Category: Working

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To-Go California, You can order your meal but you’ll never eat.

Consider this a bit of a PSA.

I stumbled across this article in The Wall Street Journal about some new regulation for fast food and dine-in restaurants no longer providing plastic utensils with your order, unless you specifically ask for them.

Gone are the days when you can blow through a Taco Bell drive through and be assured that you’ll be able to eat all your meal.

You’d think, “No worries, I’ll use my hands.”

TRUE you could, but then you’ll find that the napkins you assumed would be in the bag, AREN’T.

Not to worry though, It’s not like you’ll have hot sauce in the bag either because those too you’d have to ask for.

So, Taco Bell, and other fast food options will kinda be a no option without a checklist. I’ll attempt to help by providing my personal Ordering checklist. I’ve got it on my phone, but I’m thinking a post-it note stuck to my car dashboard might be better.

Fast Food ordering:

  1. Food
  2. Drink
  3. Condiments (Ketchup, Hot Sauce, etc.)
  4. Straw
  5. Napkins at least 5 (More depending on type of food)
  6. Necessary utensils (Spork, Knife, etc.)
  7. Pull up to window. Pay.
  8. CHECK that meal is correct and necessary Utensils, Napkins, and condiments are present.
  9. IGNORE HONKING of impatient people waiting behind you!

Yet again The State of California is working to make your life better, through unintended consequences.

Most of the time, If you’re a working stiff, perhaps hourly you’ve maybe got a 30 minute lunch. If the company you work for is exceptionally generous you might even have 45 minutes or a whole hour!

With traffic in most areas around California industrial parks, for a working stiff, it works out like this;

5 minutes to get out of the building, 5 minutes to get out of the parking lot (due to everyone else trying to leave for lunch) 10 minutes to navigate the rest of the lunch hour traffic from all the other companies in the industrial park.

5 minutes at traffic lights and turning into the nearest strip mall or gas station parking lot.

Pull into shortest line for for one of the fast food places, (Wendy’s, Mac Donalds, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Panda Express, etc) wait in line 5 to 10 minutes (By which time you’re already late if you’re on a 30 minute lunch.)

Place your order, 5 minute wait for food, then mad 10 minute dash, (You’re late at this point if you have a 45 minute lunch,) back to the industrial park.

5 minutes waiting at lights, 5 minutes to get into parking lot and find parking space, 5 minutes to get back into building. (You’re on the raggedy edge of being late at this point if you have an hour lunch.)

You get back to your desk, ready to resume work and eat your meal while you’re working…

You open your bag of cold soggy burger & fries or tacos that started out as crunchy but which are now, anything but. Voilà you discover that the whole exercise was pointless because even though you could eat without the condiments, or perhaps even the utensils, you have nothing to wipe your hands with.

Your lunch sits in the bag, not getting any fresher until finally it smells disgusting and ends up in the trash. Thereby contributing to food waste and spewing CO2 into the air, in the dash to get lunch that was also a pointless waste of energy.

So tell me again how wonderful it is that you’ve eliminated basic necessities to protect the planet? Huuuummm?

I swear to God, all of these jackass politicians should be under mandatory orders to live with their proposed laws for six months before they can put them into action.

Not ONE of the political elites in any California city has ever had to punch a clock or be screamed at by an overbearing manager over their lunch break being 2 minutes too long.

All one need do is look at the distribution of restaurants in and around industrial parks in San Diego, Irvine, Victorville, Huntington Beach, The San Fernando Valley, Ventura, or Los Angeles to see that most of the “working class” lives what I’ve described above daily. Or they bring their lunch so that they can at least have a real few minutes of rest during their lunch break.

Now, thanks to the politician brain trust, this new anti utensil or condiment law will ultimately slow the food ordering process down even further.

Not that these Politicians give a shit. After all, if the workers aren’t spending money on fast food, after skipping breakfast to get the kids off to school, it means the workers will have more money that can collected as taxes.

Obviously the low wage earner who collects $12 a week in unspent lunch money doesn’t need it now do they?

Plus, the Arch Ministers of Public Health can chalk up a “Win” because obesity will be less of a problem. Who cares if the workers are starving while they toil away to earn enough to pay their tax burden? That just means they’ll die sooner and a whole new group can be imported from wherever.

Maybe the Politicians are hoping it’ll be mostly white people!

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Normally I like Fall.

This time of year is usually one of my favorites.

It’s a time of changing leaves, cool temperatures, and relative peace.

Not this year.

This year, it’s me against nature. It also signals that soon I’ll be trapped into being here another 5 months. Even though I have no immediate plans to get the hell out of California, it’s a psychological barrier. One simply doesn’t change homes in the snow. I did it once a long time ago and learned my lesson.

We’re having a cold snap that is impairing my ability to finish painting the trim of the house. I started this project and then injured my knee. I’d started the project in the narrow window between the completion of the repairs from the water damage and now.

I thought at the time, “it will be tight but I’ll have time to finish before Winter.” Then I hurt my knee and spent 3 weeks hobbling around like an old man barely able to stand up.

You know that you’re hurt bad when the dog keeps licking your foot and leg, and doesn’t even react when you head to the door. It’s like the dog is saying, “Dude, you can walk yourself, you sure as hell can’t walk me!”

The licking can be bothersome but it’s sweet in its way. The pup is just trying to make you feel better as he would another dog. I take it as a sign that he’s decided we’re a pack.

The knee is getting better daily. I’ve been able to do much of the project by chipping away at it. I’ll work until my knee says, “That’s enough,” I’ve made good progress but I’m worried that I won’t be able to complete the project before it’s too cold to finish painting. Did you know that paint wont set up correctly below certain temperatures? I didn’t, until I moved here.

The other winterizing project that I have yet to do, is cleaning out the gutters. That, like painting requires that I be on a ladder. The more time I spend on a ladder, the less time I have to actually do the project before the knee starts “Bidening” (Calling a lid on the day). That’s a project that has got to get done, because otherwise water backs up in the gutters and then freezes, causing problems throughout the entire Winter.

The last project for Winter, is annoying but can be done regardless of the temperature. Unfortunately, it also means that I have to be on a ladder and climbing around in the attic. (There’s that ladder thing again!)

I’ve got to get in the attic crawlspace and retape the ductwork. We had some work done last year up in the attic and I think one or more of the ducts got pushed around, perhaps creating leaks between the ductwork and the registers. It happens, I didn’t notice the problem until months after the workmen had left because their work was done in the time between needing to run either the A/C or the heat.

You can do ductwork stuff in the Summer with the roof broiling in the sun and the attic is 120°F or you can do it in the fall when attic temps are more reasonable. I’ve chosen the latter.

Thinking about it, I should also clean out the dryer vent. That may be a “today” kind of project because it’s 35°F outside and windy. (So, no painting today!) As a bonus, there’s no ladder required.

All of this is to say,

Welcome to Fall!

It also serves as an explanation of why I’ve not been blogging as much as usual.

I’ve scanned the news recently. Nothing much has changed.

I could sum up the news like this, “We’re all gonna die, the government is out of money, one group or another is pissed off about something, and everything is going to hell in a hand basket.”

There, now you don’t have to watch the evening news. Instead, turn off the TV, shut down the computer, put the phone aside, and go read a good book.

Until next time… I hope you’re having a nice Fall season.

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We’ve reached the end of the week.

Annnnnnnddd… Nothing is new!

Had a job offer rescinded. Disappointing but in truth I had some reservations about the job. The pay was good, but the Job itself was in Florida.

Florida wouldn’t be bad for me personally, but it would mean leaving Jesse, my home, and probably any reasonable chance of returning to California would be gone too, except to sell the house eventually.

I thought about it and had come to peace about all that I’d be leaving and all that I’d have to clean up eventually.

The reservations about the job in addition to those stated, also had to do with the relationship of the person I’d be working for and my family’s involvement. What happened to the job if things went sour between my boss and the family? Those questions were apparently answered when the offer was rescinded. I know from the family’s perspective that something happened.

I’m trying to convince myself that it was for the best and have mustered at least some strength of will to continue this fruitless search.

I’ve been considering just entering warehouse work. There’s a nice symmetry in that. One of the first jobs I had, involved warehouse work, and I sorta liked it.

No politics, simple labor, In motion all day long, and not trapped behind a desk. Do your job, do it right, and go home at night.

There’s also a pot grower nearby that is looking for help with the growing. The pay isn’t as high as the warehousing positions, but I like making things grow. I’d also be a good candidate because I don’t particularly like pot. The employer wouldn’t have to worry about me taking merchandise or being stoned out of my mind on the job.

The longer this unemployment goes on, the more I’m leaning toward abandoning technology as a career and doing something that’s actually constructive.

I’ve been thinking maybe it’s time to let software continue it’s slide toward horrific inadequacy without my interference.

After all we’ve all seen the debacles across the software industry in recent years. From simple things like, Typos salted through menus and help texts, to data breaches exposing a corporations entire customer database to the world.

Remember… the software “Passed” testing…

I wonder how happy I’d be returning to an office environment where any bug I discovered could be called “Racist” based on the color of a programmer’s skin or their national origin. Software either works correctly or it doesn’t. As a QA person my job is to find the problems and report them. I don’t care who or what the programmer is, a bug is a bug.

The problem is, that if you’re assigned to test a particular part of functionality it’s often a particular programmer’s code. Programmers hate QA finding bugs in their code I could see it devolving into a “He’s just a racist and going through my code with a fine tooth comb because he hates: X, Y, Z colored people.“

No matter how you play that scenario out, as a white man these days you lose. Even if you’re treating all the code you test in exactly the same way.

Then I ask myself do I really want to deal with being afraid of using the wrong word or pronoun.

Years ago I was called on the carpet during a class that I was teaching for using the term “dikes”. It was a common term that described diagonal cutters (as in for wire).

I don’t know how the term came into common usage, as that happened decades before I was an itch in my Daddy’s pants. But there I was, facing a pissed off lesbian who’d taken offense.

First of all, I didn’t know or care that she was a lesbian. Second of all, I used a term that the other 30 people in the class knew, and my use of that term caused them to all pick up the indicated tool to perform the indicated action.

I asked her what term I should use, her reply was, “diagonal cutters”. “Fine,” I said, “I’ll use that term for the rest of the class.”

While she was yelling in my face about how hurtful the term “dikes” was, I could see the other 30 people in the class rolling their eyes in annoyance.

I told her in front of the class that I happened to be gay and that I wasn’t offended by the term “Fag.” In fact I expected to hear that term frequently when I was in London.

I then asked if we could get on with the class. She’d have none of it. She demanded satisfaction in the form of an immediate written apology for using an offensive term.

Her boss spared me wasting time on an endeavor to satisfy 0.03030303 % of the class by removing her from the classroom.

Several other women were present and two of them said they too were lesbians, and didn’t mind my use of the term in this context. One of them quipped, “I hope Sheila NEVER visits Holland!“

The class burst into laughter and we got on with business.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that incident over the past year. I honestly can’t say if I’d be happy in an office full of people just waiting to pounce on the wrong word, action, or pronoun, just to be offended and cause drama.

Perhaps I’ve had enough of the corporate grind.

I know I’ve had enough of the HR bullshit where a corporation states their policy then promptly discards the policy based on skin color.

Yeah, the last place I worked had a few incidents like that. I’m rule based. Give me a rule & I’ll follow it until you aren’t following the rules. At that point, don’t try making me selectively follow your rules, especially not based on the color of my skin versus someone else’s.

The last place I worked, was just starting to see the perpetually aggrieved. I have to wonder how much worse that’s gotten over the past year.

I just want to go to work, do my job, be paid for my effort, and go home. I don’t want to be terrorized all day into silence or be expected to show up at some event to show corporate support for a cause that I don’t believe in.

Sadly, that too seems to be required by some companies.

Time will tell…

I wonder if it’s too late in my life to move to Norway. A nice simple one room cottage perched on green hills overlooking a fjord. Maybe some sheep, a cow, and a windmill or solar panels to charge the electronics, (At least much of the year…)

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Patterns…

1200px Fibonacci spiral 34 svgAll our lives are defined by patterns.

Some of us are more attuned to sensing and or seeing those patterns.

As a Software QA person, I honed that ability to a fine point.

Sometimes software demonstrates a highly repetitive defect in a very short period of time. At other times, a pattern of failure is demonstrated over a longer period of days, weeks, or months. A person like me, tends to start noticing patterns in everything around us.Fibonacci sequence nautilus shell1 Fibonacci sequence

We’re all familiar with fractal patterns whether we know it or not. The waves crashing on a beach and the water receding, the view of a hurricane from space, the form of a maple leaf.

Another pattern defined by math is the spiral of a nautilus shell. That pattern is seen in nature everywhere. A fern leaf getting ready to open, the nautilus shell, snail shells, usually demonstrate “The Golden Mean” mathematicians call it the Fibonacci sequence.

The point is, once you see the sequence, you can’t unsee it.

This is a brief view into how my head works. 

It’s not just math though. I’m not gifted with the ability to see equations like some people are. For me, doing math is actually kinda hard. But If I can see it represented in some kind of three dimensional space, I suddenly get it.

I suppose I’m more a creature of spacial equations than theoretical equations. A physicist can work out the math behind velocity, mass, gravity, and distance to tell that a monkey can leap the gap in between buildings, or from branch to branch.

cactus.jpgThe monkey, on the other hand, feels it and “knows” he’ll make the leap to the nice bit of fruit on the branch without a whiteboard. It’s instinct and spacial relationships.

People behave on the boundaries of chaos. Groups of people move and react in generally predictable ways, but when it comes down individual decisions people get very chaotic.

That being said, sometimes people are insanely, tediously predictable.

This appears to be the case with the other half’s employer. 

For the second time in 10 years a female boss appears to be drunk with power, feeling that she’s above reproach and deciding that the other half isn’t communicating.

The other half has responded by producing the emails, and text message exchanges. Instead of putting the issue to bed it’s only exacerbated the conflict. Now the boss is becoming more erratic, generating multiple changes in direction within a week, or day, not clearly communicating the changes and expecting people to read her mind.

I’ve seen this pattern before. In my own life with female bosses and in my other half’s previous female boss.

The pattern appears to be based in vengeance. It’s designed to create an overload of changes in hopes that the targeted individual or individuals will drop the ball and be demonstrably incompetent.

Incompetence equals unfit for job, which equals a termination offense. 

It’s a straight up process, and it works. All it takes is tenacity and the targeted individuals making mistakes.

The mistakes happen automatically because the boss is at the same time is usually haranguing the targets, increasing their stress and waiting for the targets to slip up, like a hungry shark in shallow water under a well greased bridge.

There are variations, of course but generally either the stress makes the target find another job, or they get fired.

One of the more common flourishes is to make sure that the target “fails” very publicly, securing the Bosses “High Ground” of righteous indignation.

It’s a similar system used by wives and mothers to “win” arguments with husbands and children. 

The only time I’ve ever beaten this system is by producing 5 different presentations and being able to give one of the five presentations to the boss at a moment’s notice. In that case the boss changed her mind 3 times in the conference room. My ability to produce whatever she wanted clearly irritated her. My “win” still cost me my job for being a smart ass.

Not to worry, she fired me, but one of her male colleagues hired me the same day. He & I worked well together for several years until the company was sold.

Essentially my experience in these situations has always been fatal. As such, I don’t fight the battle anymore. I save myself the stress and aggravation by finding another position. No win scenarios are pointless to fight.

When women are drunk on power, they’re egalitarian about how they abuse it.

Remarkably other women are less prepared to fight on equal terms than men.

For most men, it’s aggravating beyond belief (See American divorce rates). For women, it’s kinda like a double whammy. The women feel betrayed and aggravated. It makes women easier targets, because they do the wrong thing, & slip more easily off the greased bridge.

This of course makes finding new jobs more challenging. I’m not by nature a misogynist. When it comes to bosses I’ll always prefer to work for a man.

Things are just a whole lot easier.

All this is to say I’ve noted the pattern occurring with the other half, and yesterday I described my concern.

All I got from that was “I’ve noticed and thank you for your concern…”

Okay I’ve said my piece. Unfortunately, now the chips will fall where they may.

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I really need to get a real job again

The past three years have been a bit of a waste. Don’t get me wrong, income is a good thing. The problem with income where all you do is tread water, is that you’re not pushing the ball forward.

office politics KnivesWhen I joined the most recent company I thought it was an entry path to Software QA (my primary career) in the medical field (new territory). Unfortunately, the company tends to silo each of its departments very heavily. The HR department doesn’t really look at the employees as assets, they only think of employees as components that are replaceable as was so vividly demonstrated.

My Career arc is funny. Not haha, but strange, when I started out many years ago, I had technical aptitude, and the ability to repair machines that some people described as uncanny. Not surprising since generally I like machines better than I like people and so I had an understanding of machines that I still don’t have with people.

I carried a tool kit in those early days, and moved gradually, as I was able, into positions of greater responsibility. I’ve worked a lot of jobs in the technical industry gradually moving up the corporate ladder and accumulating a lot of experience and knowledge.

Problem is, a lot of corporations don’t really like that kind of employee. It’s tough to silo someone like that. Folks like me tend to just fix a problem, we don’t worry too much about coloring outside the lines. We’re dedicated to the mission, getting the product out the door, and we figure the toes we step on will be bandaged, and the paperwork can be finished up after the launch party while we’re counting our bonuses.

In most situations this worked very well. The old saying “The proof is in the pudding” won out. Then sometime in late ‘80s it started to change. The workplace became more political and forgiveness was harder to come by, especially if your decision was glaringly the correct one.

It wasn’t that big a worry for me because there was enough “old guard” management who appreciated someone who not only would make a decision to move things forward, but who would also stand behind that decision and take the hit if things went wrong.

By the late ‘90s political machinations were so entrenched in technical corporations that making an independent decision was tantamount to corporate espionage. In some cases it was worse. This was especially true if you happened to step on middle management’s toes. 

Organizational politics by noman ghalib 2 638There seemed to be a trend toward vendetta, and loss of sight about getting the job done. People spent more time covering their asses, and currying favor, than they did actually working. Those who sat quietly doing their jobs were forgotten and almost never acknowledged for their contribution.

The only time these folks were acknowledged is when they needed time off for medical procedures, or to tend to family business. Then, their request was subjected to a bureaucratic nightmare of discussion and rules & regulations.

It didn’t matter how many years they’d worked in silence or how many weeks of unused vacation time they had, or that they’d never asked for time off… after making a request they were on the radar and were considered a “problem”. Often, “business needs” was used as an excuse to deny the employee’s request. This left the employee in a difficult position of quitting their job to meet medical or familial obligations or ignoring those obligations altogether. 

The political machinations only got worse throughout the ‘00s. 

At some point in the 2000’s I decided that I wanted something different and that I wanted to contribute to our country’s well being. In the mid 2000’s I found a job that paid a bit less and was a lot further from my home in the defense industry.

Generally speaking, I loved it. There were frustrations to be sure. But as long as I could avoid the politics that were growing like a malicious weed, I was a happy camper. I was fortunate to have a couple of bosses that thought their job was to insulate their employees from the endless bullshit or the politics so that the employees could get the job done.

Under their umbrella, I could just work, be productive, and happy.

Political cartoon corporate greedThat changed after the 2008 election. Then, there was no protection from politics. Because the US govt. started switching funding on and off. A lot of great people lost their jobs through no fault of their own, because our politicians loved playing games with each other and gave no thought to unintended consequences.

That led me to unemployment and experience with agism coupled with full blown corporate politics and this rather strange philosophy that regardless of your experience if you’d not completed college you couldn’t possibly know anything. Or that whatever you knew wasn’t relevant to the job you were applying for even if the job requirements were exactly the same as the position you’d previous occupied.

At my most recent employer, there were a lot of people about my age who experienced the same bias I had, and who’d taken this job to get a foot in the door. What we didn’t know was how different things had become, or that the company was going to doom us to a “boxed in” position where the only options were suck it up, or leave. 

As we learned that hard lesson, we began to start looking elsewhere and many of us found other positions, though in the San Diego area there aren’t many positions to be had for experienced older workers. The pay scale for those available positions is representative of a two class system. (Obscenely high, or barely scraping by.) With the cost of living in the area, many of my former coworkers  have relocated, just as I’m doing. (I do hope someone remembers to secure San Onofre before the last “old guys” leave or are forced out.)

I think a lot of my former coworkers realized they’d made a mistake before they were out of their training classes. I know I did, but like “Old guys” we figured it was a mistake that could be corrected after we’d paid our dues. Turns out we were all operating under old rules that no longer apply in the Corporate America of today.

I’ve decided that I’m going to chalk this experience up to, “The School of hard knocks” and I’m going to focus my attention on getting a job in the defense industry. At least there, people are more results oriented and appreciative of someone that will make a decision, take action, and move the ball forward.

I’ll be looking over other positions and will apply to those that pay well and are also within my experience base. But my focus will be on defense jobs, I really need to work someplace where I fit.

My next challenge is getting my former company to send the check to a valid address or better yet do what they say they’re going to do in the exit paperwork. Then I need to re-establish my access to ADP for my tax records (yeah, looks like they turned that off).

I just want to close the book on this whole wasted time, and move forward.

I suspect that dealing with the company’s HR department is going to be as difficult as they can possibly make it. It’s been their modus operandi for the past three years, it’s unreasonable to expect anything different now.

So it’s off to have the car serviced, then back to packing for the move.

Wish me luck, and as always have a good day.