School of Rocks

I apologize for the sparseness of my posts but I have been very busy with work, preparing for retirement, playing World of Warcraft, job hunting, and finishing up my Masters. Below I have some quotes from people in my Masters class, some of whom only 1 class from graduation. I have followed these people, painstakingly, from class to class and I dread seeing them every time.

I would love to play just 10 minutes of a conversation in our classroom but I’m afraid the excruciatingly long diatribes, most of which have nothing to do with the professors questions, would cause you to go into a catatonic trance from which only a whack from a wooden blackjack would break.

“He do evaluations…”
“Many bidnesses…”
“dispendable”
“Donalds Rumfeld”
“helf care”
“Po-leese”
“These are mines…” (used as a possessive, not floating explosives)
“They might axe you a pacific question” (Got a two-fer there)
“You can see favoritism in all faucets of the organization”
“People will put on a fas-kahd”
“lackadaisy attitude”
“unhappy with company constrictions”
“We all in the Army knows this”

This was about half a notebook page of gems not including the conversation by an Army recruiter who tried to tie in the empowerment of recruiters to do their job to Condoleeza Rice and Colon Powell’s relationship. This person always tries to tie her job into whatever the professor is talking about at every opportunity. She is only the second woman I have ever called a dork.

Although I am in the military, and normally the only Navy person (let alone submariner), I do not talk about what I do very much unless specifically asked. I think these people are going to have serious issues letting go of their military speak and transitioning to civilian life.

In all fairness, most of them have good intentions but they just cannot develop or deliver a coherent thought. Fortunately I do not have to work with these nimrods and only have a few more classes with them.

Comments

  1. As you know, submarine sailors score very high in the intelligence factor. Can't say much about the rest of the services.

    ReplyDelete
  2. My favorite was Farrah Faucet and boy did I want to go plumbing!

    I'm guessing the dork-ladyperson with the constant tie-in effort is insecure and in need of validation - but which doesn't excuse her from being a dork. Meanwhile given the same job-insecurity and need for validation that exists in the Civillian Bid'ness World, a stupid amount of ridiculous jargon and mind-numbing gibberish has been invented just to differentiate among and between the divisions, separating all the little compartments and cubicles from each other. Divide and conquor, and never trust the HR person - they work for the Management Team.

    ReplyDelete
  3. HR falls under staff and not line in the hierarchy of the bidnesses, but I think there is an element of distrust of the department because they are percieved as making things harder on employees through enforcement of policies.

    Whenever I read about jobs/subicles/office politics etc. I just can't help but think of Office Space and Lumberg's example of everything that is wrong with that environment.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You forgot, "Ideal". And a "perscription" to the paper.

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  5. In every business in which I've worked HR works first for the Management Team implementing their policies, and then for the rest of the employees - including when I was in fundraising at a prominent West Cost Private University. Having been through several rounds of layoffs and companies that failed and went tits-up maybe I'm just jaded. ;-) My last job was a relief, working with a small team of smart people on a neat project -- from a situation where following a buyout and under a New Corporate Culture, very similar and strictly Lumbergian Office-Space like procedures were laid-down. It was like they saw the movie and decided to implement just those policies that were the stupidist and worst!

    ReplyDelete

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