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>I'm sure there are non-technical office jobs that lack the 'white collar' pitfalls I've listed above, Sure, but then we have our own issues. Highly repetitiv

>I'm sure there are non-technical office jobs that lack the 'white collar' pitfalls I've listed above, Sure, but then we have our own issues. Highly repetitive work, sharing desks, open offices where team leads are in the back of every row to watch our every move, paperwork for this, paperwork for that, gotta print this out and hand write this then have another person scan it in at some point so you can do this, this is on one doc in the case but it is marked wrong so you get to virtual print it back into the case as the appropriate doc and it's not the fault of whoever scanned it originally it's your fault for not noticing they did it wrong but they're gonna get penalized as much as you. When I mess something up it's quite literally like Office Space - I hear from my senior coordinator, I hear from my team lead, I'll get a file referral issued by someone I've never met in another state that my team lead then tells me about again and I have to review it and agree to it with whatever my team lead tells me to because God forbid I get to dispute it and explain my logic, then I get to hear about it again during my monthly meeting with my manager and then for our annual merit review I'll hear about it as a statistic "sorry, you only get a 2 out of 4 here because you had that mistake 9 months ago even though you look at hundreds to thousands of pages of paperwork a day while trying to make quota. You now get even less of a sub-inflation merit based increase for the next fiscal year!" Don't have a degree like me? Congrats, All but two of the managers and all but one or two of the team leads have been here as little as half as long as you making considerably more than you. Oh, your friend that moved to 3rd shift, they now make at least 15% more than you because of shift differential for doing the same job and oh, they've been here half as long as you and... are a team lead. Oh, and, we're going to stop funding the pension with a % of your income and instead we're going to add 2 more % of match range to the 401k even though you can't afford to even get the full match now! Oh, and remember how you used to get all of your vacation June 1st each year (start of the fiscal year), well we know that's how we did it the first 12 years you were here but now for the 13th and beyond you have to earn your time weekly and oh, it still doesn't' roll over. Use it or lose it sucka. Oh, yes, we haven't given a cost of living increase in a decade but it's ok our CEO took $15.96 million in total compensation in FY 2019, down from $16.67 million in FY 2018 so we're trying to save money! Don't feel so bad about only make 0.2% of what he did, everyone's struggling! It's cool though, I only have to work here until I die since retirement isn't realistic. If sharing desks doesn't give me a potentially fatal bacteria or virus since we're highly discouraged from calling in sick and we work in an office where people urinate on the floor, defecate on the toilet seats, leave blood on toilet seats/floors and pick & stick boogers on every surface in the bathroom then between the strong smell of mold in the building every time it rains and the jet exhaust coming in the doors on windy days I'll die long before my dotage. Visiting the OpenAI office 2 years ago ruined my life. Clean offices, everyone was calm and quietly working, no overlords passive aggressively staring at you if you were talking, catered meals twice a day, no smell of mold, no one coughing and sneezing without covering their mouths, was offered water (from a bottle! It wasn't even milky white, I'm not kidding you our tap water is milky white the first several seconds) by the nicest security guard ever. I thought I'd died and gone to job nirvana. I was just visiting someone though for a quick meeting unrelated to OpenAI, alas I had to return to my bottom rung office job where I'm a replaceable serial number and not a human being. At least I'm not digging graves anymore though, sun poisoning sucked.

taneq 7y ago
Oh wow. What technical background do you need to get a job literally in Hell? :(
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  I clear international freight through customs, if you've got a pulse and can type have I got a job for you haha. It wasn't so bad when I started, it was terrifying due to the volume of information you have to learn (back then it was 3 weeks in a classroom before you touched a shipment, now it's 2 and then everything you touch is quarantined and reviewed before it gets submitted) but over the years it's gotten more and more blah. When I started we didn't share desks and up until maybe 4 years ago only like half the office shared desks. Now basically everyone does unless someone quits even though we have like 25-30 new desks they bought planning to add more jobs to our office but then opened 2 satellite offices in other states instead... but those desks aren't in the core area so no managers can peak out of their offices and see them. We have a lot of issues with our building (water/mold, leaking pipes, blah water, HVAC goes out all the time) but that's not my employer's fault, we lease the building (I believe from IND airport authority) and you know how that goes... landlords generally suck. As far as dirty people, pick and stickers, people peeing on the floor, people crapping on the toilet seats... well, a lot t of that happens on 2nd and 3rd shifts. You attract a weird group of people that want to work from like 9pm-5:30am. In the past we had someone that would smear their feces on the wall, you could see their fingerprints in it. We also had someone that kept flushing paper towels down the urinals. It got to the point where it was a very real threat that bathrooms would require management to go with you because we were having so many issues in the men's rooms and the managers were the ones that had to clean it up. A couple of people quit that summer though and it magically stopped (poop on walls, paper towels). That was just one or more disturbed individuals probably. It's all just a lot of little stuff that adds up and makes you miserable. Sharing desks is super annoying as you come in and your keyboard has crumbs or hair on it, your monitors are moved, every possible setting on your chair is changed and all of your stuff has to fit in one drawer and you have to buy wipes to wipe everything down because you don't know if the person was sick. Then the HVAC being inconsistent means you never know if you should dress warm or dress light because it might be 66F and it might be 74F in the winter and in the summer You're lucky if it's 74F and it might get to 82F for a few weeks in the office (again, not my employer's fault, totally the building owner's fault because they'd rather send someone out for 5 hours to tinker than actually replace the HVAC equipment). Then you've got 2 microwaves and 100ish peopel there during the day. Then you've got 1 soda vending machine and 1 snack machine and the vendor comes once a week but will sometimes vanish for 3-5 weeks without notice and the machine is mostly empty within 3 days and you don't have time to go anywhere with your 30-minute lunch if you need a caffeine fix because we're on airport property and the closest thing is McDonald's which will take about 20 minutes roundtrip if it isn't busy and the two refrigerators aren't big enough for even half of an entire shift to store stuff in. It just adds up. Then all the constantly changing government stuff... it just adds up.

taneq 7y ago

Oh wow. What technical background do you need to get a job literally in Hell? :(

ryanmercer 7y ago
I clear international freight through customs, if you've got a pulse and can type have I got a job for you haha. It wasn't so bad when I started, it was terrifying due to the volume of information you have to learn (back then it was 3 weeks in a classroom before you touched a shipment, now it's 2 and then everything you touch is quarantined and reviewed before it gets submitted) but over the years it's gotten more and more blah. When I started we didn't share desks and up until maybe 4 years ago only like half the office shared desks. Now basically everyone does unless someone quits even though we have like 25-30 new desks they bought planning to add more jobs to our office but then opened 2 satellite offices in other states instead... but those desks aren't in the core area so no managers can peak out of their offices and see them. We have a lot of issues with our building (water/mold, leaking pipes, blah water, HVAC goes out all the time) but that's not my employer's fault, we lease the building (I believe from IND airport authority) and you know how that goes... landlords generally suck. As far as dirty people, pick and stickers, people peeing on the floor, people crapping on the toilet seats... well, a lot t of that happens on 2nd and 3rd shifts. You attract a weird group of people that want to work from like 9pm-5:30am. In the past we had someone that would smear their feces on the wall, you could see their fingerprints in it. We also had someone that kept flushing paper towels down the urinals. It got to the point where it was a very real threat that bathrooms would require management to go with you because we were having so many issues in the men's rooms and the managers were the ones that had to clean it up. A couple of people quit that summer though and it magically stopped (poop on walls, paper towels). That was just one or more disturbed individuals probably. It's all just a lot of little stuff that adds up and makes you miserable. Sharing desks is super annoying as you come in and your keyboard has crumbs or hair on it, your monitors are moved, every possible setting on your chair is changed and all of your stuff has to fit in one drawer and you have to buy wipes to wipe everything down because you don't know if the person was sick. Then the HVAC being inconsistent means you never know if you should dress warm or dress light because it might be 66F and it might be 74F in the winter and in the summer You're lucky if it's 74F and it might get to 82F for a few weeks in the office (again, not my employer's fault, totally the building owner's fault because they'd rather send someone out for 5 hours to tinker than actually replace the HVAC equipment). Then you've got 2 microwaves and 100ish peopel there during the day. Then you've got 1 soda vending machine and 1 snack machine and the vendor comes once a week but will sometimes vanish for 3-5 weeks without notice and the machine is mostly empty within 3 days and you don't have time to go anywhere with your 30-minute lunch if you need a caffeine fix because we're on airport property and the closest thing is McDonald's which will take about 20 minutes roundtrip if it isn't busy and the two refrigerators aren't big enough for even half of an entire shift to store stuff in. It just adds up. Then all the constantly changing government stuff... it just adds up.