Useless Conversation

[Merusk]

I work 16-18 hours a day 7 days a week and so should you, you lazy fuck. No, I don't care that I make money all those hours and you're actually costing yourself money when you do it. This is why you aren't a success. You aren't willing to sacrifice to get ahead and get a leg up. The work you put in now will pay off if you were only willing to do it and then you too would be making money all those hours. If only you weren't so lazy and self-interested.

That's the internal monologue of the Type A business achiever. That's what's wrong with some people.

Eh, I'm type A as fuck and I run an accounting department of a successful contracting company. My motto is, "Get the job done, and I won't have to get involved. And you don't want me involved."

The older people (see: over 50) in our office wonder why my group doesn't work 8 hour days consistently. I tell them because they are salaried to get a job done, and if they don't like that, give our group more to do or better yet mind their own fucking business about their end of the business.

You and Schild are of a different generation. The Type-As in upper management I've encountered across multiple careers now have all been the type I described in one form or another. Some are more passive-aggressive about it, but they ALL had that mindset. They were all Boomers, though. I haven't had a single Gen-X upper manager yet, so I have no idea how my gen will handle it.

Personally I'm of the same mindset as you, even in the few managerial positions I had. Didn't mean I wasn't pressured to behave like that. In one instance I was outright told that exact line, "this job is what LETS them have a life, so they'd better do what I demand."  Fuck that guy forever.*

Managers/ Owners never seem to realize they stand on the backs of others doing the work for them. I've never understood it and was amazed at the disdain held for workers in management training courses. These weren't off-the-street entry-level high-school-dropouts, but professionals and management wanted them to work like slaves so THEY could have a bigger bonus. Man what a shitty field the AEC industry can be.

*It took him 10 more years to be fired and I have a feeling it was only done to strip him of a retirement because he was 63 by that time and had been there almost 40 years. His "temper problem" was widely known before "the incident," so fuck that company, too.

[Nebu]

Having worked in fields where 14 hour days are the norm, I can tell you that most of the people that stay long hours at work do so because they prefer being at work to being at home.

[Signe]

Jobs are for losers.  Get rid of the pesky jobs and come hang out with me.  Bring beer.  And food.  Toilet paper.  Or we could hang out at your house.  Shelter would be nice and I could use a shower.

I don't know which letter my personality is.

[HaemishM]

It's obviously the letter Z.

For zombie.

[Father mike]

I don't know which letter my personality is.

Something with an umlaut.

[Merusk]

Having worked in fields where 14 hour days are the norm, I can tell you that most of the people that stay long hours at work do so because they prefer being at work to being at home.

Same hours but not the case here. It's very much a problem of understaffing and overpromising combined with shorty business sense and organization.

[Chimpy]

It's obviously the letter Z.

For zombie.

 

[Samwise]

Having worked in fields where 14 hour days are the norm, I can tell you that most of the people that stay long hours at work do so because they prefer being at work to being at home.

I was definitely more productive during the years of my life where I didn't want to go home for one reason or another (e.g. I was living with shitty roommates).  Now that I kinda love being at home I work very regular 8-hour days.   

[Paelos]

Most 30-something managers I've met fall into the category of "team-oriented" meaning that they rise and fall as a team and they treat their people as cohorts rather than peons.

Most Boomer managers I've met fall into the "fuck you get it done" category which means they hand out jobs and then bitch at you if you fuck it up from a lack of support. Trial by fire is one of their favorite expressions. They work constantly and can't seem to truly delegate anything without checking up on you for small items that aren't meaningful to the project. They don't like to be told that something isn't working. They don't listen to potential issues and flip out with overreactions when something goes wrong, then actively blame people for not informing them sooner.

I want most Boomer managers to retire, and this country will finally advance.

[Rasix]

I haven't had a good manager in forever. The last 4 have been worthless, although one can be excused because she took a better job like 3 months in. You could just tell she stopped trying after knowing she got the other job although it took 3 months for them to announce it and execute the move. Current manager is nice and of similar age, but he's just too chummy, and I'm under him just for another headcount. He has no input into what I do currently, although in my previous position, he showed that he's somewhat spineless when confronted by upper management.

Most managers I run into are just your manager in order to get a better management job. The last one to try and make a difference for the department as a whole is now my second line. Has a great head for the business, attempts to understand the technology, and really knows the internals of the company well. She's very effective. Everyone else has just been a caretaker.

I've had one boomer manager although that was like 8 years ago. She was the fucking worst. Fake folksy charm and all. Effectively sabotaged my review when I changed positions.

[Chimpy]

Once you get sold to Lenovo you will probably get better/more effective management. 

At least that is the vibe I get from all the x system people I talk to, they actually like their jobs now.

[Rendakor]

One of the best parts of my job is that we effectively have no management. 99% of the things we do are done with a 1-3 man crew, and I've been here long enough that I'm a crew lead more often than a support. All our boss does is tell us who's going where and what the general scope of the job is, then we go there and do things as we see fit. As long as the customer's happy and we get things done in a timely fashion, we get very little flak.

The one exception is equipment; a lot of our stuff is ancient and it's like a bad game of hot potato: whoever is stuck holding it when it finally shits the bed often gets the blame for breaking it.

[Khaldun]

I think I was a Type A in utero in my late 20s/early 30s but I feel as if I had some clear-headed moments where I thought about the lives that those guys (mostly guys, not all) were actually living, and I came to two conclusions:

a) they're time-bombs who will either die younger than they should or experience a moment of disastrous clarity at some point in their 40s/50s and essentially have an emotional detonation that clears out all life in their vicinity;
b) they make everyone else miserable and cause an overall net-reduction in effectiveness and efficiency in any organization or company; the only good type-A is a type-A who has work that they can do entirely or largely by themselves, like artists or novelists

Give me an emotionally-intelligent Type B who has some creativity and vision any day, in any situation--as a friend, as a colleague, as a supervisor, etc.

[schild]

There ARE different types of Type-As., Khaldun.

[Khaldun]

Are there? I thought Type-A was just the super-intense, work-all-the-time, win at everything or die, shouting orders to everyone person.

[schild]

Type A and B dictate a personality set, not what their actions will be. I'm hilariously competitive and aggressive and outgoing and I want things to be as efficient and painless as possible to maximize downtime. Working all the time is a different problem entirely. Those people are called "bad at living." There isn't a personality type for that.

[schild]

http://store.iam8bit.com/collections/sequel

Picked up Egg Shen and the Six Demon Bag and Being Jeff Goldblum. These are sick. Make sure you look at the sizes and such (and print run). They're all giclee prints.

[Abagadro]

Repo Man 2 is pretty slick.

[schild]

Repo Man 2 is pretty slick.

Yea, that one was a contender. It was just a bit small (16x24) for what it was.

[Yegolev]

"How did you get up there?"

"It wasn't easy!"

I use that one a lot.

[calapine]

For a lack of proper thread I am putting it here.

Interesting read. The image is the link (trying something new!)

[Chimpy]

Wasps, ants, and crabs battling to the death. Not sure if I want any of the participants to win. 

[calapine]

Ants scary, yes. But the crabs are cool. Look:

[schild]

At some point, Stephen King's IT was remastered and released on Blu-ray. I just found out. It looks very, very, very good. And sounds amazing.

[apocrypha]

I've never watched or read It. Is it genuinely scary? Wife and I have been trying to find some horror films or TV series that are actually scary and so far we've come up empty. A few jump scares, some disturbing and difficult things (Nina Forever) but nothing that's actually scared us for more than moments. Starting to wonder if we're just too old and cynical to be scared by anything non-political.

[schild]

Is it scary? Depends. Doesnt build dread well, but Tim Curry is as good as Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal with marginally more screen time. Mostly though, up until the last 20 minutes/final battle, its arguably one of the best miniseries ever made.

[apocrypha]

OK, will check it out. Got 2/3rd though The Stand and got a bit fed up with it's total lack of subtlety.

[Ironwood]

The book wasn't particularly subtle either, if it helps.

[schild]

Stephen King doesnt practice subtlety in horror. He does it in his drama.

[Ironwood]

I'll be honest, I didn't find The Stand to be particularly horrorful.  There have been tons of other apocalypse books that have been scarier or more thought provoking or worrying, but this one was frankly a weak biblical retread that, when it got thin, just decided to yank the actual Bible in there.

Also, almost ALL the characters in The Stand were just utter shitty cardboard shit.  Say what you like about IT, at least it had some good characters in there. 

[apocrypha]

Yep, exactly what I was finding about The Stand. I started watching it because it was one of those shows that I'd heard people eulogising about.

The question of what is scary horror for us now is a tricky one. Neither my wife nor I have the slightest inclination to supernatural beliefs so ghost and demon stories rarely work because we struggle to suspend our disbelief. Psycho slasher films are more likely to disgust than scare if they lean on gore too much, or feel clichéd if they're too heavy on jump scares. Post apocalyptic ones are generally just depressing. We're moving on to some Korean monster movies next, see if they manage to trigger anything.

Of couse if I still knew who to get decent drugs from I'm sure I could scae the shit out of myself with a bloody Pixar film or something. 

[Ironwood]

Day of the Triffids is, for me, frankly the scariest end of the world book I've ever read.  Some people think the horror in that is about flesh eating plants, but they're totally wrong.

Wondrous Horrible Book.

[apocrypha]

John Wyndham was a great author, definitely. Midwich Cuckoos was also pretty scary and was about similar things. Film & TV adaptations of his stuff have been really patchy though.

[HaemishM]

What I remember about IT the mini-series was the first half with all Pennywise/Tim Curry was pretty brilliant. It only really went downhill in the second half when it followed the adults and became

[Rasix]

The Stand isn't horror. At least I never considered it to be. It's as much horror as something like Eyes of the Dragon or The Dark Tower series. It's just standard dystopian sci-fi/fantasy with your typical awful King ending.  

True horror is the back spasms that I'm having right now. Trapped at work. Can't drive home because of the spasms, hard to work because of the incredible pain.