Ask Lemmy

The stupidity of the general public. Most people couldn't be as stupid as some of the people I deal with if they tried.

Some examples;

No, you will not receive mail anymore if you haven't picked up your mail in almost 2 years, it doesn't matter if it's important, you've lost that privilege over a year ago. Get a PO box.

Yes, you are required to pick up all your mail, whether you want the junk mail or not. You cannot pick and choose what you pick up. Empty it all from your box or you won't get any.

Yes, you are required to use your apartment number on ALL your mail. Insufficient addresses don't get delivered, especially in an apartment complex. I don't give a shit if Amazon delivers without an apartment number, we're not Amazon. If you don't know where you live how can I?

You haven't received mail in 3 weeks because you've had your car in front of your box for 3 weeks, move your car if you want mail.

No, writing a note to your mailman saying not to deliver mail for "current resident" and saying "NO JUNK MAIL" doesn't work. You ARE the current resident, and again, you do not get to choose. You get all your mail or you get no mail. Pick one.

"I've lived here for 6 months and haven't gotten any mail." Well, is you name on your mailbox? "Well, no why should it be?"

Comments made by the utterly deranged

IT.

If you fix an issue that should've caused something not to work previously, but it did.

I am a janitor at McDonald's. Sometimes I find a whole-ass burger behind the fryers and it had to be there for at least a week, with how often we clean behind them, and they are perfectly fucking preserved other than the fact that they are rock hard.

IDK what they put in the food, but real food rots. I'm extremely wary of eating food that even microbes won't touch.

One of the things I do at my job is emptying the trash bins of the car park, people throw away all sorts of things, some of them are useful, some of them are disgusting, some of them are intriguing. Then there are the patterns and trends.

I'm talking about a pay car park, all interior inside a building. There's this spot where each week there was a gin bottle in the trash with three or four cans of tonic, but no plastic cups. Each week for maybe ten years then one day it changed to a bottle or two of Ballantine's for two or three years and just recently it changed again to a herbs liquor popular around here.

Other times, not often enough, there are rejected presents, like a pair of new shoes that some guy tossed in the trash. How do I know it was a rejected present? Because it included a birthday note that read something like:

I've never forgot your birthday, I hope you enjoy it my dear [Joe], even though you hurt me that much you might know why you did it.
Sincerly [Jane]

My friends tell me that I should write stories about the stuff I find but I'm really bad at that, it would be fun though.

My security clearance certificate has me listed as a Government Agent.

I work for a thankless and ungrateful store who successfully met its sales criteria and became the most successful store in the state. However, that doesn't reflect in how the store is operated and associate morale is constantly shit on. I'm one of the more decent workers, however, my management works me to death and stupidly wonders why my performance fluctuates from time to time.

And this is all to make sure, stupid dumbfucks with wallets (yes I'm talking about moronic fucking customers, fuck all of you) shit is on the shelf so more dumbfuck moronic customers can ask even more dumbfuck questions that don't relate to anything and shoving their phones in my face.

The rare 10-30 seconds when something first goes wrong. The mix of surprise, concern and instant mental troubleshooting. I'm an engineer in a big power plant on the operations side. My job 99% of the time is to take numbers and do some wrenching/maintenance when needed. 1% of the time I earn my money by running at the scary shit and figuring it out.

Figuring out which parts of the vendors' documentation is lies vs. what isn't

Getting to be alone with the pets when the owner is out of the house (pet sitter)

I'm unemployed, so I stay home to run errands, manage finances, cook, clean and otherwise manage the house.

I would say cooking is the most intriguing part, as it can be quite complex, involves creativity and skill, and can be quite rewarding.

Ill tell ya when I get some.

That I get paid what I do for the job I do. It brings no real benefit to society but it’s a living.

Watching my designs come to life from CAD. The tooling I work on has hundreds upon hundreds of parts. I have had bills of materials that are 60 pages long. We have our own CNC machines, and an enormous industrial 3D printer. So, I get to watch my parts grow, and be released from blocks of raw aluminum. Then, slowly over the course of a month, the parts gradually come together to something resembling a machine. When air and power get plugged in for the first time and it comes to life? Magic every time. Those first parts are like newborns to me. Even if they are scrap/ugly. When they finally get tuned in to produce good parts every time, I'm always giddy. I made this. This is my baby.

I think the craziest tool I have had to design was roughly 2.5 x 1.5 x 1 meter. It made one part at a time. It had 25 "edgefolding" units, 7 slides, retractable skin pins, a retractable skin clamp, suction cups, grippers, two-stage vacuum for the skin, and three forms of heat. Hot air, hot water, and a big IR shuttle that came in and heated both the upper and lower tool and had to retract and close in 2 seconds.

For me, it is bringing together a technical design that fits the best case for the various stakeholders and the client. It turns out that is a complicated thing to do.

The amount of R&D and the sheer amount of technology that has gone into drastically reducing truck exhaust pollution over the years is amazing.

You learn some interesting things sometimes when reviewing medical records

The behind the scenes of a college campus.

sorry can't tell you classified

figuring out other people's mistakes when trying to replicate their results, closely followed by figuring out my mistakes when trying to replicate my own old results

I just fix problems.

Processing data broken? I’ll fix it.

VPN broken? I’m on it.

New server needs installed? Yeah I’ll do that. (I love hosting Minecraft on a server that costs more than my car)

Old server needs removed? Cool free stuff.

It’s always something different, and I get to explore new things and possibly get free stuff.

How bafflingly incompetent my supervisors are. I am entirely convinced useless retards are promoted to management positions on purpose because if they did actual work they’d just fuck everything up.

How much of the global telecommunications infrastructure is held together with cable ties.

Crawling around inside the guts of ancient ass buildings. I used to be obsessed with whatever was inside the walls when I was a kid. Daydreaming about climbing around. Now I get to see it. Also liminal spaces after working hours.

Audrey.

Don't tell her. I think she knows, but it's a bit awkward right now.

Watching people make connections.