First rant of 2008

At work we have a bunch of microwaves for people to use for warming up their lunches, which is a nice convenience in my opinion. There’s even one outside the front office where my cubicle is. One thing that seems to happen a lot is that people will take their food out of the machine before the timer ends and NOT clear the damn thing. What I want to know is why people are setting the damn timer when they have no intention of waiting for the damn thing to count down. If they want to warm their food for 2 minutes, why do they take it out at 1:30. SET THE FUCKING MACHING FOR 1:30. IS THIS SO FUCKING HARD?

This happens all the time around here and it amazes me at the lack of logic around here. The things I’ve seen are amazing. But I cannot blog about them because some things are told me in confidence, and other stuff I overhear. Either way, I’m going to keep quiet about stuff that could bite me in the ass, but there is one thing that I can reveal because it doesn’t involve any other staff.

I’m in the front office and I’m the one who usually buzz people in. That is the door is locked and I have to hit a button to unlock the door so they can enter. Outside there is a sign on the door telling people to push the doorbell button to be “Buzzed” in, simple enough? I thought so, but 90% of the people who come into the office cannot get it right, and out of that remaining 10%, 8% are either vendors, sales people or service people. I call this the “First Hurdle of getting a job”, if you can’t understand the process of getting into the front office, then you score high on my list. Again, I usually have to wave these people to get them to open the door. STUPID!!!!

Another thing that gets me after they walk in, if they start talking to someone else in the front office that happens to be of the same ethnic group as them, they tend to ignore me and start talking to the other person in their native language. This seriously pisses me off, so much so that I’ll ignore them for a good 10-15 seconds after they ask me for an application. Apparently I’m not important enough to talk too, so why the hell should I bother with then, especially after they failed the Door Test.

The big issue in this city is the need for smart workers, and right now we’re force to scrape the bottom of the barrel, and based on what is walking in to apply, we’re scraping pretty deep.

Another thing I’ve been doing is looking over the applications for issues, such as contact information, but I also notice other things, like the lack of language skills. Now if I were moving to a new country, I would make it a priority to LEARN the language of the country that I’m moving too, thus if I we’re moving to Canada, I’d make sure that I knew how to speak, read and write in English (or French if I was heading for Quebec). If I were moving to Japanese, I’d take some time (months at least) to make sure that I could speak the language and learn the basics of the written language (ok 6 months would be needed, but dammit, I would make the effort).We give out a 3 page application which requests standard information like name, address, previous work experience and education. I’ve seen people take over 30 minutes to fill this thing out, and some of the take the applications to their car to ask their friends what they should write down.

Ok people, here’s some tips, Under Name of University (if Applicable) , do not put your country of origin. Also under Please tell me why you’re interested in applying for this position, DO NOT PUT, Me need money for rent and food. I swear that I can’t take this much longer.

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