It’s the pit. It’s where we come to RO Fight Club each other.
I didn’t respond to this because I didn’t want to derail the thread into a debate on the inherit inequity of sex and reproduction in the workplace. We just did a thread on that.
But, since VOC3 is causing chaos anyhow:
No, she shouldn’t get to keep her job “simply because she is pregnant.” I was just trying to sympathize on how craptacular it is to be out of work while simultaneously going through an enormous shift in financial situation, what with having to outfit a whole new person and the sundry medical expenses. These are not demands that would be typically placed on a single male.
Unless he and a coworker got into an industrial accident and the coworker’s head had to be grafted onto his body.
Laying someone off is not placing a demand on someone. It’s a business decision. The personal life of the employee should have nothing to do with it.
I am self-employed, but when I wasn’t, I deeply resented having to do someone else’s work because she had to pick up the kids after school, or being told so and so got a raise because “he needs the money.” That should have piss-all to do with it. We go to work to do a job. Those that do it best are rewarded the best. Anything else is bullshit. What the OP is going to do after the layoff is irrelevant to the reasons for the layoff.
This whole situation sounds like a gift to me. If you resign, you usually get no unemployment (at least not for some period). If they lay you off, you get it immediately.
Go immediately to the unemployment office & fill out the forms. Collect the checks. Pretty simple & fairly painless process.
Whichever, Contrapuntal. I’m seriously not interested in having this argument.
Yes, it’s unfair. Yes, personal life shouldn’t factor into how many breaks someone gets from their employer. But, when it boils down, we’re all people, and occasionally, people have sympathy for one another and try to do what is in their power to help. Is the help perfectly evenly applied? No. So we all keep trying to be good people and life carries on.
I’m glad you are now self employed and have escaped the cycle of abuse.
Peace.
When I was younger, I would have agreed with Contrapuntal, thinking in very black and white terms about how people are paid within a given company, but as I get older, I understand, appreciate, and agree with your viewpoint more. “It’s just business” is usually just an excuse (and a widely accepted one) for someone being an asshole.
Damn dude! Isn’t there an anthill you could be frying with your magnifying glass? Your so offensive it’s fucking comical. Are you channeling Don Rickles? :rolleyes:
I’m perfectly willing to do whatever is in my power to help someone in need. It should not be a condition of my employment. If giving someone time off else forces me to do their work, and I am not compensated form it, then I call bullshit with a capital B. Two offenses have been committed; she is paid for not working, and I am forced to work for no pay. This seems fair to you?
Again, giving someone a promotion over me, even though I am the better worker, is not “help unevenly applied.” It is help coerced, and at my expense.
Sarcasm duly noted. No one mentioned a cycle of abuse.
Nice to see that you have no problem putting your hand in my pocket.
Can this become the new SDMB motto? It’s got a certain poetic resonance that “Fighting Ignorance Since 1973” just doesn’t capture.
Do you have a Live Journal, MM? I’m not asking to be snarky, but it does seem like your life is giving you a lot to talk about.
I hate this sort of BS budgeting. I got this same lame excuse from my uni.
Say an office usually spends $10 a year on salaries, $10 a year on computers and $5 a year on supplies. Not realistic, whatever. $25 total. Salaries 40%, computers 40%, supplies 20%.
This year, the office comes up short in its budget one year and has only $20. Following the percentages, $8 goes to salaries, $8 goes to computers and $4 to supplies. An investor shows up with $4, but says you can only spend it on computers.
Here’s how a university handles this situation:
$8 to Salaries, $12 to computers, $4 to supplies. Someone gets fired, supplies are mised, and computers are upgraded.
Any idiot would cut the preallocated computer budget and spend the unrestricted funds elsewhere, while still using the investor’s money on its restricted target.
Large universities are festering piles of bureaucracy running rampant with waste. For every raise in tuition there’s some massive frivolity that no one needs and few students use or even know about.
Here’s my take on the situation, until MM comes in and clarifies.
Step 1: MM tries to hand in her resignation.
Step 2: Dr. Boss begs her to stay. He tells her that she’ll be laid off soon anyway, but could she please stick around until then.
Step 3: She agrees.
Step 4: She was laid off immediately.
As far as I can tell, it’s less about the job loss and more about the jerking her around.
That’s what I took from it. When she resigned, she probably set a date, then was laid off unexpectedly soon.
Step 1-4 is the same interpretation I have. However I don’t agree with her conclusion. Dr. Boss wasn’t jerking her around, he was doing her a favor. By pulling her resignation letter, then immediately laying her off, he gave her the gift of unemployment benefits. Same result (she’s out of a job) but now she has a few months of unemployment to fall back on. Instead of being pissed, I’d be grateful that he didn’t let her quit a few weeks before she would have been let go.
I won’t argue that university administrations aren’t festering piles of bureaucracy. The OP says she was research staff, though, and that’s not the same as being a regular U employee… so what you wrote above in all probability doesn’t apply in her case.
Far and away the most common situation is that research staff salaries are paid by outside grants that are administered by the U, so when the research grant money is gone, so is the job. No amount of wishing that $$$ would get transferred from the U’s billion+ dollar endowment, say, is going to keep you employed once the grant is spent.
People don’t realize it, but being a “soft money” (grant supported) researcher is essentially like being self employed: you (the PI) have to keep a continual stream of new project money coming in, or you (and the rest of the group you’re supporting - post-docs, grad students, technicians, programmers, etc.) won’t get paid. The U is there mostly to give you a place to hang your hat and to deal with the financial guff associated with administering gov’t money, and that’s it.
Don Rickles could be funny. VCO3 is just a motherfucking dickhead. 
Hey Mouse, NOW will you contact the press about your former boss’s financial fraud?
I am not familiar with this turn of phrase, and Google is just giving me links to Alanis Morissette. Are you saying that I am putting words in your mouth? Or presuming facts about your life not in evidence? 
Taking money from me. As in forcing me to do someone else’s work without compensation.
Lets look at a hypothetical. Say you have contracted me to re-model your bathroom for $7500, and halfway through the job I tell you that since my wife is pregnant, and I really need the money, it’s going to cost $10,000. Would you pay it?
If I told you that I cannot complete the job unless you contribute 10 hours per week, would you?
Ah. Thank you.
Excellent CD. I had not appreciated Van Morrison’s style before.