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Ok, the name of this journal section shall be changed to protect the innocent.



This section was called "masquerade"

and now it will be called "work stuffs".



No, seriously. The ONE story I had in this journal from a vampire larp game I attended last February does not warrant its own section, and I am finding that my workday gripes and frequent kvetching about my offshore replacement team is just sooo not "me" sometimes, that they could really use their own space....



So, here we go. From hereforth, I shall post all the negative "WORK SUX (but not that we're complaining because we really LOVE getting paid.)" posts in this section here.

I'm taking a few deep breaths now.... Working with my replacement team in India is sometimes an incredibly exhausting, irritating, and daunting task. It was once said, "You can lead an idiot to reason, but you can't make him think."



They refuse to use their brains. They want me to tell them all of the answers over and over again. I keep pointing my finger at the tables, queries, and prior examples that they can look at to COPY and PASTE their answers, and they still refuse to take their fingers out of their noses and start typing sql.



One song, and one song alone keeps running through my head. "Hot Rod Lincoln." I swear, If it weren't for the fact that their stupidity keeps my cushy job nice and secure, I'd be really upset about this. See, no one with half a brain likes to waste their time, and the fact that I keep having to repeat myself over and over, and over, and over, and show them examples over a dozen times drives my aries/tiger spirit absolutely insane.



In theory, I know the saying that there are no bad students, only bad teachers... but DAMN! OK, I'm not a professional teacher, I'll admit. But this is ridiculous! I guess, win some/lose some. I really shouldn't complain; but MAN, do I need to unwind right now....



I really hate being a person who generalizes and speaks negatively of any group... but I really can't help myself here. I must laugh. I must post this image. I really do feel like I've been trying to train a team of monkeys for the last five months, because they seem to want to do nothing but play the "imitate" game.



And to that, I must say, "Think for yourself, Dammit! Stop asking me and go look for the answer in the notes from the last time you did the very same task!"







Ahh... Much better.

*sigh*



OH, and one more... because it's sooo true!







And thanks to Requiem, I found a quote on the Daily WTF by "Broken Hack"



"I understand all the words he said, I just don't understand all the words he said when they are put together in that way."



Oh, yes. He must be talking about "Hind-Lish."



Today's Hind-Lish Gem:

"Developer again need more data from us. these are the data's from two tables. shall i provide data to them, kindly approve."



********************************



Let's just not even go into the two hours I spent with them to teach them how to dial a conference call number in the US and enter their conference code - followed by the POUND sign. ("Yes," I told them, "I believe you call it a HASH sign.")



Two hours.



To get them to be able to dial into a conference.



No joke.



*rolls eyes*

Can I have that in English please?



"New ID was created for the below PO due to the job data was submitted wrongly. Please do the need full."



Yes, I get between fifty and two hundred fifty messages written in "Engrish" like this a day. And sometimes, when I've been up with India working all night, and then I'm supporting the US side all day, and I've had day after day of less than 4 hours sleep, I find that it can get just a bit irritating.



What's even worse is when I'm tired and I end up sending a message out that reads just as badly.



"The wrongly submitted P.O. needs to be closed and then re-created. Please have the manager reject the same."



AARRRGH! I swear! it's contagious!



Please, let me know if I end up talking in "Hind-lish" here on VR.



--and yes, I just coined the phrase "Hind-lish" right now. Oooh, Scary!

The developers in India will almost never call my office line when they have a question. They will IM me, or email me, and work on something else while they wait for my answer. I have ASKED them to call me whatever the hour, whenever they need help working any critical issue. Still, they rarely call.



The idiots that I'm training to replace me, however.... These idiots will ping me on IM, and call me 24 hours a day with stupid questions like "How do we set up a conference?" "What do you want me to enter in this spreadsheet?" Grr. "Umm... try the data from the tables so you can look at it and analyze the issue, MORON!" Seriously, I'm thinking they're going to ask me how to wipe their ass next! I could take any semi-competent receptionist and train them to do this job in under 3 months. Who ARE these people in India that they have hired, and why didn't I get to do the interviews?! At least when I do the interviews, semi-competent people get hired....



Boy, I would really like to change my office phone number. Its 3:42 am here, I don't need to be getting non-emergency phone calls at 4 am! If I didn't have to support the US between 9 and 5, I couldn't give a damn, but if I can't sleep more than 4 hours, for days at a time... it really starts to inflame my pain, dudes!



Tomorrow morning I will send an email detailing my office phone call hours for the team, and CC the higher-ups too.



If it is not a critical 24x7 support issue, please only call the home office line between 7:30 am and 10:30 PM. Eastern Time. I don't care if I'm currently working with you and haven't responded to your "ping" in the last two minutes. I could be in the ladies room, morons, and you're waking the WHOLE FRAKKING HOUSE!



Thanks!







No, but seriously. I am rather grateful that I still have this job. I thought my replacements would have replaced me months ago.



Hrm. For the months of extra work in trade for dealing with idiots at 4 am...



*takes out balance scale and weighs a stone against a stack of 100's*

The emergency critical 24x7 work crisis is over. I can rest now. I plan on doing nothing more strenuous than napping and playing the CRASH DOWN game on my profile for at least the next five hours.



No learning, no doing anything for anyone, no chatting that is not 100% recreational, no helping people, no working on the house, no updating people's websites, no work (unless they call me with another emergency.) For the next FIVE hours, I am resting, recovering and spoiling myself with nothingness.



For six days we laboured, 24x7 with only brief naps in-between. Now it is time to rest.



:)

Oh my Holy Hellhound!



You would think it's a full moon. Everyone I talk to today has had a major emergency. Its almost 5 am in India; my people in India are sleeping at the office... My people in London are up until 11 pm so far. the client doesn't care, we have a critical issue that so far no one (not even me) could figure out exactly how it happened.



I've just made my third datafix in trying to resolve this thing... Yes, the same thing that I pulled an all-nighter for at work LAST week - is back.



Now, the people at the client are supposed to take my script and get it applied, ASAP. Its a critical issue. We're up all night around the clock for them, and where is their 24x7 support team?



At their FRIGGIN Xmas Party!

OMG! Their IT team is upset because they don't want to miss a friggin party?



You know... Way back in 1996, I had a saying, and it went like this: "You make a choice. If you are a consultant, you get a higher rate, but you DON'T get job security, and you don't get birthday or Xmas parties. It is your responsibility and your duty to document your code so that anyone can pick up your trail at all times, and it is your responsibility to make sure the job is done and done right, no matter what the schedule. That is what a consultant is paid for."



Here at the end of 2006 in a world of outsourcing, I find that the above can be stated a lot more succinctly and clearly as follows:



"Hey, if you want to ride a camel, you should be prepared to deal with some fleas."