Scrofula
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2017
- Messages
- 5,399
My deepest, snarkiest apologies for asking about this looming, stressful event in your life, and not assuming it's just like here in the USA. Just in case you really did misunderstand, and you weren't just stress-snarling (which is fine), I was making fun of myself and my fellow proud American Civil Servants, by pointing out we're not expected to be more than idiots, even if we have tests. I come from a place of bitterness, OP. Everything sucks everywhere.
(It doesn't bother me that we're certainly not expected to have a solid decade of full time graduate education, like I do, to open mail. What makes me queasy is, two decades ago at the start of my higher ed career, I worked for a different civil service, the US Postal Service, ironically not opening the mail, just coding it for routing. My wage, absolute, unadjusted for 20 years of inflation or cost-of-living or advanced degrees or corporate salaryman experience, is LESS now. It's like a return-on-investment for my life, and it is negative. Sorry shareholders.)
On Wednesday the 14th I got a notice in the mail for failure to show to a seasonal refresher training on the 7th, and that I had no phone number on file. Except, I went to the one on the 2nd and updated everything then, I'm all caught up. It warned me to be at the one on the 12th, or else. It was also signed by a manager on the 12th.
I should be in a different department, but appear to be stuck in the sub-basement of a shuttering facility because I have a tiny bit of defaulted debt (<$10k). But I tell them, I can't set up a payment plan till you hire me out of seasonal, or guarantee some hours. Well, they say, set up a plan on the debt, your paperwork is sitting here on file, just pending. This of course has taken over a year across multiple vast federal bureaucracies with encrypted emails and conflicting certified mail, to move up two rungs in the same building.
I work for the US Treasury Department, the one with the money. But I have to go through, I'm not kidding, the Department of Agriculture for personnel matters; they actually handle the payroll. In processing mail, I have seen Treasury checks, like you'd get for your tax refund if you lived here, come in ~$100 values, in batches of ~20 individual US Mail envelopes, by the truckload, to be hand stamped individually, stapled, and routed, at the Treasury building I stand in.
Treasury Bldg. at point A transfers a few million dollars to Treasury Bldg. at point B, physically. A hundred people involved, at least. Trucks, gas, planes, drug forum moderators, each making a mistake now and then, stapling checks so they tear on the way to the scanners where they will be unstapled, on the same floor, literally 100 yards away.
They are each hand stamped only in case one of them falls in that 100 yard journey, and one of the employees who's there only to hand stamp them, picks it up and puts it in his pocket. And tries to cash the check that says "US GOVT." So many metaphors, this purpose created by merely being. It could be a model for human consciousness and its search for meaning, the creation of gods to explain ourselves. Or a model for pre-metastatic tumors. No one's determined the initial spark that triggers the genetic catastrophe in cancer, but at some point many begin secreting their own growth hormones, creating a new tissue from nothing.
I've stood in line for six hours in 40C weather along with ten thousand other people to apply for a hundred minimum wage jobs at fucking WalMart (not one of those numbers is an exaggeration). I never got a call. When I left school and looked for local academic work--right at the bottom of the market in 2010--there were 72 applicants to just one minor lab assistant opening in one of the few university labs actually allowed to hire (state budget mandated employee furloughs, even for lab techs), the State University system (lower tier) replaced their entire jobs portal with a single "Not hiring" page. For two years. By then it had been two years without academic work, career effectively terminated.
I'm not arguing with you OP, this is commiserating, just bitching, about how a few US senators relaxing restrictions on these fucking parasite "bankers" torpedoed my career.
On Wednesday the 14th I got a notice in the mail for failure to show to a seasonal refresher training on the 7th, and that I had no phone number on file. Except, I went to the one on the 2nd and updated everything then, I'm all caught up. It warned me to be at the one on the 12th, or else. It was also signed by a manager on the 12th.
I should be in a different department, but appear to be stuck in the sub-basement of a shuttering facility because I have a tiny bit of defaulted debt (<$10k). But I tell them, I can't set up a payment plan till you hire me out of seasonal, or guarantee some hours. Well, they say, set up a plan on the debt, your paperwork is sitting here on file, just pending. This of course has taken over a year across multiple vast federal bureaucracies with encrypted emails and conflicting certified mail, to move up two rungs in the same building.
I work for the US Treasury Department, the one with the money. But I have to go through, I'm not kidding, the Department of Agriculture for personnel matters; they actually handle the payroll. In processing mail, I have seen Treasury checks, like you'd get for your tax refund if you lived here, come in ~$100 values, in batches of ~20 individual US Mail envelopes, by the truckload, to be hand stamped individually, stapled, and routed, at the Treasury building I stand in.
Treasury Bldg. at point A transfers a few million dollars to Treasury Bldg. at point B, physically. A hundred people involved, at least. Trucks, gas, planes, drug forum moderators, each making a mistake now and then, stapling checks so they tear on the way to the scanners where they will be unstapled, on the same floor, literally 100 yards away.
They are each hand stamped only in case one of them falls in that 100 yard journey, and one of the employees who's there only to hand stamp them, picks it up and puts it in his pocket. And tries to cash the check that says "US GOVT." So many metaphors, this purpose created by merely being. It could be a model for human consciousness and its search for meaning, the creation of gods to explain ourselves. Or a model for pre-metastatic tumors. No one's determined the initial spark that triggers the genetic catastrophe in cancer, but at some point many begin secreting their own growth hormones, creating a new tissue from nothing.
I've stood in line for six hours in 40C weather along with ten thousand other people to apply for a hundred minimum wage jobs at fucking WalMart (not one of those numbers is an exaggeration). I never got a call. When I left school and looked for local academic work--right at the bottom of the market in 2010--there were 72 applicants to just one minor lab assistant opening in one of the few university labs actually allowed to hire (state budget mandated employee furloughs, even for lab techs), the State University system (lower tier) replaced their entire jobs portal with a single "Not hiring" page. For two years. By then it had been two years without academic work, career effectively terminated.
I'm not arguing with you OP, this is commiserating, just bitching, about how a few US senators relaxing restrictions on these fucking parasite "bankers" torpedoed my career.
Proceed to the next exam maybe? Gain access to the room where it's held. Never concede defeat, OP, you will succeed! Exceed your expectations, and accede to your new title.
Yeah, just relax and focus, worry about your habits later. Let us know how it goes.