POSITION REQUIREMENTS
…
3. Minimum two years data entry experience
Are you kidding me? Do you legitimately not think I can accurately and efficiently put data into little prescribed boxes? I mean, I’d understand if this was data for some crazy, complicated science experiement, but… membership information for people who donate to NPR?
I just imagined myself actually having two years data entry experience. I felt as though I had the worst last two years ever.
A friend of mine has a cat named Broccoli. When she hadn’t seen it in a few days, she went out looking for it with her boyfriend.
I really wish I could have seen the two of them walking down the street, yelling “Broccoli,” in that long, drawn out way one does when hailing a lost pet.
This post does little justice to how much has happened over the last two weeks. Instead of trying, I’ll just come back more often.
Annie Dillard, For the Time Being
(As of July 2008, the population had increased to 1,330,044,544)
As some of you may recall, I recently had a tycoon-status teleconference with people in both Paris and NYC. This happened at 9am Pacific-time, which was 6pm Paris-time, meaning this guy had to stay late to talk to me. Nobody likes to do that.
His roll in the conversation was to discuss options for online credit merchants. The one that seemed to fit the best financially and logistically was Amazon’s system. It’s not tied to any huge bank, so we wouldn’t be subject to their changes, and it’s pricing didn’t penalize smaller retailers. Additionally, the webshell we were using was already designed to fit it, and using anything else would have required a few days of recoding the page.
But the Bosslady refused.
Apparently Amazon represents the very pinnacle of capitalist evil to her, and has been the bane of small bookstores and independent publishers since it’s inception. (Really, she’s just mad at them for recently forcing publishers to pay for their return-shipping costs). No matter how many positive arguments there were for Amazon, which were numerous, she refused outright. And not like that whole weighing your options and opting to go with your morals kind of refusal; it was totally the common kindergarten cover-your-ears-and-hum while the arguments are made, and then state your original response again. Amazon was bad, and that was final.
So I had to sheepishly respond to the developers that we didn’t want Amazon, and they were going to go have to rework the entire site, and then explain to the dude that despite his compelling arguments and obvious excitement over the best option he’s found in the industry in years, I was acting exactly contrary to his advice.
Then, this morning, my CEO comes downstairs and casually mentions she ordered our new router from Amazon.
While the associated press was busy publishing pieces that detailed, by percentages that didn’t add up to one hundred, where pirate ransom money ultimately goes, along with subheaders that read “Somali Pirates no Johnny Depp,” someone was actually doing some decent investigation and analysis.
Foreign Policy Magazine writes:
The pirates aren’t just getting lucky. Indeed, Somali piracy is quite the opposite of the helter-skelter often portrayed in the media; it is a highly structured enterprise built around a number of syndicates. Pirate bases in Eyl, in the northeastern Puntland region, and in Xarardheere, in central Somalia, stand out for their audacity and for the resources they command. The syndicates operate “mother ships” far offshore that serve as long-range platforms for the speedboats that attack commercial vessels; they own depots along the coast where the pirates resupply before bringing captured boats to their main bases; and they coordinate the networks to support pirate operations on land. A report to the U.N. Security Council last month by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plaintively conceded that “these groups now rival established Somali authorities in terms of their military capabilities and resource bases.”
The complete article can be read here.
In a recent conversation with Jenny, I learned she stopped running the faucet while she pees 3 years ago, and back then Jeff didn’t want to be an environmental lawyer anyways.
After having explaning to my boss the need for regular content updates on our webpage to draw traffic on at least thress seperate occasions, an employee she likes much better suggested we update the blog once a week. Bosslady loved the idea, and asked who would do it this week. While everyone else made themselves small, shuffled their feet, and looked around the room uninterested, the CEO chose me, and told me to have it up as soon as possible, mumbling something about Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.
I was a little upset at first, just because of the time frame, but I ended up really enjoying the process. I got to do some research, interview the CEO of a much-more-together nonprofit, and got an invitation to visit San Quentin State Prison, home of California’s only death row for men. I would have appreciated more time to do some actual analysis, but as the CEO wanted it up quickly, I rushed through it, creating the ultimate penitentary puff-piece.
Three minutes after it’s posted, she comes rushing downstairs and saying “I really wish you would have run that by me before posting it.” This strikes me as being in contrast with her previous instruction to post it as soon as possible, but I apologize anyway. I ask if she wants me to take it down, to which she replies “No, let’s just … fine-tune it a little bit,” and then proceeds to tell me to make corrections to sentences that don’t exist. Before long, it’s very clear that she didn’t even read the article, but rather the first few, and last two sentences, and then guessed as to what else I had written.
I edit what she instructs me to, and she disappears upstairs, seemingly satisfied. A minute later, she comes back down and asks me to change the title. I change it, but remain unclear as to whether or not she actually read the article in it’s entirety, or just went back and read the title.
It should be noted that all of this took place on a day that another coworker left in tears, telling Bosslady, “I can’t take any more of your criticisms today. I’ll be back tomorrow.” I’m not sure if this fact is to her defense, or to her condemnation, but it does force me to ask how she views us as employees. Incompetent? In need of motivation? Lazy? This, in turn, makes me curious as to how she views herself.
My guess is that she doesn’t see what I see. Namely, a twice divorced woman who never graduated from college who’s about to lose her second company as a result of her inability to recognize the reality of her market, desperately trying to convince herself that she has any control over anything (despite the weekly yoga and occasional meditation retreats, which suggest happiness comes from letting go) by psychologically bullying people.
Monday.
Back to work.
And thank God, you know? I really couldn’t wait to get back here and update our wordpress calendar to let everyone know that one of our authors will be speaking at the Restorative Yoga and Sustainable Writing workshop. Unfortunately for the masses of people that Im sure would absolutely love to attend, the email that requested I add the event to the calendar included no details on where and when the workshop was. Whats worse, like any legitimate, professional, or worthwhile event, they don’t have a webpage.
The weekend made today worth it. Saturday exploring Marin, and Sunday I managed to do not-shitty in an alleycat (mainly thanks to DM’s charity) and won this:
(No, thats not me, or my actual hippack, just the picture from the site. Mine is teal, and my jeans are way more fashionable than that dude’s).
