I agree with you about the union dues sucking for the low-wage guys. My first job was for a union grocery store (as a carry-out), in the $4.25/hr minimum wage era, and I only started taking home decent paychecks in the last couple of months after having the dues deducted.
I was working and going to school that summer, and even though I had given the management my schedule, and they had verbally agreed to work around my classes, they never did. Every week I was scheduled right in the middle of my classes and I had to find someone to trade with.
When Finals came up, I called in sick - of course I wasn't, but I was scheduled something like 4-midnight the night before a 9:00 AM final and school is way more important than a grocery store job - and they fired me for it.
I had my union dues paid up so I could have brought a grievance against the dickhead manager, and in retrospect I wish I would have, just to make his life worse, but then it wasn't worth the hassle for the $4.25/hr. I ended up doing farm labor on my days off, getting paid under the table, and made about 3x what I was making at that store.
The nice thing about the USA is that nobody forces you to work a job where you have to pay union dues. But, sometimes it's worth it.
you're totally preaching to the choir. It's just that defending labor unions (my dad's a retired steelworker, it's in my blood) gets you branded as Marxist more often than not these days, especially among the kids of white collar parents, which seems to be most of/.'s readership.
btw...I agree with the "over worked" premise that the former EA employees have presented. The problem is that this is a society issue and not one that is specific to EA. I've been studying the "over worked American" for a couple years and I can tell you that the issue is not exclusive to the IT or gaming industries. As long as we Americans strive to live in excess we will work in excess.
There is much truth in this. The happiest, most content people I've met were near-homeless, lived check to check and had next to nothing in material wealth. The reason they were happy was because they didn't want anything more. At the risk of sounding Marxist, the consumerist BUY IT NOW society plays right into the exploiters' hands.
I'm fortunate enough to have a great manager right now who thinks like you describe. However, I know better than to think he's anything like the norm, and I feel for my brothers that have to work under slave-drivers like the ones at EA.
You, sir, are a middle manager's wet dream. Why? You love your work and you don't care how masochistic it is, you'll put up with anything as long as you get to do it.
Please stop speaking for the rest of us, who work because we have to and would rather be just about anywhere but our jobs, save a homeless shelter, Fallujah, or prison.
you're comparing a minimum-wage mindless job that any idiot can do (quite frankly) with that of trained professionals that should be respected for their knowledge and their contribution to company profits.
As a stock boy, you were pure overhead. For that matter, all customer-facing employees in retail are overhead, costs that corporations would love not to have, but are seen as necessary evils. A retail company's perfect world would be one huge vending machine with a conveyor belt from the factory to the point where you can get it out of the machine.
I have a co-worker (on the opposite side of the cube wall from me in fact) named Adam Miller, who also doesn't get much sleep and is a heavy-duty gamer that's active in the fanfic and d20 gaming community.
Unless he's been lying to us all all along and he's really this same Adam Miller.
- the whole cheesy "random family with shipping business just happens to provide the Rebellion with yet another hero" storyline turned me off. - that stupid robot sidekick was like a bad ripoff of Bender and I didn't like Futurama in the first place. - it was too fucking hard for hard's sake. The missions were endurance tests, not intelligent action puzzles like in X-Wing and Tie Fighter
Aerin's (if that's her name) voice actress sounded hot, though:)
that hasn't bought into this integrated media center pc bullshit?
To listen to CDs, I put them in the CD player that I got for $20 at a pawnshop. I don't have an mp3 player that isn't on my PC, and I don't feel the need to get one.
For video, to watch a movie, I put the DVD in my DVD player. If I need to record something, I.. wait, I don't watch enough TV to want to record anything.
I use PCs for work and for at least one of my hobbies (gaming) so leaving the PC for some of my entertainment is a good thing.
mostly I was just trying to be funny. My job isn't perfect but it's not as painful as this book seems to indicate cubicle life as being.
I'm still just working to save money to start my own business, though. The USA is becoming a nation where only corporations have rights, and you never truly get ahead working for someone else anyway.
I liked it enough to play it quite a bit, but the depth was seriously lacking. It had a lot of information, and a lot of characters, but not much variety in the way you could win - it was basically follow the plot of the movies or lose. Plus, missions were broken, space battles were crap, and nothing really gave you a good sense of being master of the star wars universe.
Hell yeah to #2. I want to see Rebellion done right. Like MOO3 but with the Star Wars license, and scenarios for all three eras - Old Republic, Rebellion, New Republic.
Also... What about Star Wars: Total War? ala Shogun, Medieval, and now Rome? massive battles with the Star Wars units.. mmm hmm.
In my opinion, spam is a theft of services (bandwidth and mail server capacity), so the punishment should be in the same proportion as for stealing cable or phone service.
I was an apple II guy too! I have a IIgs back at my parents' that I decommissioned from an elementary school (yes, legitimately). When I was a kid I always wanted one (I had a//c) but we could never afford it.
Unfortunately once I booted it and saw that it was just old and not really going to do anything that I wanted to do, I shut it down and put it back in the attic. Being married and having a full time job kind of puts the damper on your gratuitous geeking.
TRS-80 Model 100
on
Digital Retro
·
· Score: 3, Funny
This story made me go onto ebay and bid on a Model 100.
no, what's worse is making the same goddamn slashdotting comment for every fucking story that gets posted.
What is this fascination with sites getting a lot of traffic and servers collapsing under the load? why does this fill you assholes with so much glee? are you so morally bankrupt that you have to resort to laughing at hardware failure?? jesus christ..
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you about the union dues sucking for the low-wage guys. My first job was for a union grocery store (as a carry-out), in the $4.25/hr minimum wage era, and I only started taking home decent paychecks in the last couple of months after having the dues deducted.
I was working and going to school that summer, and even though I had given the management my schedule, and they had verbally agreed to work around my classes, they never did. Every week I was scheduled right in the middle of my classes and I had to find someone to trade with.
When Finals came up, I called in sick - of course I wasn't, but I was scheduled something like 4-midnight the night before a 9:00 AM final and school is way more important than a grocery store job - and they fired me for it.
I had my union dues paid up so I could have brought a grievance against the dickhead manager, and in retrospect I wish I would have, just to make his life worse, but then it wasn't worth the hassle for the $4.25/hr. I ended up doing farm labor on my days off, getting paid under the table, and made about 3x what I was making at that store.
The nice thing about the USA is that nobody forces you to work a job where you have to pay union dues. But, sometimes it's worth it.
yeah, but good luck taking it away from them.
you're totally preaching to the choir. It's just that defending labor unions (my dad's a retired steelworker, it's in my blood) gets you branded as Marxist more often than not these days, especially among the kids of white collar parents, which seems to be most of /.'s readership.
btw...I agree with the "over worked" premise that the former EA employees have presented. The problem is that this is a society issue and not one that is specific to EA. I've been studying the "over worked American" for a couple years and I can tell you that the issue is not exclusive to the IT or gaming industries. As long as we Americans strive to live in excess we will work in excess.
There is much truth in this. The happiest, most content people I've met were near-homeless, lived check to check and had next to nothing in material wealth. The reason they were happy was because they didn't want anything more. At the risk of sounding Marxist, the consumerist BUY IT NOW society plays right into the exploiters' hands.
I had never heard that. I now see Dilbert in a wholly different light. Thanks.
(seriously)
I'm fortunate enough to have a great manager right now who thinks like you describe. However, I know better than to think he's anything like the norm, and I feel for my brothers that have to work under slave-drivers like the ones at EA.
You, sir, are a middle manager's wet dream. Why? You love your work and you don't care how masochistic it is, you'll put up with anything as long as you get to do it.
Please stop speaking for the rest of us, who work because we have to and would rather be just about anywhere but our jobs, save a homeless shelter, Fallujah, or prison.
you're comparing a minimum-wage mindless job that any idiot can do (quite frankly) with that of trained professionals that should be respected for their knowledge and their contribution to company profits.
As a stock boy, you were pure overhead. For that matter, all customer-facing employees in retail are overhead, costs that corporations would love not to have, but are seen as necessary evils. A retail company's perfect world would be one huge vending machine with a conveyor belt from the factory to the point where you can get it out of the machine.
this is so fucking bizarre.
I have a co-worker (on the opposite side of the cube wall from me in fact) named Adam Miller, who also doesn't get much sleep and is a heavy-duty gamer that's active in the fanfic and d20 gaming community.
Unless he's been lying to us all all along and he's really this same Adam Miller.
Do you happen to live in the St. Louis area?
no kidding. If I didn't have the net I'd be digging ditches for a living just to avoid the boredom.
I wanted to love Alliance but...
:)
- the whole cheesy "random family with shipping business just happens to provide the Rebellion with yet another hero" storyline turned me off.
- that stupid robot sidekick was like a bad ripoff of Bender and I didn't like Futurama in the first place.
- it was too fucking hard for hard's sake. The missions were endurance tests, not intelligent action puzzles like in X-Wing and Tie Fighter
Aerin's (if that's her name) voice actress sounded hot, though
that hasn't bought into this integrated media center pc bullshit?
To listen to CDs, I put them in the CD player that I got for $20 at a pawnshop. I don't have an mp3 player that isn't on my PC, and I don't feel the need to get one.
For video, to watch a movie, I put the DVD in my DVD player. If I need to record something, I.. wait, I don't watch enough TV to want to record anything.
I use PCs for work and for at least one of my hobbies (gaming) so leaving the PC for some of my entertainment is a good thing.
mostly I was just trying to be funny. My job isn't perfect but it's not as painful as this book seems to indicate cubicle life as being.
I'm still just working to save money to start my own business, though. The USA is becoming a nation where only corporations have rights, and you never truly get ahead working for someone else anyway.
Cooking isn't cheaper if it's just for one person.
A lot of the food that you stock up on will go bad before one person can eat it all.
The last thing I want to do after living this for 8 hours a day is to go home and read about it.
I liked it enough to play it quite a bit, but the depth was seriously lacking. It had a lot of information, and a lot of characters, but not much variety in the way you could win - it was basically follow the plot of the movies or lose. Plus, missions were broken, space battles were crap, and nothing really gave you a good sense of being master of the star wars universe.
Hell yeah to #2. I want to see Rebellion done right. Like MOO3 but with the Star Wars license, and scenarios for all three eras - Old Republic, Rebellion, New Republic.
Also... What about Star Wars: Total War? ala Shogun, Medieval, and now Rome? massive battles with the Star Wars units.. mmm hmm.
In my opinion, spam is a theft of services (bandwidth and mail server capacity), so the punishment should be in the same proportion as for stealing cable or phone service.
Western Europe believes in birth control.
there have been semi-automatic shotguns for over 100 years.
Please research before you spew bullshit.
Evolutionary biologists would say that war is population control for humans since the only natural predator man has is himself.
That's a little too cynical for my tastes, but it's probably true.
I was an apple II guy too! I have a IIgs back at my parents' that I decommissioned from an elementary school (yes, legitimately). When I was a kid I always wanted one (I had a //c) but we could never afford it.
Unfortunately once I booted it and saw that it was just old and not really going to do anything that I wanted to do, I shut it down and put it back in the attic. Being married and having a full time job kind of puts the damper on your gratuitous geeking.
This story made me go onto ebay and bid on a Model 100.
I have no idea why.
Colon be damned.
I had one of those at taco bell the other day
no, what's worse is making the same goddamn slashdotting comment for every fucking story that gets posted.
What is this fascination with sites getting a lot of traffic and servers collapsing under the load? why does this fill you assholes with so much glee? are you so morally bankrupt that you have to resort to laughing at hardware failure?? jesus christ..