The Vent and Rant Thread

[red_phoenix]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

FULL RANT MODE (accompanied with tears of pure frustration)

What are the chances that the receptionist (on her lunch hour) would freeze, crash, and totally fubar a company PC (that she has no business using) that handles, amongst other things, the dedicated email client for receiving invoices, the end-of-year financial spreadsheets that should be updated daily, and ..... I can't go on ....

Yes, I hear you say "Why wasn't the PC pass-worded or restricted to prevent casual users from .... well, using it? Well, my boss hates passwords and refuses to have them on PC's he uses (I'm not making this up), and his sister is allowed free run of the company, including using company PC's for her personal use ....

I'm almost beyond words, having spent the afternoon fending off demands for invoices, spreadsheets, etc., as I have had to fit PC repair into an already full day. And of course the stupid b***h is lying as to what she was doing before the freeze, and what she did to cause the crash - so I'm working blind trying to preserve the morning's data and NOT do a restore to a previous day.

So, during this wonderful afternoon, my boss drops in to say I'll be getting an email with a LOT of attachments - he has decided to acquire another (failed) business and wants me to go over 7 years of tax returns & financials .... on top of everything else I'm dealing with.

I'm having chest pains, stomach pains, head pains, and am mad as hell! I'm seriously considering walking out of this hell-hole and bagging groceries. "Paper or plastic?"

Going home now to play with the cats .....

*gives pooh a really big hug*

[Rumpelteazer]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

FULL RANT MODE (accompanied with tears of pure frustration)

Poor Poor!
((((Big hug))))

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Rumpelteazer

Poor Poor!
((((Big hug))))

+100. Poor Pooh!

I feel for ya. Once upon a lifetime dreary...I had a boss like that. It was decades ago, but I remember it well. And, yes, we had office PC's. (I won't regale you with the time I sent him his first email on the Network, and he couldn't understand why it wasn't like...say, Skype. So, [I swear to G-d, I am not making this up] yelled down the hall "send it again!") After that, I explained the "how" of email...how it didn't go from A-B, but it went "way up in the sky to the satellite, then back down to earth, then to the ISP..."

'tis a brave new world for some folks, and a tough old world for the rest of us doing the actual humping. (of work I mean, get your minds outta the gutter!)

Hitch

[poohbear_nc]

Made it home safely ... a little hoarse from screaming at idiot drivers ... had a Guinness ... played with the cats .... cats are great listeners - b/c they don't care - but are willingly bribed ....

Game plan: I have to stay there for another week - there's no way I'm leaving without my Xmas bonus check - if I have to dope myself to the gills with Xanax every day - I'm going to get my money and walk!

Time for more cat therapy now ....

Thanks everyone for the hugs .... it helps ...

[nohmi2]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Made it home safely ... a little hoarse from screaming at idiot drivers ... had a Guinness ... played with the cats .... cats are great listeners - b/c they don't care - but are willingly bribed ....

Game plan: I have to stay there for another week - there's no way I'm leaving without my Xmas bonus check - if I have to dope myself to the gills with Xanax every day - I'm going to get my money and walk!

Time for more cat therapy now ....

Thanks everyone for the hugs .... it helps ...

Good vibes are coming your way, plus a couple of hugs.

Hang in there and fight the good fight, then if I may say so, taper off the Xanax.

Not long to go.

Cheers.

[Stitchawl]

Pooh... you can do it. You can.
Stay, get your bonus, then empty your desk and walk away.
Yes, I know you need the steady income, but the money won't do you any good when you stroke out. Better to be poor and alive than rich and dead. Paying all that money to a gastroenterologist to take care of the ulcers, a psychiatrist to unravel the mental knots, and a pharmacist or mixologist to calm you down, can't compare with sitting beside a quiet stream listening to the wind in the trees. You've already worked for 20-30 years. Now it's time to live. You don't need a lot of money to live. You need good health, mental and physical. There is a great mud wrestling bar right near Duke's front gate that takes in trainees...

Stitchawl

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

Pooh... you can do it. You can.
Stay, get your bonus, then empty your desk and walk away.
Yes, I know you need the steady income, but the money won't do you any good when you stroke out. Better to be poor and alive than rich and dead. Paying all that money to a gastroenterologist to take care of the ulcers, a psychiatrist to unravel the mental knots, and a pharmacist or mixologist to calm you down, can't compare with sitting beside a quiet stream listening to the wind in the trees. You've already worked for 20-30 years. Now it's time to live. You don't need a lot of money to live. You need good health, mental and physical. There is a great mud wrestling bar right near Duke's front gate that takes in trainees...

Stitchawl

You're very right ... I've been living quite frugally the past few years - saw this coming - so I could build up a cash reserve for my 'exit'

Mud wrestling you say .... be kind of hard cleaning it out of my feathers ....
But there is Duke Gardens - gentle stream with ducks! My kind of soothing ...

I've been gradually emptying my office over the past year .. removing stuff slowly .. no one has noticed ... so I can sling everything into 1 box and walk when it's time ..

[CRussel]

Pooh - take a deep breath, a large Talisker, and call up a reputable massage therapist and book an appointment. Then gird your loins and go back to survive another week. Get the bonus, then walk. It's never worth it. Though it is usually worth it to stick out a week.

[Freeshadow]

@ pooh
There's hardly a worse thing at work than such superiors.
I remember your previous stories
Promise to yourself to tell him WHY you couldn't stand it anymore, when you leave.
This way you can make it an additional reward for you.
Feel hugged - be proud of yourself - I think I'd break down

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

Made it home safely ... a little hoarse from screaming at idiot drivers ... had a Guinness ... played with the cats .... cats are great listeners - b/c they don't care - but are willingly bribed ....

Game plan: I have to stay there for another week - there's no way I'm leaving without my Xmas bonus check - if I have to dope myself to the gills with Xanax every day - I'm going to get my money and walk!

Time for more cat therapy now ....

Thanks everyone for the hugs .... it helps ...

My sincerest sympathies for your situation, and a word of advice: Don't walk until you have a Plan B fully operational and ready to launch. I once walked out of a good paying job into long months of unemployment and uncertainty. I'd never had a problem in my life getting a job before I did that, but I suddenly found that things had changed. Potential employers now said that either I was over-qualified or that they couldn't afford to pay me what I had been earning and didn't want to hire me for less for fear I'd leave the first the moment a better opportunity came along. It's not a very comfortable place to be.

[kindlekitten]

Ahhhhh pooh, hugs! I know it's horrid! Maybe time to come back to the n.w.!

But seriously, along the lines of what Tom said... Plan and be careful. If there's anyway you can actually manage to be fired instead of quit, all the better for you financially. We're in the middle of a big blow up at my chamber of commerce I'm a member of and do a lot of volunteer work for. Ugly stuff

[5thWiggle]

I feel for you, Pooh

I agree with Tom - don't quit without an operational Plan B if you can't financially stand a long period of unemployment. You don't want to be fighting the cats for their food...

If things are good moneywise, take the bonus, run and laugh as the company crashes and burns. If not, make your self even more indispensable, then, when Plan B is in effect, run and laugh as the company crashes and burns that much quicker.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by poohbear_nc

"Paper or plastic?"

Paper please.

Ugh, it sounds terrible.

You know you could, if you wanted, but you're too nice, probably guess their gmail, facebook and linkedin passwords. I'm just saying, it's probably in the top-ten most used passwords.

[gluejar]

Originally Posted by Stitchawl

Rant Mode: ON

I contacted an excellent company called Homespun Taps, Ltd., with whom I've done business in the past. The produce and sell instructional videos for many different instruments, predominantly strings, and mostly in the folk music genre. Excellent company with great products. I purchased three videos to be sent to my house, and two others that were offered as "Instant Access." And that's when it hit the fan...

It turns out that AFTER you pay for the "Instant Access" videos, you learn that you have to install special third-party software from a group called 'PlatformPurple' to download them. That made me angry. I don't want to install special third-party software into my computer. Had I known that I'd have to install unknown third-party software, I never would have ordered it. To me, instant access means just that; you pay your money and you get a URL to a download site, and instantly begin downloading what you've purchased.

But I'd already paid my money so I installed it. Then I tried to download the videos... and got an error message saying "Error. Can not find .dll, contact tech support." I also got a socket error message. OK, I contacted tech support at PlatformPurple and they told me that the .dll in question really wasn't theirs, but belonged to QuickTime. OK... software often shares with other programs. And I guess it's their standard policy to blame someone else. They told my that my version of QuickTime must be bad and to re-install it. That made me wonder... QuickTime seemed to work just fine when I needed it to. But I re-installed it anyway, tried to download the videos, and got the error message again. I contacted tech support and they said, sorry, the problem is with someone else's software. I told them I had no trouble with that other software, and only got the error message with their software. That seemed to piss them off. Their next suggestion was that I let them into my computer...

Now... call me paranoid, but here's a company that
1. I never heard of,
2. that never said a word about needing special software installed until AFTER I gave them my money,
3. blamed an error message received when running their software on someone else,
and
4. now wants me to let them run around inside my computer?
That just doesn't sound right to me. (By the way, they never so much as mentioned the socket error problem.) So I went looking in my computer, found a copy of the .dll that was missing, and copied it to their installation folder. Can you believe it? The software actually ran... If tech support had simply said that in the beginning I'd have let all this slide.

But, at the same time, I was still getting a socket error message which I had the temerity to contact tech support about. Their suggestion again: Hey, let us inside your computer... How many tech supports have requested control of your computer on the first date? That's a last-ditch hail-Mary play.

I wrote back that I wasn't happy at all with this company and its policies from the very beginning. They wrote back with the following;
We are very sorry this happened, because 99% of the time, everything works perfectly. But in this case, all we can say is that this couldn’t have happened to a nicer person.

For all you customer support people out there, who have wanted to say something like this to a customer, but didn't because you realize what the results will be, this is the result in action... And it's being cc'd to a dozen different forums around the Internet. Company's name is 'PlatformPurple.' The support person was Mabel. A word to the wise is sufficient; don't do business with 'PlatformPurple.'


Stitchawl

Stitchawl, "PlatformPurple" used to be called "Leaping Brain Labs".

Lesson learned, never "buy" DRM-locked content.

Also, to me, the name "PlatformPurple" sounds skeevy; I'd say someone's brain took too many leaps.

Eric

[poohbear_nc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

My sincerest sympathies for your situation, and a word of advice: Don't walk until you have a Plan B fully operational and ready to launch. I once walked out of a good paying job into long months of unemployment and uncertainty. I'd never had a problem in my life getting a job before I did that, but I suddenly found that things had changed. Potential employers now said that either I was over-qualified or that they couldn't afford to pay me what I had been earning and didn't want to hire me for less for fear I'd leave the first the moment a better opportunity came along. It's not a very comfortable place to be.

Thanks guys for all the sympathy & good advice.

Yes, astonishing as it seems, I realize the world is not waiting with bated breath for me to re-enter the employment market, and that not everyone has such a high regard for my work ethic and qualifications .... as I do. So I am in the process of launching Plan B:
1. Stay sane & alive until bonus check is in the bank.
2. Use bonus check to assist in updating my job skills - particularly becoming proficient again in QuickBooks - my current company uses a separate proprietary business accounting software and my QuickBooks skills have become rusty.
3. Start "feeling out" the local jobs environment during December - as local business folk stop in for holiday greetings, etc.
4. Establish a beginning network of references and information sources.

Whew! I'm tired already .... but ready to begin ...