It’s a terrible description; it tells you nothing about the paper. People have many patterns for pajamas, and green & white stripes is hardly the most common one.
The proper name, as mentioned is ‘greenbar’.
When laser page printers became available for mainframes (1976-1977), they had a forms flash to provide a similar pattern on white paper, but in the black toner used by those printers. It was commonly called ‘graybar’.
Are the versions in colors other than green called bluebar, pinkbar, greybar and yellowbar? (Those are the ones I’ve seen, there may be others)
What do they call the kinds with duckies and bunnies and choo choo trains?
Nursery-bar.
This is more of a very mildly amusing than a gripe (or maybe a rolleyes at a co-worker):
there’s a new name on next week’s schedule.
Co-worker: “So, is the new person a boy or a girl?”
Manager: “Name is a MAN”
MAN is someone I could pick out of a line-up, but probably have never had an actual conversation with.
And it’s kinda odd to see a new name on the schedule the week I’m on vacation, but hey, not my problem until I come back.
I’ve also been warned that we may not get to keep MAN, which is ok, too. I mean, at this point, I don’t know if we actually want MAN.
Last year, as a second year employee, I was given 16 paid days off, plus 8 government holidays.
THIS fucking year, I just finished working 55+ hours weekly since first week of January. And they changed our floating holidays to sick pay. Meaning it can only be used for medical purposes with a fucking doctor’s note. That’s ten less paid holidays, and I don’t earn any extra time even after pulling all these hours for five months. I basically gave them 6 1/2 months work in 5 months.
Since my sis is a doctor in NYC, and I’ll be visiting her, maybe that’s a legitimate reason?? FMJ
Hey powers-that-be? If you were going to suddenly stop stocking the women’s restroom with feminine hygiene products, a little advance warning would’ve been nice. One day there was this little basket in the bathroom, the next day it was gone. I didn’t get caught unprepared, but my deskmate did. Fortunately for her I have a stash in my locker.
About a month ago I noticed something written by a co-worker was…odd. It used phrases and terms I’ve never heard her use and the style was different. I plugged one of the more distinct phrases into Google and found the article she’d lifted, nearly word for word.
Rather than make a big scene, I changed the text and at our next meeting emphasized to everyone that plagiarizing work is unethical and hurts our credibility. I made it clear it’s possible to find the original article with two seconds and a search engine. She nodded with everyone else.
Today I get a new piece from her. Not only did she once again cut and paste off websites, she didn’t even make the half-assed effort to switch dates from British formatting to American. :mad: Guess what, Americans? Bloomsday falls during the 16th month this year.
I’m buying a book on integrity just so I can smack her upside the head with it.
Probably make more of an impact if you nail it to a copy of Ulysses first…
Hardcover.
Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter(s).
What is it about SPSS and IT departments?
At my last job, I was using SPSS on a regular basis for data analysis. Then during our move to another office space we were given new computers, and IT reinstalled all of our software, except SPSS. When I made a formal request to have it reinstalled, I was told that was not possible “because our contract only allowed unlimited licenses for one specific department.” When I asked why that hadn’t been mentioned the last time I’d asked for an installation, I got a lot of runaround and doubletalk, which troubled me because I’d had a good working relationship with IT, and I’d never been stonewalled like that before. Since our department needed my analysis, the issue quickly reached VP level, and he was referred to our legal department. Lo and behold, our attorney was baffled as to why IT would say that–our contract said nothing about licenses being limited to one department, because it was a company-wide contract. And yet, despite direct orders from the attorney, IT still refused to reinstall SPSS on my machine. For over a year, I had to physically go over to the “favored department” and run my analyses there. That wasn’t totally a bad thing, because I learned some things from their analysts, but it meant I had to be out of our department for an hour or two at a time, which did cause problems in our office.
Now to the new place. I found out that SPSS was considered a “zero-cost” program, meaning you could apply to have it installed at no cost to your budget line. Great, I thought, and I put in an order to have it installed. The first problem came when I got an angry e-mail back from IT complaining I hadn’t included a payment form. I e-mailed back saying, SPSS is zero-cost, there are no payment forms needed. Within a minute there was a call. No, you’re wrong, SPSS 21 costs your line $50. But I ordered SPSS 20, I replied. Grumble, grumble, click. Just three short weeks later, an IT worker showed up to install SPSS 20 on my machine.
End of the line? Of course not. Two days later another IT worker showed up, bearing a new computer. Apparently I’d run into the budget director a few weeks before and mentioned that I had a sluggish laptop that was breaking down, and our budget director, showing a generosity previously unheard of in her field, ordered me a new top-of-the-line machine. The IT worker set up the new rig, and it was great–ran everything fast, nothing crashed anymore. But SPSS was gone. So I sent in another form, explaining that I’d gotten a new machine and I needed to have SPSS 20 reinstalled. I heard nothing for two weeks, then got an angry e-mail back from IT asking why I’d asked to have software I’d already ordered reinstalled. I tried as patiently as I could to explain that IT had given me a new computer, and that they had not transferred over SPSS from the old machine. I heard nothing for two weeks. Finally I mentioned to our department IT rep what was going on. He said, yeah, they take a long time to get things done. I mentioned it had been a month now. He kind of blanched and said he’d make a phone call immediately.
This Thursday he asked me “Did they call you?” Nope. “They were supposed to call on Tuesday. They’re going to call you today or tomorrow, I guarantee.” As expected, no call or e-mail appeared. I’m going to be meeting with the Senior VP on another matter on Monday. He’s expecting me to start working on a data analysis project for him and the CEO of the company over the next two weeks. I wouldn’t want to be IT right now, let’s just say that.
Does someone in IT have a personal grudge against someone connected to this SPSS? Or is there just some serious childishness and laziness going on?
Well it’s two different companies, so if there’s a grudge I think it’s coincidental. But the strange part of it is that IBM, the manufacturer of SPSS, bends over backwards to get people to use vanilla SPSS (the theory I guess being that if people like the software they’ll buy more expensive versions of it). In particular, they make SPSS available very cheaply to students–and any student, not just those in stats or social sciences or other disciplines where data analysis is used. It’s been suggested to me that I just go ahead and buy SPSS myself, using my student ID from the community college where I’m taking a creative-writing class. The irony that it is faster and less troublesome to simply purchase the statistical software I need because I happen to be taking a creative writing course is approaching Kafka levels.
Do that.
Then submit an expense reimbursement voucher for it. Be sure to include:
Make 'em pay when they force you to do extra work to cover their failures.
Since it’s happened twice, your attempt to correct this without a big scene obviously isn’t working. (People who do this have a great capacity for not recognizing that it’s them being talked about.)
So you will have to make a scene about it to get it stopped.
But start with a small scene.
Schedule a meeting with you, her, the supervisor, and someone from the legal department. (Such plagiarizing can put your company at significant legal risk. Ask the lawyer to explain that.) Then you need to state specifically to her face, that she is the one that was being talked about, and that she must stop this activity. Be ready with the specific examples of what she ‘wrote’ and printouts of where she copied it from. The supervisor will have to specify the company expectations, and the consequences if her behavior soes not improve.
Ok, they are now installing SPSS. Which one of you tipped off IT? (Looks suspiciously around room)
Had a 2 hour Implementation Call planned on Thursday.
Due to a last minute assignment, it got pushed back to Friday. Friday rolls around, and technical difficulties result in 110 minutes of the 2 hour call being spent with our IT department talking with theirs. So, since we weren’t able to actually discuss the content of the intended meeting, we schedule a call for first thing, this morning.
15 minutes before the call, I get an email, asking if we can reschedule for tomorrow.
Thing is, with this particular part of the project, I can’t do anything further until we’ve had this conversation, so my hands have been tied for the better part of a week.
FFS employer, would you please get an online bill pay in place for our members? You’ve only been working on it for 6 months, and I hate taking inbound payment calls for two weeks out of the month.
The plot thickens. Since we aren’t allowed to telecommute any more, we asked if we can still flex our time. The local HR rep said yes. My boss asked his boss, who asked her HR. Her HR said No. WTF?