The new guy needs to be productive right away
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Our team had an open slot that would disappear by year end, so they hired someone to fill it. Once hired, the senior folks insisted that the person be put to work right away so as not to drag down the productivity reports.
While we had an open req, the purchasing budgets were frozen, so there was no money to buy him a computer. So he sits at his desk, reading printouts about the various systems with which he will someday work.
After two weeks of this, he's expectedly getting bored and starting to hover to try and learn something.
Unfortunately, most of the folks around here are from India, and have exceedingly thick accents. As such, they are quite difficult to understand. As a result, this poor guy has been hovering over *me*.
While I feel for the guy, I feel like giving him a starter six pack and telling him to go drink heavily.
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Snoofle, if even half the shit you've told us about this place is true, it's a wonder they're still in business.
Further: How the hell is reading printouts considered productive?
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@snoofle said:
Unfortunately, most of the folks around here are from India, and have exceedingly thick accents. As such, they are quite difficult to understand. As a result, this poor guy has been hovering over *me*.
Soooo, Nagesh and company working with you explain why your workplace sucks
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@serguey123 said:
Soooo, Nagesh and company working with you explain why your workplace sucks
Because they're constantly asking him for the codez?
ba dum tsh
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Tell the schlub to get a laptop and work on a side contract until they get him a machine.
Seriously though, they're willing to piss away thousands of dollars worth of his billable time in order to save a few hundred? My god, how do these people get themselves dressed in the morning?
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@snoofle said:
this poor guy has been hovering over me.
So did he watch you make this post? Are you teaching him to report all of the WTFs he comes across on TDWTF? This seems like absolutely vital training.
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@UrzaMTG said:
@snoofle said:
this poor guy has been hovering over *me*.
So did he watch you make this post? Are you teaching him to report all of the WTFs he comes across on TDWTF? This seems like absolutely vital training.
#1 sign you need a new job: "There are too many WTFs for me to post on the forum. I need an assistant to pick up some of the slack."
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@UrzaMTG said:
@snoofle said:
this poor guy has been hovering over me.
So did he watch you make this post? Are you teaching him to report all of the WTFs he comes across on TDWTF? This seems like absolutely vital training.
Yes, especially since snoofle may not be there much longer (isn't his contract end coming up?).
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@Lorne Kates said:
@UrzaMTG said:
@snoofle said:
this poor guy has been hovering over *me*.
So did he watch you make this post? Are you teaching him to report all of the WTFs he comes across on TDWTF? This seems like absolutely vital training.
#1 sign you need a new job: "There are too many WTFs for me to post on the forum. I need an assistant to pick up some of the slack."
But on the upside, more quality material for us to read.
Keep the great work snoofle and let us welcome snoofle sidekick warmly!
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@boomzilla said:
...snoofle may not be there much longer (isn't his contract end coming up?).
It is, but it's HIGHLY likely they'll extend as they've already asked me what I want to work on going forward.
I'm torn between trying to fix this POS on which I'm now working (assignment of the day: figure out how to join 8 unrelated tables in the db; so far I've got 13 tables of indirects: gonna take years to run on 5B rows), or delving into an entirely different area in which there will ABSOLUTELY be a whole new field of WTFery...
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BTW: the new guy was just loaned out to another team so he could be productive until our budget for next year kicks in so we can get him a laptop.
They walk him over to some cubicle by the other team. It was vacated by someone temporarily on vacation. They took their laptop with them in case an emergency comes up. They can't justify buying him a laptop because he's only on loan from our team.
So now he's sitting in another empty cubicle looking at architectural printouts from the other teams' product.
It'll be interesting to see if he sticks it out until January - with nothing to do on TWO projects!
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@snoofle said:
join 8 unrelated tables in the db; so far I've got 13 tables of indirects: gonna take years to run on 5B rows
I ran into that one on a smaller scale last year; the eventual solution was "copy the handful of rows relevant to the current task to separate tables, then join those tables instead". HTH.
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@snoofle said:
It'll be interesting to see if he sticks it out until January - with nothing to do on TWO projects!
I he doesn’t, PM me for my résumé. (Seriously.)
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@Master Chief said:
@serguey123 said:
Soooo, Nagesh and company working with you explain why your workplace sucks
Because they're constantly asking him for the codez?
ba dum tsh
They ask him to "do the needful".
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@LegacyCrono said:
@Master Chief said:
And "revert back to me" when they have? (Not that I've seen that particular piece of management-speak restricted to a particular continent... Our Dutch contingent was mildly amused at my last rant about that phrase being (ab)used when I replied-to-all.)@serguey123 said:
Soooo, Nagesh and company working with you explain why your workplace sucks
Because they're constantly asking him for the codez?
ba dum tsh
They ask him to "do the needful".
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@PJH said:
@LegacyCrono said:
@Master Chief said:
And "revert back to me" when they have? (Not that I've seen that particular piece of management-speak restricted to a particular continent... Our Dutch contingent was mildly amused at my last rant about that phrase being (ab)used when I replied-to-all.)@serguey123 said:
Soooo, Nagesh and company working with you explain why your workplace sucks
Because they're constantly asking him for the codez?
ba dum tsh
They ask him to "do the needful".I've had a lengthy discussion (well, one-sided argument rant) with people in my office using "revert" in contexts where it makes no sense.
Added to the people who put "RE:" before the subject in the first email they send you and can't understand why they shouldn't (come to think of it, all of these are women. No idea why); and one of my two (different departments...) line managers being unable to write more than three lines before they descend in to actual - not managerial but actual, incoherent - gibberish, I really suspect that I somehow managed to get through my schooling in the brief period that they could actually teach English properly.
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@Cian said:
two (different departments...) line managers being unable to write more than three lines before they descend in to actual - not managerial but actual, incoherent - gibberish
plz send teh gibberish
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@Cian said:
Added to the people who put "RE:" before the subject in the first email they send you and can't understand why they shouldn't
Other than custom, what reasons are there against it, assuming the mail is actually 'in re' of something?
(Custom and the irritation coming from violating it is sufficient for me, just curious whether there are more reasons.)
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@Ilya Ehrenburg said:
@Cian said:
Added to the people who put "RE:" before the subject in the first email they send you and can't understand why they shouldn't
Other than custom, what reasons are there against it, assuming the mail is actually 'in re' of something?
(Custom and the irritation coming from violating it is sufficient for me, just curious whether there are more reasons.)
Oh, hey, a third meaning. At least, I assume that's short for "in reference," since "in reply" would be more "to" than "of?"
It actually took me a surprisingly long time to realize that most people I encountered read that "RE:" as "REPLY" rather than "REGARDING." Somehow I went for what, in retrospect, seems an astonishingly long time between starting to use email and receiving a FW:.
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@kilroo said:
Oh, hey, a third meaning. At least, I assume that's short for "in reference," since "in reply" would be more "to" than "of?"
It actually took me a surprisingly long time to realize that most people I encountered read that "RE:" as "REPLY" rather than "REGARDING." Somehow I went for what, in retrospect, seems an astonishingly long time between starting to use email and receiving a FW:.
Actually, where I come from, it's short for Latin 'in re', roughly 'in the matter of' (from res, thing). I strongly suspect that was how it entered the English language too, and the meanings of regarding, referring to, or reply, were later invented by people not aware of the latin origin and meaning.
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@Ilya Ehrenburg said:
@Cian said:
Added to the people who put "RE:" before the subject in the first email they send you and can't understand why they shouldn't
Other than custom, what reasons are there against it, assuming the mail is actually 'in re' of something?
I believe email clients format "RE:*" messages differently.
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@Ilya Ehrenburg said:
@Cian said:
Added to the people who put "RE:" before the subject in the first email they send you and can't understand why they shouldn't
Other than custom, what reasons are there against it, assuming the mail is actually 'in re' of something?
(Custom and the irritation coming from violating it is sufficient for me, just curious whether there are more reasons.)
For the worst offender, the emails are never, ever in re of something. Completely new topics, often things I've never heard of, come with "RE:" or even worse, "RE: NBNB!" (with no importance flag set). Always.
Can only imagine she assumed that because most emails she gets (she causes email chains) had "RE:" on them, she should add it to all outbound ones.
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@Cian said:
For the worst offender, the emails are never, ever in re of something. Completely new topics, often things I've never heard of, come with "RE:"
But then they are in re (concerning, in the matter of, in reference to; that's all my dead-tree dictionary knows of - it's a bit oldish, though) of that topic, hopefully.
That would make it unusual, irritating, even annoying, but not strictly (semantically) wrong, unless the meaning of 're' has changed in English during the last 30 years.
or even worse, "RE: NBNB!" (with no importance flag set). Always.
Ugh! Commiserations.
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@Ilya Ehrenburg said:
@kilroo said:
Oh, hey, a third meaning. At least, I assume that's short for "in reference," since "in reply" would be more "to" than "of?"
It actually took me a surprisingly long time to realize that most people I encountered read that "RE:" as "REPLY" rather than "REGARDING." Somehow I went for what, in retrospect, seems an astonishingly long time between starting to use email and receiving a FW:.
Actually, where I come from, it's short for Latin 'in re', roughly 'in the matter of' (from res, thing). I strongly suspect that was how it entered the English language too, and the meanings of regarding, referring to, or reply, were later invented by people not aware of the latin origin and meaning.
Ah. I'll mark that up as my new etymological fact learned today.
...Although, possibly due to my lack of linguistics training, it seems to me that the English constructions "in reference to," "regarding," and "in the matter of" would be semantically interchangeable in most cases.Regarding a couple of other comments since that one: I'm inclined to consider an email client that alters how an email is displayed based on parsing the subject line to be a failing in the client and possible also a failing in e-mail as a technology (I think Exchange actually uses some kind of conversation ID independent of the subject line to keep track of relationships among messages, but I don't know if anything else does). And I don't know what NBNB! means. Should I be glad?
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@kilroo said:
I'm inclined to consider an email client that alters how an email is displayed based on parsing the subject line to be a failing in the client and possible also a failing in e-mail as a technology (I think Exchange actually uses some kind of conversation ID independent of the subject line to keep track of relationships among messages, but I don't know if anything else does).
Most e-mail messages have Message-id header, which is supposed to uniquely identify a message. When you reply to a message, most e-mail clients will copy the Message-ID of the message you're replying to to the In-Reply-To header, and will also copy the entire References header from the original message, and add the Message-ID of the same message to it. This allows e-mail clients to display e-mail conversations in threads. But notice how I said "most" there? None of these header fields are mandatory, and many e-mail clients get them wrong, so a lot of e-mail clients also look at the subject, or only at the subject to determine if the message is part of a particular thread.
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@kilroo said:
And I don't know what NBNB! means. Should I be glad?
I'd assume that NBNB was a Very Important "NB" (Nota Bene). Double note below?
I seem to remember getting dead tree letters with headed something like "Dear Mr Zemm, RE: Your recent enquiry". So RE was like "subject". Of course the subject is labelled in the email client and RE now is short for REply.
One of my pet peeves is being forwarded an email chain with the original subject, but with a question nothing to do with the subject. Almost like reading a TDWTF thread :) Along with that is the email has often gone through many different clients: outlook, outlook for Mac, apple mail, lotus notes, thunderbird, etc; so you get long non-wrapping lines, random fonts, crazy layouts, strange attachments, etc. The most recent example was being forwarded the "your domain is about to expire" email and being asked to migrate everyone over to the sister site and shut down the expiring site. Things must be getting bad if we can't afford the $10 renewal!
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@Zemm said:
Of course the subject is labelled in the email client and RE now is short for REply.
Where does this assertion keep coming from? When did this change? Was there a memo I missed?
Your email adds "Re:" to replies because the reply is regarding the original subject line, not because it's a reply. I frequently start email threads with the "Re:" in the first message. For example, if I'm emailing HR about dental benefits, I could use "Re: dental benefits" and then they can forward to the appropriate person without opening it.
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@Zemm said:
I'd assume that NBNB was a Very Important "NB" (Nota Bene). Double note below?
Note well, not note below.
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@blakeyrat said:
@Zemm said:
Contrary to popular belief, it's not an abbreviation at all. It's a Latin word which means "about, regarding, with reference to; especially in letters and documents."Of course the subject is labelled in the email client and RE now is short for REply.
Where does this assertion keep coming from? When did this change? Was there a memo I missed?Your email adds "Re:" to replies because the reply is regarding the original subject line, not because it's a reply. I frequently start email threads with the "Re:" in the first message. For example, if I'm emailing HR about dental benefits, I could use "Re: dental benefits" and then they can forward to the appropriate person without opening it.
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@frits said:
@blakeyrat said:
@Zemm said:
Contrary to popular belief, it's not an abbreviation at all. It's a Latin word which means "about, regarding, with reference to; especially in letters and documents."Of course the subject is labelled in the email client and RE now is short for REply.
Where does this assertion keep coming from? When did this change? Was there a memo I missed?Your email adds "Re:" to replies because the reply is regarding the original subject line, not because it's a reply. I frequently start email threads with the "Re:" in the first message. For example, if I'm emailing HR about dental benefits, I could use "Re: dental benefits" and then they can forward to the appropriate person without opening it.
I thought it was a drop of golden sun :(
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@blakeyrat said:
Your email adds "Re:" to replies because the reply is regarding the original subject line, not because it's a reply.
And it adds "Fw: " to forwarded messages instead because... they are not about the original subject any more? I'm not familiar with the Latin word "fw" so I can't comment further on that possibility.Since email has a defined area for the subject, it's not necessary to specify that the body of the email is in regard to whatever you've put as the subject line. That is implicit in the fact that you chose to put it in the subject line. Re: and Fw: are generally added by email clients to indicate that this email is respectively a reply to or a forward of another message. This is a difference between email and physical mail. In physical mail, Re: is used to indicate the subject of the mail. Is this really so hard?
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@blakeyrat said:
@Zemm said:
Of course the subject is labelled in the email client and RE now is short for REply.
Where does this assertion keep coming from?
It comes up when you press the "Reply" button on your email. Just like how "FW" is prepended when pressing Forward.
@blakeyrat said:
Was there a memo I missed?
Maybe it was forwarded to you and you thought FW stood for something else? :-P
@blakeyrat said:
I could use "Re: dental benefits" and then they
can forward to the appropriate person without opening it.The Subject line is what the email is about, so the "Re" for the first email is redundant.
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@Scarlet Manuka said:
Since email has a defined area for the subject
I wrote out my reply on the train this morning (GMT+1000) but my netbook ran out of batteries as I hit submit (went into hibernate). You have a more articulate explanation of what I was saying...
re - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
