RANT: All the Issues are My Fault and You Won't Answer My Questions
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
It's the reason I'm good at my job and why people come back to see ME and ONLY me
So the store would close down if you left? Was it not open before you started?
That a few people come to see AJ doesn't mean that any profit is made because of that. I know people used to come to one employee of NTG - because he did all the work for free without recording the hours. So customers learned to look for that one person because they would never be billed for work. Sometimes being the "go to" guy for customers means you are the worst person for the business. Not saying that that is the case here, but AJ having customers who love him does not indicate that Staples likes his work or is happy with the situation. They probably are, but one does not imply the other.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@tonyshowoff said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
I complain about a lot of things, sure. However I also have made many comments about how much I enjoy working there, how much I care about my job, some of the great people I work with, and so on. I don't deal well with people who are lazy or apathetic at the store, because that job is very personal to me. It's the reason I'm good at my job and why people come back to see ME and ONLY me. So yes, I complain. But it's because I'm frustrated by things that I can't fix, and I'm the kind of person who likes to fix things.
Management, HR, etc never see the complements, 10,000 complements mean nothing compared to 1 complaint, and they can take any complaint and make it into a bigger deal than you think. You have to remember that other people cannot understand/read your own feelings about things. Also consider if someone important saw any one of your bad comments, none of your good ones, by the time you tried to explain it to the person firing you, it'll be too late.
Oh I know that. Thankfully I know none of those people will ever see this. Even if the word Staples is triggered in corporate's monitoring of the online usage of it, there are pretty much no links to their site from this site and no one at corporate cares about what I have to say. We have a hard enough time getting them to address REAL issues that are brought up by someone like the GM.
This shows the staggering to degree that you don't understand how this works. None of this is correct or makes any sense. What links have to do with it, I have no idea. And why you think ANYONE in management would ask for your head on a platter, if they knew how you advertised their brand, I have no idea. Other than not yet knowing what you say, I can't think of any reason you are allowed to work there. Not having found out yet is not the same as not wanting you fired for what you are saying.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
Oh I know that. Thankfully I know none of those people will ever see this.
They won't likely see it today. But the chances that they will never see it are very low.
But that doesn't even matter. Losing your job at Staples really doesn't matter. That job sucks. You can always do non-IT work for similar money. The bigger issue is that no company that looks you up will ever hire you. That you bad-talk your current employer, and a few past employers, is enough that normal companies will simply see you as a high risk and avoid you. There are plenty of people looking for work, no need to take on one with a very high risk track record. The highest risk online presence track record I've ever heard of, actually. Sure, someone is worse, not saying that they are not. But you are definitely in the top .001% of high risk online presences.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Every company pretty much has this clause. Never seen one that didn't. Many hold you legally responsible for damage you may cause to the company with statements as well.
That's the scary part. That they might come after you later, after you are no longer employed there.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@tonyshowoff said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Oh I know that. Thankfully I know none of those people will ever see this. Even if the word Staples is triggered in corporate's monitoring of the online usage of it, there are pretty much no links to their site from this site and no one at corporate cares about what I have to say. We have a hard enough time getting them to address REAL issues that are brought up by someone like the GM.
You don't understand how good SEO is these days and how easy it is to find stuff. If i search for aj stringham staples or aj stringham rant It turns up quite a bit.
I love that a top hit for "aj stringham staples" brings up "moody teenage". LMAO
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
Also.
Think about future employment, everything you are saying here is cached and preserved by not just MangoLassi but google takes a cache as well.
What will a future employer think if they see you trash talking the current employer?
I understand your point in this. I do. But if a company wants to take what I say totally at face value without any context, the job wouldn't work out anyways.
Read: Working is going to work out.
This is EVERY company AJ. You are relying on companies that don't know what you've said, not that they don't care. Every one of them cares. Most just aren't aware.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
Yep. Very few people know my real name online. Nor where I work. Linked in doesn't even list my current info.
Same here. Until I went to work at Change, where they want me advertising the brand as part of my career identity, I only listed old employers on my things like FB and LinkedIn, never my current ones. And I wasn't talking about my employers, ever. But I didn't want to offhand say "had a long day at work today" and have someone know that that was OilNavigator or some other current employer. Years later, I let the ambiguous connections get made for people who really care.
If you want to take the time to figure out that I had an early morning at OilNavigator on a Wednesday in 2000 now, knock yourself out. They went under fifteen years ago, they don't care, I don't care and I didn't hurt them in any way, ever. Even taking weeks of work, you will struggle to find something that I've ever said negative about somewhere that I was working, even by mistake and even when not mentioning them.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
There is no such thing as "A good public complaint" about ones workplace.
They pay me so much, I can't decide which house(s) t buy!
They give me so much vacation time, I spend all of my free time planning on where to travel!
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@tonyshowoff said:
I've fired a few irreplaceable people, even I thought they would be hard to replace, but the world keeps turning even without you.
NTG would go on without me. Probably would do better
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@tonyshowoff said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@tonyshowoff said:
Staples relies on you to make them money, they're leasing your labour, so if they think you're saying or doing anything to ever...
Or what about trying to take there business: http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/346177-what-to-do
We have a non-compete clause and I'm betting Staples probably does too.
Not for someone at my level. They wouldn't give a damn if tomorrow I quit to go work at GeekSquad. One advantage of being a pee-on in retail. All those professional restrictions most people deal with don't funnel down that far.
Even Jimmy Johns stops their sandwich makers from trying to make a sandwich somewhere else.
I've seen people "at your level" lose their career options from non-competes. There is no "at my level" protection in the US. Not in real terms.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
Not for someone at my level. They wouldn't give a damn if tomorrow I quit to go work at GeekSquad. One advantage of being a pee-on in retail. All those professional restrictions most people deal with don't funnel down that far.
That's different. In many states they can't stop you after you've quit or been fired from working there. (but they sure can from using customer contacts from past jobs). and they can fire you for working at a competitor.
I've been through this. There is only one state where that is basically a given and that is California. And I've been forced to use the California / US-emmigration option to get away from a non-compete. Sure, New York will go to great lengths to protect you, but even with a top and very expensive lawyer, a large company can easily make the cost of working something you can't afford to do - legal or not. The US has great protections for forcing people into court and bleeding them dry while they attempt to prove that they did nothing wrong.
And if you are not in California or NY, you have almost zero hope, even if there is no basis at all. A company that decides to stop you from working can do immense damage to your career and your savings.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
There are other companies besides MSPs.
The vast majority of IT work is not MSPs or retail. SMB, SME, Enterprise, Gov't, Non-Profits.... these are the largest pool of IT jobs by far.
And I know lots of employers in Syracuse, I used to work with them at the local SUNY board.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
There are other companies besides MSPs.
The problem is that I need to either be at an MSP or a company where my hand gets to play with all the different cookie jars.
Are you sure? You are settled into one MSP where there is only one cookie jar and are at Staples the rest of the time, where there are basically no jars at all. The MSP market is actually a very "one or two job" market most of the time. NTG is the opposite of a normal MSP, having lots of jars is a specialty, not a normality. MSPs are typically resellers with support contracts - so not even few jars, but small jars, if that makes sense.
SMB IT, internal staff, is the best common path to having access to multiple jars.
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For for reference, if Staples just uses your name and theirs, checking via Duck Duck Go, your Spiceworks and MangoLassi (and some other) hits that are you and Staples together come right up. You are surviving simply on the fact that they are not looking to see what their employees are saying, not that any effort would not tie it together.
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@scottalanmiller said:
For for reference, if Staples just uses your name and theirs, checking via Duck Duck Go, your Spiceworks and MangoLassi (and some other) hits that are you and Staples together come right up. You are surviving simply on the fact that they are not looking to see what their employees are saying, not that any effort would not tie it together.
And spiceworks people keep coming here just to see this stuff. Look at how many views these types of your topics get. and someone over on spiceworks posted some screenshots of this thread elsewhere online. Chances of this stuff getting see by an employer get higher and higher each time you do it.
Most of us are trying to help, but obviously there are those that just come here to see the crash and burn.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
And spiceworks people keep coming here just to see this stuff. Look at how many views these types of your topics get. and someone over on spiceworks posted some screenshots of this thread elsewhere online. t obviously there are those that just come here to see the crash and burn.
In a private group or another site?
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@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
For for reference, if Staples just uses your name and theirs, checking via Duck Duck Go, your Spiceworks and MangoLassi (and some other) hits that are you and Staples together come right up. You are surviving simply on the fact that they are not looking to see what their employees are saying, not that any effort would not tie it together.
And spiceworks people keep coming here just to see this stuff. Look at how many views these types of your topics get. and someone over on spiceworks posted some screenshots of this thread elsewhere online. Chances of this stuff getting see by an employer get higher and higher each time you do it.
Most of us are trying to help, but obviously there are those that just come here to see the crash and burn.
I appreciate that. I have a really easy time empathizing with others' pain, whether physical, emotional or mental. However, I have a very hard time empathizing with how other people interpret what I say. I'm working on that but it's a real struggle for me.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
For for reference, if Staples just uses your name and theirs, checking via Duck Duck Go, your Spiceworks and MangoLassi (and some other) hits that are you and Staples together come right up. You are surviving simply on the fact that they are not looking to see what their employees are saying, not that any effort would not tie it together.
And spiceworks people keep coming here just to see this stuff. Look at how many views these types of your topics get. and someone over on spiceworks posted some screenshots of this thread elsewhere online. Chances of this stuff getting see by an employer get higher and higher each time you do it.
Most of us are trying to help, but obviously there are those that just come here to see the crash and burn.
I appreciate that. I have a really easy time empathizing with others' pain, whether physical, emotional or mental. However, I have a very hard time empathizing with how other people interpret what I say. I'm working on that but it's a real struggle for me.
The most important part is to stop saying it. You have recognized that you can't tell how others will see it. Now, how do you action that knowledge in a good way? You avoid the behaviour until you can determine what is safe or not.
Think about it this way, what if you can't tell if the range top is hot? Do you put your hand on it and get burned sometimes? Or do you stop putting your hand on it at all until you figure out how to determine if it is hot or not?
When it doubt, avoid. Play it safe.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksajdotcom said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
For for reference, if Staples just uses your name and theirs, checking via Duck Duck Go, your Spiceworks and MangoLassi (and some other) hits that are you and Staples together come right up. You are surviving simply on the fact that they are not looking to see what their employees are saying, not that any effort would not tie it together.
And spiceworks people keep coming here just to see this stuff. Look at how many views these types of your topics get. and someone over on spiceworks posted some screenshots of this thread elsewhere online. Chances of this stuff getting see by an employer get higher and higher each time you do it.
Most of us are trying to help, but obviously there are those that just come here to see the crash and burn.
I appreciate that. I have a really easy time empathizing with others' pain, whether physical, emotional or mental. However, I have a very hard time empathizing with how other people interpret what I say. I'm working on that but it's a real struggle for me.
The most important part is to stop saying it. You have recognized that you can't tell how others will see it. Now, how do you action that knowledge in a good way? You avoid the behaviour until you can determine what is safe or not.
Think about it this way, what if you can't tell if the range top is hot? Do you put your hand on it and get burned sometimes? Or do you stop putting your hand on it at all until you figure out how to determine if it is hot or not?
When it doubt, avoid. Play it safe.
The other part of my problem is my own way of viewing myself. If you ever talked to me in person, I could give a more accurate demonstration, but I'm a world-class liar. I know exactly how to work it so that I can make a person totally believe one thing without actually lying most of the time. The devil is in the details. So the odd part is that, while I'm quite amazing at this, I also detest lying. In fact, I think it's pretty obvious I often are a little too honest. The biggest reason I do this has nothing to do with anyone else, but has to do with the fact that it's a coping mechanism for me. I don't do well keeping stuff bottled up. I'd much rather put everything out there and deal with the consequences than keep whatever it might be bottled up. Now the consequences at times are pretty severe, and most people would think I'm nuts. But to me, dealing with that is STILL easier than the feeling and anxiety I get keeping it bottled up. The trick I need to figure out is just knowing when to release that info/those feelings, etc.
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@thanksajdotcom said:
In fact, I think it's pretty obvious I often are a little too honest.
No, you are too transparent. Not the same thing at all.
