My plans to make a mockery of last week’s writing seminar were partially foiled by the dreaded “lunch crash.” We were bribed into the seminar with the promise of a pizza lunch. After said lunch was consumed nobody much felt like doing any writing.
In the past I’ve been the victim of a recurring nightmare in […]

We’re having a business writing seminar here at work (3 days x 6 hours.) As part of the seminar each of us are going through the steps of writing an actual business document.  Since my projects are mostly governed by non-disclosure agreements there’s no way I can use the seminar to write an actual report […]

Today is the retirement party for the lady who handles all of our communications and marketing here at work. She’s been here ever since this place opened and during her tenure has served as librarian, computer administrator (a title that later became known as “IT” toward the late 90’s) webmaster, web designer (another title that […]

I’m well aware that Europeans generally work fewer hours and get more vacation time than American workers but this still ruined my morning.
This morning I was in a teleconference with a whole group of scientists collaborating on a project. Some of the scientists are in Europe. The meeting was in the morning central time to […]

Today we received our annual notification regarding the company’s summer hours. From June 4th until August 11th employees may work 1 extra hour each day Monday through Thursday. If our supervisor approves we may then leave at noon on Friday.
So we get to exchange a piece of our evenings for a chunk of Friday afternoon. […]

This question came to me some years ago while I was working at my old job. My job at that company was to test finished product for microbiological defects. The company manufactured sweeteners that were, for the most part, microbiologically clean. It was rare that we would find a count of mold (that’s one mold […]

It’s been an interesting couple days here at work. Last Wednesday my laptop died. Last Thursday I spent all day trying to fix it and failed. Last Friday our IT coordinator was fired. She wasn’t fired for my computer crashing; that was just a bad coincidence. I actually feel bad for her. It was one […]

Not so long ago we had a luncheon here at work. I think it was part of a big all-day meeting. Hell, it could have been the Christmas party for all I know. It was a couple years ago so my memory is hazy. Upon the arrival of the lunching hour, on my way to […]

So back to what I was saying yesterday. I think that most of the 4 years I spent at college were pretty much wasted. I learned everything I needed to learn about microbiology in less than 2 years. All of the other stuff I was required to take was pretty much just useless fluff. Is […]

It’s a sad truth of the modern workplace that in many companies and institutions there are people with stable jobs whose value to the company is not obvious to anyone except the person who keeps signing their paychecks. Maybe the position is traditional (”but we’ve always had an assistant to the sub-regional dispatch coordinator!”) Maybe […]