in which Brin has a job

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

gasmaskaesthetic:

Boss has been at the [out of state] office since last Friday, which means that they’re printing the physical checks for our weekly AP run there. And….this is really silly, but I do miss doing that part. Printing, folding, envelope stuffing. It’s an easy, pleasant, meditative task that mentally marks the end of my week.

Silly because accounts payable is definitely the most basic and data-entry-oriented part of my job, but dammit, I like having the harder stuff punctuated with pleasingly tactile admin work!

I did a lot of secretarial stuff in high school. I was very good at it, I liked it, and I got a lot of praise for it. It’s a bit nostalgic.

 

shieldfoss:

America really is a whole other country

 

argumate:

I love doing payroll, I love the way you just have to [ presses button marked “payroll” and the machine automatically transfers the appropriate amounts electronically and emails out payslips and notifies the tax office ]

 

shieldfoss:

“Oh you guys have to press a button?”

 

shacklesburst:

Usually you do, because that way you can be sure stuff like reimbursable expenses for the month (if they were filed already) are in the system and you have the ability to delay pushing the button for a few hours if there are some last-minute changes to be made (not ideal, but happens).

Having a button also makes to possible to gather around one desk every month as a team and chant “press the button, press the button” at whomever is responsible for that action currently. And then go for drinks or smth.

 

gasmaskaesthetic:

This post wasn’t about payroll but yes

Current job is more involved than some systems I’ve seen because the accounting module sucks and was clearly just pasted on top of an otherwise mostly-functional industry-specific ERP.

Takes me 1-3 hours.

This is a very weird conversation to me, because among my meatspace social group the ones who get paid electronically are like “it’s a nightmare, they won’t let me log in to see my pay statements, I’m just supposed to trust that they sent me the right amount, it took me two months of complaining and escalating to superiors to even get a *tax form* out of them (and then my taxes were late)”, and the ones who get paper are like “yeah, it’s fine, it was a bit annoying at first having to go to the bank every fortnight but then I learned how to use mobile cheque deposit”.

(I know that you guys are taking the perspective of the one sending out the payments rather than the one receiving them, but still.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #in which Brin has a job #(ftr I’m one of the paper ones)

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

loveydoveynb:

loveydoveynb:

if u make clark kent say soda you are grossly mischaracterizing him and i wont stand for it

tumblr_inline_pomlazldvh1rqjbyi_400

the real reason no one thinks clark is superman is bc they’re all east coasters who constantly mock clark’s usage of “pop” so they never connect mr. “soda” superman to mr. clark “pop” kent

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #(I moved from the East Coast to the Great Lakes) #(and often I will say pop just to keep people from giving me That Look) #(you can’t just say ”soda” without it being a Statement) #(and I’m not here to make Statements I’m just trying to ring up your food) #our home and cherished land #food #in which Brin has a job #Superman

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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brin-bellway:

Today, I am thankful that my workplace does not play Christmas music.

Our radio developed some issue a while back that severely restricts which stations it can pick up, so this year–for lack of better options–we *are* on a Christmas-music station.

I’m actually coping a lot better than I thought I would. I think there’s a lot more pressure on *children* to like Christmas, and as I spend more time away from that it seems to be getting easier to appreciate Christmas on my own terms. And understanding what my problem with “The Little Drummer Boy” is [link] seems to have taken the sting out of that song. And IIRC, all of the co-workers whose shifts overlap with mine are first-gen immigrants from non-Christian societies, which lets them take an outsider-but-laid-back-about it attitude towards Christmas that might be rubbing off on me.

My preference ordering tends to go hymns –> songs that aren’t about Jesus but *are* explicitly about Christmas –> secular winter music: the hymns tend to be prettier, and the secular songs can feel dishonest and…nonconsensually inclusive? Just because you didn’t say the C word doesn’t mean you aren’t *thinking* it–in fact, I *know* you’re thinking it because the announcer literally just called this a Christmas music mix–and it doesn’t mean I should be happy to join you in a celebration that isn’t mine. Please go back to singing about Jesus so I can go back to Your Culture Is Not My Culture But Your Culture Is Okay.

(Also, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” is still fucking creepy.)

But overall, it’s actually been surprisingly okay.

Tags:

#on Black Friday (the first Christmas-music day) my (apathetically Hindu) manager wished me a happy Christmas and split a cookie with me #and I find I have no objections to this #music #Christmas #oh look an original post #oh look an update #in which Brin has a job

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theunitofcaring:

A weirdly large share of productivity advice is about increasing how many hours in your day you spend doing work. 

My current job is not a good example here because it doesn’t come in discrete little units, but my last job did. My last job was to write profiles of software engineers. They took about 15minutes to write when I was in the swing of things, but it was often hard to get myself into the mode where I could work on them. Sometimes I’d spend the whole day slowly slogging through them. Sometimes I’d procrastinate all day and then do all of them with two hours left in the day. 

The maximally productive day, for that job, would have been to finish all of my work by 10am and then spend the rest of the day relaxing. 

Nearly all productivity tools and apps would consider the ‘most productive’ day to be the one where I spent ten hours working on profiles. 

I get why they do this. You have more volitional control over how much time you spend working than over how much work you get done when you do, and it can be discouraging to strive for something that’s not really in your control. For many people and many tasks, how much time you work and how much you get done are pretty strongly correlated. And it’s easier to track time spent than progress accomplished.

But nonetheless, it seems pretty damaging for this to be the focus of nearly all productivity advice. The rare things which are instead results-oriented seem to do well. Duolingo rewards lessons completed, not time spent doing them. 4thewords rewards words written. The people I know seem to like them and stick with them a lot more than with time-trackers or strategies to squeeze more workday out of their lives. 

I think most people trying to be more productive should try both a ‘track how much time you spend working! spend more!’ approach and a ‘here’s how much you have to achieve today! try for the earliest possible completion time!’ approach, so you can give yourself a chance at hitting on whatever works best.

I find that what works best for me is neither “spend as much time as possible” nor “do a set amount” (mind you, I don’t think I’ve tried the particular variant “do a set amount *as quickly as possible*”; that might work a little better), but rather “you have this much time available, do as much as possible within that period”.

Both more-time and result-based methods tend to make me work more slowly because it feels like there’s little reason not to, whereas if I only have a certain amount of time I want to make it count. My job pays by the hour, and I actually do really well under that system: it motivates me to make myself useful, because I want my employer to get his money’s worth.

Meanwhile, with university, it’s unfortunate that my schedule is not as conducive to “spend Exactly Four Hours working on school assignments” as it used to be, and I *am* pretty sure that I go through schoolwork more slowly now that I’m not doing that. I’ve been considering ways I might tweak my approach to allow for rigid school times while still being able to fulfil my duties as my workplace’s emergency fill-in person (that is to say, while having a somewhat unpredictable work schedule).

Tags:

#yes I do best with strict scheduling but signed up for a job with an explicit condition of ”must be able to show up on short notice” #look local minimum wage is super high compared to my cost of living #so by my standards even this fast-food job pays *very* well #most weeks I work 16 hours and make very nearly enough to support myself #reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #adventures in University Land #in which Brin has a job #adventures in human capitalism

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ferretandscarehead:

Look I DON’T CARE if I won’t haVE TIme FoR reading I WILL BRING MY BOOK ANYWAY cause having a book with you when you go somewhere is such a good feeling, OKAY?

Tags:

#yes this #I bring paper books a lot less often than I used to #(I’m more strongly germophobic now that I work at an outside-the-home non-freelance customer-facing job) #(there are never times anymore where I can just take a week off from my life with no knock-on effects) #(if I get sick every possible response involves letting a bunch of people down) #(including my future selves who needed those wages for food and shelter and stuff) #((yes of course I take the stay-home response)) #((I am neither amoral enough nor desperate enough to sink to such levels of evil)) #((and my boss gives out unpaid leave very freely as long as you tell him in advance or have a decent reason why you couldn’t have known)) #anyway my point was that paper books are kind of a pain to disinfect #and if you have a dedicated Outside Book you won’t make much progress in it because yeah there often *isn’t* time for reading #what I do have is a vast and ever-expanding archive stored on my smartphone #much of it in the form of text #and quite a bit of that in the form of ebooks #I agree that it’s not *quite* the same visceral feeling as clutching a chunk of paper to you #but I find it does manage to capture *most* of the comforting emotions #tag rambles #in which Brin has a job #Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #tangents #I guess I’m in a tag-rambly mood today

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

Background radio at work: *opening notes of “Call Me Maybe”*

My brain: “♪ My name is Nietzsche, hello/A sort of nihilist bro/Hey, God is dead, did you know?/What is morality? ♫”

Tags:

#this actually happened *last* week #but I was thinking about it again because last night they played ”Counting Stars” #and I ended up with the Awakening of the Birds soundtrack stuck in my head #my brain has some firm opinions on what the primary versions of songs are and they are not always the same as the mainstream view #Amenta #philosophy #music #oh look an original post #in which Brin has a job #♪ I gazed into the abyss ♫ #♪ off of that dark precipice ♫ #♪ in existentialist bliss ♫ #♪ it gazed back into me ♫

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

thejochiang:

deductioneers:

Amass Fuck-You Money

Goals: amass fuckyou money

Forever reblog the mother goddess

(status: I acknowledge that this is psychological damage from an extended period of financial hardship during formative years, but I nonetheless mostly endorse it)

Hmm. I seem to be having a bunch of thoughts and feelings about this.

There seems to be a…maybe “divide” is too strong a word, I don’t know. But…like, I called it “fuck-you money vs fuck-me money” in a post a while back. Even when the actions are the same, there’s this psychological difference in how people can approach it.

When I see FIRE people, they always frame it in terms of *freedom*. (It’s right there in the acronym: Financially *Independent*, Retiring Early.) But to me, it strikes me as being a thing about *safety*. “Enough money that you can run your household solely off the interest from your investments” can protect you from a lot of different problems, and *that’s* why the idea appeals to me.

A few weeks ago I saw some distant acquaintance-of-an-acquaintance on Tumblr (I don’t recall who) advising a young person with a high-paying job and relatively low expenses (Silicon Valley programmer, I think, or something like that) to go on some trips and enjoy themself, because they weren’t going to have this much disposable income again until their forties if not later. And it felt like a very weird framing to me, because…the way I see it, if future-me doesn’t have money to spare, then neither do I. I don’t have spare money unless I can afford to feed myself, and I can’t truly afford to feed myself unless I can afford to feed *all* of my selves.

16-year-old me got to eat because 7-year-old me’s dad put away some “”extra””, and eventually that “”extra”” was all he had left. Where is 33-year-old me getting *her* food from?

Because if the source isn’t me, then I don’t trust it to come through for her. I want to do all I can to make sure that, no matter who is or is not willing to employ her or for how much, 33-year-old me (and 44-year-old me, and 55-year-old me…) is fed and housed and so forth.

—

(This was going to be a tag ramble, but then I thought it should probably stay with the post if somebody reblogs it to respond or something. I’m just going to leave it in tag format.)

#this post probably partly inspired by my first anniversary of non-freelance employment   #which is coming up soon   #I think I will celebrate by scheduling the dental checkup I have been putting off for ~3 years because I didn’t feel I could afford it   #(yes government healthcare does not cover dental)   #(OHIP has some very weird-looking exceptions)   #(this is probably the result of some kind of complicated political negotiation that I’m not sure I want to know the details of)   #anyway a dental checkup seems like a good compromise between celebratory and practical   #(and [practical celebrations are easier to enjoy]/[I find myself drawn to practical gifts these days anyway including gifts I buy for myself])   #((that safety thing manifests here especially))   #((the things I dream of buying these days are always things that protect you from something))   #((checkups that protect you from tooth damage and electric cars that protect you from rising oil prices and solar-powered phone chargers that protect you from power outages))   #((this I am much less sure I endorse))   #((I mean I think it is good to want practical things but it would also probably be good if I felt safe enough to want a few non-practical things too))   #(((sometimes on especially bad brain days I can’t even bring myself to play Flight Rising)))   #(((that is currently the most common cause of my FR hiatuses)))   #(((it used to be the most common cause was that I felt like playing some other game instead)))

Tags:

#tag rambles #adventures in human capitalism #this should probably have some warning tag but I am not sure what #I will put this in the tags though: #I was reading my Tumblr archive recently and *damn* 2014!me was having a hard time #she didn’t talk about it much in public but occasionally she couldn’t quite hold it in anymore and it leaked out into a post #I felt very sorry for her #basically what I’m saying is #hi 2022!me #I hope you’re in a good enough position that you can feel sorry for me rather than going ”yeah I still know that feel” #(but if so please do still provide for farther-future!us) #(just with a healthier frame of mind) #(maybe buy solar chargers *and* video games) #in which Brin has a job #(the following category tag was added retroactively:) #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers

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~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

Last workweek, for the first time, I made enough money to live on!  :D  o/

(it’s still a very useful supplement even when I get fewer hours than that, and while I have been known to push for (and usually receive) more hours, I’ve never presented it to my boss as being of vital importance)

(“Enough money to live on” is here defined at a relatively high level of abstraction: “if each individual in my household made this much money every week for a year, the total amount earned would equal the amount we spent in the previous calendar year (minus some things we’ve since cut)”. For 2018 (which uses 2017 data), this is about 17 minimum-wage-hours.)

(Hmm…*calculates*…ooh. Looks like ever since my most recent request for more hours (which was granted), most weeks I make right around the threshold for “enough to live on if no unusual expenses occur” (about 11.5 hours). Mom tries very hard to at least keep herself above that threshold (and encourages Dad to do the same), because she feels better about asking Brother for additional money if it’s only for occasional expenses, and she suspects it might cause less resentment in Brother too.)

Tags:

#the idea of feeling resentful about having to maintain the household *feels* ridiculous to me but there’s a good chance she’s right #I’ve grown pretty collectivist over the years of gradually increasing hardship #which is supposedly part of the standard coping mechanism for this and yet nobody else here exhibits nearly as much of it as I do #(the pathogen-stress people might say my potential for collectivism was closer to the surface and so more easily activated) #intuitively I think of individualistic approaches to budgeting as something you grow out of around puberty #but then I also intuitively think of shooter games as something you grow out of around puberty #so I guess I’m a terrible judge of these things #anyway I have to go get ready for work soon #(I think I’m getting 15 hours this week so still not bad) #oh look an original post #adventures in human capitalism #tag rambles #in which Brin has a job

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

True rebellion is accepting my lot.

Tags:

#sounds like a shitpost but isn’t #competing access needs #don’t you tell me that I deserve better #I take great comfort in not deserving better #it sure as hell beats cultivating misery #oh look an original post #somewhat related to #our roads may be golden or broken or lost #but currently mostly inspired by #in which Brin has a job #(okay fine before anyone is all ”oh no what happened”) #(both my job and my menial Internet labour cut my hours) #(and my job stopped providing one free meal a week) #(now can everyone please stop trying to ~commiserate~ and ~fuck those bastards~ or whatever and just let me get on with things) #fuck anyone who insists that I need to be angry about this state of affairs #the only thing we have to get angry about is anger itself #tag rambles

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

Today, I am thankful that my workplace does not play Christmas music.

Tags:

#Top 40 is vastly preferable #(I mean there’s other things I’m thankful for too) #(but this is one of the less obvious ones) #we aren’t actually observing Thanksgiving today because from 1 PM to midnight at least one family member is at work at any given time #we will have our feast on Saturday instead #(note: from what I can gather regarding previous years it really is that they *don’t* play it and not that they start playing it later) #(but I suppose it could do with some wood-knocking anyway) #Christmas #in which Brin has a job #oh look an original post #music #Thanksgiving #this kind of sounds like a joke but it is also completely truthful

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