I did this a lot – sending an email saying “based on our recent phone conversation, these are the changes you are requesting to the system …”.
It’s a lot easier for me to do that than to wait for an email from them, which is likely to be just as rambling, confused, and vague as their phone conversation. So I’d have to do that anyway; might as well get it down in writing in an organized way to start with.
And the cc: to managers is also important. Other people affected is especially needed – often phoned requests like this are attempts to get additional resources spent on their projects, or to bump the priority of something on their projects – without your other customers knowing about it.
There was a rumor floating around for the last week about a pay cut. We finally got the email yesterday, Jan 8, about it. It just says that the loss of pay started in Dec 30th and will be reflected in your next check.
Thanks for the heads up on that.
For most if us, we will lose about $1,000 to $1500 a year . Most folks won’t quit over that amount, but that loss combined with the expiration of the temporary tax cut and the usual increase in insurance costs may leave a lot of us with some budgeting problems this year.
Not the pay cut itself, but telling you after it took effect. When you went to work on January 2, you did so under the assumption that you were getting paid x dollars per hour. They decided, unilaterally, that you were getting x - y dollars.
I like being part of a huge community of “Gripers”, because it’s like floating down the Mississippi on a raft (which I did one summer, but since this isn’t MPSIS, forget I said that), and as we raise our “Hate work? Join us!” flag, dozens of smaller rafts/kayaks/doors with Leo DiCaprio hanging on float alongside, throw us a rope and we welcome them with umbrella drinks and musical instruments and pretty soon we’ve got the biggest party in the Pit, cruising downstream, playing music and listening to the latest barely-believable tale of bureaucratic incompetence. [/run-on sentence]
And I say “biggest party in the Pit” because even though the Paterno thread is over 6000 now, it’s whatever the opposite of a party is.
Not to belabor the obvious, but you DO realize that submitting that post has obligated you to come back to this thread no later than next Friday and tell us about it, right?
BMES Bag Dump Station is used for manual unloading of product from bags, to avoid dusting during manual dumping of powder from the bags, and to maintain clean atmosphere, and safe working condition for workers. An automatic reverse pulse cleaning ensures release of dust from the filters.
Our corner of the floor smells like mold. BAD. Making everyone sick.
Everyone agrees that it’s coming through the heating vents, because it gets worse when the heat kicks in. Since it’s just this one corner, it’s probably just inside these vents or in the ceiling around them.
Well, everyone except Clueless George, who insists that it is physically impossible for mold to live in heating vents because “they’re dryer than any desert” and it has to be coming from two potted plants at the end of the row. And of course, in classic CG style, pushing this argument well past the “yeah, sure, ok, whatever, you can stop now” point. Because he has to be right and everyone has to tell him he’s right.
I don’t want to give too much identifying info, but I’m a nurse and work in a hospital.
Five of us from my department made an appointment with the CEO to ask some questions about our pay cut. One of us handled questions, one handled the collected negative staff comments heard over the past few days, and one handled the very few neutral comments. The other two just winged it. We thought having several people attend would make us less a target in case of retaliation and the anonymous collected comments from folks in different departments would have a similar effect.
The CEO and her assistant explained to us repeatedly that a market survey showed that we were paid more than the other dozen or so offices in our region. We asked why our pay had to come down, why the others wouldn’t come up, and why was only the day shift targeted for this ‘market correction’ and not the night shifts.
They said compared to our competitors- uh, I’m not sure what they said about that. A lot of the discussion was very confusing. We asked if the company was in bad financial shape and did we need to be worried about that? They said "Oh no, were in great shape!’ ‘So, why then, did we need a pay cut?’ we asked. We pointed out that we just helped them meet a major milestone at work that was a really big deal to the company, and were rewarded with a pay cut. And we pointed out also that the company is asking us to do some other ‘big deal’ items in the near future.
But then they said ‘Well the pay cut roll-out wasn’t meant for you guys just yet. It’s for the other offices in the region. Yours is coming later, but we don’t know when.’
We asked them to send out an email to all the employees clarifying that as there were many rumors and bits of misinformation floating around and that someone in authority needed to clarify the issue. That email came out about and hour and a half after we left.
I dunno. The whole thing was weird and unprofessional and disorganized feeling. I’ve been there for 15 years and am not going to quit over this issue, but my spidey-sense is tingling. I have always been well treated by my company, really do love working there, and would hate to leave, but this whole thing was just odd.
Spidey sense should be tingling: those two paragraphs are directly contradictory. It says that your office is overpaid compared to the others, and is getting a cut" then it says “but we’re cutting everyone else first”.
Let’s just say, I wouldn’t be putting any of my 401(k) money into the company stock right now.
I had the vibe that “market survey showed that we were paid more than the other dozen or so offices in our region” referred to competitors’ offices, rather than other offices within the company.
There’s enough vagueness in the description here to make me wish Ca3799 would clarify the point.
First, thanks to the expiration of the social security tax reduction and increased medical insurance payments, my take-home will be about $3K less this year than last year (and I haven’t had a raise in at least 5 years). Oh well, belt tightening is the new 40, I’m told. This is what I get for working in a dying industry.
Second, and a bit more serious: I’m way older than almost everyone I work with. I’m 63, and everyone else, including my boss, is under 40. Also, I’m gay, and it seems there are fewer and fewer other gay people working here as time goes by (there used to be lots).
Neither of these things is anyone’s fault. However, I’m not good at socializing anyway, and these factors just make it more difficult for me. I don’t feel much in common with them, and I suspect vice versa. So I feel increasingly isolated. People are perfectly nice, but there are fewer and fewer people I can talk to here on anything other than a business basis.
I feel like I need to make this matter less to me than it does, but I don’t know how to go about changing how I feel. I guess I can just ride it out for another couple of years until retirement…
Roddy
I’m pretty sure she was referring to businesses in our company in our region. But, it was a long meeting- about 40 minutes- and those 5 of us present are still trying to sort out what we heard today.
I can relate somewhat - I’m 46 and I work as a temp, so everyone at every job I go to is younger than I am, and I don’t socialize a lot with people on assignment, either, since there isn’t any point since I’ll be gone in a month or three. I usually just mind my own business and do my job and go home.
