I haven't been keeping up with this blog because I was being kept busy at work. You know, do more with less.
It is my opinion that becoming a sexagenarian makes a person a target for job removal. It's illegal, it's age discrimination, but it is my opinion that it goes on all the time.
I believe that with any subtlety, it is easy to get rid of an older worker and replace him or her with a younger, cheaper, more technologically facile and harder-working person. Experience, know-how, wisdom, the ability and willingness to mentor younger workers and institutional knowledge bleed away in torrential geysers in such occurrences though.
In my opinion, some managers improperly, deliberately and in collusion give a bogus rating to the older employee which is lower than anyone else in the heavily subjective annual review process, then set up a series of ridiculous tasks with artificial, unrealistic deadlines, demand completion of the most unimportant and least advanced tasks first, paper the situation with "confirming" emails, and wait for the employee to fail or be said to have furnished an "unacceptable" product. In my opinion, unless the manager is a complete ham-handed boob, the method is tried, true and unerringly applied by many ambitious modern managers who are a generation or more younger than the employees they are actively purging.
Showing posts with label almost there. Show all posts
Showing posts with label almost there. Show all posts
Monday, June 6, 2016
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
On to the infamous bridge
I jumped into the MCM at MP 19 when I spotted my running buddy Leah, she of the 4:51 PR, to pace her during her last 7 miles in her quixotic quest to break 4 hours with very minimal training. That would necessitate a 9:09 pace.
As I settled into running alongside Leah, I told her I was going to sprint ahead 50 yards so that I could get in front of her far enough to stop and turn and get an action shot of her running towards me that would "take" on a digital camera, and since she'd just run 19 miles, she shouldn't speed up to follow me. She nodded in agreement and I ran ahead and turned, but as I brought my camera up she was still practically right behind me. I got the shot but I thought to myself that she appeared fresh enough after 19 miles to be able to do a short burst of speed work, and I wondered just what her possibilities were for a 3:59 marathon.
In any case, I now started running alongside her and we conversed for two miles, and she discoursed readily enough and didn't seem either excessively fatigued or particularly out of breath. We ran at what I thought were 9-minute miles and she kept up with me well enough, with me continuously going literally from side to side of the course to find a space to dart through clumps of runners, what I call sideways running on crowded courses, which seemed odd to be necessary at such a far distance from the start line.
The MCM is a huge race, with many scores of thousands of runners, but to still be sideways running twenty miles into a race suggested that for whatever reason, Leah was among the slowpokes of the race, because with the oddball exception of solitary runners blazing by us occasionally at a fast pace, we were steadily moving up amongst the racers and we steadily started passing runners I recognized as having passed by me while I waited for Leah before she came by. We turned left at 14th Street and started over the long bridge over the Potomac, which represented a major uphill for the weary runners in their twentieth mile as the Pentagon on the Virginia shore comes into sight off to the right. I now assumed a path breaking spot five yards in front of Leah and she doggedly followed wherever I went as we worked our way through runners at about a nine-minute pace, with me wondering how close she actually was to the magic four hour mark, knowing as I did that the four-hour pace group was still several minutes ahead of us.
As I settled into running alongside Leah, I told her I was going to sprint ahead 50 yards so that I could get in front of her far enough to stop and turn and get an action shot of her running towards me that would "take" on a digital camera, and since she'd just run 19 miles, she shouldn't speed up to follow me. She nodded in agreement and I ran ahead and turned, but as I brought my camera up she was still practically right behind me. I got the shot but I thought to myself that she appeared fresh enough after 19 miles to be able to do a short burst of speed work, and I wondered just what her possibilities were for a 3:59 marathon.
In any case, I now started running alongside her and we conversed for two miles, and she discoursed readily enough and didn't seem either excessively fatigued or particularly out of breath. We ran at what I thought were 9-minute miles and she kept up with me well enough, with me continuously going literally from side to side of the course to find a space to dart through clumps of runners, what I call sideways running on crowded courses, which seemed odd to be necessary at such a far distance from the start line.
The MCM is a huge race, with many scores of thousands of runners, but to still be sideways running twenty miles into a race suggested that for whatever reason, Leah was among the slowpokes of the race, because with the oddball exception of solitary runners blazing by us occasionally at a fast pace, we were steadily moving up amongst the racers and we steadily started passing runners I recognized as having passed by me while I waited for Leah before she came by. We turned left at 14th Street and started over the long bridge over the Potomac, which represented a major uphill for the weary runners in their twentieth mile as the Pentagon on the Virginia shore comes into sight off to the right. I now assumed a path breaking spot five yards in front of Leah and she doggedly followed wherever I went as we worked our way through runners at about a nine-minute pace, with me wondering how close she actually was to the magic four hour mark, knowing as I did that the four-hour pace group was still several minutes ahead of us.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Final Dental Visit, Part Four.
The dentist came back in and after looking at the fit of the new crown on the top side, she pulled it off so it could be emplaced permanently. Zing!
"Sensitive, huh?" she remarked, seeing me wince. "We'll just shoot that up with a mild sedative before we go further with it."
The long needle loomed in front of my face, carrying with it the prospect of needle holes in both sides of my mouth, again. I sat there glumly, mouth closed tight, for fifteen or twenty seconds composing myself while both women waited patiently before I opened my mouth to accept the shot.
It had been a long three months at the dental office and my pain tolerance was definitely weakening. While the Novocain took effect on the second tooth, they started in on the lower tooth on that side, the only non-deadened tooth left of the three being worked on that day.
"Sensitive, huh?" she remarked, seeing me wince. "We'll just shoot that up with a mild sedative before we go further with it."
The long needle loomed in front of my face, carrying with it the prospect of needle holes in both sides of my mouth, again. I sat there glumly, mouth closed tight, for fifteen or twenty seconds composing myself while both women waited patiently before I opened my mouth to accept the shot.
It had been a long three months at the dental office and my pain tolerance was definitely weakening. While the Novocain took effect on the second tooth, they started in on the lower tooth on that side, the only non-deadened tooth left of the three being worked on that day.
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