none so negative

this is gonna be brief because i am worn out and just want to curl up in bed and decompile.

first day of new job was good and bad. i’m the guinea pig in their new assimilation method which starts with a full day of orientation. i basically spent the whole day with one guy while he barraged me with facts about the company, work environment, etc. it was hard. hard to get my brain out of unemployment mode so it could process things more complicated than lolcats. hard to stay awake because i got no sleep last night. hard to stay focused because i really wasn’t interested.

went like this. got up went into work, had no idea what time i had to be there so i rocked up at around 8, apparently my tour guide (the service desk manager) didn’t know when i was supposed to show up either. was shown my desk, no privacy, it’s right on the main thoroughfare through the office so basically people will be walking behind me all day. frustrating. was given a notebook and pens and junk. hm.

went to boardroom where i was beaten mercilessly with information about the company structure, the products, the major clients etc. brain crying for help, only 9:30.

wheeled around the office like a new toy meeting all the people and immediately forgetting them on account of i left my brain in the boardroom or maybe at home, i dunno. some people seemed nice, some people seemed “nice”. met the company CEO who is about 10 feet tall. made me feel small, physically and significantly.

cigarette break. i don’t smoke. got shown some places to eat. food was absolutely the last thing i was interested in.

went to mensroom, almost plowed right into the CEO when i came out of them. HE held the door for ME.

booted out of boardroom so continued assimilation in the atrium podium. temperature swung violently between too hot and too cold. face aches from squinting in the sunlight. got excited about ITIL, quickly lost interest.

lunch break. sucked down a redbull like my life depended on it. it might have. put as much distance between me and work as the time permitted. stopped. breathed. returned to work.

sat around feeling like a waste of space while the manager was busy with his real job. the team leader tried to get me involved on something he was doing which seemed pretty interesting. RADIUS puzzles.

went into a little meeting room to continue spraying me with knowledge that just formed droplets and ran off my oily brain. at some stage i was introduced to more of the support team. one of the guys has a soul calibur wallpaper on his workstation.

quick break. ran downstairs fast like litning and inhaled another redbull. fridge was up high and the redbull was super cold, so tasty.

more blah blah and some blah blah about the training blah blah that’ll start tomorrow and some blah blah about timesheets and legal something or other and raaaaaaaaa. given fancy keys.

day over, brain in tears.

cat writes (11:12 PM):

cat writes (8:47 PM):

so, i’ve been job hunting. i’ve run out of money, have no income and am fucked if i don’t find a job. i should have started proper job hunting months ago instead of just saying “i have to start proper job hunting” but i didn’t so here i am.

when i was at [company name] we had some dealings with a lot of broadband hardware manufacturers, one was the best modems since sliced bread (read: dynalink/ascii), a few were ok products but not what we were after (SMC comes to mind) and one company, which i won’t name for obvious reasons, had TERRIBLE products and an especially tenacious sales rep. i actually brought one of their modems home to test and had problem after problem after problem.

anyway, their products isn’t important, what was important was their sales rep. he’d call repeatedly to try and set up a deal with us, he’d vainly defend his company’s hardware when i’d rage on about all the issues i was having with their test unit (and their hopeless support staff) and he’d get constantly shafted by my boss promising to call him back and never getting around to it. basically, our company were kinda jerks to him.

i got a call back for a job i applied for last week, it was through a recruiting company i’d not heard of before, and i was sure i recognized the voice. he said his name and i was still thinking “no way,” then he mentioned he used to deal with [company name] and i was all “holy crap!”

turns out him and one of his co-workers (i found out later the guy that actually hired him initially) had left that company to set up their own IT-specific recruitment firm. what a crazy-small world.

ultimately it worked hugely in my favor. it gave me a foot in the door and, since he’d dealt with me at [company name], he knew the kind of background i had from there. it’s usually a difficult thing to explain [company name] on account of the company was, uh, unconventional, so him knowing all about it saved me the usual headache of trying to explain the chaos of running an entire ISP (infrastructure, sales, support, everything) with a team of only 3-4 people to someone who’s IT “experience” consists of repeating bits and pieces from PC User articles and having a facebook page. to be honest half the time i suspect the IT “professionals” think i make it all up when i explain to them what it was like. i mean, in their world of ITIL, ticket escalation and other all-talk-no-action bullshit the idea of something that chaotic couldn’t possibly be real.

the simple truth of our support team there, though, was that there was no level 2, 3, X support. there was no specialists, no NOC. we were it. if we couldn’t solve a problem then it simply could not be solved and we honestly never had that happen. it makes me sound like a liar, i know. how can i, a “level 1″ tech support operator, no degree, no training, possibly solve “level 3″ problems? fucking easy is how. it makes me sound like a liar when it SHOULD make me sound like a fucking badass support ninja because that’s exactly what i am. i don’t “solve problems to the best of my ability (read: pay rate),” i just fucking solve problems. the different levels of support is such a ridiculous and alien concept to me. i can not understand why, when faced with a problem you can’t solve, you wouldn’t want to learn how to solve it. escalate it to level 2 and go back to twiddling your thumbs, what the fuck do you have to live for if you aren’t learning anything?

the problem is the structure of the industry (and i might be repeating stuff serp mentioned in his post earlier) attracts lazy people because they think it’s easy money and is itself designed to enable laziness. i can’t think of any industry where there is so much uselessness and redundancy. i’ve never had a salesperson come up to me and ask me if i’d want to buy “toaster x” and then get out of his depth when i say i’d prefer “toaster y” and fob me off to another, more senior salesperson. it sounds like an exaggeration but it’s not.

one question they asked that really stood out for me at the interview was that they asked me “if a modem didn’t have line sync, would we see authentication attempts/packets.”

to ABSOLUTELY ANYONE in the IT industry. hell, even to all those fucking drooling cunts that think they’re computer literate because they can use email to send “funny” photos to each other this should be as obvious as “if the lamp is plugged into the power but the lightbulb isn’t screwed in, will you see light come out?”

but it isn’t that obvious and the average IT support person’s lightbulb isn’t fucking screwed in, i can tell you.

the answer is “no,” but there’s this aura that computers have that make everyone in contact with them dumb as a bag of hammers. the assumption that computers are made of magic. you buy a lamp, you have to plug it in to the power. you buy a toaster, it needs power. your tv, power AND an aerial. all obvious, no doubt, but for some fucking reason this IMPOSSIBLY SIMPLE LOGIC gets thrown right out the window and people assume, despite the FUCKING GIANT POWER BRICK in the box that a modem doesn’t need power or doesn’t need to be plugged into the phone line (with the phone cord provided and as detailed on the simple quick-start guide) or the computer (with the LAN cable provided and, again, on the quick start guide), they just assume the magic will sort it out.

well the closest thing to magic is me, chumps, and this magic fucking hates you all for being so fucking stupid.

which, since i mentioned it, is another thing that fucks me off about the IT industry. this assumption that we’re all elitist jerks talking down to people because you “don’t know about computers.”

no. we talk down to you because we get tired of you people getting extra-stupid and shutting off every basic function of your brain whenever you get near one. let’s say you can walk fine, he’ll you’re fighting fit, but whenever you have to go through an automatic door you just stand there blankly, expecting someone to pick you up and carry you through and you swear and curse and moan and whine and complain until someone, us, does. it’s not that you’re scared of the door or that it’s new or complicated, it’s just that because it’s an automatic door you assume you don’t need to remember to use your legs anymore. it sounds retarded but that’s exactly how i see these people. slapping, drooling apes that fail at everything not because it’s hard but because they act dumber around it and have this bizarre idea that basic reality does not apply to computers.

the interviewers said i’d be surprised at how many people get thrown by or can’t answer that question but no, i really wouldn’t.

i have my doubts as to whether i’ll enjoy the job, assuming i get it, i have another interview some time early this week. not because of the job itself but because of the environment. it’s a very corporate environment with all sorts of by-the-book managerial and motivational crap which, to be honest, just gets in my way. i hate people. they could be the nicest co-workers i could ever want and i’ll still hate them. i don’t like having to share what i do in my spare time, what music i like, what hobbies i have. i don’t like people feeling like because they work with me they are entitled to know and have an opinion on what i do when they’re not around and i don’t like them assuming that i care about what they do. in my life, when i leave that office you all cease to exist and no amount of mandatory staff functions are going to change that, they’re just going to make me uncomfortable at work. it’s not that i think i’m better than people, i just don’t have time for them and i’ll openly admit, without any shame, that i’m self-centered and self-absorbed.

besides, it’s easier to pretend i’m not interested in things than it is to explain what i am interested in to someone who has absolutely no interest in hearing what i’m interested in.

that got ranty and i forgot what i was originally going to say… this whole thing has made me re-think some stuff, too, but it’s almost 2am.

cat says (10:54 PM):
   i’ma start selling shirts that say “PUNCH MY BALLS. JUST, LIKE,
   PUNCH THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THEM.”
cat says (10:54 PM):
   and see if i sell any
teh oatse says (10:54 PM):
   I reckon you would
cat says (10:55 PM):
   i’ll do it real ghetto, like cafepress or something
teh oatse says (10:56 PM):
   do it

DONE!

inspired by a-ko’s post here. ;p

cat says (6:02 PM):
   how rad would it be to have a multiple personality disorder
cat says (6:02 PM):
   except!
cat says (6:02 PM):
   they were all like benign and functional
cat says (6:02 PM):
   like i got split personalities.. one’s a lawyer, one’s a doctor!
cat says (6:03 PM):
   all leavin notes for the other personality, makin’ them dinner and shit

i can’t believe how dependant i’ve become on twitter and how lost i am without it. o_o

it’s been down for maybe an hour today and i’m bored out of my mind!