This may very well be 3:30am escapism, but given that:
- I can pay all my fixed costs online.
- I make all of my money online.
- I don’t have a permanent place to live.
usd-isk-0000-0-0-11-2454619-2454918
While I normally groan when recruiters call me at work (and wonder why I’m whispering) and roll my eyes when they ask me to go in for a consultation, my attitude has changed lately. With the cat thoroughly out of the bag that I’ll be leaving my current position in the near future and with the typically slow holiday season, dealing with recruiters has been quite entertaining. These calls and consultations represent a nice break in my day and presents an opportunity for UNINTENTIONAL COMEDY.
The most impressive one to date was the one I met with today. He called and left multiple messages on my voicemail last week despite my not picking up the phone once. Each call had slightly greater urgency. Initially, I thought, “God, this fuck is annoying.” By the third call, I realized “This guy is hilarious. Something ill-advised will occur as a result.”
Today, I returned his call and agreed to go to his office in Midtown to meet him. While I used the lobby kiosk to fill in my information, I was able to peer into the office. The office was unlike anything I’d ever seen. In one large room, there seemed to be two teams of mostly 20-somethings sitting in close proximity, hounding candidates on the phone. There was constant coworker chatter, constant calling and a degree of bullying. Like any entry-level sales jobs, the only adults were the supervisors and the rest were essentially children.
I finally got in front of my contact, who proceeded to ramble at high speed (me: how does he breath?) about how their process is different (me: but still sleazy) and jotted down a bunch of things on my resume that I don’t think he even understood. He had the gall to tell me that the way he speaks, people think he can code in any language (me: not what I was thinking), but that he “can’t code a lick” (me: he is lucky if he can name the platform that powers his favorite porn site). At the end he introduced me to two members of his team (me: whoever was not on the phone at the time). I wonder if he really thinks that they work as a team, when I am pretty sure there are other motives, such as… I don’t know, lead retention in the incidental case that a salesperson (eg. him) turns over?
The best part is of course, at the end of the day when I took his card out of my pocket and looked him up on Facebook.
20081222_recruiter_crop
THIS guy is going to be my “Placement Counselor”? I am not sure how many things an ‘07 graduate could counsel me on if the best placement he was able to get himself was in a bullpen of similarly immature sales grunts.
Tags: worst
Things have gotten strange in my office. I find that the more terse and snarky I am with my coworkers, the more they tend to respect the value of my time and the more I can get done. The issue is, I may be taking it too far.
This morning, I was sent an error report from my new coworker who had been with the company for several weeks. While he is a well-meaning, jolly fellow, he is rather corny and sends me a lot of useless emails. After I fixed the error, he responded:
You’re a gentleman and a scholar…well, a scholar. 
I quickly wrote a response, blind carbon-copying a few coworkers, but couldn’t bring myself to send it. After several minutes of deep introspection, my other coworker (and friend) walked by. I said, “Dude, I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do.” He looked at my screen and offered, “Would it make it easier if I just hit send for you?” I responded, “Yes.” The response:
You are a funny fat man… that is not funny. :)
I giggled myself foolish. Several minutes later, I got a message from my coworker/buttonpusher accomplice:
dude im reaction watching
he opened the email
looked for awhile
contemplated writing back
then checked and deleted spam
he’s now checking personal email
maybe for a pick me up
typing now
maybe to bitch about you
The rest of the day, I waited patiently to get a dirty look or some snarky comment, but alas, the day completed without incident… on that front.
…
In the afternoon, my boss and I were working through an issue regarding encryption certificates - I ended up implementing a solution that saved 90% of the cost. When my boss asked me why it was so much less expensive, I responded, “I think it is one of those scenarios where you chose it because it was the only option and never bothered to shop around in the time since.”
I paused and said, “A lot has changed in ten years.” My boss gave me the look she often gives me that basically said, “You’re an insolent punk and I would fire you, but I can’t replace you for less.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out my iPod Nano and said, “Look, music doesn’t come on tape anymore, either.” Coworker and aforementioned accomplice, usually good at not eavesdropping and not laughing, burst out laughing as I walked away.
The circle of snark has to begin somewhere.
I’m a complainer, I know.
When I signed up for this job, I knew that I would be working with some ColdFusion legacy code with datestamps that go back to the late 1990s. I did not however, realize that the authors were people posing as programmers and that they were masochists, to boot. I get the feeling that some of this spaghetti code would violate the Geneva Conventions. I frequently find myself asking, “Who the hell would do this?”
 |
Here is the query from the ColdFusion error screen that I was presented with today:
SELECT contact.contactid,contact.pub,FirstName, LastName,isnull(company.companyname,' ') companyname,contact.note, (SELECT max(TelNum) FROM ContactPhone WHERE ContactPhone.contactId = Contact.ContactId AND ContactPhone.pub = Contact.Pub AND PrimaryPhone=1) as TelNum FROM Contact left outer join Company on contact.companyid=company.companyid and contact.companypub=company.pub WHERE Contact.Pub=nnnnn and ( ( Contact.Active=1 and contact.deactivatedate is null and contact.pub in (select brokerpub from Brokers_Master bm where bm.status=1 and bm.companyid in (select x.companyid from company x where x.parent_company_id = )) ) or ( contact.contactid in (select aptcontact.contactid from aptcontact where aptcontact.aptPub=nnnnn and aptcontact.aptid = 0) ) ) or ( contact.pub <> 1 and (contact.pub in (select brokerpub from Brokers_Master bm where bm.status=1 and bm.companyid in (select x.companyid from company x where x.parent_company_id = )) or (contact.contactid in (select aptcontact.contactid from aptcontact where aptcontact.aptid = 0 ))) and Contact.deactivatedate is null AND (contact.companyid=0 OR (IsPrimary=1 AND Contact.Pub=nnnnn) OR (contact.CompanyId in (SELECT companyid from company pc1 WHERE parent_company_id = ))) AND Active=1 AND company.GRP='everyone' ) ORDER BY companyname, isnull(PrimaryCompContact,0) desc, Lastname, FirstName, ContactID |
Using the nifty SQL formatter, the result was:
SELECT contact.contactid ,
contact.pub ,
FirstName ,
LastName ,
isnull(company.companyname,' ') companyname,
contact.note ,
(SELECT MAX(TelNum)
FROM ContactPhone
WHERE ContactPhone.contactId = Contact.ContactId
AND ContactPhone.pub = Contact.Pub
AND PrimaryPhone =1
) AS TelNum
FROM Contact
LEFT OUTER JOIN Company
ON contact.companyid =company.companyid
AND contact.companypub=company.pub
WHERE Contact.Pub =nnnnn
AND
(
(
Contact.Active=1
AND contact.deactivatedate IS NULL
AND contact.pub IN
(SELECT brokerpub
FROM Brokers_Master bm
WHERE bm.status =1
AND bm.companyid IN
(SELECT x.companyid
FROM company x
WHERE x.parent_company_id =
)
)
)
OR
(
contact.contactid IN
(SELECT aptcontact.contactid
FROM aptcontact
WHERE aptcontact.aptPub=nnnnn
AND aptcontact.aptid = 0
)
)
)
OR
(
contact.pub <> 1
AND
(
contact.pub IN
(SELECT brokerpub
FROM Brokers_Master bm
WHERE bm.status =1
AND bm.companyid IN
(SELECT x.companyid
FROM company x
WHERE x.parent_company_id =
)
)
OR
(
contact.contactid IN
(SELECT aptcontact.contactid
FROM aptcontact
WHERE aptcontact.aptid = 0
)
)
)
AND Contact.deactivatedate IS NULL
AND
(
contact.companyid=0
OR
(
IsPrimary =1
AND Contact.Pub=nnnnn
)
OR
(
contact.CompanyId IN
(SELECT companyid
FROM company pc1
WHERE parent_company_id =
)
)
)
AND Active =1
AND company.GRP='everyone'
)
ORDER BY companyname ,
isnull(PrimaryCompContact,0) DESC,
Lastname ,
FirstName ,
ContactID
|
Moral of the story: SUBSELECT is not your friend, at least not when it was written by someone else.
I’ve been at my present job for about 6 months now. Outside of the president and myself, the most consistent person here has been the guy that comes in and cleans the office every week. Despite his propensity to blare gospel (which I occasionally counteract with some Spank Rock), he has been pleasant and professional.
Last week, he asked me if I could help him reformat his computer. I hesitantly agreed, since it would set an awful precedent. As much, as I wanted to show him the “How about no” bear:
 how-about-no-bear |
… I figured since he is a small business owner in a down economy, I should help the guy out. Plus, I have a hard and fast policy: be supremely nice to anybody that has access to your shit, particularly roommates and people that prepare your food.
Sure enough, today he came in with his laptop and I helped him with it while I picked through my email. When I complained about the situation to my friend, she asked, “How’d he know you could fix it?” to which I responded, “I think he had a hunch when he noticed the four 22-inch screens on my desk.”
In retrospect, I realize that it might have also been influenced by class guilt. In my vernacular, class guilt has replaced white guilt since (1) I’m not even white, (2) I probably would have done this for a white guy. The people I might have a chance of throwing the “How about no” bear at? English majors.
 dilbert20012211860201 |
PS: to Scott Adams and the operators of dilbert.com, your search engine could use some work. I had to pilfer this image from elsewhere.
