These are the days of our lives…

As you might have guessed from the Topic this Post is going to be all about the sublime Soap Opera that is my workplace. Flee now unless you wish to be baffled by the goings on at my place of work.

This past week has been pretty rough, past 10 days actually but I don’t want to split hairs, with a few days of really short Staff on hand due to injuries (a bad back and one Doctors Appointment) and people who can’t seem to get out of bed on time coupled with one young man from Fiji who decided it would be fine to lie about why he could not come to work on Saturday by saying he was ill when we ALL knew he was in the City with his Brother.

Of course my Employer found out about all of this and it was pretty much her last straw for that month hence the Staff Meetings. Ostensibly it was about rising Food Costs, 1.5% to be precise over the last month which translates into an increase of around $4500. This is unacceptable. There is no reason for it. Many of the Staff have gotten lazy and do not use the Scales provided to weigh out food portions and that is where the cost starts to creep up. 1/2 an Ounce here…3 Ounces there and before you know it $4500 is gone.

That was legitamite and I have no problems being told to get my shit together and do it right. That was the first 10 minutes of the meeting. Unfortunately the next 50 minutes turned into our Boss nearly bawling her eyes out in frustration over the childish crap people are pulling, a few feuds between friends and her general frustration at having to baby sit her staff as if she was Mommy. Something she should never have to do of course. We heard about how in the City this sort of thing would just get you fired, and in other Restaurants if you didn’t bring in a Doctors Note explaining why you were not at work you were fired on the spot.

Basically the grass is always greener on the other side sort of thing. My beef with that was I have NEVER been a problem for her…ever. I hardly ever ask for time off, I show up for my shifts. I don’t cry and whine every five minutes. I have a good time with my co-workers and the Front of House staff. I am pretty much universally liked by all as far as I know because I don’t panic, don’t get angry and can usually be counted on to be the village idiot/smartass whenever tension needs to be released.

Aside from generally knowing that something was up I really did not know any details, nor was I in any way involved in the whole mess yet I had to sit there as she re-hashed the same point over and over and over and over…for almost an hour.

One of the guys that is being a pain lives with two of our other Cooks, they used to be fast friends and now they won’t even talk to one another. Why? They’re KIDS…hardly 21 years old all three of them, out on their own for the first time in their lives, making good money, saving on Bills by living together and full of piss and vinegar. They are very much in the “Screw You Too!” phase of their lives even over the smallest of things. THat is all that this problem is. Schoolyard Bullshit.

Why am I annoyed? Because I got lumped into this crap against my will. I’ve told these guys all repeatedly in the past. Don’t Fuck Around. If you have a problem go straight to the Boss with it and get it done with. Don’t piss off in the middle of the night and vanish from the face of the earth for two days. Act your fucking ages and have some respect for the woman who went out of pocket to the tune of $9000 for EACH of your sorry asses to get you over here and give you a job and a place to stay. Not to mention she is acting on their behalf with the Government to ensure that they all get their Permanent Resident status. Not because she is obligated too but because she wants to see them get ahead.

Fucking ingrates…geezus.

Anyway, that’s some of the drama from the last couple days. I feel better getting it out of my system. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!

What Irks Me - The Day Off Edition

A little backstory for the new people. Up until about 6 months ago I had been working 6 Days a week on average around 10 hours a day at the Restaurant. This led to me having essentially no life to speak of. My one day off was consumed utterly by Bill Payments, Grocery Shopping and spending time with my wife. Unlike most people I worked (and still work) Split Shifts while my wife works regular day shifts and the occasional evening.

That meant I dropped her off at work, went in to the Restaurant, came home in the afternoon for 2.5 hours then went back to work about 30 minutes before she got home. I’d get back from the Split shift around 9:30 most nights, later if it was really busy, eat dinner, do laundry and pretty much be ready for bed.

That was my life for almost 3 years. Yes the money was nice, yes my wife understood that I was sorely needed due to lack of staff at the Restaurant but none of that helped me when I took a good long look at my wife and realized I had no life. I had work and a day to catch up. That is not a life.

My friends hardly ever saw me, I missed pretty much every single get together any of them had and I worked every weekend so when I DID have some time it was on a Monday when everyone else was getting back to work themselves.

About 6 months or so ago I went to my Boss and said I could not do it any longer, the toll it was taking on me personally was just getting to be too much. Thankfully she understood and I started to get two days off. It’s been nice for the most part, having one day to do my running and another to just do whatever I felt like doing.

Now we get to my problem (sorry it took so long…) I have SO much saved up to do, books purchased along the way that I wanted to read, DVDs with the same intention, Video Games for various consoles and things of that sort. What this has led to is a bit of paralysis. I have free time and I guess too much I want to do so I end up getting to do nothing while I try to figure it out.

I used to be part of a great PBeM (Play By Email) game a long time ago but the demands of work forced me to retire from it because I could not uphold my commitments to the game. Unfortunately I also lost a valued friendship as a result of all that. I miss the participation in creating something larger and now that I have the time again I have looked around for something else to invest myself in as I did once before. Sadly I have yet to find anything that has given me the same ‘buzz’.

I’ve tried to just pick one thing and do that exclusively but it’s not as easy as it might seem. Not for me at least. So I turn to the people I have met on the Interbaun. What do you do to help you make up your mind when you have multiple things to do?

I need something to occupy my mind and videogames just can’t do that for me, nor can the Movies.

Longwinded…Sorry =/

Allow me to sum up…

the events of my most recent Staff Meeting at work. Set to happen at 3 P.M. we all show up on time (a minor miracle in its own right) and the meeting begins promptly. Some of the Major Cleaning duties in the kitchen haven’t been getting done on time, this needs to be corrected. We all agree.

Next point regards Staff worrying about their Pay Rates and thinking of leaving for greener pastures (this is entirely the Immigrant workers the company has brought over to fill positions.) up north. We dispense information explaining that yes, they make up to $5 more/hour than we do here BUT the cost of living there is almost 60% more than it is here so all of that amazing wage goes to simply living there.

And that dear readers is it. After that it was just a constant re-hashing of the prior points…for the next 50 bloody minutes. In total the information we were given took all of 10 minutes to impart and then it was like moving through some sort of demented timewarp/groundhog day sort of thing.

I COULD have been home about 20 minutes after I left but no…that would have been a good thing.

Grah.

Work Drama Part Deux

To further enlighten the curious I have learned a few new things since my last Post on the subject of the co-worker who is giving us the proverbial shaft. Last week he had asked our Boss to sign a paper saying that he was now allowed to work wherever he chose and was free of ties to her company. At this time he was claiming that his contract with her was up. She was reluctant to sign a legally binding document without consulting her lawyers and said she would sign it when her lawyer got back to her.  That was Friday.

Cut to Monday when our Boss comes in to work and gets in touch with her Lawyer who tells her that he has an entire year left on his contractual obligation to her. So he tried to pull the wool over her eyes once right there. Then we inform her that he is moving to the City on Wednesday (also he hi-jacked another of our employee’s to help him move leaving us short handed today) AND is taking all the furniture in the apartment as well.

Our Boss furnished the apartment completely, right down to silverware and linens for them so they would not have to do anything when they arrived. So ALL of the furniture is hers and she has not been paid for it at all. So as of today when he started taking loads down to the City in a rented Truck he is guilty of theft. Not to mention Breach of Contract.

Even after ALL of this she is reluctant to take legal action against him. She asked my opinion and I told her the following, “Let him go to Edmonton, let him get his family settled in. Then you call your lawyer and you tell him what happened and you go after him for Breach of Contract as well as Theft over $1000. You don’t want him to come back to work here because you’ll both hate it. So you take him to court and let the law do the work for you. At they very least you should be able to have his wages garnished to compensate you for the lost income as a result of having to replace him here and I don’t doubt that you’d be able to get a cash settlement out of him for the theft of your furniture. See how he likes living in the City when a good chunk of every paycheck he cashes comes straight to you for the next year.”

That’s going to be my last Rant-ish type Post on this matter. Any future mention of this will just be basic updates so I can keep it all straight in my own head down the road.

Work Related

Oh the urge to tear off a chunk of Rant and chew mightily on it is powerful today…but I will try to avoid that if I can.

We have several foreign workers at the Restaurant in the Kitchen. They were hired on contract by the Owner because she could not find competent staff in our sleepy little City. Under those contracts they work for her for Three years and then are free to do whatever they please. In return she helped to pay for them to come here, set them up with furnished apartments and often drove them wherever they might need to go. All in all it was a pretty fair deal for all involved.

Until they started taking advantage of her kindness. First it was Silva, who could not handle the hectic pace our Kitchen maintains during its peak hours. Silva up and walked out in the middle of his shift, hopped a bus the next day and went to stay with some of his countrymen in Edmonton. No explanation, no apology, he just ran.

Now it is Sepala, a man that I actually called ‘friend’ for quite some time. With him it started when he could not understand the paperwork involved in bringing his Family to be with him in Canada. My Boss went out of her way to hire a lawyer at her own expense to help with that and soon enough his family was here. Shortly after that he couldn’t work nights because his wife was working at the local Wal-Mart at night and he needed to be with the Children. Then he could not work in the Mornings because he wanted to walk his Children to school and his wife, who worked the overnight shift at Wal-Mart, was asleep until around 11 A.M. most days.

Just recently these past few months his Wife has begun having medical problems with her feet and back. This has forced her to miss many shifts at Wal-Mart and eventually she quit as a result. So once again we had to change the schedule to meet his needs ( I should mention that many of us gave up days off for several months to make this happen) so that he could deal with his family.

Two weeks ago he needed to take his wife in to Edmonton to see a Specialist about her back. We all pulled together and covered for him while he was gone for five days and were happy when he finally returned. All that changed today though.

This morning we learned that his wife was never ill, she was merely unhappy with this City we all call home. So much so that she refused to go to work and lied about foot and back pains to get out of it. On the days when he was supposed to be home watching his kids and walking them to school he was in fact out looking for another job. When they went to Edmonton to see the “Specialist” he was looking for a house in the City and taking interviews for Jobs there.

All the times we covered for him he was screwing us around so that he could set himself up in Edmonton and today he came in and informed us all that he and his family would be moving to Edmonton on Wednesday of next week so of course he could not work with us after that day. He thought it was quite amusing that I had no idea what was going on (in the past I had defended him to the Owner who suspected he might be doing something like this because I had thought he was my friend) so for the first time in many long years I looked a man right in the eye and said, “Fuck you, you inconsiderate bastard.” and walked away.

He didn’t even have the balls to tell the woman who went out of pocket to bring his sorry ass over here and then did it again to help get his ungrateful family over here as well.

What kind of creature does things like that to the people who help them? So yeah.

W

T

F

EDITED to Add: He HAD 6 months left on his contract and is defaulting on it. So apparently he will be paying some sort of penalty as a result. I hope it’s huge.

Some things just never get old

Take April Fools Day for instance. In the world that I live in, which is Online Gaming mostly, there is a long-standing tradition of silly April Fools jokes on Company Websites. I admit when I first started my MMO Career back with the original EverQuest I found these things totally hilarious not so much for the amusement value as for the shock and outrage it provoked within the die-hard gamers out there. Since I left EverQuest lo these many years ago (Geez I feel ancient right now it’s been like 8 years since I played EQ) I’ve moved on to other games, Guild Wars, EverQuest II, Rappelz, Conquer Online, Eve Online and of course the grandpappy of them all World of WarCraft. In every instance there was the tradition of April Fools trickery and it was fun…until a few years ago I started to realize it was less about amusement and more about expectation on the part of the client base. That’s when the fun went out of April Fools for me.

April Fools is a day for everyone to let out their inner devil and do something both amusing and treacherous to loved ones, friends and co-workers for the sake of getting a simple laugh out of the ridiculous situation. That’s all it’s supposed to be, not some massive event akin to a Holiday Celebration. I want to get back to that and not let April Fools end up being the commercialized mess that most modern Days of Celebration have become.

Some things never get old…and some things need to act their age.

Start your PSPs!

Ah the heady days of Spring how they move me to action. Allow me to share with you what could very well be the most significant thing I do for the next 2 weeks. That most wondrous of franchises with the MOST foolish name in Gaming History (arguable but it sounds good) Final Fantasy! Crisis Core comes out tomorrow. I’d squee but I’m to macho.

Up until now my favorite game for the PSP has been Warhammer 40K Squad Command but no longer I say! Of course that being said I will probably not like the *SMACK*…sorry sorry, can’t believe I almost said that.

Oh..and while I have you here readers…What The Fuck…is wrong with Amazon.com? Kindle is not available outside the United States? What kind of stupid shit is that? I realize there are probably distribution laws causing most of this problem but for fucks sake people…I am SO very sick of running into this crap every time something interesting comes out. ITunes Canada, no Downloadable American TV shows or Movies for you Mr. Canadian! Old Navy, We currently do not ship outside the United States from our Online Store you silly Canuck!

The ONLY thing this does is force me to go underground to get the things I want. And in 97% of cases I succeed, so yeah, you go with your Legal Crap and see how far it gets you when half your country is laughing at your regulations and getting the things they want anyway.

Oh and someone with more Tech Experience might want to explain to me how do do Cuts…so I can spare a whole screen of me babbling. Thanks!

Monday Meltdown ™*

Ah so we begin with a nod to milady Pandora over at her blog for giving me the impetus to Rant this fine Monday morning.

Our Renovations are thankfully almost over now but the sort of insanity we have had to deal with (which should NEVER have been staff concerns) has been phenomenal to say the least. Ideally we should have closed for the entire length of the Renovation but our Owner has partners and they wanted us open the whole time. So we have been dealing with the mess of a Renovation while trying to serve people decent food this whole time. That in and of itself is stressful. I take pride in my work and stand behind the food I sent out of the Kitchen but with all the mess everywhere it’s like walking through a mine field to send it out without it getting contaminated by Drywall dust, dirt and general crud from the Renovation.

Now that half the Restaurant is done and open with its new look a new set of problems has arisen. Cleaning the new place is becoming a chore because of the rules involved, new paint means no washing walls for 30 days, new tiles means we have to wash with sponges and not mops because the grout has to set, workers leaving tools and materials EVERYWHERE for us to trip over. Owner and her Partners trampling all over the place to whine and moan about speed, looks, details and a myriad of other things.

Topping them all though is Valentines Day. In the Restaurant business you have Two or Three Blockbuster days. Mothers Day, New Years and Valentines Day. When is Valentines this year? The Last scheduled day of the Renovation. Which means we have to help the Contractors in every way possible to get the other half of the Restaurant finished, dressed and open for the throngs of people that show up on Valentines every year.

In their rush to get things done things are getting broken and forgotten. Yesterday they tripped three breakers in the Kitchen at different times during the day. I don’t know how many of you have ever worked in a Kitchen before but when one thing goes down during a rush it gets overlooked for a long while until the noise dies down and someone realizes there’s a problem.

All day yesterday the Owner was in the Restaurant, she’s a lovely woman that I have MUCH respect for, getting in everyones way and generally being the wrench in the machine for us. We KNOW how to run the Kitchen, let us DO it for crying out loud. YES the Quality Assurance Inspector is one of the guys coming down to “help” (holy loose terms Batman!) us get things done for the 13th & 14th but he’s NOT going to be doing a QA report on us. There’s no need for us all to be in scrubbing the nooks and crannies with toothbrushes on our hands and knees when we have more important things to be doing.

Last night was almost the straw that broke my back. Mid-Dinner service and we get a visit from a Manager saying, “You guys need to make sure you’re not just standing around when you’re not busy, there’s lots of work to be done so find something to do.” I’m sorry but the Dinner service is the busiest time of the day, our task is to get the food made, cooked and out to the customer as fast as humanly possible for the three hour period that the rush usually lasts. Coming into the Kitchen in the middle of that to tell me I am not doing enough? That’s a damn ass fast way to get told to fuck right off. If I have two minutes between bills where I am not running to get more stock or helping someone else to stock their station I am sure as bloody hell going to take a moment and do what relaxing I can. Making matters a little worse the Manager who came in to drop that little gem of wisdom is a DAY shift Manager who hasn’t worked a Dinner service in over a year meaning she has no clue what it’s like these days. (Business has grown for us every single year I have worked there…I’m sure it grew before I started there too..not trying to be all “I’m the reason this place does so well.” hehe)

Enough about work, on to the personal Ranty sort of things.

I have, in the past, had trouble with my eyes and apparently nerves if you ask my Doctor. A few year ago I lost alot of feeling in my extremities for a period of about…2 months or so, which was accompanied by some visual issues like one eye was focusing on things at a different range then the other giving me a sort of double vision. I made an appointment to get checked out, was referred to a specialist when the “usual” suspects were ruled out and unfortunately in the time it took them to get me an appointment for an MRI my symptoms had alleviated themselves so the MRI turned up very little of interest and thusly my Doctor shrugged and threw up his hands (paraphrasing of course). Well a couple times in the last two months I have had a new sort of visual problem, sort of a kaleidoscope effect obscures a small portion of my visual field.

It’s similar to what happens when you get a sun-spot on your eye from looking at something bright, that little point of light that takes a while to go away and gets in your way of seeing things properly for a short time. Same idea but this ones is a cascade of colors as if I were looking partly through a kaleidoscope. In both instances I had not had enough sleep and was suffering from a fairly severe headache so right now I am writing it down as perhaps a minor migraine.

Scary though, have to say that… while it is happening I tend to get very depressed and worried, which leads to anxiety, lack of sleep, the Dark Side..you get the idea. I made an appointment to get in to the Doctor again though just to keep him up to date. Course it’s next week at the earliest they can get me in so of course by then he’ll have nothing to see. Ah well.

Ok all done!

*Trademark is just me being amusing

Trials and Tribulations

So I play alot of Hellgate: London. What can I say, I’ve played so damn many Fantasy related games in my time online that I am just plain tired of seeing Elves and Dwarves and Gnomes all over the place. Hellgate is a great game that I highly recommend and again as I have mentioned before it’s easy on the older Systems which has been a boon to me for sure since my system is three-ish years old now.

That brings me to two days ago when I was happily playing away whilst my wife was doing her own thing. I was in the middle of an extended leg of the game meaning if I stopped where I was all my current progress would be lost and I would have to start anew next time I logged in. Needless to say I did not want to stop until I reached the end. Valiantly I fought onward until at last I had only one more task to accomplish before I could log out for the night.

And then the power went out.

Enraged is a good word for what I was at that time, but I am not one to hold onto rage when it serves no purpose. This had/has happened before in our house, she’d an older gal our house and her wiring isn’t the best. By that I mean the entire basement is wired onto a single circuit and was never really intended for use other than a laundry room and storage. We have the whole thing furnished as a living/game area for ourselves, both our PCs are down there, the big TV with the game systems attached as well as the nice surround system etc etc.

What we learned early on was that the plug by the bar we put in could only run one item at a time or the circuit breaker would trip and the basement would lose power. So we try never to do that, especially if we’re using the PCs because they are touchy about that sort of thing.

Getting back to the power going out on me right as I was in the last leg of my game it turned out she was cooking something in the toaster oven and decided she wanted tea at the same time so on went the kettle. That’s One more item than the circuit can handle. So darkness was my friend. Cue the rage, which I let slide easily enough etc etc. She apologized profusely and I rebooted to see how much work I would need to redo.

SO I get into the game and things look…strange…I can’t quite put my finger on it until I try to move and suddenly the graphics go right down to the seventh level of Hell. I’m getting corrupted images and distorted textures everywhere I look and it quickly makes the game unplayable. Cue the next round of “I’m sorry honey!” from my wife and again I let it go. It sucks since this is the one thing I really enjoy doing on my PC but what can you do right? I try a few more times to no avail, uninstall, reinstall etc etc ad infinitum and after two days of tinkering I got it to work half ass decently just a while ago.

It’s clear my PC is on it’s last legs now, the CD Drive is refusing to read anything but DVDs at the moment, my Install of XP crashes on 1 in 5 startups and now the Vid Card only runs properly on some pretty dumbed down settings.

I went around with her today for a bit to see what was out there locally for potential new systems and 1.3k gets me a nice rig but that’s about $400 more than I wanted to spend. Then I get the, “Well if you’re getting a new one I want a new one too.” which means I need to find two systems in the range of $1300 TOTAL. That’s $650 per system. Pardon my language but that buys you sweet fuck all when it comes to a PC these days.

So yes, Trials and Tribulations.

Free At Last!

Finally I am free from the cycle of IPod abuse. By “Abuse” I mean the perpetual flood of new IPods twice a year by the folks over at Apple. While I applaud their desire to constantly push the technology of personal music devices I am finally drawing my line in the sand and saying, “No more!” IPod technology has gotten even more out of hand than PCs these days. Not two months after you buy a shiny new IPod you can check out Apples Website for the even newer and shinier version with more features, better battery life and more storage space and at the same price as your outdated one.

Had Apple gone to an Annual release format I might still be an avid fan of their IPod but this has gotten to be irritating and I won’t shell out for a new IPod every 4-6 months. I still like my IPod, don’t misunderstand me,  but like many people these days I find it extremely offputting to know that in a mere 3 months something bigger and better will come along for the same price. It gives me the impression that these companies are merely pawning off their junk of me so that they can get to the business of releasing the “really” good items.

I guess as a consumer I am finally fed up with it. At least with a PC I can buy a new one and upgrade for a fraction of the price to get about 5 solid years out of it before I need a new one.

In other news the Renovations are well under way at the Restaurant and wow was it totally dead the first day. I think all the Contractors vehicles and plywood over the windows are giving people the impression that we are entirely closed which is not good seeing as how we are half open. In either regard I am happy with the slower periods as it is allowing me and the rest of the crew to get caught up on our rainy day tasks like replacing/repairing some of the items in the kitchen which needed it. Hopefully when we re-open on the 14th of February full time we’ll have the whole place tuned in nicely.

Oh and a bizarre link for you: Knicker Picker