Anticipated Serendipity II: January 2007

What the...???????

Is this piece of "news" sooooooooo important that it has to occupy the front page of one of our national newspapers???

GEEZ!!!!! What a waste of space!!

Is it any wonder that I hardly read the local newspapers these days??? What with the amount of crap they put in it...

My Secret Life on the McJob

This looks like an interesting read... got it in my mail, regular updates from my alma mater. Unfortunately, it's only available on Amazon.com :-(

********

This message is being sent on behalf of Dr. Jerry Newman, Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair, Department of Organization and Human Resources, UB School of Management ________________________________________________________________

Hi All!
My book finally came out! My Secret Life on the McJob (McGraw-Hill, 2007) talks about my undercover job as a crew member in 7 fast food restaurants. The book is available online at Amazon.com. For those of you in the area, I'm at Barnes and Noble on Niagara Falls Boulevard , January 27 (Saturday) at noon. Below is the inside cover blurb. Thanks for enduring this blatant sales pitch. Four more copies and it will be an even dozen., lol (PS. The Wall Street Journal just reviewed the book, it's in January 17 edition, section D.)

Once upon a time, a Ph.D. went to work at Mickey D's... And what he found was illuminating. Jerry Newman, a college professor who has taught business courses for nearly 30 years, went undercover as a bottom-rung worker for the biggest names in fast food, including McDonald's
and Burger King. Newman found that fast-food chains were the perfect petri dishes for covert research: High-pressure, high-volume businesses with high-employee turnover. The pecking order was also crystal clear, from fry cook all the way up to store manager. Of the seven restaurants where Newman worked, some were high-morale, high-productivity machines. Others were miserable, misplaced circles of hell. Yet one common trait stuck out from them all: Each restaurant's respective manager determined the climate of the work environment. Go behind the fast food counter with Newman and see what happens on an average day on the "McJob".

Jerry M. Newman
Distinguished Teaching Professor and Chair
Department of Organization and Human Resources
School of Management
SUNY at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY 14260
jmnewman [at] buffalo.edu

Constant Irritations

Eeeeeeee!!! I cannot tahan these users!! I tell you, they just drive me nuts!! See, they were supposed to provide info from each of their modules for the UAT closure report based on a specific cut-off date. And even that took us so many reminders to them before they provided the info (and some of them gave us in the wrong format even though we gave them a template! Bah!). So anyway, I managed to compile all the data from everyone and sent out the report for their final review before the sign-off. And then these couple of users, throughout that one-month of time that they had to give us any updates, didn't give us any... then yesterday at the last minute, the bloody ppl email me and say, this and that and that has been completed/defect raised. And I'm like, "Hallo?????? Now only you want to give us an update???? We can't change the status/figures now coz then we'll have to change ALL the figures!!!!" Geez!! And one of them, the info that's in the report was given by him/her. All I did was copy-paste and correct the grammar. And then s/he comes back at the last minute to amend the info that s/he had given earlier. I'm like "Uh, the report's written as per what you gave. Why didn't you tell me earlier if you wanted to change it???? Sorry, the deadline to amend the report is OVER."

GEEZ!!!!!!!

**********
Oh, and I so so sooooooo DETEST drivers who blatantly (1) cut queue (2) use the emergency lane to cut queue.

STUPID MORONS! WHO GAVE U THE RIGHT TO CUT INTO MY LANE???!!!!! I WANT TO GET TO MY DESTINATION AS MUCH AS YOU DO SO GET THE **** OUT OF MY WAY!!! AND NO, I AM NOT LETTING YOU IN MY LANE!

Gawd, driving in KL is so not good for one's blood pressure. And I have to encounter these morons every single day.

GAAAHHH!!!!!

Some People Will Do Anything for Money

So I had to attend an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Anti-Terrorisim Funding (ATF) training session today as part of the co's compliance program.

Some parts were rather interesting, others not so... plus they dimmed the lights for us to watch the VCD so I almost nodded off at certain points.

So anyway, after the VCD, the trainer took us thru some .ppt slides and told us some real life scenarios where large, well-known overseas financial institutions were fined and some closed down due to non-compliance to the AML and ATF regulatory standards.

Towards the end of the session, he told us that there are people who would do anything for money and he gave this real life story that was conveyed by a senior official. There was a couple who went holidaying with their young son in another country. While they were shopping/walking around, they realized that they had lost their son. They became frantic and reported the lost child to the authorities but the authorities told them that there wasn't much they could do but suggested that the couple wait by the border to see if they managed to spot their son. Sure enough, when they were waiting at the border, they saw a man walking towards the border, carrying their child. So the mother, being like all mothers, got frantic and ran towards the man. Upon seeing the woman, the man got scared, dropped the child and ran but the police managed to apprehend him. When the mother got to her child, she found that her child had been slit and gutted, and the boy's corpse was stuffed with drugs. Apparently, the man was planning to smuggle the drugs that was stuffed in the child, across the border, pretending that the child was asleep so the authorities wouldn't think twice of questioning him.

Gosh, can you imagine??????? What WON'T people think of doing???

o_O

What a waste of our $$$!!!

So there I was, driving to Sutra last Sunday for class. Got to the Jln Pahang roundabout and ran smack into a traffic jam on Jln Tun Razak, which on normal Sundays, would be clear.

WHY??????

Coz the police bloody closed the road in front of Istana Budaya (the same road that I needed to turn into to get to Sutra) coz of the Visit Malaysia Year 2007 thing happening at Tasik Titiwangsa.

GAAAAHHH!!! I had to take a U-turn at Menara Celcom, get stuck in another traffic jam on the opposite side of the road on Jln Tun Razak, take another U-turn after the Jln Pahang roundabout back to the roundabout and get stuck in another traffic jam on Jln Pahang coz I had to find a blurdy alternative road to get to Sutra!!!!

GAAAAAAHHH!!!

See, I'm fine with all this VMY campaign as long as :

Taxpayers hard-earned taxes are used wisely and effectively to make the country a more pleasant place to visit (i.e. cleaner toilets, more efficient public transportation, you get my drift...).
Locals are not inconvenienced by whatever activities they have planned for the so-called VMY event.

Coz heck, even if you dun have the largest ferris wheel in the world or what not, people will still make the effort to visit your country if your cultural heritages are well-maintained and your public transport system is reliable and efficient, and your service guides are knowledgeable, up-to-date and helpful. Visitors dun need to come all the way to lil' ol' M'sia just to ride on your Eye on Malaysia.

BUT when these powers-that-be chop down huge, old, magnificent trees and remove parking spots just to build two stupid huts for goodness-knows-what and close roads which people need to use, this so pisses me off!!!

Now, the area around Tasik Titiwangsa looks so bare (just like the rest of the city and many other outskirts) with all the grand ol' trees chopped down and all u can see is the stupid ferris wheel, which is such a waste of money and an obvious copycat of the London Eye (why can't M'sians be more original?!) and is NOT what M'sia is about and which will most likely be another white elephant before u and I can count to ten.

GAAAAHHH!!! Those road closures better NOT be a permanent feature every Sunday, man.

*fuming, visible smoke coming out of my ears and nostrils*

Shelters

How do ppl run their shelters just on their salaries and donations???

THIS is what I'd like to do...

If only humans would just treat animals like any other human/living being with a right to live without being abused/exploited, there wouldn't be a need for shelters in the first place.

Hmph...

Stupid, ignorant, selfish humans...

Paws & Reflect

...If a man cares about his dog, it is a mark that he may also possess certain behaviors essential to a relationship: the ability to give and receive love, the capacity to tend to the needs of another, the openness to accept the presence of someone else...

- Excerpt from Paws and Reflect : Exploring the Bond Between Gay Men and Their Dogs

I think this can apply to anyone who has the good fortune to share their lives with animals.