Ideal Workers / Employees Characteristics 2

[Ashereng]

A thread was started

Ideal working conditions
thread732-153992

I thought I would solicit the other half of the coin/relatinship. What are the traits and characteristics of the ideal employees/workers?

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[whyun]

Ideal employee:
1. Make money for the company
2. No complaints

Everything else... probably doesn't matter much.

 

[Inthevalley]

This makes me think of a joke I heard many years ago...
In Heaven:
Lovers are Italian
Engineers are German
Cooks are French
Money is handled by the Swiss
and everything is organised by the Brittish

In Hell:
Lovers are Brittish
Engineers are Frech
Cooks are German
Money is handled by the Italians
and everything is organised by the Swiss

The same applies to employees - use the right person for the right job!

 

[HgTX]

Heading on a tangent off-topic, but it's interesting how many different versions there are of that joke.

Here's the version I know:

Heaven:
Lovers are Italian
Cooks are French
Engineers are German
Police are English
Everything is run by the Swiss
(note that last bit is completely opposite from your version!)

Hell:
Lovers are Swiss
Cooks are English (you have to admit English food has much worse reputation than German food)
Engineers are French
Police are German
Everything is run by the Italians

Hg

, everything being run by the Swiss is heaven, not hell! And in hell, the lovers are Swiss, the cooks are British, and the rest of the joke is too different to fully rearrange everyone and still have it work out.


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[ScottyUK]

Hg,

You need to venture further East to, say, Poland for some truly awful food. There are some nice Polish dishes too, but they are outnumbered!

And anyway, how can anyone from the home country of McDonalds, Dunkin' Donuts, and KFC complain about another country's cuisine?!

Some British recipes are pretty awful, but many are good if you use decent ingredients. Historically many of our worst dishes are made from offal and poor cuts of meat, or other cheap ingredients. Some things are beyond redemption, like black pudding and bread & butter pudding, but many 'bad' dishes are actually good if made properly. Sausages and burgers can be either good or bad - if you make 'em with crappy meat, they will be crappy sausages or burgers. In fact that thought extends to the true curse of modern British cuisine: the microwavable ready meal. Made down to a cost, instead of up to a standard, these hideous perversions of decent food are laden with chemical 'improvers' and flavourings to disguise the fact that the ingredients are so poor.

If you like good food, learn to cook it yourself. It's enjoyable and the end results are so much better than the processed equivalent from the supermarket.

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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

 

[ziggi]

What the heck are you talking about Scotty, Polish food is bloody great, all that pork, potatoes and cottage cheese, the cabbage I can do without, but the rest is great, and you can't go wrong with good strong 6% and up Polish beer.

I'll admit that I am a fan of some of the worst English dishes around (health wise that is), such as steak and kidney pie, sheperd's pie and bangers and mash...especially bangers and mash...with plenty of gravy, not to mention ultra greasy fish and chips hmmmm yum. However the Englishman who decided to couple lamb with mint jelly and the moron who invented warm beer ought to be hung by their short and curlies.

And I agree with you about using good ingredients, I live in Canada, but almost exclusively shop at European food stores around here, European food just tastes better, and as always it tastes better if you've grown and cooked it yourself.



As for my version of hell, all the engineers would be Cuban

 

[ivymike]

I don't get it - what would Cuban engineers do differently?

 

[ScottyUK]

ziggi,

Maybe your Polish language skills are greater than mine. I can just about ask for a beer and say 'thank you' in Polish. At least I can sort out the essential basics; the rest is just details! I get so embarrassed by my linguistic disability when I'm abroad. As I say, there are some good Polish dishes out there. Some of those I tasted on my last visit were beautifully cooked, just alien to my palate. Others - for example a 'delicacy' comprising of crisped bacon fragments in lard, apparently intended to be spread on bread - are simply awful.

Steak pie is good. As far as I'm concerned kidney is not a food, at least not for humans. What goes in cat food isn't my problem. Shepherd's (spot the extra 'h'; from Sheep Herder) Pie is ok, but Cumberland Pie is better. The main difference is Shepherd's pie uses lamb or mutton mince, and Cumberland Pie uses beef mince. Greasy fish & chips are an abomination before God. Decent fish & chips are not greasy! Fish should be a white fillet of a large ocean fish and be coated in a have a light golden crisp batter, and the chips should be a light golden colour with a slightly nutty flavour. Neither should be greasy.

In my version of hell, the only food served would be McDonalds. With milkshake as the only beverage!

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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

 

[ziggi]

ivymike,
It's not so much what they do differently.... it's that they don't really do anything...hmmm I guess that's still not as bad as the French, who actually do something albeit very very badly .

Scotty,
The lard and bacon bits on bread is called 'smalec' (pronounced sme-ledz)and it is just that, lard w/ bacon bits on bread (specifically rye bread), I love it, although to really enjoy it you need a good strong dill pickle on the side and an even stronger beer, a liberal sprinkling of fresh onion helps too.
Also, most Poles speak decent English, decent German too...just don't speak Russian to them...they don't appreciate that. Also most Poles don't tip so as soon as they see you're a foreigner they will do everything possible to serve you.

I knew I spelt shepherd's wrong, I define cumberland and shepherd's pie as the same thing (the majority of shepherd's pies here are made w/ beef mince). I've only ever had true fish and chips once, wrapped in a newspaper and covered in that black stuff which I think was vinegar, it was great, or smashing as the Poms call it.

 

[kchayfie]

I've always called it cottage pie if its made with beef mince, and shepherds pie when made with lamb.

 

[ScottyUK]

Hi kchayfie,

I think the only difference is the Cumberland one is sprinkled with a little cheese or crumb or something on the top. Or maybe that's just my impression. They're very similar for sure.

Ziggi,

You made me smile mentioning the 'black stuff'. That's proper vinegar! It's brewed from a malt-based concoction. I experienced the colourless chemistry lab vinegar you guys have in Canada just recently when I was on holiday. What the hell is 'iodized salt' too? Table salt was NaCl when I went to school.

You obviously know your Polish food. I was in Krakow and Ostrow Wielkopolskie earlier this year for an acceptance test on some control system equipment. Krakow is beautiful. I can heartily recommend the Polish beer too: Zywiec or EB are well worth a try if you can get them. Do you have some connection to Poland? You know a fair bit about the food there.

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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

 

[ziggi]

Scotty,

I can't blame your distaste for the fast food vinegar, some places do have the malt stuff though, although the best vinegar: balsamic, wine, malt etc etc, can only be found in the specialty aisle of the local shop.

My family is from Krakow actually, so I'm partially biased towards Polish food, I still can't bring myself to eat tripe soup though.

I like Polish beer too, although Belgian is still tops with me. Polish vodka is a real treat for me, but only if it's from Poland, it tastes much better than the crap here and it's a fraction of the price.

 

[ScottyUK]

Ah, Stella Artois! Awesome, but the hangover the next day is not worth the pleasure of the moment. I prefer Kronenbourg 1664 or, if I can find it, the Czech Budweiser Budvar. Not the North American crap with a similar name: Anheuser must have developed some special process which removes the flavour from their beer. Horrible.

I tried Zubrowka (sp?) vodka while I was there. Quite nice - mixes well with apple juice. The locals got me drinking this while I was there. I brought a bottle back with me.

The fire-breathing dragon sculpture on the bank of the Vistula, just below the castle, is quite impressive at night. Mind, it's as ugly as sin during the day!


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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

 

[ziggi]

I generally drink Stella as well, however I've never really had a hang over from it, I do constantly complain about the price though, the brewer has artificially raised the price to place the brand squarely in the premium section. I'm also partial to 'Hoegaarten' and 'Leffe', I'll have to try 'Kronenburg 1664' if I find it.

There's not many people who like US Budweiser, I'm one of the minority...well I don't actually like it as much as I'll tolerate it (it's still better than other cheap Canadian brands like Molson and Labatt...I'll probably get lynched for saying that here though ) . As for Canuck brands, try out 'Alexander Keith's' if you like pale ale and the 'Mill Street' brands are quite good if you like your beer stronger and full of flavour.

Zubrowka is not too bad as far as vodka goes, I prefer the more expensive brands such as 'Tadeusz' and 'Belvedere', drink them neat and ice cold to fully appreciate them, I recommend a fruit juice chaser if you get hung over easily. You'll know it's a good vodka if you can't taste it and it goes down smoothly, plus you get wickedly drunk off of the good ones and you should have no hang over the next day. The cheap crap is for mixing with.
Another good Polish concoction is honey liquer and honey vodka, really sweet but good in moderation.

I like the dragon too, you really can't have Krakow without its dragon

 

[ScottyUK]

Alexander Keith's is not bad at all. I tried it at Jack Astor's in Toronto and had quite a few pints one night. The food there was ok too. In fact I didn't have a bad meal in time I spent there. I found Leffe in Amsterdam and it was nice. We seem to have similar tastes!

The Molson variety which made it to the UK a few years ago as a 'designer' drink wasn't very good. It was 'Special Dry' I think - I've got a promo T-shirt somewhere from years ago when I worked in a bar while at college. Labatt's is cooking lager, like Fosters or Carling in the UK. Not good enough for drinking, except on those days when you need the effect more than the flavour! Do you ever see Beck's Bier over in Canada? Or Holsten, or Lowenbrau? Lowenbrau is lovely; as kids we knew it as 'loopy brew'. I don't seem to see it so often these days.

I'll check out the other vodka brands next time I'm across there. 'Tadeusz' should be easy to remember: it's the surname of one of the engineer's I've been working with. The duty free prices at the airport have really rocketed for EU citizens since Poland joined the EU. Vodka used to be cheaper than UK petrol. Seriously. Now it is a lot more expensive - I guess they have to pay for the improvements to Warsaw airport somehow!

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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

 

[ziggi]

Over here Fosters and Carling are slightly better than average brews, we have Beck,s Holsten, Lowenbrau etc here. They're quite good, but German beer just doesn't do it for me, neither does Heineken.

Warsaw airport has pretty decent variety, but they still fleece you, as in any country the best prices are where the locals go. Here in Canada alcohol is highly taxed and regulated...well at least here in Ontario. A rubbish 750ml bottle of vodka costs $25, a really good one costs $50 and up, in Poland excellent vodka costs the equivalent of $10 Canadian, so it's a steal in my opinion. Beer is even cheaper in Poland, at $0.80 per half liter for Zywiec you really can't go wrong.

I know what you mean about prices increasing, just a few years ago a few dollars could buy a whole lot of fun, now they still do buy alot of fun, but not as much of it. If you want more bang for your buck try out Slovenia, Ukraine, Hungary and Romania....then again.

BTW what sort of work were you doing in Poland?

 

[ScottyUK]

Emerson Process Management (Power & Water) have their European headquarters in Warsaw and their main hardware subcontractor is in Ostrow. I work in a power plant which uses the Westinghouse WDPF control system. When the Westinghouse empire was scattered to the four winds the WDPF product ended up with Emerson. The Westinghouse office was also based in Warsaw - they just changed the sign above the door.

We've been over to Warsaw for a training course, to Ostrow for a factory test, Krakow for a conference and as a base for a visit to the Polaniec power plant. That place really is impressive - the control system is a full generation ahead of ours, and they have done a lot of development with it. Electrabel must pouring money into that facility.

We skirted the edge of Katowice en-route to Ostrow. I know it was dark, and winter makes most places look bleak, but it looked like the set of one of the Resident Evil games. And that coming from someone who works in industrial Teesside is praise indeed!

I'm thinking about a city break to Krakow with my wife. She wants to visit Auschwitz, and I would like to see it too. My colleagues visited just before I joined the company. They said it was somewhere they were pleased they had been, but never wanted to ever go back. It's a period of history which fascinates me, perhaps because it is so recent.

We have kinda hijacked this thread haven't we? Should we start a new one in the Pub, or just keep going?

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I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy it...

 

[Quantum50]

Personnally, I've enjoyed reading about the food N drink diversity. By all means, start another thread!
It's fascinating because I grew up/live in Texas where the home drink does and has always tasted like dog pee. Lone Star Beer. Nasty, even when drunk.

 

[ziggi]

It's amazing how quickly Poland has recovered from communism (lower case on purpose), granted some industries still need a good shakeout, the casting industry for one.

I went back not too long ago and was glad to see that alot of the young professionals are ambitious, alot of the communist influences still prevail but they're evaporating very quickly, much faster than I imagined.

Krakow is a beautiful city anytime of the year, as is Zakopane (a resort town to the south of Krakow), I visited Warsaw once and I hated it. I'm also biased towards Krakow and Zakopane b/c I have family there .

BTW your employer isn't looking for area specialists on Eastern Europe and/or Asia is it? (the Asia part is a long story)