To the progressives here

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rode_kater
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Re: To the progressives here

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moonshadow wrote: Thu Nov 04, 2021 1:38 pm If everyone just lays around and does nothing all day, milking whatever social program may exist to keep them fed and sheltered, then who will do the work required to keep modern life going? Who will stock the store shelves? Who will deliver the pizza? Who will truck the goods across the country? Who will u load those trucks? Who will prepare the food? While will pick the produce? Who will fix the machines when they break?

I think we're seeing the answer to that question play out... Nobody.
I think you're right, but in a different sense. I'm in IT so the answer in automate, automate, automate. Why is there a person to fill your petrol tank when you can do it yourself? Why have a till when you can wave your card at the machine and go? The mini-supermarket here at the train station now only has 8 self-serve tills and two (young) people who keep an eye on things and restock. The end result is that everything is automated and nobody works. Isn't that what we want?

At my work my job is to automate, but that just leads to more work which then has to be automated. Never a dull moment.

One impact of social security is that it kills shitty jobs. Why would you work $15/hr at a job that wears you down with a boss that abuses you, when you can get the equivalent of $12/hr staying home. (numbers made up for effect). Employers have to invest in their employees or they lose them to someone who treats them better. High minimum wage mean you can't let people do stupid jobs, they have to do something that produces more than the minimum wage. You could say it destroys jobs, but it can just as easily make the existing jobs less dull.

How does Europe work when so many people are on holiday? By simply planning around it. Don't start new projects in July. Many small stores hang up a sign saying "back in august". Students take summer jobs to hold the fort so all the normal people can go on holidays. Of course, holidays in this period are super-expensive, people without kids choose to go before or after. OTOH it's then high season for tourists, so touristy places attract people who in the winter go work in elsewhere. Because construction largely stops, there's less deliveries. People on holidays don't order online. It just sort of all works out.

It's an attitude. In France shops close for lunch. I find that annoying, but for them, because everybody does it they plan around it and it all works out. After all, if everybody is at lunch there's no point keeping your own shop open, right?

I think that as long as the whole of the US has the idea everyone has to work unpaid overtime, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I also don't think it's something you can change by yourself :(
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Kirbstone
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Re: To the progressives here

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The horn is the best idea, agreed. I'd also slot into my sign-writer suit here and adorn said edifice with notices like 'Duck or Grouse' or perhaps 'Ye Olde Cranium cracker' or similar.

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Re: To the progressives here

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rode_kater wrote: Fri Nov 05, 2021 11:02 amOne impact of social security is that it kills shitty jobs. Why would you work $15/hr at a job that wears you down with a boss that abuses you, when you can get the equivalent of $12/hr staying home. (numbers made up for effect). Employers have to invest in their employees or they lose them to someone who treats them better. High minimum wage mean you can't let people do stupid jobs, they have to do something that produces more than the minimum wage. You could say it destroys jobs, but it can just as easily make the existing jobs less dull.
That idea is great, but it only works in healthy economies where there are choices of where to work -- and for whom to work. In the US, we've got a dead economy, meaningful work is difficult to find and getting more difficult. Increasingly, people are working two or three "McJobs" just to make ends meet, "rush hour" is now all day as people shuffle between trash jobs, and the general quality of life is in the toilet. And don't think it's confined to the bottom tier, either, because it's not. Sh!tty jobs paying six figures to the left of the decimal point can -- and frequently do -- suck; they're also almost impossible to find.
I think that as long as the whole of the US has the idea everyone has to work unpaid overtime, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I also don't think it's something you can change by yourself :(
Nope. One cannot change the course of this ship single-handedly. It's going to take a lot of force to regain control to the point where the country and its government actually represents the whole of society. I don't think that revolution is the answer; those tend to have nasty repercussions. And recall that even Rome eventually fell.
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Sinned
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Re: To the progressives here

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The height of the roof corner is such that my wife can walk under it and not be in any danger of bonce bump. Under normal circumstances I see it as I approach it. The times I have hit my head hard on it is when I have stood up adjacent to it and with my back to it. A rising head hits the point bullseye and I drew blood. The tennis ball idea appeals because they can be a cheap and easy solution. I suppose that I can round the point so it doesn't do quite so much damage.

As for holidays in our store they have to be planned. Since there are only a small number of staff there can't be too many off at once, particularly in one department. This does present a problem when trying to organise a holiday abroad. Fortunately we have an app that enables us to see store staff booked holidays during the company holiday year. For larger companies then the holiday booking is assumed to be authorised and you arrange your workload so that the break can be taken. I would work with one of my team so that they could take over the running of the project in my absence. Generally there were sufficient bodies to take up any slack.

Carl, there is such a thing as being indispensable. While this may seem to offer job security, in reality all that happens is that you are imposed upon more, you work longer hours in a desperate effort to continually prove your worth and you burn out. You can't train your replacement because there may not be anyone of sufficient calibre or experience and anyway you don't have the time. That happened to me. When you finally become non-functional and end up on sick leave you find that suddenly there's a brought-in contractor to do what you did and the company takes the opportunity to change the technology so that your job becomes redundant. Easy to do in these fast-changing times. Mainframes replaced with client/server, replaced with distributed internet and cloud. You don't have the opportunity or time to uprate your skills. Scrap heap. Sound familiar, anyone.
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crfriend
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Re: To the progressives here

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Sinned wrote: Fri Nov 05, 2021 9:59 pmCarl, there is such a thing as being indispensable. While this may seem to offer job security, in reality all that happens is that you are imposed upon more, you work longer hours in a desperate effort to continually prove your worth and you burn out. [... S]uddenly there's a brought-in contractor to do what you did and the company takes the opportunity to change the technology so that your job becomes redundant.
I absolutely understand that, and feel it painfully. The sad part is that I seem to be the only person on staff who actually has a CS (Computer Science) background and who can navigate the wasteland between the silos that permeate the modern land. I'll also have a leg up on the contractor who tries to replace me because the Corporation won't hire anyone of that calibre because they're now viewed as dangerous in terms of "security" (i.e. "they know too much" [1]).

In my case, the Corporation bought one by accident without prior knowledge. Case in point, my "hot project" at the moment in an EMITEE (Everything More Important Than Everything Else) world is to come up with a way to reliably get stateful and restorable tape backups of databases. To do this, I must deal with at least four "silos" of "security"-separated individuals to make the thing possible. Sadly, I alone possess the knowledge of how to make this possible -- everybody else is prohibited from having knowledge of what happens in an adjacent "silo". Thus, I need to draw together multiple "teams" (silos) to make a simple backup work -- the Linux Admins, because they have ultimate control over the machines, the SAN (Storage Area Network) silo, the Backup silo, the Networking silo, and finally "Cyber'security'" [2]. This against a backdrop of me having an all-up proof-of-concept running in my home environment last year which was rubbished by my boss. I'm confident in the design. I am completely unconfident of it ever getting implemented successfully because of all the structural impediments. I give it a 5% to 15% chance of success.


[1] Since they can see the big picture they can immediately recognise where the security holes are and where breaches likely happened. This is a direct threat the the "Cyber'security'"[2] types, so having generalists on staff is frowned upon [3].
[2] Used as a term of outright contempt in the modern incarnation. They are as bereft of clue as the US TSA (Transportation "Safety" Administration) which solely exists to look up other folks' skirts.
[3] You got out at a good time!
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moonshadow
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Re: To the progressives here

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rode_kater wrote: Fri Nov 05, 2021 11:02 am I think that as long as the whole of the US has the idea everyone has to work unpaid overtime, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I also don't think it's something you can change by yourself
I've never heard of that. Wage earners (W-2 "non exempt") workers get time and a half for any time worked in a seven day period over 40 hours.

If the employer doesn't pay it, they're breaking the law, and I've worked for a lot of employers in my life, and all have paid as required.

You know, from my perspective, things really didn't start to suck until 2020 when covid hit.

My progressive side? LGBT rights, racial justice, true religious freedom (freedom of and from religion), rebuilding/maintaining our infrastructure, community minded projects, fixing the health insurance mess.

My conservative side? Everyone needs to pull their weight. No freeloaders.

If all that makes me a jerk, then I guess I'm just a jerk.
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moonshadow
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Re: To the progressives here

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Also, a thought occurred to me this morning while mulling over this topic:

Anyone who may be critical of my position or think of me a cold hearted, hard man for my insistence that people pull their own weight, I figure that most progressive members here are people of decent means, with enough excess to enjoy some of the finer things of civilized life....

A suggestion, instead of taking a vacation next year, or going out on an expensive dinner, or buying that new gadget or gismo you really don't need, why not be a part of the solution, and find someone homeless or otherwise someone in need to sponsor? We all have a little extra money at any given time. The scriptures has Christ instructing us to sell everything you own, give it to the poor, and follow him. This sentiment could easily be adapted for more secular minded people who want to make a difference.

You don't want to because deep down you know I'm not 100% wrong.

And if you still hold to your convictions, please let me know so next time I find myself in a $20k bind and facing homelessness like I was a few years ago I'll be sure to look you up...

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with having empathy for those in need, and giving charity and wanting to make a positive difference, but lets not forget, it's a fundamental law of nature that when it comes to living creatures (humans included) the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. Don't believe me? Get a house cat or raise a teenager and see for yourself. And let's face it, some people are just plain sorry.

With all due respect Carl, Falda, rode, you just don't know what Jenn and I are putting up with at the moment... and I'm not even talking about places of employment now, this situation hits much closer to home.
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Kirbstone
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Re: To the progressives here

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Despite all one's noble altruistic ideas and intentions, the old saying 'Charity begins at home' holds true. It is a fundamental that domestic problems and Family issues must first be, if not put in order, at least contained, so that all members can live harmoniously together, or within easy reach of each other. The most important thing is to keep lines of communication open.

It is absolutely true that those who get help tend to squander it and fail to become truly independent. Witness the hoards of total non- contributors who live on Benefit, availing themselves of every handout and are the first to complain about their living conditions/standards. Every developed country is host to hundreds of thousands of these and those at the Nations' helms know they cannot just pull the plug.

Historically the British used colonialism, but that is not an option anymore. We Irish call it 'the Diaspora', so we 'colonise' the World without conquests. e.g. there are some 18 Million Irish passport holders resident in the US of A, some four times our population here.

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moonshadow wrote: Sat Nov 06, 2021 2:27 amI've never heard of that. Wage earners (W-2 "non exempt") workers get time and a half for any time worked in a seven day period over 40 hours.
It's clear you've never drawn a salary -- with a salary you are "exempt" from overtime and labour law and companies leverage that to the hilt.

My first job was paid hourly, and I did well at it. I was properly paid for the holidays I had to work, I got a shift-differential when I was on 2nd or third shift, and I got paid overtime on top of that if I had to work beyond that.

My second job was an interesting hybrid in that I drew a base salary even if there was no work to be done (i.e. when everything was running well) but got paid overtime for anything more than 40 hours of billable time. Customers with impaired equipment seldom hesitated to request billable (above and beyond the basic maintenance contract) work, so that greatly expanded my income. The reason for the hybrid? At the time, the New England economy was still healthy and if we were on base hourly the company could not have retained the talent.

Every gig after that was salary alone, and the workload and demanded hours have only been increasing over time without a commensurate pay increase -- and that's not counting the corrosive effect of inflation which is starting to get out of control (again).

Add into that, the basic fact that no business has a shred of ethics any longer, and as a result the quality of the workplace is in freefall. Here, the economy is dead, good jobs are not to be found, so one is pretty much stuck where he is and is treated like he should feel lucky to have a job -- no matter how much it might suck. If companies 30 years ago treated us like we're treated now they'd never be able to retain staff and would go out of business. Today that threat simply isn't there.
[....] fixing the health insurance mess.
Forget fixing the "insurance" mess. Strip that for-profit vulture-layer out entirely.
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Sinned
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Re: To the progressives here

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Carl, looks as if you should be deserting the sinking ship. If you burn out and leave and they didn't bring in someone or ones ( contractors or not ) to replace your skills then in the medium to long term it's tits up time. At least in the bank I worked for senior management and IT realised that the end of the line had come for the fully fault-tolerant mainframe we were using and needed to move to an alternative technology. A visit to a few places with schematics and sample cleansed data tapes and a pathway was clear but the detail wasn't settled and there were some huge chasms in the implementation. But at least the recognition was there and it all came good in the end. It was the finish of my IT career though. My mainframe skills were no longer needed and the client/server setup that I helped to implement and release didn't really interest me so I accepted redundancy with an exceptional ( for that time ) payoff. If you have that concept implementation still on your home system then keep it safe - you may be selling it to them when they become desperate enough and that particular set of managers has been "let go". I don't envy your position as "been there, done it."

As for tape backups - never found them successful as a media. We had more problems doing restores from backup tapes than anything else. It was a major project, before decommissioning the Sequoia mainframe to transfer the backup customer data from PICK flat file to db2 format. Nightmare. Data from 1989 to 2002.

Moon, there are hourly paid which has premium overtime rates including time-and-a-half and double or even triple time for hours in excess of say, 37 hours ( the "standard" working week over here ). Then there are "salaried" positions where overtime isn't paid so no matter how many hours you work you are paid the same. Then there are "hybrid" systems such as the one I was on. It was salaried so that under normal circumstances it was flat pay. But for anything unusual there were extra payments. So, for example, the mainframe went down on Friday afternoon and we worked right through Friday night until tea time Saturday. We would be paid from 17:00 until we left work at say 17:00 Saturday as an extra payment. Also we had extra payments for on call episodes with rates dependent upon whether it was a telephone call, dial in or site visit. The laws governing all this changed and it now all depends upon your Contract of Employment. It all has to be in there.
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Re: To the progressives here

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moonshadow wrote: Sat Nov 06, 2021 2:41 am Anyone who may be critical of my position or think of me a cold hearted, hard man for my insistence that people pull their own weight, I figure that most progressive members here are people of decent means, with enough excess to enjoy some of the finer things of civilized life....
To be clear, I don't feel I can judge anyone I've never met. My position is that everybody (including you) is doing their best, until proven otherwise.
moonshadow wrote: Sat Nov 06, 2021 2:41 am A suggestion, instead of taking a vacation next year, or going out on an expensive dinner, or buying that new gadget or gismo you really don't need, why not be a part of the solution, and find someone homeless or otherwise someone in need to sponsor? We all have a little extra money at any given time. The scriptures has Christ instructing us to sell everything you own, give it to the poor, and follow him. This sentiment could easily be adapted for more secular minded people who want to make a difference.

You don't want to because deep down you know I'm not 100% wrong.
Here I see a cultural difference. Here we have, collectively, decided that things like homelessness are responsibility of the collective, not of individuals. The actual work is done by the government. they are funded by my taxes. I donate to various causes I find worthy. I help family members who need help.

You see, here 1 in 6 adults have trouble reading and writing. That's 16,000 alone in my city. Online I read that 54% of adult Americans don't read at 6th grade level :shock:. (Ok, that's really shocking, I also just read the the maths skills of US students is almost last in the OECD, WTF!) These people are never going to hold a high paying job. And it's too many for me to help alone. It can only be done as a collective.

And secondly, it's not an efficient use of my time to try to look for individuals to help. It's better if I do what I'm good at, and leave the helping of others to people who are good at that.

I think America has made a different choice here. I'm not sure any choice is particularly better or worse, just different. After all, you could argue that the attitude "I pay my taxes, why do I need to do more?" is also not good.
moonshadow wrote: Sat Nov 06, 2021 2:41 am Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with having empathy for those in need, and giving charity and wanting to make a positive difference, but lets not forget, it's a fundamental law of nature that when it comes to living creatures (humans included) the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves. Don't believe me? Get a house cat or raise a teenager and see for yourself. And let's face it, some people are just plain sorry.
I'm not quite so pessimistic, Yes, there are people who don't want to be saved, there's not a lot you can do about that. But the people who need a leg-up to get started should be helped.
moonshadow wrote: Sat Nov 06, 2021 2:41 am With all due respect Carl, Falda, rode, you just don't know what Jenn and I are putting up with at the moment... and I'm not even talking about places of employment now, this situation hits much closer to home.
I wish you all the strength in the world for whatever it is. I honestly believe we are all acting with the best intentions and doing the best we can.
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Re: To the progressives here

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I agree with r_k and don't consider you hard or cold-hearted, just someone in a difficult position trying to do the best that you can. In some of your posts your family come across as having hearts of gold rather than ice. In some senses I'm just ahead of you in the path of life but having had it easier underfoot and hence am in a better situation. We've been lucky, or had better angels looking after us. We could certainly be in a far worse position. I don't know what troubles you are going through apart from what you post but life is a b*tch at the moment over here and, by the looks, over there as well. It don't look like getting any better. We have children and grandchildren that are pretty much independent of us but we help them in little ways whenever we can.

Over here we have charities and government social programmes to look after the less fortunate - handicapped, homeless and so on so we are encouraged to contribute to them rather than have direct involvement. Besides it could be dangerous to get personally involved in someone whose background, history, personality and problems you don't know. Good people have taken in waifs of any age and have been assaulted, robbed and worse as a result of their well-meaning action. We have some very valuable items in our home that we wouldn't want to lose but pass on to family. We limit ourselves to fundraising and contributing.
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Re: To the progressives here

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Rode, Dennis, Falda and the others,

Thanks for your kind words of understanding. On many (if not most) other platforms around the internet, I would have been quite rudely taken to task, shunned, possibly banned, and flamed for sharing such thoughts.

Jenn and I are navigating a few different taxing situations simultaneously at the moment. Thankfully none seem to be a direct result of our actual marriage (we're getting along fine), but I would be remiss to say it hasn't taxed the relationship to a degree. Thus far we seem to be weathering the storm fairly well.

The particular situation at home has called into question many of my more "leftist" values I have held over the years, and hence the overall sentiment I have expressed in this thread. Frankly, I'm doing a lot of soul searching at the moment, trying to recalibrate my own moral and ethical compass.

As for the issue at work, I'm inclined to believe "this too shall pass", I've dealt with this situation on and off my whole life. In a nutshell, I find myself once again feeling as though I'm carrying the full weight of the department, surrounded by colleagues that jet at 5PM sharp, leaving me to finish up their jobs, work every weekend, burden me with their on call while they constantly call out sick or take vacations on their "on call" week. I would abide this type of thing during my 20's and 30's, but now, entering my fifth decade on this rock, I'm realizing there aren't that many "good years" left of relative youth. I'm finding I don't want to burn my candle at both ends anymore, yet I constantly find myself in this situation over and over again. I'm not really to sure what to do about it. This is about the only thing I'm skilled at, and I don't fancy standing on my feet all day working a till, or zipping back and forth stocking cases on canned goods on store shelves. I don't mind what I do, but I'm growing weary of the long hours while everyone else gets to enjoy time with their family.

The home issue and the work issue are reacting with one another, and it's working to increase my overall jadedness and bitterness about the world at the moment.

In a nutshell, I feel like I'm digging my own grave just for the world to dance on it when I'm gone.
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Re: To the progressives here

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Story time.

After my degree I kinda rolled into a job, my first real job. It was fun, I couldn't believe they were paying me all this money just for having fun. I was the first full-time employee, it was a start-up, eventually we moved to a bigger city to be closer to the business customers. I was working all hours, fixing things. There were only four of us, but I was the only backender and there was one other for the frontend.

This went on for a few years, yet the company never really grew. The owner/manager had great ideas but couldn't run a company to save his life. I was forbidden from going on long holidays because what if something went wrong? Yet there was not enough money to hire another person. I'd get called up on holiday anyway for stupid things. At one point there was another person hired and once when I was on holiday I made the decision: I can quit now.

When I came back, turned out the other guy had beat me to it :cry:

Responsible me figured I couldn't quit now, then there'd be no-one. But we were back to square one.

Eventually I managed to arrange a long holiday to the other side of the world. The most important job in the company was the monthly invoice generation, a two-day affair involving lots of printing and lots of envelopes. I had the whole process down so you just had to hit enter every now and then. It even printed the toner level so you knew when to switch.

On this holiday my grandma who I was visiting broke a hip and quickly died. I called to say I was staying an extra week for the funeral. The response: "You have to get back here now. I missed both my parent's funerals, it's not a big deal". :shock: I hung up.

That was the final straw. (There was another issue with money going on the side also). I returned and basically said I was leaving in six months whether or not there was someone else. I ended up emigrating to Europe and eventually simply cutting all contact. I'd keep getting pulled back because I felt responsible. It took me years to recover, in retrospect it was probably a burnout, though I'd never heard of the word at the time.

When I eventually started looking for work again I made the decision to never work for a small company again: if they can't deal with me going on holiday then I don't want to be there. I stumbled into a job with really smart people doing cool work, but: I'm now one of those people who comes in at 10am and leaves 6:30pm. I've made very clear I'm not going to do overtime. I see new people starting, just like me, working all hours because it's fun. I warn them: remember you have a life to live. If the work that needs to be done by you doesn't fit in 40 hours, that's not your fault and not your responsibility. If you enjoy it, sure, but remember there are other things and you can always say no.

Fortunately, this is accepted where I work, my manager is on board. I have colleagues who think the same. Sure, if work needs to be done at night, I'll do it and trade time-for-time. If something unexpected happens (e.g. a rack blows up) you can call me. But if you have a project that's been going six months and three days before the deadline you throw it on my desk with the command "fix it" then I'll tell you I'll try, but no overtime and ask if that sound was their deadline flying past. After a few times they wise up. And I have both the management and the law on my side here.

End story

Moonshadow, I don't know you but you seem like a decent person. I don't know if any of the above sounds familiar. But it's my story which I share with others as warning. It's a cliché but You Only Live Once. I've seen burnouts up close from the other side, it drives people mad. It's no fun for the partners either. Despite everything at my work, burnouts are still the number one cause of long term sick leave. It's combination of perfectionism and feeling responsible, apparently we attract those kinds of people. The most important lesson is to learn to say "No". I can assure you, it's not easy.

I deliberately arrange for a long holiday every year for the sole purpose of disconnecting. They need to learn to live without me, and I need to learn that there are other things than work. I don't even necessarily go anywhere, just not work. Working too hard remains my weak spot and probably always will be. Last year my manager copped some flak for letting me take so much time off. His response to them was that I could just as well have been hit by a bus or quit. At least this way I was coming back.

Damn it, I'm getting all emotional just typing this. You're right, we don't have that many years on this rock. Work is just a means to an end, not an end in itself. We all deserve to live our lives as we see fit. It's your life, no-one else's.

tl;dr Read it all, or skip it you prefer
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Re: To the progressives here

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Thanks for sharing your story Rode, it's nice to know others have been in similar situations.

To be fair, there have been some unique circumstances taking place since the day I started with my present employer, additionally if there is one thing I've learned working here is that much like the weather, if you don't like something, wait, things change very often. I'd tell anyone reading this, one on one, my current gripes with certain people I work with, but as this is a public board, I'd rather not disclose these things openly (a valuable lesson learned from 2016).

I think I'm getting old enough now where I understand these type of things come and go in phases. Right now it's "all hands on deck", but it will level off again. We're losing one man to retirement at the end of December, and due to a pretty nasty grievance between another man and the branch manager, I look for him to quit sometime early next year. None of this is anything out of the ordinary, but my immediate supervisor tends to take his time and wait for the PERFECT candidate to come along before he'll hire, and when he does hire, he tends to take his time getting them trained up. The man he hired two years ago still can't do scales. He's been trained, went to wrapper school, the whole works, but lacks his state license. It would take all of a couple hours one day to sit through the online course to obtain the license, but nobody will make the time... so next year we will be down to two scale techs... myself and another. That means, on call every other weekend.

I am not amused, and my patience is running out.
-Andrea
The old hillbilly from the coal fields of the Appalachian mountains currently living like there's no tomorrow on the west coast.
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