My journey to the top

I interviewed at JFS in January of 2007 and was offered the job shortly thereafter. I said yes because JFS would look really good on my resume (let me be honest), would train me in on state of the art technologies, and was offering a lot more per hour then the crap work-study jobs offered at my college. From the time I was officially offered the job until the time I was actually hired one year went by. To explain why this took so long I must elaborate a bit on what it is the group I work for within JFS does. They do things related to optics (think displays). It's highly likely, in fact, that the screen you're staring at right now has some technology made by JFS inside of it. Unfortunately, it's been a bad year for the displays market and JFS has been losing a lot of money in this area. Thus, I wasn't able to actually come on at JFS until the higher-ups had approved the acquisition. Like I said, this took one year.

So in January of 2008 I had my first day at JFS. I learned that, of the two men who I interviewed with, only one was still within our group and would be my working boss (as opposed to my "reports to" who is a higher-up and my official boss, to whom I have exchanged perhaps two sentences with in my life). I also met the woman below him who I would in fact be working with everyday. Below her was another lab technician similar in stature to me but with more experience in her position and seniority at the company. At the bottom there was me.

I was excited to be at JFS and eager to learn. I acquired as many skills as I could, asking not only how but why (oh isn't he sooo smart?) because I was genuinely interested in the tasks of my new position and how the devices which I was creating worked. The other lab technician was eager to teach me and also just as eager to bitch about the job and its "ergonomic hardships" (gloveboxes in the cleanroom do pose some odd strains to the neck and back, but these complaints are trivial when compared to the pains found in any standard retail or waitressing job). Soon, the lab tech had taught me everything she knew and, shortly thereafter, bailed on her position. She began not coming in to work and soon avoided the clean room at all costs. The higher-ups finally yielded to her complaints and, while an "ergonomic investigation" was held in the cleanroom (of which there were no results as, quite honestly, nobody gave a fuck) she was given a new position. At this point I had become #3 in knowledge and seniority within the clean-room.

To replace ergo-woman a new tech-aide was being hired, and an existing technical employee was being transferred from another division. Simultaneously my working boss, the man whom I had originally interviewed with at JFS, announced that he was moving to a new division. This made the #2 boss, the woman whom I worked closely with everyday, the new #1 boss and made me, concurrently, #2 in seniority.

The new #1 boss and I began training in the new and transfered employees so as to regain the momentum we used to have. Within several weeks we were working at a faster pace than ever and everybody was happy in their positions. Then one day I came in to work and my boss looked at me and said "Well you ought to know that I've been terminated." I stared at her in disbelief. "What?" I said, laughing a little, "Like you're 'exploring new opportunities'?" I'm smiling. "Yeah, like I'm fired."

She is serious.

She is fired.

I am now #1 in seniority within the cleanroom.

I am 21 and I get paid 13$/hr.

People here do not like eye contact

I am 21 years old and on a good day at work can be found wearing an un-tucked polo shirt and some khaki pants. On a bad day I am wearing a t-shirt with toothpaste stains and jeans with holes around the back-pockets (why do holes form here?). I am tall and skinny with a scruff of unkempt curly hair. I am not, by any standards, an intimidating looking person. Certainly in a professional corporate setting there would be no reason to look towards the floor, or the wall, or back and forth repeatedly between the two in some kind of frightened attempt to avoid eye contact, when passing the likes of me in the hallway. And yet this is exactly what I see.

I understand that these are not normal people, that they have PhD's in things like Physics and Materials Science and that for these they have sacrificed some of the more sophisticated social skills such as knowing when to draw someone a map and when to simply say "the bathroom is around the corner," but I thought that a head nod or simple "hello" when passing a fellow co-worker would be within everyone heres ability.

I was mistaken.

The lights went out

I am sitting in my cubicle and I have a spreadsheet open that I'm typing away at. All of a sudden the lights go out. We have lights which are activated by motion and which are meant to continue to stay on as long as somebody is in the room. Apparently sitting in a cubicle tapping at a keyboard in front of a 1246 row spreadsheet is not considered motion.

Fair enough.

What do you do??

Once I tell someone that I work at JFS, they will inevitably ask me on of two questions:

Question 1: "Oh! Do you know PersonX?"

To this I always end up saying: "Hmmm....no I dont think so...it's a pretty big place..."
They will then be disapointed and walk away.

Question 2: "Oh! Cool! What do you do?"

To this I will attempt to succintcly summarize the obscure machinery and methods which I use to create objects that perhaps 1000 people in the world could recognize as useful.
They will then be disapointed and walk away.


There is also sometimes a third reply.

Question 3: "Oh! You work there? How can you possibly justify that? Do you know how much pollution and health hazards that company has caused?"

I will then be disapointed and walk away.

Where do you work???

I have a job as a "Technical Aide" at a multinational company which invests heavily in scientific research and development. I will refer to this company as JFS, which is an acronym for the phrase "Jamal Fucking Sucks". I will refer to it as JFS because acronyms are everyone's favorite thing to do at my job, and because Jamal fucking sucks.

A typical conversation:

-Hey Dave, did you get the LIVS on those PDL-P's yet?
-No not yet, the PR-650 was down, but I took some BF and EL shots.
-What about PL?
-No I didnt get to PL's yet but I can when I look at the WNF6. Hey did you get any word about when we'll get some more block ITO?
-Yeah I called MMD, they said it'll be in next week along with the NDP and some more GGD
-Nice.

This is not an exaggeration.

40% of the time people will not know nor care to know what the acronyms they use daily stand for.