Workplace cynicism

[KrazyHorse]

No way - cycles are cheap and bandwidth is expensive.

[Kuciwalker]

I cross-edited you.

[KrazyHorse]

Not my fault that they were wrong

Please go back to filing books. Men are talking now.

[Aeson]

The boss at my job doesn't know what he's doing half the time, and the other half of the time can't communicate it to the workers. Nothing needed is readily available, and once procured, is not to specs and has to be patched/modified to fit. It's awesome

[SlowwHand]

Kind of like Civ's 3,4 & 5.

[Aeson]

Without reloads!

[BlackCat]

The boss at my job doesn't know what he's doing half the time, and the other half of the time can't communicate it to the workers. Nothing needed is readily available, and once procured, is not to specs and has to be patched/modified to fit. It's awesome

Is he the son of the company owner ? If not, why hasn't he been kicked out long ago ?

[Aeson]

I tried to fire myself but no one understood that it had happened so it was just business as usual.

[BlackCat]

[Traianvs]

Basically, the problem is just that a large, standardized system can't hope to meet everyone's needs equally, and one student's difficulties can affect others.

Another Xpost. I really should simply quote if I'm going to type out these monsters.

I imagine you've seen the following RSAnimate vid already:



Two important things in my view are:

• Kids should be encouraged to pursue what truly interests them. In high school my life was made a complete hell due to 'standardization' and *****y teachers, and I know this to be the case for many others as well. That has to change, and smaller classes is one huge leap forward in achieving that.
• Parents need to step up more. People have more freedom to do as they please nowadays as the vestiges of traditional community values have pretty much crumbled, much in thanks to technological advances and in turn creating a different - modern - way of life. Contrary to societies where community raises kids, nearly all the burden falls on the parents' shoulders now. With people less capable of responsability towards their offspring, particularly in the less well-off part of society, the dependence on schools and teachers grows dramatically. That's simply just not sustainable. People need to ward off that indifference, they need to be more (or better) involved with their kids education; not patronizing them but guiding them to make the right choices.

I think the origins of your troubles in the teaching environment differ somewhat to those that stem from traditional business workplaces, imo

[Traianvs]

I'm relatively new to working in the formal sense; until I graduated from college, I mostly did jobs for my parents when I wanted cash (my dad ran a little business and often needed help). I've worked at three jobs in the past two years: a badly-run pizza place, the U.S. Census Bureau, and now substitute teaching. And at all three, I quickly developed a feeling that my place of work was, in essence, FUBAR. Nothing seemed to work as intended, inefficiency abounded, and much of what I or my coworkers do/did seemed pointless or self-defeating. And everybody else seemed to realize this state of affairs as well, adjusting accordingly: they did the bare minimum of work, cut corners knowing they were unlikely to be caught or punished, and worked the system for personal gain without regard. Not that I'm blaming them--I do/did much the same thing, because the flaws seemed unfixable. Now, this might be a result of my having the three jobs I did, and/or my talent for seeing the worst in every situation. But dang, three in a row!

Hence the poll. How big of a fustercluck is your current place of work? Is this something I just need to get used to?

I think those problems occur less often in young, innovating start-up companies or organisations where people all pretty much try to work towards a common goal (NGO's for example).

My previous job involved working on a project with both consultants (IBM, CSC, Siemens) and civil servants. Clichés abounded. Consultants were only thinking about their end-of-year bonus, generally being terribly uncooperative, and civil servants just did whatever the **** they wanted to.

Awful times. That's why I'm now looking for work in small, versatile orgs with a clear (preferably non-profit) goal and plan of action.

[Elok]

I think the origins of your troubles in the teaching environment differ somewhat to those that stem from traditional business workplaces, imo

Yes and no. The precise nature of the problems varies, but the real root of both is that some idiot put human beings in charge. And you just can't trust humans to get anything right. We need to get our scientists working on an antidote for the human condition, pronto.

My wife is big on homeschooling. I don't know if that will be practical, but if we have kids I'm all for trying it out. It would be better, of course, if we could fix the actual system, but I don't see that happening in my country within my lifetime. But both your points sound like reasonable places to start.

[C0ckney]

and what's wrong with being a librarian. you get to sit around surrounded by books, talking about books and readning books. sounds like a sweet deal to me.

[KrazyHorse]

Nothing's wrong with being a librarian so long as you don't attempt to represent yourself as something else

[BlackCat]