People are trash

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

People are trash. My team-members, after a whole semester of wholesome teamwork, decided to make me a scapegoat and demand my attribution of the final report for che322 course be decreased and theirs increased proportionally. I demanded of the instructor to find out on what basis. The basis is an "offensive" email I sent to the team. The instructor didn't read it, but showed it to me. I pointed out that it's not for this assignment, it's not for this course, it was 3 months ago, and the offensive part is a copy-pasted joke from the internet which I forgot to put in quotations. On that occasion I was the team-leader and was sending out auxiliary information so my team-members are more prepared. And we already sorted out our relationship 2 days after that email in person. And I found out about this while going to a restaurant with a friend after an exam, and the instructor was sitting there eating steak - the teammies didn't send me anything.

 

As a chemical engineer I am now switching directions, from my previous commitment to produce more food on earth so people don't starve, to a new direction to work for the military developing weapons like mustard gas so people get punished.

[oDDity]

Get hold of a couple of automatic pistols and massacre them all, that'll teach them, plus you'll be (in)famous all over the world for for a week or so, and you'll still be able to study chemistry with a prison course.

Get a good lawyer, you'll be out in no time, sell your story for a million and do the chat show circut, and shag thousands of bimbos until you get AIDS and die.

I can't see any flaws in the plan.

[Domarius]

So what's your instructor think? That's the main thing.

[SplaTtzZ]

Get hold of a couple of automatic pistols

There's a flaw right there. I would up the ante, it needs to be more spectacular!

Instead, stroll down to your nearest red, white and blue gun store and pick up one of the rocket launchers they sell for 'self defense and/or hunting big game'.

 

In all seriousness though yeah, you should speak to your instructor or the division/department administrator. And what exactly was the 'offensive' content of the email?

Edited May 1, 2007 by SplaTtzZ

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

It's been sorted out. If you don't like detergenty opera, don't read this paragraph. I'm not good at understanding things that happen between people, but here's my best take on it. I didn't answer to a social email to Vanessa when exams started, putting all communication on hiatus. This caused some emotion perturbations, she sent a complaining email to instructor, giving as example the unrelated email. Instructor said attributions were done strangely on a report: by sections instead of percent. She notified other team members to decrease my attribution, increase theirs, based on finding some flaws in my behaviour and saying I did less work. I found out there's some trouble while in the restaurant, and decided to sort it out. Emailed Vanessa, finishing the email from 2 weeks ago in which I complimented her, and wrote from the point of view of knowing only "there's some confusion with attribution". She replied the professor was confused with sections instead of percent, and we should split it the standard way (25% for each of four members). Instructor, perceiving there's some communication issue within our team asked each to send the attribution percentage. So we did.

 

Here's the email. the ommitted quotes around 'Bruner Corollary on Time Management' humour is the offensive part.

Good day,

Friday I stopped working on the report about 2PM and spent the rest of

my time in a bar. Saturday I was at a Russian concert. Then my

productivity took a plummet on Sunday.

 

 

 

The area of nuts wasn't included in the lab-data XL file nor in my

notebook. The value used in the file, in the embedded XL table is 3cm,

an approximation. Person who has measured the nuts, please correct the

value, thickness will update automatically. Thanks.

 

 

 

I'll be sending off the report and the executive summary sometimes

after 3PM from my ecf account. Here's the subject headings for the

files as necessitated by the bureaucracy.

Fluidized Bed report

Executive Summary for Fluidized bed, group 19

 

 

If any of you had a very strong preference of doing the executive

summaries early then I apologize for having inconvenienced you.

 

This was written by some smart guy, and is essentially the time

management strategy I follow.

The Bruner Corollary on Time Management is much simpler and can be

summarized thusly:

 

Step 1) Whatever it is, ignore it.

 

Step 2) If it is important, it should call you back.

 

It's also a great filing system:

 

Step 1) Set whatever it is on the giant pile of paper on your desk.

 

Step 2) Months later, find time to plow through the pile and

realize, to your great relief, that most of it is no longer relevant

and can be thrown away.

 

Probably like many of you, I get a redonkulous number of emails daily,

way too much to deal with, particularly if I hope to accomplish

anything else. So I kind of graze. If you're my wife or my boss, or my

boss's boss or the CEO (yes, I'm a peon), I'll probably read your

email right away. If you're anyone else, I'll try to get to it when I

can. That may be never.

 

The way I figure, if it's important, you'll probably email me again.

Better yet, you'll call. If you don't know my phone number, and you

don't show enough initiative to figure it out, whatever you want can

probably wait. It's not as important as breathing or eating or

sleeping, is it? And if it's not that important, how important could

it really be?

 

 

 

below is my executive summary. It's a quick summary of the document, I

don't think it's really hard, if you like you can read it as you type

up yours.

 

A fluidized bed is a suspension of solid particles in an upward

flowing gas. They are in constant movement and exhibit properties of a

fluid – smooth surface, conformity to sides. This experiment consisted

of analyzing the relationship between the wind speed, pressure

difference across a fluidized bed, and the state of fluidization,

called the regime, which determines behaviour such as bubbling and

extent of mixing. It further consisted of using the acquired knowledge

of fluidized bed control to use a fluidized bed of coating agent

particles to coat a heated nut. The coating was done at the two

suggested temperatures but for times lower than suggested because the

nut had cooled down and couldn't be coated more. Reheating the nuts

was impossible because the heat would damage the coating. The higher

temperature achieved better, uniform coating, of about 3mm. It was

found that using a high temperature for a short single dip ensured the

best coating quality. The walls of the coating vessel are opaque with

accumulated powder making it hard to know the depth of immersion of

the nut. The coating powder used consisted of variously sized

particles making some fly out of the vessel and others hardly

fluidized, and the wind speed was controlled by a regulator but not

known. Mitigating the above problems would ensure a more consistent

and quality coating. The nut would be immersed to a uniform depth each

time, the particles would be of uniform density throughout the bed,

and the wind speed for optimum fluidization could be determined and

quickly numerically set each time.

 

 

 

 

bed-report.doc

95K View as HTML Open as a Google document Download

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

And I'm sure you know the part about mustard gas was also a joke (just like oDDityX's advice), just as the whole complaining about people. I just like acting different "roles", not really capable of holding a grudge or being emotional. But I do find that people's emotions is one of the best playgrounds. And (just like some other people) I don't put smilies in my posts to make them more ambiguous and conducive to multifaceted deep philosophical and ontological musings.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

So what's your instructor think? That's the main thing.

He doesn't give a damn as long as we let him alone to do research and eat steak.

[Ishtvan]

Advice: Don't include anything personal in academic team emails unless you everyone on the team very well before the class started.

 

Also, what kind of crazy attribution system is it where you can get varying amounts of total credit for the same report? In every group lab class I've ever been in, there was one grade for the report and group members were expected to split up the workload equally.

 

Anyway, I don't envy you; those group lab classes can be a pain, especially when there are issues with the group/prof. I took four of them. Three of them were fine, I came very close to nervous breakdown the other.

[Domarius]

Yeah same advice - group projects can be an epic ... thing, so keep it all business unless you are friends (in which case you shouldn't be doing a project together, trust me) and well yeah you should eventually try and lighten the mood if it would seem to improve your working together, but do so very tentitavely.

[jdude]

I'm in a business program and every group project we do we have to divy up the grades so that at least one person has a full grade point lower than everyone else. The best thing I find, is to only focus on the goals of your team until you get to this point. Be polite professional and treat everyone not like a human being but some kind of robot meant to do work. Eventually after working a long time with people they end up pouring their hearts out onto you, meanwhile you can sit back and relax knowing you are secure in your social situation within the group and they will somehow think more of you. However always expect people to get mad after divying the marks, but by that time you wont have to work with them anymore! I don't see anything offensive about your email btw.

[OrbWeaver]

I'm in a business program and every group project we do we have to divy up the grades so that at least one person has a full grade point lower than everyone else.

 

That sounds like the performance system used by my employer -- no matter how hard and succesfully everyone works, a given percentage have to fail according to the process.

[Domarius]

No not offensive - the issues was that it was taken seriously instead of as a joke.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

Good advice I guess. I'll try to live up to my old high school reputation of being dry and crusty.

[Unstoppable]

Well that sucks but I think they're just jealous you're smarter than them. So just get the class over with and never see them again. One day you will be somewhere they never will.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

I don't think so, I'm not really in the mood of going to that somewhere.

[oDDity]

Of course, we're only hearing one side of the story here.

Maybe they just generally don't like you because of your personality, and want any excuse to fuck you over.

[Order of the Hammer Bureaucrat]

Possibly. Although they were always friendly before and after.

[Domarius]

Of course, we're only hearing one side of the story here.

Maybe they just generally don't like you because of your personality, and want any excuse to fuck you over.

The advice from Ishtvan and me is still good even so. If you're all business (and good at it) then there is less material for them to go off, and less chance of you annoying them.

[sparhawk]

Possibly. Although they were always friendly before and after.

 

That's what I really hate about such relationships. It's similar with my neighbours. We don't like us, but on the surface they are friendly, and only talk about us behind our back. I would prefer it much more if they just say openly how they think about us, instead of them pretending everything is ok. So mostly we ignore each other.

[jdude]

That's sadly how most people work. Confrontation and conflict are average people's largest fears when it comes to social interaction. People who are open regarding such issues are rare and tend to be leaders if they address such issues properly. Those come far and in-between.

[Ishtvan]

So it sounds like this grade attribution system is basically designed to make people backstab eachother?

[OrbWeaver]

So it sounds like this grade attribution system is basically designed to make people backstab eachother?

 

Good preparation for the commercial world, then.

[Ishtvan]

Yeah, "earned value management." "Bob earned less value than I did!"

[Unstoppable]

There's probably a way to fix this. If you are smart you will figure out how. Here's my example based on a true story

 

Bob calls Tom one daay and tells Tom that he wants to sell his car. Tom at first says no because he knows all the problems wrong with it. Tom then instead of going with his gut feeling since he knows Bob VERY well decides to sell the car. However Tom is not stupid, so he creates a series of rules to protect himself. One of them being word of mouth is very important and must be followed. Also Bob must let Tom handle the sale. When it comes down to it Tom will take care of almost everything except maybe handing over the car.

 

Car is bid on for 10,500$. Tom calls the bidder and tells him he does not need to purchase the vehicle because Tom knows about the problems. Tom says he may check out the vehicle and not need to buy. However Tom has put in the auction that the bidder must pay 500$ within 3 days. The bidders name is Pove.

 

After about two or three weeks Pove and his family drive 1500 miles on vacation and happen to stop by and see the car. The problem is Bob is now handling it, Bob is a bit controlling. The sale fails just like Tom thought it would. Since Tom created a series of rules he is protected. The deposit was in Tom's hands not Bob. Bob treats Pove badly and Tom was at first skeptical and sided with Bob. however Tom is going to rely on his gut instinct this time.

 

Previously Tom had told Pove that he would return the deposit if the sale didn't go through. Since he is a man of his word he would do that. However considernig all the trouble Tom, Bob, and Pove come to an agreement. 200$ from the 500 will be kept. Tom knows Bob wants the money so he dosen't even bother. From this day forward though Tom will never EVER do business with Bob. Considering Bob owes him Tom now truly knows the only way for people to change is by themselves. Tom and Pove are fine now since Tom kept his word. Pove had offered the 200$ and Tom didn't force him.

 

Tom covered his ass. Bob wanted the full 500$. However Tom does not want to escilate things so the 200$ and giving the rest back is best in his view. Tom would of had avoided this if he had trusted his gut instinct based on knowing Bob. Tom has done a lot of shit for Bob to get him out of trouble. Tom will now let Bob live his life and see where Bob ends up. Tom see's no need to be Bob's friend when he wasn't really a good one to begin with.

 

There are people who will use you for everything you're worth. Bob was doing that to Tom on some level but now Tom knows not to let people do that. Everything they told him in Highschool has come true. From George W. Bush to being nice to people comes back to haunt you. Respect your elders.

 

I am Tom.

 

I am Tom.

[OrbWeaver]

Yeah, "earned value management." "Bob earned less value than I did!"

 

In my company it's called "relative contribution", but it amounts to the same thing. Namely, "It doesn't matter how good a job you do, if you're not scrambling ahead of the rat-race we'll pick you off as a straggler."