The Whining and Bitching Thread

[zabu of nΩd]

I'm in a similar situation as you, except I'm still satisfied with ~30% of the job, and there's plenty of help needed around the company if I care to reach out for more to do.

That and I have zero desire to have kids. Fuck that bullshit

I'm convinced there's nothing else I'd rather do that pays at least half what I'm making now. It sucks, but having an easy job that pays well is a far better lot in life than most people have, and I'm always reminding myself to be grateful for that.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

This is a weird thing to bitch about, but I get scared of the dark almost every night now at my apartment, when I go to bed. Specifically, scared that I might see a ghost. It's something I've struggled with ever since I started living alone eight years ago, but it got much worse this year after I watched Crimson Peak and a few episodes of Ghost Adventures. I've absolutely sworn off ghost movies/shows now.

I've never seen a ghost in my life, and I don't believe in anything supernatural. It's amazing how powerful a fear can be, even when I know it's a completely irrational one.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

I have basically zero percent job satisfaction right now. I get paid a shit ton of money to essentially sit around and do nothing (honestly someone in the world's dream job tbh). I guess because my job is more project based, it isn't unexpected to have lulls in activity but I swear the last 6 months I've had to start asking people if they need help with things because of the lack of work to do or the degree of ease at which I can complete work. I have to ask to be assigned to projects so I don't feel like a fucking freeloader just browsing Wikipedia or shitposting here. I don't feel challenged or enriched at all. Rumor mill says that at some point I'm going to be pushed into a developer (programmer) role but I'm not really optimistic about it. I don't see any of the developers retiring anytime soon and the youngest developer is 50 or so years old. We have a sizable project about to start soon so I'm sure I'll be really busy with that until it's over but even then I don't feel challenged. I know I'm somewhat proficient at my job because I find system defects all the time that need to be fixed but I never feel like I'm pulling my own weight at all. I am the third most knowledgeable person about this administration system in a company of 1,000+ people so I have job security/knowledge power and could feasibly stay in this role for a long time but this isn't what I want to do for even 5 more years.

I've thought about:

• going back to school
• making a complete career change and learning a trade of some kind (which would involve #1)
  
• joining the military (I have one more year to join the Army and until I'm 39 to join the USAF so I have some time to make a decision on this but not much time. I would also have to drop 40 more pounds based on my height but I could probably get a waiver if I drop half that)
  
• finding a job at a different company (although I hate interviews enough so shy away from this right now)
• transferring to a different department in the company (although I imagine once I learn how to do THAT job, I will become bored again)

At least when I worked in a call center, I didn't have time to be bored. I'm just not sure what to do. I am satisfied about everything else in my life other than this (and the fact that I want to get married and have kids because the urge to have kids intensifies as I get older but I can't control that at all unfortunately) and has me really feeling down lately. I don't look forward to going to work at all anymore. I don't dread going to work either, but it's just a constant state of complacency because of the work environment and political environment within work.

All that money for schooling to be bitching about a job I don't like. Fuck this.

Hey, you could go back to school and get that degree in gender studies you've always wanted

If you're really unhappy there and you want to go with one of those five options, your best bet might just be to try out a different company. You'll eventually run into the same problem you mention with fifth problem, but you'll eventually run into that problem with any of the options listed. Sometimes just a change of environment and work crew can make all the difference. I would however echo Grant before recommending any major changes.

Your military option struck my eye though. I've found myself mulling over the military option (specifically the officer route) a couple of times over the last 5 or so years. Typically when it crossed my mind, I was in a rather alienated position with occupational circumstances and I also tended to isolate myself from people in my free time (in part because I barely had any). I was pretty unhappy and I think my view on it was something of an organized, secure way of running away. Remaining on the path I was on just seemed too slow and I couldn't bear it. Obviously I didn't go through with it, and I'm glad that I didn't because my motivation for doing so was misplaced. The military is a good place to run away to when you don't have other options; you're making quite a sacrifice when you do have other options, and you could wind up being locked in for a few years and feeling like you're wasting your time the whole way through without any guaranteed benefits at the end except a waiting list at the VA. Of course, my experience is probably totally different than yours, but I just wanted to throw mine out there. I'm sure our military guys here have some commentary on that.

This is a bit more personal of a question, but how's your social life? A good social life makes situations like yours much more tolerable. I don't like teaching very much and the hourly demands of my job here are next to nothing, so I was pretty miserable until I found a solid group of friends here a couple months back.

 

[The Ozzman]

This is a bit more personal of a question, but how's your social life?

I guess it's relative. I've never been a social butterfly but I'm finally aligning myself with people I can trust and really good friendships with a small group of people. Socialization is a very important and necessary part of life so I understand I can't just barricade myself in my house all the time. Ever since I quit drinking my perspectives on things have changed. My friend and his wife had a cookout last night and I opted not to go even after another friend was goading me to come mainly because I was tired from my class. I usually make those gatherings and I figure I have the option to not to go one since i try to attend 80% of them.

I've found with my work emvironment, the people I used to hang out with can no longer be trusted for several reasons. As a result, I really only hang out with one person from work but she has essentially become my best work friend and female friend. She is also in recovery and we have grown closer as we have journeyed through sobriety together.

Not sure if I answered your question. Do I socialize outside of work? Yes. Do I have a social life? Your perspective dictates that.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

I guess it's relative. I've never been a social butterfly but I'm finally aligning myself with people I can trust and really good friendships with a small group of people. Socialization is a very important and necessary part of life so I understand I can't just barricade myself in my house all the time. Ever since I quit drinking my perspectives on things have changed. My friend and his wife had a cookout last night and I opted not to go even after another friend was goading me to come mainly because I was tired from my class. I usually make those gatherings and I figure I have the option to not to go one since i try to attend 80% of them.

I've found with my work emvironment, the people I used to hang out with can no longer be trusted for several reasons. As a result, I really only hang out with one person from work but she has essentially become my best work friend and female friend. She is also in recovery and we have grown closer as we have journeyed through sobriety together.

Not sure if I answered your question. Do I socialize outside of work? Yes. Do I have a social life? Your perspective dictates that.

Yeah, you answered it. You're definitely right on the drinking part. It can play proxy-company and make it easy to barricade yourself in. I try not to drink much if I'm not hanging with other people. And on hanging out with co-workers, I prefer to keep it friendly with some distance. Even with a good group of friends, drama inevitably arises, and that's not pretty in a work environment. Plus, when I loosen my tie too much, sometimes stuff comes out of my mouth that gets me fired.

I guess the one thing I might add is if there's an opening to expand your social network and fall into a new group of people, take it. It can give you something new to look forward to and it's also the best way to randomly meet a wifey.

 

[Bloopy]

I am the third most knowledgeable person about this administration system in a company of 1,000+ people so I have job security/knowledge power and could feasibly stay in this role for a long time but this isn't what I want to do for even 5 more years.

I was in a similar scenario where it was hard to stay motivated and I wasn't pulling my weight. In hindsight it seems I was gently squeezed out of access to the main source code years earlier. The system was for internal use so I was surrounded by local users interrupting me with problems that I could rarely fix properly, while the few people who understood what I did were far away. In the end neither group could find room for me in their budget, even though my pay wasn't that great. Now currently I'm self-employed and doing a bit of work from home for the far away people where I can actually concentrate. And it's just development without the distractions of system support or menial work. I'm riding my savings down a bit so will eventually need to branch out and find others to do work for.

I highly doubt I'll ever have a full-time job again. Even if I wanted to, insomnia turned up and started getting in the way. I've never really given a fuck about career as such. I saw my software engineering degree as mainly just my timid young self's way of easing into the real world. If I found myself in the high-pressure software development sphere I'd probably bail and try my hand at copy-editing or something. I don't know if there's an equivalent for your skills, but I was quite lucky to find a job in the utilities/construction industry where I was the company's only developer based within a 2,000km radius and I could get people excited as fuck just by adding a text box or multiple colours to something, haha!

 

[Phylactery]

There are parts of my job I love and parts that get me down. I love being in the classroom, especially when you’ve planned a good lesson and the energy is high and the students are really interested in the topic. I love the fact that I get to do maths every single day because I adore the subject. I also love getting creative when planning lessons to try and engage the students. However, you rarely have the time to spend much time doing that because of all the other crap that goes with this profession! In the UK, out of a possible 50 lessons over a fortnight (this is most school, where you have 5 one hour lessons per day) you get 6 hours where you’re not teaching. That time should he spent planning lessons I feel, however, it’s usually spent marking and catching up on pointless admin! Marking often feels like a waste of time and a useless tick box exercise because I teach way too many kids to be able to give them meaningful feedback. And tbh, I think planning interesting lessons is way more useful than marking anyway.

I also hate the amount of work I have to outside of school. I’ve got much better at it tbf, but I used to spend every evening and most weekends working.

 

[PrincessHades]

My phone is pretty much fucked. Last week it started glitching/freezing and now its to the point where its barely usable.

At first I thought it was the battery being constantly low, but I charged it up and it is still getting worse. I cleared my app cache and all that shit and still nothing improved.

Honestly I think it might be a porno virus (I get those notifactions a lot on pornhub and generally I assume theyre scams but im sure some of them are real. I really hope this isnt from dropping my phone a lot because if thats the case im fucked.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Learn some self control and wait to make it home from the security of your computer before jacking it. I don't really get phone porn anyways. Like, masturbation is a far more involved and intimate process than driving a car, but everyone knows that handling your phone and shift at the same time is a bad idea, so why juggle your phone and shaft?

 

[zabu of nΩd]

My phone is pretty much fucked. Last week it started glitching/freezing and now its to the point where its barely usable.

At first I thought it was the battery being constantly low, but I charged it up and it is still getting worse. I cleared my app cache and all that shit and still nothing improved.

Honestly I think it might be a porno virus (I get those notifactions a lot on pornhub and generally I assume theyre scams but im sure some of them are real. I really hope this isnt from dropping my phone a lot because if thats the case im fucked.

Google "factory reset" and try that. If it doesn't work, replace the battery.

 

[Bloopy]

Factory reset and then keep bloated apps to a minimum. Eg. use Messenger Lite instead of regular Facebook Messenger if you can (it has no call features and I think it's Android only).

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Fucking Open Office! My files have been losing some of my recent edits after I save them. I don't know if this is a bug in Open Office, one in the Google Drive desktop sync I leave running (I know the sync process can prevent files from getting updated), or some kind of Windows malware, but I'm fucking done with this shit.

I've been reluctant to use Google Docs for everything I write, because it doesn't save local copies by default, which means no backup if Google happens to glitch out and lose all my files. Aside from that risk, though, Google is just too convenient and reliable for me to want to bother with anything else. I'll just have to get in the habit of exporting local copies from it...

 

[-CC-]

I’d say the risk of losing files locally as opposed to cloud storage is infinitely larger. There are many failsafes in place for recovering data on their end. All it takes on your end is some spilled coffee or a power outage.

If you want an easy solution to keeping a copy locally and on Google, use Drive File Stream. It’s pretty convenient.

Edit: never mind it seems you are already using it. I misread the post.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I’d say the risk of losing files locally as opposed to cloud storage is infinitely larger. There are many failsafes in place for recovering data on their end. All it takes on your end is some spilled coffee or a power outage.

If you want an easy solution to keeping a copy locally and on Google, use Drive File Stream. It’s pretty convenient.

Edit: never mind it seems you are already using it. I misread the post.

Yeah, I've already lost many files due to local-only storage, and I already use Google Drive to store basically all my documents now. What I'm saying is I've still been editing many documents locally (and then syncing them with Google Drive), and that's the part I'm ready to give up on, because I've managed to lose data that way too.

On top of that, I'm paranoid that any file, no matter where it is, can be hacked / destroyed by a software bug, so once in a while I look for convenient failsafes to add to my storage practices. I have a lot of paper backups too -- it'd be nice if I could afford to hire Iron Mountain like big companies do, but alas I'm stuck with my Canon printer.

 

[Bloopy]

If you don't edit your documents at the Google end, you could keep them elsewhere and manually echo them to your Google Drive folder using something like Microsoft SyncToy. Which is a little silly if your computer only has one hard drive and the documents take up a lot of space. Or if you forget to do it. But otherwise it'd prevent Google's sync process from fucking with them.

Also, have you looked into LibreOffice as an alternative to OpenOffice?

 

[zabu of nΩd]

If you don't edit your documents at the Google end, you could keep them elsewhere and manually echo them to your Google Drive folder using something like Microsoft SyncToy. Which is a little silly if your computer only has one hard drive and the documents take up a lot of space. Or if you forget to do it. But otherwise it'd prevent Google's sync process from fucking with them.

Also, have you looked into LibreOffice as an alternative to OpenOffice?

I'm suspicious that any sync app which acts as an intermediary between different companies' software can fuck documents up, especially if the document editor uses lock files (which I've seen Google's sync app especially choke on).

I don't want to use LibreOffice, or any other freeware bullshit. Document editors are very hard to build right, and the less frequently they're updated, the more of a malware liability they become. I've lost trust in all but the big companies' editors, and for now Google Docs is the cheapest I know of.

 

[Bloopy]

I've used SyncToy for years, but only ever in echo mode and not syncing in both directions. Even if a file is open just for reading by another program it errors on it because it wants exclusive access. Whereas other sync programs might read a file that's in use and about to be re-saved.

I know all its quirks and probably wouldn't rely on any other sync app. Only time it didn't do its job was when I tried to use 2 USB hard drives interchangeably with only one folder pair set up. It does keep empty folders even if you delete them, and occasionally hasn't removed files I'd deleted/moved (but that may have been due to me re-configuring). Also it's a bit slow.

 

[viewerfromnihil]

I primarily use a Chromebook, so I live off of Google Drive and haven't died yet.

 

[Krow]

Hot water heater went out yesterday evening. Pilot light will not light whatsoever. Cleaned the pilot line and still nothing. Dont think its the thermocouple because I cant get a flame at all.Tinkered with it a bit and I think the thermostat quit working. Decided to try and fix it since its natural gas and the only components that actually do shit seem to be the thermostat control and the burner. Have to wait for the new thermostat until Wednesday. Will be good and sick of cold showers by then.

 

[The Butt]

Not gonna lie my life is kind of crumbling around me (now-ex-girlfriend dumped me last week, said she wants the apartment or to live as roommates. naturally im gonna fight it and get the place but meh), and I'm just sitting here working, getting high, playing pokemon go and making suicide jokes to cope lmao.

shits fucked.