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Goodbye Jesus

My Workplace Tries To Make Me A Racist


Thurisaz

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Yeah so... I know it's bullshit but from what I'm almost forced to feel at work since about four years ago it can surely be easy to join the braindead racist crowd.

 

Started when I began doing server maintenance for the customer's subsidiaries in Mexico and China. Making mistakes is okay, we're all human, but I quickly gained the impression (and I wasn't the only one) that both the Chinese and the Mexicans never listen to what you say, never read any explanatory emails, and let you suffer the consequences of their same-old-same-old crap.

 

Then I went back to normal office work almost exactly two years ago, and now I "get it" from all around the world, from all the subsidiaries. Of course some are worse than others, but one crowd especially tries to blow my brain out each and every day and attempts to fill the void with crap. Namely, UK.

 

It's not that they send us the same stuff two, three or four times because no one there knows what the other one is doing. It's not that they fill their request forms with everything their users already have, forcing us to dig through 5 to 10 pages every time without any reason. It's stuff like what happened yesterday.

 

You see, 'tis the time for cleanup in the customer's systems. Our IT wizards compile lists of user IDs in the subsidiary branches that seem to be inactive, and we send them over to their bosses to check whether they can all be deleted. For the recent UK list, we received OK from their IT head (let's just call her Stephanie). Last Friday I started deleting the first 100 out of almost 700 user IDs.

 

Then, yesterday, first they started screaming at us because "Why is this user ID suddenly revoked?! We need it for automatic batch runs and such! You must immediately correct this mistake!" Oh really, mistake? Guess on what list that user ID was...

 

...and to add insult to their own injury: If you wonder whether we really made a mistake or UK just said OK without having a single look at that long list... later that day we noticed that Stephanie's own user ID was on the to-delete list.

Excuse me while I try to slam my head through a concrete wall... :banghead:

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Yup. Happens all the time. I sell lots of stuff on Craigslist. We live on a main street. To get to our house, you drive to another main street that everyone in the county knows. You drive east to our street (we're at the east end of the first street) and turn left. So for almost everyone in the county, its "turn right on xx street and turn left on our street." I give them the street number and I tell them that our house is in the second block, painted xx. It's the only house in the second block painted this way and extremely easy to spot. Even people with poor vision can see it. You'd be surprised at how many cell phone calls I get from folks who are driving around looking for us.

 

Then there are the idiots who call and ask questions about the item that are clearly explained in the ad.

 

Then there are the idiots who don't have a pencil and paper handy to write down the directions to our house, and I have to wait while they fumble around looking for a pen that works or a scrap of paper bag to write on.

 

Then there are the idiots who ask me what my lowest price is. I already put a price in the ad. Make me an offer.

 

Then there are the idiots who show up and want to write a check for a $20 item.

 

Then there are the idiots who say they will be there in 20 minutes and never show up.

 

I used to teach a technical subject at the college level that required a certain minimal eye-hand coordination. Most eight-year-old kids can do it. I'd show my students, "Take this in your right hand, and hook this little part onto this little peg like this." You'd be surprised at how many students that, immediately after a personal demonstration, would take it in their left hand, and jam, not hook, it into where the peg was.

 

I'd also tell students, "Don't put your thumbs on that. You'll spoil it." And while standing right in front of me, they're putting their thumbs on it, and I'd say it again, and they'd say, "But I'm not putting my thumbs on it," when they most certainly and obviously are.

 

You must have heard of the Peter Principle. This states that, in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence. A person is doing a good job and thus gets promoted. But at the new level, the person is only mediocre. So no more promotions, just mediocrity.

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I worked near a tourist-y area so we had all sorts in, and to be completely honest, the people I dreaded walking in the door most were Indians. I ain't got anything against anyone and I don't treat anyone any differently but as soon as an Indian walks in the door, I know that I'm going to spend X mins/hours bartering with the person only for them to walk off and not purchase the item. What pisses me off is their unreasonable offers. "How much is this item?" It's $125. "Okay, how does $15 sound?" I fucking kid you not. A 1/3 of the time they drive me to a near blind psychotic rage. They just don't know when to give up and either pay the required amount or look elsewhere. I had one guy in the store for over an hour arguing with me over an item which I told him I couldn't change the price for. He then proceeded to interfere with my interactions with other customers and gave me the ultimatum that he wouldn't leave until he got this item discounted. He started swearing and hassling me and the other staff in the shop. I got so pissed off that I gave him my ultimatum: Piss off out of the shop now before I kick your fucking head in. Also, what pisses me off is their rudeness. I can't count the number of times they've interrupted my conversation with another customer acting as if I wasn't talking with anyone at all. No excuse me, no sorry, no nothing. Just a "hey, I am looking for.."

 

Anyways, they weren't the only people that I dreaded dealing with. Backpackers were a big one too. Some problem: They're cheap. After them comes the English, or at least the young mid 20s guys from the UK. It can't be just me that notices that ~95% of them are off their heads on some sort of drugs. Trying to keep an ongoing conversation is near impossible. Anyways, I'm glad I'm out of that industry for now. It more than helped exasperate my general misanthropy.

 

 

 

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You must have heard of the Peter Principle. This states that, in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence. A person is doing a good job and thus gets promoted. But at the new level, the person is only mediocre. So no more promotions, just mediocrity.

The one I have observed is that if you are competent you don't get promoted because there will be no one who can do the work. Others who are incompetent get promoted instead who then go about reorganising how the work should get done and screws up the whole system.

This is the government style of running a department.

You example is the private sector.

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You must have heard of the Peter Principle. This states that, in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence. A person is doing a good job and thus gets promoted. But at the new level, the person is only mediocre. So no more promotions, just mediocrity.

The one I have observed is that if you are competent you don't get promoted because there will be no one who can do the work. Others who are incompetent get promoted instead who then go about reorganising how the work should get done and screws up the whole system.

This is the government style of running a department.

You example is the private sector.

 

Suddenly my world makes sense. Thanks for that.

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You must have heard of the Peter Principle. This states that, in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence. A person is doing a good job and thus gets promoted. But at the new level, the person is only mediocre. So no more promotions, just mediocrity.

The one I have observed is that if you are competent you don't get promoted because there will be no one who can do the work. Others who are incompetent get promoted instead who then go about reorganising how the work should get done and screws up the whole system.

This is the government style of running a department.

You example is the private sector.

 

As I learned to see it, the incompetent are often promoted out of the way so that they can't fuck up everything in front of the paying customer, so it's a double-whammy of "but the others are maintaining the entire business" and "this moron ain't good for everything down at the base level where the real work is done" :banghead:

 

The real sad thing about it all is, though, that the incompetence seems to grow with the distance to the main offices of the bank. With the exception of UK where (I suppose) incompetence mates with total disorganization, the other folks rather close to Germany (say, France or Czechia) are quite okay, and then the farther you have to travel... with places like Mexico or China being pretty much the outer limit... the more moronic people seem to get. Oh, another exception to that rule would be Japan, to be fair. The folks there are also quite okay. Thus I feel like work tries to make me racist - easy to think that "if you're not German you can't get shit done", idiotic as you know it is.

 

Another example of the crap - our Brazilian colleagues recently sent us a request to create some new SAP accounts. Of the two people on the list, one can't be helped if we do our work "by the book". We are not allowed (for some reasons related to security, or bureaucracy... make your choice :vent:) to set up users directly in the SAP systems but have to use a unified application for managing user permissions. In there, every account in every system must be connected to a person record for the user who needs the system access. For that user, the person record has been revoked, leading the system to block any changes to his account list, including creating new accounts.

 

Yesterday, I started my FOURTH attempt to explain the oh-so-complicated fact to them "For user X, you first have to formally request that we reactivate his person record, then we can get to work on the SAP account". One might want to point out that our colleagues there probably did not grow up with English as native language... but then, English is the mandatory lingua franca within all of Volkswagen, so whose fault is it if they hire people who can't talk the talk right?

 

Oh well, maybe this time they got it. If not I guess I'll have to revert to babytalk level. :crazy:

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I've been working on a theory now for some time and it seems to hold true.

In any given cross section of any given profession there are the 5% at the top who excel beyond the remaining 95%

 

e.g. Doctors. Try finding a good one. Dentists, same shit. Engineers no change there. I should know, I are one ;)

 

Even in the elite areas, 5% of the elite stand far beyond the rest of the 95% even though they are all classified as "elite".

Has a lot to do with the normal distribution curve.

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I've been working on a theory now for some time and it seems to hold true.

In any given cross section of any given profession there are the 5% at the top who excel beyond the remaining 95%

 

e.g. Doctors. Try finding a good one. Dentists, same shit. Engineers no change there. I should know, I are one ;)

 

Even in the elite areas, 5% of the elite stand far beyond the rest of the 95% even though they are all classified as "elite".

Has a lot to do with the normal distribution curve.

 

Not sure how you could test your theory, but it fits the distribution curve of the IQ fairly well.

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That is pretty much the what the seed of the idea was.

That and seeing about 95% of engineers competency levels...of course that assumes I'm in the 5% but I figure that's ok since I'm God and all. :D

Not that I give too much credence to IQ tests. Something wrong with the scale.

I did one one time to test it. Got 135. Same as GW Bush.

I figured it wasn't too bad since I downed 3/4 bottle of 750ml bourbon and was plastered off my face while taking the test.

Those 3d shapes seem to rotate before one's very eyes when that drunk. Not sure if that raised or lowered the final figure.

So I'm about as smart as the ex president of the USA, if I was fully tanked. There's a sobering thought!

Running joke with me now. I make better decisions than the president while I'm drunk!

 

Can't spell for shit though. Sober or not. I'm dicklexic.

And I'll repeat that I don't think much of IQ tests. See above for proof. LOL

 

Don't mind me. I'm posting with a Vodka induced IQ :D

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