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selenayI am having a day. The kind of day where I am surrounded by morons, incompetents and idiots. Grrr.
I am currently training a guy on how to run my Monday/Tuesday stuff so that I can take a holiday on a Monday. As regular readers may know, on Monday it is complete hell and there is a report that absolutely, no two ways about it, must be analysed and completed by the end of the day. The data is gathered from the data warehouse, which usually takes several hours, and then formatted into an Excel spreadsheet.
I then have to look at each entry, check the data that's been brought backf and work out what has happened - find the root cause for the problem on each entry. This takes several hours of looking at data an interpreting it.
As you can imagine, getting started on the data as early as possible is essential in order to get the report compiled in time.
I let the guy that I'm training know that the data was back as soon as it returned. This is the signal to drop everything and get processing. As the data had come back two hours later than normal and I've emphasised several times over the last couple of weeks how vital it is to get started ASAP, I erroneously thought that he'd start working.
Um, no.
Forty-five minutes later I checked with him to see how it was going. "Oh, you mean I'm supposed to start it now?"
GGGRRRRRRR!!
At this rate, I'm going to be lucky to get out of here by 6pm (having worked through lunch) because I should still be supervising the guy. I am definitely not going to guarantee that everything runs successfully while I'm gone *sigh*
This is not the only office-related stupidity this morning, but it's certainly the most frustrating.
In non-office stuff, there is a guy on the LibraryThing writer-reader forums who is epitomising everything that's bad about writers. He's pretentious, overblown and over impressed with himself. He also feels that people can't be called writers until they've earned it (I believe that wrecking health and relationships for your writing is the qualifier there) and that just writing fun stuff is the worst thing a writer can do. Everything must be extracted with blood and sweat, there is no point in writing unless it hurts and if you happen to write something that people like, you're obviously doing it wrong.
People like that make me mad. Not just because I want to punch the guy for bringing every thread back to how much he has had to work for his craft (*snort*), but because he's probably making a lot of new writers feel guilty about writing things they enjoy and potentially putting them off the idea at all.
He has "contributed" to every thread on the board since he joined LT at the beginning of the month and not one post has been positive or helpful. In fact, every single post seems to have been aimed at dragging the conversation back to his philosophy on writing. A philosophy that probably works for him, but shouldn't be touted as the Only Way To Truely Being A Writer.
What is so wrong about writing and enjoying it? What's wrong with writing something that you find fun? Is turning writing into a tortured, unpleasant activity that you nevertheless must do because "you're driven" inherently better than just having fun with your imagination?
Am I doing this all wrong?
Why are there so many morons in this world?
I am currently training a guy on how to run my Monday/Tuesday stuff so that I can take a holiday on a Monday. As regular readers may know, on Monday it is complete hell and there is a report that absolutely, no two ways about it, must be analysed and completed by the end of the day. The data is gathered from the data warehouse, which usually takes several hours, and then formatted into an Excel spreadsheet.
I then have to look at each entry, check the data that's been brought backf and work out what has happened - find the root cause for the problem on each entry. This takes several hours of looking at data an interpreting it.
As you can imagine, getting started on the data as early as possible is essential in order to get the report compiled in time.
I let the guy that I'm training know that the data was back as soon as it returned. This is the signal to drop everything and get processing. As the data had come back two hours later than normal and I've emphasised several times over the last couple of weeks how vital it is to get started ASAP, I erroneously thought that he'd start working.
Um, no.
Forty-five minutes later I checked with him to see how it was going. "Oh, you mean I'm supposed to start it now?"
GGGRRRRRRR!!
At this rate, I'm going to be lucky to get out of here by 6pm (having worked through lunch) because I should still be supervising the guy. I am definitely not going to guarantee that everything runs successfully while I'm gone *sigh*
This is not the only office-related stupidity this morning, but it's certainly the most frustrating.
In non-office stuff, there is a guy on the LibraryThing writer-reader forums who is epitomising everything that's bad about writers. He's pretentious, overblown and over impressed with himself. He also feels that people can't be called writers until they've earned it (I believe that wrecking health and relationships for your writing is the qualifier there) and that just writing fun stuff is the worst thing a writer can do. Everything must be extracted with blood and sweat, there is no point in writing unless it hurts and if you happen to write something that people like, you're obviously doing it wrong.
People like that make me mad. Not just because I want to punch the guy for bringing every thread back to how much he has had to work for his craft (*snort*), but because he's probably making a lot of new writers feel guilty about writing things they enjoy and potentially putting them off the idea at all.
He has "contributed" to every thread on the board since he joined LT at the beginning of the month and not one post has been positive or helpful. In fact, every single post seems to have been aimed at dragging the conversation back to his philosophy on writing. A philosophy that probably works for him, but shouldn't be touted as the Only Way To Truely Being A Writer.
What is so wrong about writing and enjoying it? What's wrong with writing something that you find fun? Is turning writing into a tortured, unpleasant activity that you nevertheless must do because "you're driven" inherently better than just having fun with your imagination?
Am I doing this all wrong?
Why are there so many morons in this world?
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 02:14 pm (UTC)Wanna bet he plans to leave on time?
As for the idiot on LT, makes me want to go over there and just laugh at all his posts. I don't know if you're 'doing it wrong' if you're 'suffering for your art', but I do suspect you might need to remember to take your meds.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 08:32 pm (UTC)His plans worked. Da Big Boss ordered me to take over and finish it for him, ensuring that another week went by with very little training (due to the speed I had to work to meet DBB's lovely new emergency deadline). In a fortnight, when I have a Monday booked off, they're going to get such a bloody shock.
He didn't quite post in every thread, but it wasn't too far off. He missed the characterisation thread, which I was sure he'd hit. Anyway, the thread that got me thoroughly riled was: http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=12423 (I was trying to catch up on my reading while not interfering too much with training guy). Check out some of CliffBurns' posts, which take off half way down. I'm not sure why he got to me so badly, but he seems to be the kind of elitist, snobby writer that drives me a little nuts and finding him on LT just got to me.
His posts, both later on that thread and on other threads, seem to be mainly about pushing people to read his blog where he expounds on some of his 'ideas' about writing: http://cliffjburns.wordpress.com/ The guy is either serious or messing with heads and I just can't decide which yet.
So I'm going back to writing my fun Doctor Who fic and then looking over the most recent pages of my novel. The novel that I'm having quite a lot of fun with and haven't noticed any blood-letting yet.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-01 06:24 pm (UTC)He seems to have something of a "I've done my time, I'm owed a publishing contract" thing going on, which may explain some of the BS he's spouting.
If his novels are like his blog and his posts then it's no wonder he's never got a publisher!
He's also exhibited troll-like behaviour on the sci-fi forum (um, why would anyone with a brain post to a sci-fi comm telling them that all SF is crap?) so I can only conclude that the man hasn't got a whole bunch of sense.
And yeah, it's scary how many of that group are rather OTT. It's irritating because a few months ago they were having some interesting discussions on writing. Bleh. It's reminded me of why I usually stay clear of writers' forums :-)
Your response to the guy was brilliant, though. Thank you for writing that. His response was, ah, not so cool but I'm glad you said it. I just have a feeling that any potential writers who aren't stuck in the pretentious idiot phase may be getting rather put off by the content of that group.
Thankfully, not everyone on LT is like that :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-07-01 06:49 pm (UTC)As for why people bitch about SF on SF groups, it's the same sort of thing. After all, SF isn't *real* literature. Uh-huh. SF is *fun* and as *everyone* knows, *real* writing isn't *fun* it's ART. And ART is supposed to *hurt*. Wish my first college drawing teacher were around. He'd be laughing his ass off. ;-);-);-) Yeah, he had a university pay check, but the man was also a working artist. I never saw *anyone* who had so much fun with what he did.
The jerk's a nOOb and the worst sort - he doesn't even know it.
no subject
Date: 2007-06-25 08:47 pm (UTC)(Wait *this* is my alter-ego!)