Recruiter told not to hire WoW players

[Valmorian]

That's about the response I expected.

Well, you SHOULD have expected it after the ridiculous statements you made.  I mean really, " If you have a salaried job and don't work for the government, a non-profit, or an educational institution, you're not working 40 hours a week." 

That might work if you posted that where there weren't people who ARE salaried employees working 40 hours a week in positions that aren't government, non-profit or educational.   All I need to do to see how full of crap that statement is is peek over any cubicle wall here.

[MrHat]

Aha! Wise opponent. My full name is Samir al-Tafouaj, and my favorite food is camel meatballs braised in the blood of christian babes with baba gnanouj (eggplant dip, you american devils would say) and flatbread made from the ground bones of your white pigswine children. Delicious! And so I have named myself.

I manage a white slavery outfit, with roughly eight Hands of the Sword below me, praise to His name. Aieeo! We primarily operate out of depressed eastern europe and the former USSR, trafficking in thin willowy blondes and flame heads for my blessed masters in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, and the UAE. I work hard for little wages, but will be rewarded in heaven with 77 blonde virgins. Freedom from my four brown wives, ptui! Willowy clean blondes of my very own! Al-akbar! Ayiyiyiyiyi!

On a different note, old or not, that's an awesome picture.

Is there a racist equivalent of the grammar snake?

Also, schild, what are you, some sort of Internet Historian?

[sam, an eggplant]

silly dogshit

I could say something fairly mean but absolutely true in retort to that, but instead I'll just say that you're absolutely right. You need to avoid speaking in absolutes on the internet, because some pedantic jackass will always come up with an exception. For example, I could declare that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, and some fucknut will come up with "wrong, not at the north pole!". Shrug.

[Merusk]

That's about the response I expected. I still think you guys are wrong, but don't want to continue the derail.

No, this derail is fun.  

What's wrong about being able to find a work/life balance?  Why is not being of the mindset that you Live To Work and not Work To Live wrong? Enquiring minds want to know.

For me: nothing is wrong with this. I often joke that I don't really "go home" at the end of the day. It's more that I change venues, with a three hour break for family time. But that has nothing to do with being fundamentally right or wrong about it. There's no black and white here.

I sure hope you're being paid a lot of dough.

Fuck, I hope any of you idiots working over 50 hours are getting paid a lot.   I haven't worked a week more than 50h in my life, and I refuse to do so.  Dad and I had a long, long talk about that after he was thrown away by an employer during a buyout of his division, despite being an workaholic like you all in the President's position and turning a company around from 3 mil loss to 2 mil profit in 2 years time. (During which I saw him sundays and saturday evenings. He was regularly gone before I went to school and home at 9pm.) Enjoy your kids' therapy bills, mine were a bitch.

If you're working 60 hours, and just one of your co-workers is also working 60 hours, guess what?  You just saved your company 90 grand.  The first firm I worked for out of college did this on purpose.  They weren't shy about it, either.  "We expect you to work a minimum of 50 hours, so we don't have to hire another person.  If you can't do that we're going to have problems." Was how it was put at my annual when they reviewed and saw I was only working 45 on a regular basis.  Guess what, I was fired a month and a half later when my hours didn't up.

You're a cog, a tool and nothing more than that.  If they can abuse you, they will. Particularly in this economic hard time.

[kildorn]

That's about the response I expected. I still think you guys are wrong, but don't want to continue the derail. The real story here is how long it takes for the AP feed to pick up this breaking news. And credit it to the pope, via l'osservatore romano out of the vatican.

If there's a role in your productive flow that requires 60 hours a week from the employees, no long vacations, etc, it means that employee is now a company risk.

If they die/break a leg/etc, you're Fucked. You lack redundancy. If you had redundancy, said employee could schedule vacations.

That said, I don't like taking long vacations. Drives me nuts to not be at work for three or four days in a row. But if you're ever That vital to the company, it needs to be brought up as a risk to be evaluated.

[voodoolily]

In completely unrelated news, in about 21 hours I will have spent 24 days posting on f13.net.

I've spent an entire month of my life logged in! That's time I'll never get back. 

[schild]

Total time logged in: 327 days, 23 hours and 27 minutes.

Sup.

Now that that tangent is over. We can go straight back into Sam being a slave - in just 1 post!

[MrHat]

So, is that active time on the board? Like, time spent reading/writing?

[schild]

So, is that active time on the board? Like, time spent reading/writing?

It's active forum time slapping your mom in the face with my wang, now stfu and let the slave talk. It's not every day we actually find someone worthy of reparations.

[bhodi]

40 virtual acres and a mule to be granted... in Atitd?

[Numtini]

40 virtual acres and a mule to be granted... in Atitd?

You get a free sheep with the pre-pay package.

[Valmorian]

I could say something fairly mean but absolutely true in retort to that

Be my guest.  Go ahead.

[Orthiad]

This makes me glad I don't mention what games I play out of work. If I get asked what my hobbies are they get the typical reading and building PCs answer.

I play WoW but I don't take it to the obsession level. I would be pretty pissed if I was not hired because of a game I play just because a bunch of idiots out there don't know how to handle real life. I've played it for about 2 or so years and now I've pretty much lost interested in it.

 I work for a large 3rd party processing company for subscription websites and a lot of the people in my department are Wow players and they all sit around talking about it and i just can't help feel that they are huge losers while I'm over at my pc pumping out emails and they're all slacking off and doing shit. There is a time and place for everything and work is not one of those places for WoW. It irks me to no end that I'm being paid a lot less then they are while they do nothing, one of my supervisors even brings in his Nintendo DS and plays it while on his shift.

[Murgos]

Anyway, just because someone works 'lots' doesn't have anything to do with quality of result or challenge or, well, anything.  Heck, it's not even necessarily indicative of compensation or reward.  Working more != win, it's just working more.

[Rasix]

My boss knows I'm a gamer.  He asks about it at times.  He knows that I play WoW and have in the past written about video games.  It helps him relate to me, and I suppose it helps him relate a bit better to his teenager as he'll ask me stuff about things he hears from his son. I've found ways to avoid him coming here and reading my work (not like I really write anymore) as I would like to keep some barriers intact.   Someone coming into this place with no frame of reference (even as just someone who plays video games at all) would be at a loss and no way I want him throwing his teenage kid here and letting you all have at him.

He also knows that I play tennis and used to play soccer. I've had meetings I've declined to attend because of tennis.  It's never caused a problem. 

My work place attemtps to value work/life balance.  Sure, I've had to write emails and attend teleconferences while I've been on vacation.  I've had to scrub defects and give direction at 10pm when my wife goes to bed.  But I take my 4 weeks of vacation a year and in pretty large chunks most of the time.  I've worked 60+ hours certain weeks when under pressure of a deadline or when a vendor working for me has dropped the ball and I need to play catch up.  This is never the norm. I check my email in off hours and my boss and co-workers have my personal numbers to get in touch with me if they need to.  I will be taking my 2 weeks paternity leave, and I've never heard any grousing about paternity or maternity leave from anyone.  It's an accepted part of working where I do.

I work for a huge company, but at least in the area I work in, they tend to remember you're a human being. You have your needs, and you have your limits.  They do their best to respect that.  It inspires loyalty to a fault.

[Ingmar]

Everyone I work with knows I'm a gamer, it isn't an issue.

Re: this 60 hour work week stuff: 

Put me down for another one of those has-a-real-job-and-rarely-goes-over-40-hours a week. And I work in IT. Yeah once in a while I have to go in at 2 am to put out a fire, and I usually have my email tether with me, even on vacation, but that's not really working.

[Nevermore]

Curious, I checked out Sam's posting history fully expecting most, if not all, of his posting activity would take place in the evening or night.  I mean, he has so much work piled on him that he's forced to work 50+ 60+ hours every week since he has a real job, unlike the rest of us losers who work for the government or an educational institution.  I was shocked, SHOCKED to see that he mostly posts during business hours!  I guess it's a good thing his boss isn't as big a jackass as he is.

[Nija]

My small company was acquired by a big 4 recently. Before the acquisition I played pool an hour per day and had lunch an hour per day and breaks whenever I wanted. (I'm not a smoker, so not often.) I'd do 32-35 hours per week and got paid salary with full benefits.

Now they want me to do 60. Your world sucks, Sam.

[kildorn]

Curious, I checked out Sam's posting history fully expecting most, if not all, of his posting activity would take place in the evening or night.  I mean, he has so much work piled on him that he's forced to work 50+ 60+ hours every week since he has a real job, unlike the rest of us losers who work for the government or an educational institution.  I was shocked, SHOCKED to see that he mostly posts during business hours!  I guess it's a good thing his boss isn't as big a jackass as he is.

He's roleplaying.

[schild]

Curious, I checked out Sam's posting history fully expecting most, if not all, of his posting activity would take place in the evening or night.  I mean, he has so much work piled on him that he's forced to work 50+ 60+ hours every week since he has a real job, unlike the rest of us losers who work for the government or an educational institution.  I was shocked, SHOCKED to see that he mostly posts during business hours!  I guess it's a good thing his boss isn't as big a jackass as he is.

He's roleplaying.

Roleplaying a free man, or a slave? I'm confused. It's hard to follow.

[kildorn]

Curious, I checked out Sam's posting history fully expecting most, if not all, of his posting activity would take place in the evening or night.  I mean, he has so much work piled on him that he's forced to work 50+ 60+ hours every week since he has a real job, unlike the rest of us losers who work for the government or an educational institution.  I was shocked, SHOCKED to see that he mostly posts during business hours!  I guess it's a good thing his boss isn't as big a jackass as he is.

He's roleplaying.

Roleplaying a free man, or a slave? I'm confused. It's hard to follow.

Roleplaying a successful businessman with an amazing job, a sportscar and a model hot wife while posting on an internet forum at work.

I'm just.. uhh... testing the speed of the new office connection.

[Yegolev]

Now that I actually work here, I'm not shy about being a gamer.  I'm the go-to guy at Christmas for people with kids that want games.  In fact I related a recent bit of learning from this site to someone looking to avoid giving $100 to MicroSoft for a USB ethernet dongle.  I listen patiently as people tell me how awesome they think Mass Effect is... just last week.  Someone excitedly tells me they just got a Wii and I congratulate them.  I'm like the gaming SME, which is really much better than being the printing SME, trust me.  It's funny also because I'm like the office pot dealer except this isn't illegal.

Are we still talking about work schedules for salaried people?  I submit that anyone here on a salary in a job* that works too much** should put out the resume.  You might find a job where you can spend some of your weeks sitting around with your thumb up your ass while making enough money, as long as you Get The Job Done.  Don't tell anyone you play WoW during the interview.

* Check norms in your field, your mileage may vary according to profession.
** Working too much is a subjective measure.  Note that most people only have jobs so they can get monies, not because they enjoy working more than bowling with their family.

Somewhat related, I have discovered that the best way to punish someone I don't like is to force them to adhere to all of the rules.  The funny thing is that if I stuck to the rules, some projects would grind to a fucking halt, pert quick.  I only seriously do this when I am trying to be an ass pole, since it fucks lots of people pretty hard and my boss knows when I am doing it.  Also it doesn't make anyone quit, probably because this is a great company to work for.  Relatively, anyway.

I don't know how many hours I work per week, but I put 37.5 on my timesheet unless I go over that.

[sam, an eggplant]

Doesn't everybody post at work? I tend to post while stuck on conference calls, office door closed, speakerphone on mute. I'm on one right this instant, actually, although they tend to be short right around xmas as people start to leave for vacation. Beyond MMO sites I also browse stripperweb.com (very entertaining, check it out) and fleshbot for interesting new perspectives on porn. Nothing passes the time on conference calls like porno and MMO news. Point is that nobody's checking on me, because I do what needs to be done. Anyway, I enjoy my job.

[Tale]

Doesn't everybody post at work?

No. I'm too busy at work, because it's about putting the latest and most clickable information on a news website every minute of the day, so it's like constantly being on deadline. Any time I step away from that, it's to cram as much admin/planning work into my time as possible, then back to the grind. I posted once to this thread from work yesterday, when I stole about 30 seconds to look at what was happening with this thread, but every other visit/post has been from home, including the first post.

[chargerrich]

Doesn't everybody post at work? I tend to post while stuck on conference calls, office door closed, speakerphone on mute. I'm on one right this instant, actually, although they tend to be short right around xmas as people start to leave for vacation. Beyond MMO sites I also browse stripperweb.com (very entertaining, check it out) and fleshbot for interesting new perspectives on porn. Nothing passes the time on conference calls like porno and MMO news. Point is that nobody's checking on me, because I do what needs to be done. Anyway, I enjoy my job.

you damn well better if you are spending 60+ hours a week there... I also hope you get paid a tidy salary because whatever it is you need to reduce it by 33% since your working those additional 20 hours per week. Funny how 100k can turn into 66k almost instantly :D

Oh and... FOR THE HORDE!

[Tale]

Ah hahaha!  Farked!

Being Farked (via a link to a link) done very little for the page views on this thread, presuming they're accurate. The views shot to 40,000 after the initial burst of stories, and 24 hours later it's still in the 50,000s.

In my work presenting web news to a mainstream audience, I've occasionally thrown in a games-related story. It only gets mediocre traffic. Last time I tried it was when people were queueing to buy the latest WoW expansion. I ran an angle like "players of biggest online game go nuts for new add-on" with a picture that was clearly WoW-related to see what response it got. The clicks bubbled along acceptably for a couple of hours, then faded and I replaced it with a celebrity story.

The gaming media and tech blogs picked this up because it's money for jam - gamers are on the internet where your news is, and they share links on message boards. Tell them their hobby is bad for them, and they'll click. The more clicks your site gets, the more income you get from ads, so every site needs a version of everyone else's clickable story. That's right, we're a resource and we're being mined for gold (see, it's just like WoW ... cough).

But most people on the internet are not gamers. It's a niche thing. "Employers avoid WoW players" might be worth a few paragraphs in a mainstream news feature about people losing themselves in online worlds (I'll write it), but it won't engage a mainstream audience on its own.

[Ratman_tf]

Wow, the world is watching. We have a chance to change things. Company policy is at steak!

Or make a profound statement.

[Ratman_tf]

You're a cog, a tool and nothing more than that.  If they can abuse you, they will. Particularly in this economic hard time.

Yup. I never want a salary position. Not getting paid for my overtime (which is required by law in my profession, you can't get some goony exception) would touch me off.
Having a strong work ethic is one thing. Being a sucker is quite another.

[Nevermore]

Ah hahaha!  Farked!

Being Farked (via a link to a link) done very little for the page views on this thread, presuming they're accurate. The views shot to 40,000 after the initial burst of stories, and 24 hours later it's still in the 50,000s.

Farkers are lazy.  Most don't even click the topic link, let alone drill down to the source.

[voodoolily]

It's times like this when I bet schild really wishes he had some decent CPM banner up.

[Lantyssa]

But most people on the internet are not gamers. It's a niche thing. "Employers avoid WoW players" might be worth a few paragraphs in a mainstream news feature about people losing themselves in online worlds (I'll write it), but it won't engage a mainstream audience on its own.

You should put up a link to this article about some poster on a board commenting about how Employers won't hire WoW players I've heard about and see how it does.

Then the circle would be complete.

[tazelbain]

Some may see that as completing the circle, others may see it as fraud.

[Lantyssa]

Fine.  He should put a link up to those 'news' organizations going crazy about this article on Employers and WoW that link back to this place.

[amiable]

No offense meant, but I question what you guys do in the real world. The stuff you're saying is highly naive. If you have a salaried job and don't work for the government, a non-profit, or an educational institution, you're not working 40 hours a week. I haven't put in less than 60 hours since I entered the workforce. If you have a real job, you don't take off at 5PM sharp. You're reachable on the phone, you don't take long vacations except for special occasions, and you don't use up all your sick days to play videogames, because they need you at work. You're not a nameless faceless cog in the engine, you're driving the car. It's as much control over your destiny as is possible before starting your own business-- and that's when the hours really start to pile up.

I'm sure that all sounds incredibly elitist, but seriously now-- a set number of hours per week for salaried employees? Dream world, buddy.

Why the government hate?  Some of the salaried government employees work pretty hard as well (my weeks are 50-60 hours, and I am accessible at all times via phone).  Of course my hours would be substantially longer in the private sector, but I would make an ass-ton more money, but I don't mind the trade off.

In any case I think this is a somewhat irrelevant issue to the systematic discrimination you are engaged in, and it is discrimination and it is systematic.  Folks have to do shit like procreate for the good of society as a whole, and that means that your company/business needs to be supportive of that, and using backdoor ways to get folks to quit/push them out is equally illegal.  Replace the word "pregnant" with "black" in your description to understand what kind of fire you are playing with.  I know some employment attorneys in the private sector would cream themselves over the post you just made, because sooner or later someone is going to hire them and make a lot of money from your behavior.  Posts like the one you just made indicate to me that you need some "real world" training too, you need to have some discussions with risk management.

[Nebu]

Yup. I never want a salary position. Not getting paid for my overtime (which is required by law in my profession, you can't get some goony exception) would touch me off.
Having a strong work ethic is one thing. Being a sucker is quite another.

As soon as I can find a faculty position that pays an hourly wage, I'll agree. 

Not all of us are suckers that work for salary... many are people that lack an alternative in their field.