/FONT]

 

[Moemg]

And to add insult to injury, you had to endure all this while wearing uncomfortable shoes and a bra

Double pain if it's a underwire !

 

[brewer12345]

But I will probably will miss these kinds of emails. I mean, we all need some form of entertainment in our lives........


Email I received today
[FONT=Arial, sans-serif]If you are currently using your xxxxxx license or plan on using it in the future, delete this message.Do not respond. [/FONT][FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Otherwise, please let us know, as we are looking to remove people who may have left the company and no longer need XXXXX so we can reassign their license to someone else.[/FONT]

Hahahaha, morons. Things like this almost seem like a practical joke or intentional sabotage. Then again, never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

 

[Onward]

I need to build a “package” and then send it to someone who sits at a desk and presses a button

Pair programming!