To be fair, the job is a legitimate work at home job with a decent hourly pay. So no commute, no work clothing and I can watch television at the same time. But no paid time off at all and one lousy three percent raise. And often literally no idea if I’m working any given day or even how many hours until very nearly that day. I’m so sick of employers acting as if boring, tedious work is a gift and a decent paycheck for that work an incredible privilege.
Why are so many employers such assholes?
Ah, the question for the ages. It’s a truly symbiotic relationship - they need work done, we need money. We do the work, they pay us. No one should be seen as having the upper hand over the other (the operative word being “should”).
Well, I’m winning my personal War on X-mas: I’m skipping the company Holiday Party! And I’m so excited – I’ve told a couple of people I’ve got “a family thing I can’t get out of” (which consists of spending the evening nestled on the couch between two dogs, finding so-stupid-it’s-hilarious stuff on Netflix).
Management made the decision easy for me. They made it appetizers only (I checked: cracker and cheese plates), and a cash bar, this year.
I tried skipping. I got two supervisors whining about how I’m not going. That’s how I ended up working 11 hours on Wednesday. That’s also how I got out of work an hour and a half early last night and will be gone an hour and a half early Tuesday.
Afternoon Blonde and I have made a pact to start looking for jobs in the beginning of the year once all the holiday crap clears out. Morale’s gone to shit in the last three months and we’re sick of the political bullshit from the brass. (Office politics, of course.)
Ours was during work hours! Yay! Had one beer, one diet coke, some food and left in time to make my normal bus ride home.
There’s a gif that’s been circulating around here of a demonstration of unemployed people, with the banners edited to say “we’re here for the company party”.
The Ladies had their little Christmas lunch last week. There was a gift exchange–$5 limit–and they actually drew names this year instead of doing some stupid Dirty Santa or pass-the-presents thing. I was actually going to attend until they announced that everyone should wear an ugly Christmas sweater and / or some Christmas “bling”. Um, hell no. Turns out that I missed a lot of drama though…since the day of the lunch coincided with one lady’s birthday, she was allowed to select the restaurant–a chain steakhouse. The lunch organizer didn’t realize that this chain has two steakhouses in town; she made reservations at the one furthest from work, but everyone thought the reservations were at the one close to work. Once the mistake was realized, everyone headed across town–except for Birthday Lady, who is hourly and unable to casually leave early for lunch. No one was able to get up with her in time, so she ate lunch alone. The ladies did end up compensating her for the lunch (it’s a sort of tradition here), though there was much grumbling because she had selected a full meal that exceeded $20.
Wait… she shows up for her birthday/holiday lunch, no one’s there, so… she doesn’t call anyone, doesn’t check the reservations or the other restaurant. Doesn’t even call work and get the location of the party? She just orders food, waits for it, presumably noticing nobody’s there, takes the time to eat her “full meal”, and never checks on why she’s sitting there all alone?
Confession: Exact situation happened to me – went to the wrong restaurant for a work birthday party. But I had the hostess check with the other location and texted one of my workmates, who replied “Haha. Yeah, we’re at waterfront brewpub, and youre not. Get over here!” Showing up 15 min late was a lot better than eating by myself.
Or maybe she didn’t care, and just thought “Bet they all went to other location. Screw 'em, I’m eating.”
Several people are out of the office today, but I am deemed an “essential employee” and therefore I get to stay. Same with tomorrow. My wife was able to get both days off and I assumed I would too. And the day I did get off, Thursday, she has to work. Ugh for bad vacation timing. 
Yes, it is very annoying when you play loud music and snap your fingers to it. No, I’m not going to say anything because I don’t want to be subject to your histrionics at being told what to do. When’s your retirement date again, you old bitch?
First day on the new job in the same hospital, different department. My transfer paperwork wasn’t filed by my old boss, as my new boss discovered today, and old boss is out until the end of the week. I don’t see why it wasn’t filed, as all that means is that my old department is paying me to work in my new department until old boss actually fills out the short little 1-page form (and money transfers will go on behind the scenes, etc., to reimburse the old department).
Coworker, I understand that you ordered a tv or something for store pickup and you haven’t received your confirmation and you need to call the store (and any other store in the area) to find out where and if you can pick it up.
But could you also do some fucking work, please?
I don’t like how my company has blocked my email provider, but I can still get to Facebook.
And don’t say “Careful, they’ll block that next”, because as far as I am concerned, they can. I’m rather surprised that it hasn’t been blocked all along. But I’d really like to be able to get to my email. Hell, it caused me no end of issues when they hired me. HR guy sent the offer letter to my home email, then asked me to look it over and respond by the end of the day! :eek: Had to go over to another building where I could get wifi, and forward it to my work email so I could reply to it. Then of course they sent me a bunch of other emails with information that I needed to have to key into (internal) company websites, so I had to go home and forward them to my work email.
Now of course I’ve had all these packages being shipped to me, and I can’t get to the emails with the tracking information to know what has been delivered today so that I can call the apartment complex office and ask them to put it inside my door.
No, I don’t have a smartphone. I can’t see paying $60-80 a month extra for that.
Yep! She was quite surly about it the rest of the day, too.
A little side note: whenever I can’t (or don’t want to) attend a birthday lunch, I always send the Birthday Lady (or Ladies) a quick email to say “hope you had a great time at lunch!” Unfortunately, I did this last week before I was even aware of what had happened to the lunch plans…so my email probably came off as nasty and/or sarcastic. Oopsie.
It looks like my boss will be able to retire and skip out on a couple of back pay issues amounting to almost $8000. My coworkers, who didn’t get shift differential for 3 years, are partially to blame for not standing up for themselves. But still, hiding behind the “I’ve referred the matter to Labor Relations” excuse–for more than a year–is one of the shittiest things I’ve seen in over 30 years with the company.
“Dear” “parents”, is it even remotely possible that you might divert a little attention from the precious phone to actually be even remotely aware of how much of a mess your offspring are making? I JUST sorted out that aisle your kids just totaled, TYVM.
Dear coworkers from logistics:
If you’re still coding away,
and Quality is not coding anything except for, hey, Stuff About Moving Things Around which you have dumped on us,
and Quality has problems moving stuff around
and all of those problems have nothing to do with the moving-things stuff Quality is coding,
YES it’s YOUR problem!
We’ve got the most complicated warehousing design I’ve seen and they keep changing the code, then when Production, Quality, Purchasing or Sales can’t send stuff, use stuff, or receive stuff, claim it’s our problem. No it’s not, damnit.
Lots of people being told to go home at 2pm today. I have very little work to do at all. No one is here. But do you think our boss, Mr. “I only take vacation because they make me, but I still call in and do work during it” would let US go home? Not a chance. We’re support. So even though we have not had a single fucking phone call all day, the four of us need to be here to the bitter end of the day because…fuck if I know why…someone might call.
Chimera - I’m sorry! That just sucks.
My old manager did the opposite with my former officemate - said officemate requested to be able to work today, as she needs time to get stuff done as I’ve transferred out, and there will be a few other people working in the department so it’s open anyway. But no. She was forced to stay home and use up a paid day off out of her pool (as does everyone else taking the day off, that part is normal), and was told if she really wanted to, she could work New Year’s Eve day instead. (Uh, no. She’s young and wants to start partying early.)
Same said manager also said the department has a policy against going-away parties, and when one of the doctors I worked for instead hosted one for me in his private clinic on the same floor and my officemate invited everyone in the main department, the manager shot that extended invitation down! Not. Allowed.
I’m beginning to think the supposed policy against going-away parties is to keep anyone from having hope for something better.