“Only Nixon could go to China”
Republicans will oppose it because Obama did it. If Romney had won the election and done it, they would be praising it to high heaven as an idea long overdue.
Yes I have drastically cut down on sugar and usually politely decline office treats.
Yes I am currently eating a donut that was given to me as a surprise gift.
No I don’t need your comments about “Oh you’ve fallen off the wagon! You’re eating sugar!”
I wish I had an office with walls and a door like on Mad Men.
So what you’re saying is you want fewer people to have jobs, and more unemployed struggling for survival just so Your Highness can have an easier commute?
As I say: “It isn’t that I can’t eat sugar, its that I have to limit my intake. Right now I’m choosing to eat this donut, and I am aware of how much sugar it has.”
That’s probably more diplomatic than my response of “…and how does this effect you?”
—Spock
Must do the quote correctly…
Shit, I think I got nailed by photo radar today. I was tooling along behind another car, just basically pacing him. 35mph zone. I had just glanced at the speedo and saw 39mph and was backing off the gas when I crested a hill and saw a bright flash from a van parked across the road. Fuck! I haven’t had a ticket since about 1984.
Apropos that you got caught by a silent, ever-vigilant, always-on electronic viewing device. I hope you capped it off by spending at least two minutes posting in Pit threads.
If I ordered from Panera the way the food actually comes out it would sound more like:
“I’d like a bagel, partially sliced then torn the rest of the way open, brought up to just above room temperature in the toaster, and two packets of cryogenically frozen butter.”
Back when my kids were working in fast food, they got promotions partly because they were willing to call around to other franchises and work deals, either loans or swaps, for things they were running out of. Of course if one location is the one that’s always running out of everything, that would only work for so long.
I was out running this morning and almost got run over by a bicyclist cycling ON THE SIDEWALK! I was just turning the (semi-blind) corner and he was right there. I swerved and he braked, but dang! Dude, there is a HUGE bike lane right next to you. Use it! If you are really that uncomfortable riding your bike in the road for that stretch, get off and freakin’ walk your bike! Geez.
Me to husband, after recounting the incident: “I hope he gets hit gently by a car.”
Husband: “Hey, that’s not nice.”
Me: “I did say gently!”
I feel your pain. Making any kind of plans is really difficult because you never know how you’re going to feel and it’s better to not have plans than to cancel them at the last minute all the time. Going to my few extracurricular activities is sketchy, I missed a lot of choir rehearsals leading up to our recent concert, and during the last rehearsal at the venue we had to stand in one place for over an hour, by which time my section leader had grabbed me a chair because I was so obviously in pain. I managed to stand up through the concert itself, but between the half hour or so of the performance itself and the hour and a half or so of sitting in a narrow church pew beforehand, I was in pretty bad shape at the end of it.
I live in fear of losing my job because some days I just can’t drive. I’m lucky to have a workplace that’s reasonably accomodating about this sort of thing. I’m on Wellbutrin, which is reputed to help some fibromyalgia sufferers, but I don’t know how much it’s helping with that if any (I take it for depression and anxiety). I also take a huge handful of other pills every morning, including ibuprofen, flax oil, vitamin D, B complex, magnesium, glucosamine sulfate, etc. I don’t know how much they’re doing either, but some of them are of the ‘you don’t notice they’re helping until you stop taking them’ variety. I’ve tried some of the other antidepressants and whatnot that they prescribe for this, and can’t tolerate the side effects. I hope you find something that helps soon.
This e-cigarette is fucking bullshit. I miss my Yellows.
Who are these people who don’t take their vacation time?? At my workplace, it’s use it or lose it for the year. I track paid time off (PTO) ultimately by hand, because the couple hours it takes me a month to do it is vastly cheaper than having ADP do it for us. We also allow some “borrowing” and carryover if a new employee hasn’t reached their 90 days before the year rollover and ADP requires manual adjustment we’d rather not have screwed up on people’s stubs, so the stubs just say nothing and “the book” is tracked by me.
So I’m updating the book to the end of November (payroll is 2 weeks in arrears), and there are so many people with 2 weeks or more left, that they can’t possibly take in December. I mean, jeez, I love my job and all, but I’m taking all my PTO, every year, every minute of it! Why the heck wouldn’t I? And why don’t these people?? It’s the same amount of cash out for the employer, it’s not like they’re saving a nonprofit anything by not taking their time, just risking burnout because they take one week out of FOUR they have available. Duh.
Can anyone explain taking only a quarter or half of the time you’re allotted for time off in a year? Why on earth would one do this? I can see a couple of the salaried people not being able to take a whole two weeks at a time, but seriously there’s nothing here that can’t ever wait a week that someone else can’t cover, and definitely nothing that can’t wait a day here and there, just plan a day off a week and work a bunch of 4-day weeks for a while or something. Who wouldn’t want a couple months worth of 3-day weekends?
In one of my accounting classes to date, we discussed internal controls to help prevent theft by employees. One is requiring people to take their vacation time, since someone who’s up to no good won’t want anyone else to have a chance to look the situation over and find something that’s not right.
Alternately, they’ve convinced themselves that they’re indispensably irreplaceably essential. IOW, raging egos.
They can’t carry over any PTO? What if they get sick in January? At my workplace we are limited to 400 hours, but hardly anyone accumulates that much, except for one guy who I swear comes to work to get away from home. I got pancreatitis in February a few years ago and missed a lot of time from work, and I was really glad I had enough PTO to cover it. Or do you get the PTO all in a lump at the beginning of the year instead of accruing a certain amount each pay period?
It accrues twice a year, half on January 1st and the second half on July 1st. If something comes up, our Executive Director is really cool about letting us “borrow” time from the next accrual period if we need to. When I had my gall bladder out in December last year and was in the hospital for 4 days and not really up to speed for a few weeks, I was able to borrow 2 weeks from this year. Which still left me with 4 weeks, so it was fine.
New employees, during their first year, accrue monthly - and that can be pretty fluid, too, if something comes up and they need more time than they’ve earned. Our ED is a pretty cool dude as far as all that goes.
My profligate spending habits put me into a bit of a bind. I work a shift and weekly schedule which adds premiums of about $230 per week to my base pay. So that’s what it costs me to take a week off. I do still take some time, and I’m able to avoid any of it evaporating by a combination of selling a week at the beginning of the year and donating a week here and there to co-workers on the disabled list who have depleted their own PTO banks.
Oh, but fighting the hypothetical is a long-standing Doper tradition.
And to be fair, it’s not always crystal clear that the task (construct this specific sentence in strict accordance with the most arcane of grammar rules) cannot be replaced with a broader mission (formulate the meaning of this communication in such a way that it will not raise any objections from Grammar Nazis).
Anyway, I’ve got a little bit of a problem with how “Grammar Nazis” is being used in this context. In my experience, the people who know the really arcane rules are what I think of as Grammar Mavens. These folks know all about present pluperfect future subjunctive conditionals (or something). Grammar Nazis, OTOH, are comparatively dilletantish, and their knowledge tends to top out at what’s necessary to demand that someone not use the reflexive case where the nominative is appropriate.
Our PTO is reloaded once every quarter. The amount you receive depends on whether you’re part or full time and how many years of service. I always still have the bulk of mine remaining come November, so I’m forced to take extra days off during our busiest time of the year (yay retail).
Why don’t I spread them out? For one, we seldom go anywhere on vacation (my husband isn’t a traveller like I am – his idea of a vacation is going to a neighboring state during the off season because he can’t stand crowds nor summer heat). Two, it’s difficult for me to get out of the “indispensable employee” syndrome because for many years I WAS such because nobody could do what I did (I literally had managers screaming whenever I said I was taking a vacation week and never heard the end of it. Yeah, finally learned my lesson.) Three, I’ve got a history of weird and wacky injuries so I usually end up, at least once a year, being out for an extended period of time which will eat up my remaining PTO.
Our PTO is use-it-or-lose-it. We’re allowed a payout up to 48 hours, but that’s it. I’m returning to work on a transitional schedule starting tomorrow because I want my remaining PTO to be a payout (I’ve been out since early November).