Tag Archives: attitude

Positive Mental Attitude

Probably not the Old Town I’m talking about in the anecdote below, but close enough.
And strangely, the only Old Town photo I had in my photo library.

It’s 2017, and our last night in Malaysia. In the morning, we start the journey home, back to Australia. Just as we’re about to turn in for the night, one of our cousins decides to take us out. It’s one part last hurrah, seeing as it’s been a few years since we’ve been together, and one part long goodbye, given that we have no idea when we’ll be back or when we’ll see each other again.

We end up going to a little coffee shop, part of a chain called Old Town. It’s not super late, maybe 9 or 10pm, but your guess is as good as mine why there’s a coffee shop open that late. In Australia, most coffee shops would have closed by now, even though they would have opened at 7 or earlier. But in Malaysia, everything opens much later (10 or 11am), and stays open a lot later, too, so I guess it all balances out. Chalking it up to cultural differences, we order. The conversation is slow at first, given that it’s just the three of us and the only reason we’re back anyway is because of grandpa’s funeral, but eventually we get talking.

Because we’re all getting to that age where some of us cousins should start thinking about getting married, settling down, and starting a family, we start wondering who will be getting married next. It’s a topic we’ve covered before, and like last time, we come to the same conclusion: there just aren’t that many of us that have been in the kind of long-term relationship that could lead to marriage, so the chances of any one of us getting married any time soon are pretty low.

Eventually our cousin mentions that it’s unlikely one of our other cousins will get married soon, partly because of their general attitude and overall negative demeanour towards life. You know the type — always complaining, always lamenting how unfortunate their own existence is. Never happy, never content, a real pessimist in every definition of the word. Miserable.

I’ve thought about that a lot.

There’s a lot to be said for your own attitude towards life. We all know that life happens, but what happens if you start thinking about things in a positive way? Instead of focusing on the negatives, what happens if you start remembering all the good that’s happened, instead of all the bad? I’m not telling you to ignore or otherwise trivialise all the bad stuff that happens; it’s all important. But by choosing to think about things in a certain way, by choosing to find the good in every situation you find yourself in, can’t you improve your own perception of how things have panned out, whichever way the cookie has crumbled?

I’ve been calling it positive mental attitude, although it takes many forms. Positive thinking. Optimism. Glass-half-full. And the most recent one I’ve heard of, useful belief. Whatever you call it, the concept remains the same: by choosing to think a certain way about everything, your outlook on life changes. And when you choose to put a positive spin on even the worst news, it changes your perspective in a subtle way. Soon enough, you’ll start to notice the upside to everything, the proverbial and figurative light at the end of the tunnel.

Continue Reading →

“I’m kind of a BIG DEAL, alright?”

Finally, a third blue t-shirted tossrag comes to patronise me further. ‘Just leave it with us’ he says. No. Then he says oh, if it’s the HDD, we dont have them in stock. You will have to wait till next week.

I call bullshit. This is APPLE. People. APPLE.

So I ask if there is any alternative. Could I bring in a drive to be installed? No. Could I take it to another store for a faster resolution? No. Clearly the whole I AM HAVING A BABY VERY SOON part wasnt relevant here. Driving to Doncaster and back 7 times is a JOY.

via A Week At Apple — sunrisesister.

For those of you that didn’t bother to click the link and read the whole story, it goes a little like this:

Customer brings computer in to be fixed for dead graphics card (which results in logic board replacement). Not in stock, so customer waits.
Waits for quite a long time in Doncaster, noting that the seats aren’t made for pregnant women. So she stands for the 4.5 hours that she waits for. Apple are late for their appointment.
Anyway, logic board replaced, but as soon as she gets the machine home, she finds that the hard drive has died. Calls Apple, explains that she is, and I quote, “EXTREMELY PREGNANT”, and Apple aren’t helpful as they could be.
Continue debacle at Apple store, where it turns out her second appointment hasn’t been made. Manager asks for her to wait – which turns out to be an hour or so. Finally, you enter the crazy scene above, in which a guy tells her the bad news – machine needs to be left with them, hard drive not in stock, and so on.

As much as I respect the person who wrote this particular blog post, it’s stuff like this that shits me to tears – people who think that the world revolves around them, as much as it should do.

Working in retail exposes you to some fairly scary people – the loonies, the downright insane “I WANT IT DONE THIS WAY AND I WANT IT DONE NOW” people, yes, even the crazy ones. Some of these people aren’t satisfied with your work, no matter how much you try to please – nothing’s ever going to be good enough, fast enough, or cheap enough to satisfy their consumerist hunger.

Notice how many times I mentioned that she made a big deal of how she was EXTREMELY PREGNANT? That’s exactly the attitude I’m trying to get at, because to Apple, you’re just another faceless wannabe, someone that they couldn’t care less about, just another brick in the wall (apologies to Pink Floyd).

You’re pregnant. You’re elderly. Your right index finger was shot off in the war. Thanks for serving our country, reproducing, and living a good life, but if you think this entitles you to any special treatment, you’re wrong, no matter how pregnant you are, no matter how elderly, or how index finger-less.

FFS, just get over yourself already.

There are two sides to every story…

…and as such, two sides of every coin.

If you missed my post about why professional IT is going down the drain, hit it up here. It’s highly recommended for what I’m about to say, because then you’ll know what I’m actually talking about.

However, it is the length of a small essay, so I’ll provide the executive summary here:
Professional IT is going down the toilet because the “professionals” aren’t – they’re mindless, spineless robots who don’t diversify themselves into many different IT fields, choosing to instead specialise (and then even barely) in one particular field, one vendor, one solution. When faced with a challenge, they recommend their one and only solution, backing away from everything they’re unfamiliar with – even if the unknown could be a far better solution than their “tried and true” solution.

BUT! There is one problem – we’re only looking at one side of the equation, coin, story. We know that the IT professionals are becoming less and less professional – but why?

Well, I have the answer.

It’s you.

It’s probably not me, but it is the people that put huge demands on their respective IT professional.

I know a person that is an awesome guy – nice to hang with, has good morals, etc – but he does work in IT. He is also damn good at his job. Over the last couple of months though, I’ve seen that even though the quality of his work hasn’t deteriorated, his attitude towards it has.

You might be asking yourself how you’re the problem. Well, end-users are now expecting so much of people in the IT industry – to me, we’re becoming an increasingly selfish culture who only see ourselves as the centre of the universe.

Everything, all the time, is about “Me, Me Me!”, and it doesn’t matter that there is a queue for services, or that there are other matters to be attended to before people can deal with your problem. People aren’t seeing the big picture – in the grand scheme of things, you don’t matter.

Maybe this is turning into a rant, but even worse is when end-users like you complain bitterly about the service you’ve received. I mean, what the hell, man! We’re trying to help you, and the thanks we get is “I iz gonna call the [insert security organisation/complaints department of choice here] on your ass!“? Thanks, but no thanks. I’d rather not serve you next time – and I’m sure my colleagues feel the same way.

Judging by the reactions of some people who have lost years of data because they [stupidly] never backed up and were “surprised” by a massive hard drive failure (it happens, trust me, it happens), then it’s no wonder professional IT is going down the drain! Seriously, calm down and while you’re thinking about your precious data that we’ve inadvertently lost, think about how it’s all your fault. These kinds of failures, while rare, can happen and are totally preventable. To this end, I’m issuing a community service announcement: back the hell up. If it’s important to you, back it up. At a bare minimum, back up anything you’ve created yourself, eg all your school documents, essays, presentations, spreadsheets. If in doubt, back it up.

I apologise. Once again, I digress. Getting back on topic, my awesome friend now has a horrible attitude towards work, and it’s all the end-users fault. I once had some other people I know consider suing some computer shop just because they lost their data – this was after they had signed a contract saying that that computer store wasn’t responsible for their data, as they shouldn’t have been. If you’re thinking of trusting your data to anyone else, even those “automated backup” software, don’t. It’s not a good idea to leave your data in someone else’ hands, much less a money grabbing company!

AH! What is with me and backups! Right, getting back on topic, again: My anonymous friend now doesn’t care. He’s completely indifferent to your continual issues with your printer, scanner, and Windows. He just doesn’t care – he’s being paid to fix your problems, but that doesn’t mean he cares.

Personally, I think that’s a rubbish attitude to have, especially in IT. Apple Genii don’t get their jobs by not wanting to help people! Sure, there is a fine difference between not caring and wanting to help. In IT, you could do your job even if you didn’t care. You could still be awesome at your job and not care. However, you wouldn’t excel at your job.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you whether you care or not.

Comments below.