Category Archives: Work

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little things to help start the day + trains

Friday nearly cuts the subway population in half.  This is a huge benefit when with my subway over half the train cars don’t work right now.  So say on a Thursday you get to share personal space with 173 of your best friends.  But it’s Friday and on Memorial Day weekend so I suppose a whole gaggle of people want nothing to do with the office today.  This was a nice little pick me up to get the day going where I had space enough to actually read my magazine.

In merry old England they just opened the Elizabeth Line which is one of the most modern (and expensive) train lines ever built.  But then I read that even London’s subway is still only at about 2/3 to 3/4 of pre pandemic capacity.  So it seems working from home is semi-permanent, or perhaps a lot of businesses no longer see advantages to being downtown.  Is it in fact going to permanently reshape urban transportation?

Or, with inflation, war, supply shortages, alien sabotage, etc, the economy has still not fully recovered from pandemic?  Maybe in say five years after inflation has cooled, Vlad is impaled on a spike by that Hero Comic Guy, and people can once again buy critical supplies again (like garden rakes) then the economy will blast off.  And when it does downtown offices and their supporting subways will get cracking again.  Who knows?  At this point, it’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen to the planet in say three or four days.

But we at TAP are here to help!  We can predict what will happen by next Tuesday!  Honest.  Let’s go!

1) Zombies

2) Pizza will be made illegal

3) …

Nah, nope, we’re ah, we’re just not going to do this today.  Sorry.

Enjoy your weekend, friends!

Boris will get drunk, comically push the train conductor out, and drive the train to Wales (somehow) where he will stop the train at an old Edward I hilltop fort castle (somehow) and then pass out drunk by falling through a wooden table.

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all trees must pay, for the alter of work

A new person at work has decided that they’re going to manage everybody’s training records.  I suspect because they just got hired, nobody is telling them what to do, and they feel that have to do, like, something, anything?  Normally this wouldn’t matter to me, but now they’re after me on my training records like I work for them.  Normally this wouldn’t matter to me, but all our work training sucks and is a check in the block.

Plus, all this extra work, spreadsheets, training records, etc, is all paper printed off, signed, scanned whatever.  We go through a legendary amount of paper in this office.  It’s like it’s still 1947.  We buy paper by the pallet full.  All trees must pay, for the alter of work.  Bow down to it, or they get mad at you and put your name in red text on an excel spreadsheet.

There’s this theory going around, I think somebody wrote a book, on the era of white collar “bullshit” jobs.  Where folks think they (or actually) accomplish nothing of actual value.  They just keep the hamster wheel of their place of business moving along.  I’ve read a few articles lately about how all that’s a lie, and that much of this work actually matters, it’s just most people hate their jobs.

I would tend to agree with that, that most people don’t like their jobs.  But the idea that our super modern white collar world is not about 73% bullshit, is, well, not exactly, precisely correct.  On a given day I’d say about only 1/3 of what I do actually matters.  The rest is the hamster wheel that my boss, or his new training assistant, makes me do that has no value.

I should quit this bullshit gig and go take care of homeless puppies.  But then I’d have a bill pay problem, my dog’s kibble is expensive, beer doesn’t pay for itself.  I should quit and take a risk at value, I won’t, that’s the trap I guess.  We all got bills to pay and white collar work combined with dead trees means you don’t work in a cadmium mine 12 hours a day.

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to Office Space is a verb

I watched four of my employees this morning struggle mightily with the photocopier like it was cavemen learning about fire. They fought the machine for a half hour before they got it to work again. This copier is brand new, and it already is failing. It’s a Xerox, who has been making copiers since 1959 and things still don’t work.

You’d think if they’d been making the same kind of machine for over six decades they’d have figured this sort of thing out. Nope! Everybody around the planet is still struggling with the same flaws, failure, frustrations, and fury. It’s almost like they build these machines poorly on purpose. So you can pay them for maintenance or have to buy a new one all the time.

Everybody wants to Office Space their photocopier. It will always be so. Aliens don’t even need to blow up the planet to take over. They just need to give every family on Earth their own copier. After one month of dealing with failure, we’ll be begging the aliens to become our overlords. Just as long as they destroy all copiers.

not complying with electronic equipment environmental disposal / destruction laws is the dream of every white collar employee

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quick boss changes are fun

I’m constantly amazed at how human organizations so easily decide to spike their own success. We do it to ourselves. It’s not like one of those science fiction episodes where the slug in the brain makes people do dumb things. In real life, the alien slugs would take a hard look at us, then set up shop in Bermuda and get wasted while we do their work for them.

My good boss has been in the job for three years. Now he’s leaving, and they’re replacing him within one week. Do you think one week is enough time for a solid turnover between bosses? Well, our executive leadership sure thinks so. Which is another mark against them for why I wouldn’t let them walk my dog for three seconds unsupervised.

The other thing is the new boss has zero experience doing this job. So we got that going for us too. It’ll be a long six months as we drag this poor bastard across the bureaucracy of our asinine cubicle hell work environment. We’re gonna have to hold this guy’s hand every step of the way.

Here are some examples:

1) Boss makes a statement, as fact, when in reality it is fiction because he hasn’t the background

2) Boss makes his escape and attends a meeting without the subject matter expert to keep him honest and unknowingly destroys project

3) Alien slug monster calls boss on phone to verify ineptness continues, when confirmed, slug hangs up phone and orders another martini

4) Boss gets angry and yells at and demeans fellow human being in frustration at inability to comprehend knowledge he does not possess

5) Boss attempts to make up for lack of experience by ingratiating himself with executive leadership, thus removing the blocking powers of prior good boss, and causing all the executive’s bad ideas to become our problem

6) Slug monster sends a false pretentious, patronizing thank you not to new boss with the name of an old friend, slug writes that new boss is the best, smartest person in the world, and needs essentially no advice to excel

7) New boss awkwardly attempts social contact at mandatory (and covid illegal) work greeting event by telling humorous (to him) stories from things he did 17 years ago

8) Boss asks question, we give answer, boss asks same question 11 days later

9) Old good boss asks us how we’re all doing when we run into him in the hallway, extremely awkward and inaccurate comments are uttered and old good boss feels bad

10) Alien slug monster wants to speed up the pace of disaster, tells us that we must give bad advice to the new boss and that if we don’t, slug monster will set off a fusion bomb underneath a city, when we discover that the bomb is in Brussels, we shrug and laugh at them

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retire “hump day”, or else

We’re back!  After an unexplained 477 week absence.  Did you miss us?  No?  Oh, ah, uh, hmm, we thought folks missed us.  [cricket, cricket, cricket]

So we’re back to talk about what massive important topic to the human race?  Global pandemic?  Locust swarms?  The shortage of effective keys and locks?  No!  But rather, the continual use of the term “hump day” at work.  Oh my!  The horror.

1) This joke was mildly amusing when the Geico goons put this out nine years ago.  I say mildly, as in something you’d chuckle about once and then wish to forget forever.  But folks kept saying it again and again in the camel voice.  It won’t die.  Why?  Why won’t this die?

2) Why do folks carry on and spout jokes written by a boardroom of faceless suits?  Geico is famous for this.  They’re not jokes folks.  They’re made to separate money from people.  If you want to inject humor into the workplace, please use something not written by the Giant Octopus.

3) The term Hump Day has Jumped the Shark.

4) Saying even anything remotely sexual in the workplace now gets you drawn and quartered by the Stazi.  The word “hump” is associated with sexual behavior.  We must retire its use in the workplace otherwise the office will be burned to the grown by Antifa.

5) The camel actor in the original Geico commercial was euthanized over five years ago.  His Kuwaiti owners didn’t want to pay for his anti-biotics.  I’m sorry.  I’m so very, very sorry.

6) The concept of Hump Day is that the week is half over and it can only go happily calmer or get better from there until the joy of the weekend arrives.  This theory is shit.  Everyone knows at 1pm on Friday you’ll get that fucking phone call that makes you want to quit your job that very instant.

7) Elves are responsible for your decreased workplace satisfaction.  I know this to be fact.  The sources My Guests possess are unimaginable and infallible.

8) Enjoy your day!

Dromedary skeleton

everybody’s wood shed day comes eventually

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work is an intrusion to home

Every human needs a sanctuary, a place where they can unplug and not be accountable to anybody but themselves or their immediate family.

For the white collar worker this evil virus has eviscerated that line.  Yes, it’s been dulled for years as high fliers or big shots checked their work e-mail at 12:31 in the morning just to keep themselves in the game, but now it’s in overdrive.

For blue collar workers who are either out of a job or have to expose themselves to the virus every day on the jobsite this is a good problem to have though.

I’m now on week two of online conferences and courses for work at home and it’s extremely jarring.  I don’t want to hear big shot #43 run his mouth about how awesome he is while I hear my washing machine go.  It’s an intrusion on my castle.  It feels odd.  It feels wrong.  Honestly, I’d just rather be at work.

A few publications that aren’t busy (still) playing politics have begun to ask very important questions about where society will be after the first global pandemic in a century.  My worry at this particular moment is the work world and the your world will be essentially blended from now on.  You did it for months, so why can’t your boss ask you do to work at home whenever the hell they want?  At whatever time they want?

This isn’t normal and it isn’t human.  But whether we like it or not, maybe it will become the new normal?

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selective morality, reality, and values are the best morality, reality, and values

all corporations that lose our data to hackers are evil and greedy vs. giving the audio data in your own home free of charge of a corporation via a live bug is hip

your dog demands the most pristine of kibble vs. will eat garbage wood off the grass and pout when you don’t allow this

cigarettes are so awful they need to be banned from Netflix vs. marijuana is perfectly cool to smoke and is beneficial to your health

magic mushrooms are also beneficial and will soon be legal in multiple jurisdictions vs. soda with sugar is horrible for you and requires severe regulation

plastic straws are wasteful and worthy of a ban vs. drinking an extra tall latte out of a one use disposal and non-recyclable coffee cup is trendy

squirrels hoard all the nuts and acorns because they need them to live vs. squirrels hoard guns and explosives because they need them for the forthcoming purge

Weinstein is a depraved sexual deviant who should be erased from the planet vs. Jackson’s music is still awesome and regularly played at festivals

your boss is angry that you’re late with your assigned task vs. your boss is never own time with any assistance you’ve ever required from them

the detention centers used by Trump’s goons are abhorrent vs. the exact same detention centers used by Obama’s goons were not abhorrent

labeling the opposite side as racist instead of thinking things through vs. labeling the opposite side as racist instead of thinking things through

alcohol is the cause and solution to all of life’s problem vs. alcohol is so tasty

gasoline powered cars crush the planet’s health and are on their way out vs. charging electric cars from coal fired power plants

gasoline pumps want your money vs. gasoline pumps require the selection of 11 different options before allowing you to pay them money for gas

animal kept in captivity is immoral and the zoo will soon be banned vs. dressing up your dog/cat in a furry X-Mas costume is a sign of sophistication

everybody in the workforce requires $15 an hour vs. advocating for such issues at rallies arrived courtesy of Uber driver making half that amount

manufacturing jobs needs to come back to America vs. establishing tariffs and trade policies so abstract as to require the bailout of soybean farmers

our future alien masters promise us bliss and saving ourselves from each other vs. will blanket 1/3 of the planet in fusion fire to introduce their benevolent, wise rule

chronic obesity problem that will bankrupt the health system by 2049 vs. electric bikes and scooters are so much fun and avoid the need to walk or pedal anywhere

wave of the punk future where virtual coin will set the human free vs. coin mill farm corporations with enough size and electricity to power a medium sized nation

religion is the source of all evil mind control and should be banned from any public sphere vs. 1.3 billion likes on Instagram for the latest celebrity selfie

machines will be our masters, artificial intelligence is so error free cars will drive themselves vs. have you ever tried using [insert any software program here] without errors

innocent until proven guilty vs. they publish a mug shot online before anybody’s been found guilty and the federal justice system convicts at a stasi-like 99% rate

the magical meth elf promised you happy times if you burned down a shopping mall vs. all you got instead was a felony arrest warrant and the elf never showed up again

natural gluten is evil is requires expungement from the diet vs. generating artificial fake meat in a lab is wholesome

blogging is a healthy experience that allows the author to get things of their chest in a safe environment that informs others vs. blogging is a narcissistic act that only informs the reader that the author is somebody who needs help, and maybe a puppy/kitty or two

 

 

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ordinary, average, human experience

Boss tells you to do something. You do it. Boss comes back, apologies, and says they wanted something different. Boss walks away. Boss then comes back, and yells at everybody for doing it wrong in the first place. Boss then sends an inflammatory e-mail to all impacted colleagues demanding said product now and asking why it’s late.

I would gather for most, this is not an uncommon experience.

You know, in so many different ways, part of me wants to take us back to the stone age. Back then, things like this could be handled so much more simply. I could just challenge the boss to a fight to the death. Only the strong, wise, or guileful got to lead. Now, anybody can lead, and be permitted by society’s ‘rules’ to fail and fail again and lead for years and years thus increasing the overall misery of others without consequence.

iuC4D9ZM2J

Give me back my drunken club fights!

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stupid work potato salad

We had to pick a dish to bring for the work potluck.  I chose potato salad, because it was easier than telling work I don’t like them and refusing to play.  So we decided to spice things up and make a potato salad that nobody on the planet had ever had before.

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stupid work potato salad

8 strips bacon, diced

1 yellow onion, diced

1 Tbsp brown sugar

2 lbs mixed potatoes, cubed

1/8 cup white wine vinegar

6 garlic cloves, mined

1 lemon, juiced

salt & pepper

1 Tbsp paprika

1 Tbsp olive oil

4 eggs

2 Tbsp mustard

1 cup mayo

2 Tbsp sriracha

1/4 cup capers

1/2 cup parmesan

cook the bacon over medium-high heat in a saute pan until it’s nicely done, remove bacon and set aside; discard all but about 1 Tbsp of the bacon fat from the pan; add the onion and cook until browned, add the brown sugar, lower the heat, and slowly caramelize the onions

preheat the oven to 375 degrees; wash the cubed potatoes in a colander, add them to a bowl and toss with the vinegar, garlic, 1/2 of the lemon juice, salt & pepper, paprika, and olive oil; dump the potato mixture on a baking sheet covered with aluminum foil and roast, stirring once, for about a half-hour until the potatoes are crispy but not overly brown

meanwhile, hard boil the eggs, cool them in the fridge, then peel and dice them

in a large bowl, add the potatoes, then add the mustard, mayo, sriracha, capers, remaining lemon juice, onion, bacon, eggs, and cheese, mix them all up until it’s a nice salad; serve immediately hot, or later on cold

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Let’s begin!

Cube the potatoes to a size you like and then wash them in a colander to get the starch off.  In a large mixing bowl douse the potatoes with the vinegar, garlic, juice of half the lemon, salt, pepper, paprika, and olive oil.

Cut the garlic to a size you like.  I minced it because you never know how much folks do or do not like garlic.  But, if I’d been cooking for myself I’d probably just leave the garlic cloves whole and roast them as is.

Make sure you mix up the bowl really well.  You want the paprika, vinegar, and olive oil to really coat all the potatoes.  After that, aluminum foil on a baking sheet and bake them.

Do not pre-grease the aluminum foil.  As you stir them yes, they may tend to stick to the foil so don’t make the mistake of not stirring them at all during the roasting.  You want the potatoes to be brown but not overly done, just slightly still firm.  It’s potato salad and not true fully roasted browned potatoes.

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You’ve got regular old bacon and hard boiled eggs which are staples of many potato salads.  I add caramelized onions because I love them and want to share that love with all humanity.

When you’re done making the bacon, eggs, onions, and potatoes, it’s time to mix it all together with the remaining ingredients.

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Use whatever mustard and mayo you prefer.  The sriracha is flexible with another hot sauce if you want.  Go with what you like.  But please put some kind of sauce in there because it’s money and not boring.

The capers add a nice extra touch for my taste.  If you don’t like capers, you can skip this part.

As with before, make sure you really get a good mix in the bowl so all the sauces coat the potatoes all over.

You can serve this immediately while it’s hot, or chill it and serve later cold.

Be advised, this will not really keep in the fridge for more than about two or three days.  After that time, the moisture starts to separate from the potato mixture and the salad becomes dry and tough.

This is easily tackled by reheating the mixture in the microwave for about a minute to loosen it up again.  But, generally speaking, I’d eat it all within two days for max tastiness.

Enjoy life!

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cooking in a kitchen that’s not your own

Well, it’s been two months since my employer (dressed as an evil smiling clown) black bagged me in the middle of the night and sent me abroad.  And my precious, precious doggies are doing well with my host family, but I miss them.  I also miss my kitchen.  A lot.

This has ended up being a far bigger issue than I would have expected.  If you cook regularly, we all have our kitchens.  We know them.  It’s downright transparent.  You might make an alteration here and there, but it’s essentially static.  The dynamic factor is the food.

We also have what I guess you can call guest kitchens.  For example I cook at my Ma’s for me Ma all the time.  I know that kitchen like the back of my hand.  It means nothing for me to cook over there as if it was my own.

So I guess I just kind of assumed since work wasn’t sending me to the middle of Vlad’s Siberia wonderland or a tiger filled jungle that I’d have a real kitchen, figure it out, and it would be fine.  Right?  Nope.  But, why?

1) Bare Basics

Because I’m abroad for a limited time I didn’t get to bring my stuff.  Work has a local contract (which wouldn’t pass most Western anti-corruption standards) to provide me the very bare bones basics at my apartment.  This means I’ve got some plates, a few bowls, and six sad water glasses.  I’ve also got some D grade pots and pans manufactured in Yugoslavia Circa 1989.

You can forget the most benign of kitchen items are important to you, until they don’t exist.  Out here I have bowls, but they’re of a shallow nature, and hold only enough liquid for a six year old’s soup  I made curry and the broth was a rather light consistency.  Given the small bowl size I had hardly any food in there.

In frustration, I ended up using a pot as my eating bowl instead.  I’m there eating straight out of the pot and I look over and there’s this Viking ghost sitting next to me doing the same.  He hoists his drinking horn in a toast, I hoist my cheap ass local beer can made of cadmium.  Cheers my Viking brother, I’ve gone back in time.  It burns.  The spicy curry, not the cadmium, not yet anyways.

How about spices?  How about starting from zero, nothing.  At home I might have 50 spices of a variety that would make a 16th Century Portuguese smuggler angry and pull his cutlass.  Out here I had a bare cupboard.  I’ve methodically replenished jar by jar for weeks.

At first I didn’t get new measuring cups because I didn’t want to buy new ones.  I eyed everything.  Then I realized you really can’t write proper recipes without them.  So I had to go buy new measuring cups I didn’t want to purchase.

Remember grating cheese or vegetables?  This is a pretty standard task, right?  But what happens when you don’t have a grater?  You have to make a tactical decision on whether it’s important enough to buy a new grater.  Countless, countless decisions need to be made on how important things and tools are to you.

So you’re probably like, well, whatever man, just go buy all this stuff.  It’ll be fun, right?  But, …

2) Waste

I already have a grater, and spices, and bowls, and whatever back home.  So I’m going to buy new items to satisfy my kitchen needs out here, for what, one year and some change?  I had to buy a new colander because you essentially can’t cook without one.

But I’ve got like five or six different sized colander’s back home.  So this was an unnecessary purchase.  I felt really bad buying it even though I knew I absolutely needed it.  So what do I do with it after I’m done here?  Ship it home?  I need a seventh colander less than a mercenary elf assassin.

So I guess I’ll ship the new one home, and donate one of my older colanders to charity?  I guess?

It’s not that big a deal for these minor tools I suppose.  A colander or a peeler or a wooden spoon are small, relatively cheap, and just not that big of an impact to anything.  But, …

3) Gear

For the first few years of my cooking journey I didn’t really employ gear.  You need good knives, good pans, a large steel mixing bowl, etc.  For a long while I never used things like a food processor, blender, spice grinder, any of that.  But once I did, and learned how to use them well.  They became essential tools.

This is even truer for me because I like to cook and experiment with various cuisines from around the globe.  Now without this gear I feel my powers are reduced.  There’s less magic to be made.  Buying a new colander I don’t need is minor waste.  Buying a new food processor that costs north of three figures?  I haven’t done that.  I won’t do that.

And so in the meantime: I’m in a dark cave, behind me are a bunch of kidnapped urchin children I’m rescuing.  The cursed bear is up on his hind legs, roaring, foaming with delight, urchins are screaming in terror.  “I’ll deal with him,” I firmly state.  I reach for my sorcerer wand, and nothing is there.  Then the urchins are running and screaming as the bear rips me in half.  But, …

4) The Past

I don’t know how my Grandparents did it.  It’s weird to think about.  The number one thing I typically wonder is how they cooked all that delicious food with so little counter space.  The answer is I think they did a ton of prep actually at the kitchen table.  In those days the table was actually right in the kitchen.

My Grandmother had a double stack oven, the kind where you have two whole elements you could set to different temperatures.  So that capability was awesome, and actually in excess of what most kitchens have today.  But they didn’t have fancy tools like food processors or spice grinders.  They probably didn’t let a of lack spice jars bother them as much as it does me.

So it’s tough to know how much of my current kitchen is real legitimate frustration on my part, and how much of it is I’m an amateur cook who’s a spoiled brat.  I’m still cooking and cooking well out here, it’s just a slog at times with these various limitations.  It sucks when you plan a meal, you’re in the zone, and you reach for (x) and you’ve entirely forgotten you don’t have it.

So you flex, and get it done, and the food tastes great.  But it was much harder to do, and so there’s a commensurate lapse in enjoyment.

Not sure how I feel about all this.  But that’s about it.  I miss my dogs.  I really miss my family and friends.  I’ll get the kitchen back too, and that’ll be nice.

In the meantime, it’s been a good long while since I put a recipe up here.  More on that, and soon.  After all, work made me.