Blog: Articles filed under work

With the first term nearing its end, here’s a little review of my second year so far.

That is the best way to describe how I spend most of my time now. With three math classes, I spend nine hours a week listening to math lectures. I have three assignments due each week, so I work on those in my time between school and work. Every second week until the middle of November, I went to a practice sessions for math competitions for an hour on Fridays. Even when I’m not doing my own math, I like to help other people with their math. I am living and breathing math.

AND IT’S FRELLING AWESOME.

For those who don’t understand how someone can be so excited about math, the best way I can describe it is like being closer to God. I don’t necessarily believe in God, but I imagine that what I feel when I’m exploring mathematical concepts is the same feeling pious people get when they do whatever it is pious people do to feel closer to God. And math truly is the language of the universe. If God does exist, in one form or another, then understanding math helps one understand the universe and, in a way, get closer to God and creation.

When I first started university, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I had this deep, dark fear that I’d fail to understand crucial concepts and I‘d never be able to graduate in the math program. Fortunately, so far that isn’t the case. I am learning, and it is a challenge—some of these concepts are really complicated! But I build on what I learned before, and that allows me to understand concepts that a year ago I would have been unable to grasp.

The more I learn, however, the more I‘m able to comprehend just how much more there is I don’t understand yet. I‘m starting to get an idea of where my interests lie, however. I’m really enjoying ring theory—we’ll see if my interest continues next term, when we learn group theory. Abstract algebra appeals to me because it focuses on the reason I love mathematics. Abstract algebra involves constructing and proving the fundamental aspects of math. It’s the fundamentals of the fundamentals. I‘m discovering that I love doing proofs.

I’m getting the sense that most of my peers don’t have the same white-hot passionate love for math that I do. But that’s fine. I’ll show them. I’ll show them all! Muwahahaha! Muwahaha—er … right. Moving on.

When I tell people who know me that I want to teach high school, most of them react with scepticism. Apparently I walk around with the word “Professor” stamped on my forehead. Working for the first time with a new hire at the gallery, I made an allusion to Sisyphus, and my boss said, “Ben’s our resident Einstein.” And the new girl replied, “Yeah, I’m getting that vibe.”

Apparently I give off a vibe now….

I have wanted to teach for as long as I can remember. As I got older, however, the age group I wanted to teach got older as well. So I can’t deny that now that I’m in university, I‘m starting to understand why I would want to teach at a university. My main reason for not wanting to become a professor is that I don’t want to write math papers and do research into theories. I just wanted to do math. Now I‘m realizing that I actually like doing proofs, and it’s scary! :whoa:

Will I stick with my original desire to teach high school? Or will I fulfil everyone else’s predictions? Tune in for the exciting conclusion over the next three years!

Either way, I’m going to be a math hermit for a very, very long time.

I don’t usually rant about work, mostly because it isn’t that bad as jobs go. It has its moments, of course, but what job doesn’t? It is weird, however. I know, I know—every job is weird. But if there were a contest, I’m pretty sure my workplace would be, if not first, top three.

First, the bare essential backstory. We currently have an exhibit up from the Canadian Museum of Nature called “The Gee! in Genomics”. As the name implies, it is a genomics exhibition. The exhibition itself is reminiscient of a science centre; there are lots of buttons to press, videos to watch, matching games—it’s pretty cool. And I’m quite excited about it. Genetics is a science of increasing importance in society. We‘ve mapped the human genome. We’re developing genes that allow us to prevent congenital defects or cure hereditary diseases—but that’s another blog post.

Today, orders came down from on high that we (the front desk staff) were not “enthusiastic” enough. To be fair, this is probably true—at least in my case; in my coworkers‘ defence, they are pretty enthusiastic, or at least amiable. It’s likely that the level of expected “enthusiasm” is higher than even their typical output. However, that raises the question: how does one quantitatively measure enthusiasm anyway?

I’m just not built to work in the customer service industry. I think I would do very well as the stereotypical cafeteria lunch lady (minus the lady part). You know the one I mean: gruff, monosyllabic attitude. She serves you the same unidentifiable meal, day after day. If you ask for pie, she just says, “Eat. Move on.” That’s me. When people come to the gallery, I give them what they want, then hope they go away and stop bugging me. Now, I think that often this is what people want. Let me be clear: I am not rude—at least, I try not to be. I‘m simply brief. I detain people for as long as necessary to communicate the essential rules and information, then I allow them to go. If they want to know something else, they are welcome to ask me questions.

However, I’m getting the sense that more is expected. Apparently I‘m supposed to talk people to death as well as take their money. In addition to being gracious and informative, I’m supposed to extol the virtues of the gallery, the current exhibitions, art in general, and human civilization for the past three hundred years. After politely informing patrons of the exhibition in each gallery and reminding them not to touch the art, I should be thrusting an infinite series of pamphlets and newsletters into their hands.

Maybe some people enjoy being schmoozed. Many probably expect, or at least understand and recognize it (especially if they are schmoozers themselves). But how many really want it? How many just tolerate it because it’s the social norm, not because they’re wired to thrive on it? I recognize that some people genuinely thrive on greasing the wheels on which society turns—all the more power to them.

I have trouble faking enthusiasm. I’m plenty enthusiastic about this current show—ask me how I feel about genomics, and I’ll speak volumes. However, I don’t always volunteer my enthusiasm unless people express interest in knowing. Maybe that makes me a bad front desk attendant. Maybe that makes me defective. But on the flip side, it also means you can be sure I am always sincere. If I am listening, I‘m interested. If I’m talking, I‘m either completely serious or being facetious, but I don’t dissemble.

I wish I knew who did this so I could nominate him or her for a Darwin award. This is what I found when I had to change a light bulb in one of the pot lights above the front desk at work. The light bulbs are standard; the fixture is recessed. So someone came up with this brilliant idea to avoid having a recessed bulb. Take a look at the design! It’s actually two pieces screwed together. And it’s discoloured at the bottom—that can’t be good.

What’s with all the outlets on it? One of my coworkers jokingly suggested it was for plugging in disco balls (the building dates to the seventies). I‘m not an electrician (I shudder to think what an electrician would do upon seeing something like this), but that can’t be to code. I wonder what will happen if a building inspector ever discovers this.

The label is a barcode with 7 digits (phone number?) and “Mexico” on it….

We’ve got this bottle of whiteout in the drawer at the front desk of the art gallery. Regular whiteout or whatnot. I was bored one day and read the tiny printing on the back of the label. After resting my eyes from the strain of trying to read the subatomic type, I considered the implications of this warning: “Contents may catch fire.”

It’s very ambiguous. What do they mean, “contents may catch fire?” So this liquid might just decide to spontaneously combust while it’s sitting in the drawer? Or does it mean that if I expose it to a heat source then the contents might catch fire, but on the other hand, they might not. I half-expected the brand name to be Schrodinger’s Whiteout.

I could expand my reading of the label to create even more interpretations. For instance, prior to the warning about quantum flammability, it says, “Keep out of reach of children”. Let’s concatenate that. “Keep out of reach of children; contents may catch fire.” Let me get this straight: the whiteout company is implying that today’s average child is some sort of pyromaniac who will light whiteout on fire at any chance he or she gets? That’s kind of cynical. Not to mention just mean. Or are they saying that they‘ve engineered the whiteout so that if a child touches it, the whiteout will burst into flames?!

There’s a moral to be learned in all this: be careful how you label things. People might mistake them for soup cans, or thought experiments, or Danish philosophers. When you put something to text, make sure you know what you want to say, and communicate that clearly. Because sometimes a child’s life may depend on it!

Working full-time has finally taken its toll on me. On Friday, my co-worker Danielle and I agreed that we’ve finally snapped. It started with bears….

We get the occasional bear wandering around the campus on which the gallery’s located. Somehow we got on the subject of bears, and Danielle suggested that we trap a bear using stale doughnuts from Robin’s Donuts and then train him to work at the front desk. We‘d dress him in a hat, shades, a vest with tassels, and Lycra pants. h34r: Then we’d sic him on people who touched the artwork. If someone touches the artwork, we would press the button to drop the bear, who would proceed to rampage around the gallery. Sure, all of the art would be destroyed, but that person would never touch the art again! (Probably because they’ve been teared limb from limb…).

Oh, and we‘re going to name him Kingsley Shacklebolt.

And if the above hasn’t yet convinced you I’ve snapped, listen to this: on Sunday I sold a man $100 worth of rocks. Yes indeedy. A dude from Toronto, his wife, and his teenage daughter came to see the gallery. Then he selected a $70 rock and a $30 rock from the gift shop. They weren’t plain, ordinary rocks, of course. They had animals painted on the surface—an owl and a wolf, respectively. However, the punchline goes something like this:

Man: (Looking at $8.95 catalogue his wife wants to get) Mmm … I don’t know if we should get something we’ll look at once and then never open again. It’s not even for an exhibit….

Dude, you’re buying $100 worth of rocks and you’re going to begrudge your wife a $8.95 catalogue?! I wanted to slap him in the face with his own irony. Don’t get me wrong; he was a very nice guy. He certainly had different priorities than most, though.

Anyway, soon school starts. I have conquered Google Calendar and fed it a Sunbird-generated iCal file of my classes. Wednesdays look pretty crowded, but I’m liking Tuesday—one class in the morning and then I‘m done! Friday looks nice too, especially because I don’t work Fridays either.

Hot Fuzz came out on DVD Tuesday. I didn’t see it in theatres, but I enjoyed Shaun of the Dead a lot, so I bought it. Like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz parodies a genre of movies—in this case, cop-themed action movies. It is nonstop hilarious in the way that it’s virtually impossible to discuss specific parts of the movie—it’s all funny. Yet the humour isn’t cheap. There is a compelling plot buried beneath the parody too. Overall, I‘d readily rank it one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.

Last night Laura came online and started bragging about this awesome purchase she made at Zellers. When she revealed it was the complete Dilbert television series, I nearly went ballistic. Dilbert!! I used to watch it all the time when Teletoon aired it, but then they stopped, and that was sad. So I went to Zellers today and snagged a copy—$20 for the entire series. Can’t go wrong at that price.

Last night at work I got an odd phone call. There was an old lady who said she was calling from Vancouver. Apparently she had worked here in Thunder Bay as a kindergarten teacher between 1940 and 1975. She made sketches of the children’s heads. And now she was calling here to talk about “art”. It was at this point that I made a “help me” gesture to Danielle. I kept on trying to steer the conversation to see if she had a particular reason, but nope, that was it. I think she was just lonely—at one point she said, “Well, I‘m over 90 now, and I don’t know how much longer I have left … I just want to make a connection.” Nice lady, I‘m sure. I hope that if I live to be 90 I can be that eccentric. But it was the strangest phone call I’ve ever gotten to date (and we get some weird calls.)

This story is an example of why I lack any common sense whatsoever.

Yesterday at work a guy came in and said he was delivering phone books. Okay, no problem, bring them in. Oh wait—they are heavy. Okay, no problem, I’ll help you. Oh wait—there’s a lot of them. Okay, I’ll open up receiving.

Now at this point I’ll admit I thought something was unusual. But I didn’t question anything and proceeded to help these two guys unload 650 telephone books into our receiving area. With a staff of about 12, we really don’t need those many books. It was only after they had left and I went back to the front desk that I realized the order was probably meant to go to the college nearby and we got it by mistake.

After a quick call to the phone company we sorted out the problem, and the books will be picked up today. I feel sorry for those two guys though, because after I help them load up the phone books, they’re going to have to unload them a third time at the college.

This is just another example of how very intelligent people often lack basic common sense (I think it ties in the poor social skills thing too). If I had any common sense I would have stopped them and then asked someone why we were getting 650 books. But did I do that? Nooo. What an idiot!

It does make for a good story though.

For those who observe Daylight Saving Time, we changed back to standard time this morning. I was there when it happened (no secrets of the universe were revealed to me, however, so I want my money back).

This morning at about 11:15 I was getting ready for work when the phone rings. Who is it? It’s my coworker, Danielle, calling from work.

Danielle: Ben … you do know you’re supposed to be working, right?
Me: Yes…
Danielle: Well, you‘re late. It’s after 12.
Me: Um … no it’s not.
Danielle: All the clocks around here say 12:15.
Me: You didn’t set your clocks back?
Danielle: (Calling off to our curator) Glenn did we set our clocks back? (To me) Oh my god…
Me: I’ll see you in about half an hour.

Yes, suffice it to say, we aren’t going to let her live that one down. She spent the rest of the time looking for the manual to reprogram the front desk phone’s clock, though, which is good because it was always ten minutes slow and annoyed us to no end.

Other than that work was pretty slow.

Oh, last night the American Movie Classics channel was playing The Exorcist at 9 followed by The Exorcist II. At 10, guess what Space started playing? That’s right, The Exorcist. To up the creepiness factor to another level, they were showing The Exorcist II right after. Two completely different channels, one number 53 and the other number 52, decide to show the same two movies just hours apart?

Talk about 200 channels and nothin’ to watch.

I got some training today as I started my job. First I had to bike to the Art Gallery, which is located on the college campus. The ride was okay, although I hate crossing the busier streets because I‘m paranoid about being hit by a car. After I got to the gallery, I changed from my shorts into dress pants and a dress shirt (and some dress shoes) to start off at work. I filled out the form and then it was off to the races.

Lots of stuff goes on, and I have varied responsibilities. It was a lot to take in the first day, but I think I’ll like the job. My co-workers are nice and friendly.

There’s a lot of security concerns, it being an art gallery, and particularly this summer because the Norval Morrisseau exhibition is part of the National Collection, in Ottawa, so there is pressure on us from them to make thing everything is secure. Whenever there are visitors inside the galleries, an attendant needs to be in the gallery just to observe and make sure that no one touches the artwork or such. So there’s a lot of standing involved.

At the front desk, attendants have to work the cash register for admission and gift shop and such, as well as answer phone calls. Then at the end of the day we have to do a cash summary from the register and walk around the gallery for an “outgoing check”. All and all, while it takes a lot of energy, I think it’ll be a good job, and I’m glad that I got it.

Not much else to say, eh. Superman Returns comes out tomorrow, although I don’t know when I’ll be able to go see it. GST drops 1% on Saturday, which is both nifty and weird. Canada Day on Saturday too.

There’s such a thing as “too much of the CBC”. That is what I learned today.

I went into work for six hours (because the pay is lucrative but I find it difficult to work for any large amount of time due to the fact I have “school” ). From noon until six today, I mostly sat down in the basement of the Chapples Building and carefully sorted paper from paperclips, the former going into a container to be shredded. This humdrum existence was periodically punctuated by brief trips upstairs to return a full bin and downstairs with an empty bin.

By 5:30 I sort of ran out of steam. I had been listening to CBC Radio One for nearly six full hours by that time. A number of revelations flashed through my mind!

You start to notice how often the host cuts off the guest by interrupting them. I started counting how many times the hosts would say “Okay,” or some other acknowledgement until they had to actually step in and blatantly talk over the guest in order to end the segment. It’s just like listening for people’s intakes of breath before they talk, it’s this bad habit I latch onto after listening to something for any period of time.

Oh, and the hourly world news things? Yeah, they record that. They have about two different recordings for the day that tell the same stories in different orders. After four hours, I realised that they were repeating it word for word. It’s not so much the fact that they record it, I can understand, but I guess no one counts on anyone actually listening to the radio for four hours and finding out that the eagerly-anticipated hourly news turns out to be a rerun from two hours ago.

By 5:30, I was running out of steam. Rex Murphy’s Cross Country Checkup was on. Rex Murphy is cool, not because of who he is, but because the CBC actually pays him money to pontificate with his large vocabulary about any sort of subject. It’s the kind of thing that only the CBC can get away with; those American stations all have their personalities who espouse their points of view, but Rex Murphy seems like the only one who can be blatantly biased and still come off seeming like an intelligent individual.

I think it’s the accent.

Anyway, so I was listening to Cross Country Checkup, where there’s an issue and people from across the country phone in with their take on it. Today was “gun violence amongst inner city youths,” in response to the alarming increase in (you guesed it) gun violence in Toronto. Scarily enough, I was actually tempted to phone in. I was saved from actually touching a phone by the rationalisation that I had nothing to say on the subject. I‘m sure that, had I touched the phone, something disastrous would have happened, like, say a meteor strike that completely wipes out human life on the planet.

The moral of the story: listening to the CBC is good. I like the CBC. I just don’t think I’ll ever try listening to it for six hours straight ever again.