Ok, since I started the threadjacking with my enraging comment about posting at work, I think the Real Dolls are creepy as all hell. Anyone who catches themselves ordering one should really seek professional help, even if it would mean brushing the cobwebs off the phone and pry the boards off the door to come in contact with real people.

Hey, those are reasons. Maybe some some justifications thrown in, but primarily reasons...

mmm.... okay, maybe so.... On the personal level, I wish you well.

If I was a different sort of chap, I'd be tempted to order one of those dolls, not only while at work, but with my company credit card.

But I'm not that kind of guy.

9Th , go for it , be driven , have lofty goals , be pissed off when folks don't see things they way you do ,,,,, Yo GO Boyyyye !!!! ( and I Do NOT meen that in a patronizeing way ) .

But as an engneering type of dude you have to wounder just HOW life like they REALY ARE ???

What initiative am I supposed to have? I am a contract worker at the moment and was hired for a particular purpose. I have no flexibility in what I can do. When that work lags, there is nothing else for me to do. I don't just sit here and not let anyone know. I follow the chain of command. If I was a full-time employee, yes, I would be getting different things to do. I have seen full-time employees who sit there for weeks and not tell anyone that they don't have anything to do. I actually hate not having anything to do.

At my old job, yes, I would take a 10 minute mental break and surf a bit. What is the difference between that and people going out for a cigarette or going to take a couple laps around the building? I have always gotten my work done. No one has ever had a problem with my performance, in fact, I get compliments.

I just want to revisit this particular note because it is central to the whole matter. Glatt of course you're doing the right thing if your people are otherwise fine. Your approach means you understand the matter. But the dynamic here is definitely I'm not supposed to be doing this and I am hiding it as well as possible because you are supposed to demerit me if you catch me.

So you've noted that "coffee breaks" are not only acceptable but promote productivity, but your people are worried and act guilty when you catch them at this productivity-increasing activity.

Is this dynamic working? On the face of it, I bet you're a better manager than 19 out of 20 managers, simply because you DO ignore it. In your group there is only a little less of a trustful relationship than in other groups. There is only a little disconnect.

I tellya, the last manager who caught me Cellarizing and bitched at me up and down for it, was left holding the bag, as I was out of there six weeks later and gave an exit interview that put it all on her.

Now I admit to being a problem child. Under manager "A" I was the smartest, most productive employee who worked extremely hard to improve the organization. Under manager "B" I spread wide dissatisfaction and eventually left. Manager "A" was considerate, respectful, gave me space, and recognized the work I did... and so I quickly became the top person. Manager "B" used the carrot-and-stick approach, except without the carrot, and within months I pretty much gave up on doing a lot of good work.

I just won't stand for a lot of disrespect.

Originally Posted by morethanpretty
I will NOT allow my thread to be hijacked! I am intensly curious as to what the cellarites think of the Real Doll! I must needs to know! NOW!

OK...here it goes.....i could probably jerk off with a pair of pliers (spanner) if it were done gently, but the idea of hugging the severed torso of a blow-up doll is spooky. my hand has served me well through my 58th birthday. Blow up, $5,000 dolls make my skin crawl.

Oh thank GOD! Because, to be perfectly honest, I would rather be stuck on an island with a "real doll" than you. Charlie would be loads more fun. :lol: He would probably reach for a towel for me while you were bitching that the fish you were trying to spear were not efficiently using their time and resources and therefore are useless to our society.

I know, I cried. But now I'll just accept it and jump right in.
I don't work in an office with a comp. If I did, I would probably do some goofing off on the computer, but only if I didn't have any work to do. Which to me means I've done all of my reg work and can't find anything else to clean (never gonna happen). For some odd reason I like to clean, but not my house.

I would work as many hours you would need me too, as long as you pay well, I get some breaks and don't have to stand on my feet the whole time.

That's an interesting point. As I think about it more, I admit that it is a little conflicted. On the one hand, the people in my department (this is a paralegal department in a law firm) bill their time to the firm's client. They and the attorneys are the only income our firm has, so we want them to bill as much of their time as possible. On the other hand, my department only does litigations, which are very deadline driven. When you have a filing due at 5PM as the court closes, you have to make that deadline, or you get sued for malpractice. So we really spend a lot of effort focusing on the work product and meeting the deadlines. We don't focus so much on keeping people busy. It just happens on its own. But if we don't keep everyone busy, we don't make any money. So, as a manager, I'm conflicted. And so are the employees. More seasoned folks have figured out what the right balance is, and they will pull me in to show me something they found while surfing the web, because I know they were working hard until 10PM the night before. It's mostly the new people who are nervous when I walk in on them.

From an "official" point of view, we expect everyone to spend 6.5 to 7.0 hours of each 7.5 hour day doing work that will be billed to a client. The remaining 30-60 minutes is there to take care of general office paperwork, go to the bathroom, take coffee breaks, surf the web, whatever. If somebody only bills 4 hours on a particular day, they aren't going to get in trouble. But we do look at long term trends in hours billed to see if one particular case is over or understaffed.

And finally, from a practical standpoint, many of the folks in my department work so hard, and do so much overtime, that they easily make themselves valuable, even if they slack off for an hour or two each day. So that's why I pretend I don't see them surfing the web.

I think that if your realdoll doesn't have enough work to do and is therefore "goofing" off, it is your fault.

my point exactly. a good employee pulls his or her weight, and is not chastised for an occasional distraction. no one can work non stop. the human brain just isn't set up to work non stop.

just because you BILL the client for 4 hours doesn't mean that 4 hours were ACTUALLY worked. the people that i pay for 8 hours certainly aren't working 8 hours. but they get their job done.

sorry, no time to read this thread.....too busy working!

I understand what you are saying and that there may be an understanding where you work that getting a certain job done will result in an hourly charge of a set amount, but at my firm, we are very serious that you don't pad the bill. If you didn't spend the time working on a case, you better not bill the client for it. That's just wrong, especially when you consider that our hourly rates are extremely high. Getting caught falsifying time records is something that will get you fired very quickly here.

Realdoll management: when even a warm body doesn't matter.

n.b. some managers talk about head count as "warm bodies", especially in situations where politics requires large numbers of consultants on site even if they won't be particularly productive. "Let's put 10 more warm bodies in Houston, that project is billed at $3M this month and they expect it to be fully staffed."

g, it sounds like you are an excellent manager to create the right environment where real work is respected and put in when the rubber meets the road. It's the personal signals that you send that create it, huh.

Thanks. To be fair, though, I'm in middle management. My bosses kind of set the tone around here, giving me a lot of flexibility in how I do my job. tw is probably right about that 85% figure. We are lucky to have good leadership at my firm. We win awards and stuff for being a good place to work, and we also win awards for doing good work. It's nice here.

i am not suggesting that you "pad" a bill, but any person that is working for 4 straight hours on a project will spend a certain amount of time daydreaming, getting a glass of water, using the restroom, or checking their personal email. what i suggest is that at the end of 4 hours the project was done, and that the resulting work product was such that a 4 hour fee was justly due.

spoken like someone who's never met a proxy server...

I'm just sayin...

My God. You worked for that fucker too? :instinctively reaches for pistole:

Crap. There goes a year of therapy down the drain...

O Yeah.:D

hmmm apropos of nothing, I swear.
a certain dwellar, who shall be nameless, dies and goes to saint peter who looks at the big book (the akashic record, if you must know) and asks the dwellar's name.

"hmmm." comes the reply.

"spelling?" St. Pete queries.

"hmmm."

"Age?" taxes The saint.

"hmmm."

"WHAT?" demands the dwellar.

"Well, you say you are 60, but according to your billing records, you are 108."

Give me the name of the employee (in my company) and I can tell you everything they have done including every command they have entered on a piece of equipment, time they logged in, logged out etc. Upper management chooses not to "see" certain things. The employees have no idea we are collecting all this data.

what kind of company do you work for?

Is it a concious decision not to let the employees know, or just something that never comes up in conversation?

Hmm...where is the "freedom" in this, oh founder? ;)

i used to be a student aid. I ran outta things to do (I couldn't clean his office or else he would lose all of his stuff), I would either play on the net, sleep, bitch at my training student aid (she is Stupid!--capital "S" because she is the embodiment of the word), or (rarely) work on homework. I had this teach for 3 outta my 7 classes. The principal claim I lived in that office. Although I goofed off alot my teach loved/loves me and tell me how much he misses my work now that I grad. I did more than just my job (keep records of our fundraiser) I re-organized it, re-made it, and popularized it. Sadly it will probably be gone next year b/c he cannot find another student to keep it up and he doesn't have time to. In addition to my work with the fundraiser I kept tournament records, helped organize them and his class lessons/grades/attendance and all of his $ records. And lots of "little" jobs.
In my current job I goof off alot but at the same time I am normally working. I like to reorganize our stuff, and the management will always ask me to do the extra b/c they know I'll do it well. I normally work 6-8hrs at a time and I might take one "break". I hate taking breaks tho unless I'm hungry and when my coworkers aren't working I'm severly pissed b/c the burden then falls on me.

Just felt I needed to brag about myself...I'm done for now.

I am a poor girl without a penny, but I haven't been able to get help for college (so far). The problem is I need my father's financial information to fill out the FAFSA and he would not give it to me until it was too late to apply for that year. And no one, I repeat, NO ONE, would even consider me for loans unless I had already done the FAFSA.

When I finally did get it done, I wasn't eligible for grants (so far I don't know about the loans... but I should be able to get them *crosses fingers*) because me and my dad made too much together. But I think under $25,000 each per year is not nearly enough to pay for college on my own. And I haven't gotten financial aid in anything from my dad since I got a job when I was 16. I am definitely open to suggestions as to where to get loans and similar things, seeing as how I haven't been able to find any helpful ones yet. I have also applied for scholarships, and no luck there as of yet. But I keep trying.

I'm not trying to pick on you, but just because you were able to get loans and stuff doesn't mean that everyone else can. There is a large population of students that make just enough that they don’t get help, but not quite enough to pay for college all on their own. That is whey there are loans, but again, so far I haven’t been able to get them because of my father.

I have only been able to go to college part time because it was all out of pocket and that was all I could afford. Just recently I got tuition reimbursement through my job, but that only covers about 50% of all of the expenses I incur when I go to school.

I will admit that college can be a lot harder than working at a regular job. Things also work differently. At college, you can work and study constantly and still have room for improvement. The difference is that at a job sometimes there is only so much you can do. That doesn't make those employees left with nothing to do less than you. It just means they are doing something different and they don't have to work as hard, and many times can't. But that doesn’t mean they are “slacking” and need to be fired.

9th, you say that all those who goof off at work should be fired because they could be getting so much done. But that isn’t always the case. You are in a completely different field (i.e. school) then the workforce so you can’t say that what you do is the same. I think it is much more difficult then working a regular job and that is because you need to apply yourself constantly to be where you want to be. I just want you to see that most jobs don’t work that way. And again, that doesn’t make them less than you. Not everyone can be a bioengineer. There are many other jobs that need workers to do them, and many of those jobs will have some free time in between the tasks that must be completed. Just my 2 cents.

Edit: I should add that I work full time so I am no longer pennyless, but I don't have any extra money after bills to pay for college.

Iggy,

I am a financial aid administrator, and I know exactly what you are saying. I say time and time again that there is an entire poplulation of students who don't get any federal or state grants, yet their family really doesn't make enough money to comfortably send their kids, or themselves, to school. We as administrators see this all the time, and there is nothing we can do about the regulations, though we help all we can.

You should be able to get federal stafford loans easily, as long as everything else is OK, meaning you have taken all the FAFSA steps and have a valid ISIR (what the schools are sent from the results of FAFSA processing; valid meaning all verification, or other docs, have been received and processed.) Stafford loans are figured on cost of attendance (a school's formula, based on federal guidelines, for determing what it should cost that student to attend school, taking into account tuition, fees, books, costs for transportation, living expenses, child care costs, dependency status, year of school...etc and so on.) Then, aid already received is subtracted from the equation. However, dependent students are limited by annual amounts.

I was just in a meeting last Monday at the State House talking about a NEW grant we have to administer, in very short time...that once again is for students who have a zero EFC (expected family contribution.) It is a convoluted story, but I did point out to the board of regents lady that we are ignoring a very large population of students and next time they want to look good they might consider helping out those who don't get help. I didn't say it nearly that harshly, but I got applause from all the other FA administrators in the room.

I always suggest students write to their congressman. It might sound silly, but the best way to effect change is for them to understand that a large part of their consituency is unhappy and wants change.

In the meantime, keep your eyes out for scholarship opportunities. We have many institutional scholarships (I am scholarship chair) to give out every year and we find so many who don't apply because they think they have no chance.

Watch for third party scholarship opportunities in your community from civic groups. Apply for everything. Spend time on your app...sell yourself!

Also, there are national scholarships available that target a million different categories; there may be a scholarship for blond haired, green eyed people with 6 toes. You can enter yourself in a database at www.finaid.org ...find scholarship searches. They take your information and inform you of scholarships that you might be eligible for that you otherwise would never had known existed.

Most of all, hang in there. Be very careful of scams. DO NOT give money to organizations who say they will find you more aid. Any self respecting FA administrator at any respectable institution will provide you with all information for free.

I wish you the best of luck. Keep applying for scholarships!

I have tried fastweb.com It looks for all scholarship applications I qualify for based on the information I gave. I have applied for most of them, but no luck. My EIC is around $8500 this year. That is why I can't get grants. The last time I recieved information on the stafford loan (it was last year or the year before, I can't remember) it said that if I went full time to the local college then they would give me $1000. The problem with this is that full time tuition (12 credit hours) at that school is around $3000, and I can't pay the difference. They wouldn't give me money for going part time, at least that is how I understood it.

But I will write to my local congressman. I don't know why I didn't think of that, it makes perfect sense. If I don't get any aid from it, at least I will have voiced my opinion. Maybe one day that will make a difference.

I retract the firing portion of my comment, that's a little harsher than I really meant. I'm just frusterated at how many people feel that doing just the minimum to get by is enough, even here it's a big population. If some people are in jobs where they need to work in concert with many other people, some of whome are less than timely with their contribution, I understand that and that's not who I was refering to. I was listening to one of my roommates friends whine about how she was going to have to take both macro and microeconomics in the comming semester and was seeing red at the time. Both courses are really a joke anyway, and I swear if I have to listen to Ms. 'but it's gonna be haarrdd:bawling:' even one more time I'm going to go postal. :rattat:

Bwhahaha, obviously you got it. Cool, I usually have to explain it.:cool:


I work for a company that will eventually be put under the authority of the all knowing and wise UN. After all, the internet should be censored equally for everyone.

9th Engineer - every employee has to sign a form with their onboarding docs acknowledging their compliance with data collection. So theoretically they all know we collect this stuff but realistically every time I have shared something with one of them they have been amazed.

There will always be people who do just enough to get by. There will always be those who do more than their share. The law of averages says it'll all even out in the end.

I surf the web when I'm at work sometimes. Usually I'm too busy, but on slow days I do now and then.

I'm a salesperson. I always make my quota and am in fact one of the two top sales people in the company. The extra I sell makes up for those whose sales skills or product knowledge are not equal to mine.

My boss knows I surf the web sometimes. We all do. We know we're being monitored every moment we're online. I'm sure if my boss had an issue with it he'd tell me and I'd expect him to. I'm sure as hell not going to feel guilty about doing it though because I make more money for the company/hour worked than just about every other salesperson. On the other hand, if they offer me a payrise then I could be persuaded to limit my browsing time. :)

Some people, some very smart people, find those courses difficult. Just because something is easy for you don't assume that it should be easy for other people. I find math (alg atleast) fairly simple and easy, but my boyfriend is on his 3rd try of the class after having had to take all of the remedial courses.

I guess 9th isn't a "compassionate conservative" . . . he's old-school, hard-core baby!

My econ final was difficult. I forgot my calculator, and had to calculate 0.7^9 by hand, and there was no partial credit.

If there HAD been partial credit I would have answered "1" It would have to be in somewhere. :rolleyes:

My sister's calculator died on her right before her SAT...she still ended up with a 1310...I wish that I could hate her.

1310? That's the result of inflation. You kids today think your scores are so big, why back when I was a kid, the most you could get on the SAT was 3.

In fact, it wasn't even the SAT back then, it was just the AT. /curmudgeon

Ya, not alot of 'compassionate conservative' in here, it's the bitching that really got on my nerves. We're in university here, not highschool. If she finds those courses hard but still has to take them concurently then she'll just have to buckle down, work hard, and maybe drop a few side intrests off her calender. Frankly I'm amazed at how many students seem to think they should be able to be in a frat/sorority, four different student groups, and still have two or three nights a week for going out with friends. That's not how college works if you want to come out with a competitive skill set. And yes, that's what I believe everything boils down to. Someone mentioned that it doesn't matter if you have a degree from a good college, you're still at the mercy of 'The Man'. Well a degree doesn't mean dick if you arn't more skilled at what you do than most of your peers, that's how the market works, not some ghostly 'Man' working to keep you down. The skilled always rise to the top and succeed, the less skilled blame their lackluster results on something other than themselves.
So yeah, no NeoCon's here, I'm all old school! :D

Well shit!!
 

Women's Day - 30th October 2006

Bachelor Malcolm Smith finally felt ready to take the next big step as he exchanged vows with Caroline - a shapely blonde wearing a white wedding dress bought on ebay.
Dressed in a military-style outfit, he made his vows to Caroline watched by Rebecca, their witness.
He'd spent weeks scouring the charity shops looking for the perfect dress for his "bride", and he'd also found a $35 pink frock for Rebecca. Malcolm didnt know Caroline's ring size, so instead of a gold band, he bought her a fake diamond tiara and pearls.
He had the day of his dreams, despite the fact that the bride, witness and other guests were all life-size dolls. And after the one-hour ceremony, Malcolm lugged his 60kg wife awkwardly upstairs before consummating their marriage in the bedroom.
"It nearly gave me a hernia, but it was worth it and felt really special."

The lonely singleton, who has only ever had one real girlfriend, has a total of five mannequins and insists they're so life-like he has fallen in love with them - and given up on his quest to find a human girlfriend.
"The opposite sex has always been baffling to me," says Malcolm, a computer programmer. "So, I decided to turn to dolls".
He bought his Read Dolls, marketed as the "world's finest love dolls," for more than $12,300 each from a company in America..........(snip)

...."Its relaxing, and nice that they don't answer back. I think conversation is overrated," he says. He loves to have tea parties at weekends, and takes the dolls out for drives.
It may all sound utterly weird, but it works for Malcolm, who insists he has a good love-life. "At least I never get criticised on my performance", he jokes.


:worried:

Are you really going to complain that this guy isn't going to be hitting on you at bars?:cool:

The idea that you can USE a calculator on the SAT horrifies me. More than the above marrying a plastic sex doll story.

Why does that horrify you? You are only allowed to use certain calcs. and they make sure that you clear your memory before the test. I thought about it and I don't think that a calc. is really all that useful on the SAT, but for me and my sis it would be a comfort to have it. Without the calc. we are both pretty nervous even when we know we don't really need it.

I think they let you use fancy calculators at least partially to throw off unprepared students. The SAT isn't so much about getting the answer right to a problem, it's seeing the trick they put into the problem to make you THINK you know the answer when you really goofed it up. So buying anything more than a basic +-*/ type for it is wasted money.

Our HS provided TIs for our use all year. My sis, and I both bought a T1 for our college math courses, I don't really need mine but I prefer the layout and am familiar w/ the way it works. My sis needs her...she's in advance mathmatics and is planning on teaching HS advance math.

Just for the record, in high school I programmed my TI-85 to read "memory cleared" when the user entered the appropriate command, but not actually clear the memory.

But don't worry wolf, it's like 9th said: the questions nowadays are such that the calculator is no more than a mundane convenience--if you really need it, you won't be scoring well anyway.

Clodfobble is a calculator ninja!

It was a team effort with several friends. Honestly, we were such nerds we weren't even doing it to cheat, it was born out of pure laziness. I absolutely hated solving the quadratic equation, and I got tired of having to re-program it back in every time I took a test.