I'm Over Contract Work, Thanks

I have been working on-contract since 2006, when Cingular bought AT&T and handed me over to a boss who was "passionate about delivering quality metrics." I had no upward mobility in that organization, and was so angry about the jackload who was managing me at the time being allowed to manage at all that I took off. I said "Later days, better lays" and went the contract route. It's been good and bad and not great ever since then. Sometimes it's been a clusterfist. It has all been about making money, and that's not always a good thing. When you're making money, more than some folks you work with, you can still be on the shit-end of the butt-wiping stick.
Here "why" is.

Apropos of nothing, I can NOT get a good cup of coffee today. It's thrown my day off-center. Usually I get 2 cups of coffee in over the day, with 2 cups of green tea in there, but ride my ears if I find a decent cup in this dump. MultiBILLION dollar comp'ny, zip-point shit for coffoise. BALLS.

Contract work allows one the freedom to move from company to company as soon as you screw up a project. If you're good at what you do, like I am with building requirements, determining requirement-design gaps, project management, business intelligence, interviewing, and redirecting fart-blame, your contract runs out close to the time you achieve Full Immersion and Momentum! on a project. Kinda like being in the act of coitus and the interruptus happens right about the time you realize you're setting some new stamina record, but OH HERE COMES THE FANTASY SYRUP and then BLAP...
you're cleaning out your desk with a loin-heat unlike any you've ever felt, and you're out of work again.

But if you're under 30, unmarried (or financially secure with your partner's money), and without children, Contracting is a great way to build a resumé. Otherwise you wanna get in a place and put down roots. Here's why:

Contractors are treated like rent-a-Cops at concerts. Necessary, sure. Doing a job some folks could not do, or are just too busy for. You are good enough to work AT, but not FOR, that company. Don't forget that.
Contractors get scraps. If your company has an all-day off-site meeting with guest speaker Alfonso Ribeiro, that's EMPLOYEES ONLY, mmkay? So you sit tight and finish working while the Employees go nuts watching The Carlton Dance up-close.
Benefits aren't great. 3rd-tier health care. Little/no retirement investing. You're on your own to drop $ into a Roth IRA or 401k, and don't expect the consulting company you're with to match it.

So I am 100% thankful for, but now totally over, my Contracting experience. I am actively pursuing full-time, in-house positions with a number of companies, but I think a lot of it is going to be contacting my friends at these places. Which I'm happy to do. I interview a lot so I'm comfortable widdit. I just hope the coffee doesn't taste like trucker underwear.

Not that I have perspective.
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MC, HOST, CORPORATE, COMEDY, SEATTLE, GEOFF, LOTT

Customer Disservice - Verizon Edition

Soooo... I got hooked up with Verizon for home phone, innernat, and a TV package through DirecTV which was a whole different bag of lazy. For some reason - likely a major miss on the part of the web-design team at Verizon - they aren't updating their billing system when they receive my money. In effect, their record that I see - "my bill" - shows I'm 2 months behind on payments, while my records and those of my bank show the payments having been processed every month.

WHILE I DON'T EVEN HAVE A FULL TIME JOB, in case any of you are lenders. I make payments, monkey face. We do money right!

SO, I finally track down a number to call in to Verizon with so that I can discuss why THEY are behind on my payments and YES that makes sense, and here's what happens:

1. The underpaid person I speak with tells me she has to transfer me to somebody who "handles my area," which I assume is Kirkland and NOT my "fundle." (3min)
2. The next guy I talk to is also likely underpaid, but makes up for it by being nearly unintelligible while speaking. I tell him what's wrong and he says he has to transfer me to a Billing Specialist. Unlike a medical, military, or culinary specialist, Billing Specialists eat lunch at their desks and have a fondness for books with Fabio on the cover. (7min)
3. The Billing Specialist, in the tone of whose voice I could hear an earring and a number of silk shirts, tells me... everyone now!... he HAS TO TRANSFER ME TO SOMEBODY WHO HANDLES MY AREA. Kirkland must have a special corral of friendly, caucasian-sounding reps on the ready at Verizon.
4. The Real Billing Specialist tells me that she shows my payments have all gone through, but the website version of my bill doesn't reflect it. She admits a few weird things going on in updates to the billing and website infrastructure (my word, not hers). Then tells me they have my payments, and that I should speak to the Web team, then tries to transfer me. Hey, I'm not paying you AND doing UAT, assholes.

So now... Verizon IS aware of this problem. It's going on 2 months now. And it's not fixed. While reflecting that customers are behind on payments. Some customers may very well be paying and paying, waiting to see the balance get zeroed. BUT IT WON'T, and if Verizon is aware of this and not doing anything about it, HELLO LAWSUIT. It's 2 months and hundreds of thousands of dollars = Gross Negligence.

So there you go. Verizon isn't showing a lot of wherewithall in getting their shit together to make it easy to deal with them. Ideally, the best customer service is never having to contact customer service. So if you can avoid 'em, stay away from Verizon until they get a few dorks off their chairs and on to fixing the billing updates.

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What Are You Saying?

In the world of communication, getting your message across is as much WHAT you say as HOW you say it. In fact, the latter may be more important. For example, let's say you have an empty bottle, a full bladder, and a meeting. What makes more sense to say?

1) I'm going to fill my water bottle, use the restroom, and go to the meeting.
OR
2) I'm going to the meeting, after I use the restroom and fill my bottle.

Many, many, far-too-many people are clinically annoying in how they speak, and when they decide to pipe up. Read the comments section of any local news story in an on-line news site. The internet has given people who have - and some who have not - clamored for years to be heard! To be SEEN! To have their existence made known to dozens of strangers who will eventually refer to their FaceSpace profiles before hiring them and cause the hire-er to wonder "Who is this dipsh*t, and why are they always making hand gestures with the hand NOT holding a cocktail?"

I am always delving into my mind and the works of the great cartoonists to find new ways to speak, to communicate, to express what it is that buts a burr in my figurative butt.

So as we get closer to the end of your life, and mine, please take into account a few important quotes about speaking:

A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something. -Plato

That's all I ever needed to know.

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Blow Me Down

The Pacific Northwest has a broad spectrum of weather, getting both arms around - and both cheeks into - every season. Icy, snowy Springs. Sunny, drizzly Winters. Summers that last only 7 weeks but have temps in the low 100s. And the WIND, oh yes... Mother Nature's Howl.

Recently, while Wife and Son and I were in Culver City there was a really hefty wind-storm. Not a storm just by Los Angeles standards that gusted up to 18mph and threw cigarette ashes all over the back seat of the TT. The kind where, if you were walking home from the bus stop, your legs were being blown into each other and almost tripping you, and you freaked out because normally you can handle that much NightTrain on a 20minute bus ride. Also, you realized that the lights all along the block, up to the Lee SuperLiquor! bodega, were out. HEAVY BLOWIN'. (that oughtta get some more hits to the page)

Power was out for about 3 hours that night. We ordered Italian food from Ugo. It was quality bites. I highly recommend Sun-dried tomatoes and smoked mozzarella on a sammitch. The next day I was driving to work and was on Venice Blvd. A tree had been blown over in the wind, and the branches and leaves and top-half of the trunk were passed out... excuse me... flopped down into the far-left lane. A traffic cone had been placed 50 feet ahead of it to let people know, "YO... we'll get to it!"

The city of Los Angeles has red light cameras all over the place, but not enough to drive revenue from the incredible number of red-light runners (2-per, from my count). A 1-hour rain will flood the streets. The buckling roadways are ground-down and patched-over. Perfectly good comedians are getting shunned for spots at the A-clubs, while horrid hosts with barely 9 minutes of masturmaterial get half-hours on Comedy Central because of their management team. BAD, bad, bad infrastructure.

So that tree, the broken & blocking one, lay there for 2 days before somebody in a city truck came to get it. Sunny weather, clear skies, dry roads. No city utility worker available to clear the roadway. For 2 days.

Last night up on Juanita Drive & 163rd, a tree blew down and knocked power out to Juanita-like areas. The crews were up there this morning getting it handled.

4 weeks ago I had to call the city office in LA about a health inspection. I got a call back TODAY. Thank you, Los Angeles. You proved your point.



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Freakuency

I've taken to calling-out people doing rude and dumb things in public. Recently, at Swapper Jack's, a man's left arm crossed my face to reach for a chutney. It wasn't preceded with any sort of "Excuse me," nor a "pardon, I'm sorry, but there's one guy here who needs some mango chutney on the regular, and it ain't YOU, mang." THAT I'd-a be down fo'.

So I said, about 6 inches from his untrimmed ear:
"Do you need to get in here, sir?"

He said nothing, paused, then beat a retreat with what I can only assume is a life-changing mincemeat of mango, bell pepper, honey, and exotic spices.

Today at the Post Office - which I openly mock because I'm comfortable knowing I will NEVER work there - I was 6th in line when a chick in pig tails, yoga pants, flip-flaps, and a hoodie cut the line to ask a cage worker "Um, like, hiii, can I ask a question?"
(Cage worker was helping somebody who was rather stunned)
The cage worker said "mmmhmmm" or some sort of affirmation.

Dipshit asked "My friend left her diary here a while ago, like, do you have a Lost & Found? It was like 2 weeks ago I think?"

Okay, nobody said anything.
The problem is now everybody's issue. Because this isn't a transaction that will benefit the USPS, and will only hold everything else up, and I'll be Catholic Priest-tickled if that shit's happening when I'm in the building.

And I start to think, "Will Cage Worker take a break from the line and go look for the journal of this dipshit's dipshit friend? NOOOOO, she wouldn't. That would be like Customer Service, and the Post Office ain't that."

Well, she DID go look. For about 5minutes, which is 30minutes in Post Office time. I moved to 4th in line. Journal not found.
Dipshit in PigTails starts asking questions about "Could you look again? Are there ANY books?" and this is WAAAAAAY over the limit...
SO I SAY...

"Excuse me, excuse me? Miss, in the sweatshirt?" Now everyone's looking at me. And I will admit, I FELT VERY MUCH ALIVE.

"Um, yeeeah?"

"We're all waiting in line to do business here, your friend's journal's gone. We need to get going here, okay? Sorry."

Everyone's acting like it wasn't said, except me, Dipshirt, and Cage Worker. Dipshirt takes a second, glances around, acts all butt-hurt, sighs, and says "Thanks" to the Cage Worker and flaps-off out the branch.


YOU'RE WELCOME, WEST HOLLYWOOD POST OFFICE.

Say something. Especially when somebody's doing something wrong and it's hurting the community and if needed, you could kick their ass.

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