[thechat] people who work weekends: a rant

William Anderson neuro at well.com
Sun Nov 2 18:53:25 CST 2008


Erika wrote:
> People who work on weekends generally piss me off.  Mightily.  People 
> work on weekends (and/or long days) piss me off because:
> [snip]

Hey Erika,

as someone who worked this morning, I respectfully say the following:
shut the hell up :)

Some of us work in environments where 24/7/365 service delivery and
monitoring is a necessary evil, and someone's got to draw the short
straw and work at weekends.  And there are an equal amount of jerks who
work during the week too!

Hon, we live in a world that has servers, and those servers need to be
guarded by men (and women) with terminal windows.  Who's going to do it?
 You?  You, Lieutenant Weinberg?  I have a greater responsibility than
you can possibly fathom.  You weep for weekday workers and curse the
weekend workers; you have that luxury.  You have the luxury of not
knowing what I know: that working at the weekend, while tragic, probably
saved lives and that my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible
to you, saves lives.  You don't want the truth because deep down in
places you don't talk about at parties you want me on that server, you
need me on that server.  We use words like back shift, alarm clocks,
espresso.  We use them as the backbone of a life trying to maintain
something.  You use them as a punchline.  I have neither the time nor
the inclination to explain myself to someone who rises and sleeps under
the blanket of the very services I provide and then questions the manner
in which I provide it.  I would rather you just said "thank you," and
went on your way.  Otherwise, I suggest that you pick up a username and
login to a shell.  Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you
are entitled to.

- Did you work at the weekend?
- I did the job I was ...
- Did you work at the weekend?!
- YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DID!

-n

(hoping you take this in the jest in which it was given!)



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