I’m not sure it’s so easy to manufacture “performance issues” out of thin air. There needs to be documentation, doesn’t there? That could take some time to build up; and in the meantime, the contract is being honored.
And could someone please clarify for me how being in a “right-to-work” state releases a company from the requirement to abide by the terms of a contract? It would seem to me that when a new corporation buys out an existing company, they’re also buying that company’s contractual obligations.
Also, I’m not completely clear on whether Bogette has specified that she’s one of the employees with a contract containing the telecommuting clause. Bogette?
At one of my most recent projects, I had to work with this onsite “programmer” (for lack of a better word); he had to run some data prep. I needed .txt files. First time he called me to check whether what he’d gotten was correct, he opened an .xls with alternating middle-blue, light-blue lines. I exclaimed “oh, pajama paper, how cute :p” “ pajama paper?” I stared at the screen. Looked at his manager. Said “I’m suddenly feeling, not old, ancient.” He said “I know. You got the number of any nice retirement homes?”
Dude refused to send the data as .txts (“but why would you use txts? You can make the program read the appropriate page in the excel!” “That’s not the way the program is written, we’re not going to change it to suit you.”), sent the files “live” (they’d try to read the data every time they were opened, with seriously bad results) and didn’t believe the way he was taught to color spreadsheets is actually copied from computer-printout paper until his boss showed him a sample.
Once a year I have to beat my head against a program that uses .txt files. The damn thing was published in 2006 and is written in FORTRAN. I work in the environmental industry and let me tell you, ALL data is in Excel. The USGS may claim to be the premier water sciencists, but they need to hire a programmer who is under 60 years old!
My supervisor just threw me under the bus for something that was not my fault. I am not a happy camper. It makes me wonder what she says about me behind my back.
Does anyone have good stress-relieving techniques for the office? Yoga, stretches, deep breathing, biting the head off live chickens? The stress is starting to get to me. I just realized that I’m much grumpier and pessimistic than I should be, and I think it’s because of this job.
I’m a sad person today and totally unmotivated now.
I asked for a transfer to another city to be closer to my family and friends. My supervisor is good with it. HR is good with it. But the union is blocking it. Apparently, since my job was posted in this city and not my destination city, people from the destination city wouldn’t have applied for it, so I may have screwed some hypothetical person out of a hypothetical job.
I pay for the union to have my back! My back, not some hypothetical person who isn’t even in this organization. I asked for a meeting with the union rep, we’ll see.
I think the reference is to old fanfold paper which was common up to the mid-1990’s and used frequently in dot-matrix printers. A lot of it had pre-shaded blue or green lines that were helpful in the days of fixed-height fonts.
If you want to try it yourself, you can put Windows Notepad in nightie mode by opening up a command prompt and typing “notepad /nightie”
Yes, that’s the paper I was referring to. The so-called programmer had never heard of it. He’s one of those guys who do things a certain way because “that’s how they taught us to do it”.
I had my first programming course in 1970 and primarily used Fortran for quite a few years. I almost never used greenbar/pajama/white+green fanfold paper. Everywhere I went used uniformly white paper. I certainly saw the greenbar stuff and I would expect anyone from that era to know of it, but not necessarily to know it by any nicknames.
In Spanish I’ve never heard anybody call it anything else. The name was so prevalent that people joked about the white one having been “bleached for too long”.
Oh farging hell, Quickbooks Online - don’t force me to update to your spiffy new Romper Room version. I’m a professional, not a 5-year-old who needs goddamn colored blocks instead of an accounting program. I hate it when programs decide what the hell, we are going to change everything about where to find stuff, what its called, and what it looks like. And especially don’t do this to me at the start of the busiest season when I need to be able to process work at full speed and then some. Shit. Now it looks like Windows 8. On top of this I have found three things that I use on a daily basis that they don’t have working yet so i have to build work-arounds.
I suppose I’ll spend the free time I would use for sleeping at this time of year to start researching new accounting programs.
Sorry I didn’t respond sooner. All this driving is driving me nuts. I have a signed document from my manager and HR allowing me to telecommute 2 days a week, on Tues and Thurs. I was told it wouldn’t be honored. I can’t believe the feelings I’ve had these last few days.
That well and truly sucks. I would recommend that you stay away from Peachtree/Sage.They force you to upgrade every couple of years and it ain’t cheap.
Signed contract with them? Or as part of your employment contract? Employment contracts may or may not have a Survival Clause, which specifies what happens if the company is sold. If you don’t have that, you’re boned.
Try GnuCash. I tried a number of free and not-free programs until I found this one. It’s a true double-entry system with a large degree of customization possible. And it’s free!
So, here’s the rest of the story from earlier today. I know you’ve all been waiting impatiently…
It’s the end of the fiscal year, so we’re working on a contract that needs to be done ASAP so we can spend the money before the fiscal year ends. My supervisor decided that this would be an excellent time for me to learn how to do contracts, so she asked me to take care of this one, even though it’s a complicated contract involving multiple departments. She’s ended up doing a good bit of the work on it because it made more sense for her to talk to the other departments about giving us more money for this project. We met with the head of the department and she told us to take out the sales tax. I asked for another quote without the sales tax, filled out all the contract paperwork and started on the process of getting all of the necessary signatures. It turns out that we do need to pay sales tax, so at this point we have to juggle things around and find something we can remove from the project so we have enough money to pay for the whole thing.
I overheard my supervisor talking to the department head today, and she blamed me for the sales tax fiasco. Well, excuse me for believing something I was told by two people who have done lots of contracts and should know how it works by now. (My supervisor did an identical contract for the same project less than two years ago. She doesn’t remember anything about that contract because she has the memory of a fruitfly. Our department head is responsible for all the contracts in our department. She signs each and every one, so why would I not trust her when she tells me we don’t have to pay sales tax?) But somehow this is my fault. I’m really starting to hate my job.
Then a little bit later my supervisor called me and proceeded to smack her gum very loudly in my ear. If you think that’s no big deal, it’s because you have no idea that it’s even possible to smack gum that loudly. It’s deafening. And it’s really hard for me to hear what she’s asking me when I have to pull the phone away from my ear so I can’t hear the damn gum smacking. It’s amazing that I haven’t been hauled away in a straitjacket.
:mad:
:mad:
:mad:
Also I have to work with my Annoying Coworker on another project. I am in hell.
pajama paper?” I stared at the screen. Looked at his manager. Said “I’m suddenly feeling, not old, ancient.” He said “I know. You got the number of any nice retirement homes?”
