Tag: work

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Work Shell-Shock and frustration

Today we got the surprising news from my boss that he’s leaving for another job in about two months. This sucks. Not only is he the most encouraging, grateful, humorous, relaxed, level-headed boss I could hope for, he’s also taken the station to new heights in development. We busted through past records during our October drive, and have generally (word is) emerged from the dark ages into an efficient, productive department, capable of sufficiently supporting the wonderful service we offer to western New England. I have seen this a little bit in the short three months I’ve been here, and Jerry was around for almost two years before that as well. I’m happy his talent is being given its financial due by the foundation he’s going to, but I will miss him greatly.

Also at work today, I tried chopping out a CSS dropdown menu that would work in IE 6 & 7 as well as Firefox. I haven’t even looked at Safari compatibility yet, but that’s only about 7% of our visitors, so it’s a lower priority. Anyways, Internet Explorer sucks. They’ve got their own rules for how to display things, which means web developers have to dance around, applying multiple frameworks to our web design. Total bummer. I eventually felt a little productive after digging a little into the fundamentals of how the different browsers apply CSS differently. We’ll see if I can build something up from scratch tomorrow.

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Office Lunch

When I arrived at this my first full-time job, I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do for lunch. At home, I grab lunch whenever I want and eat it as soon as I make it. At college there’s this cafeteria with lots of options, all (ostensibly) free, and generally made for you. I haven’t packed a lunch since high school. But that’s what I generally do at work, and eat at my desk as I catch up on my personal email, blogs, and facebook.

Today, though, I went on my first office lunch outing, with four coworkers to a nice new Vietnamese restaurant. It’s strange going out to lunch with coworkers in the middle of the workday! All of your relationships with them are centered around the work environment and mindset, and then here you are in a social situation where you have to converse about things not related to work! Really, it seems like work-related things are a conversation topic of last resort in such a situation. We talked about birds and squirrels and local businesses; it wasn’t that awkward, but I was stricken by the distinct social nature of the outing.

But, of course, almost all of my coworkers are absolutely fantastic, and I really enjoyed the interaction with these four, even if it was a little odd.