Finally Done!

If the title doesn't say it enough -- maybe this does below. If you know what I'm talking about - you'll appreciate it!

A New Favorite Humor Site

I cannot believe that I got this link from a somewhat “professional” eNewsletter. Not that it isn’t professional, but it is all about humor and not real support.

http://lolnptech.blogspot.com/

For those of you who love cats, you’ll love this one a lot too – because a lot of these wonderful NonProfit Techie humor pictures are based off of images of cats. There are few on this site that I might have captions for, particularly this one, that looks like th cat is about to be placed under arrest. Well, there are few employees that I'd like to do that too (starting with the PG all the way down to the girl-who-is-hyped-up-on-so-many-diet-A.K.A.-speed-pills-she-can't-sign-on-right-every-morning)

Either way, my first idea was “Step Away from the Group Policy Snap-In”. Once I start editing group policy, I have an angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other shoulder. The one is saying "be nice, only make them have a four character password" while the devil is saying "Make it be eight characters long, with at least three of the four - a capital letter, a small letter, a number and a symbol. And they have to change their password every 30 days!". Then when changing permissions to the ability to change things, the angel says "Sometimes being unique and giving the ability to change the background and screensave breeds happiness within employees" while the devil screams "Keep everyone the same!" I am almost proud to say this - but I listen to the devil much more often. When it comes to my network, lock it down! So, at times, I feel like I should be arrested for making so many strong changes to the group policy.

Of course, the caption could be something less about me and more about the employees - “Guilty of using password as a password”.

I had my first phone call for tech support this morning at 5:59 am – I wasn’t even downstairs and people were calling the offices going, “I know that you are there, so can you unlock me from having a frozen account, I can’t get into my Outlook”. I haven’t fixed the problem yet. I’m just bitter that people are freaking calling me that early and expecting me to jump for them. The problem is this user keeps coming in earlier and earlier – and it’s just plum ridiculous. They better not call me on Wednesday morning when I am sleeping in for the big event that evening. They better not even think of it!

If there is National Boss Day - Can there be National Bad Boss Day?

Or rather, “My Boss is a Big Giant Jack-ass Who Doesn’t Know What the Word Boss Means and Therefore He Can’t Function At That Job Title” Day? That would be around the title I would give for a holiday that celebrates my PG. And guess what – none of my coworkers are doing ANYTHING for the PG. We have all decided to pretend like it is any other day.

 

We used to plan elaborate things. We would make false meetings and go meet him in cool restaurants. We used to have fun with it. But somewhere along the line the PG has morphed horribly into this boss who can’t function as a boss. I know that he doesn’t like conflict, but now we’ve added the following things that he doesn’t like to do: make decisions, follow deadlines, correct staff, follow the rules, answer his phone, answer email with more than one word, and be at work. In fact, the list of things that he does do has shrunk too (much like his height). He likes to clean the cupboards (too bad we have a janitorial staff that does that too). That’s about it. Oh, he also likes to poke fun of staff, screw off during work, place the blame of things not getting done because he hasn’t done anything onto his staff (ME!), and generally go around and annoy everyone. A couple weeks ago it was damn magnets (Thanks Geeka! He hasn’t said anything about them this week. It’s been blissfully silent with those things gone.) This week he is deciding to work on our huge event next week. He is asking all of these questions, wanting to see the videos, having suggestions, and worried about the fact that we are down over 100 people in comparison from last year.

 

So, in the glory that National Boss Day is, I have gone researching for some material on Bad Bosses – and man, there is a jackpot of information out there. There must be a lot of PGs out there (or other versions of him). So, to get this started, I must admit that both the Post Gazette and MSN had lead articles on their websites yesterday and today about Bad Bosses. (Now, doesn’t that make everyone stop for a second and say “Why is that?”). Either way, the MSN article gave me the wealth of information that I sought. It started out with this website: http://www.badbosses.net/  - Yep, the Bad Bosses Website. And on this website, they have an assessment tool to rank you boss: Bad Bosses Assessment. Now, this is absolutely the best one to take. Can I say that I love this website? I can also say that this survey calls out the extremes that the PG can be. Let’s just say every one of the passive questions, he scores the highest on. He isn’t the worst boss out there, but when the survey comes up saying “Mayday! Mayday! You could be in store for a  crash landing with a very difficult boss!”, I have to tell the survey that it isn’t telling me something that I don’t already know. Too bad there wasn’t a question on there about “Can you bribe your boss with chocolate and do other people in your office use chocolate to gain favors from him?”.

 

But my research didn’t end there. No way. Instead, I continued on and found some things that I wish I could just drop on his lap someday. There is this website: http://www.badbossology.com/ that has a book called “Coward’s Guide to Conflict” that he ABSOLUTELY FREAKING NEEDS TO READ!  However, this site seems to be too serious for my taste. I’ve already sat through one horrible wrong Stress Management class with the PG – I don’t need more advice that is along the lines of “Before going in to see your boss, take two deep breathes and outline your conversation along with the things you want to achieve”. That NEVER works.

 

So, further research made me find this site, http://www.workingamerica.org/badboss/  which I wish I would have found earlier. I don’t know if I’d ever get the guts to submit my PG into a contest because I’m sure he doesn’t rank up in the categories of being a mean boss, he is just a bad boss. Well, according to this website, he is also known as The Second Worst Boss on the Block: BOZO the Boss.

 

Finally, in honor of Geeka, I googled “My Boss Is A JackAss” and let’s just say, there were plenty of hits (and lots of other blogs – and Geeka was the 6^th site that was on the google search with her post: Jackass-palooza ). So that Geeka doesn’t have to go and look these up, here are some that everyone may enjoy: http://www.workrant.com/

My Boss is a Jackass Message Board

http://www.fthisjob.com/node/60

 

 

Being Polite

I would think if I ever am a supervisor and I have an employee who works the entire weekend a project – let’s say, a big giant video that is going to be shown to 450 people that features popups boxes as in the VH1 Popup Video style along with voiceovers – that the first I’m back at work, that I would stop and see how the progress is. It’s only polite since the employee is probably putting in more hours than what they are being paid for, they are stressing out to no end, and they were categorically against using their own voice for the popup voiceovers, but had to do it either way.

 

But simply said, the PG doesn’t know Polite if it bit him in the ass and took his damn magnets away.

 

Yes, the PG has been too busy playing with magnets that make noise when you throw them together than to come see a video that I’ve probably worked on for well over 28 hours since Friday morning at 7 am.  Needless to say, let him destroy equipment with the magnets – there will be no conversations between us. I know that he wants a new freaking blackberry, but playing with magnets around the blackberry is going to do nothing to get me to put his blackberry on our servers. Hell, it’s not going to get him anything if he ruins stuff with magnets.

 

And now, he still has things to do for me, and he is too busy. What the hell? Was I too busy this weekend to work on the video? Was I too busy this weekend to figure out how to make up the popups clear and not translucent? Was I too busy this weekend to place 4 filters on all voiceovers to make it sound better? Was I too busy to find the stupid “bloop” sound for each popup? I don’t think so. Give up the magnets, become a grown man for 6 minutes and 24 seconds and see the damn video!

Irish Stepdancing Monkeys and Moron Magnets

This was a very serious conversation I had yesterday with Geeka on the way back from the very cool farmer's market (butternut squash fo 75 cents, giant heads of cauliflower for $2, homemade sugar-free jams for $4.50). It all started with the fact that we both work with complete morons. More specifically, we both have bosses taht are complete morons. Geeka's moron is the Canadian moron. She has been with this moron for too long. I'm with the Pocket-Gay Moron. Unfortunately, I've been with my moron for longer, but he wasn't always a moron.

However, this opened up new avenues for exploring morons. Because I really think that I attract this special breed of morons known as the "Gay morons". Now I must say, I'm perfectly find with this lifestyle for people who find themselves attracted to others of the same sex. I'd rather know about that first though. I don't know how many blind dates my first gay moron set up on with other men who were more interested in him than me.

Ok, back to business... First, gay morons are not exactly hiding the fact (although the PG is not exactly out of the closet but he isn't all the way into closet either, but he is small enough you can't always see where he is at a given moment). Second, they pretend to be this cool person who has all this fun when in the background they are like models on "America's Next Top Model" - ready to stab you in the back and throw you underneath the bus (or ACCESS van). Third, they need to be the most important person in the relatioship and demand it. If they aren't, they just fight with you so you go away. Fourth, they love to do things just to drive you absolutely batty because they love to see you upsest. (The PG has been carrying around these loud-ass magnets that make noise when you throw them together. He has been using them for over a week now. No problem, but there are tons of computer equipment in my building. Computer equipment that doesn't like magnets.... Getting the picture here?)

I'm not saying that I don't attract other morons and I'm not saying that only me and Geeka are specializing this. I'm sorry to say, but I even think Image Goddess attracted the same Canadian moron that I had. It wasn't our fault that time. We were hurt. We needed physical therapy. We were assigned the Canadian moron. (Although the verdict on this is still way out there. Somehow this man is still sort of right about my knee, although I'm still in pain.)

So the question is out there, if you are a moron magnet, how to do demagnetize yourself? Is there some sort of spray that I can get to get all the morons away? It seems as if I left one gay moron for another gay moron. In fact, I think my PG morphed into a bigger moron after I got rid of the other gay moron. Did I cause that because I no longer had a moron attached to me?

Enough of this -- but here, for some fun and what I teased about earlier: Irish Stepdancing Monkeys: