Welcum two Stock Home, Njoy Yur Steh.

I’m sure we’ve all seen those silly posts on FaceBook, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and wherever else people frequently go to poke fun at idiots. And you know exactly the kind of posts I’m talking about…

Re: Holocaust

Stuff like this…

Re: Time Zones

…Or that…

Re: Genetics

…and especially that.

I wonder if you’re all like me. You laugh, you hate the world for existing for a moment, and then you chalk it up to somebody trolling or just being silly because surely no one is really that stupid.

Re: Mediocre

But then you see it…in real life. That friend’s e-mail that tells you how to make nifty blue glow sticks when in reality they’re making a deadly chlorine bomb, your grandma warning about people hiding out under cars and cutting your ankles off with a machete when you’re in a parking garage, or that co-worker who tells you they’re going to How Why E on vacation. Either way they bring into question the person’s gullibility and make you question the whole country’s education system.

Re: The reason why Tigers eat their young.

That’s right folks, nobody is immune: Sometimes those people really do exist. You know them by name, you live with them, you work alongside them. Hell they may even get paid more than you!

That is my personal case, a young lady was hired at the place I work as a part-timer a few months ago and during a department restructuring she got bumped up to full-time employment. Now she’s a nice enough girl, but she gets paid 25 cents an hour more than me. She’s a regular working in her department, while I am the department manager for my own department. That’s infuriating enough, but it doesn’t help that our departments overlap a lot. She does some of the same work I do…of course like I said, she gets paid more than me to do it. She also gets 3 dollars an hour more than the regular workers in my department…to do half the same work as we do.

She does half of what we do, then goes back and files papers and helps sort the mail for the rest of the day. Hell, I’ll sort mail for a 25 cent raise, if that means I can stop worrying about scheduling, payroll, managing patrols, incident reports, safety seminars, fighting off Professor Moriarty with a blunt stick, fixing the access mainframe, putting out the kitchenette fires when people forget to turn off empty coffee pots in the break rooms, and chasing away homeless people who try to sleep in our parking garage.

Mail sorting sounds pretty nice, now doesn’t it?

But of course, there’s always an explanation for stuff like that, right? Maybe she has me solidly outdone in education. Maybe she has a Master’s Degree in mail sorting, compared to my 4^th grade education in geography? Of course, my geography knowledge definitely makes me look smart in e-mails.

You see, while she was doing some of the same work as me and my crew, she received a message to be forwarded to someone else. This is the message she forwarded (minus identifiable information)…

Re: Reel Educashun

She is of course talking about Stock Home, Sweden.

Also known as: Stockholm.

Maybe she was just in a difficult relationship and has been affected by Stock Home Syndrome, right?

BTW, in case you didn’t want to do the math…that’s a pay difference in her favor of over $500 a year. Maybe I should move to Sore Ache, Switzerland or See Owl, South Korea, maybe Bay Shing, China…ooo, I’ll bet there’s plenty of good jobs in Pray Tore A, South Africa.

~RCS

Sleepy Christmas…

So, I, uhh…am pretty tired right now.  I had to work Christmas Eve and halfway through my shift I got a call from one of my officers.  He called off for the overnight shift.  I was quite perturbed, because we have additional manpower requirements on holidays so we have a harsher penalty for calling off on holidays than for regular days.  When I asked him why he was calling off he said, “…my father just passed away, I’m at the hospital now.”

Well…this just got awkward.

The only officer who wasn’t already working or out-of-town admitted he was already three sheets to the wind by 7pm…and was actually drinking while on the phone with me.  So I worked a double on Christmas Eve, and had to come back to work Christmas Day for the afternoon shift.

So I just thought I’d share a video I found while sitting around with nothing to do which helped me get through the night…

~RCS

Bad Manners Make Good Workers

Notes: This post was written over three years ago, in the early days of this site; but it was scrapped and never posted.  I was working as a fairly low-ranking security guard and has just started working in a new building.  I decided as a little Christmas Treat I would pull it out of the old bin and put it up.  Enjoy!

Yesterday my boss approached me when no one else was around and informed me that the client company we work for had complained about something I was doing.  Always willing to listen to constructive criticism, especially from the folks who sign my paycheck, so I nodded my head and waited to hear what nugget of wisdom would keep me from getting fired.

“The Facility Manager said that she wants you to stop saying thank you,” he told me, “When you page someone on the intercom.  Just say their name and the extension to call, then hang up; they don’t want you to so say ‘thank you’ anymore.”

The look I gave him must have screamed “WTF” because he shrugged and added, “You’re not in trouble, or anything, just something for you to work on.”

He then went on to wax poetic about other weird things people have done over the intercom, like announce personal messages over the PA system.

Mark, your oncologist just called. That growth above your rectum is benign.

Now I’ve had some pretty strange requests in my time in the industry, from one place asking us to lock the break rooms after the production run is over so that workers don’t loiter on the site (in an attempt to prevent job-site vandalism by employees), to being told to make sure no one is in a part of the building…including security (how can I chase people out, if I’m not allowed in?), all the way up to the prize-taker of being told to physically force a drunk female employee to lay down on a couch in a locked office and hold her still until she sobered up (can anyone say Sexual Harassment?).

But really…don’t say thank you?  And now that I have been verbally warned, the next step is a written warning if I say it again, followed by an unpaid suspension, and finally termination.  I have the hope that I can appeal the termination and simply be demoted and transferred to another location.  What if someone told you that kind of deal was in store for you at your new job?  I think you’d say no thank you.

Only in America can you be fired for saying, “Thank You.”

~RCS

Happy Holidays, folks!  Whatever you celebrate: Christmas, Festivus, etc.

Dearest And Sincerest Apologies

Oy, my aching kidneys!  Life hit me with a cheap shot and I’ve been reeling from it for a while now.

First of all, in case you aren’t related to me and therefore weren’t at the Housewarming party for the new house we held back in August:

I am officially a Married Man!

That’s right, my fiancée and I finally got off our asses and signed the papers.  I’ll see about giving you all the full story soon; it’s charming and amusing.

But anyway, long story short: The new Wifey’s been sick, I’ve been hammered at the work and I’m struggling to catch up, I’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work for the Writer’s Chatroom, and I’ve been writing legit manuscripts insanely all month.

That’s the main reason you haven’t heard much of me this whole month (or at all, really; sorry) aside from a bit on Facebook and Twitter.  The bad news is, as I said, I haven’t given you a whole lot of product here on the site lately; for that I apologize.  The good news is that, combined in the three stories I’m currently spreading my time on, I’ve written over fifty thousand words in the month of December.  That’s almost an entire novel worth of writing…except of course it’s spread among a novel I’d just started (which has 40,000 of the 50,000+), and the rest were thrown onto less-full works.

I hope to be getting back into the swing of things.  I usually catch up to things on Holidays, but Thanksgiving was spent normally with family.  Christmas will be spent working, but with very little to do actually do at work, so I should be able to catch up a bit then.

Thanks for your continued support and readership!

~RCS

More Profitable Than Work!

I was heading to work a couple of nights ago to handle an overnight shift because my boss doesn’t understand that if you fire someone…somebody else has to do their job. It’s okay though, this only the second time they’ve done that to me in 6 months, I’m sure they learned their lesson this time, right?

So anyway, I took my fiancé’s car because it was 2am and I’ve got a headlight out. A headlight I can’t fixed because I’m working what feels, like 23.5 hours a day, lately.
I was stopped at a red light and saw a car fast approaching me from behind. I thought, “They’re not gonna hit me are they?”
Ever closer, without losing speed, they came.
“I think they’re gonna hit me.”
And yet still they closed in on me, full speed.
“Yeah, they’re definitely gonna hit me.”

I hope I’m wearing brown pants right now. Well, whatever they were, they’re brown now!

My only option was to run the red light and get t-boned by the tri-axle dump truck coming through the intersection. Or sit there and cringe.
BAM!!
“Yup, they hit me.”

Welcome to my back seat, do you have a reservation?

Well okay, actually it was more if a short screech followed by a “pash” sound as they just tapped my rear bumper.
I got out and checked the damages. They were in a BMW, I was in a ’94 Toyota Camry. They donated some grill paint to my back bumper, which wiped right off.
No fender crumpling, the trunk still worked, both rear lights were still good, and I didn’t even jolt in my seat.
The passenger claimed fault for distracting her husband by showing him a text. We all determined the damage was superficial, but I wanted to trade insurance just in case.
He said, “Okay, that’s fair. …or could we talk cash?”
I said, “How much cash are we talking?”
He said fifty, I said one hundred, and his wife pulls a wad of cash out. Hands me 5 twenties and tells me the Pearl Jam concert was awesome.
I wasn’t even late for work. Since it was only a 5 hour shift, I actually made more in the collision than I did at work.
~RCS
Drive safe, folks.

Labor Pains

Somehow I managed to get Labor Day off this year (that’s a rarity in my industry, on account of how criminals don’t generally take the holidays off).  I just want you all to know that I am still alive, I have just been incredibly busy, hence why the Otakon review is not up, yet.  I’m still writing it.  I hope to catch up a bit on this here Labor Day, but catching up is such a pain…

That whole line was just to set up this joke.

As soon as I can actually get some time to do things besides fixing our new house (Living Room, Dining Room, Closet, and Kitchen are done…only have to do the office, bedroom, basement, attic, and the entire freakin’ outside!!) I hope to get caught up on the DotM posts, get the Otakon review up, and at least preview, if not outright release, our new feature (secret-y stuff, shh!).

In the meantime here’s a short photopost about Labor Day.

Le Gasp!!

~RC–

Wait, what?  I told you it was a short photopost.  Not good enough?  Okay…how about a Labor Day rant, since I haven’t gone all political on your asses in a while.

Labor Day is a celebration of the hard-working masses who propel this country toward prosperity, no matter how many bankers, board members, politicians, lawyers, and other classification of criminals work against them.  So why is it that the lowest-tiered jobs are actually the ones who don’t get the day off?  Look around, travel a bit, and you’ll find a (less-than-) dedicated crew of low-class workers.  For instance take a look at the common grocery store today.  While you’re away on a Labor Day vacation the Janitors, Security Guards, Cashiers, Stockers, and food preparers are still working.  In the average office building you’ll see much the same, guards and janitors sitting around BSing because there’s not much to do since nobody else showed up to do any real work.

But who always gets the day off?  Bankers, politicians, lawyers, and board members…the same kinds of people who cause all the problems and treat the low-class workers like shit the whole rest of the year.  The one day dedicated to the common worker…and these assholes make the common worker work like a common day, then take a Monday off to get drunk and bitch about how they only made $2 million in bonuses last year, instead of the normal $4 million.

Reminds me of when I got out of the service, moved a hundred miles out of the jobless countryside I was born in, and got a job in a factory just outside of Pittsburgh.  Let me remind you that the President of the Company used the company’s accounts to finance his house, his car, his wife’s car, his daughter’s car, and they fired a salesman so that they could give the company car to his younger daughter (who was only 15 at the time).  We had a crew of 13 guys working in 100 degree weather inside an old building that was poorly maintained, had poor ventilation, improper storage areas for dangerous/explosive/corrosive/deadly chemicals, and no air conditioning.  There were four AC units in the whole building…1 in the President’s office, 1 in the President’s secretary’s office (his aforementioned wife, of course), one in the Accountant’s office, and one in the back of the Plant Manager’s office that actually did more to cool the hallways between the offices of the President, Secretary, and Accountant than cool the PM’s office (where we would sit to get new orders).

So there we are, 13 guys all getting paid $22,000 a year, each.  The President came into the Plant Manager’s office and whined that he had to cut his own pay down to $125,000 a year.  Yes, he paid himself $100,000+ more than each of his regular employees, every year…and that was after cutting his own pay.  Keep in mind he wasn’t some genius entrepreneur or something…his father-in-law founded the company fifty years ago and this guy married the eldest daughter and jointly inherited 51% stock in the company through the marriage.  He wanted the PM to put more pressure on us to start working off the clock to get more things done; yeah, he wanted the 22 grand a year workers to work off-the-clock so he could raise his own pay back up to normal.  Keep in mind the guy was there twice a week, and the rest of the week he was coaching the local school’s softball team, playing golf, running for school board, or just sitting around at home watching the gardeners mow his lawn.

On Labor Day he should be working the floor while the regular workers are at home celebrating, certainly not the other way around.

~RCS

Okay, one more funny one…

4th Anniversay

No, not of the site.  It’s my fourth anniversary with my fiancé.  Not that any of you care; I just thought I’d mention it.

We’ve come a long way since Day One four years ago.  I was toiling away as a the lowest-tenured Sergeant (a shift supervisory position) hoping that in ten years I might get promoted to Sergeant, if our post was able to stay far enough above water to keep from getting shut down (it wasn’t, BTW, I jumped ship and transferred about six months before they fired everyone but the Captain and brought in rookies at about half our pay).  She was still living at home with her parents and could only visit me in my apartment on weekends and looking for a job that wouldn’t interrupt her classes.  I came home every day to a domestic disturbance down the road, or a home invasion across the street, or a shooting at the other side of town.

Now, four years later…I’m a Lieutenant in charge of 3 posts, she’s throwing away job offers because they’re coming too often, and we own our own house…that we live in together!  And our house is in a nice, quiet neighborhood where the neighbors have actually walked over and introduced themselves.  My next door neighbor even gave us cucumbers as a welcome gift!  Sure it’s not a pie like in the movies, but I like cucumbers so I’m happy with the deal.

And in a few weeks I’m going on vacation, because I actually have paid vacation days, to Otakon in Baltimore.  I didn’t want to drive to, or in, Baltimore so I got tickets on a Greyhound and actually said to myself “Ninety-six dollar?  That’s not a bad deal, I’ll but them.”  Almost a hundred dollars and I just spent the money, because I have enough in the bank to comfortably do that.  Hell yeah!!  Sure beats when I rolled out of the service and found myself living on $18 a month, living with my mother and eating rice and BBQ sauce every day, occasionally treating myself to fourteen-cent packs of ramen.

And to think, my High School Guidance Counselor told me I was going to be a waste to society just because I didn’t want to go to college.  I have four college students or graduates working for me because I got a jump-start in employment and experience and climbed the ladder while they were raking in student loan debt.  Take that American Education System!

~RCS

Update: I ficed a pivotal typo that change the whole tone of a line, like…into a nonsensical jumble.  Take that silly fingers!

Memorial Day, 2013

In honor of Memorial Day I’ve decided to work a double shift.  Nothing says I am honored to have men and women willing to fight and die for my freedom to complain about their bosses without being shot, like working 16 hours straight on 5 hours of sleep.

Of course, it’s all automatic time and a half because it’s a holiday.

So to share in my personal good tidings, on such a morbid day to honor the deaths of those in our armed forces…I’ve got some funny pictures and a cute anecdote.  First the pictures…

Unfortunately this seems to be the case in ‘Murica.

Where can I get gas for $1.64?

Future Repulbicans! Gotta love the li’l rascals!

 

 

 

 

Me: Nope…well except during funerals.  And we save it all up for those.  You ever seen Marine at a buddy’s funeral?  We lose our shit and are totally inconsolable!  Tears, snot…we’re on our knees, in the rain…shit we don’t care.  We love it when it rains during one of our funerals.

Girl: Why?

Me: Harder to see the tears dripping from our chins.

 

Well, that’s enough from me.  Back to not actually doing any work and getting paid for it…

~RCS

Yup…sounds about right for me.

Promotion Motion: Part Duex!

For those following the continuing advancement of my career, I’m sure you’ve already read about my recent promotion to Sergeant about two months ago.  Well, a bit of skullduggery and a dash of scandal later and I have another promotion: Lieutenant.

Without getting into too much detail my boss was doing things he shouldn’t have been doing and he happened to get caught on camera doing those things.  While I hate climbing the ladder of success on the backs of others, especially people whom I got along with pretty well…I can’t change his job situation and if I don’t take the job they’ll bring in somebody from another part of town to man our crew (because none of the other officers want the job, I’ll get to that in a moment).

Needless to say, today is the last day of my first week at Lieutenant…and it has been a rough week.  The big bosses took away a 40-hour a week worker and then told me to cover all my shifts without acquiring any overtime.  My one available part-time officer took two extra days this week and I just decided to convince her to come in full-time…but I still had 3 whole days to cover.  Plus one of the administrative positions was taking a day off, so I had to cover an extra 8 hours of work, too.

But lo and behold I was receiving a new part-time officer…who is only available two days.  Neither of those two days are the days I need covered for this week.  She is a single-mother who only wants to work a couple of days a week; not a problem, but she won’t help me with my overtime situation this week.  She was supposed to train last Saturday and tomorrow (Friday), but something came up with one of her kids and asked if she could switch her training to Wednesday and Friday.  So she was agreeing to come in on a day she didn’t want to work to make up for not coming in Saturday.  As I mentioned, neither of her days helped me this week, so I said fine.

The next day I get a call from the Council of Captains informing me that I had made a poor decision.  They wanted me to strong-arm the single-mother (whose days of availability they had dictated to me on Thursday); without informing me of this.  Apparently she called the Council and they told her to call me.  They didn’t tell me that they were setting me up to be the bad guy and wanted me to knuckle down on the new girl, who wouldn’t help me in the least this week, anyway.

That was Strike Two!

Two, you ask?  Yes Strike One came on my first day when I asked my new subordinates to work extra and off-day shifts to cover the missing days, probably without overtime (we just give them extra days off to keep under 40 hours).  Apparently by my asking them to do so, keep in mind I got all the shifts covered, showed me to be a ‘weak commander’ and ‘unfit for leadership’ because my rank and position indicates that I should make a schedule and force my workers to follow by it, regardless of their personal obligations.

Did I mention the first thing they told me is that my primary concern should be making all of the officers ‘like and respect’ me, because they all hated my old boss and he couldn’t get them to do anything when he asked them to do it.

…go ahead, take a moment and think about that.

To paraphrase this guy, “That’s what we call a contradiction.  That means all the previous shit you just said…is now stupid.”

 

But remember, the most important thing is that I’m making an extra 6 grand a year now.  Y’know, until tomorrow when they review my payroll and see that we still had 8 hours of extra time.  Then that’s Strike Three!!

Yerrr Ooot!

~RCS

Of course to be fair…I’m well-liked by the other officers and the locals we watch over, otherwise-efficient, dedicated, and dashingly handsome.

Well, y’know…at least the first three.

Promotion Motion!

For those of you who are keeping track of my career, then I would like to inform you of a recent promotion. After a year at my newest posting I have been promoted to Sergeant. Unlike the last place where I worked as a Sergeant, this isn’t just a supervisory position, instead it’s management.
Now let me explain about how this kind of stuff works. The last place I worked as a Sergeant we had a larger crew and stricter rank structure. We had a Captain who ran the whole place, two Lieutenants who worked under him, and three Sergeants. Officers were not allowed to work without at least a Sergeant overseeing them.
In this case a Sergeant was a Shift Supervisor, a Lieutenant was like an Assistant Manager, and the Captain was General Manager.
I then took a job in a much calmer (and wealthier area) where officers made more than I got at my Sergeant pay. But that was actually a poor career decision because I wound up taking a job that had me answering to a guy that I had written up three years earlier (when I was a Sergeant at aforementioned location). He spent the next few months trying to get me fired and using me for a scapegoat for everything that happened in a ten-mile radius of anything I touched.

This was officially my new uniform and job title.

So, carrying the recommendation of the Major from our local headquarters, I went to another headquarters and applied for a rolling supervisor position (which is technically a Captain’s position). I was gently informed that with only four-to-five years’ experience, I didn’t have experience to be a Captain. So I got sent off to my current posting, where the facility is commanded by a Lieutenant, instead of a Captain, and everyone else is an Officer.
By the way, just to prove it’s not what you know but who you know…
The Captain’s position that I was told I was too inexperienced and too young for (I was 25 when I applied for it) was filled about six months after that by a 20-year-old with 3 months experience. His uncle is dating the Big Boss who decides what officers are hired, promoted, and dispatched on this side of town; the same one who told me I was too inexperienced for the job.
She’s changed her tune, though, agreeing to make me a Sergeant even though I have next to the lowest amount of tenure at my current posting. It comes with almost a dollar and hour raise and I am now Assistant Manager of the post.
Being the only guy who gets along with the Lt. is a big help to my advancement, I think, which also proves it’s not what you know it’s who you know.
So I now have chevrons on my lapels and an extra dollar in my pocket. And when the Lt. retires (in 25 years, he plans), I’m next in line for his job. Whoo!
~RCS