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A disgruntled federal employee's 1980s desk calendar (2018)
- hmottestad 2y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20240413123133/https://internationaltimes.it/a-disgruntled-federal-employees-1980s-desk-calendar/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240413123133/https://internati...
- bmacho 2y agoOr https://archive.ph/oldest/https://internationaltimes.it/a-disgruntled-federal-employees-1980s-desk-calendar/ https://archive.ph/oldest/https://internationaltimes.it/a-di...
- hmottestad 2y agoarchive.ph doesn't seem to work for me. Not managing to connect via https, but the server is responding to ping.
- _n_b_ 2y agoIf you use non-cloudflare DNS, it should work.
- hmottestad 2y agoPing seems to resolve fine. And I'm using the DNS from my ISP, which is definitely not related to cloudflare. I found out it work in firefox, so it must be something to do with Safari or the adblocker I'm using.
- Spooky23 2y agoThis is great, but this person is 4/10 on the disgruntled scale. A truly miserable government worker has a daily countdown to retirement. At extreme levels, down to the hour.
- Schattenbaer 2y agoWas about to leave a similar comment. A lot of this was pretty neutral, some of it heart-warming, and there isn't a lot of evidence of negativity here. And I loved the little illustrations, all in all it felt like someone who took effort to make their environment prettier.
- ryandrake 2y agoI was going to say, too! This seems absolutely joyful in comparison to my dreary (online) work calendar which just contains the same weekly recurring status meetings with the same people week after week, color coded by project. It would be cool to have interoperability between calendar software and illustrative art software so modern office workers could create something like this during downtime/boredom!
- bravetraveler 2y agoMine aren't even color coded - imagine, yours but monochrome :|
- function_seven 2y agoI color code mine. Yellow if I’m listed as an optional participant, blue if I’m required. I don’t attend the yellow ones.
- bigEnotation 2y agoHow could you be a human being and not be small D disgruntled?
- andrelaszlo 2y agoI'm curious about the two numbers recorded every second Saturday: 242/119, 246/85, 183/78, 187/84, 207/76, 115/197, 121/201, ... Maybe it's obvious to Americans? Is it related to sports? I sure hope it's not their blood pressure!
- fl7305 2y agoIs it some kind of way to keep track of flex time or similar?
- fsckboy 2y agointriguing... I'm American and I remember those days, nothing comes to mind. "Every two weeks" sounds likely paycheck related though, but for instance those don't sound like hours worked or anything like that. the other comment about flextime, maybe, could be "hours of holiday time accrued" and it goes up and down because he spends it? Maybe a military person would know better, maybe in some subreddit.
- theodric 2y ago"During the eighties, a nameless Cold Warrior grew frustrated in his job" And now we know he got his period on the 15th, as well. Did the author not read each cell systematically?
- mike-the-mikado 2y agoIn the 1980s, I would doodle at work when my mind was taking a break. A helpful diagram might get embellished. Nowadays, I would be finding some excuse to check the internet. And I'm less likely to have scrap paper to hand.
- mc32 2y agoThere is something odd about this persons numbers. It’s the 80s and on occasion the number zero is written with a slash through it, but most of the time not. I’m not sure there was a prevalence to distinguish 0s from Os in type back then. Maybe it was some one else later who wrote that.
- bluedemon 2y agoIt was not uncommon to draw a line through the zero to distinguish it from the letter ‘O’. Similarly, a slash was often added to the letter ‘Z’ to prevent confusion with the number 2. On rare occassions, I still kind of do it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jacksonhacker 2y ago[dead]
- Ajay-p 2y agoI am struggling to believe all of this. It feels like a calendar that was used but then someone later filed it in with all of this artwork, and commentary after the fact. Recording events that already happened. If this was a desk calendar, someone would have noticed, and noticed the content. If it's true, it's a glimpse into the past and thinking of someone in a very important position during a very difficult time in the world. But I can't quell this nagging doubt
- andyjohnson0 2y agoI concur on its authenticity. It looks like someone's craft project using an old calendar. Nicely done, though, however it originated: I wish I could letter and doodle so neatly.
- Spooky23 2y agoI started working in offices around 1998 as an intern. The place I worked used email heavily, but had no shared calendar. Definitely people who did stuff like this. My boss had a bound dated diary book that he used to record what happened (vs where he had to be) decorated which he decorated with interesting doodles, etc. We lost something with Outlook for everything.
- woutersf 2y agoAbout the drawing: i draw like this on everything too. Agendas, todo lists. Its not like i want to do this. Its to keep my fingers busy. I can attest that some people’s paper is filled with drawings ugly and nice. I cant speak about the authenticity of this document.
- Isamu 2y agoYeah the drawing thing is a compulsion. It’s hard for others to understand but that’s okay. I used to draw all the time but now I miss it. I used to be compulsive about making things. Way back when they still issued business cards I had to make geometric constructions with them.
- 2y ago
- JKCalhoun 2y agoThey would be better gruntled two years later since K.U. would win the NCAAA Tournament in 1987.
- bee_rider 2y agoThere should be a word for these back-formations that specifically come from cutting this prefix looking thing off the front of a word to invert their meaning. Disgruntled -> gruntled Unhinged -> hinged
- worstspotgain 2y agohttps://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/how-i-met-my-wife.html https://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/how-i-met-my-wife...
- sour-taste 2y agoWhat if we called them k formations, by applying the same rule we're trying to describe to the word backfoations? Overwhelmed/underwhelmed -> whelmed Discombobulated -> combobulate Disghust -> ghust
- jprete 2y agoOT, but I looked up "whelmed" in after reading your comment and...we never really needed "overwhelmed" at all. Just plain "whelmed" seems bad enough.
- ajcp 2y agoI use "whelming" almost daily to denote something that I or the person I'm talking to expect to be over/underwhelming, but turns out not to be. Them: "How'd you like that new burger joint Bad Jimmies? I heard it's amazing!" Me: "Not bad, but I found their burgers to be...[0] whelming." 0. The pregnant pause-for-effect is very important here, since it makes even the use of "whelming" a whelming experience.
- aj7 2y ago
- cobbaut 2y agoJanuary 13 1984 he switched to using Debian :)
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoA man ahead of his time :-)
- pan69 2y agoOr unboxed his Dreamcast. :)
- cobbaut 2y agoDreamcast logo curls the other way...
- pimlottc 2y agoIs there a particular reason to believe that the unnamed employee was male? The article refers to them as "he" multiple times and compares them to a monk (traditionally male): > Like a monk, he labored over his document every day, adding carefully crafted letters and elaborate drawings to what became, over nine years, a remarkably full chronicle of the decade.
- nocoiner 2y agoThere appears to be a significant other named Liz in the mix, and a reference to a wedding anniversary, so a male author seems probable to me.
- smabie 2y agoI mean you can obviously tell immediately from the hand writing
- galaxyofdoom 2y ago[flagged]
- pimlottc 2y ago[flagged]
- egypturnash 2y ago“He” comes from the description in the original posting on the rare books site selling these: https://web.archive.org/web/20221205191022/https://bostonraremaps.com/inventory/1980s-illustrated-cold-war-calendars/?utm_source=Boston+Rare+Maps+subscribers&utm_campaign=83bfb37c15-Recent_acquisitions_2017_September_19_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3d73b433c0-83bfb37c15-44277753 https://web.archive.org/web/20221205191022/https://bostonrar... - possibly they knew exactly who it was from? That said, I got a femme vibe off the handwriting too. And the inclusion of cartouches around the lunar phase drawings plus a lovingly illustrated entry for Samhain suggests the artist is a neopagan of some kind, which could be a slight tell for femininity. Maybe. Depends on the coven really. Which they were apparently a part of, the full sales post includes an image with a little pile of coven newsletters, some of which are in “paste-up form” which suggests they were participating in the time honored tradition of using the office copier on the sly.
- lolinder 2y agoHugged to death, archive here: https://archive.ph/REbFy https://archive.ph/REbFy
- mytailorisrich 2y agoThis is not disgruntled but bored.
- steve1977 2y agoWell it already said federal employee, so…
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- raheemm 2y agoHe is far from disgruntled. He seems like someone who enjoyed his work and his life. Clickbait article but I guess it worked.
- Aloha 2y agoThis appears to be the original source - https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/a-disgruntled-federal-employees-1980s-desk-calendar/ https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/13/a-disgruntled...
- ugh123 2y agowhich also notes that this was recently sold for $5500 via https://bostonraremaps.com/inventory/1980s-illustrated-cold-war-calendars/?utm_source=Boston+Rare+Maps+subscribers&utm_campaign=83bfb37c15-Recent_acquisitions_2017_September_19_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3d73b433c0-83bfb37c15-44277753 https://bostonraremaps.com/inventory/1980s-illustrated-cold-...
- dang 2y agoThanks! We've changed to that from https://internationaltimes.it/a-disgruntled-federal-employees-1980s-desk-calendar/ https://internationaltimes.it/a-disgruntled-federal-employee....
- seattle_spring 2y agoLooks like the page is currently being hugged to death so I’m not sure if this is actually related to OP, but… My father was very much in the category of “disgruntled federal employee” during his employment with the USGS. I’ll spare most of the details, but the most ridiculous thing I remember was his screensaver showing the countdown, in days, until retirement. He had this going for at least 15 years prior to his retirement. Can you imagine going into work every day and seeing a countdown with nearly 5000 days on it? Absolutely nuts to me.
- susiecambria 2y ago> First class postage increased to 18¢ Wish we had that now!
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y agoUsing CPI, $0.18 in 1980 is $0.68 now, so you have better than that now.
- nateroling 2y agoSoftware calendars are so poor compared to this. There’s no concept of importance, of impact, of life. Just times and titles, every one equivalent. Digital calendars have hardly evolved since the palm pilot.