make the beast with two backs my job!!!!!!

[ZLTFUL]

Disclaimer: This is a vent...Normally I love my job and in this day and age, I am very thankful thatI *DO* have a job.

That being said, today, my job can go make the beast with two backs itself!!!!!
It all starts Friday. I knew we were rolling out a new anti-virus and spyware package and I knew that it would be a LONG weekend. But as I went into work at 6am to handle an issue with a driver's handheld, I just knew it was going to be a LONG weekend.

The rest of Friday was a normal for us day. Towards the end of the day, salesmen start dropping off their laptops and I get to work. Thinking the whole time that if we had ONE server on site that could handle the ammount of connections needed, I couild have easily created an install script and done all of them at once or used the admin tool's remote install feature to do all of the computers at once. Unfortunately, all of our equipmet is nearing end of service life and there is no intention of upgrading this year (owners initially signed off on $80k to not only replace our servers here but to mirror them at one of our other locations for disaster recovery but then reneged on that AND the phone system that we desperately need as our phone system is 12 years old and only 1 company that charges $500 JUST to come out will even touch it).

Anyway, so I am here until 11:30 pm manually installing anti-virus software on computers. Finally I say make the beast with two backs it and head home.

Saturday morning, I grab some breakfast and head in. When I get here, there are 3 messages on my phone from sales guys who want to know if they can pick up their laptops yet (I guess the email I sent ot to everyone that said they can pick them up Monday morning means nothing...). So I ignore the messages and get back to work. 6:30 rolls around and I am wrapping up the last one. I get a call from one of our sales managers who says he needs his laptop and is it ready yet. I say it is and he TELLS me(not asks tells) to bring it out to his house. His house is 28 miles in the exact opposite direction I go home. In fact, the combined distance between his place and mine is 52 miles. So I would get to drive 28 miles to his place and then 52 miles home for a grand total of 80 miles round trip. At 10mpg that my truck gets, I say no but I will leave it on his desk for him.

So I cut out and head home, reveling in the fact that I am done about a day earlier than I had anticipated. I wake up bright and early at 11 am on Sunday morning and veg out the entire day only leaving the house for my now traditional 4 mile evening walk.

Fast forward to 4:13 this morning. My phone rings, I answer it. Turns out a driver is havng issues with his printer. I walk him through fixing that. Start to doze back off and get another call...this time from a sales guy looking for his laptop (that ironically is on his desk). I ask him if he checked his desk and he says he hasn't...oh there it is, sorry to bother you.
And after 2 more calls of similar nature, I decide that I am NOT going to get that extra 30 or so minutes of sleep I was hoping for so I head on in to work.

I get here and there are 2 post it notes on my door. One is from our CEO and the other is from our Marketing manager both asking for meetings.
Backing up a bit here, our VP of sales (and half owner) asked that we check for inappropriate content on people's laptops and leave a note with each one stating what stuff they shouldn't be doing. He also wanted us to give him a list as well.
So I stop in to see our marketing director first as our CEO has his door closed.

Greg says to me, Why were you snooping around on my computer? To which I respond, because Jay told me to. To which he responds, Jay says that these things don't apply to me. From that point, the conversation degraded rapidly and I fnally said ifyou have a problem with this, then talk to Jay as I was just following his orders.

I leave his office and head in to see our CEO who tells me to close the door behind me. Uh oh...
He starts in with how i will NOT tell a sales manager No in the future and if they tell me to drive to Egypt and back, I should ask them which route they want me to take. At this point, my I don't give a make the beast with two backs has kicked in full force and I say, So then you are going to pay for my mileage or gie me a company vehicle then right? He says, Why should I? To which I reply that outside of NOT giving me the raise they promised me, that they also don't pay me to drive around in my personal vehicle and especially don't pay me extra for field work. I then said that if I am expected to do all of the things that the IT manager is expected to do then 1. I should make the same money she does and 2. She should be expected to work 28 hours in 2 days just like me.
I then said that if he felt I wasn't doing a good enough job and felt that he could do better than me for the money they pay me, then he should start his search as I would be happy to give my notice.
He immediately became very apologetic and after a nice long talk, he understands that I am very appreciative to have this job but I am tired of being used because I *AM* willing to work extra hard for them while the IT manager spends her weekend at the casino spending the money that she has been saving since they filed for bankruptcy.

I told him that we needed to continue this conversation when I was a bit less beligerent and would be able to better express my concerns at the short cuts they have been making and that the IT manager is too weak to defend (i.e. our single backup solution, a 9 year old tape drive finally died and we are currently backing up our system to MY external hard drive that I take home with me each night).

Anyway, I apologize for the rant but if they came in here right now and asked me anything, I think I would snap and walk out telling them all to go make the beast with two backs themselves.

[He Man]

 

Very few people could of gotten out of that with out snapping. I certainly would of. But it seems like they need you there and you have the upper hand. 

[Privateer]

sounds like they were making judgments without hearing your side.  Not fair.  That sales manager could have just as easily driven into the office to pick up their laptop.  That's what managers do.  Minions shouldn't be expected to do that stuff without compensation.  If the laptop pick up had been your screw up, maybe, but they knew ahead that they'd be without for the weekend.

good job standing up for yourself.

[ZLTFUL]

Yeah...my biggest peeve about this place is they look at IT as the support role instead of a vital part of the infrastructure here. Some days I just want to walk into the server room, pull some plugs, turn my phone off and go to lunch.

As I always say to our scheduling manager, "Master Blaster run Barter Town!"

[cyrus buelton]

 

That is hilarious, dude.



sounds like my company..........

[ZLTFUL]

I really love the fact that I have a straight line to the CEO. I get alot of shit done that would otherwise get pushed aside by the IT manager.

But he also has so many people kissing his ass day in and day out that he is beginning to think everyone should. Me...not so much. And I think that is why he respects me because I will tell him his iea is a bad one if it is and I will suggest solutions that maintain his face to the other minios.

I think folks are getting the correct vibe from me today. I have gotten about a week's worth of work done today with people staying out of my way.

[cyrus buelton]

What's the annual sales of said company?


I am guessing it is really small.

WTF CEO gets involved with an end user IT guy about a laptop? That is just worthless.



It is like the president of my division, 1.2bil in sales a year, sending out emails about pointless shit that is so petty

[ZLTFUL]

Actually...small is relative here. Compared to your company, our $155mil in net profits last year is small hehe.

Our CEO also goes out in the field and helps with shelf resets (supervises) and has a pretty open door policy with his management staff(they consider me management the morons!)

[cyrus buelton]

This guy needs to find more work to do if he is harassing IT guys over sales support.................

[capt steubing]

Here is a big-picture perspective changer for you.  Today, one of our neighbors calls to have me help her put down one of her cows that prolapsed giving birth to a calf.  So I drive out to her place, and look at the cow and decide that it is worth trying to save the cow since she was going to lose the cow anyway if I shot it, so she agrees.  So we get get the cow in the squeeze chute, and I proceed to clean the prolapsed uterus with some disinfectant (by the way a prolapsed uterus looks like a bloody pillowcase hanging out of her woo hoo, and it weighs about 15 pounds).  After the uterus is clean (relatively), I proceed to stuff the uterus back into the vaginal opening, it involves taking handfuls of uterus, and stuffing them like putting a sleeping bag into the little storage bags they come in.  There is a lot of grabbing and pushing, and the whole time the cow is grunting and trying to push the uterus back out, because it feels like labor to her, and her bloody tail is occasionally whipping me across the face since my hands are busy holding in the uterus and grabbing another handful to stuff in.  So after a few minutes, all of the uterus is back mostly where it belongs.  Then you have to take boluses and place them as far into the uterus as they will go, so you are shoulder deep in a cow placing them.  Once the boluses are placed, you take sharpened pieces of baling wire, and pierce both sides of the vagina and wire her vagina closed in about 5-6 places so she can still pee, but her prolapse won't come back out again.  I love hearing about people and their problems dealing with asshole people, I'd much rather do what I did today than deal with shitty people, makes me appreciate what I do.  By the way Ryan, thanks for the game, it is great! You are the man, and if you need any advise about cows or farming, let me know!

[cyrus buelton]

Now your day at the office sounds a bit more exciting then ours

[Sinister]

Here is a big-picture perspective changer for you.  Today, one of our neighbors calls to have me help her put down one of her cows that prolapsed giving birth to a calf.  So I drive out to her place, and look at the cow and decide that it is worth trying to save the cow since she was going to lose the cow anyway if I shot it, so she agrees.  So we get get the cow in the squeeze chute, and I proceed to clean the prolapsed uterus with some disinfectant (by the way a prolapsed uterus looks like a bloody pillowcase hanging out of her woo hoo, and it weighs about 15 pounds).  After the uterus is clean (relatively), I proceed to stuff the uterus back into the vaginal opening, it involves taking handfuls of uterus, and stuffing them like putting a sleeping bag into the little storage bags they come in.  There is a lot of grabbing and pushing, and the whole time the cow is grunting and trying to push the uterus back out, because it feels like labor to her, and her bloody tail is occasionally whipping me across the face since my hands are busy holding in the uterus and grabbing another handful to stuff in.  So after a few minutes, all of the uterus is back mostly where it belongs.  Then you have to take boluses and place them as far into the uterus as they will go, so you are shoulder deep in a cow placing them.  Once the boluses are placed, you take sharpened pieces of baling wire, and pierce both sides of the vagina and wire her vagina closed in about 5-6 places so she can still pee, but her prolapse won't come back out again.  I love hearing about people and their problems dealing with asshole people, I'd much rather do what I did today than deal with shitty people, makes me appreciate what I do.  By the way Ryan, thanks for the game, it is great! You are the man, and if you need any advise about cows or farming, let me know!

Sounds like a James Heriot story.  Way to go.

[somegirl]

Sounds like a James Heriot story.  Way to go.

Was thinking the same.  Puts things in perspective.

[LMT]

The question no one has asked, is what did you find on the laptops?  Anything good?  Just what are they doing /looking at?

[ZLTFUL]

Thanks Capt. Steubing. I grew up visiting my Grandparent's farm so it brought back alot of fond memories for me. Although, my favorite was watching Grandpa lopping the heads off the chickens. Pissed my mom off something fierce when we would come in for super covered in chicken blood from chasing those headless devils around...

As for what was on them, I agreed to inform the owners if anything was too far out of line (beer sales is still very much a good ole boys kind of job). Only had 2 people who had very indecent content on their computers and another who has no kids or family but had Barbie's Beauty Boutique installed...

All in all it was rather uneventful outside of the one dumbass user who opened the E-Card from his "Mom". Um dumbass...I am pretty much positive that your mom is now "beatrice85700793@hotmail.com" when her name is Helen...