Breakdown: A Review

(Alternate title: Do Not Buy This Game!)

First off, this game is hard. Take everything you know about video games, and all the tricks you know to handle them, and how to deal with tough enemies. Now throw that all away, because none of it will do you any good.

This game is REALLY hard. They like to throw you at enemies you don't have a way to damage yet, and go through some 'frantic puzzle' shindig where you're trying to evade one-hit kill enemies left and right just to get to the door at the end of the level. Except that the door is a vault door, and it takes your character nearly thirty seconds to turn the wheel. Did I mention the enemies aren't very slow, and it's a small room?

Yeah. Expect, if you buy this game, that you will die. A lot. Fortunately, there are checkpoints, which are triggered regardless of if you save or not. Unfortunately, the game doesn't pull any punches.

This game is billed as a first person fighter, and I suppose it is that. Unfortunately, people who like fighting games are probably not really going to get into this, as it doesn't feel much like a fighter. People who are into FPS games might get more into it, but quit because the controls are really designed for it to be a fighting game, not a shooting game.

You get guns in this game, of course, though their use is somewhat dubious once the fighting element comes to the fore. Why bother shooting a marine at point blank with a half a clip from your M-16 to take him down, when you could just punch him once, and have the same result? And, you can block bullets with your hand, but not a gun, thus making the guns even more useless to fight anything except for bugs. Which the game will give you, but still.

If you are the type of gamer who likes to face an enemy that can only be beaten a single way, and not having any clues to what that way is (thus allowing you to retry, thanks to the checkpoints, repeatedly, until you do figure out that one way you were meant to be allowed to win), then this game is probably for you. It'll keep you coming back, probably forever.

If you are the type of gamer who's more concerned with progress through the game than mastery over the game, this is not the game for you at all. And that's a real shame, because the story of this game is fantastic.

You wake up with no idea of who you are, and everything you go in this game is from the first-person point of view. Everything. This makes the back-flip manuever a little dizzying.

From there, the game's next innovation in storytelling is that your character hallucinates. You see things. This is just plain awesome, because you see wierd, plot-relevant things, as opposed to the Max Payne continual review of paths of blood through a dark abyss. At one point, he looks down at his arms, because his skin and muscles have completely melted away. He's just a skeleton, until the hallucination ends.

There's intrigue, as you meet characters who hint darkly at what's really going on, and what's still going to happen. There's a bit of sci-fi that comes off as schlocky, but you suspect is that way for a reason.

And unless you want to deal with the game's increasingly ridiculous challenges (you and a mine-card versus three m-16 armed soldiers, and their tank) that just go to a scale that leaves you stunned (running from the game's final boss at about the midway point, if even that, and unable to damage him, yet still needing to put enough distance between you and him to turn a series of increasingly slow valves), and then just get worse (you versus a helicopter, with a rocket launcher. Except, the helicopter can only actually be hit while it's already firing its vulcan cannon at you, and needs about six direct rockets hits to be taken down), however, you're never going to be able to see exactly how the game turns out.

And given how the game's greatest challenge is due to poor design instead of intent, every time you have to fight multiple enemies in HTH combat, you might as well just reach for the reset button if you make a single mistake. Then again, given how quickly the game kills you, chances are you'll be reloading to your last check point before you even get out of your seat. I think it's a real pity a story and plotline this much fun were hidden in a game so needlessly challenging (and the 'easy' mode isn't, folks) as to render it unplayable. This is the kind of story I'd like enough to watch as a series, as long as I didn't have to be the one pressing the buttons to make it happen, because lets face it; it's not going to happen.

The difficulty is approximately enough that a six year old thrashing on the buttons randomly is going to fare about as well as someone who's been playing the game for hours.

If you liked this game: Go cure cancer with your spare time. I'm sure it's easy in comparison.

If you didn't like this game: Go to EB today and trade it in -- like I'm about to. 0 have shared the love

 
Killing Your Campaign in 30 Easy Sessions

Another Pedantic Diatribe by Brian Randall

(As requested by Dunefar.)

So, I have referenced the 'bad' game I was in, but avoided the specifics of what exactly was wrong with it that upset me so, instead analyzing the underlying reason for the failure.

We know that it was that the GM's expectations and mine didn't match up. So why bother recording them here? Well, the truth of the matter is that some of these can apply to other players and GMs. You may see things here that you'll realize you want to keep an eye out for to avoid in your own game.

You may get an idea for how to accomplish what our GM tried, only without making it such a painful experience.

Okay. There's a lot of backstory, and the campaign that the GM tried to run garnered an awful lot of fallout. It resulted in a lot of bad things, some of which will be detailed later.

Anyway. The premise for the game is this:

It's an Alternate Reality campaign, which means the players create characters that are supposed to accurately model themselves, and see how they fare. The setting is the afterlife. Apparently, however, the afterlife is some 13 digit number of people in a big tournament, each tier of the tournament being 25 days long, and resulting in 90% of the people in the tier getting the 'tier fate'.

Tier one's tier fate is to have your soul destroyed to power the new sun.

This is a mistake right here, people. Imprisoning your players is generally something you want to avoid, and keep to a bare minimum as often as possible. People tend to play games in RPG formats with other people because of the unlimited choices and possibilities. If you're going to be stuck in something so linear, why play it with dice and papers at all?

Anyway. The populous of the tournament is divided evenly between Core Worlders (real people) and the various Mirror-Worlders (characters from fantasy novels, video games, etc.), Monsters, Aliens, Demons, and Angels.

I didn't really find the religious overtone offensive. I didn't find it interesting, either.

We each got lists of people we could pick to put on our 'watched' list, so we could see how well these random ten people (anyone, real or not) were doing, and increase the odds of running into them. In theory.

There's a major problem here, though. The players, at the start of the game, are divided evenly into two groups -- those who have played with this GM before, and those who have not. Those who have, ask if they can play their former AR selves, who have apparently saved the world before.

The GM approved.

This was a huge mistake, amounting to favoritism on the part of the GM. The players who had played before found themselves surrounded by an ungodly number of super-powered allies (including the GM himself!), and three largely ineffectual enemies. When I asked the GM if us new people would get anything like this, he asked me who I knew. I mentioned my friends in #void, and the GM put the dice away, said, "They're all dead", and moved on to speak to someone else.

In the actual tournament events themselves, I have to admit, the GM was a miracle at pacing everything so that you had to fight until your last couple of points of Body (HP, essentially), to win. Unfortunately, every single conflict was either this, or someone finding a way around the battle. There was never really any conflict we had where we could wade in and kick butt. It was always a struggle that often left a few party members dead, or the NPC allies showed up, and the enemies were reduced to ash before we could blink.

I was playing the game to have fun and do things, but I never got to do that -- I ended up having to spend all my CP on support abilities (healing, weaponsmithing, craft, inventor), because no one else in the party wanted to. And if I hadn't invested in these abilities, the entire party would have been killed before then.

Of course, I was never allowed to role-play this out, except for the healing. It was just noted down, and then the bonuses applied to the dice. This is, admittedly, a failure of the other PCs, but it resulted in me not having fun, because I wanted to be on the front lines with my friends, and was relegated to support. The GM really should have seen to it that the game was flexible enough to allow something else, but he didn't.

Anyway. I mentioned previously that the game was divided into two groups of players, those who had been, and those who hadn't. The people who had no allies started dropping out of the campaign, one by one. Almost all of them left.

Which brings me to another point of GM inflexibility. At one point, on a tournament mission, one of the players suddenly decided that he was going to go crazy, and kill the people we'd paid to help us cross a desert, to rob them blind.

Being forced into the combat, we helped out friend out, and then yelled at him for what he did. As it turns out, the GM was herding us into a scenario where we'd end up fighting the entire Demon faction in the tournament, and one of the PCs just straight out killed half of the people who were supposed to be our one single 'in' to the Angelic host to make the battle even remotely survivable.

He knew about this in Tier one, and didn't mention it until Tier five (I got this second hand), when the players unanimously decided the game had become unplayable due to the fact that the PCs just couldn't progress against the Demons.

Admittedly, there should be repercussions for a character going insane like that. But holding it against the rest of the party well enough to destroy the campaign, given that the player in question dropped out three sessions after going ballistic?

Another problem I had was the lack of a moment to ever shine. I've touched on this before, as I wasted all my CP on trying to help everyone else out. I think, that pretty much everyone who ever games, especially in a large group of players, wants at least one moment to shine, to pull something amazing off, and to really make a difference.

This was a privilege reserved for players with pre-existing allies, unfortunately.

When I tried to make an ally of my own within the game, he turned out (after the fact) to be some baby-eating-monster that the other PCs refused to associate with me because of. All of this, just to try and gain some of what the GM's favored players already had.

I had a lot of grievances, one of them being that when I aired my complaints on my blog, the GM e-mailed me in reply. The net result was that he wouldn't listen to any of my points, and then told the other players that he had to 'deal' with my complaints, but we were all ready to game (complete with rolling-up-of-sleeves motion on his part). I'll admit, he didn't throw anything worse at me as punishment for my perceived transgression. But he also didn't even try to fix what I pointed out as flaws.

I told the GM early on that I hated the tournament part of the game, and was only playing because I thought that there was something beyond the tournament. Basically, that the world was larger than just this forced regime, and we could do something without being so rigidly forced. The GM said, "Oh, just wait and see," without actually promising improvement. I told him that if things hadn't changed by tier three, I would be dropping out of the game.

I think, realistically, waiting 10 months for a campaign to get to the 'good part', and continually getting nothing, is another one of those not-so-much-fun things.

Now, looking back, and knowing what kind of person the GM is, I have to say, his game is exactly the kind of game he'd like to play in.

Unfortunately, it's far from perfect for everyone else. This is another case of player and GM expectations just not matching up. Mostly a laundry list of personal grievances, but it gives you an idea of what NOT to do. 0 have shared the love

 
What I've Learned As a GM

A stream-of-thought essay on Game-Mastering by Brian Randall

We, as gamers, put a lot of stock in 'good' GMs and 'good' players, as components for assembling a 'good' game.

But, realistically, what makes a 'good' game? Different types of gamers will want different things. The easiest way to get on the road to a good game, as I've found, is to participate in a bad one. That is to say, a game which gives you exactly what you don't want.

I ended up going through a horrible game quite by accident, and came to some conclusions that most of you will probably already have known.

Now, I'll spare you most of the specifics of the bad game I went through, as the details aren't really relevant. This is meant to be more of a pedantic dissertation on the philosophy of gaming (and GMing, specifically) than the details.

And realistically, that's an important factor in your games. What it all comes down to is this:

You, as a GM, probably have an array of sourcebooks at your disposal, if you're using a system that's been around and your players already know. You've got rules galore for managing pretty much everything you could want to manage. There are other tools you can apply, too. Dice, of course, are the most obvious ones, as almost any game I've ever been in relied on them for their mechanic. Figurines, for those of you who want to take detail to the next level.

But, as I realized through the aforementioned horrible game, for me, 'role playing' wasn't about the dice, or the stats, due to the fact that the GM pretty much ignored the dice and had exactly what he wanted to happen take place. This was done badly, in this instance, but showed me that it could be done better, too. The truth of the matter, I realized then, was that gaming is about playing your role, and the dice (or any rules at all) are all secondary to mission #1 of gaming: having fun.

We take gaming seriously, and on some forums, we may take it too seriously. Rules Lawyers are a well known stereotype, but let's look at them after we apply mission #1 to them. For the Rules Lawyer, very likely the game (the RPing, specifically) is secondary to the system it's run in, and the rules that make the world you're in. For the RL, the game is ultimately less about RP, and more about doing what you want within the system. This is not exactly getting to the point where you 'win the game', but it's getting you to a point where you're playing, and ostensibly making progress.

Now, before anyone gets the idea that I'm saying RLs can't RP, or have no interest, that's not what I'm saying. I'm just pointing out what is their primary drive in the game. RLs are gamers, too, and they're in the game to have fun.

Looking at a few other stereotypes, we get the Combat Monkey and the Drama Queen. Both of these players have clearly definable goals -- the Combat Monkey wants to fight, get better at fighting, and fight some more. And maybe he'll RP along the way, and maybe all his fighting is pure RP because he's on a quest for vengeance. Most likely, though, the Combat Monkey archetype is there to fight, because for him (or her), that's what the game is 'about'. That's the fun part.

The Drama Queen, of course, wants to RP, talk their way around most confrontations, and see about doing things that work (most likely within the system), to accomplish their goals without fighting as much. Or maybe just as much as the CM, only it's, you know, dramatic. This is also valid, but most DQs are really all about the character interaction, the thrill of BEING someone else. That's the sea route to comedy India in terms of fun for them.

Taking what we've learned here, your ideal 'good' game is going to cater to what your players want. As a GM, it's your job to make sure that their goals and yours are close enough for you and your players to have fun. Because, let's be honest. If you're not having fun, it's not much of a game, is it?

Any time your game becomes so serious that you have to kick someone out of it, and no longer speak to that person as a friend, or every time you end a friendship over something your GM did to you ... you're taking something that's a game way too seriously. Because you've just taken the entire thing into the realm of no longer having fun, in which case, why are you bothering? The only reason you're ever going to get a 'bad' game is, in short, by having a GM that fails to meet the player's expectations.

Of course, your players may demand things you don't want to give them, in which case, take a step back and ask yourself if it's going to be fun gaming in the first place. Communication is the key to any good game, I believe. Some players will go for the cruel, sadistic, unfriendly, and monster/trap/evil NPC/natural accident route to the extreme, and make you suffer every inch of your journey until it's complete. And if that's what you're looking for in a game, to make that final reward that much sweeter, then it's perfect for you. But it might not work so well for someone else.

This isn't to say you can't surprise your players once in a while. There's no reason everything should be sunshine and roses the entire trip. If it's too easy, it may lack desired dramatic tension. But communicating with your players is the key here. Communication is always the key. Check with your players and see what they want. As a GM, be flexible enough to change things to suit your players.

The worst thing you can do as a GM is to make an immense, structured, static world, and expect your players to go through it a specific way. Because if your players make a move that throws you, they're suddenly running into things and NPCs that you've statically assigned to screw them over or not care, or just wonder why the heck they're around. And now you're not having fun because the path you wanted them to go down isn't being trodden, and they're unhappy because they're running into things that aren't helping them reach their goal.

This may sound an awful lot like saying, "always let the player win; it's not about the player versus the GM". And it may be. Check with your players, and see what expectations they have for their characters. Players can get attached to characters, and pretty upset if their character is killed ... then they have to create a new one. Permanent character death is one of those things you have to seriously consider before bringing it into your game. Will your players enjoy gaming knowing that at any moment a bad die roll means they're either out of the game, or their character is gone, and they need to start over? For some people, the answer is going to be yes. For others, it's going to be no.

But this brings us back to the instructions for how to play (and to GM) a 'good' game. And that's to play together. To work together with your players to what their goal is. Give them the challenge they want -- don't be afraid to throw them a few surprises, because the game will get boring without it. But always be sure that you know what they expect out of the game, and that they know what you're planning on giving them.

Realistically, as some of you already know, you don't even need rules to run a 'good' game. If you're all working together, you don't even need a GM, let alone the dice. Use exactly what you're comfortable with, if it's every single core book and supplement ever created, or if it's just, "Let's all work together and tell a story."

That's about it out of me. 0 have shared the love

 
Quick note:

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Moderate
Schizotypal:	Very High
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Very High
Histrionic:	High
Narcissistic:	Low
Avoidant:	High
Dependent:	High
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Moderate
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

0 have shared the love

 
Review of Read or Die TV:

I'm gonna take a crack at reviewing this anime. But, since there are two ways to approach this anime, I'll essentially review it TWICE.

So. The first way you can approach this anime is as a follow-up to the RoD OAVs.

Coming from that, you're introduced to three entirely new characters, no familiar characters, and a plot that's impressive, but leaves you wondering, "Where are my old favorites?" The basic trio of sisters that comprise the 'Three Sisters Detective Agency' are interesting characters, in their own right, but the directors of the anime decided that one of them was worth far more attention than the other two.

This is kind of like when you watch SMJ, thinking it's about Cherry, Lime, and Bloodberry, but you realize, wait, it's really only about Lime!

Unfortunately, the character they chose to develop and focus the most annoying and least sympathetic of the three sisters. And yeah, it's the kid. With pink hair. Funny, that.

What was obviously intended to be moments of drama unfortunately came across as stilted. What's supposed to portray Anita as vulnerable just makes her look whiny. And the entire anime ends with a gratuitous play for sympathy that evokes more eye-rolling than actual emotion.

The action sequences (where there is action) are pretty good, even if they do mostly center around Anita. Unsurprisingly, when the action focuses on someone else, the action sequences get even better, evoking true awesomeness at about the midpoint of the anime.

The plot development is a bit stilted, and poorly justified.

There's a bit more here, but those involve spoilers, so we'll move on to the other approach to the anime first.

The other way you can look at this anime, is as a wholly independant universe from the original. Approaching it from that direction, the lack of familiar characters isn't a betrayal, though Anita is still annoying.

The action sequencs are good, even though the three sisters all have the same power (there's slight variations in how they actually do it, which lends a bit of flavor to all three of them. Well, okay, Anita's still not as cool).

Now, for the bits that are true for both:

The plot is sketchy, vague, and really (ultimately) hindered by the continual mocking of the US. What was kind of awkward in the OAVs now becomes fully embarassing to watch. Especially since it adds nothing to the anime to show just how incompetent us Americans are. Hint: The US has no actual role in the anime other than to look stupid (not counting ... well, we'll get to that). They do not fulfill any truly plot relevant points. The fact that it was included seems, in all honesty, in poor taste (and I'm about as un-patriotic as they come, what with me emmigrating OUT of the US!).

If you look at the story as more of a study of the characters who are in the struggle than the struggle itself, then the vagueries are irrelevant, and you're left with the fact that, well, Anita is still annoying, and becomes progressively moreso as time wears on. And really, that approach is letting the directors take a cop-out on their job of direction.

Now. On to the section that will contain spoilers. I'll try and keep them minor, but they're going to be there. Hilight to read:

The big question you're probably asking (if you haven't asked someone else already) is: Does Yomiko show up?

And in all honesty, most of your old favorites from the OAVs do reprise their previous roles.

Yomiko is more fleshed out and explored as a character, this time around. Unfortunately, most of her screen time is spent putting up with Anita screaming about something or another. Her role is kept so minor that she's realisticaly only a background character compared to the sisters. But then, the anime is about the sisters, not the original cast.

Drake returns, larger than life, and twice as cool as before. He actually gets probably the most development of any character outside of the three sisters and Junior. Strangely enough, Anita doesn't whine at him too much. Its as though the director were trying to prove that Anita was better than Yomiko, and never regarded Drake as competition....

Anyway. Joker returns, in all of his cardboard cutout glory. Unfortunately, they took pretty much everything that was cool about Joker and turned it into raw, pure, untainted dumb. There's no real other way to phrase is: Joker's made such a paradoy of his character in the original OAV you have to wonder why they bothered using him when they could have just as easily (more easily) replaced him with a new character.

And now, the conclusion of this review. While not a series I regretted watching (the action sequences at the aformentioned midway point were totally awesome), this is NOT a series I would reccomend watching to someone else. The ending is actually not that bad, but the series had a lot of promise up until the final four or five episodes. Then it got stupid. Really stupid.

The ending was a little too much talking, not enough action, and ultimately unsatisfying, as it still leaves a question or two unanswered. It gives hope, of course, and seeing Drake dressed up like an 1842 Englishman is pretty cool, but most of the series just isn't worth it.

Your viewing time is probably better spent watching something else (as long as it's not Narutaru). 0 have shared the love

 
I signed up for a livejournal just so I could comment on my friends' entries.

True bloggage will overcome. 0 have shared the love

 
So. I've been hanging out with the Communists more often these days.

The Communists are some friends of mine. Used to be roomates for a while, back in the day. Of course, things went down poorly at one point, and I had to bail to further my career, and left them behind.

They didn't hold it against me, though.

Time went on, the Communist clatch grew in size. There were, I think, five people in the original commune.

Now there are six. And they have some communal friends.

One of them is a certain Major.

I call him Mr. Major because I don't think he's a person I like enough to call by his first name.

Now, this guy, for reasons I don't know, has never liked me. The FIRST time I met him was when I had just gotten the first volume of Excel Saga on DVD, and was still living with the communists. I was the major lease-holder of the house. The television in the living room was mine.

Walker (one of the communists) had told me that he was inviting a friend over. Walker was not actually a tenant at that point, and was actually only a guest.

I said this was okay, and then Mr. Major and two other people came in. Major saw that I was watching something animated, said something derogatory about anime in general, and then (keep in mind, I was the one who was paying rent here) told me to get off the TV so he could show Walker (a guest) the SpaceBalls movie.

I was in a bad mood with A: more people that should have been there in the room, and B: him being an asshole.

But I moved aside, cranked my headphones to maximum volume, and listened to AMVs.

Now, as I visit the communists more often these days, I also (obviously) run into Mr. Major more often. And he seems to harbor some resentment against me.

He seems to think I'm a bad person, and just generally try and say clever things about how stupid I am behind my back. I say things about how stupid he is to his face, but they all go over his head. He assumes (correctly) that I'm saying something bad about him, and to his face, but has no idea WHAT I said.

So he just gets all huffy.

But today. I decided to drop in on the communists to hang out with Sterling, because we were going to discuss gaming (which we did a bit) and Mr. Major made noises about joining our Demon: the Fallen campaign.

I didn't really care.

So, we were getting hungry. I asked Jim (Communist) what he thought about dinner, and he said he had to go to Fry's to get something for Mr. Major (for some reason). My younger brother was with me, so I said, "Let's all go to Fry's, then."

Major doesn't like this (for some reason) but we all go. Me and my brother in his car.

While we're there, Jim bemoans his lack of funds, seeing as there's a CPU on sale he could use to bring his dead PC back to life, but he's short about ten dollars the cost of it.

So I say something like, "Well, it's your birthday next month, and I won't have the money then. So, happy birthday." And I buy it for him.

(Aside: When the cashier asked me if I wanted a bag for the processor, I answered, "No thanks, we'll eat it in the car.")

(She didn't notice.)

So, we split up there. Me and my brother to get food, and I asked Jim if he could do me a favor and pick up the drinks. We get back to the townhouse, lay out the food, Jim and Major come home with the drinks, and we all have a merry feast.

Except for Mr. Major.

Who makes a big deal out of asking me for permission for taking food.

Now, I do this thing once a month (or so) where I get some food for everyone in the Communist Block, we eat together, talk about gaming, and I make comments about their worship of me sustaining my god-like powers.

A good time is had by all.

Usually (since he hangs out there a lot) Major is there, too.

Not ONCE have I said he couldn't eat.

But he always asks.

And then, after he eats, he's still rude to me.

He lacks respect, is what it is.

And I would get annoyed, yeah, but wouldn't mind THAT much if he disrespected me.

But.

He disrespects my FRIENDS.

He goes over, and kicks these people off of their own TV so he can play his game.

He goes over, and drags Jim over to a GameStop, just so that he can take advantage of Jim's employee discount.

He openly disrespects EVERYONE in the townhouse. To their faces.

And today, he made some openly snide comment about me to my face.

And I thought about it for a while.

And I decided to leave.

Because, hey, I don't want to just explode and pick a fist-fight with him on the spot. I want to step back and consider, and try to understand why I think he's such a bad person.

And now I pretty much have.

So, the next time I see him, I'll tell him ... "If you have something to say to me, say it to my face. If you're too much of a coward to say something to me, but brave enough to take food I bring for my friends, I think you're going to be better off not showing your face around me." And now.

This is why I hated psychology in college. It allows me SO EASILY to take someone apart and understand how they work. And consider them less people, and more just an assemply of complexes and disorders.

So. I show Major the same respect that he shows everyone else.

Which is none.

Guy pisses me off.

And, I've decided (after considering my piss-poor excuse for a manager at Televigation) that I'm not going to take this anymore.

Obviously, I need to be careful about how I approach this -- I don't need (or want) to pick a fight with everyone I see. But at the same time, the only way this guy is ever going to grow up is if someone gives him a verbal kick in the pants, and opens up his eyes enough to show him that the world is a hell of a lot bigger than him.

Ironically, I hurt because I care. There are two possible outcomes to my confrontation with him. In one of them, he resents me, and fails to grow. In another, he grows, and probably still doesn't like me, but hey, at least he's grown, and most likely I don't have to deal with him anymore. 0 have shared the love

 
I'm now unemployed.

I don't consider it much of a loss.

It's unclear on if I'll be elegible for unemployment. Either way, the stress of that place was eating me up. I don't think I can work customer service anymore. I'm really poisoned against it.

Monday, I go back to school and straighten out the confusion behind me being admitted to any classes.

Hmm.

Tuesday, I start looking for work. Night work.

Moving boxes in a warehouse.

Or something. Something that doesn't involve customers, anyway. 0 have shared the love

 
So.

I can't get a copy of my job description from my supervisor.

How strange.

How strange indeed....

I've come up with plans regardless.

It's really hard to care about the consequences of quitting, when the consequences of remaining are even worse. 0 have shared the love

 
I woke up early this morning.

Most likely because I went to sleep early.

Anyway. Since I was up so early, I thought I'd bring donuts in to work for ... well, everyone, really. It seemed like it would be nice. I ended up getting in about thirty minutes early.

This is not, in and of itself problematic.

What IS promblematic is that my shift hasn't even started, and my manager is already dumping stuff on my lap -- new things I'm going to be doing. He never asks us if we're willing to volunteer for a duty anymore. He just says, "Today, you're going to be doing...." And WHAT it turned out I was going to be doing was some form of conference call with a whole bunch of customers.

I'd never done it. Never seen it done. Not even was supposed to be working.

But he's dropping a new duty on me, and when I interupt his instructional tirade to say, "I don't even start working for another twenty minutes," he gives me a look as if to say, 'What kind of attitude is that?'

Also, the company president still cannot spell my name.

I'm always 'Brain'.

Vexxing.

Anyway. Thank you for the support in the replies to my last whine; they meant a lot to me. I'm going to be looking for work tonight and ... well, until this company either drops like the rock it is, or I get another job.

Secondly, is it unreasonable to expect me to do work when it's not my shift if I'm still at work? I think it might be; what else am I doing at work, after all. But at the same time, it seems to me that legally, this is wrong.

Tomorrow, should someone pester me, I will explain exactly what I think is wrong with the world. It'll be chock FULL of innacurate fun. :D 0 have shared the love

 
So. No one will answer my question.

Vexing.

But then, life is like that.

So today was nothing more than an ordeal of frustration.

Maybe I'm not cut out to work? There's a cop-out.

Still, it seems to me that the ideal job is either something you enjoy (at least a little bit), or something which allows you do something you enjoy.

I've come to the conclusion that I cannot stand customer service anymore. The truth of the matter is, I can't take speaking with vapid customers who are wasting money on something they don't need (and lying to their employees about in the process).l I can't handle marketing/sales people. It's so easy to be a salesperson, though.

They call people, tell them the product's great, say the latest feature which is just now in beta-testing is actually solid, and perfected, etc. Build up the customer's expectations -- whatever it takes to make the sale. Once that's done, your obligation is over, turn them over to the support crew, and ignore your phone when it rings. Don't talk to anyone who you've already gotten money from (unless you think you can get more). And then, when your support crew is drowning under the fury of customers denied, call up the support people and say, "Hey, I need you to call this customer to show them feature X."

After a grueling day of phone calls with ignorant (when not outright hostile) customers, I just feel so much anger, so much frustration. I'm tired of repeating myself. Of not being able to just teach a thing, and have it be taught. I understand that, hey, I work with the technology every day, so it seems natural to me. I understand that someone who's never seen it before can be daunted, and will need help.

But if I'm going to be doing something so pointlessly empty and unfulfilling, I'd rather be doing manual labor; at least then I could converse with a co-worker, and do something with my mind more constructive than try and focus on the customer. And it's an effort to focus these days, because I really, honestly, just don't care. The love is gone, the honeymoon is over, and I am sick of dealing with it. I'm tired. I'm not having any fun repeating myself. I want to go back to school.

I want to learn, I want to be educated, I want to get a job that allows me to do something where I can work with people who, after I teach them a thing, are taught it, so I don't need to constantly repeat myself, and explain the simplest things in minute detail. A job where I can, if the concept is too confusing for a coleague, just do it myself until we have time to teach them better. A job where I don't need to listen to the continual and mind-numbing voice of the eternally confused customer.

But that's just one half of the issue.

Management. Our company is poorly managed. I can understand why, though. This is the year that if the company can't turn a profit, it (as far as I can tell), goes under. Backing is revoked, funding is nill, and our jobs are gone (I long for that day; that day when I can collect an unemployment check and become a full-time student). Therefore, the company is dedicated to turning a profit, because if they don't, well, they go under.

They break no laws. They violate no moral or ethical codes (outside of the salespeople promising we can make good on things easily that in fact require straining on our part).

But they plan so poorly. Our customer base expands faster than we can reasonably be expected to handle it. Demand outstrips our ability to produce results.

And most damaging, I imagine, we have competitors that offer superior products.

I don't believe that (barring some miracle) the company will survive the year. I know, logically, I should just wait it out. Be patient. Work until they go under, then collect my EDD money and begin working on something productive -- a diploma.

...but at the same time, it's so hard.

Because, there's my personal manager, too.

He's tough. A hockey coach. Ex-mil. A gamer. Someone who thinks he identifies with me.

He doesn't.

He continually uses the phrase, "what have you," which is irrelevant, yet vexing to me. Continually. Anyway.

He gives us needless, long, nigh excruciating pep-talks about how the company is "going places", and it's our decision to "ride that train"/"get on that bus"/"stick it out"/"be there when it happens".

He tells us (often) the story of his own hireing, and how he was originally a temp (contractor) -- just like us -- before he got to be the manager.

I am currently the one person at that company entirely responsible for shipping and recieving, as well as a number of other inconsequential duties. But he always tells me that he used to do everything (everything) himself. It's like he has to rub in how poor we are as replacements for him.

We had a discussion, once, whereupon he told me that it was his job ("just like in the military") to find out what my breaking point was, how much I could take, and to then push me farther. I told him (to his face) that I'd rather he didn't take that approach, and just fire me. Right there. He refused, and said he would just keep pushing me. Because this company was going places.

After all of that, he explained how he felt I was incompetant, and couldn't be trusted with the tasks I had been assigned. But I was going to keep doing them (and more) anyway. I don't think he understands how much that hurt me. He thinks that I'm still fine and happy, and he fixed it, and that he's a great manager.

I don't think he's going to be happy when he finds out the truth of the matter.

But it gets worse. He's sworn at me. Talked down to all of us. Told us to (illegally) work through our lunches to get something done, and then he offered to, "buy you guys a pizza, which you don't even deserve."

When I confronted him on swearing at me, he said, "You have to learn to take that."

When a customer swore at me, I hung up on him. I warned him, "if you continue to swear at me, I will terminate this phone call." His reply was a nearly incomprehensible screech of, "You can't fucking hang up on me!" So I hung up on him.

He called back. He demanded to speak to my supervisor, who was not at that point in. I told the customer this, and he swore at me again.

I hung up on him again.

After this, my co-worker decided to take all that swearing and try to deal with the customer, which degenerated into a shouting match, and a voice-mail left with the company president.

End result: new policy from the manager.

"From now on, when a customer is abusive, or rude, or annoying--"

"I refuse to be a customer's emotional punching bag," I interrupt, jarring the morning meeting. "I'm going to try and help a customer, but I'm not paid to let him swear at me. If he swears, I'll warn him that if he doesn't calm down, I'm hanging up. If he keeps swearing, I'll do it."

"Okay, yeah, and that's fine," the manager says. "But what I'm saying is, if they act like that towards you, just take it."

And afterwards, another new policy:

"Don't commiserate with your co-workers."

So when we get a bad customer, or sworn out, and we "take it", as we're ordered to, we can't talk about it. This is VERBOTEN.

We're getting some new employees soon.

The standing orders are to, "put on your best face. Don't let them see how bitter and jaded you've become. You gotta act relaxed, natural, and let the new guys try and fit in, and feel comfortable.



I want to cry.

I look at how much I hate my job, and I ask myself, "Is this it? Am I just so weak willed and lazy I can't even handle working a normal job like everyone else? What's wrong with me that I handle this so poorly?"

I feel rage at my inability to deal with this as happily as it seems everyone else can.

I feel great depression that I've finally got something good, a job, and I don't want to keep it. But obviously, I need to, as without it, I can't pay for rent, or any of life's other neccessities.

I hate my job.

Why am I so bad at dealing with life? 0 have shared the love

 
DRAHMA.

I love being regarded as property when my friends squabble.

Especially when both friends are displaying pigheaded attitudes and being generally xenephobic.

Online communities are kinda funky. But it's always ridiculous when people are this juvenile.

Speaking of which, my search for the Foe draws closer to a successful conclusion to the hunt. Or nothing.

We shall see.

And then....

DRAHMA. 0 have shared the love