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2003-04-22 - 4:45 p.m.

Today's office antics:

1. Mr. Erratic called demanding an immediate emergency meeting. First of all, he was terribly distraught and had loaded some search tool I wrote on his desktop. He was ranting about how there are no records coming up in any of his searches. I'm at a loss, the code hasn't been touched. I told him maybe the database was being refreshed, he got annoyed and insisted that wasn't the case. Mmm kay, I have no idea then. He just wanted to go on and on about how my stuff is broken and how I have to fix it right now and how this is a big crisis.

Now what actually happened is this: Mr. Erratic entered a bunch of junk text into the keywords box before running his search. Since no records matched the keywords he was getting no data back. I wasn't around when he entered the keyword stuff so I didn't know what he'd done. Fortunately after pounding on his keyboard for a bit he figured it out. No apology of course.

2. I got an emergency application defect ticket about a record not showing up in one of the search tools. I go and run some queries and of course the record doesn't have its status marked as approved so that is why it isn't showing up. Sorry, jackasses, if you want the records to show up in the search tools you've got to approve them, but you knew that. It isn't my code that is defective, it is my co-workers' brains.

3. I got 6 emails about the application defect ticket I mentioned above, SIX! The issue was emailed around and about 15 people were on the CC list so they all felt they had to reply I guess. So not only do I get people hassling me about mistakes they made, I get to hear about it SIX times. Delete, delete, delete...

Finally, here is my rant on why I can't cope in Officeville, and I realize this is really snotty and elitist and uses a lot of generalizations so if you are really sensitive and easily offended don't read on.

Mostly I blame academia for my troubles. I spent my formative years surrounded by other geeks. I took those fancy schmancy AP and "gifted" classes in school so I just got used to being around smarter than average folks. I went to a reasonably elite university so even in college I was surrounded by smarties. Now here I am in the real world and there's no placement schema here so if you're the guy who took remedial classes in school but you've got the right friends you get to be a manager at MegaCorp X and run an entire department of geeks. This, my friends, is a problem, and this is why I'll be nothing but frustrated unless I'm working for myself.

Here's another thing, the powers that be in Officeville would just be amazed if they had any idea how much time I spend fucking around at the office. They think I'm sooo productive and on top of things, and considering their basis for comparison, I am.

It isn't that I am lazy, it's that I know me doing 40 hours of real work per week would be too much for the idiots here to take and it'd just disrupt the delicate ecosystem of Officeville. They can't charge clients zillions of dollars if they don't have zillions of billable hours, so I have to act like it takes much longer to do things than it actually does. I work an hour or two and spend the rest of the day goofing off.

If this is the way the professional world works, that's fine, I can play along with that. I will start my own company and either make what I make now by doing what it takes most people 40 hours to do in a mere 5 to 10 ('cause keep in mind those remedial kiddies out there actually do need 40 hours to do what it takes me only a few hours to do since I'm a geek) and spend the rest of the time laying in bed or watching TV or working on art projects or whatever it is I feel like doing, or I'll work a real 40 hours per week and make four times as much money as I make now. Either way is fine with me, but the set up I've got now just has to go.

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