1-800-r-u-cryin

I entered the working world in 2005. I had a few odd jobs for a few years and then finally just bit the bullet in 2009, got a job at a grocery storeas an inventory clerk. My job was to count surplus items in the backroom and update the counts. Additional responsibilities included helping stock the front end. I left that job in less than a year.

A friend of mine now works at the same chain, different location, same job title, in 2022. But where I shared that title with two other people, he's the only one with that job title. Additionally, there are less stockpersons, and he is often called out to the floor to help them, which impedes his primary job function. He is also expected to clean bathrooms and some other maintenance things that I cant imagine doing as an inventory clerk.

And I thought maybe it was just that his location is understaffed, but looking back on the past few years where I was expected to do everything (be the front end, the dispatcher, the manufacturer, the teacher, trainer, janitor, delivery driver, account handler... christ, how did I do all this?) I'm looking at the issue with fresh eyes.

I hear sometimes about the 'slim down,' where a lot of companies took on a trend of hiring less people than they need to cut down on the cost of labor, and I look at how fast a person can burn out at a job. And how many jobs are considered 'high pressure sales' when they dont need to be.

Like I'm looking at the possibility of starting a business and I'm looking at the jobs I've had that burned me out and why. And it's almost always been 'I was always juggling responsibilities because we needed more staff'.

Like it seemed like I was doing everything, but getting paid the same.

And I think about that backroom job, where occasionally i would have to help out the stockers on big days, but mostly my job was one function.

Receptionist

Janitor

AV assistant grip

AV inventory manager

AV bookkeeper

Software tester

Software testing and QA manager

Lead proofreader

Lead QA Tech

Copywriter

Archive manager

IT assistant (as needed)

Company newsletter editor (secondary, lead, secondary, off)

Birthday party and internal event manager in all but name

Eventually I got off the front desk and eventually I got off AV scut work but even when my job title narrowed to "Copywriter II" most of my work hours were spent doing other legacy shit and answering legacy questions and doing the traffic manager's job because the traffic manager didn't like the traffic managing parts of her job so she just didn't do them.

I came home from work crying every other day and had ongoing dishydrosis outbreaks for years, caused by stress. This job had me having major suicidal episodes at least twice a year because of the stress I was under.

Any time they'd release the pressure valve a little I'd panic and feel like I wasn't doing enough and was in imminent danger of being fired. Eventually they did lay me off for "not enough work" (my director was doing the work he found fun that should have gone to me instead of the work he found unfun that should have gone to him, and which instead went undone) and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Then I found out that there are ad agencies who have a normal amount of stress and crunch and --

My first freelance writing job after Helljob 1 only wanted me to write things and they gave me so much time to write the things and they had enough staff and paid me twice as much as the lean staffing place had and I felt like I was ripping them off.

Because by doing the things they asked of me I wasn't doing enough things and didn't have enough things to do.

Treat your people good and give them raises commensurate with their value, growth, and cost of living and they will stay with you until they are indispensable, and then consult for you after they retire. Make your people do the work of 3.5 people for the wages of .53 people and they are not going to feel anything but malice for you and they are not going to say how high when you post your impossible job to the job board.

That goes for blue collar and white collar jobs.

resurgence of the “suicide mouse” creepypasta

chuggo’s Ah C’mon becomes a meme. some people try to cancel it because they mishear the hook as “Ahhh! C’mon, fuck a guy!” and argue it’s homophobic

some pet blogger catches a mole and attempts to keep it as a pet

eboys start making POV videos where they’re dressed up as old timey ships captains

the platform releases a filter that turns your head into a skull. people make bones jokes with it for about 3 days until some thin woman influencers come up with a challenge where you compare the shape of your skull to theirs. teen girls giving each other body dysmorphia through an unironic return to phrenology.

ariana grande shaves her head completely bald (not tiktok but i need to put this one down before i forget it)

pee wee herman memes blow the fuck up out of nowhere

kids hurt themselves trying to blow glass at home

“russian warship 545 is unhappy”

So I went back to check on my pal Russian Warship 545 (registration name KOLA), and being unable to find the red dot in the area, thought it had moved on. Curious as to when and where to, I ran a search on Vesselfinder for the name “Russian Warship 545”.

No results found.

“Okay, that’s fair. Maybe you can’t search for naval vessels by name. National security and all.” I said to myself. Then I remembered that I’d screenshotted the ID number (see above), so I ran a search for that instead.

This is when shit got weird.

So I mentioned just now that while the vessel showed up earlier today under the AIS tracking title “Russian Vessel 545”, the legal registration name listed at the bottom of its details page was “KOLA”. This isn’t that weird in and of itself — I was poking around home on the map earlier today, and found Canadian naval vessels with tracking titles like “Canadian Warship 707” and then the actual vessel name (HMCS FancyName or what have ye) listed as the registration name along with the flag country.

I mentioned also that I couldn’t find Russian Warship 545’s distinctive red dot (red is the colour for search and rescue, coast guard, and naval vessels in Vessel Finder) in the Red Sea anchorage field outside the canal when I went to check up on it.

So imagine my surprise when I type the ID number for “Russian Warship 545” into the search, and am told IT IS STILL LOCATED IN THE RED SEA ANCHORAGE.

Huh???

But not ONLY that.

It has now been switched to an ORANGE tanker vessel dot, and is showing up with “KOLA” as its AIS tracking name, looking for all intents and purposes like a regular oil tanker:

Except for the fact that when you open the details page on Vessel Finder, the image attached is VERY MUCH STILL A RUSSIAN WARSHIP:

And the specs and details are all the same as earlier, including being owned by what is still listed (due to the 1967 manufacturing date) as, I shit you not, “Soviet Navy”:

However!!!

On further investigation via Marine Tracker, I’ve found what seems to be a much less “stripped from Wikipedia”, and much less impressive, image of our friend Russian Warship 545 (which is still listed as the AIS name on Marine Tracker):

This page on Baltic Shipping also associates similar pictures with the same ID numbers, further corroborating this and giving a bit more extra backstory about the builder etc. “Kola” is listed as an Altay-class Russian military tanker with a matching 1967 build date on this List of Active Russian Military Vessels, and was actively doing stuff for the Russian Navy in the Mediterranean within the last two years (x) (x).

So.

My best guess at an explanation for all this weirdness?

Creaky old Soviet-built oil tanker KOLA, owned by Russian military, was doing regular oil-getting business in the area.

Said oil tanker is listed on some AIS records in the same manner as most military-owned vessels, “[nationality] warship [hull #]”, and with a red military ID dot.

Somebody working for Vessel Finder is really lazy about attaching a database image to the profile for KOLA. (Interestingly enough, reverse image search turned up no other instances of the warship image used on the listing).

Then, this week, Ever Given does the world’s worst parallel parking job and blocks up the Suez canal.

KOLA, gone to go get oil and bring it back to the fleet, is now stranded with many other oil tankers in the middle of the Red Sea, unable to pass back up through to the Black Sea or wherever the hell she was going.

At some point, perhaps somebody involved in the control/management of KOLA had the thought, possibly while sitting around at anchor for two days twiddling thumbs and playing cards, “hey, you don’t think our AIS designation would make us look like we’re up to some really sketchy shit out here, do you? given that hundreds if not thousands of random people are looking at vessel tracking sites right now?”

“Hm. Shit.”

(Alternatively, somebody onboard is killing time on their phone looking at the shipping carnage and notices their bright red tracking dot and alarming name).

Phone calls are made/things are updated and Creaky old Soviet-built military-owned oil tanker KOLA hastily has its AIS display name updated to read as its registration name instead of “Russian Warship 545”, now with an orange oil tanker classification marker.

This change has the unintended result of making them look EXPONENTIALLY sketchier than they did before.

ALTERNATIVELY: Less funny version, it may just be a glitch in Vessel Finder’s software that gets triggered by the two different names and the conflicting classifications. When I went to look at it again just a minute ago, we were back to a red indicator and “Russian Warship 545”:

Bottom line: do I think that anything freaky or untoward is ACTUALLY happening with this vessel? Not really.

Do I find this all EXTREMELY entertaining? You bet your ass I do.

1. The Kola. Brought along for supply and support I would assume. 

2. A sea tug, the Yakov Grebelsky. 3. A Corvette. The main ship of this detachment, this is the ship that would be doing all the training. All parts of the crew aboard are going to be training in different simulations and just representing the Russian Navy. Identified as the Stoyky. .....The Stoyky. A Russian Warship, with the Hull Designation of 545. 

Here is the Russian defense ministry’s article about the Detachment’s deployment.   https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12330458@egNews Which leaves us with a few questions.  So there is the possibility that we are looking at an entire Fleet Detachment. That is sitting there in the red sea.  Or the possibility that they got separated somehow.  Or...that there is no sign of the Yakov Grebelsky or Stoyky, and they somehow just ditched the Kola.  Which gets even funnier, because apparently right around the time the suez canal first got blocked off. The Kola and another vessel got into a light collision. 

Somebody whose ask I think I lost sent me this article from early February about Kola and Stoiky (and I think it mentions the tug as well near the end) transiting down through the canal in the first place, I assume this week was supposed to be the return journey. Maybe the tug moved on to work somewhere else?

If I had to hazard a guess, either Kola and Stoiky are sharing one AIS signal (I don’t think that’s a thing??), OR there’s been some sort of confusion (possibly human error) in a logging system somewhere that, when processing both of the vessels together as they passed through somewhere, ended up accidentally labelling Kola with Stoiky’s photo and hull number.

WAIT. @echo1608 I’ve had a breakthrough!!

So I’m actually inclined to think that Vessel Finder (which I’m told by people in the notes is visually super-glitchy at the best of times because of how much data it has to handle) has somehow ended up turning the AIS signal for both ships (Kola and Stoiky) into only ONE display point/readout — but it does know geographically that both of them are there. Here’s why I say that:

Here is where Kola is currently anchored, in a berth next to what looks like an empty anchor berth:

Earlier today, I noticed something that struck me as weird when I was looking at Kola’s tracking line of recent movement, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time other than “huh, glitchy”.

On vessels that are mostly sitting still or anchored (like the Ever Given lol), the tracking line that shows the last couple of hours of movement mostly moves in small overlapping circles right underneath where the vessel is.

That is uh, not what Kola’s track does:

(The red dot on the right there is me selecting a point on the track) Soooo Kola’s track basically looks like she’s teleporting lol. Jumping back and forth across that distance so quickly that there are no progress dots in between, but still keeping that registered movement speed (seen in the blue box) at 0kts.

This morning, I thought that weirdness must just be a variance/glitch in how the tracker is picked up by satellite — like how you can sometimes watch your personal dot on Google Maps move around while you’re standing still. I assumed that Kola wasn’t really moving much (listed as anchored, 0kts), the calibration of the geo-tracker was just poor and resulted in the vessel signal “jumping” back and forth between two points and creating these lines.

But then I thought about your “two vessels, one weird hybrid AIS display on our screens” thing. And I thought about it a little more. And then I turned the nautical chart overlay back on:

And OH. The other end of that super-fast back and forth and back and forth tracking pattern between two completely still states lines up DIRECTLY with the centre of the neighbouring anchorage point.

So. If I had to theorize (in a semi-informed manner, based on the evidence at hand):

I would bet that BOTH Kola and the Corvette Stoiky (aka the elusive Russian Warship 545) are present here, but for reasons inexplicable to me (and possibly it just comes down to Program Is Hella Glitchy, or a weird method of entering their data, who knows), Vessel Finder (and by the looks of it, Marine Traffic too) is using the SAME ID number (6720004) for BOTH ships, resulting in them being combined into a weird hybrid profile that VesselFinder reads from which has:

1 photo (of a boat I’d bet my pants is the Corvette Stoiky or a similar model)

1 registered name (KOLA)

1 set of specifications (the ones for KOLA)

1 little cartoon ship marker (tied to the left-side geographic signal)

1 vessel class name (“oil products tanker”)

2 possible display names (“KOLA” and “Russian Warship 545”)

2 colour classifications (service vessel red and tanker orange)

2 geolocation signals (one signal coming from that left anchor point where the ship marker sits, and signal two coming from the right anchor point where the track marks point to).

When the program is reading from the data profile, it seems to be displaying all of the things on that list that only have 1 as constants, and then for everything where there are 2 (data from BOTH vessels), it simply jumps back and forth between reading from one, then the other, and back and forth. Probably every time the map refreshes itself or something. I think Marine Traffic might be doing the exact same thing, but with a photo of Kola instead of Stoiky.

Again, this is just a theory, but its the only thing I can currently think of that explains everything we’ve seen here so far!

Either through a glitch in the system, or an error in human entry, or a deliberate choice to register them under a combined profile with the idea they are not to be separated (perhaps in some misguided attempt to simplify registration), I think what we are seeing is a pair of ships, showing up as one single ship profile which has two names, two geolocations, and two class designations, and is flipping back and forth between those data sources based on whichever it picks up.

tl;dr: My new running theory is we’re seeing two ships which travel together, with two names, two geolocation signals, two classifications, grouped under one (1) profile and ID number, resulting in the program inconsistently displaying the duplicate values as it tries to represent two different vessels with a single visual datapoint and a single profile page.

And, lol, when I went back to look again and check something between getting those first couple screenshots, guess who’s back to the old tricks again... :)

God I’ve gotten so much serotonin out of this problem-solving challenge, along with the stress of a trillion notifications. But this has been..... fun??

In Conclusion:

This morning when I looked on Vessel Finder, I could now see the mixed signal/profile for KOLA/Russian Warship 545 (Stoiky) in its original position, but ALSO a “satellite AIS only” second signal sitting on that second mooring buoy, classed as SAR/Military:

“Satellite AIS only” means that the vessel can only be picked up by the more powerful and wide ranging AIS tracking of satellites, vs standard terrestrial AIS which is done with transponders pinging from shore. Most of the signals we see on the free version of Vessel Finder are terrestrial AIS, and sometimes the site can tell us “hey, I know something is here via satellite, but you’ll have to pay a fee if you wanna know more than that”. You do have to pay a hefty annual subscription fee to access more detailed data from objects tracked by satellite AIS than “there’s a boat here”, so I can’t see any more info than this.

This diagram on Marine Traffic sums up the difference pretty simply (Marine Traffic also shows two satellite AIS signals hanging out in the correct spots, but doesn’t let free users see more info about them):

So Kola and Stoiky still have a mixed profile for terrestrial AIS, but the satellite AIS system does know there’s a second ship physically there (probably still with the shared IMO number).

Aaaaand it’s obviously not the most consistent satellite signal, bc while I was looking at the map that second dot from satellite AIS winked out of existence again lol: