Wednesday, November 19, 2003

QUACK!

Know what that sound is? It's what you hear when you are a fucktard. This morning I come to work. The drive was miserable. A little bit of rain hits the road and suddenly everyone is wanting to steer into you. But let's forget about that.

So I walk in the door and find that this contract instructor has all ready started her class. She was brought in to teach a 3-day Oracle class. She is from Texas. And she is an idiot. About half an hour earlier I got a phone call from the office. It seems that there was a problem with her classroom setup. She was missing her powerpoint viewer! You would think an exerienced instructor with Internet access would know what to do. But who said she was experienced. She was obviously a certified Oracle instructor. And that is about the extent of her knowledge.

Our receptionist thought fast. She knew in the back offices we had copies of just about any Microsoft software. So she brought out an Office 2000 CD and handed it off to our instructor. She stared back blankly. "You can install Office 2000 ... custom install, and get powerpoint from this". But it was no good. She had no idea what to do. So she was told "someone will be in shortly to help you".

That someone was me. When I arrived, I threw open the door, and there were 12 students staring back at me. The instructor pointed to the open CD-ROM drive and said "that's the computer you need to put it on, not that other one". That was helpful for me. Because I knew that that other computer was actually a router. She also let me know that her D drive was "inaccessible". So I sat down, installed the powerpoint viewer, and headed out of the room.

That was easy. I grab some coffee and head into the server room to see how sick our mail server was this morning. As soon as I sit down, my door is opened, and there is numb-nuts. "It's telling me my D: drive is inaccessible". So I go into the room again. Now her students look slightly annoyed. I know this stupid game. She will soon be bashing this 'damn training center' for it's failing hardware. But I detect that some of these wiser students have all ready figured her out. I can *FEEL* them rolling their eyes at her. I walk to the machine, put her disc in, and bring up her stupid slides with ease. No problem. As I try to sneak out of the room again she turns and asks me (in front of her class) "so what was wrong with that thing?". I explained "You have to let the little disc spin around a bit before you try to access it" *wink*. It's hard to explain, but I put on my 'big boy' voice. The kind of tone you take when you are telling a 3 year old not to put twinkies in the VCR.

This was just the beginning of the idiots I had to deal with today. By 10:30AM I was full of rage. Partly because of the idiots, and also because of my work schedule. I am facing solitude for what will probably end up being weeks on end. Several times a week I will be driving out to a forest to teach the monkeys how to use Microsoft Office products. 2 hours out, 2 hours inbetween classes. 2 hours to drive back home. That's six hours from my 14 hour days that I will not be getting compensated for. I'm not exactly sure how this is a fair working relationship.

So I did what anyone would do. I hit the job sites. I have hit them before in the past. But today I felt like I was really looking. I think I have been slowly but surely talking myself into walking away from this job. It's futureless now. The longer I stay, the more meaningless my roles become. How will I ever get a raise when I go from teaching routing, to how to use a mouse. I am moving in reverse, and that is unacceptable.

I made the move to document a few jobs that sound really cool, and would probably pay very well. I even went out to the office supply store and bought some really nice paper to put my resume on. That %100 cotton stuff. So you will be taken seriously. Then I began work on my resume. And boy does it need work. I figure I have a couple of hours of downtime tomorrow I can use to work on it.

Well now bedtime is near. I need to get up early so I can drive into the forest again for class. Can't wait.

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