On FB someone was sharing a rant that was posted on a business's page by one of the employees. I'm pasting only half of it here, the rest of it was a screed about skateboarders in the neighborhood: Spoiler: long unprofessional rant Yesterday turned out to be a frustrating and non-productive day! We lost electricty in the store due to some pretty shoddy work by Dominion VA Power! We had an issue about 7 months ago when we also lost electricity. During that incident, Dominion painted colorful marks all over the grass and parking lot, put up hundreds of ridiculous flags everywhere, dug a huge hole near the front of the building and repaired lines that had corroded through the insulation and were sending our power into the ground! This time they painted colorful marks all over the grass and parking lot, put up hundreds of ridiculous flags everywhere, dug a huge hole near the front of the building and repaired lines that had corroded through the insulation and were sending our power into the ground........exactly 3 inches from their last repair! It also took them 5 hours to find and repair the problem. Part of the reason that it took so long is that they spent a great deal of time leaning on shovels discussing the problem, decided to bring in a mini-backhoe to see if they could cause a maximum amount of damage to the landscaping, a complete refusal on their part to check the original repair from the start as I had suggested, and spending a great deal of time waiting for Miss Utility to show up to point out where their own lines were! Obviously, at the point of the repair, this could have all been avoided since the location of the lines were pretty well delineated by the sunken hole, due to the fact that the original damage they they created had never been repaired by Dominion! Of course, without electricity, lights, and air conditioning, there wasn't much that we could do (Cherie refuses to go to the bathroom in pitch blackness and with the slot machine out of commission there was absolutely nothing to keep her occupied) so we closed the store early! If any of you stopped by yesterday afternoon and found us closed, that was the reason and we apologize for the inconvenience! Also, if you have ever wondered as to why we have astronomical electric bills, had you stopped by the store yesterday, all of your questions would have been answered! I've never had major electrical repairs done, though I've seen the flags/painted grass before. I have zero knowledge about what goes into that sort of thing. So notwithstanding the unprofessionalism of the rant, I might have been disposed to sympathize with her. But then I read the comments from linesmen and their families (including some angry wives talking about the dangers of the job). Some of the more enlightening comments: Spoiler: gettin schooled Dominion most likely did not put different color paint and flags for you. Unless they were red. It would be the other utilities marking THEIR lines so that Dominion did not cut them. So now Cherie can still flush the toilet because you still have water. Just so you know dominion has many safety procedures they go through to ensure that their employees nor their customers get hurt in any way shape or form so them leaning on shovels while working in the sun and heat was them probably discussing procedures and how to safely go about the problem while yes taking a well deserved break and maybe hydrating themselves too This is slightly comical. Every time there is a power outage everyone wants to know why the utility hasn't started putting all of their lines underground. Here the ones are underground and the customer still isn't happy. This is what happens when thereare underground lines, they are buried by other underground lines. Dominion didn't paint and flag , the other utilities or a miss dig company did to ensure the workers and your safety make sure they don't cut one of the other lines, cutting a gas or water line isn't fun. One other thing about underground , it takes longer to repair. You can't see what wrong therefore there is a process that must be done to find the bad spot in the wire. Just be thankful you have power the paint will fade away and the flags will be done and all the "damage" can be fixed. How about next time you loose power, you just fix it yourself. My advice would be not to call in any locates so there won't be spray painted lines or flags to tell you where things like gas and phone lines are. Also don't call and get the locates for the power lines. Just go out and start digging. I'm sure you can find and fix the problem in about ten minutes because you seem so very intelligent!! Good Luck I enjoy learning new perspectives and shrinking some of my own ignorance. Focus: do you have a line of work or particular interest that people tend to misunderstand, to your frustration? Anti-focus: were you ever schooled thoroughly by someone who knew better than you?
Electricity is one of those weird things that people mistake for an assumption rather than a service. When the power went out for a week in the northeast due to some hurricanes and storms a few years ago, people were calling in death threats to the heads of Connecticut Light and Power and NStar (which powers MA) because the power wasnt turned on quick enough. People turn into animals after you take away some of the conveniences. Focus: Video game playing. Its not so bad anymore as gaming is mainstream now, but the misunderstanding that its for nerds or a waste of time still rears its head every so often. I like gaming, I always have. My parents gave me so much shit for it when I was growing up. I was wasting my time. There was a whole world outside that I was ignoring. Yadda yadda. I never really understood that. If its something I like doing with my friends, how is it ever a waste of time? And its for nerds? GTA V made $1 billion in 3 days. Again I think its becoming more and more understood, but that treatment of it always drove me crazy. I think as the first generation of gamers are now becoming parents of second generation gamers, that perspective will die a final death.
I haven't had a job that was simple to explain since I was a trader 5-6 years ago. I used to working in Strategy and Analytics for the media group of an ad agency. We had little to no input in most of the creative process, so when you mention "advertising" people assume its some Mad Men shit, which it absolutely wasn't. A chunk of people could process when I would say that I didn't create the ads, but if you had seen them, then I was doing my job well, so they understood my team/agency's role. But then my specific job, which wasn't media planning, would just go over their heads. My account was a large and very well known alcohol company. People couldn't seem to process the relationship of working on an account. If I made a comment about them drinking a competitor, people would make snippy comments about them not paying my salary. Actually yes, yes they do. I don't get a pay check from said company, but their HUGE agency fees that they pay each year directly translate into my pay check. Without those fees, I don't have a job. So yes, put down that shitty competitor. Now I work for a large CPG company on a brand team. I'm not a brand manager, but work in insights and analytics. So basically, I do 90% of the research, trend work, and competitive analysis that enables the brand managers to do their jobs/make decisions. I tell 75% of people that I meet that I'm a brand manager. Not cause I'm ashamed or feel like I need to lie, but because its just easier. And I could do everything a BM does anyways, so its not like someone would stump me if they actually know what I'm talking about. Ive also learned, related to this topic, that people's polite curiosity only goes about a layer or two deep. So once you get past their initial knowledge or a level passed that, they just mentally turn off and can't compute. Its different if its intelligent family members, prospective relationships, good friends, etc... who truly want to know and understand, otherwise, nope.
That quote is hilarious, because pretty much everything she listed is standard procedure for fixing underground utilities. The "hundreds of ridiculous flags" part was the best. Would you rather we just start digging and sever your gas and fiber optic services too? And fuck Cherie and her pretentious first name, she can take a shit in the dark. Focus: I'm a farmer and a drainage contractor. Both of these industries have a huge target on their back and are constantly under attack from the general public, who know fuck all about either one. It seems like it's a constant stream of bullshit that people come up with, like how we're slaves to Monsanto (no one ever mentions Syngenta, DuPont, Dow and Bayer), or we're creating the hypoxic zone in the Gulf on purpose and aren't doing a fucking thing to solve it. The biggest one is people who have zero understanding of the chemicals used to produce their food, yet try to accuse farmers of poisoning everyone. I could go on and on about it, but I've got better things to do, like slowly kill the human population. All hail Monsanto!
I'm a Category Buyer for a fish company manufacturing fish for the wholesale and foodservice markets, while before that I was working for a speciality food distributor. The number of conversations I have with people who have no clue whatsoever about how food is made, what actually goes into it and how restrictive and controlled the industry is, is staggering. The worst are usually the people who think that because they eat only organic, small producer made products they are somehow more knowledgable than the actual producers and thus demand stupid things (I.e. Demanding farming of salmon be stopped because of antibiotics destroying the environment, when in reality no antibiotics have been used for years)
The more I work in the food industry the more I gain an appreciation for how stupid people are with regards to the health benefits of certain things. There's more bullshit in hipster dieting than any other hobby I can think of.
I swear, the acronym IT turns people in to fucking idiots. It's part of the reason I've been unemployed since last September; I was an IT manager for a small organization and did more project management and business analysis than serious IT stuff - we had an outside firm for that - but people (recruiters) see I was involved in IT and they try to hook me up with jobs in the IT field, which I'm trying to move away from. It's like they're more fucking impressed that I can do basic desktop support than the fact that I've PMed paper-to-electronic health record implementations and built business cases for other infrastructure or system implementations.
THIS. I recently interviewed to be a chef at a Pilgrim's Market location. The amount of misinformation they, as in the employees themselves, acknowledge to be bullshit and yet continue to plow ahead with it, (GMO's, grass-fed beef, etc) is all to basically grossly up-sale blueberries and local goat meat and fucking flour.
I work in an integrative healthcare clinic, which means that people are convinced the doctors don't believe in science. Either it's people who only believe in strictly allopathic medicine accusing us of being quacks or anti-vaxxers, or it's crazy people who get offended when the doctors don't agree that snake oil is a reasonable treatment for cancer. The idea that anything exists in between seems to baffle people.