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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Less frustrating because it wasn't management, but it reminded me.

I'm elbow-deep in a POS system, with my company polo shirt on. The employees' shirts are bright blue, mine is black. Someone leans over the counter and asks me if the lane is open. I tell him it isn't, because I'm fixing the register. "Oh. You should open it up, it's really busy."

My old job was doing third party inventory validation for various companies around our area, including Wal-Mart. Our uniforms were dark maroon shirts with giant computers hanging from our waists, and our name tags clearly displayed we were not Wal-Mart employees.

But part of our agreement with big W was if a customer approached us, we had to immediately stop what we were doing, and personally escort them to a store employee. Then request permission to leave from both the customer and the store employee. Then go back to our shelf run and try to figure out where we left off, falling that, we had to start over.

It was so satisfying to work grocery stores again after that and be able to tell people that you don't work there, and that if they can't read the signs it's not my problem.

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Rhymenoserous
May 23, 2008

Baconroll posted:

My Dad was telling me about a ticket he got in the late 1980s for a very old-school security issue - He worked for a software house in a very aggressive growing market and some contractors moving interior walls had come across some hardware that needed moving. Upon further investigation it was was a covert radio transmitter with multiple hardwired microphones going into the boardroom walls. All very high end kit and professionally installed.

They pretty much knew which company had done it as it was just them and 1 other company fighting in the market space. It all got hushed up at the time, so I'm guessing both sides were playing dirty tricks.

Running anti-virus just doesn't have the same James Bond feel as having someone walk around the office sweeping for bugs.

Awesome.

Wibla
Feb 16, 2011

Crowley posted:


Also: Turns this years three weeks of summer was right on my vacation, and now we're back to mixed rain. Go me!

My vacation starts on Friday, wanna guess how the weather will be for the next three weeks? (hint: Norway).

Better book a trip to Croatia or something right away...

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



Kurieg posted:

But part of our agreement with big W was if a customer approached us, we had to immediately stop what we were doing, and personally escort them to a store employee. Then request permission to leave from both the customer and the store employee. Then go back to our shelf run and try to figure out where we left off, falling that, we had to start over.

And I thought we had negotiated a lovely contract. I have told this one before, but we were fixing all of their traditional registers. We had at maximum a 48 hour SLA, with most at 24 and some at 6. We shipped everything overnight, except for the 6th our ticket equipment, which was same day.

Normally this would work well, except Wal-Mart provided all of the parts. And they were terrible at keeping common parts in stock. And the contract said we were responsible for getting the problem fixed within the SLA, regardless of whether the parts had shipped.

I was brought on a month or two after the contract started. Within four months of me starting, we had lost it and paid heavy fines to Wal-Mart. There were two CEO changes within six months.

neogeo0823
Jul 4, 2007

NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

less than three posted:

It's always a weird standoff when you're around dressed in no way like a store employee, but doing work. Half the time their response to "Oh I don't work here, I'm just fixing this" they'll glare at you for 5 seconds thinking you're trying to avoid them.

I hate walking into any business that's not the company I work for while wearing my work clothes. It doesn't mater where I work or where I am, everyone thinks I work there. I was once asked if I worked at a Lowes(red jersey vests and blue jeans) while wearing Best Buy garb(blue polos and khakis), and another time I was asked if I worked at Gamestop(casual wear) while wearing my Charlie's Subs uniform(bright yellow short with logos and black pants). Though, the best ones are the ones that ask me if I work at a place while wearing that place's very distinct uniform. I used to work at Harbor Freight and had at least 3 people a week come up to me while wearing the distinct blue shirt, blue jeans, and black back brace and ask me if I worked there. My reflexive response to "do you work here?" was "Nope! I just think the back braces are fashionable." It usually got a laugh out of people, except a few, who always went on to complain about their experience. Never got in trouble for it though.

Inspector_666
Oct 7, 2003

benny with the good hair
Sometimes when I am sitting at front desks people try to get me to sign for packages, that's about as rough as it's gotten for me.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

22 Eargesplitten posted:

And I thought we had negotiated a lovely contract. I have told this one before, but we were fixing all of their traditional registers. We had at maximum a 48 hour SLA, with most at 24 and some at 6. We shipped everything overnight, except for the 6th our ticket equipment, which was same day.

Normally this would work well, except Wal-Mart provided all of the parts. And they were terrible at keeping common parts in stock. And the contract said we were responsible for getting the problem fixed within the SLA, regardless of whether the parts had shipped.

I was brought on a month or two after the contract started. Within four months of me starting, we had lost it and paid heavy fines to Wal-Mart. There were two CEO changes within six months.

No it definitely sounds like you had it worse. Our crew staff augmented the dedicated "Wal-Mart Team" when they came into our region every 6 months or so. So I only had to put up with it for about 48 hours total across my 3 years at that job.

The guys who did it for a living, however, were douchebags who acted like they were rock stars and demanded respect from their "lessers". I still can't figure out how they saw a job description of "dedicated wal-mart bitch" as a point of pride, regardless of if their nametag had a fancy blue stripe.

pr0digal
Sep 12, 2008

Alan Rickman Overdrive

neogeo0823 posted:

I hate walking into any business that's not the company I work for while wearing my work clothes. It doesn't mater where I work or where I am, everyone thinks I work there. I was once asked if I worked at a Lowes(red jersey vests and blue jeans) while wearing Best Buy garb(blue polos and khakis), and another time I was asked if I worked at Gamestop(casual wear) while wearing my Charlie's Subs uniform(bright yellow short with logos and black pants). Though, the best ones are the ones that ask me if I work at a place while wearing that place's very distinct uniform. I used to work at Harbor Freight and had at least 3 people a week come up to me while wearing the distinct blue shirt, blue jeans, and black back brace and ask me if I worked there. My reflexive response to "do you work here?" was "Nope! I just think the back braces are fashionable." It usually got a laugh out of people, except a few, who always went on to complain about their experience. Never got in trouble for it though.

I had a young kid ask me if I worked at Hot Topic last year.

:smith: I just saw the records they had for sale and wanted to look at them.

3D Megadoodoo
Nov 25, 2010

Inspector_666 posted:

Sometimes when I am sitting at front desks people try to get me to sign for packages, that's about as rough as it's gotten for me.

I was working at a customer's site that was closed down (as in none of their employees were present) for a Friday that came after a Thursday holiday, and suddenly a Latvian (or maybe Lithuanian? I forget) lorry driver was in our sales office waving a waybill and a biro in my face. I glanced at it long enough to see the goods were addressed to the customer, not us*. Thanks, security company who had been told not to let anyone in through the gate that day. (I poured myself some coffee and left because it wasn't my problem. I'm sure sales handled it some way :shrug:)

*) In case someone's ever in this situation: never sign anything for another company no matter who tells you to. Also never sign for anything you haven't actually seen and counted (to see if it matches the number of packages on the waybill) if it's addressed to your own company. If someone like your boss insists, tell them to sign it themselves.

Gunjin
Apr 27, 2004

Om nom nom

Baconroll posted:


Running anti-virus just doesn't have the same James Bond feel as having someone walk around the office sweeping for bugs.

A couple times a year, usually before and during the Board meetings, they have a guy come in and sweep the executive row and boardroom for bugs and set up a station and monitor for wireless eavesdropping. I wonder how lucrative a field that is, and what sort of qualifications one needs to get into that position.

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



Kurieg posted:

No it definitely sounds like you had it worse. Our crew staff augmented the dedicated "Wal-Mart Team" when they came into our region every 6 months or so. So I only had to put up with it for about 48 hours total across my 3 years at that job.

Eh, it never bothered me. I didn't lose my job, I never got in any trouble because my boss knew it wasn't my fault, and POS work was my least favorite part of the job.

On the other hand, they did start squeezing the techs after the fiscal year ended and they had done terribly. They decided that the techs couldn't count up to a half hour of their first trip to a site and their last trip home from a site each day. Which is 100% illegal, since we always had to do paperwork before and after we left and got home.

Now my Facebook keeps popping up ads about a class action lawsuit against them over forcing employees to work unpaid hours.

I forgot to mention, it's thanks to someone here that I found it was illegal. I just kept billing all of my travel time, they never hassled me about it.

22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Jul 21, 2015

Volmarias
Dec 31, 2002

EMAIL... THE INTERNET... SEARCH ENGINES...

GreenBuckanneer posted:

Best response to that is more of "Oh I'm just the plumber, you'll want to talk to someone else"

Oh, so you're good with toilets? I poop in then but then I never know what to do next, I'm not very good with plumbing hahaha, do you think you could fix this poop piled above the lid? Pay you? You should do this for free, it's what you people enjoy!

J
Jun 10, 2001

Gunjin posted:

A couple times a year, usually before and during the Board meetings, they have a guy come in and sweep the executive row and boardroom for bugs and set up a station and monitor for wireless eavesdropping. I wonder how lucrative a field that is, and what sort of qualifications one needs to get into that position.

But who monitors the guy sweeping for bugs to make sure he isn't planting bugs himself? :tinfoil:

pr0digal
Sep 12, 2008

Alan Rickman Overdrive
I'm working with a client remotely and we needed to reboot a server so I did it via the command line. A few minutes later I'm able to log back in but running uptime shows it was never rebooted. Talking with the client it turns out their internal systems team saw that the server had gone down and went in with Bladelogic and restarted ssh thus somehow preventing the server from actually restarting. This didn't make much sense to me but it's what I was told.

Since my login to iDRAC was not working for some reason I asked him to nicely ask the systems team to reboot the server via Bladelogic.

Gunjin
Apr 27, 2004

Om nom nom

J posted:

But who monitors the guy sweeping for bugs to make sure he isn't planting bugs himself? :tinfoil:

He's accompanied by a corporate security officer. I mean it all seems a bit paranoid until you remember that this is a fortune 200 company with one of the worlds most valuable brands and a product portfolio worth billions.

ilkhan
Oct 7, 2004

You'll be sorry you made fun of me when Daddy Donald jails all my posting enemies!
Ticket comes in: Can't access network drive [x]
No other details.

Ping them on skype: Hello [user], is windows giving you an error message when trying to access the drive?
User: It actually just worked again. Thanks.

Open->close in less than 3 minutes.
Well at least it was quick.
OTOH, it did disturb my SA browsing...

The Fool
Oct 16, 2003


less than three posted:

It's always a weird standoff when you're around dressed in no way like a store employee, but doing work. Half the time their response to "Oh I don't work here, I'm just fixing this" they'll glare at you for 5 seconds thinking you're trying to avoid them.

This happens to me occasionally. Pre-IT career I was briefly the manager of a c-store, and the c-store/grocery store people that I really feel sorry for are the vendor agents. They come in to set up a display, or get an order together, and then get chewed out for 5 minutes because they aren't able to help some entitled bitch find some product on the other side of the store.

edit: didn't see the next page

The Fool fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Jul 21, 2015

MiniFoo
Dec 25, 2006

METHAMPHETAMINE

A ticket came in.

quote:

When I try to send a password protected email from Proseries 2014, I get this error:



Can you please check and let me know what is wrong with this feature?

:geno:

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

Dice and Indeed seem to best for searching for stuff, but maintain a LinkedIn profile so recruiters come you as well.


So did they give you anywhere near what you asked for?

I'm giving them until next week. I'm out of the office this Thursday and Friday, so that gives them more than enough time to mull things over and for me to prepare for the inevitable lolno/drastic undershot number.

Someone else mentioned a good alternative plan, which I'm facepalming over not having thought of, would be to ask for the equivalent salary in a monthly bonus so that way if they do hire someone, the bonus goes away and I'm easier to keep on the books.

I've maintained the status quo on my end, at least. Things are still getting done.

Maybe if I unionized the IT department and voted to strike, that would be interesting, but I think entire workplaces have to be unionized for that to happen.

BaseballPCHiker
Jan 16, 2006

MJP posted:

I'm giving them until next week. I'm out of the office this Thursday and Friday, so that gives them more than enough time to mull things over and for me to prepare for the inevitable lolno/drastic undershot number.

Someone else mentioned a good alternative plan, which I'm facepalming over not having thought of, would be to ask for the equivalent salary in a monthly bonus so that way if they do hire someone, the bonus goes away and I'm easier to keep on the books.

I've maintained the status quo on my end, at least. Things are still getting done.

Maybe if I unionized the IT department and voted to strike, that would be interesting, but I think entire workplaces have to be unionized for that to happen.

Just keep plugging away on Dice, Indeed, LinkedIn, etc. I wouldn't limit yourself to jobs you think you are qualified for either, stretch a bit here and there if you aren't already. Try getting in touch with a few recruiters if you havent been contacted already. And don't forget about the classifieds in the local paper, for whatever reason some companies still post expensive ads in the paper for jobs, I don't know why but they do.

Have you tried negotiating more PTO in the meantime?

neogeo0823
Jul 4, 2007

NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

A call from a detective came in...

One of our clients, a nail salon operated by an Asian man who can barely speak English, had one of his customers allege on his Facebook page that he stole their credit card info and used it to try and purchase items at a nearby Macy's the same day that the customer was at his salon. His first response was to call us, ask if his terminal could have "been hacked" to reveal the info, and when I told him no, he then went to the police to file a report and had them call me to verify. So now, in addition to everything else I have to do today, I have to talk to a detective about why someone doesn't want to own up to the fact that they put their CC info into a phishing site or whatever and instead wants to blame a furious Asian man over getting their card info stolen.

It'd be hilarious if it weren't happening to me.

FreshFeesh
Jun 3, 2007

Drum Solo
A client complained of the "terrible service" we were providing after a server migration and creation of a new domain.

Over the past two weeks our contact has been getting issues raised by their staff (mainly training things like how to use the new network drives and such) and instead of passing them on to us, has been sitting on them, getting madder and madder that things don't "just work." They then throw all of these issues at us at once as proof that we should give them free service and/or credit them back for the project.

My most junior guy took care of their two-week incident back log in two hours. :what:

My next step is to have a conversation with our contact's manager to make sure there's no confusion as to what has been going on.

Nerdrock
Jan 31, 2006

neogeo0823 posted:

A call from a detective came in...

One of our clients, a nail salon operated by an Asian man who can barely speak English, had one of his customers allege on his Facebook page that he stole their credit card info and used it to try and purchase items at a nearby Macy's the same day that the customer was at his salon. His first response was to call us, ask if his terminal could have "been hacked" to reveal the info, and when I told him no, he then went to the police to file a report and had them call me to verify. So now, in addition to everything else I have to do today, I have to talk to a detective about why someone doesn't want to own up to the fact that they put their CC info into a phishing site or whatever and instead wants to blame a furious Asian man over getting their card info stolen.

It'd be hilarious if it weren't happening to me.

I was blamed of that while working at a retailer almost 15 years ago. As it turns out, some companies run their CC transactions through more promptly than others, and the customer had pinned on us the purchases they themselves had made at that other retailer shortly before shopping at my store.

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer

BaseballPCHiker posted:

Just keep plugging away on Dice, Indeed, LinkedIn, etc. I wouldn't limit yourself to jobs you think you are qualified for either, stretch a bit here and there if you aren't already. Try getting in touch with a few recruiters if you havent been contacted already. And don't forget about the classifieds in the local paper, for whatever reason some companies still post expensive ads in the paper for jobs, I don't know why but they do.

Have you tried negotiating more PTO in the meantime?

The PTO negotiation option is my fallback. PTO is useless given that I have to be on call every Saturday due to the boss being orthodox Jewish. Sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, he can't work. If I hadn't talked with co-workers about some of the awesome pernil or pulled pork I'd cooked, I'd play that card since I'm Jewish too.

The last vacation I took where I didn't have to cover a Saturday on call was when we still had a helpdesk guy. Since then I don't think I've taken any PTO other than a long-standing disability claim I needed to witness at in May, and that was a Tuesday.

I have a convention in Baltimore this weekend and if something happens, I gotta at least address it and if it's critical enough, fix it or get the right consultant involved.

My grandfather's in palliative care and if they think I'll work on a Saturday while sitting shiva with my family, they're going to be real surprised when I come in after bereavement's up and find out I literally deleted the company email account from my phone for the occasion.

In any case, I'd probably ask for the same 15 days PTO that an FTE would get along with a decent one-time bonus if they immediately kibosh the salary. I want more money, not more time off. I was already under market rates when I got my VCP while working for these guys.

I'm stretching, all right. Got thrown in for a VMware engineering thing, 12-month contract with IBM. Not exactly ideal but it involves benefits, a huge pay raise, and working remote. I doubt I'll get it, but on paper I do meet most of the qualifications.

I've touched base with all the recruiters I've touched base with in past searches, and I'm responding to the posts from non-Indian recruiters with "Hey, thanks, that's not my thing but here's my resume" and whatnot.

Meanwhile I'm trying to work aggressively at keeping the guttural anger at helpdesking in check. I'll be honest, having a good therapist helps greatly. I needed a qualified human to deal with my fast-talking neuroses and years of all kinds of psychological stuff and get me into a position where I can at least work on myself a little, with the right guidance. Nothing but helpful.

Rhymenoserous
May 23, 2008

neogeo0823 posted:

I hate walking into any business that's not the company I work for while wearing my work clothes. It doesn't mater where I work or where I am, everyone thinks I work there. I was once asked if I worked at a Lowes(red jersey vests and blue jeans) while wearing Best Buy garb(blue polos and khakis), and another time I was asked if I worked at Gamestop(casual wear) while wearing my Charlie's Subs uniform(bright yellow short with logos and black pants). Though, the best ones are the ones that ask me if I work at a place while wearing that place's very distinct uniform. I used to work at Harbor Freight and had at least 3 people a week come up to me while wearing the distinct blue shirt, blue jeans, and black back brace and ask me if I worked there. My reflexive response to "do you work here?" was "Nope! I just think the back braces are fashionable." It usually got a laugh out of people, except a few, who always went on to complain about their experience. Never got in trouble for it though.

I used to get pulled aside in Best Buy all the time. My work uniform was a pair of shorts, a suitably non edgy t-shirt, a baseball cap and my badge (I worked in a web hosting datacenter, no customer contact, no need to dress up). Apparently just a badge is enough to trigger "Let me ask this guy stupid questions" reflexes.

Rhymenoserous
May 23, 2008

MJP posted:

The PTO negotiation option is my fallback. PTO is useless given that I have to be on call every Saturday due to the boss being orthodox Jewish. Sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, he can't work. If I hadn't talked with co-workers about some of the awesome pernil or pulled pork I'd cooked, I'd play that card since I'm Jewish too.

loving not your problem. If I don't have enough coverage to handle things while I take a week or two off, then we don't have enough coverage period.

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer

Rhymenoserous posted:

loving not your problem. If I don't have enough coverage to handle things while I take a week or two off, then we don't have enough coverage period.

I was recently denied a vacation request because it fell on a day when my boss already had claimed. It was a Thursday. If we can't escalate issues to our hourly consultant and be charged for them, we sure as hell can't have him cover the helpdesk.

If I refuse to cover it's fairly clear insubordination. If I get fired I aim for it to be for no cause so I can collect UI, at the very least. It took a lot for them to understand when I took a vacation last year that I will not be accessible under any circumstances, I have documented everything I've ever done either in ticket responses, Trello, or our wiki. There will be no need to call me and I will not pick up if called. I removed my company email account from my phone and set an autoresponder that I will not be checking. When I first started here, it was "understood" that while a lunch break was included, nobody ever took it. I took that up with the recruiter and my boss' boss before they relented and said it was OK if I took a lunch.

I'm toying with medicaling out for a few days if I can find a doctor willing to write me a note. Meanwhile, though, I'm holding onto my PTO in the unfavorable event that I can't YotJ soon enough and I'm faced with actually needing time off.

Rhymenoserous
May 23, 2008
Time to quit. Your environment is royally hosed.

socialsecurity
Aug 30, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 3 hours!

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Less frustrating because it wasn't management, but it reminded me.

I'm elbow-deep in a POS system, with my company polo shirt on. The employees' shirts are bright blue, mine is black. Someone leans over the counter and asks me if the lane is open. I tell him it isn't, because I'm fixing the register. "Oh. You should open it up, it's really busy."

Yes this, I used to work on Self Checkout machines. One time I was on my back hanging with half the machine sitting disassembled around me and a lady came up and STARTED TUGGING ON MY FEET LIKE SHE WAS GOING TO PULL ME OUT OR SOME poo poo trying to get me to get her some cashback, it took everything I had to explain nicely how I am not allowed to touch the money as I am just a repairman.

the littlest prince
Sep 23, 2006


MJP posted:

When I first started here, it was "understood" that while a lunch break was included, nobody ever took it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcVe2k4GpKg

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer

Rhymenoserous posted:

Time to quit. Your environment is royally hosed.

Our environment's been royally hosed since long before they termed my helpdesk guy.

Our network engineer consultant said it best: we're using poo poo at enterprise levels without enterprise level support contracts or people knowledgeable enough on the payroll, and it's overkill for our needs.

This company's punching above its weight class without a trainer. Or the right gloves. Or the weight.

I can't just up and quit - single income earner. I've scrolled every single job board that has relevant postings and am checking them fairly frequently through the week. Even if I have more time to search I've got no more postings to apply to. Best thing I can do is just keep up appearances, work on handling the stress in a constructive manner, and keep looking.

I just wish I could figure out effective drop-shipping strategies so I could have an Ebay side gig or something else to make extra cash from my cube.

Humbug Scoolbus
Apr 25, 2008

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
Clapping Larry
Start selling IT assets/Office furniture?

AreWeDrunkYet
Jul 8, 2006

If you're a single-income household, is there anything preventing you from relocating? Widening the net might get you better results. I don't recall if you've said where you live, but there's a serious shortage of decent IT people in some parts of the country.

Super Slash
Feb 20, 2006

You rang ?
It's not even IT; most times when I go about town on my lunch break someone ends up asking if I work in [Shop], I just wear black slacks and a plain polo shirt?

Crowley
Mar 13, 2003

Wibla posted:

My vacation starts on Friday, wanna guess how the weather will be for the next three weeks? (hint: Norway).

Better book a trip to Croatia or something right away...

If you're in Bergen you can expect rain.

Because: Bergen

..rain

Always rain in Bergen :smith:

(I ended my vacation in the summer house with clear skies. Packed up and drove 10 km, and it was pouring rain the rest of the day. Maybe Thor wants me to do him a favor later or something..)

neogeo0823
Jul 4, 2007

NO THAT'S NOT ME!!

Super Slash posted:

It's not even IT; most times when I go about town on my lunch break someone ends up asking if I work in [Shop], I just wear black slacks and a plain polo shirt?

It's gotta be that then. Clothes like that must invoke a feeling of "He looks official" in people.

MJP posted:

Our environment's been royally hosed since long before they termed my helpdesk guy.

Our network engineer consultant said it best: we're using poo poo at enterprise levels without enterprise level support contracts or people knowledgeable enough on the payroll, and it's overkill for our needs.

This company's punching above its weight class without a trainer. Or the right gloves. Or the weight.

I can't just up and quit - single income earner. I've scrolled every single job board that has relevant postings and am checking them fairly frequently through the week. Even if I have more time to search I've got no more postings to apply to. Best thing I can do is just keep up appearances, work on handling the stress in a constructive manner, and keep looking.

I just wish I could figure out effective drop-shipping strategies so I could have an Ebay side gig or something else to make extra cash from my cube.

If you're not finding anything in your field, it's time to move on to greener pastures. If you're single income, you probably aren't tied down. Move elsewhere. Move to a bigger city, or get to a different career path, even temporarily. I've been a carney barker, worked in an electronics sweat shop, held half a dozen fast food jobs, did landscaping(I'm an out of shape fatass), worked in a poo poo pit of a bowling alley, drove a forklift for a major hardware store, and have done a bunch of other side gigs and temp and retail work, and I have been in your position before. I've worked in places where I wasn't "allowed" to take certain days off because of stupidity stemming from my management or coworkers. In my vast swath of job experience, every single place that denied me a day off for poo poo like that was a hell hole that was not worth being within 100 feet of, and the only reason I ever kept those jobs was because I didn't think I could do better, and because I considered myself "lucky" to have the job at the time.

You need to tell yourself that you can do better. "Better" in this case is not necessarily a pay bump or a promotion. It is an improvement in sanity. You can never take a vacation because you can never have a Saturday off because your boss, who shouldn't effect your workflow enough to be indispensable, called dibs on every loving Saturday from now till he dies. How are you supposed to not go crazy if you can never take a few days to decompress? Take a job doing something you've never tried before. Who knows, maybe you'll like it? At the very least, it should be a refreshing change of pace for a few months. In the meantime, you'll look back on this company and go "drat, glad I got out of there" when Saturday rolls around and the IT department literally implodes like you seem to think it will.

MJP
Jun 17, 2007

Are you looking at me Senpai?

Grimey Drawer
After a disproportionately helpdesk-heavy day, I think I'm going to ask my boss tomorrow what the response was on the raise request. So much junior level poo poo in a stagnant Windows/VMware environment. To hell with giving them time, it's almost a week.

Humbug Scoolbus posted:

Start selling IT assets/Office furniture?

Whenever we decomm something or otherwise, I sell it and split the proceeds with the boss, so long as Accounting is OK with writing it off. It's not happening much lately.

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

If you're a single-income household, is there anything preventing you from relocating? Widening the net might get you better results. I don't recall if you've said where you live, but there's a serious shortage of decent IT people in some parts of the country.

We have a mortgage and we love northern NJ. There'll be a YotJ eventually, but we ain't moving. I'm close enough to do the NYC commute, so it's more a matter of me being patient and continuing to apply than no jobs.

neogeo0823 posted:

If you're not finding anything in your field, it's time to move on to greener pastures. If you're single income, you probably aren't tied down. Move elsewhere. Move to a bigger city, or get to a different career path, even temporarily. I've been a carney barker, worked in an electronics sweat shop, held half a dozen fast food jobs, did landscaping(I'm an out of shape fatass), worked in a poo poo pit of a bowling alley, drove a forklift for a major hardware store, and have done a bunch of other side gigs and temp and retail work, and I have been in your position before. I've worked in places where I wasn't "allowed" to take certain days off because of stupidity stemming from my management or coworkers. In my vast swath of job experience, every single place that denied me a day off for poo poo like that was a hell hole that was not worth being within 100 feet of, and the only reason I ever kept those jobs was because I didn't think I could do better, and because I considered myself "lucky" to have the job at the time.

You need to tell yourself that you can do better. "Better" in this case is not necessarily a pay bump or a promotion. It is an improvement in sanity. You can never take a vacation because you can never have a Saturday off because your boss, who shouldn't effect your workflow enough to be indispensable, called dibs on every loving Saturday from now till he dies. How are you supposed to not go crazy if you can never take a few days to decompress? Take a job doing something you've never tried before. Who knows, maybe you'll like it? At the very least, it should be a refreshing change of pace for a few months. In the meantime, you'll look back on this company and go "drat, glad I got out of there" when Saturday rolls around and the IT department literally implodes like you seem to think it will.

We're single income due to my wife's medical issues. I've honestly been trying to figure out what else other than IT I can do as a career but coming up short. If she gets back to full-time, we can see what happens - I do have a bachelor's degree, at least - but the only jobs I can take need to be able to pay the bills.

I know I can do better. That's why I'm trying to get out. But I can't restart in a new career unless entry level is at least the mid-70k range if med insurance is free and it's a driving commute.

Danith
May 20, 2006
I've lurked here for years

AreWeDrunkYet posted:

If you're a single-income household, is there anything preventing you from relocating? Widening the net might get you better results. I don't recall if you've said where you live, but there's a serious shortage of decent IT people in some parts of the country.

What parts? I'm sorta interested in moving to a different state, but I just bought my first house end of last year so maybe it's just a dream for now.

22 Eargesplitten
Oct 10, 2010



Raleigh is supposed to be highly in demand, and cheap. It's also a college town, so it's not straight out of Deliverance.

The Denver-Boulder area seems pretty good too, if you're willing to live in a big(ish) city or be surrounded by hippies and a constant haze of pot smoke.

Dice had an article on the top 10 fastest growing tech cities, I don't remember any of them aside from Raleigh, though.

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AreWeDrunkYet
Jul 8, 2006

Danith posted:

What parts? I'm sorta interested in moving to a different state, but I just bought my first house end of last year so maybe it's just a dream for now.

I've seen it in DC and Austin.

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