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Modern professionalism and work ethic - Am I getting old or??

Sandy Johnson

Sandy Johnson

Harry Member
Joined
May 19, 2020
Member Number
247
Messages
2,809
Loc
Spreckels, Ca
I'm a government employee. As such I've always felt that I worked in a pretty laid back environment compared to my previous jobs in the private sector. In the past due to bureaucracy, people taking time off, and holidays that no one else takes, we've always been the weakest link when it came to working with private sector vendors to complete a project or resolve an issue... At least, we used to be.

I'm in IT and we work with a lot of tech vendors. Big names like cisco, fortinet, crowdstrike, microsoft, etc., small installers, low voltage contractors, big time SAS vendors, you name it. Lately I've noticed a lot of people working at those contacts "phoning it in". They're less available than this here government employee with tons of banked vacation hours, extra holidays, and an aversion to scheduling meetings on a Friday afternoon. When they do actually produce something, generally the first attempt looks the like equivalent of something I would have tried to submit to a high school teacher after forgetting I had an assignment due until the morning of. Half of the time someone "technical" comes out to put in work on site, I end up having to redo what they half-assed, or walk them through something they should have researched before even showing up.

Am I getting cantankerous at only 43 years old or is the amount of effort people are putting into their occupations dropping over the last 5 years or so?
 
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I'm a workaholic, but nowadays the younger generation is lazyaholic. Or aversetoworkaholic. 40 hours a week is way too much time to be at work.

Time off for everything. Time off for their spouse's or SO's everything.

When they are at work, half their time is on their phone.

And they sure as heck aren't going to put any extra effort into anything.

And Covid bullshit made everything even worse.
 
I stopped caring at work.

I'll match the effort of the general level that's needed for me to be slightly above the masses and get my full bonus and rate increase, then go home and put my energy into projects that will grow my personal skillset, make me money or let me enjoy life.
 
I do a lot of contract work for the city of San Francisco. I really don't give a shit about my job because no one else does.
All I care about is no call backs about anything I built or fixed. I still have pride in my work.
What I notice working with a lot of gov and gov contract vendors is incompetence. People that are in positions that they have no idea of what they're doing.
Also, no one will ever make a hard decision, it's always "above their pay grade". So then nothing gets done.
 
Maybe their just sick of the gov's bureaucratic regulations continually changing and expecting the private sector to keep up and figure it out. It wouldn't be bad but I haven't seen a new reg come down the board that made any sense to anyone in the field.

After many years of doing DEP work I know I'm about fed up with the state and just about wanna tell them to pound sand and find someone else who will put up with it. Can't speak about other areas but around here it's getting hard for DEP to find drillers willing to work under their bullshit.


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I'm ok with on their phones every now and then. Here's an example of what I've been seeing lately:

Tuesday we had some firewall hardware die. We have a support contract with a digital security firm that is supposed to manage our firewalls (it usually ends up me making all the changes and letting them know, but I actually prefer it that way). When the firewall went down, I had some things in place to fail us over to another connection, but they didn't' know that. They sent an email basically saying "your junk went down, is everything ok?". I told them no. At this point they're contractually obligated to get us back up asap. I went down and started troubleshooting for them, and sent them all the info I found. Radio silence. I find the dead piece of hardware, and take it out of the equation and get us back running. Radio silence.

I call their support line the next day since this is a critical piece of hardware and I'm limping along at one out of two devices. I get a tier 1 tech that shows lots of concern, agrees that what I've sent them shows I need them to send me replacement hardware, and tells me to hold while he finds a tier 2 engineer at their company to tell him what to do. I wait while he tries to contact people. Nothing. I finally tell him that maybe he could just call me back when one of his engineers shows up to the party? He agrees.

Finally, 24 hours later, tier 2 engineer contacts a junior admin here that wasn't even working on the issue and isn't the main point of contact. That guy was like "uuuuhh... I have no idea what's going on, but here's the contact information for the guy who has been sending you all the information you have."
They call me, I pick up and they tell me they've got an engineer on the line from insert big name network equipment mfg here and they have been waiting to work on the issue. I tell them that's cool, but they need to wait because I'll have to get my butt down to the actual equipment with my laptop, as he must know since I've been updating them that part of the problem is we can't remotely connect to the dead hardware. This dude was shocked to know that I didn't just live in my datacenter full time, and actually spent most of my time elsewhere. I've been waiting over 24 hours for a call back and NOW suddenly it's vital that I be touching this hardware immediately.

Now it really starts to get good: I hop on a video conference all with everyone 10 minutes later and we go through the usual steps to prove to the manufacturer that the hardware is dead. Manufacturer Engineer lady doesn't believe it, says she wants to run a hardware test. Cool, lets do it. She tells me we should do it after hours during a scheduled maintenance window.
"Ok, how about after 5pm pacific time today?" I ask
"I'm off at 5pm" she replies. This is an odd statement for someone getting paid 6 figures to provide 24x7 support. I roll with it.
"Ok, how about 7 am tomorrow morning?"
"I don't start work until 9am." she says with zero trace of irony in her voice. I let her know it's going to be pretty fucking hard to do any after-hours work with those sort of hours, and she decides that maaayabe the hardware test could probably run during regular business hours without impacting anything. Oh, I get it- she didn't' want to do the test. I tell her there's less people doing stuff here at lunch time in 1 hour. She finally agrees. Hardware failed test, they're going to ship something. Sweet.

It's now Friday and the guaranteed overnight replacement finally arrived a few days late. Someone in our shipping and receiving messages me that it's here.
"Do I need to put an asset tag on it?"
"Yes"
"Can you get me a procurement ticket number for it?"
"There isn't one, it's a direct warranty replacement."
"Well we need a ticket number to be able to tag it."


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a lot of the working remote bullshit came with covid and never left, i work for the DOD and need certain IT people semi-regularly for account issues. never answer the phone, never email me back, I have to call around looking for them before I get a person on the phone. last time I called to ask for a person I needed, the person who answered didn't even know that person works there. it shows how much they show up. I can only get them to respond if I CC my supervision on an email, because then they'll know someone higher than me is tracking it. then magically i get a reply
JD Mark said:
And they sure as heck aren't going to put any extra effort into anything.
Click to expand...
why would I? I learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago. I do my job and do it well, but nothing more than that. the reward for going above and beyond is more work for the same pay. fuck that. you want me to do more? let's talk turkey first, and then I'll consider it

if you're known as the expert on an aircraft maintenance task, guess who gets to go relieve the dipshits on the flightline who can't read an instruction manual.

if you're the guy who knows his shit in whatever professional environemnt, guess who gets voluntold to give briefings to "designated" visitors?
JD Mark said:
And Covid bullshit made everything even worse.
Click to expand...
yep
 
lagunaMS said:
a lot of the working remote bullshit came with covid and never left, i work for the DOD and need certain IT people semi-regularly for account issues. never answer the phone, never email me back, I have to call around looking for them before I get a person on the phone. last time I called to ask for a person I needed, the person who answered didn't even know that person works there. it shows how much they show up. I can only get them to respond if I CC my supervision on an email, because then they'll know someone higher than me is tracking it. then magically i get a reply
Click to expand...
This right here. I work in IT, and we worked remote during COVID and I made sure all my guys knew that people were watching to see if that remote work they all wanted was actually going to be productive. The one rule was if someone calls/messages/emails, etc. you ass better get back to them immediately or have a really good reason why you couldn't. They have have phones, laptops, vpn, etc.

Some people on our development team apparently didn't get the memo and ruined it for the rest of us. Guess what? We're all back in the office now. Thanks assholes.
 
Sandy Johnson said:
I'm ok with on their phones every now and then. Here's an example of what I've been seeing lately:

Tuesday we had some firewall hardware die. We have a support contract with a digital security firm that is supposed to manage our firewalls (it usually ends up me making all the changes and letting them know, but I actually prefer it that way). When the firewall went down, I had some things in place to fail us over to another connection, but they didn't' know that. They sent an email basically saying "your junk went down, is everything ok?". I told them no. At this point they're contractually obligated to get us back up asap. I went down and started troubleshooting for them, and sent them all the info I found. Radio silence. I find the dead piece of hardware, and take it out of the equation and get us back running. Radio silence.

I call their support line the next day since this is a critical piece of hardware and I'm limping along at one out of two devices. I get a tier 1 tech that shows lots of concern, agrees that what I've sent them shows I need them to send me replacement hardware, and tells me to hold while he finds a tier 2 engineer at their company to tell him what to do. I wait while he tries to contact people. Nothing. I finally tell him that maybe he could just call me back when one of his engineers shows up to the party? He agrees.

Finally, 24 hours later, tier 2 engineer contacts a junior admin here that wasn't even working on the issue and isn't the main point of contact. That guy was like "uuuuhh... I have no idea what's going on, but here's the contact information for the guy who has been sending you all the information you have."
They call me, I pick up and they tell me they've got an engineer on the line from insert big name network equipment mfg here and they have been waiting to work on the issue. I tell them that's cool, but they need to wait because I'll have to get my butt down to the actual equipment with my laptop, as he must know since I've been updating them that part of the problem is we can't remotely connect to the dead hardware. This dude was shocked to know that I didn't just live in my datacenter full time, and actually spent most of my time elsewhere.

Now it really starts to get good: I hop on a video conference all with everyone 10 minutes later and we go through the usual steps to prove to the manufacturer that the hardware is dead. Manufacturer Engineer lady doesn't believe it, says she wants to run a hardware test. Cool, lets do it. She tells me we should do it after hours during a scheduled maintenance window.
"Ok, how about after 5pm pacific time today?" I ask
"I'm off at 5pm" she replies. This is an odd statement for someone getting paid 6 figures to provide 24x7 support. I roll with it.
"Ok, how about 7 am tomorrow morning?"
"I don't start work until 9am." she says with zero trace of irony in her voice. I let her know it's going to be pretty fucking hard to do any after-hours work with those sort of hours, and she decides that maaayabe the hardware test could probably run during regular business hours without impacting anything. Oh, I get it- she didn't' want to do the test. I tell her there's less people doing stuff here at lunch time in 1 hour. She finally agrees. Hardware failed test, they're going to ship something. Sweet.

It's now Friday and the guaranteed overnight replacement finally arrived a few days late. Someone in our shipping and receiving messages me that it's here.
"Do I need to put an asset tag on it?"
"Yes"
"Can you get me a procurement ticket number for it?"
"There isn't one, it's a direct warranty replacement."
"Well we need a ticket number to be able to tag it."


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Click to expand...

I argued and fought with our former interweb provider for 6 months about our slow connection.

Every time it was something on our end. I kept telling them something was wrong with their hardware, wiring, connection, whatever.

Nope, can't be.

Yes, it can be.

Finally, after testing on my own, a couple different computers, different OS, hardwire vs wifi, blah, blah, blah they say we'll check into it.

Oh...someone flipped a switch at the phone junction switch building thing that we didn't know about. No freaking shit dumbass...that's what I've been trying to tell you for 6 freaking months.

Morons kept having me do speed tests. Upload and download speeds were within spec, but the ping was stupid high. They never asked me about that and at the time I had no idea what it meant. If it helps...this was back when 1 Mbps wasn't top of the line speed, but that was the max we could get.
 
JD Mark said:
I argued and fought with our former interweb provider for 6 months about our slow connection.

Every time it was something on our end. I kept telling them something was wrong with their hardware, wiring, connection, whatever.

Nope, can't be.

Yes, it can be.

Finally, after testing on my own, a couple different computers, different OS, hardwire vs wifi, blah, blah, blah they say we'll check into it.

Oh...someone flipped a switch at the phone junction switch building thing that we didn't know about. No freaking shit dumbass...that's what I've been trying to tell you for 6 freaking months.

Morons kept having me do speed tests. Upload and download speeds were within spec, but the ping was stupid high. They never asked me about that and at the time I had no idea what it meant. If it helps...this was back when 1 Mbps wasn't top of the line speed, but that was the max we could get.
Click to expand...
I had that issue with comcast at my house. Suddenly one day things got really really slow. Speed tests were down, latency was bad, something was up. Cable dude comes out, I tell him I think there's a problem at the pole or my line in, but he is too busy being offended that I am not using official cable modem and router. That must be it. I assure him that my hardware is infinitely more badass than what they want me to rent from them and working fine. I suggest he check the signal level since they didn't look good on my cable modem. No, he must first plug in one of their rentals and try a speed test. He does not get good results. Starts to leave after having me reboot my own modem. I tell him I wont sign off on him leaving until he puts a meter on the line to my house. He gets all huffy, goes to grab his meter from the van aaaaand.... is out there for a really long time.

He comes back in 30 mins later and gruffly says he thinks there's a problem up at the pole and he's got a ladder truck coming to help him out. I kept as straight of a face as possible and told him good luck.
 
I went to a titty bar in SF and those girls certainly do NOT work very hard. Only 1 came by offering a dance, the others were looking at their damn phones. Its like they were all in a damn whore union. A month later we were at a spot in Reno, NV and those girls earned every dollar
 
JR4X said:
Covid time off changed everything. Everyone learned to phone it in. If you try at all you’ll be a better employee than everyone you work with. So that’s where you’re at. Phone it in world.
Click to expand...
They never restaffed after covid so were all stuck doing twice the work. Instead of hiring more people they hire in consultants peddling the newest system for time management and try to force us to use it, which just eats up more time.
 
I do the best I am able to.

Some days that's just showing up though. Like last year when I was sick as shit, heaters wide open, winter gear on and teeth chattering still. Or when I tweaked my back and could barely walk.

Other days it means no lunch, hustling doing 5 things at once, 14+ hrs

Wish I didn't need food, get sore, need a bathroom or sleep, would be so much more efficient.
 
Im convinced the 40hr/5day week (in this century) turns one into an indifferent worker-zombie. Easily takes 50hrs to put in those 40. Approval processes, budgets, and bureaucracy push everything into 'next week', 'next month' or 'next quarter' perpetually, with increasingly shitty outcomes. This has become acceptable practice at higher levels, and really smacks of not giving a fuck. So whats the attitude of the peon worker-zombie gonna be?

I work 168hrs in 2 week intervals. I get enough downtime (2 weeks off) that I can come to work and giv'er, turning a blind eye to the idiocy that happens in the office. So in my case, more days-off and less commuting makes me a more productive worker.

This 5 day week shit is antiquated. It had its place when Pops was the breadwinner and Mama stayed home raising kids and carrying the household. Nobody commuted for 2hrs/day. Thats not life today.

Maybe I've become a cantankerous 47yo. :homer:
 
Void_of_Light said:
They never restaffed after covid so were all stuck doing twice the work. Instead of hiring more people they hire in consultants peddling the newest system for time management and try to force us to use it, which just eats up more time.
Click to expand...
Pretty much this. Most places I go for contract work is running on an absolute skeleton crew yet the expect shit to get done like they got 10 people on shift when in reality there's only 1-2.

Usually it's 1 person that kind of maybe knows what's going on and 1 person that's being trained by the other guy.

This place I'm working at now has been "trying" to hire people for over a year and all they were able to find was the managers drunk buddy that then proceeded to get fired for being drunk at work :homer:
 
lagunaMS said:
a lot of the working remote bullshit came with covid and never left, i work for the DOD and need certain IT people semi-regularly for account issues. never answer the phone, never email me back, I have to call around looking for them before I get a person on the phone. last time I called to ask for a person I needed, the person who answered didn't even know that person works there. it shows how much they show up. I can only get them to respond if I CC my supervision on an email, because then they'll know someone higher than me is tracking it. then magically i get a reply

why would I? I learned that lesson the hard way a long time ago. I do my job and do it well, but nothing more than that. the reward for going above and beyond is more work for the same pay. fuck that. you want me to do more? let's talk turkey first, and then I'll consider it

if you're known as the expert on an aircraft maintenance task, guess who gets to go relieve the dipshits on the flightline who can't read an instruction manual.

if you're the guy who knows his shit in whatever professional environemnt, guess who gets voluntold to give briefings to "designated" visitors?

yep
Click to expand...
BCC is a wonderful tool; at least it was a decade ago when I was in the Army.

Example:

Need to get follow-on duty assignment, as my overseas tour is coming to a close. E-mail branch manager. no response. FWD email again, this time with a BCC to the Branch Sergeant Major. No response. Email a third time, this time moving the Sergeant Major to the regular CC line. Branch Manager magically responds within 24 hours. I can then have the conversation and ask why my first two emails were ignored, met with excuses... but behind the scenes? The Sergeant Major was lighting her lazy ass up because she refused to get info from the troops and just placed them wherever she felt they were needed.

My orders were magically entered without fanfare the following day, followed by an apology email from the Sergeant Major about his NCO's apathy.
 
Archer said:
After many years of doing DEP work I know I'm about fed up with the state and just about wanna tell them to pound sand and find someone else who will put up with it. Can't speak about other areas but around here it's getting hard for DEP to find drillers willing to work under their bullshit.
Click to expand...

I have been involved with drilling since I walked out of the door with my degree. Private, oilfield, private, my own company and then 21 years of State work ended up managing an entire "Foundation Drilling" branch with 13 crews out on the slab or whatever.

WHAT THE FUCK IS DEP ???

Department of Environmental Pussy ?

DumbAss Ended Poorly ?

Douche Entry Portal ?

Spell your shit out at least once so someone, anyone, has at least a chance at a tiny clue of what the fuck you are talking about.

I have more :lmao::lmao::lmao:
 
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