• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

CT: What's the deal with those guys in The Pit?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Sounds like a lot of government employees I know and interact with.

I have to work with lots of permitting/zoning departments. Those are the most unpleasant twat waffles this world has ever seen.
 
This never happens in the private sector.

I don't think most people get into transportation because of a love of it. Also, even State, while you think people would do it because an interest in the world or travel, you still get a fair number who just want a government job, hours and benefits, and actually hate living overseas.

Its much more difficult to be let go from a government job, so people feel more comfortable saying no helping. I've seen the best and worst of it, and unfortunately the best are outnumbered.
 
I don't think most people get into transportation because of a love of it. Also, even State, while you think people would do it because an interest in the world or travel, you still get a fair number who just want a government job, hours and benefits, and actually hate living overseas.

Its much more difficult to be let go from a government job, so people feel more comfortable saying no helping. I've seen the best and worst of it, and unfortunately the best are outnumbered.

I was once told that statistically a person is more likely to die while working a fed job than to get fired.
 
yes, though more on the planning and entitlement stuff than the building and engineering permit stuff

Gotcha, I'm on the building and permit stuff side. Most small towns are really easy to work with. When the permit guy is also the guy that cuts the grass around the government buildings, things run pretty smooth. When it's some Karen that is on a power trip, but can't interpret the code, doesn't understand site plans and is unresponsive, it makes things way more difficult.

Then you have the places like Cary and Apex who are in a competition to see who can be the most restrictive. That isn't the permit clerks fault, but it is a pain in my ass.
 
I had the roasted turkey avocado BLT in a pinch at the SLC airport Panera 2 weeks ago and thought it was damn good. Hadn't eaten at a Panera in years though.
 
I'm kinda bummed I started this talk about Gov't workers sucking.

I've rarely encountered a university administrator, or an airline agent, or a power company service tech, or a cable company employee of any kind, or a god damn health insurance company associate, go above and beyond the confines of the their job description and pretty often they won't even do their actual job description. I think what you all are describing is the malaise of working within large organizations that gives workers little or no authority or incentive to do a good job. That's not a problem with government workers, it is a problem with organizations and institutions.
 
I'm kinda bummed I started this talk about Gov't workers sucking.

I've rarely encountered a university administrator, or an airline agent, or a power company service tech, or a cable company employee of any kind, or a god damn health insurance company associate, go above and beyond the confines of the their job description and pretty often they won't even do their actual job description. I think what you all are describing is the malaise of working within large organizations that gives workers little or no authority or incentive to do a good job. That's not a problem with government workers, it is a problem with organizations and institutions.

You're right. It isn't just government. I think what frustrates most people is that if the cable company is frustrating you, then you can threaten to cancel and they *might* make something happen. You can't tell the government employee that you are cancelling and going with their competitor.
 
Skinny, do you work on any projects in Durham? I’m a casual observer but very interested in the development process given how much activity we have here. It’s insane to me how long it takes to get a development request approved.
 
Nonetheless, the assumption that government is necessarily top-heavy with featherbedding and unnecessary levels of administrative hierarchy, while the private sector is lean and mean, is by now so firmly lodged in people’s heads that it seems no amount of evidence will dislodge it.

No doubt some of this misconception is due to memories of countries such as the Soviet Union, which had a policy of full employment and was therefore obliged to make up jobs for everyone whether a need existed or not. This is how the USSR ended up with shops where customers had to go through three different clerks to buy a loaf of bread, or road crews where, at any given moment, two-thirds of the workers were drinking, playing cards, or dozing off. This is always represented as exactly what would never happen under capitalism. The last thing a private firm, competing with other private firms, would do is to hire people it doesn’t actually need. If anything, the usual complaint about capitalism is that it’s too efficient, with private workplaces endlessly hounding employees with constant speed-ups, quotas, and surveillance.

Obviously, I’m not going to deny that the latter is often the case. In fact, the pressure on corporations to downsize and increase efficiency has redoubled since the mergers and acquisitions frenzy of the 1980s. But this pressure has been directed almost exclusively at the people at the bottom of the pyramid, the ones who are actually making, maintaining, fixing, or transporting things. Anyone forced to wear a uniform in the exercise of his daily labors, for instance, is likely to be hard-pressed. FedEx and UPS delivery workers have backbreaking schedules designed with “scientific” efficiency. In the upper echelons of those same companies, things are not the same. We can, if we like, trace this back to the key weakness in the managerial cult of efficiency—its Achilles’ heel, if you will. When managers began trying to come up with scientific studies of the most time- and energy-efficient ways to deploy human labor, they never applied those same techniques to themselves—or if they did, the effect appears to have been the opposite of what they intended. As a result, the same period that saw the most ruthless application of speed-ups and downsizing in the blue-collar sector also brought a rapid multiplication of meaningless managerial and administrative posts in almost all large firms. It’s as if businesses were endlessly trimming the fat on the shop floor and using the resulting savings to acquire even more unnecessary workers in the offices upstairs. (As we’ll see, in some companies, this was literally the case.) The end result was that, just as Socialist regimes had created millions of dummy proletarian jobs, capitalist regimes somehow ended up presiding over the creation of millions of dummy white-collar jobs instead.
 
Also I always like Panera just fine when I get it. Never my first choice but always pretty reliable.
 
At some point, I just need to go ahead and read Bullshit Jobs. I'm guessing he also argues that capitalism doesn't just create millions of dummy white-collar jobs, it also creates millions of executives, stakeholders, and shareholders who siphon off the value of that labor. So there are fewer workers but more bureaucracy. Some of that is also probably a product of maintaining a wage hierarchy instead of just paying good workers more to continue doing their job well.
 
CT: Sads for the Goose

^That has not been my experience. Edit: what TK posted.

Also, I have had plenty of airline agents go above and beyond. I think many people feel entitled to abuse airline agents. If I had people treating me like shit all the time I might not have the cheeriest disposition.
 
Skinny, do you work on any projects in Durham? I’m a casual observer but very interested in the development process given how much activity we have here. It’s insane to me how long it takes to get a development request approved.

We do work in Durham, but we don’t build houses.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top