It’s so very interesting, I recently walked into the bank that kicked me out 15 years ago. They actually knew who I was (small town bank where I grew up), they crawled so far into my ass to get me & my company back that day, I could taste their hair styling product. Very satisfying just to say" remember, you kicked me out because of a few bucks over my limit? Yes? Good! Today you learned something. Bye" Pure Bliss. Those assholes. Edit: Germany here.
I’m gonna agree with other people here, you were the asshole, the correct asshole, but the asshole. It sounds like the situation where one kid in a classroom reminds the teacher to give the quiz. The kid is right like you were, but everyone still hates them.
Working with people who aren’t pulling their weight sucks, but throwing them under the bus to the manager also sucks.
its a balancing act that takes some finesse and if you are going to be a manager soon, you might look into how it is done
Im not sure if I could explain it but it usually involves listening to the request, rewording the request and repeating it back. And then explaining the situation as you see it (why you will say no) and then when they have understanding of the situation, you explain why you are saying no.
From my personal experience, this works out pretty well but there is always that one off that blows up in your face. When that happens just face it head on and as time goes on it usually gets better and requires less work when you have to say no
From 2005 to 2008 in South Florida I created and ran a permit expediting company. It came from my mom managing a construction company, them having too many contracts, and not enough contractors to run their own permits. I saw a need and got together with a couple of friends to incorporate.
We pitched it to the owner of the company my mom managed and got a contract from them. We eventually picked up other companies as well.
So the job went like this: one of us be assigned to a specific geographic area or company for the day, we would stop by the office, pick up the paperwork for whatever permits had to be filed, retrieved, delivered.
We would visit the city building department and depending on the city (each ran things in drastically different ways with no consistency) we would be there for 15 minutes or all day. Some permits would be a quick, single day turnaround or could be in bureaucratic hell for a month or two. We’d charge based on the complexity and time involved in getting permits approved. Then we would either deliver the permits to the contractor or the job site. On occasion we would deliver liens to customers who didn’t pay their bills which could sometimes get dangerous.
The only people I’ve ever met that did this exact type of work were people I met within city building departments. It’s a relatively boring, but uncommon profession.
The job came with all kinds of weird knowledge that I’ve never had to use again, like how many palm trees on the property equal a shade tree for the purpose of landscaping requirements. Than answer back then was 3.
The company was born out of a construction boom after Hurricane Katrina and died during the housing market crash of 2008.
Edited for spelling and sentence structure.
Also edit: sometimes getting permits approved would involve meeting with city engineers, making corrections on engineering documents, and just having a good rapport with the city.
Also, currently I am a change control analyst for a telecom company. My job description literally says “protect the network”. Essentially network engineers submit projects to me, I check the projects for accuracy, impact risk, importance, etc. A lot of the time, I reject work because of errors, cutting corners, not enough preparation, etc.
My job is to balance the projects being done VS how many customers I want to piss off because their services get taken down. My engineers either absolutely love me, or would like to have the opportunity to stab me in a dark alley, there really is no in between. Generally the ones I reject often for crap work are the ones that also want to stab me.
I work in disaster planning - so if you want a really good disaster to happen then give me a call.
To be more serious:
I write disaster response plans mostly for the medical field, e.g. hospitals, nursing homes. That starts with ordinary fires and flooding, but also includes things like “IT outtakes”(which kill far more people than fire each year), “supply line collaps”, etc.
We also train staff, mostly management, and conduct full scale exercises. Additionally I write medical intelligence and evacuation reports. These are basically “plans” for aid workers, expats. that go to risky places: “Oh, I broke my leg in bumfuck nowhere South Sudan! What now? Is there a hospital? Which one do I go to? Which one has actual doctors? Is there a chance that a medical evacuation plane can reach me?”
Originally I am a critical care paramedic and I am currently studying towards (another) master degree in healthcare management. Before I founded my current company I worked as a consultant for various healthcare related firms, before that as an ambulance service director.
But mass casualty situations always were “my thing” and the multi-stakeholder approach I take during planning talking to basically all roles in a hospital, from the higher ups to the guy in charge of waste disposal, is something I enjoy immensely.
I bet Covid got you a lot of fun data to play with re: “supply line collapse”.
I’ve always been interested in work like this–I took a class that covered lean manufacturing and kept thinking about how “just in time” inventory seemed like it’d be awful for a hospital, as the hospital would be MOST needed if supply lines collapsed, and JIT stuff seemed a dumb move. But I was only spitballing on the surface as an outsider.
And mass casualty events are generally centred around population centres. If a train hits that bus in bumfuck, it’s six hours before triage and transport
Yeah, thankfully in central Europe our “bumfuck nowhere” still means that some infrastructure is reachable within 120min usually - and as long as the weather permits we throw dozens of helicopters at it.
Personally I am far more afraid of other scenarios therefore.
I’m no bearings expert but my gut tells me that if I were to start making cheap toys for kids that centered around bearings that had no significant durability or precision requirements, I would probably not opt for a bearing design that was rare or expensive or unique.
In fact, I’d probably go knocking on doors of those companies that do have strict requirements and be like, gimme all the ones that failed inspection.
In fact #2, if i wanted to retire and make everyone in Lemmy threads like this one jealous, I’d start thinking about what other high precision parts probably get thrown out if they fail inspection, that I could buy for next to nothing, and how I could make that into a toy.
Parts of machines are cool. Parts of machines that are crafted to high standards of precision are cool. The toy probably invents itself. Going viral and getting as popular as fidget spinners tho… That seems harder.
I’m a designer, which is a well-known profession, but I design substations, which almost no one I’ve run into has heard of.
Substations are like giant jungle-gyms for electricity. They’re a grouping of electric structures that transfer high-voltage electricity to low-voltage, or low voltage to high voltage. They’re a major part of our electricity distribution system. You drive by at least one every day, most likely.
I got into it by chance. Right place, right time. I went back to school and got my AS in drafting for industrial design and manufacturing. I applied to this job on accident, thinking it was for manufacturing, then when I was offered an interview, accepted it despite the mixup. Why not? They offered about double what other jobs were for a drafter, so I took it.
8 months into the job, a designer position opened up, so I interviewed for that and got the promption!
Door is still wide open, despite the general idea that drafters are becoming less of a demand. Based on my experience, they’re sorely needed, especially for civil jobs. Also I get paid higher than a friend of mine who got her masters in interior architecture (also a drafting/design gig), with just my AS. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Totally worth it.
Even with standard components, you’re still dealing with a wide variety of different sized city blocks with different types of buildings and industries, different grid layouts, etc. You also have to plan for potential future changes in load. Even if you have a large part you can copy-paste you still need to check all requirements and design the interconnections
I see. It’s just that here in the UK a lot of infrastructure like that is literally just copy paste boxes. I’m from a xUSSR country originally and there all the infrastructure is just factory built all the same stuff. Something custom is super rare. I guess everyone knows copy pasted Soviet house blocks, so yeah, infrastructure is the same.
I’m a kiln operator. I run a giant oven to dry red and white pine.
Dropped out of uni. Various retail and tech jobs for about 12 years. 4 years disability. Took an interview at a lumber mill because ‘cool tour’, took a job because ‘paycheck for a little while anyway’. Ran a planer for about 6 weeks and then offered kiln operator when their previous was poached.
On the job learning for me with the caveat that it was not a reasonable expectation to set. Typically one works under a senior operator for about two years not ‘you’re on your own but you’re good at google right?’
Certified by my work for government heat treatment programs, front loader/forklift operation and working at heights. One of those jobs where mindset is more important than education.
Would I do it again? Yes? I’d want more money for the work. There’s not a lot of people who will write an algorithm to interpret the data they gather in a 50c box. It’s a really intense combination of intellectual and manual labor and the compromise seems to be to plop the pay in the middle. Good pay for a lumber mill but shit pay for developing processes, an inventory system and an entire goddamned iOS app(that my boss didn’t even understand much less appreciate).
I wouldn’t expect the door to be open again in the future. There’s not a lot of kilns to run, they are increasingly automated and it’s a job people hold til retirement. The manager who hired me took a massive gamble on a physically disabled but intelligent person so that’s not easy to find either. Owner runs under the ‘warm body is better than no body’ premise. There’s not even any other mills close enough with kilns that I have other employment opportunities. I’ve got a very specific and reasonably lucrative skill set for a rare job.
Warp is more about the piling and stickering of the packs going into the kiln. Wet you can mitigate at home but once a warp is set you’re pretty much screwed.
The mill should have some sort of quality control in place to communicate these issues between the kilns and stacker crew. Find a different mill to buy from. Anything warped is pulled out before the planer at my mill and then sold as rough outs or goes to the chipper.
Ever seen 20 feet high of stacked lumber sway in the wind? Stickering can be a huge safety issue alongside quality.
I imagine if you took two seconds to contemplate how too many small businesses are run, you could figure out it’s shit management from your local companies and not this particular kiln operator.
I work in a museum adapting internationally touring exhibitions to align with their host communities. It’s a great career - there’s travel, I get to see behind the scenes of museum collections, and I get to study other cultures as a job. I do get paid to match the fact that I work for a charity.
My background is in the museum sector, which you can get into either through a PhD in study of a relevant field to the specific museum, or through a graduate program in museum/ conservation studies (which is what I did).
So far as I can tell, there are only a handful of people that do this job globally, which I suppose makes it lesser known!
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