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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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Return to office mandates would be a lot more palatable if we didn't have to live an hour and a half away in rush hour bumper to bumper traffic because the average person can't afford to live anywhere near the central business district anymore.
Or if we could take nonexistent public transit.
Or if we could ride a bike or walk without getting run over by a moron in their suv.
We have so many issues I don't know where to start. Personally I want to RTO. I'm sick of working from home. But with issues like that..fuck..
Why on earth would you want to return to the office? Social vampires exist there.
I like working in the office because I have a way better setup there and don't have room at home to do the same thing. I also like the mental separation my commute gives between work life and home life (usually, sometimes people piss me off so much I can't shake it before I get home). That being said the more people who WFH the better. Traffic during Covid was great and the office was never quieter.
Because I want to work at work and be home at home. It never stops when I'm working from home because I'm expected to always be on. I find it more efficient to pull up a chair and sit down next to someone going over things line by line. I miss learning through osmosis which is what I call it when you hear people talking about something you're vaguely aware of but never really saw in real life but maybe read an article on once. So you go and look over their shoulder and learn something new. (Someone on lemmy called me a horrible person because of this once so hopefully you're not a toxic SOB like average lemming.) Mostly though I just find it like herding cats, trying to get work done when everyone is in a different time zone and may or may not be online..it's just incoherent. It's fine to work from home here and there if you have a few hours of technical work that you just need to knock out. But overall I find it much more effective to be in office. IMHO
One particular serial shoulder surfer really took it to extremes. I so regretted hiring the guy, he was all talk and was incapable of completing most projects on his own. Come to find out he also lied about having been a Marine, which also further cast shoulder surfers in a bad light to me forever. And if you're out there reading this (Mark was his name), I am so glad don't work with us anymore! He could only do his job from the office, too. Covid hit, and surprise! He didn't know how to do anything.
I never knew people consider "shoulder surfing" to be "social vampirism." Goddamn what an unpleasant person you sound like right now. I like learning. I like teaching. I love when someone shows interest and wants to learn. I love when people take time to teach me. Nobody knows everything, and formal training in my experience is usually pretty useless. Nothing like real life examples to see how stuff works. You can stay the fuck at home too. Bunch of social pariahs on lemmy, what a cold dark world you must live in.
PS: do you think Spock would call me a shoulder surfing social vampire for wanting to learn and teach? Or would he embrace learning for its own sake. "Pseudo" Spock indeed.
Just like all social vampires... "How could my being around be draining on people?" People are being nice to you because they have to. There is an HR dept. and rules. News flash, not everyone likes you. Some, likely many, simply tolerate you. But that is true for everyone, not just you. We come to work to pay the mortgage, to buy our groceries, to buy the kid braces. Not to be everyone's friend.
I said requesting training is awesome. Asking for a spot on my calendar to train you on something is perfectly fine. Interrupting my own work to get me to do something for you is not that. Casually watching me work without first asking me to be "on" for you is also not ok. I would want time to prepare to teach you. I could have prepared examples, and a workflow diagram, and most importantly, be prepped to be in "on" mode to socialize with you. It's an effort to mask, just walking up and being an interruption provides no time to mask up for you, and you get an adhoc half annoyed and possibly unprepared lesson. Teaching someone properly is like taking the stage, or preparing a TEDtalk... Many of us need time to get into the role, because everything around other people is some form of act to best interact with the target audience.
Doing all that for a real public presentation is actually far easier than doing it for an individual you barely know.
Don't you see? This is an entire performance we have to put on for you. Watching someone adhoc is just cruel and invasive to that person. They have their own job to do and focus on, not worry about chit chatting with someone while making a dead line.
Spock - “May I say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed serving with humans? I find their illogic and foolish emotions a constant irritant.”
Do not confuse coworkers with friends. Some can be friends, but most are not. Most are just coworkers... people forced to be in a room or building working together. Those are mostly acquaintances at best. They aren't all asking you to go have beers with them. We have our real friends who we picked organically to be around. You know where they aren't usually? At our work.
What is a Workplace Energy Vampire?
Workplace ‘energy vampires’ can drain your life force. Stop them with these tips
Learning by osmosis
I guess that definitely rules you out! Hope you know everything because with your attitude idk how you can possibly build professional relationships. I know there's toxic people online but goddamn you're one of the worst I've ever encountered. I'm done here, just wanted to point out the technical value of, you know, not being a fucking asshole to colleagues by calling them friggin vampires.
Not at all. That falls under scheduled training. In this example, the boss has told us that I am to train them. That means I can come into the office or work with them over zoom, depending on the situation, prepared with a lesson plan. I would have interviewed these people and have copious notes about them, as well, as I do the hiring. This allows me also to be prepared for the social interaction that most likely works the best with them. I could do this for a day, a week, or even a month, as that would be my assigned job role for that period of time. Acting and putting on the show for them would be the gig. While emotionally taxing, preparation makes it possible to do, and once having assumed the role, the persona, the mask, I am excellent at it.
Right, so you can choose an outfit and figure out what kind of soda to offer, whether to use iambic pentameter or perhaps haiku, etc. you mentioned that.
Here's how it could go:
Steve: Hey Bob, I just heard you're working on a flux capacitor. That's really cool, I'm more of a warp core guy but I read an article on the holonet about that last week. How's that project going?
Bob: It's real tough, we gotta feed this 1.21 giga watts of electricity so I'm working on a Tesla coil to power it.
Steve: Oh no way, you know, I actually just built one last month on another project, I've never worked on a flux capacitor before but I can help you with the Tesla coil if you want.
Bob: Oh yeah sure thanks that's real helpful. I'm just getting started so it's still in planning phases but I'll come grab you in a bit.
Steve: Awesome! Mind if I watch you work a bit? I'll stay out of your way since I can't add much value, I just like watching people who are good at what they do while they practice their craft. And it'll help me if I ever encounter this in the future
Bob: Oh you know actually I'm sorta uncomfortable with that, makes me feel on the spot. How about I show you when it's done? I'm happy to go over the designs and final product and stuff when I have something to show for it.
Steve: Sure great awesome that works! Doesn't have to be anything formal, just a quick rundown of the basics and maybe how you resolved some technical issues with creative workarounds, stuff like that. You can wear whatever you want, don't need to dress up fancy for me. You don't have to feed me or offer drinks or anything either, super chill, just a few minutes to skim over your work.
Bob: Cool man, that works, any time. By the way, how's that warp nacelle coming alone? I hear the Heisenberg compensator is acting up again.
Steve: Yeah it's being a little bitch but I'll show you once it's done. Everyone wins!
See that's how it could go if you weren't a toxic antisocial insane person. Just talk to colleagues about projects, learn, share, collaborate. But instead you drop thousands of words of toxic vitriol overthinking the shit out of it. Going from shooting the breeze with colleagues to planning month long lesson plans and Ted talks down to what outfit you're gonna where, what accent to use (?), something about perfume...seriously man, get thee to a therapist and eat a Xanax, please l. You're in dire need.
I get along perfectly fine in an office setting with almost everyone. It's the people who feel overly welcome to just come up and completely alter your day... and I don't mean the boss with a priority shift, nor do I mean some critical incident that needs urgent response to fix. How best to explain it to you... In my team of 25 people, only one is a problem. Insists that not only does he need to be in the office, but that he works best if everyone else is at the office, too. When that happens, or as it consistently was before Covid, he was never at his desk. Where's Mark? He has that xyz deployment today and no announcements have gone out. "I dunno, I last saw him upstairs chatting with Alex." Great, he's upstairs with the dev he bullies into doing everything for him again... Ok, I'll send him a slack and an email reminding him we need his deployment outage announcement or the customer is going to cancel. ... Nothing happens still. No one can find him. He shows up at my desk, hasn't read the slack or email, "Hey, can you send out a notification for the deployment?" Where have you been? "Got side tracked talking with Han in sales." Um, Han is on the automotive product, you're on the ships product... "Yeah, I just saw him and we ended up talking and... and... and..." Meanwhile, I get an email from both Han and Alex asking us to try and keep Mark from bothering them today, they have too much to do. Alex's email asks why he's having to do Mark's deployment.
That is what I'm talking about. If a person needs to be in the office to do the job everyone else on the team can do remotely, this is likely why they like the office. Now I get it, some people can't get away from wife, kids, or other home stuff while working from home and an office gives them the space they need. Those people are happy to go in on their own and don't try demanding everyone else return to the office to support them. Then there are those who feel they need the commute to shift gears. I get it, I use to be that way a long time ago. It just took getting use to the change and some open honest communication with the family that I'd like 30 minutes or so after work to switch into family time mode and why. That works well.
I somehow doubt that. You need three weeks to prepare your outfit and soda choices for something that could be a five minute conversation. I'm over this, you win, PLEASE stay the fuck at home.
So I've read through this whole conversation between you and PseudoSpock, and at the beginning you definitely had some good points, but you're coming across awfully entitled.
There are some people who really enjoy training and can quickly shift from their workload to training mode quickly (I'm one of those), and make it clear that you can always come to them when you want to learn something because they value training above just about everything else.
And then there are others (probably most) who have to me an effort to change gears, are trying to get through their own work, and don't appreciate constant interruptions from people trying to get ad hoc training on their own schedule with complete disregard to the schedule of the person they're getting training from.
It seems like you are assuming and forcing coworkers into the position of the former. And worse, when it's pointed out to you that it's problematic to a lot of people, you're doubling down and saying other people are the problem instead of rethinking your own approach.
I think you need to rethink your approach.
Nah these guys are right, y'all should wear turtlenecks out there because I'm a friggin vampire come to suck your life force 🤣 jfc
..wow man. Just wow. Holy fucking shit.
Said the lunatic posting multiple thousand word rants.
I'm not a programmer and it's funny you assume I am, but I'm not the least bit surprised you are.
Stay the fuck at home and get some therapy, jfc
More than social vampire, you are giving off sociopath vibes. Wanting to put you at ease upsets you. I didn't assume you were a programmer, that was just an example from my world / daily life. If I had to assume your work, I would expect it would be some job high on the toxic masculinity scale.
That's funny. I'm a tax accountant. Until now I would've guessed my industry had some of the most malignant socially incompetent people but I'm clearly wrong. And come to think of it, even the worst most closed off unapproachable people I've ever worked with have always been excited to talk about their work, like it's the one thing they're comfortable going on about. I'm not asking for a beer at tchotchkes (I too maintain space from colleagues because of the conflict of interest with work in between).
Again, stay the fuck at home, I've never encountered such toxic loathing for any kind of human interaction before, I wouldn't want you in the office with that kind of attitude. Congrats, Dobby is free, you never have to wear pants or look presentable again.
Again, you’d never know. I can hate you without you thinking I was anything but your best friend. I am that good.
Eat garlic
It takes a village I guess. Good luck with the whole 'hating everyone and everything' situation, hope you all find jobs with zero human interaction whatsoever 👍
We don't hate everyone. We desire the opportunity to prepare for social interactions at work. That you find that somehow offensive really seems like a lack of respect for others.
Should be picturing Milton from office space? Because that's the vibe I'm getting. He seemed alright (except for that whole setting the building on fire thing) and wasn't socially inclined.
And to be clear I don't see how briefly sharing work related info is socializing. I'm not asking for a drink at Tchotchkes, it means helping each other learn new things informally without a Ted talk.
This makes the whole debate so much easier. I work in the train and bike for three minutes. My whole transit is billable and is billed.
If only! My commute is about a half hour and really isn't that bad all things considered. Any more than that though and I'd be grumpy about it.
Australia followed America's lead for quite a while so our cities are set up with a commercial zone surrounded (connected by road) to suburban zones
Fortunately now they're starting to build residential towers right in town, but I really want them to let people build out workplaces in suburbia