Anger!

Recently my special ladyfriend went from unemployed, to employed, to unemployed in less than a week. Her recent stop — four shifts — at a lingerie store ended on Monday when her manager, who was on her way to Mexico, called in to the store’s assistant manager to ask her to do the dirty work (fire my wife). The reason? Well, who knows. The assistant manager was given the generic bullshit “didn’t fit our team dynamic” cop-out excuse to defend the manager’s decision.

Now I have only two weeks of working retail to my name — at K-Mart about a decade ago — but I’m absolutely certain that no one can judge “team dynamic” after four goddamn shifts, especially considering my ladyfriend has two-plus years experience of retail work.

While she’s posted her own f-bomb-fuelled and totally justified response on Facebook (check it out, if you haven’t), I have to chime in as well. The past three workplaces my ladyfriend has worked have consisted of petty grudges, backstabbing, cliques, verbal berating, and nonexistant training, overseen or perpetrated by store managers that have zero ability to manage people. Yes, I understand that retail isn’t necessarily going to be run by the best people available, but rather by “whoever’s been there the longest”. But poor management skills are poor management skills, and telling your assistant to fire someone is just another twist on how to be a shitty manager.

Needless to say, my ladyfriend is pretty much done with retail. And I don’t blame her one bit. The stress of kissing the ass of customers, and dealing with a high-school mentality or piss-poor management isn’t worth the pay. Next time you go to a clothing store and get bad service, realize that the good people generally don’t stick around in retail. You’re dealing with assholes because that’s what it takes to get ahead in that line of work.

The third movie of the year

Last weekend, the ladyfriend and I hit up a theatre with our friend Leah to take in The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson’s latest film. I absolutely loved The Life Aquatic, and enjoyed The Royal Tennenbaums, so hopes were high for this one. It was pretty good, although it still felt a little less entertaining than the others Anderson has made (I’ve excluded Rushmore from mention because I did not like it at all, and have yet to see Bottle Rocket). One of the things I like about his films is the dialogue — it’s the kind of writing I wish I could come up with on a consistent basis. Anyway, The Darjeeling Limited was roughly the third movie I’ve seen in theatre this year. Why so few? Because paying $12 to see movies is retarded. Recently I’ve read reports of Hollywood studios blaming video games (namely Halo 3) for poor box office returns. Is there anything we can’t blame on video games? I’d like to blame my problem body odour on games.

This reminds me, I’ll have to put The Life Aquatic on my Christmas wish list.

Lately I’ve had Rihanna’s Umbrella song stuck in my head. I had to listen to it today to try and get it out of my head, and by doing so I’ve realized it’s actually a pretty good song. Much better than her previous teen-club hits like SOS and Pon de Replay.

With winter on its way, I feel it is my duty to present to you another episode of Hinterland’s Who’s Who. This time, it’s the snowy owl. Enjoy!

Doomsday

Tonight the cable TV stopped working. I can live without an episode of Bionic Woman, but the real crisis starts tomorrow if my ladyfriend has to go without Ugly Betty and Grey’s Anatomy. I don’t know what we’ll do; I’m sure as hell not going to talk about feelings or look at wallpaper samples or whatever it is that wives make their husbands do. Maybe I’ll pretend there’s something wrong with the bathroom faucet and spend all night pretending to fix it.

I haven’t turned on my iPod in about three weeks. I really need new music. I think the last music I downloaded was a Yeah Yeah Yeah EP. In the past I’ve turned to iTunes to download music legally, because it’s relatively cheap (although not as cheap as free). Now I read that the group representing artists in Canada — the same group that charges levies on blank recording media — wants to place levies on legally downloaded music. Sure, their proposal is only about two cents per song, but it’s ridiculous. Music companies have to face the fact that they missed the boat on digital downloads, and punitive measures like levies is only going to drive consumers to illegal downloads even more. At least TV and movie distribution is trying to keep up with downloading and streaming, although they’re still facing a battle with the lure of free stuff. And generally, between cost and free, free wins.

Last night I watched an episode of Frontline regarding the recent history of Iran-US relations. It was very interesting to see how, for a very brief moment in time, the US had a chance to work alongside Iran in both Afghanistan and Iraq, but instead put their concerns over nuclear weapons ahead of solutions to sectarian violence and insurgency. There was a window in which Iran didn’t have to be part of the Axis of Evil, and the choice was America’s. The great thing about Frontline is that you can watch their documentaries for free online. I suggest watching this one.

Breaking a Blog Rule

One of the rules of blogging is not to write about work. A good example of why not to do this surfaced recently when a Nintendo employee was fired because of comments on her personal blog. I’m not going to the extent she did, and don’t plan to blast anyone personally, but I will give some insight into what’s going on in my work life.

Quite a few people have left the company. Some of the departed I worked with directly, including the creative producer on my project. Another colleague was unceremoniously fired. In all it makes for a very depressed atmosphere at work. When you see people you like leave, it sucks. There’s no other way to describe it. I felt this way at EA too, although the exodus of talent wasn’t as sudden as it has been here. Plus, I’ve only been here nine months; I think at EA most of the people I got to know stuck around for at least a year before calling it quits. Sometimes I wonder if my departure from EA was a letdown to those I worked with. Leaving them was probably the only thing that weighed on my mind when I turned in my two weeks notice — as ready as I was to leave EA, it was really hard to leave the friends I’d made.

But back to current day. Seeing people leave, whether through their own choice or not, is a morale breaker. When it’s a steady trickle of colleagues disappearing from your office life, it’s unavoidable to think about your own future at the same company. The fact is, people leave for a reason, and when more and more people do the same thing, one has to question if they know something you don’t.

It’s starting to sink in that I miss working on games. There were things I didn’t like at my previous job, and they were enough to prevent me from wanting to go back (although it would be pretty funny to rejoin the same team I left), but the medium and the study/knowledge of the industry seem more and more like my bread and butter. The only thing I’m wary of is the outdated mode of working in the game industry: the long hours of unpaid overtime, the design-by-committee approach to projects, and the non-creative people making creative decisions. Sometimes a game’s development involves all three of these, sometimes not. If/when I am to return to gaming I’d be challenged to both accept some of these aspects but also make a decision to only join a team where these issues are, in the best case, minimized. I don’t really believe game development has gotten over its antiquated ways of working long hours.

Where am I going with this? I don’t know, really. Let’s just say work right now is a bit of a downer. On an up note, though, a web page I’ve been working on should be online in the next couple of weeks. I’ll boast about it and provide a link once it’s up, because it’s one of the few things that have seen the light of day that I can point to and say, “I did that.”

TWIG Notes Nine

Without posts for a seven days, it’s time once again for This Week In Garrett.

- One of the few traditions we have, and one of the newest, is heading to the Laity Pumpkin Farm in Pitt Meadows every October to pick out a gourd or two for decoration. There will be photos of this on Flickr soon, including shots of the rare Bumkin and the super-ugly Flumpkin. Aside from pumpkins, the Farm also is host to a number of animals such as pigs, cows, horses, emus, a beagle, some roosters, a turkey, and goats. They also serve delicious hot dogs, and you bet your sweet ass we each ate one. It immediately triggered that latent hot dog craving, where once you eat one you immediately want to eat hot dogs for dinner. I had to suppress the urge since it’s also a well known fact that hot dogs are disgusting.

- In our spare time on the weekend we went to furniture stores to look at sofas and recliners. There’s a good chance that in the next few months I’ll bite the bullet and get a recliner. We’re really short on seating in our apartment: for guests, we essentially have a sofa that fits two people and a somewhat uncomfortable leather chair with an ottoman. If more than one guest is over, someone sits on the floor… with the dog.

- I watched a movie called Renaissance, a French-made neo-noir-sci-fi film that featured monochromatic computer animation. The look and feel of the movie was enhanced by the animation but the story was fairly standard, about a cop investigating some sketchy politicians looking to control the populace in a dystopian future. It should have been better; the film didn’t take advantage of the art style enough and it borrowed a lot from the gold standard of police-in-the-future movies, Blade Runner.

- Is there a better dinner to eat on a rainy day than a roast with potatoes, carrots, and yorkshire pudding? The answer is no. My ladyfriend cooked up a delicious meal in our new wedding gifted slow cooker. Yum.

Midweek Nothings

It’s been quite a few days since my last post, and it’s mainly due to the lack of anything interesting going on. Last weekend was of course Thanksgiving, and we celebrated in Mission with my ladyfriend’s side of the family. It was delicious. It was also a birthday celebration for my ladyfriend’s one-year-old nephew (my nephew-in-law?), which was all good, and also interesting because a one-year-old really has no concept of what’s going on. Case in point: one of his gifts was a sleeper, and he was more interested in putting the empty gift box on his head.

This work week has had one event of note: I won the weekly office NFL football pool. I did this by picking teams at random, since I know nothing about the NFL. The prize was a hefty one hundred dollars. The pool was totally free to enter, too! Good thing no one knows I won by extreme fluke. Poolies like nothing less than hearing a buffoon beat them at their own game.

Finally, we got our collection of professionally taken wedding photos. Of the 1200+ shots taken, we managed to whittle the “good” photos down to about 100. From that we’ll be picking ones for retouching and printing and gifting to mothers and other relatives. It was actually quite punishing to look at 1200 photos of us holding hands, kissing, and all that crap, especially when about a third of the photos featured one or both of us with our eyes closed.