Has anything of interest happened to you recently?

I have worked plenty of places where that wouldn't be a valid excuse, either, particularly when I worked in San Francisco. There's no public transit? Nobody he can get a ride from?

MulMizu laundromat, filthpig.

He lives an hour away. He uses his car to get to the train in another city that would take him into town. As it was, he had to scramble to figure out how to get his kids to school. There might be a bus, but I imagine that'd take upwards of 2 hours to use--and probably longer. And if he had someone willing to drive him all the way here, I bet he'd do that ALL THE TIME!

I had an assistant manager at a store give me an impromptu performance review (they are supposed to be scheduled) and she dinged me for being five minutes late once because I hitched a ride with a friend who had access to a vehicle when the transit system was down due to a strike. We got caught in traffic, hence being five minutes late. It didn't matter, I was dinged, anyway. I complained to the store's manager and quit three days later.

And it felt good.

That was also the last time I worked in retail, by coincidence.

That sort of petty tin soldiering seems so crazy to me.

I understand the need, from an employer's perspective, to have punctual and reliable employees, but I also understand the need, from an employee's perspective, to not have a boss that was manufactured without an empathy gland.

My former assistant manager, the one who recently saw fit to have me virtually blacklisted at my former employer, was one of these people - if she didn't like you. Blizzard blows in, causing all of the trains to freeze in their yards and the busses to overload? I leave early enough to avoid all of this but am still five minutes late anyway because blizzard? Call twenty minutes before shift to let her know? Stopped at the door and reamed in front of customers. What'd you want me to do, lady? Take the bus sometime, living like the common people will do you some good.

I'm guessing his thought process here is something along the lines of, "He should be able to afford a nanny with the generous salary and competitive benefits package we offered him. It's what I would do - if I had kids."

That is exactly it. I ended up getting the next level up involved and he has apologized and is backing off. It only took four hours of me feeling like I was going to throw up because of all the meetings and confrontation for it to happen.

Aaand my dad is going back to the operating room. During the first surgery (spleen removal) they tied off some blood vessels, and some of those are seeping a little more than the doctors are comfortable with, so back on the table with him. Otherwise, he's been recovering nicely and this operation one should be a good deal easier and smoother than the first. Today is his one week anniversary on the hospital and he's thoroughly fed up with being sick. He's also worried and a bit scared. I'm home trying to catch a little sleep as I have to drive my mother home and be back at work really early. Once he's out of surgery, post-op recovery therapy will start all over for the third time. We're all tired and nerves are a bit frayed. On the upside, he met another patient who had his spleen removed years back, and he's had very few problems because of it.

After well over a year of near continuous bitching I have finally gotten word that billing intends to surrender.

From now on I get a monthly database that includes all of my and my boss's customers, their spends, their service and their terms.

Meaning unlike all the other sales people I can build tools to generate metrics, automate giant chunks of client interaction (renewals, upgrades, etc) and in general bring my small fief into the 20th century.

In a not shit company I could just use the existing tools. Here I have to play pioneer because the CEO is cheap and the sales people never worked with anything else. Luckily I won over a big beast director with my crusade. He can't beat the CEO into just getting us salesforce but he could club billing into submission.

Whatever. For now sweet flavorful victory!

I'm working a microscope table at the Bay Area Fungus Fair today and tomorrow in Berkeley (info: http://www.mssf.org/fungus-fairs/index.html). I expect it will involve a great deal of keeping small children from breaking the scopes, but it's a lot of fun!

Do you get to sing 'We are the champignons?'

Sorry, I can't make it to the family reunion this year.

But FerdieLance is such a fun gi!

HA! In before anyone else posted that incredibly obvious pun!

<sadtrombone.mp3>

So drove all the way to Germany and bought a single malt whisky made in Sweden using traditional Scottish methods and aged in American bourbon barrels... makes total sense.

Up until today, I'd forgotten how much I love working with small children.
Their unbridled energy and curiosity... Ffffff, my heart. <3

Until you deal with it every day. Then it's like "Where the FUCK did we put the glue!?"

So I have a membership to B-Cycle, a by-the-hour bike rental service here in the city. There's a rack literally outside my front door, so it's really convenient. And with an annual membership, it costs me nothing to grab a bike and use it so long as I have it back in another rack within 30 minutes - during which time I can get anywhere they cover in the city. After the first half-hour, they charge $2 per additional half-hour.

I get an email today, since the "season" is ending and they're packing up the bikes for the winter, that I'm being charged $58 for usage fees. I look it up and holy crap, according to them a few weeks ago I had a bike out for over 24 hours. I check my emails for that date - no, I never got any check-in confirmation. Then I remember that was a weekend when I tried to use the system (after turning in this bike) and couldn't check one out because the connection from the automated rack was down. So it never registered the turn-in until the next day.

I dropped an email to their automated Contact Us box explaining the situation - the bikes all have GPS in them to determine where it is if it's stolen and also how many miles you've gone (I am currently #3 in the entire city!). I let them know that if they check the GPS log for that bike, it should have been checked in at the station the entire time.

I got a personal email back from the guy that runs the company, apologizing for the error and letting me know to expect a refund within 24 hours. It hit instantly.

Now that's good customer service.

You're only #3? This is a gaming oriented forum, we'll accept nothing less than first place.

This is a gaming-oriented forum, I should get extra credit for actually going outside under the feared day-star.

And shameful bronze.

I actually used to do it every day. For only 4-5 hours, granted, but even when it was frustrating as fuck NO HITTING (I mean in regards to the kids, not me wanting to hit them. CLARIFICATION!) i still loved it.
loved it.
my favorite thing to do ever.

then again, I love kids kind of unconditionally, so.

My dad just can't catch a break. The second surgery went smoothly, but apparently didn't fix the problem entirely. They may end up having to open him up for a third time, but for now the doctors are taking a wait-and-see approach. This is one seriously shitty way to start the month of Christmas. My dad is otherwise doing fine, but he's obviously scared shitless. My mom is worn out and I feel awful.

Sympathy like. /hugs

Sending all the hugs I can spare to your family. :(

MIL had carpal tunnel surgery on Thursday, so I've been busy keeping her from injuring herself further. (She's a retired nurse, and therefore makes a horrible patient.) It's harder than you might expect. So tired...

Sympathetic like.
And for the 'retired nurse' bit - my mother's a retired nurse and everything involving doctors is just bad with her.

If she's anything like Quat's mom, she has brass ovaries the size of basketballs and no hesitation in ordering around doctors. The stories I could tell... And the disturbing thing is that she's always right. She's intimidating, to say the least. I love her, though. Once I stopped being terrified of her we started getting along great.

So, this morning they were preparing to send my dad home. Now they're waiting for a doc to decide if he goes under the knife for the third time. Dammit, dammit dammit!

Just assume that every like is a sympathy like. :<

Thank you. And thank you to the rest of you as well. It helps.

Still, it could be worse: The guy lying next to my dad has a serious intestine problem. His wife can only visit him infrequently: She's getting cancer treatment in another ward and is rarely well enough that they can put her in a wheelchair and bring her to see him.

Aw jeez. All the best wishes.

I should really call my dad just to say hi.

It sometimes hits me that my dad could be dead and I'd never know. But then I hear he's sent a present to my niece or something, and I just get mad at him instead. I envy those of you with decent fathers... Love them and cherish them.

Through the wonders of modern technology I can update all of you fine people on the fact that I am currently stuck somewhere in West Seattle, on a very steep hill, on a tiny little road, with an empty trailer behind me, with my parking brake active, my foot on the brake and the van in gear so I don't roll into someone's house. There's probably the nicest cop I've ever met in my life here, i'm about to pay far more money to a towing company than I can afford to for the pleasure of not only not inflicting my stupidity onto anyone else (via ramming their domicile) but not destroying my vehicle in the process. My roadside assistance couldn't find anyone who wanted the job either, which officially makes them even more worthless than the fact that they can't properly jump cars.

This is officially the worst Not Truly Bad day of my adult life.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened, but it sounds like it sucks.

You rented a trailer to try and move stuff but then your van couldn't handle the steep roads? And there's a cop there because...you hit someone's house? And so you're paying a towing company to haul the trailer?

As I understood it, he's paying the towing company to haul the trailer so that he won't hit someone's house and wreck the car. I don't know why the cop is there.

My guess is he's blocking a road? So the cop came out to find out why because someone called it in, or he was meandering through the area anyway and stopped to check it out.

I've been elected chairman of the European Team Championships for 2013. It's a super hardcore wargames tournament (Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Flames of War, Warmachine/Hordes) that attracts teams from every nation in Europe but also from Australia, the US and NZ despite the name.