A lot of people have wondered why or if it was Covid that led to something. Maybe within me or with others? Did I become antisocial, or what was it?

One of my first jobs upon returning from abroad was for The Great Courses, and this was as a call center representative. Sure, I was not speaking Chinese or German, but I was leading the company forward as well as its customers, and I was getting promoted as such. My only concern was -- am I going to learn anything answering only calls, but, in fact, The Great Courses provided all of my scholastic needs, and for free. 

The Call Center / Customer Care Center / Contact Center a la...what have you...was fine and dandy, but serious developmental issues on my behalf began when I moved to Marketing and started working under one Lisa Simpson. The woman and her department were paid and talking fools I soon learned, and I thus spent 5 of my life wondering when they would stop gossiping and notice me.

I guess I should have taken the bait when Lisa threatenly asked me if I had applied for Lindsey Olson's old job. I guess I should have turned the other check when Allison Lesson (of Virginia Tech and therefore good at Finance? and also my boss's same age) went and whispered in my bosses ear in a very assuming way. I mean, there was a meeting, but could have The Secrets of The Old Testament course timeline been changed to that of Calculus? I didn't get what was so funny.

Apparantly neither did their data. For neither Allison Lessor nor Lisa Simpson nor anyone in the Marketing Department provide so much as a snitpit of information that would improve my life. Not once. I guess if I learned anything, it's that getting a degree in Business or Finance leads to such snobbery. I've learned that many times hence.

I can get into the philosophical qualms of all that later. But the matter at hand is my lay-off and how unjust it was.

First and foremost, 

 If I had my old work PC, then I could delineate the many reasons whereon and how this role was stupid as fuck. It was gaslighting at its finest, and not to mention the most fine-tuned sexism, because of Lisa Simpson. 

I had strike marks on this woman. I had asked to learn HTML from Abdallah, who claimed I was fully capable of writing these emails, but because she was a woman and she didn't like my degree of knowledge above hers, she went ahead and hired a "SHYAM" Shyam, that is right, a gentleman who quickly quit and could show neither the acumen nor degree of devotion to The Great Courses (AKA...YOU GET IT) that I did. I was there and ready to learn.

Later, I had to leave Lisa Simpson's sexist ways to go to another aspect of the department, and this time under another dumb-ass BRAD BROWN. He didn't realize I already knew everything about the company's pricing, matrices, and that I had studied up on virtually everything. Both he and Toya were virtual dumbasses, yet because I was their junior, I had to bow down and do their job for them. AKA - they couldn't get the 'complex' catalogs we had versus the offers we had on such catalogs, so I served as a mediator and said virtually nothing during our meetings aside from key words so that these dumb fucks could finally understand what we are trying to achieve.

In the meantime, they downplayed me as a dumbass. And taught me little to nothing.

Finally, I got laid off after training a new Email Marketing person after I had had enough with Lisa Simpson's idiocy. I taught her everything I knew so that she need not ask anyone anything, and her boss knew nothing anyway. Brad and Toya also had things squared away, because of my tutelage. I was left with nothing to do, but look like an idiot in front of the rest of the company. And boy oh boy, did they make me do that.

In the meantime, I was trying to make our Bill Gates' Documentary more market-worthy, and not filled with fluff. My boss Chris Raedel wasted my time day after day, and they laid me off. What a fucking waste. 

---- 

First and foremost, after a couple weeks of studying the shit out of it, I got it down pat, and by October after a Summber hiring, I was left wondering what was next. What was next? Well, that would be inner-office politics. But being the savvy young woman that I was, I knew what skills I needed to obtain in order to get to where I wanted to go in life (without the BS mumbo jumbo). I needed to learn HTML/CSS and web-coding, and I needed to learn it quick.

However, said boss Lisa Simpson was the silliest of bitches, and didn't allow me to do things she couldn't fathom. I was here to make a company run seamlessly and flawlessly, and with the help of Abdallah Aqel. I was ready for challenge. I had my notes, and I was at the ready.

Stay tuned for how The Great Courses a la Wondrium / aka The Teaching Company AKA The Great Courses Plus screwed over a multi-lingual NERD for GenX Office Politics when it came time for COVID. 

The only reason I don't still have my job is because I didn't speak up against the system. I didn't speak up against their idiocy. They talked and talked and talked anyone's ear off for non HTML-related (NOR COMPUTER-PROGRAMMING related) quandaries. These are things I already knew. Because I chose to not call them out on their trifling bullshit, I got laid off. 

Anyone who asks, what I did was this (and I could have done a shit-ton more):

I wrote their email copy and their website copy to kingdom come

I repriced  matrices and 

My only issue with them during COVID was that after I had given all I had to give to Tier I and to the News meetings and to much avail, I was getting individuals I did not even know asking me for meetings. What are they producing? What are their ideas? And yet, they weren't even asking me these questions. They were asking me basic zero questions that make me think they weren't people to converse with. I wanted to ask them what they had edited lately, and why? What had not fit, and for what reason?

If your department would have asked me specific questions about content or editing, I would have been happily provided. Instead, I was stuck in front of a camera in front of some PD person who claimed to have been insterested in me. NO. Let's reverse that. WHY AM I INTERESTED IN YOU? That is what I wanted to ask. I answered questions, and tried to rearrange the convo, but the end was fucking neigh. 

 If you would have even give me a chance to prove myself as an editor, I would have provided, but it was the under-handed things you were throwing at me. There were producers wanting to have meetings with me wanting to discuss things that I felt were irrelevant. GIVE ME A TOPIC. For instance, we have done a topic o 

The main thing for me isn't even that I got laid off from my job by lacklusters under COVID who know more about working things than actual working. It's more that I lost a lot by not having left the company after Lisa Simpson played her sexist card and declared I was not a computer programmer as a woman. I feel I would have left the company in due time, and in that regard, I should *i guess* thank TGC for having employed me during COVID. But they did me no favors by making me deal with Chris Raedel, Brad Brown, and Toya Turner, all of whom I could have expent with (for 3 days' worth of training time in some regards). But I was dealing with petty-petty people, all 3 of whom were getting paid over 80k a year versus my ~60. 

And yet I could have done their jobs. The point wasn't that, at that point, and as is the point of this essay. It's people's bullshit, and I hope The Teaching Company LLC AKA The Great Courses AKA Wondrium have learned from that. You laid off a key player, and she's never really recovered. In fact, she's making half what she used to. But, hey, you are the ones who know best and who named your company WONDRIUM. 

Working from home ruined my already fragile existence

 Yeah, not a popular topic, but I'm going to slowly but surely make it one - just the way the Covid-19 pandemic and mandates to leave the office slowly but surely deprived us of a great sense of responsibility and capacity to get along with others.

Working from home was fun and exciting for the first month, but after companies - who are run by men and women of the Hobbesian-ethic - determined that, sure, our existence can be maintained outside of the office, where we are surrounded by 60% of people we can tolerate, 10% we genuinely we, 10% we have to like, and 10% we detest, all while maintaining a go-getter attitude amongst noise and chaos, we slowly began to loathe our existence and gain utterly nothing but self-hatred and anxiety about what could-have-been.

Very few of us can effectively communicate with others from behind a camera. If you can communicate with others, then you are having a really good day, but it is not guaranteed that the person on the other side of that camera even cares about what you are talking about. Only the best of the best can develop a rapport that allows for a successful back-and-forth through a computer. The side that does the talking is full of themselves in that they perceive their underlings to care about what they are talking about.

They don't take the time to get to know what it is that their underlings are experiencing, or if their subordinates are doing well enough to gain more traction. If I could have, I would have hung up every single call that I had while working remotely, because none of them served me. In fact, none of my bosses ever asked me what it is that I would change, or how it is that I would manage my job and my aspirations within my career.

It was always talk-at-you-talk-at-you-talk-at-you. And if you were doing the same, rote job that you knew so-well before the pandemic, you saw that your managers really were - people pushers, meeting holders, time wasters. Because if they did not have you to talk to, then what else would they do? 

True subordinates like me were not given a chance to craft their job in any sort of way that fit their needs, and most needs do consist of being at an office. It's so disappointing that bosses suck so badly and wasted so much of our time during Covid, because there is no going back to what things were before the pandemic. 

And the leaders and bosses who espouse working from home are the ones who don't really have time to work anyway. They're loaded with kids and mortgages and the only thing so far as I can tell that they know how to do is waste time via speaking, and not directing.

Is it possible to sue the government - forget sovereign immunity - for scaring our corporations into sending us home for years and ruining our lives and everything that we had built up via a strong work-ethic at the office? I'm talking about about work - not the talking mumbo-jumbo that our mid-level managers subjected us to day-in-and-day-out to prove their control over us and to prove their 6-figure salaries to their do-nothing mangers? What about all the nonsense talk that people in IT and technical positions were exposed to - talk that most people can see through and easily slice through? What about our needs that were usurped and displaced?

Did no one in the whole United States have the sense in July 2021 - after restaurants and barber shops starting opening up - to tell us that we could safely sit in an office? Or are we that loathful of others? Yes, we are. We are inherently Hobbesian and our staying at home did not put the greater good into consideration. It was under the guise that 'flexibility is key. we can do the job from home.' That's what you think. You don't know anything because you make the determinations of others and are not trying to expand your skillset and your career.

Thanks to Covid and sending all of us home, my life was completely ruined, and I was let go by mid-levelers who never listened to me, and had me doing the most rote and meaningly tasks, all while wasting my time and subjecting me to their non-sense talk. They taught me literally nothing during Covid, and I'm sure there are others like us.

Elon Musk and others maybe had the sense to say that we should come back to the office, but where were our leaders? Where were the voices of psychology and education who told us that the experiment of working from home was a failure? Where was leadership? 

How can we get back at them.

Is China Experiencing Deflation?

 Hey, what ever is up with you? 

I'm gonna start writing more blog posts. In recent news, I was laid off from my job, and I think I will start blogging about the economy and finance. More specifically, I am interested in uncovering whether the economic data and reports that we receive from #cnbc #themainstreammedia holds water.

For instance, we are told that China is in a deflationary state. As for last week - around August 10, 2023 - it was widely and vastly reported that China is experiencing deflation, and that is from both fewer exports to Western and other Asian countries as well as less consumption internally. You ears may be pricked upon hearing deflation, and, in some degree, you may regard this as good for consumers because you are paying less for good that were formally more expensive. In fact, deflation and a falling currency is what led to Germany's sad economic state in the 1930's and and fostered the malaise that eventually led to World War II.

I think we can see this as a result of China's 'isolationism.' I think when we read these reports we should take a step back and wonder if this is China's real aim - to be economically not reliant the rest of the world, and that is a firm no. After all, why would China have created the 21st Century Silk Road, and all that. I dunno,  but I've been watching BABA's stock lately - because when I hear stop, I tell myself that I should really pull the trigger - and I am still going to keep buying it. I think China will figure itself out and we won't need to worry about shrill media reports. At least that's my hope...So I'm going to try to figure out if China's production is really waning and what they are reporting about us through their websites. 

What to do when you are frustrated at work

We have all been there. Ahem, let me rephrase. We are all there. Deadlines, last-minute changes, pressing tasks, and conflict with coworkers.

A simple disruption derails an otherwise great day.
The best solution is to take the changes and constant disruptions in stride and to learn how to enjoy the complications as they arise. Each complication presents a challenge but also an opportunity to learn, to grow, and to better understand how each of us deals with change. After a long day's work, and after overcoming seemingly insurmountable tasks, we will feel better about ourselves.

Annoying things at the work place include but are not limited to:
- the typing of another coworker (the precision becomes too much to bare. It is steady and hums perfectly, almost as though he is making no typos, and just like he is putting the perfect weight upon each key). Such perfection is annoying. Put your headphones on and move on with your life.
- the fact that your boss has a space heater that is used during the summertime (it's 80 god-damn degrees outside - fuck off).
- the breathing of another coworker
- their faces


Sometimes you are asked to do something by 

1) Listen to classical music.
There is no better way to hammer through a stressful day than intense Mozart. 
2) Immerse yourself in your task.
There is nothing more important than the task you have set forth for yourself. Do this task with gusto and do not allow any distraction. If distraction arises in the form of an email, an IM, a beep, a sneeze, a gesture or a hand-wave, literally wave it off until you have come to a stopping point.
3) Take breaks.

Interesting sites and photos

I cannot attribute these images to myself. As for attribution, I will say that they were found somewhere on the interwebs. 

38 and Counting Thought Dead and Resurrected -- All Had Covid-19

 

Morticians, coroners, doctors, and dozens of families across the world are shocked that family members thought to have died from COVID-19 are now back among the living.

 

The revelation that the heart can regain a beat after 6 days' death has shaken the nation, as an estimated 38 individuals worldwide have actually become awakened after presumed death from COVID-19. The scientific discovery has flummoxed the world, as coroners have been bombarded with COVID deaths over the past 2 years, and had always seen that a presumed dead was, indeed dead. But recently, research is showing that some presumed-dead have taken on life, and 37 of the 38 had not yet been put in the ground.

In all cases, the body had tested positive for COVID-19, and had been presumed dead. Many bodies had been buried, and only 1 buried body has escaped her grave. This was  was 36-year-old Tricia Stevens of Newport, Indiana. In Tricia's case, her family had buried her only 3 feet underground, instead of the usual 6', and had also given her a wooden casket that was easily destroyed with her ninja-clawing hands. The former body-builder has now joined a group of 37 former dead-turned-living COVID-19 survivors. They say their main mission is to convince the world to wait at least 10 days before putting their dead relatives in the ground, and they encourage coroners to make their body bags unzippable from the inside. 

This shocking and unprecedented finding is presumed to come from an expected confluence of factors involving COVID-19 and the individual being in unusually good shape. Church members around the word are rioting, and legislators are quick to work with hospitals on operable body-bags.

race and gender politics much?

I happened upon ideologies and schemas as of late that I am very much unaccustomed to in my present life, but ideologies and schemas in tune with a lifestyle I found comfortable as a child in Catholic school down South. As a result of this newfound exposure, I have welcomed a transformation and acceptance within myself, but not without the realization that discomfort with society and surroundings spawns from liberal political and social trends of the past 20 years.

I will preface by saying my concerns within the political arena are negligible and passive. There are 2 realms in politics that, however, everyone contends with and everyone has opinions on:  the social and the economic.

The United States is clearly one of the most capitalistic countries on the planet and belongs to a class of laissez-faire, liberal economies that provide for open capital markets, stock markets, free markets, and an abundance of profit and ca$h money. Marx says it all best. As for society, we Americans are, again, "liberal"; we are gay and proud; we are politically correct, and we know when to shut the fuck up ("Facebook" and "The Oscars" will shut us down if otherwise and #BlackLivesMatter). The opinions of pundits infiltrate our minds to a point we do not even realize it has happened, so we are left tip-toeing past every issue, unsure of when or how to speak up, and we are sure to steer clear from public embarrassment or public challenge. In 2 ways, you can see, the United States is Liberal AF.

I see both issues to be the contributing factors to my discomfort and existential dread. My parallel self - 32-year-old Amy who was born in 1886 - would recoil from this rift mainstream liberalism has inflicted upon me. But I cannot help but envy the lives of my white-collar, educated grandparents.

My contribution to society consists mostly of liaising with colleagues, putting shiny buttons on websites, and paying taxes. The role contributes to the education and betterment of the global society by offering an elite educational product at a very low cost.  I contribute to society and have done so every day of my life since the age of 16 when I started waiting tables. I never allowed my bank account to get under a couple grand, and I always sought ways to help others through my work. Yet somehow the political reality TV show of all of our lives barks at me that I should fell ashamed and guilty. What do I need to apologize for?

How do I benefit from any of the harm inflicted upon others?  I don’t feel like I’m complicit in genocide; the horrors of immigration; the decay of traditional ideals to make room for more social welfare. At the same time, I do not feel morally obligated into political activism, and in fact I think that donating money yields better results than showing up at political rallies for the disenfranchised. Money is far more effective at achieving most things in life, but money must be earned honestly and not in great excess (I would hope we all know what that means). I would advise any person who feels left out or who feels disenfranchised to get a job or get a hobby. Just provide for yourself and try to give less of a fuck about race and gender politics?

To elaborate, The Wall that Orange Julius wants us to put up is way too hyped in the media. I was speaking with a Chinese friend about this issue, and my friend remarked that this "small amount of money" is nothing to bewail and also that a governor and China could easily 把这件事情高定！ (solve the situation and put the wall up is the best way I can translate that into English, but it sounds so much smoother in Chinese). I am not saying that this is not a great deal of money - because it is, but in general the federal government is capable of such a vast amount of prodigal waste. While I advocate for a bigger and more effective government (see Germany and Northern Europe), I want funds earmarked for infrastructure, education, regulations on the environment, national parks, the arts, and science. I absolutely think entrepreneurs and developers only want to make big profits, and the notion that tech bro's are coming up out of the woodwork is utterly frightening and the things of my nightmares - your products are shitty.

A free education in this country is a privilege and a luxury, and it's a shame more people do not praise this or the positive sides of our federal government. Instead, we are are stuck worrying about the disenfranchised while hard-workers such as myself are not even considered in job applications due to a wide-array of experiences, jobs, interests, and fields of interest. I regret not having had appreciated education more, and if my genes are not washed out of the pool - which seems ever-more likely as of late, which is a damn shame - then that will the number one thing I will try to get across to my son or daughter. I don't mean to sound didactic, but I find people to be too lax on hard-work and education. I wish my teachers and my parents had been stricter, the way Asian families are. This also ties into what I think about the federal government, or a paternal-style of governing system. People need guidance. We are Americans, but to hell with individualism. At the same time, I don't believe that you need to listen to your teachers - if you look at them, then you will know how life really is.

So when I say that I am not used to the political and social notions I am currently thinking about, I mean that I am in the unfortunate predicament of having - very few - and having always have had - very few - positive influencers in my life besides my own family. I often feel I am surrounded by crude  only given douses of such social settings when I am surrounded by my family. So little value catches my eye, and I think I like authoritarianism#fckfreedom.