April 15th, 2025Kyle’s Rant
I find it strange that by and large when you walk into a place of work the people seem similar.
For instance, if you go over to Western Australia and visit a mine site, all the nonmanagerial FIFO employees are two to three axe handles across the shoulders and speak in a code of grunts and words strung together in an ocker way like “How-yagoing-mate-yeah-good”.
And then there are the bureaucrats, the type of curved-shouldered folks who hide behind laws and rules.
They have a huge sense of satisfaction when they never quite arrive at an answer and form a committee to umbrella the blame when a consensus is finally reached.
And then there are the rubbish bin operators, this clan of waste warriors have a completely different approach to training. I imagine, at the rubbish removal academy the lecturer shouting at “Johnno” the trainee driver…
“No, don’t place it down gently, if you do, back up and hit it with the arm of the pick-up device. Make sure it’s lying a minimum five metres from where you picked it up with the lid open, preferably in the gutter so it gets a gut full of water. That way you can maximise the damage when the bin gets collected and sloshes all over the residents’ clean clothes. Okay Johnno you have passed”.
Or something to along those lines. Then there are the guys at the security check-in at the airport. I imagine they would gather round like a bunch of giggling pranksters before their shift…
“Okay today, is it laptops removed from the bag or left in the bag? What about liquids? Should we tell them to have put them in clear plastic bags and then say ‘no sorry, you don’t have to have them out’ when they get to the checkpoint? And what about footwear or should we just ask every tenth blond person to remove theirs? Belts off?”
That’s always a fun one, watching all the overweight guys hanging onto their trousers while trying to collect their luggage. And there’s bound to be one person who will accidentally drop their strides for a good laugh to break up the mundanity.
And then a quick trip to an app development camp (which is my most recent experience) and it would reveal this conversation:
“How complicated should we make the sign-on given that it’s just a TV app, and after all the scammers can’t get much from someone’s free-to-air TV account information? Well, I think I’ll make them sign into their Apple account first because no one remembers that password.
“Once that’s complete, they should sign onto their Google account, because that’s harder to remember. And then we’ll set up a two-factor authentication code using their iPhone back at their Apple account to prove they are the same person who just signed into the Google account.
“Then we’ll send them a couple of automated security emails to make it look like we care. If they get through those hurdles, we’ll allow them to download the app, but not before they have to come up with a password, facial identification and a biometric scanner log-in.
“I think that is sufficiently complicated and we can all listen in to their phones as they swear and curse, and we’ll be in hysterics.
“And there is nothing they can do about it if they are serious about tuning in to last week’s MAFS series their wife missed out on.”
Overcomplicated rant over…
(Ed’s note. I really don’t know why I watch MAFS. It’s like an addiction. I am getting help now. Just the final catch-up and then I am done.)
