- cruft
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On a related note, I'm going to have to take over hiring for our summer internship program now; when I started it was 20% white men, this year it's 100% white men.
To be fair, I don't have a problem with white men, I just have a problem with things that are exclusively white men.
So I probably would have backed away from the Big Dog Gaming Company too, if I'd heard that.
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Jul 30, 2021 18:50
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 26, 2024 18:41
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- cruft
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Yeah I don't wanna be "the diversity candidate" in a 5000 body org. I'm indigenous and queer but HOW BOUT YOU HIRE SOME BLACK FOLKS AND MAYBE SOME ASIAN AND LATINE FOLKS EHHHH? Jesus.
HR telling an interview candidate that they're "trying to increase our diversity" seems like pretty clear code for "somebody decided we have a diversity problem and it's up to HR to somehow fix a systemic cultural problem".
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Jul 30, 2021 19:54
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- Farecoal
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There he go
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Wow, that's two checkboxes ticked off already! How efficient!
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Jul 30, 2021 20:16
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- Escape From Noise
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Don't mess w/ the Big Dogs!
Escape From Noise fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Aug 1, 2021
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Jul 31, 2021 09:59
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- Escape From Noise
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 BIG OL' RANT AHEAD!
Finally I'm just two weeks from ditching this absolute loving dumpster fire of a company. I know I complained about it a lot, also that I complain a lot in general, but this place is probably the worst run company I have ever worked at other than that kitchen job I had when I was 15 where the owner was arrested for pulling a knife on an employee a while after he'd fired me and later kidnapped his kids and fled with them to Florida following a divorce.
The first major issue is that the owner is a loving cheapskate and cheaps out on almost every piece of equipment in the brewery. So from start to finish: We brew using pre-milled malt which means a lack of variety and quality, but also guarantees we'll have a stuck mash, even worse on the larger system. We don't have a proper hot water tank which makes sparging on the larger system more difficult and labor intensive, it also means we can't set a proper temperature for maximum efficiency. The heat exchanger/wort chillers for both systems are inadequate, especially the smaller system, meaning that the wort often enters the tank at 25℃-30℃, especially with the smaller system, which means we have to wait for the tank to cool the wort down to proper pitching temperature (around 20℃), which can take hours BUT the glycol system for the smaller system overheats really easily and, on top of that, will fail if the set temperature is more than 5℃ off of the actual temperature. The owner also rushes beers and crashes and packages them at like 2 weeks when you need around 4 weeks. All bottles are hand labeled which is incredibly time consuming and labor intensive. All kegs are hand washed as well, which is also time intensive. The bottler is a two head filler with limited ability to CO2 purge and is really meant for smaller runs of higher turnover bottles. The owner wants to have a really long shelf life for bottles, but that's not going to be possible without a better and much more expensive bottler, and possibly other equipment as well. We regularly bottle entire 600 liter batches, which literally takes an entire day, plus you need to have enough bottles labeled. The bottle labeling/packaging system involves a label you have to stamp after labeling, bottling, and boxing with a personal stamp and checking boxes indicating the order in which these steps were done. If you have a big bottling run to do but nobody was able to do labels for you and you don't have time to do so yourself, you're basically just hosed. We often keg to open up tanks and then bottle from kegs later which is a really bad idea for a number of reasons including oxygen pickup and inconsistent product. We also stamp the label with the date it was bottled, not kegged, so it seems fresher. Also we mostly use Cornelius kegs, even at 600 liters. Cleaning tanks is time consuming and dangerous because of the lack of a proper hot water tank, I almost got sprayed with hot water as well as hot water and caustic when pressure from a tank I was cleaning backed up and started spraying it out of the top of the lid of the tank I was heating it all in, which is basically just a big stew pot. Also the pumps we use have exposed wires that we just have to use and lay down on a wet floor. It's just everything. The cold room for finished beer is way too small for all the bottling we do and is stacked dangerously high. There's also no real way of keeping it all organized in any real way because it's just bottle, bottle, bottle!
Next, the owner doesn't care about anything but immediate profits. The company is constantly sacrificing long term profits and more permanent progress for fleeting, minor profits. Like I mentioned before, the owner rushes production so our beer has all kinds of off flavors as well as stability and consistency issues. We also basically make two beers: wheat and pale ale. The owner is incredibly protective of "his" recipes (that he took from the company he studied brewing at). The weissen grain bill is just your basic 50/50 mix of wheat and pilsner, but also has orange peel and coriander for some reason. The pale ale recipe is a loving mess and is just thin and has no body. The IPA is the pale ale with more hops. The fruit beers are just the wheat beer base without enough fruit. I told him how much to add but it's expensive so that's not happening. We do a lot of contract brewing. Not for like repeat customers. Just for like some company who wants a beer for their business conference or someone's wedding (they literally advertise that we do this on ads on the city busses). Also they need it next month. So I guess we have to loving change the schedule again. Also it's just going to be the pale ale or whatever. Who cares? Contract brewing can be a great way to fill up empty tanks and make some money on the side, but we're always scrambling with these small fry orders that get in the way of an already packed schedule of our own stuff. I have brewed one beer of my own since getting here and I was given less than a week's notice to get it together. That's the last new beer we made. There's just zero effort to try for anything even sort of modern, popular, or interesting. We make awful beer nobody wants and the owner's solution, at our size, is loving exporting. We're exporting to several countries. It barely turns a profit. It's so much extra work for like no gains instead of working to improve the product. I was supposedly hired to make good beer, but I haven't been allowed to make any real changes other than the CIP. The boss will sell anything, even if it's old and/or of poor quality for a quick buck and it's obviously poisoned the brand.
Next is the production schedule. It's constantly shifting, and although it's written down sort of, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. Everything is in the owner's head, and he won't share it. It doesn't matter if you ask him point blank. His answer will change every day, sometimes a few times a day. It's impossible to actually prepare most of the time because it could change the next day.
Then there's the work schedule. Why am I working a shift schedule? It makes zero loving sense. What kind of factory works using this kind of scheduling? Production can sometimes shift meaning that the thing I was scheduled to do earlier this month suddenly can't be done and has to be shifted to another day, but I'm still scheduled for that day. Couple that with the aforementioned production schedule issues that are constantly shifting and none of it makes sense. I regularly have to work 6 or 7 days in a row, but sometimes one, two, or even three of those days I won't really even have anything to do because of the shifting in the schedule. Today I did my first of 6 days that I'm supposed to work. 2 days ago I was going over the schedule with my coworker and the manager and the manager just kind of said that I didn't have anything to do on my third day. Wonderful. It's just the most bizarre thing. I've worked at places that churn and burn. As horrible as that practice is, I can at least understand what the company is getting out of it when I see it happening. This place isn't actually really gaining anything from the hectic schedule. So all of the workers are miserable, and they're not gaining anything from it in the way that most other companies would.
Finally, I have never worked at a company before where the management actually just regularly sabotaged and undercut me. I'm not exaggerating when I say almost every time I have tried to shift things around in order to be able to run the schedule more efficiently and prepare things adequately the management always manages to somehow totally sabotage whatever preparations I've made. A few Fridays ago I didn't really have anything to do so they told me to bottle for a huge bottling run that I'm only just taking care of now. Doing the bottling that early made no sense to me, I noticed that I had to keg the following week so I told them I would clean kegs in preparation for that. When I came in the following Wednesday to just start kegging I was informed that the kegs that I had cleaned had been used because there was a shift in the schedule again. So instead of just getting in and kegging immediately, thus giving me plenty of time to clean the tank and get a head start on the bottling that I had to do, I was back to square one. More recently my coworker and I approached the manager asking what we needed to do the next day since they were asking me to bottle but we didn't have enough labeled bottles. The manager just told my coworker to label the bottles the day before even though I needed something like 30 cases (1 case=35 bottles). He also said bottling the beer wasn't a priority. Again, these would all have to be hand labeled. I just told my coworker not to worry about it that, I would just label the next day. The next day I was labeling bottles when later in the day, at around 3:00 p.m. that manager came up to me and asked how much bottling I had managed to do that day. I informed him I hadn't done any because didn't have enough bottles labeled. He told me that he needed like four cases so I should do that. I just about went ballistic. I don't think either of them realize how much work goes into bottling. I don't just go and start to bottle immediately, I have to clean and set up the machine, then there's breakdown afterwards. It's like an hour at least for just that. So everything's run super inefficiently and there's nothing I can do to change it because if I try to it just gets sabotaged. Even the smallest things I've tried to do. It's mind boggling.
I don't really know why I was hired. I get paid more than most people in the company. I was I guess brought on to help run the 2000 liter brewery that they're apparently opening, but after seeing how they run the smaller place I don't want anything to do with that. I was apparently brought on to improve things, but every time I try to change anything I'm shot down. You can't really improve things without making changes. It's just the most maddening thing. My entire hiring was just totally pointless because they won't even listen to me. I had to argue with the owner for a month about how long fermentation time was and I guess convinced him, but I knew he would stop following proper fermentation scheduling once it became inconvenient for him. Sure enough, I was recently informed that I need to bottle a tank of pale ale that I brewed two weeks ago. Because he needs it for import. He doesn't care, so I don't really either.
Escape From Noise fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Aug 2, 2021
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Aug 1, 2021 16:39
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- cruft
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I want you to know I read this whole thing. I feel you dawg
same. and same.
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Aug 1, 2021 20:59
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- Escape From Noise
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Haha dang. It's definitely a bit of a novel. Guess I was trying to reflect a little bit. I thought that post covered most of it, but I realized there's more. The issues here are just such a tangled mess.
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Aug 2, 2021 00:35
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- xcheopis
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Haha dang. It's definitely a bit of a novel. Guess I was trying to reflect a little bit. I thought that post covered most of it, but I realized there's more. The issues here are just such a tangled mess.
So glad you're able to go back to your old job!
Everywhere, everyone is red and green
I gotta lust for glory and a tape machine
I'm living out Frank Coppola's dreams
Outta my mind, I'm feelin' mean
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Aug 2, 2021 00:55
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- Escape From Noise
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Me too! At least I gave it a shot.
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Aug 2, 2021 03:01
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- Escape From Noise
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12 more days.
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Aug 3, 2021 02:59
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- xcheopis
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"On the first day of quitting, my boss said to me: Just skip the steps we know to be key!"
Everywhere, everyone is red and green
I gotta lust for glory and a tape machine
I'm living out Frank Coppola's dreams
Outta my mind, I'm feelin' mean
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Aug 3, 2021 03:14
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- Finger Prince
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"On the first day of quitting, my boss said to me: Just skip the steps we know to be key!"
Ooh we could to a whole 12 says of quitting!. On the 2nd day of quitting, my boss sent to me: two angry texts, and just skip the steps we know to be key!
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Aug 3, 2021 03:19
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- xcheopis
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Ooh we could to a whole 12 says of quitting!. On the 2nd day of quitting, my boss sent to me: two angry texts, and just skip the steps we know to be key!
On the 3rd day of quitting, my boss scheduled me: three days of cleaning, two angry texts, and just skip the steps we know to be key!
Everywhere, everyone is red and green
I gotta lust for glory and a tape machine
I'm living out Frank Coppola's dreams
Outta my mind, I'm feelin' mean
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Aug 3, 2021 03:29
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- Finger Prince
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On the fourth day of quitting, my boss scheduled me: four conference calls, three days of cleaning, sent two angry texts, and said skip all we know to be key.
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Aug 3, 2021 10:12
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- Escape From Noise
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I wish he'd put me on a conference call. I could just zone out.
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Aug 3, 2021 14:03
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- Escape From Noise
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Got to work at 7:00 in the morning to start on the Brew day because it's going to take 12 hours because it's a large batch and I can't find the notebook that has the recipe information in this disorganized shithole, so it's going to be a really long day.
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Aug 3, 2021 23:23
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- Escape From Noise
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Probably gonna be a 14 hour day for me today because this place is such a loving disorganized mess.
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Aug 4, 2021 04:11
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- Escape From Noise
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Remember that I just posted
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Aug 4, 2021 06:21
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- Escape From Noise
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I hate this place so loving much.
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Aug 4, 2021 09:19
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- Dukes Mayo Clinic
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I look forward to your Escape from Beer.
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Aug 4, 2021 10:35
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- Finger Prince
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On the 6th day of quitting, my boss gave me poo poo: for six toilet breaks, fiiiiiiiive o'clock I'm ooooooout! Four conference calls, three days of cleaning, sent two angry texts, and said skip all we know to be key.
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Aug 4, 2021 12:26
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- cruft
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I look forward to your Escape from Beer.
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Aug 4, 2021 17:56
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- Escape From Noise
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I'll still be making beer at my next job. I'll just actually be in charge of what goes on in the brewery.
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Aug 5, 2021 00:30
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- Escape From Noise
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Today and tomorrow's schedule make absolutely zero loving sense. I'm supposed to somehow clean kegs for kegging today and tomorrow, then fill two kegs from the 600 liter tank of pale ale, then bottle the rest, and I guess clean the tank,. which is impossible timewise. Then tomorrow I'm kegging a separate batch of beer and cleaning that tank? Jesus. These people are the dumbest loving pieces of poo poo I've ever had to work for.
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Aug 5, 2021 01:11
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- Escape From Noise
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It looks like beer to me, but perhaps there is a reason people don't buy beer based solely off of photos of it.
It's beer. It's just not fully attenuated, so it tastes awful.
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Aug 5, 2021 17:51
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- cruft
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Great! Ship it!
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Aug 5, 2021 18:18
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- Escape From Noise
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They are. We absolutely need it for export!
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Aug 5, 2021 18:21
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- Escape From Noise
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Oh my god that's the equivalent of selling uncured lye soap, gently caress. NO NO NO NO NO I am so glad you're getting out of there.
Yeah. It's really bad. Also I only bottled like half the tank. The rest will get bottled .. next week I guess? I "need" to clear a tank today so my coworker can brew a new batch tomorrow. That's the main concern, so I'm kegging the entire tank. They're probably going to bottle from those kegs later. The production schedule is constantly shifting based on something the owner suddenly wants. They treat the brewery like a short order kitchen. I'm not sure that they understand the time it takes to set up and break down the bottler. They'll pretty regularly ask for "just a case" late in the afternoon. If the owner wants to sample a newer beer or whatever, he doesn't just pour from a keg, he asks us to make him a few bottles from the keg.
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Aug 5, 2021 23:59
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- cruft
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If the owner wants to sample a newer beer or whatever, he doesn't just pour from a keg, he asks us to make him a few bottles from the keg.
It's almost like your boss is Tommy Wiseau.
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Aug 6, 2021 00:02
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- Adbot
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ADBOT LOVES YOU
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May 26, 2024 18:41
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- Randy Travesty
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PHANTOM QUEEN
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I just got word that while they were painting everything to prepare the building for all of us who prefer working at home to come back in to the office, they discovered asbestos floor tiles 
Between the painting, which still hasn't finished, and the building-wide asbestos abatement, and the delta variant, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be working from home for a while still. This is A-OK by me. I love working from home, and so do the orbs I manage.
In fact, my boss just suggested everybody go in and clean out their office so there's less stuff to get asbestos on 
Holy gently caress lmao
Anyway enjoy working from home for the next 2-5 years because lambda is pretty much confirmed on US soil now and also abatement took, idk, four years at one of my old places.
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Aug 6, 2021 01:39
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Jul 30, 2021 18:50
or afab at all that I've interacted with in the company over the years are either sales engineers or HR with maybe an engineering recruitment focus.
