the "things you wish you could say" thread

[mamselle]

The current system works and nobody is complaining. Find something else to improve!

^Like.

Similar to the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

M.

[FishProf]

Sending me something on Saturday night and telling me it MUST be done on Sunday (a holiday Sunday! when I am no longer on contract) is neither a way to get work done nor to endear yourself to any of us.

[nescafe]

Your grade isn't acceptable to me, either. But here we are.

[San Joaquin]

Hey, guess what?  If your system doesn't work, that is actually YOURS to fix.

[miss jane marple]

I have asked you three times, in various ways I think will be clear and to the point, what you want me to do exactly. Telling me "the Armadillo sails at midnight" the first time, "the pen of my aunt is in the forehead of my uncle" the second time, and "very social science!" the third time is not getting us closer to a resolution.

[paultuttle]

That meanspiritedness and petty behavior doesn't look good on you.

[polly_mer]

The instructions indicated this was a three-hour tour (a three-hour tour).  Having an unexpected six-hour tour means I have a big list of suggestions for things to cut from the next iteration since the stated goal is to bring us new folks up to speed.  I'm not sure I am up to speed because

(a) we only got to the stuff on which I actually work in hour 5, long after my back was explaining at great volume the problem with 5 hours standing on concrete.

(b) you had two posters on the thing I work on whereas we had beautiful, colored, full-scale models of everything else including things from decades ago that were a  dead-end after three months and things proposed before the mid-20th century that never made it out of the prototype phase.

(c) you spent a total of 5 minutes on the thing I work on, less time than you spent explaining where the ladies room was for the mid-tour potty break and even then we couldn't find the ladies room and had to come back for more instructions.

[mamselle]

Echoes of the theme from "Gilligan's Island," perhaps?

My tours always run pretty much as scheduled, unless interest is shown or I'm asked to go longer.

I also release anyone who needs to leave at the time they request, and try to address their interests first.

Just to let you know it can he done......

Sorry your back had to put up with all that.

A tour guide's inability/unwillingness to adhere to the discipline of timing the tour is a sign of egoisme.

M.

[polly_mer]

A tour guide's inability/unwillingness to adhere to the discipline of timing the tour is a sign of egoisme.

My bet is a key problem is our tour leader was not a professional tour guide.  Instead, we took a field trip to a museum where you provide your own tour guide so we had a working scientist in the knowledge area leading us along with two retired scientists who had spent their whole careers in the very specialized area contributing stories along the way.  As I told my husband, he would have loved this combination of The History Channel, Nova, Popular Science, and Old Guys Telling Stories.  We had an incredible and unique experience that was definitely worth the day spent.

My frustration really is the 6 hours* when I was planning for 3 and yet we skimped on the one area that has direct relevance for my work and that's true for about half the other people on the tour.  We have a running joke among my cohort of colleagues (all hired about the same time with different backgrounds and yet no one is an expert in this field) that we always start at the same date in history, go until someone runs out of breath, and yet we seldom even get up to things that happened in our lifetimes and we're over 40.  Some bringing-up-to-speed discussions don't even get us up to the transistor being in wide use, which is problematic since we're doing high-tech machinery along with high performance computing and a lot has changed since before the time of the transistor.

* and no lunch! On top of my no breakfast because we left here at 0-dawn-30 to make the lengthy drive and then a late supper because of the lengthy drive back.

[drbrt]

Will you just TELL ME ALREADY if my class is cancelled?

[FishProf]

Please don't threaten to quit unless you get your way....unless you mean it.

Don't get my hopes up.

[mamselle]

OK, I've given you all the info you asked for, in spreadsheet form--and now you say you knew it all along.

This is starting to make it sound like I'm going to become the fall person.

I'm starting to look elsewhere--starting now.

M.

[histchick]

In the past couple of months, I have seen multiple job postings at our place change from external to "Internal Only" positions.  I doubt there's anything nefarious going on, but someone in HR clearly needs to up their game. 

[polly_mer]

Receiving criticism is hard.  However, staying in the bubble where no one ever criticizes means you're missing vital information that you could use to head off disaster.  Not knowing what people think means you are fixing the wrong problem.

[RatGuy]

Keep your dog on a leash.