[mo money mo problems] Tell me something UNinteresting about your job

[Fifthfiend]

So basically everyone who has a job has something they totally can't stand and/or love about their job that they can't tell anybody because it would be physically impossible for anyone who isn't them to give a shit.

This is a thread for that! Tell me all about the boring-ass minutae of your humdrum existence. I really, sincerely, honestly want to know!!

EDIT I guess if you're a student that's okay too?

EDIT It had better be really, super mundane though!

[wx4caster]

something interesting is that i cant tell you anything other than i forecast the weather for the military,

how cool is that?

[POS Industries]

So, like, fucking bitches and getting money all day is pretty great. But sometimes you just need to take a break because you get all drained and things start to chafe. So, you know, all the downtime you occasionally have can be kind of a drag, since those are times when you not fucking bitches and getting money.

[Eltargrim]

Been accused of being a creeper/pervert/paedophile because I "stared too much."

That's the entire point of my job, people! How would you like it if I started reading a book and then your kid drowned?

Idiots. Happens about once a week.

[TDK]

if a child drowns once a week then I don't think you're a very good lifeguard :(

[Eltargrim]

But they don't drown, because I watch them! I usually prevent about one drowning a month or so, and that only counts people who started drowning. I'm big on prevention, which means I watch patrons! Gragh!

[Wigmund]

if a child drowns once a week then I don't think you're a very good lifeguard :(

The Pool Gods must have their sacrifices otherwise there will be dire consequences.

[Eltargrim]

I sacrifice the people who shit in the pool. That's just not cool.

[Bob The Mercenary]

I clean breast pumps.

[phil_]

if a child drowns once a week then I don't think you're a very good lifeguard :(I think this is the best post TDK has ever made on any of his various accounts.

Around the end of October, we turn the heaters on at my theater. This makes the air dry and causes high-static conditions. Because of this, all the tiny, stepped-in popcorn particulate that accrues in the lobby and hallway during the course of a show becomes super static-charged. When I try to sweep anything less than a whole kernel off the carpet, the popcorn crumbs fly anywhere but where I'm sweeping them, forcing me to make tiny, slow sweeps, alternating the orientation of the broom every few sweeps so it doesn't get a charge. Even then, the dust tends to fly out of the dustpan whenever it feels like it, forcing me to sweep it up again. It's very frustrating and I'm glad that we're on the tail-end of Spring and I don't have to deal with it for another few months.

[Kerensky287]

I sit at my computer and watch as Fifth continues to try and deconstruct the "runaway hit NPF threads" genre.

[bluestarultor]

I spend a lot of time hating on my English teacher. This is, unfortunately, the second time I've had her for English 102 due to her inability to teach a class. She's not a bad person, but she's incredibly disorganized and has a bad habit of whipping changes out at the last minute, making you scramble, insisting on stupidly narrow topics, and not rewarding you for the right things. I wrote a 5-page paper, essentially a perfect first draft, and made all the changes suggested during peer reviews and her private suggestions, and was excited to get it back. When I did, not only was there no grade for my efforts, but she wrote all sorts of notes about "problems" where they didn't exist just so she could make me revise the damn thing again for the final bit of the course, along with the one I'm doing now. My grade so far has taken three hits because the only points I've gotten for the past two units have been from marking up other people's papers for peer review and I was too busy trying to do my own under the deluded assumption it would matter.

I swear to God if I fail this class again, she's getting the worst review in the history of the school for her retarded grading policies and lack of leadership skills. As it stands, it's still not looking good.

[MasterOfMagic]

Microsoft Access has the worst rounding function known to man. It cannot handle floating point numbers with values way past the decimal point. It just gives up when the value is some distance past 10, and spits out the entire goddamn thing onto your previously nice, lined up report, regardless of your "round to 4 decimal places" setting.

Hate that thing. All it has to do is truncate. TRUNCATE. AAAGH.

Also, why the crap does opening a database add a few kilobytes every time? Having to compact every single one every so often is stupid.

[TIME BOMB]

i make a trip to the water cooler at least once an hour.. Love me some o dat h2o.

[Fifthfiend]

I sit at my computer and watch as Fifth continues to try and deconstruct the "runaway hit NPF threads" genre.

IT's time to play - Choose Your Own Postventure!!

Kerensky continues to construct the "terrible Kerensky posts" genre http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt148/fifthfiend/emoticons/smug.gif

Well maybe you should contribute something to this thread or if you're not going to contribute go somewhere else instead of dragging down everyone else's good time!!!

.

http://i606.photobucket.com/albums/tt148/fifthfiend/letsplay/sooparmario1-1detour-1.jpg




Only you can decide where the story goes from here!

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I've been at my job for over a year and I don't actually know what I'm supposed to do.

[Amake]

I write, so basically I work only when I'm awake or asleep. Every single thing I think and feel and do, or don't do, is either work, inspiration for work, research for work or de-stressification for work. I'm trying to think of something uninteresting or boring to say about it, and failing. It's pretty much wall-to-wall italicized awesome.

Sorry to disappoint.

On reflection, maybe other people don't find what I do as interesting as I do. Let me see if I can bore you. [Throat clearing sound] So I'm sitting in front of my computer, with the breasts of my beautiful wife Lucia pressed against my shoulders as she sneaks a peek, and I disappear into the characters, feel with them as I try to define what they feel and get swept away by those feelings, more vivid and breathtaking than anything I dare feel for myself. And eventually I nail the perfect words to describe those things and stand and thrust my arms up and grunt in triumph and we hug and laugh and hop around.

And when that gets boring I get to take in a movie or some recreational comics or music or just a walk outdoors, in the weather. Almost all weather appeals to me in its own way, it's like when people watch whatever's on TV I guess.

And when I somehow come up with a word I have no idea if I've even ever heard of ("Anfractuous? Is that even a real word?") I get to look it up and discover I'm so damn clever I don't even know it. And maybe I go to the etymology database and find out something fascinating about what the words really mean and why and I feel like a sorcerer learning spells of power.

That's about it. Ah, but let's not forget the constant joys of belittling the shortcomings of spellcheckers and going "I'll use as many sentence fragments as I damn well please, you stupid machine. It's POETRY, nyah."

So yeah. I hope you're more bored than me. What a horrible thing to say. But you've only yourself to blame, Fifth.

[Osterbaum]

I am a student at the faculty of Biological and environmental sciences here at my Uni. There's this course where I had to learn how to handle animals and I found out that mice are a bitch to handle. They don't stop biting you and you have to get the grip just right so they can't turn their head to bite you.

[Kerensky287]

Well maybe you should contribute something to this thread or if you're not going to contribute go somewhere else instead of dragging down everyone else's good time!!!

I DID contribute. I'm unemployed and sulky as a result.

I'm also a volunteer critic of new media. It's my non-job to drag down everyone's good time.

Your response makes you feel good about yourself for a moment, but then you are hit by a bus in an unrelated incident. Should've chosen a different route, I guess!

THE END

[EVILNess]

I am jobless! Yay!

I put in my two week notice after I was stepped over for a promotion at work.

I asked about the position and was told that we were hiring out a new person since we needed someone who could work more flexible hours than everyone else who currently worked. Fine I understand that, it makes sense. I told him to let me know if he changed his mind and dropped it. Then he changes his mind and promotes someone who has been there 6 months less than me.

Now, that doesn't inherently bother me if there was a reason for promoting someone else, but when your boss tells you he "never even thought about you" it's time to move on.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Jobless here too. Well, sort of. I've been doing PAT testing on and off for a while now, but don't tell the job centre people that!

The most boring aspect of the job is... well to be honest, it's all pretty boring. The job involves waiting for people to finish what they're doing on their computers so they can shut them down and get the fuck out of my way, unplugging all their shit (which generally involves wading through a sea of dust and random shit on the floor trying to figure out which of the 3 million cables goes to their computer), then plugging those cables and their computers, monitors, printers and other assorted shit into a testing machine, giving them a serial number, then running any number of automated tests to make sure the shit is safe to continue using, and putting a sticker on it to say its passed, then plugging all their shit back in for them.

Then I get to move on and do it all over again!

On the plus side, aside from having to work around people who don't want me there stopping them from working for 5 minutes because they're soo into whatever mundane shit they do for a living, I pretty much have no boss or anyone else looking over my shoulder watching me, so I can go as fast or as slowly as I want, take breaks when I want, start and finish when I want, and if nobody's around, can stick my iPod on and listen to some tunes as I work, if I want.

[Melfice]

I'm a mail-man.
Despite porn telling us otherwise, mail-men don't have sex every time they deliver mail.

Oh, wait. That's sorta interesting, I guess?

Uh... I walk for several hours, putting mail in mailboxes?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I used to be a mail sorter. We play horse with peoples packages and speed around on mail carts and redirect letters to politicians we don't like to far flung places. That was kind of interesting so really all I did all day was put letters in slots.

[Geminex]

That bit about the politicians is silly. Mostly they're gonna be complaints, so make sure they arrive! And add a few of your own.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Anybody with a real complaint would be writing it on the politician's windows in dogshit.

[Amake]

I'm not sure dogshit deserves such treatment. I mean, dogs are nice. The proper way to register a complaint to a politician is clearly with the shit of malaria parasites.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

I copy shit, file shit, fax shit, take shit, enter the shit into my computer to file it again. Then I file some more shit. Then my boss comes with a "difficult" shit-task which is finished in ten minutes with Excel. Every evening when I come home I'm so full of shit. Then I log on to NPF.

Every time no one looks I dream of a life with a job I can enjoy. A life full of nice things. World peace and love for everyone. A life where my dreams come true. Then I notice I'm dreaming and nothing of it is true. I'm really looking forward to being unemployed in two month's. It'll be a blast. I can quietly do my mandatory civil service in some asylum and pretend I don't mind and all this doesn't matter, it's just a bad dream that will never come true. Until I wake up.

Anyway, to end on a high note. Since this also belongs to my job (training). Today my grades magically improved via the trusted ????-pattern (usually applied to economics. In that case it would be like this: expansion -> boom -> recession -> depression -> expansion -> boom -> recession -> depression -> ???? -> Profit). Seriously, this is too good. My mean is now 1.5 or 1.3 (1 being the best), depending on whether the ???? strikes again. This may help me to find a decent job afterwards.

[batgirl]

If there aren't people dying, I have to sit. In my ambulance. And do nothing.

Unless I bring a book or my DS, but to be honest that gets old fast.

Something else that's boring: I have to take people to the doctor on my stretcher and wait with them during the appointment. Despite these people being on a stretcher, I frequently have to sit in the waiting room for hours with nothing but parenting magazines to read and the news on tv. Not even fucking Price is Right. The I get to go into the office and hear about the patient's corns/skin ulcers/poop problems and watch the doctor do nothing. I wait hours for a 5 min appointment. This happens at least twice a week.

[Fifthfiend]

Your response makes you feel good about yourself for a moment, but then you are hit by a bus in an unrelated incident. Should've chosen a different route, I guess!

THE END

Holy lol

Man, Edward Packard was an asshole.

[krogothwolf]

If it's a really slow day in IT land here I can play video games, it's great!

[Donomni]

Unemployed, but in the sense I don't work for a business.

I'm more or less my mom's secretary and on-and-off toddler distracter.

It is just as tedious and stressful as you would think, which is very(Seriously, divorces fucking SUCK).

[Tev]

My day consists of eight hours in which I answer the phone about fifty times and say “What is wrong? Which box? I sent it a signal. Did that work? No? Then swap it out.” When I am not doing that my attention is evening divided watching TV, reading things here, or poking around the rest of the internet. Sometimes I play Pokemon.

EDIT: Did I mention that I am a five time winner of a company-wide award that has only been around to hand out five times so far?

[synkr0nized]

I just sat here for an hour randomly clicking links on the Internet and refreshing my inbox in a meeting. Mmm. Delicious wastes of time.

[pochercoaster]

I have to clean dried urine off of the toilet in the men's washroom at my work.

Can someone tell me why it's so common for men to miss? Please? We don't even get a lot of kids (I work at a Starbucks-type establishment) but I suppose even after 35 years some men still haven't learned how to aim. Or maybe they're so hopped up from their large extra hot no foam skim vanilla latte half sweet with two extra shots that they can't concentrate on what they're doing. I dunno.

Also, truckers. Can't stand them. Even if they didn't drive very large and obvious trucks I can tell when one's coming because they are almost always short, beer-bellied, balding with white hair and they wear denim tuxedos with baseball caps. That, in itself, is okay, but it enhances the creepy factor when they come in and stare at the girls behind the counter. They also like to strike up conversations over nothing in particular and they're convinced that the years they've spent driving have imbued them with some sort of special wisdom that we should be oh so grateful to listen to. They're also part of a very small group of Ontarions that actually say "eh" on a regular basis, which annoys me for some reason.

That's not to say there AREN'T decent, polite, & non-creepy truckers out there. I've just yet to meet any. So, if you're a trucker and you fit the profile I just described, you can get the fuck out of my store and leave me & my co-workers alone.

[Amake]

Why do dudes stand and pee to begin with? It saves time and effort. Aiming carefully, likewise, takes brain-power that could be used to think about sex or something important like the optimal order of coffee. It's purely a matter of priorities.

Hey, at least it's sterile. Be glad almost no one tries to poop while standing.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

Men can aim correctly AND think about sex at the same time without drifting into a some fetish or something.

It's possibly the only thing we they can multi task.

EDIT: On a whim I decided to change to girl bits again.
EDIT2: Because last time Meister hit on me and I kinda liked that.

[Doc ock rokc]

I work in a Restraunt-Movie theater Hybrid. Basically the waiter takes your order.
Me and My crew take to you your food and drinks, busts the Theaters, do all the Minor but major small stuff that isn't taking the order and giving the check.
then the Waiter comes in to pick up the check and then picks up his tip basically earned off of us.
but in turn we get payed more per hour ($5.50 vs $2.50) but they walk of with more tips (30 bucks a 18 hour weekend vs 80-120 bucks a 5 hour night) ok I giving bad numbers but basically it evens out to 10 bucks a hour for us and 10-15 bucks a hour for them. it kinda Pisses me off.
Also When I find that teen that keeps Flipping the Ranch cups over so that it HAS to spill all over the table when we pick it up Ill kill him.
also It sucks if you actually want to watch the movies your running. I thankfully have avoided Kickass enough not to ruin it. but Clash and How to Train Your Dragon was ruined for me.

[katiuska]

I have to clean dried urine off of the toilet in the men's washroom at my work.

Can someone tell me why it's so common for men to miss? Please? We don't even get a lot of kids (I work at a Starbucks-type establishment) but I suppose even after 35 years some men still haven't learned how to aim. Or maybe they're so hopped up from their large extra hot no foam skim vanilla latte half sweet with two extra shots that they can't concentrate on what they're doing. I dunno.

Also, truckers. Can't stand them. Even if they didn't drive very large and obvious trucks I can tell when one's coming because they are almost always short, beer-bellied, balding with white hair and they wear denim tuxedos with baseball caps. That, in itself, is okay, but it enhances the creepy factor when they come in and stare at the girls behind the counter. They also like to strike up conversations over nothing in particular and they're convinced that the years they've spent driving have imbued them with some sort of special wisdom that we should be oh so grateful to listen to. They're also part of a very small group of Ontarions that actually say "eh" on a regular basis, which annoys me for some reason.

That's not to say there AREN'T decent, polite, and & non-creepy truckers out there. I've just yet to meet any. So, if you're a trucker and you fit the profile I just described, you can get the fuck out of my store and leave me & my co-workers alone.

I'd regularly find the lobby bathroom in my old dorm trashed, and always in the most baffling ways. I have to assume the guilty parties were totally wasted at the time, because there's no other explanation for how substances would end up so far from where they're supposed to go.

This is apparently common in the City, but not something I'd seen anywhere else.

New York women are disgusting.

[Meister]

When I find that teen that keeps Flipping the Ranch cups over so that it HAS to spill all over the table when we pick it up
Until you find the fucker and get to chew him out, bring a flat smooth piece of plastic, maybe an old (invalid) credit card or blank key card or something, or get some cardboard laminated if it really happens a lot. Slide that under the flipped cup and flip it right back. Voila, minimized spillage.

[Wigmund]

What I hate is when the ungrateful fucks buying shit at movie theaters spend their time bitching to you about the prices at the concession stand. Do they think if I had any control over those damn prices that I would spend my time getting bitched at by fat fucks who want a jumbo tub of popcorn, a couple of hot dogs, some fried shit and a large Diet Coke?

Also, while running the door stands pulling tickets I'm amazed how many people will wander aimlessly around the theaters looking for the one they're supposed to be at. Or they get bitchy about waiting in line while the previous movies are letting out and the theater is being cleaned so they won't have to sit in the previous showing's left behind trash, I'd rather let them sit next to someone's used dip cup but the company doesn't like that idea.

Why do dudes stand and pee to begin with? It saves time and effort. Aiming carefully, likewise, takes brain-power that could be used to think about sex or something important like the optimal order of coffee. It's purely a matter of priorities.

Because taking a piss while standing shows our superiority over other creatures by allowing us to write in the snow. Other animals piss while they stand, but can they write notes that vary in length depending on how much one has had to drink?

[Terex4]

I start my day by hitting snooze on the alarm as many times as my wife requests it before she gets up to get the kids ready for school. Then I start to go back to sleep which is interrupted by our 5 year old deciding he doesn't want to go to school and my wife informing him he has to (this has been going on all year).

Once I wake up, I drive to a million different places and hope I get to snag some breakfast from one of the first three. If my wife hasn't gone to work yet, I take her in and await her text message that says "I'm bored". Then I run home and hope for at least 30 minutes of time to sit and smoke a couple cigs and drink a cold soda before the kids come home from school.

I check backpacks for homework and papers I need to sign, find out how much money the school needs this month and send the older two off to do their homework. Then if I'm not exhausted by this point I do some laundry and dishes, then I try to figure out what's for dinner. Once I find inspiration I stop to make sure its within my culinary capacity to make since I suck at cooking and get to work.

After dinner I tell the kids no to at least two or three things before they ask me for something I actually plan to give them. About an hour later I tell them to get ready for bed, make sure my eldest is actually brushing her teeth (or insurance quits paying for braces), make sure my youngest is actually doing what he's told, locating where my middle child has thrown his pants since bedtime means its "boxer time" and making sure said pants are in a tolerable place.

Then I call my mother in law to have her sit with the kids while I go get my wife from work, make sure she has something to eat, then we sit and watch tv or play video games until we go to bed where I sit up until she's asleep in case she needs anything and because my sleeping pattern is fucked six ways from sunday, then I finally fall asleep.

[Doc ock rokc]

Until you find the fucker and get to chew him out, bring a flat smooth piece of plastic, maybe an old (invalid) credit card or blank key card or something, or get some cardboard laminated if it really happens a lot. Slide that under the flipped cup and flip it right back. Voila, minimized spillage.

I would do that but the cups are wider then a credit card. It doesn't happen enough to justify carrying it but still it happens enough where i can complain about it. I know it's the same dude because he has a habit of drawing a smiley face in the ranch right next to the cup. Asshole.

[bluestarultor]

I would do that but the cups are wider then a credit card. It doesn't happen enough to justify carrying it but still it happens enough where i can complain about it. I know it's the same dude because he has a habit of drawing a smiley face in the ranch right next to the cup. Asshole.

Man, I wish it was still like when my grandpa was my age and the establishment pulled assholes like that over and made them clean up their own "funny" messes before they could leave. People back then had more balls. Or at least there were more small businesses, which tend not to tell their workers to eat shit and grin because God help them if they lose one asshole customer out of their millions nationwide.

Funny how that works. You'd think they'd be able to afford the integrity.

[Ecks]

EDIT: On a whim I decided to change to girl bits again.
EDIT2: Because last time Meister hit on me and I kinda liked that.

You have no idea how far up the creep-o-meter that just bumped you, IG.

And you were pretty high up in the first place.

EDIT: Oh, by the way, I should actually post something on-topic.

I work in a food packing plant. Mostly dry goods, i.e. Cheetos (yum), Okedoke Popcorn (double yum), Sun Chips, Doritos, etc.

I also hate just about everyone in a position of authority there. Because the way they run the place just makes you wanna scream until your ears bleed. THE ONLY CAKE THING ABOUT THE JOB (cake as in "piece of cake") is that if no one's lookin, you can swipe some stuff off the product line and snack while you work. Just make sure you're the guy dumping or some other position where they're less likely to replace you if you get caught doing it. We are assigned jobs, but what we end up doing is at the shift coordinator's discretion.

I am not a company employee, unfortunately, I'm a temp. So I don't usually end up with the cool jobs (hi-lo driver, inspector, machine operator, etc). This also means I'm not guaranteed work each and every day. The unusual part is that THEY DO NOT CALL US TO TELL US WHEN WE'RE SCHEDULED TO WORK. We have to drive TO THE PLANT to see if we're scheduled, if we're not, we stand around until about fifteen minutes after the shift starts (or until the shift supervisor either finds a place for us to work or tells us to go home) at which point we go home ANYWAY. No, we do not get compensation for the gas we spent getting there. And no, we do not get to call in and ask, because then we're tying up their phone lines and they're doing business at a snail's pace, and we're just temps SO ITS TOTALLY OKAY TO SHIT ON US BECAUSE WE HAVE NO RIGHTS OR BENEFITS.

Plus side? LOTS OF FREE TIME. That I usually can't enjoy because I HAS NO MONIES.

[Wigmund]

I would do that but the cups are wider then a credit card. It doesn't happen enough to justify carrying it but still it happens enough where i can complain about it. I know it's the same dude because he has a habit of drawing a smiley face in the ranch right next to the cup. Asshole.

If you know who he is, poison his next order. Something slow acting so you don't have to deal with the body at work.

[katiuska]

I have to clean dried urine off of the toilet in the men's washroom at my work.

Can someone tell me why it's so common for men to miss? Please? We don't even get a lot of kids (I work at a Starbucks-type establishment) but I suppose even after 35 years some men still haven't learned how to aim. Or maybe they're so hopped up from their large extra hot no foam skim vanilla latte half sweet with two extra shots that they can't concentrate on what they're doing. I dunno.

Also, truckers. Can't stand them. Even if they didn't drive very large and obvious trucks I can tell when one's coming because they are almost always short, beer-bellied, balding with white hair and they wear denim tuxedos with baseball caps. That, in itself, is okay, but it enhances the creepy factor when they come in and stare at the girls behind the counter. They also like to strike up conversations over nothing in particular and they're convinced that the years they've spent driving have imbued them with some sort of special wisdom that we should be oh so grateful to listen to. They're also part of a very small group of Ontarions that actually say "eh" on a regular basis, which annoys me for some reason.

That's not to say there AREN'T decent, polite, & non-creepy truckers out there. I've just yet to meet any. So, if you're a trucker and you fit the profile I just described, you can get the fuck out of my store and leave me & my co-workers alone.

Oh, I fogort to respond re: truckers.

My Dad owns a CB radio he can tune into on long trips, ostensibly to stay abreast of traffic and traffic cops and stuff. A lot of it is boring, but every so often you'll get a gem.

*While passing a strip club*
Driver1: Man, I could go for some titties, but I already seen those.
Driver2: What's the problem?
Driver1: I already seen it! I want to see.... something different. Something bigger! Something... something.
Driver3: And you wonder why people look down on us.
Driver4: I dunno, I'd kinda like to see some titties.

That was pretty much the highlight of the trip.

[01d55]

Most posts in this thread are far too interesting for this thread.

[A Zarkin' Frood]

I once ate a sandwich at work.

[MasterOfMagic]

Most posts in this thread are far too interesting for this thread.
Phil was really the only one to get it right.

[Lost in Time]

Something happened yesterday that confused me. I work at a drive-thru. And during the afternoon, this kid came through. Real young, must have just gotten his license. I took his money and he drove off a few feet. I look down at him, this happens a few times, but mostly with older, more forgetful men. But he comes back in reverse after a few seconds. He was trying to hold back from smiling, but failing miserably.. I shrugged it off and gave him his change. Then he asked for his receipt. Like usual, I say I'll put it on his bag when his food is ready. When that time comes I hand him the bag, and he grabs the receipt and crumples it up and throws it in the back of his car, bursts out laughing, and drives off. This guy deserves a medal for burning me so hard.

[Fifthfiend]

Most posts in this thread are far too interesting for this thread.

Numsie

do a post about pointers

[Nique]

I do essentially, if not exactly, the same thing Tev does. What makes my hum-drum story of work related woe unique is my terrible schedule which is Friday-through-Tuesday 1PM to 10PM.

I should better adapt to my schedule by getting to bed around midnight and waking up bright-eyed at 8am to enjoy the day! But no matter what time I get to bed it is the same story - up at the crack of noon and off to work :( I often opt for staying up until 4am to play video games.

[Kim]

Apparently there are some problems with either my background check, or the info I volunteered on the employment form, so I don't get to start work today, probably. But my Supervisor didn't know apparently, so I've got everything here to start hitting up houses. Blergh.

I'm hoping it's just because they're looking into my inattentive driving incident back in 2007, and not because I have some arrest warrant that I have no idea about. I don't really think I'd have one, and I can't really think of what I'd have one for, but that I have a warrant out for my arrest is a personal fear of mine.

[Ryanderman]

So there's a model on my screen. A model representing some physical object. I do stuff to the model, then click a button and sit and wait while my computer does, as far as it appears, nothing for an hour or more. Even better, it does nothing so hard that it can't do anything else while it's doing nothing. So I sit and wait for it to finish doing nothing, and hope that it'll do nothing successfully, and give me useful information. But more likely, it will completely fail at doing nothing, forcing me to tweek the model in frustratingly minute ways and try again.

What do I do while it's doing nothing? Bend paperclips. Not in any interesting shapes of course, just randomly bend them until they break. Then bend another.

[01d55]

Numsie

do a post about pointers

So a pointer is a value that holds the address of a different value or of a class, which is a box full of values. Most programming languages have a way of "dereferencing" pointers to get the value of the thing they point at that's really easy, which leads to careless people forgetting that a pointer to a thing is not the thing itself, which leads to FUN TIMES and also memory leaks.

In C and C++, you can have a pointer to anything, including and especially other pointers. When you declare an array, C and C++ just allocate a block of memory on the stack and the name of the array is actually the name of a pointer to the start of that block, so you can actually use any pointer as an array and there is NO CHECKING to make sure that the pointer you are using as an array is actually an array or that you aren't running off the end of the array or anything. C trusts you to know what the hell you are doing!

You can also have pointers to functions. The syntax for these is finicky as hell, and pointers to member functions of C++ classes is finicky squared. They're generally used when some library wants to allow you to set a function to be called when something happens, most classically when an operating system allows you to handle signals. The function pointer must have a return type and list of parameters that matches exactly the function it points at, or the code will not compile.

A special kind of pointer is the void pointer. Basically, a void pointer could point to anything. It's just an address in memory! You simply can't dereference a void pointer without casting it to some other type of pointer, at which point the bits at the address in the void pointer are assumed to be the bits of whatever type you cast it to, regardless if those bits make any sense. Casting between types is generally dangerous but C will let you do it because C trusts you. Void pointers are most often seen as the return type of malloc and other C heap allocation functions.

The second most common use of void pointers is as an argument in function pointers in registered callbacks - the idea being to let the "user code" set a function pointer and a void pointer. The prototype of the function pointer is of a function that takes a void pointer as an argument; when some particular event occurs that function is called with that argument, and if the user code is sensible it can cast that void pointer to the type of the thing it does in fact point at. This allows registered callback functions to take whatever argument the user needs them to at the cost of allowing the user to easily break everything without causing some obvious sign at the source of the problem.

If you break the value of a pointer - for example, by adding a value to a pointer to int instead of to the int that is pointed to, or not initializing a pointer before you use it, or dereferencing an array of N elements by N (INDEX FROM ZERO YOU MORON), you can break literally anything. If you're pointing to a value on the stack, you can accidentally overwrite instructions with completely random instructions or plain nonsense. If you're pointing to the heap you can corrupt the heap and crash the program. If you are lucky, your program will segfault and any sensible debugger will tell you which pointer went wrong. If you make a healthy habit of initializing pointers to NULL, this will be your most common pointer problem.

[Julford Hajime]

Dammit ZeroOneDeeFiveFive, you were supposed to make the thread more boring. I found your post interesting and have learned from it.

[Doc ock rokc]

HA! one of our managers found the bastard that was doing it. Not just any manager ether. It's the Kitchen Manager. Now I know this wont mean much to you without a example but he makes This man look like a saint in comparison (http://aimlesstopics.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/hells-kitchen1.jpg)
Oh I guess i could talk about them to make things interesting in here
My work has One of every type of stereotypical managers.

We got the New Fresh upstart one that Follows health code laws to the book (So much that we can't get our free drinks during a shift because we could contaminate something. or push the rolling trashcan into a theater to speed up cleaning because it's a "seating area")

We got the Party hard manager, Who jokes and is nice to everyone and doesn't follow any rules at all. (he is the one that usually drags the rolling trashcan in to theaters if we say we can't)

We got the Accountant Manager, the guy that constantly thinks in dollars and cents and follows the rules only to avoid penalties. (he also likes to "fuck things up" by NOT following the Runners rules (which is always take away empty trays, Deliver what you take in, and man your own costumers requests)

We got the Good news bad news Manager that tries not to be mean but also tries not to be nice. so he will complement and tell you to do something.

Then there is the Not a manager Manager The one that Is technically a manager but no one (even herself) thinks or acts like she is one

The manager behind the manager a guy that isn't a manager but everyone acts like he is one (and other managers go to for advice)

Then we have the Kitchen manager...who is Mr.Bad-guy He is hell to deal with during the shift but once the stuff is over and everything is done He is the Nicest man i have ever met

[Ecks]

Y'know, I don't think Gordon Ramsey is such a bad guy. I watch his BBCA shows "The F Word" and the British run of "Kitchen Nightmares" and its usually when he's dealing with cocky, arrogant snots that he's raging and swearing all the time.

ESPECIALLY when he does Hell's Kitchen.

I remember the season with the one guy who called himself "the black Gordon Ramsey." The look on Gordon's face while he was on the tour bus disguised was priceless.