fuck this job.com

I recently moved to be in a relationship and thus am working a job far below my abilities until I find work in a new city. As such, I work in a retail environment in an affluent area of town. I have never in my life seen scum in this quantity and with such pervasiveness.

Long story short, a customer came in, berated me and a fellow coworker for about 20 minutes, and then haughtily said "forget it, i did your job for you" when she found what she was looking for. Of course, what she was looking for wasn't in my department so I dont know the inventory that well, or that she completely interrupted when I was in the middle of helping another customer without so much as an "excuse me". Apparently the world ends 6" from her nose.

... and you're calling because you have a position that a) pays entirely on sales comission and/or b) has the words "account" and "manager" in the job title, be prepared for a verbal assault involving sexual impossibilities with farm animals before I hang up on you.

ps - nice to see after a year and a half of inactivity my account is still active! time to blog again!

shout outs to little nicky, sig sauer, cranky broad, and servicewithafakesmile (if any of you are still here)

All of you know the drill, you go to hotjobs/monster/corporate page/satan to check out job opportunities and get carpal tunnel syndrome on your mouse hand from clicking "apply to this job". So you get the usual bullshit email confirmations with that lovely postscript "please do not reply to this email. this email address is unattended and will not be seen" or some equivalent bullshit.

So then you decide "okay, I'll go to the company's webpage and see if I can get some contact info for HR." So of course you click on "careers" and get all sorts of options to click on! My favorites are:

After some soul searching, I decided it wouldn't hurt to enter the employment forray of job seekers. Mind you, the last time I had to look for a job was about 4 years ago at the height of the dot bomb. The career fair I went to back then sucked. There were no interviews being done (even though a few companies set up "interview booths" to lull people into thinking they would actually get hired) and the reps didn't seem interested in looking at any qualifications that might set you apart from the pack.

Fast forward about 2 years. The uni I went to hosted a job fair for business and technical juniors and seniors. Depsite the promise of companies offering entry level careers, it was in reality pure and utter bullshit. About half the companies on the prospective list didn't even bother to show up, and the other half just repeated the mantra "we dont have any jobs right now, but if you want to give us your resume..."

Our university doesn't have fire extinguishers in half the chemistry labs yet the president has the money to create 5 pet jobs under the guise of the "Department of Multicultural Affairs"?? Thats right, a department that reports directly to the president whose sole purpose is to say "look at how diverse our campus is!" Gotta love it! There's half a million out of the budget per year in salary and benefits. Meanwhile, tuition was hiked up yet again, computer centers are using dot matrix printers from 1988, and classes are being taught in a building with known asbestos problems!! Why? Because the uni wouldn't demolish it until they could get an alum to DONATE MONEY to build a new one, the cheap bastards.

Short update today.

If you dont know the difference between a function's domain and its range,
If you dont know how to find the inverse of a 1-1 function,
If you cant recognize the difference between a line and a parabola,

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN CALCULUS?!?!?!? and what moron placed you there?

Now that the summer is wrapping up, I'm starting to have anxiety attacks about the upcoming fall semester...

When the dot-bomb happened and unemployment was so long I was considering it as an occupation, I decided to take refuge in graduate school to hone my skills and get some academic credentials congruent with my desired career path. With the prerequisites for graduate school in my chosen field completed, I decide to pursue a Ph.D. Hey, what can I say, the geek at heart finally found a topic I want to research :)

As most graduate students know, universities will give you a Ph.D. in exchange for 4-6 years of indentured servitude. In my case I am a slave to a mathematics department. Calling myself a slave might be a bit harsh considering the professors in my department are some of the most brilliant, talented people in the field. Its the administrative assistants that make it feel like slavery, but thats for another blog.