I just looked anyway...damn, nothing that pays better than what I make now, and frankly I do not want to work in the Children's Zoo...nothing against the critters, just against the kids. *sigh* I shoulda majored in wildlife biology or zoology. I miss being up to my elbows in anacondas
hearing voices... anacondas... Cylarana, have you even considered that you might speak Parseltongue?
After a news report pointing how badly one of our stores did on tech repairs they sent me out there to fix it, this forces me to call someone in early and me leave at a certain time... Before I even remotely go I ask if Overtime is approved and they say yes.... (District Manager over everyone in the district says yes)
So Tuesday rolls around and the store gets a call from District Ops Manager who says No, make him go home early... So I make a phone call to the district person above me, who says "Don't worry about it"... I get a call later on that says "Yeah, don't go into overtime" and another that says don't worry about, then another says says don't do it.... Son of a bitch if I'm only allowed to be at work for 3 hours making have to rush to call people in to get proper coverage of the repairs bench.... Granted it was nice to have a half day, but still....
Apparently it is because I've not had a week without overtime since Christmas has passed... Reality is though that for every hour of overtime I got I can say exactly where it came from and why it had to be there, from doing something the district asked me to do, to an employee quitting unexpectedly, to poor staffing from no people worth hiring in the area...
re: Sick Days - some of you may find this amusing. My family is chock full of federal agents, and one member's "head office" for their branch sent out a nasty letter effectively telling the agents that they were "on to them" and had found that 40% of sick days were called in on Mondays or Fridays, meaning that the agents must have been lying and using them for 3 day weekends. Let that percentage/fraction sink in...
Without seeing the email, I'd have to guess this was a joke. It's basically just a word-for-word Dilbert strip.
re: Sick Days - some of you may find this amusing. My family is chock full of federal agents, and one member's "head office" for their branch sent out a nasty letter effectively telling the agents that they were "on to them" and had found that 40% of sick days were called in on Mondays or Fridays, meaning that the agents must have been lying and using them for 3 day weekends. Let that percentage/fraction sink in...
Without seeing the email, I'd have to guess this was a joke. It's basically just a word-for-word Dilbert strip.
Both stories Grendel has said are internet "this totally happened to my friend" stories.
Fuck, are you up in the Ohio area? I'd give my left nut to work in the Cincinatti zoo. I mean that literally too, they have a killer herp house. I can live with one teste if it means getting to deal with Fea's Vipers and Boloens Pythons and all those wonderful rare chelonians they have...zoo work is the bomb, even if you do get bit sometimes.
Nah, Grand Rapids MI. The zoo in question is John Ball, which while small is awesome and has a huge, brand-new chimp habitat that I'd kill to work with.
One of my co-workers took a 50-minute break last night. He went to break at 4:10. I went to break at 4:45. I beat him back out on the floor at 5:00. He didn't take kindly to me calling him a "lazy, work-dodging fuckhead."
I once worked for a PC games studio where two of the designers, who were female, although that only has tangential relevance, somehow got it into their heads that they could take up to 1 sick day every two weeks. So they wouldn't show up on average 1 day out of every 10.
No one ever told them they were wrong, mostly because their desks were very close to the President's office, who, when introducing visitors to the Design department, would point both of them out and name them, and then move on to the next department, completely glossing over the guys in the team.
At least, my own boss was awesome, at the time. It was the first real job in my "career", even though it was just game QA, but one of the first things my boss told me when I started was, "If you're sick, stay home. We don't want to all get sick because you're afraid you're gonna lose your job if you call in sick."
The standard in most companies I've worked for since then has been 6 sick days per year, no rollover onto next year, and no "bonus" for any remaining sick days at the end of the year. I find this to be fair, as long as everyone is reasonable: even if you take the occasional sick day as a "personal day" instead, as long as you don't go over, no one needs to complain. And if you get very sick and need more leave, some things can be negociated (and it's normal not to expect full pay for an extended sick leave; however, it's not normal to fire someone because of extended sick leave.)
I get 10 sick days per year. For several years running, I maxed them out (we don't get any bonuses for not using them up), but last year I decided to cut back a bit. By the time my performance appraisal was up (October or so), I had used 5.
Apparently this wasn't good enough, and was brought up in said performance appraisal. Cutting sick time usage by 50% wasn't enough of an improvement.
I used 3 more by January 1st.
I'm half tempted to use one every month or two (I still have all 10), because I'm an old, bitter and unappreciated man.
Apparently my bosses wouldn't know positive reinforcement if it mugged them in a well lit alley.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Luckily, if I ever quit or am fired, any comp time I have left over is added to my last paycheck. So if I have four weeks of comp time for whatever reason, I get it. Basically, another months worth of pay.
I don't know why all companies haven't just moved into classifying everything as general time off. If people want to take a day off, they'll call up and make some fake coughing. If they're sick and out of sick time, they'll call it a vacation. Why make liars out of people when the reason for not showing up doesn't make any difference to the company?
I don't know why all companies haven't just moved into classifying everything as general time off. If people want to take a day off, they'll call up and make some fake coughing. If they're sick and out of sick time, they'll call it a vacation. Why make liars out of people when the reason for not showing up doesn't make any difference to the company?
I'm sure it is highly variable between companies, but often there are significant legal and financial differentiations.
For example, I have three different types of "off-time" available: 3 floating holidays (i.e. Personal Days), a couple weeks of Emergency Time (i.e. Sick Days), and three weeks of vacation (i.e. ...uh...Vacation Days).
Now, the "floating holidays" are there so that there can be no claims of religious discrimination - however, if I do not use them I do not get reimbursed for the time. Alternatively, while my vacation time does not roll over I am reimbursed (i.e. cashed out) for any time not used. Meanwhile, emergency time is obviously “use it or loose itâ€.
If all the days were lumped together, all those various time purposes would be a huge mess.
I don't know why all companies haven't just moved into classifying everything as general time off. If people want to take a day off, they'll call up and make some fake coughing. If they're sick and out of sick time, they'll call it a vacation. Why make liars out of people when the reason for not showing up doesn't make any difference to the company?
I'm sure it is highly variable between companies, but often there are significant legal and financial differentiations.
For example, I have three different types of "off-time" available: 3 floating holidays (i.e. Personal Days), a couple weeks of Emergency Time (i.e. Sick Days), and three weeks of vacation (i.e. ...uh...Vacation Days).
Now, the "floating holidays" are there so that there can be no claims of religious discrimination - however, if I do not use them I do not get reimbursed for the time. Alternatively, while my vacation time does not roll over I am reimbursed (i.e. cashed out) for any time not used. Meanwhile, emergency time is obviously “use it or loose it”.
If all the days were lumped together, all those various time purposes would be a huge mess.
The company would just have to make the decision if all (or a set limit/fraction) the time is "use it or lose it" or if they can be "cashed out" or if they all roll over to the next year. And there would be no difference between sick days or vacation days. "Oh, your not going to be in today? Ok, I'll just take 8 hours out of your paid time off."
At work we have this weird, mutant policy called "paid time off."
We don't get sick time, or vacation time, or even holidays. Every single occasion for which you might ever take off work is thrown into a big pot of PTO time. Sick? Take a PTO day. It's Christmas? Take a PTO day. Problem is, this leads to a bunch of advanced mathematics whenever you take time off to make sure you have enough time left over at the end of the year for Christmas. Take off too much time before that, and no paid Christmas off for you. But whatever you don't take doesn't roll over to the next year. It's a pain.
On the plus side, PTO time doesn't have any stigma attached to it, so we're actually encouraged to take the three days of PTO designated as "sick days" even if we don't get sick. So if you're healthy, you get extra days off.
I can't prove this, but I think we switched from a traditional system so the company could take advantage of a legal loophole and not pay employees their remaining vacation time when they quit/are laid off.
cloudeagle on
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
2 years "on the floor", 1 year in Dispatch, 3.5 doing cushy Access Control stuff.
I really should find something more lucrative / rewarding / less soul crushing, but ... meh ... it pays the bills.
I work for a company that does DVRs but we're getting in the first stuff for access control in now. I get set up a panel and a swipe card system for testing next week.
Almost forgot the most vexing part of the PTO system.
You earn PTO as you work, and it's reflected in your paycheck how much you have at any given point.
However, the PTO you earn now is supposed to be used next year. So the paycheck statement has the PTO you've earned for next year so far mixed in with the PTO you have remaining for this year.
Unless you keep very close track of how much PTO you've used so far (again, this is sick time, holidays, vacation, etc.) it's nigh-impossible to tell how much time you have left without advanced math. Grah.
I don't know why all companies haven't just moved into classifying everything as general time off. If people want to take a day off, they'll call up and make some fake coughing. If they're sick and out of sick time, they'll call it a vacation. Why make liars out of people when the reason for not showing up doesn't make any difference to the company?
I'm sure it is highly variable between companies, but often there are significant legal and financial differentiations.
For example, I have three different types of "off-time" available: 3 floating holidays (i.e. Personal Days), a couple weeks of Emergency Time (i.e. Sick Days), and three weeks of vacation (i.e. ...uh...Vacation Days).
Now, the "floating holidays" are there so that there can be no claims of religious discrimination - however, if I do not use them I do not get reimbursed for the time. Alternatively, while my vacation time does not roll over I am reimbursed (i.e. cashed out) for any time not used. Meanwhile, emergency time is obviously “use it or loose itâ€.
If all the days were lumped together, all those various time purposes would be a huge mess.
The company would just have to make the decision if all (or a set limit/fraction) the time is "use it or lose it" or if they can be "cashed out" or if they all roll over to the next year. And there would be no difference between sick days or vacation days. "Oh, your not going to be in today? Ok, I'll just take 8 hours out of your paid time off."
The problem with lumping them into one bucket is that most people will then view them as vacation days and since they don't want to 'waste' their vacation days when their sick they'll come into work which is a bad thing for everyone. There's also the problem with roll over as if they take that away you run into the problem where some years you may not use all your days and you either screw everyone over come December or make some sort of deal with your boss to get around the system.
I think the big problem is accounting for it. Vacation time is essentially a benefit for the worker, so someone having extra vacation days would be essentially "owed" those days to them by the employer, so these days are counted as a liability. This is why a lot of companies want their employees to use up their sick days, since if they don't use them, they will end up with huge liabilities to their employees, which looks bad on the balance sheet.
Sick days, on the other hand, are days the worker can take off due because it's mandated by law, so even if someone doesn't take those sick days, the company doesn't "owe" them anything, and it's not accounted for.
Combining both doesn't really make sense, since they're not the same. The employee might view them as being the same, but they're handled differently.
I don't know why all companies haven't just moved into classifying everything as general time off. If people want to take a day off, they'll call up and make some fake coughing. If they're sick and out of sick time, they'll call it a vacation. Why make liars out of people when the reason for not showing up doesn't make any difference to the company?
I'm sure it is highly variable between companies, but often there are significant legal and financial differentiations.
For example, I have three different types of "off-time" available: 3 floating holidays (i.e. Personal Days), a couple weeks of Emergency Time (i.e. Sick Days), and three weeks of vacation (i.e. ...uh...Vacation Days).
Now, the "floating holidays" are there so that there can be no claims of religious discrimination - however, if I do not use them I do not get reimbursed for the time. Alternatively, while my vacation time does not roll over I am reimbursed (i.e. cashed out) for any time not used. Meanwhile, emergency time is obviously “use it or loose it”.
If all the days were lumped together, all those various time purposes would be a huge mess.
The company would just have to make the decision if all (or a set limit/fraction) the time is "use it or lose it" or if they can be "cashed out" or if they all roll over to the next year. And there would be no difference between sick days or vacation days. "Oh, your not going to be in today? Ok, I'll just take 8 hours out of your paid time off."
The problem with lumping them into one bucket is that most people will then view them as vacation days and since they don't want to 'waste' their vacation days when their sick they'll come into work which is a bad thing for everyone. There's also the problem with roll over as if they take that away you run into the problem where some years you may not use all your days and you either screw everyone over come December or make some sort of deal with your boss to get around the system.
This. Also, while you could limit/fraction out time it would be a nightmare for the bean counters. The employees at my company are legion, and a lot of them are "remote" from the 4 primary home offices (about 10,000 or so field personnel alone). Lots of ticking hours to fraction out.
On another related note: Mental illness in the workplace. I don't mind saying this here because I wouldn't know ya'll from Adam so it doesn't really invade my privacy...I wound up telling my boss I hear voices that aren't there. She asked me what was wrong one week because I guess I was obviously peaky, and it just sorta came out. They'd been real bad that week...wearing me the fuck out. Couldn't sleep, couldn't get it on with my wife, etc. It's happened off and on since...mid or late teenage years so I've lived with them a bit. But now I'm worried that I'll be a sympathy case and I don't fucking want that either. Fuck. ANyone else deal with anything similar?
Yeah, I don't think it's too unusual if you hear voices inside your head. I always figured that was what people meant by listening to your conscience. I'm not an expert on anything but I often have different conflicting voices in my head saying different things. It's more of a problem if they're saying things that arn't positive which can happen if I'm feeling depressed or stressed out. If it's affecting you in a negative way I'd, at least, consult a doctor.
This isn't really the thread for this though, you might want to make a thread in the Help & Advice forum where people can talk about it more indepth.
So I helped this strange, very old Japanese man change his flat tire in the parking lot of the gas station I work at. He had some archaic screw-jack and a tiny, tiny tire iron, so it takes me something like 30 minutes to complete. The whole time he was telling me about some restaurant he owns in a town that I drive past every weekend, and how I said I'll have to go eat there and stuff.
After I'm done, he thanks me profusely for nearly 15 minutes and tells me he owes me, I saved his life, and that he'll pay me back the next day, etc etc. I thought I had dropped off enough hints to get a lifetime supply of food from his pancake restaurant, but instead he showed up the next day with a dark grey sweater.
Even though I haven't worn a sweater in maybe 12 years, it still made me pretty happy. He also went to all the other employees telling them how great I am, which was incredibly embarassing. >.<
Wow. Maybe hes gay?
No, he's just an old Japanese man. They do things like that over there, especially the older generation. For reals. They don't expect tips for good service. But, gifts are not uncommon at all. They remember and appreciate. Of course, you gotta remember and appreciate back. I still get a bottle of Midori every year for my birthday for helping a guy who did distribution for Suntory back in 1998 by networking his home.
Man, I don't get customers. I'm not saying you should always take extended warranties (I know I rarely do), but they are NOT scams, or at the very least, not always. It's not like they're 100% profit (for Staples, I think it's 60%. So, basically, out of a million dollars in warranties, we give back 400K to customers in the form of repairs, shipping and buyouts).
For me, it really depends on the appliance. I was offered a $10 replacement plan on my girlfriend's $30 Insignia DVD player. Yeah, don't think so. However, when you're talking about things that I know can easily burn out or have little issues develop with after a few months, and it's over a couple of hundred dollars, then I'll start to think about it.
So working at a high-end company does not mean 'high class' amongst the employees. Somebody at the place I work, ACS a Fortune 500 company, POOPED IN AN URINAL!! Seriously poop...in the urinal.
They piss all over the seats here. I know which group of people it is, but because the folks who are doing it are all Indian contractors, I'm kind of afraid to say anything because it will probably come out like "the Indians are pissing on the toilet seat", even though I don't really mean it in that way.
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tuxkamenreally took this picture.Registered Userregular
Fuck, are you up in the Ohio area? I'd give my left nut to work in the Cincinatti zoo. I mean that literally too, they have a killer herp house. I can live with one teste if it means getting to deal with Fea's Vipers and Boloens Pythons and all those wonderful rare chelonians they have...zoo work is the bomb, even if you do get bit sometimes.
Nah, Grand Rapids MI. The zoo in question is John Ball, which while small is awesome and has a huge, brand-new chimp habitat that I'd kill to work with.
Apparently nobody else is concerned with the meat/fish department worker wanting desperately to get a job at the zoo.
Because of the nature of my job (Strongly commissions based) people NEVER take days off. Miss a Saturday? That could easily cost you $800 over a month in lost sales. There have been quite a few times were people have rocked up to work far too sick to actually do anything other than infect everyone around them. Most of the time they get set home with pay (that doesn't eat into their PTO) or, if they refuse that, flat out fired.
We get sick days and holidays, that both rise with the hours you work. Over a year you get 1 month worth of holidays and 2 weeks worth of sick leave, if you don't use them you lose them.
Also, you may remember a few pages back i was worried about how they where going to shaft me out of my money? Well they attempted to, but all it took was one phone call that went like:
"Hey, HR guy, its noobert"
"Oh, hey"
"I've got a question about my pay slip, i was paid out at the *large store rate* when we had agreed to *small store rate*"
"Ahh no worries, i'll change that rite away for you"
Fuck, are you up in the Ohio area? I'd give my left nut to work in the Cincinatti zoo. I mean that literally too, they have a killer herp house. I can live with one teste if it means getting to deal with Fea's Vipers and Boloens Pythons and all those wonderful rare chelonians they have...zoo work is the bomb, even if you do get bit sometimes.
Nah, Grand Rapids MI. The zoo in question is John Ball, which while small is awesome and has a huge, brand-new chimp habitat that I'd kill to work with.
Apparently nobody else is concerned with the meat/fish department worker wanting desperately to get a job at the zoo.
See, we get the PTO thing rather than "sick days" or vacation days. Every month you get an updated sheet with how many days you have off accrued. It's really easy and (mostly) people are good at you know, being reasonable with them. We do discourage taking vacations during hurricane season though, simply due to the fact that our calls go through the roof. But really , no one cares too much. You can carry over 10 days/year, and if you're laid off or quit, you can get paid for up to 10 days you have. It works well for us. There's also an amazing degree of flexibility in terms of special circumstances.
And the voices--they're actual audible. I'm clear headed enough not to think they're real, but good christ they get freaking annoying as hell. It always sounds like they're over my damn shoulder. Thank god it's intermittent. And I do have a dr. appt :P It helps working for a non-profit, and having faimly and friends that are physcologist.
So, anyone know what it's like to work help desk for a large company?
Depends.
Some companies it can be a very rewarding job and you get to see a lot of sides of the business. Some companies it can be a hellhole from which you never return and where you forget who your family is.
Don't make the mistake of "I'll go work at a big technical company... the users will be more intelligent there and understand computers." You have no idea how stupid engineers and IT people can sometimes be, or how pushy. I probably like working for accountants more than any other group... they just want things to work and add up. If it doesn't do that, they'll be up in your ass. But, if it does that and if the system doesn't crash during closes, they'll be your bestest customers ever.
The guy who took a 50-minute break yesterday got verbally raped by my department manager. And the store manager. He spent from 3-11 up front on the tobacco register so the CSMs could keep an eye on him. To rub it in, when my friend and I got off at 10:30, we went through his line. He'll be lucky if he has a job by this time next week.
Also:
"Hey, I'm looking to buy two TVs, and I want a deal on them."
"...deal? What kind of deal?"
"I want a special deal. Don't make me go to Rex (shitty big box wannabe store with notoriously stupid salespeople), now."
"Well, sir, this is Wal-Mart. Our prices are more or less set in stone. I can't give you money off because you're buying two TVs."
"But you'll be making money!"
"Sir, we don't work on commission."
"So you're not going to sell me anything?"
"Sir, I'm more than willing to sell you what you need, but I can't cut a deal for you just because you're buying more than one of something."
"That's bullshit! I want to talk to a manager!"
"Sir, management's busy with other things today and I can't really bother them to come out here and just repeat everything I've told you. Have a nice day."
"I'll be calling up and talking to your department manager!"
"You're welcome to. Her name's Kathy and she'll be here from 6-3 tomorrow morning. Have a nice day."
High on the list of things you do not want to hear when you walk in to the office at 8am: (multiple users) "xThaNx, we can't log in to our computers - fix it!" Hm. Ok. Go to my computer, attempt to log in - not that I don't believe the people in the office, but it's better for my sanity to make sure that the logging in really is a problem. Yup, epic fail on the log-in. Ok fine - go to server room and check on server... and find out that at some point between 1am and 7:30am, the server has decided to lock-up. Completely and utterly unresponsive - which leaves me with the options of A) hard re-booting it or hard re-booting it. Bearing in mind this is Windows Server 2k3 for small business... yeah, I'm not overly thrilled with these choices, but there you go.
As you can probably imagine, all sorts of wackiness ensues. By "wackiness" I of course mean "The server decides to lock-up while rebooting, last known good config doesn't work etc etc etc etc." Many hours of trouble-shooting later with a senior engineer from the company we contract most the heavy lifting IT stuff to (which of course included everyone in the office coming by going "Is it working yet?" - No it's not fucking working. If it was working I would have come and fucking told you all it was working and you could log in), the problem is finally diagnosed to exchange data being corrupted. Suffice it to say - not a lot of work got done today.
High on the list of things you do not want to hear when you walk in to the office at 8am: (multiple users) "xThaNx, we can't log in to our computers - fix it!" Hm. Ok. Go to my computer, attempt to log in - not that I don't believe the people in the office, but it's better for my sanity to make sure that the logging in really is a problem. Yup, epic fail on the log-in. Ok fine - go to server room and check on server... and find out that at some point between 1am and 7:30am, the server has decided to lock-up. Completely and utterly unresponsive - which leaves me with the options of A) hard re-booting it or hard re-booting it. Bearing in mind this is Windows Server 2k3 for small business... yeah, I'm not overly thrilled with these choices, but there you go.
As you can probably imagine, all sorts of wackiness ensues. By "wackiness" I of course mean "The server decides to lock-up while rebooting, last known good config doesn't work etc etc etc etc." Many hours of trouble-shooting later with a senior engineer from the company we contract most the heavy lifting IT stuff to (which of course included everyone in the office coming by going "Is it working yet?" - No it's not fucking working. If it was working I would have come and fucking told you all it was working and you could log in), the problem is finally diagnosed to exchange data being corrupted. Suffice it to say - not a lot of work got done today.
If you are allowed or whatever, get a spare machine and install nagios or other monitoring software to send out an email when something breaks to whoever would be in charge of servers at night. While it sucks being woken up at 1 am, having 90% of the work done before 8am, will make the rest of your day a lot easier.
Also to stay on topic.
Customer needed a backup restored on a server. Easy enough. I restore it. 5 minutes later, can you restore it again, I did the same thing that broke it last time....
3 restores later he stops doing what he was doing. Won't tell me what that was either...
Small background, I work disputes and fraud for MANY different pre-paid debit cards. The program this came from, the Customer Service reps are horrible abominations of customer service.
Me - Disputes, my names Veevee. How may I help you?
Bonehead - I have a reference number to give you.
Me - I'm sorry, but reference numbers are a customer service thing. I have no access to those reference numbers. Can I have your card number
BH - blah blah blah
Me - *after verification* How can I help you
BH - I have a reference number
Me - As i said, reference numbers do not mean anything, they are just a number that is given to a customer service rep when they enter notes (most of which are entered into a separate system than I have access to). How can I help you?
BH - But I have a reference Number!
Me - Ma'am, as I said, that number will mean absolutely nothing to me, could you please describe your problem to me?
BH - But my reference number!
Me - Either you can describe your problem to me so I can help, or I will disconnect this call.
BH - But they said you could help from my reference number, now help me!
Me - I would be more than happy to help you, but first I need to know the problem before I can help you.
BH - But, the number is blah blah blah, now help me!
Me - Ma'am, once you can tell me what the problem is, you are more than welcome to call back *number goes here*. Until then, please have a good weekend *click*
I have exactly that problem all the time. In my case it's the reference number for a loss adjuster/disaster recovery firm/contractor/supplier rather than a policy number.
I have exactly that problem all the time. In my case it's the reference number for a loss adjuster/disaster recovery firm/contractor/supplier rather than a policy number.
Just tell me your surname and postcode, Damn it.
We do not use any confirmation numbers or anything in this department, all the info is stored under the card account. I had one guy who would not let me end the call until I gave him a confirmation number, under the guise that unless he got one then he couldn't trust me that the job would be done. By the end, I told him that his confirmation number was "1234" and he was satisfied and finally hung up.
A few days later he called back and referenced the number for a co-worker, who was confused until I told him the story.
Small background, I work disputes and fraud for MANY different pre-paid debit cards. The program this came from, the Customer Service reps are horrible abominations of customer service.
I used to work in IT for a small up-and-coming pre-paid debit card provider. I remember hearing all of the horror stories when I was working there and it's gotten even worse since I left. I think the most fun thing in the world was that they reduced the number of ID verification "hits" required to issue a card, they ended up issuing hundreds of accounts to dead people. Or maybe it was finding out that they were going through with their plan for hiring cheap labor in southern states (otherwise known as "Remote Agents") without their partner banks' approval.
I still keep in touch with people I worked there with because, well, when you go through that kind of hell with a group of people - you tend to bond really well. Only because a lot of people I know from there are still there has kept me from reporting them to the BSA... yet.
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hearing voices... anacondas... Cylarana, have you even considered that you might speak Parseltongue?
After a news report pointing how badly one of our stores did on tech repairs they sent me out there to fix it, this forces me to call someone in early and me leave at a certain time... Before I even remotely go I ask if Overtime is approved and they say yes.... (District Manager over everyone in the district says yes)
So Tuesday rolls around and the store gets a call from District Ops Manager who says No, make him go home early... So I make a phone call to the district person above me, who says "Don't worry about it"... I get a call later on that says "Yeah, don't go into overtime" and another that says don't worry about, then another says says don't do it.... Son of a bitch if I'm only allowed to be at work for 3 hours making have to rush to call people in to get proper coverage of the repairs bench.... Granted it was nice to have a half day, but still....
Apparently it is because I've not had a week without overtime since Christmas has passed... Reality is though that for every hour of overtime I got I can say exactly where it came from and why it had to be there, from doing something the district asked me to do, to an employee quitting unexpectedly, to poor staffing from no people worth hiring in the area...
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Holy shit! Sony's new techno toy!
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And besides if my pythons and boas could talk I'm pretty sure it'd be like "Hey, dumbass, give me another mouse!"
Without seeing the email, I'd have to guess this was a joke. It's basically just a word-for-word Dilbert strip.
Both stories Grendel has said are internet "this totally happened to my friend" stories.
Hello from Kalamazoo!
2 years "on the floor", 1 year in Dispatch, 3.5 doing cushy Access Control stuff.
I really should find something more lucrative / rewarding / less soul crushing, but ... meh ... it pays the bills.
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
I once worked for a PC games studio where two of the designers, who were female, although that only has tangential relevance, somehow got it into their heads that they could take up to 1 sick day every two weeks. So they wouldn't show up on average 1 day out of every 10.
No one ever told them they were wrong, mostly because their desks were very close to the President's office, who, when introducing visitors to the Design department, would point both of them out and name them, and then move on to the next department, completely glossing over the guys in the team.
At least, my own boss was awesome, at the time. It was the first real job in my "career", even though it was just game QA, but one of the first things my boss told me when I started was, "If you're sick, stay home. We don't want to all get sick because you're afraid you're gonna lose your job if you call in sick."
The standard in most companies I've worked for since then has been 6 sick days per year, no rollover onto next year, and no "bonus" for any remaining sick days at the end of the year. I find this to be fair, as long as everyone is reasonable: even if you take the occasional sick day as a "personal day" instead, as long as you don't go over, no one needs to complain. And if you get very sick and need more leave, some things can be negociated (and it's normal not to expect full pay for an extended sick leave; however, it's not normal to fire someone because of extended sick leave.)
Check out my new blog: http://50wordstories.ca
Also check out my old game design blog: http://stealmygamedesigns.blogspot.com
Apparently this wasn't good enough, and was brought up in said performance appraisal. Cutting sick time usage by 50% wasn't enough of an improvement.
I used 3 more by January 1st.
I'm half tempted to use one every month or two (I still have all 10), because I'm an old, bitter and unappreciated man.
Apparently my bosses wouldn't know positive reinforcement if it mugged them in a well lit alley.
I'm a temporary Part-time employee. So if I'm sick I call them and tell them. They don't care, because if I'm not at work, they aren't paying me.
Luckily, if I ever quit or am fired, any comp time I have left over is added to my last paycheck. So if I have four weeks of comp time for whatever reason, I get it. Basically, another months worth of pay.
I'm sure it is highly variable between companies, but often there are significant legal and financial differentiations.
For example, I have three different types of "off-time" available: 3 floating holidays (i.e. Personal Days), a couple weeks of Emergency Time (i.e. Sick Days), and three weeks of vacation (i.e. ...uh...Vacation Days).
Now, the "floating holidays" are there so that there can be no claims of religious discrimination - however, if I do not use them I do not get reimbursed for the time. Alternatively, while my vacation time does not roll over I am reimbursed (i.e. cashed out) for any time not used. Meanwhile, emergency time is obviously “use it or loose itâ€.
If all the days were lumped together, all those various time purposes would be a huge mess.
BNet: StandrdError#1826
The company would just have to make the decision if all (or a set limit/fraction) the time is "use it or lose it" or if they can be "cashed out" or if they all roll over to the next year. And there would be no difference between sick days or vacation days. "Oh, your not going to be in today? Ok, I'll just take 8 hours out of your paid time off."
We don't get sick time, or vacation time, or even holidays. Every single occasion for which you might ever take off work is thrown into a big pot of PTO time. Sick? Take a PTO day. It's Christmas? Take a PTO day. Problem is, this leads to a bunch of advanced mathematics whenever you take time off to make sure you have enough time left over at the end of the year for Christmas. Take off too much time before that, and no paid Christmas off for you. But whatever you don't take doesn't roll over to the next year. It's a pain.
On the plus side, PTO time doesn't have any stigma attached to it, so we're actually encouraged to take the three days of PTO designated as "sick days" even if we don't get sick. So if you're healthy, you get extra days off.
I can't prove this, but I think we switched from a traditional system so the company could take advantage of a legal loophole and not pay employees their remaining vacation time when they quit/are laid off.
I work for a company that does DVRs but we're getting in the first stuff for access control in now. I get set up a panel and a swipe card system for testing next week.
God I love new toys.
You earn PTO as you work, and it's reflected in your paycheck how much you have at any given point.
However, the PTO you earn now is supposed to be used next year. So the paycheck statement has the PTO you've earned for next year so far mixed in with the PTO you have remaining for this year.
Unless you keep very close track of how much PTO you've used so far (again, this is sick time, holidays, vacation, etc.) it's nigh-impossible to tell how much time you have left without advanced math. Grah.
The problem with lumping them into one bucket is that most people will then view them as vacation days and since they don't want to 'waste' their vacation days when their sick they'll come into work which is a bad thing for everyone. There's also the problem with roll over as if they take that away you run into the problem where some years you may not use all your days and you either screw everyone over come December or make some sort of deal with your boss to get around the system.
Sick days, on the other hand, are days the worker can take off due because it's mandated by law, so even if someone doesn't take those sick days, the company doesn't "owe" them anything, and it's not accounted for.
Combining both doesn't really make sense, since they're not the same. The employee might view them as being the same, but they're handled differently.
This. Also, while you could limit/fraction out time it would be a nightmare for the bean counters. The employees at my company are legion, and a lot of them are "remote" from the 4 primary home offices (about 10,000 or so field personnel alone). Lots of ticking hours to fraction out.
EDIT: Grammar.
BNet: StandrdError#1826
This isn't really the thread for this though, you might want to make a thread in the Help & Advice forum where people can talk about it more indepth.
PSN = Wicker86 ________ Gamertag = Wicker86
For me, it really depends on the appliance. I was offered a $10 replacement plan on my girlfriend's $30 Insignia DVD player. Yeah, don't think so. However, when you're talking about things that I know can easily burn out or have little issues develop with after a few months, and it's over a couple of hundred dollars, then I'll start to think about it.
They piss all over the seats here. I know which group of people it is, but because the folks who are doing it are all Indian contractors, I'm kind of afraid to say anything because it will probably come out like "the Indians are pissing on the toilet seat", even though I don't really mean it in that way.
Apparently nobody else is concerned with the meat/fish department worker wanting desperately to get a job at the zoo.
I'm on to you.
Games: Ad Astra Per Phalla | Choose Your Own Phalla
We get sick days and holidays, that both rise with the hours you work. Over a year you get 1 month worth of holidays and 2 weeks worth of sick leave, if you don't use them you lose them.
Also, you may remember a few pages back i was worried about how they where going to shaft me out of my money? Well they attempted to, but all it took was one phone call that went like:
"Hey, HR guy, its noobert"
"Oh, hey"
"I've got a question about my pay slip, i was paid out at the *large store rate* when we had agreed to *small store rate*"
"Ahh no worries, i'll change that rite away for you"
And he did, got the extra money rite away.
Noooo, my plans are foiled!
And the voices--they're actual audible. I'm clear headed enough not to think they're real, but good christ they get freaking annoying as hell. It always sounds like they're over my damn shoulder. Thank god it's intermittent. And I do have a dr. appt :P It helps working for a non-profit, and having faimly and friends that are physcologist.
Some companies it can be a very rewarding job and you get to see a lot of sides of the business. Some companies it can be a hellhole from which you never return and where you forget who your family is.
Don't make the mistake of "I'll go work at a big technical company... the users will be more intelligent there and understand computers." You have no idea how stupid engineers and IT people can sometimes be, or how pushy. I probably like working for accountants more than any other group... they just want things to work and add up. If it doesn't do that, they'll be up in your ass. But, if it does that and if the system doesn't crash during closes, they'll be your bestest customers ever.
Also:
"Hey, I'm looking to buy two TVs, and I want a deal on them."
"...deal? What kind of deal?"
"I want a special deal. Don't make me go to Rex (shitty big box wannabe store with notoriously stupid salespeople), now."
"Well, sir, this is Wal-Mart. Our prices are more or less set in stone. I can't give you money off because you're buying two TVs."
"But you'll be making money!"
"Sir, we don't work on commission."
"So you're not going to sell me anything?"
"Sir, I'm more than willing to sell you what you need, but I can't cut a deal for you just because you're buying more than one of something."
"That's bullshit! I want to talk to a manager!"
"Sir, management's busy with other things today and I can't really bother them to come out here and just repeat everything I've told you. Have a nice day."
"I'll be calling up and talking to your department manager!"
"You're welcome to. Her name's Kathy and she'll be here from 6-3 tomorrow morning. Have a nice day."
XBL : lJesse Custerl | MWO: Jesse Custer | Best vid ever. | 2nd best vid ever.
As you can probably imagine, all sorts of wackiness ensues. By "wackiness" I of course mean "The server decides to lock-up while rebooting, last known good config doesn't work etc etc etc etc." Many hours of trouble-shooting later with a senior engineer from the company we contract most the heavy lifting IT stuff to (which of course included everyone in the office coming by going "Is it working yet?" - No it's not fucking working. If it was working I would have come and fucking told you all it was working and you could log in), the problem is finally diagnosed to exchange data being corrupted. Suffice it to say - not a lot of work got done today.
If you are allowed or whatever, get a spare machine and install nagios or other monitoring software to send out an email when something breaks to whoever would be in charge of servers at night. While it sucks being woken up at 1 am, having 90% of the work done before 8am, will make the rest of your day a lot easier.
Also to stay on topic.
Customer needed a backup restored on a server. Easy enough. I restore it. 5 minutes later, can you restore it again, I did the same thing that broke it last time....
3 restores later he stops doing what he was doing. Won't tell me what that was either...
On the second or third trip in at short intervals I would've told him that we cannot go it again until he tells us what he was doing....
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Holy shit! Sony's new techno toy!
Wii Friend code: 1445 3205 3057 5295
True. Although all I did was hit the up key in Terminal and hit enter. So didn't really involve anything complex.
Me - Disputes, my names Veevee. How may I help you?
Bonehead - I have a reference number to give you.
Me - I'm sorry, but reference numbers are a customer service thing. I have no access to those reference numbers. Can I have your card number
BH - blah blah blah
Me - *after verification* How can I help you
BH - I have a reference number
Me - As i said, reference numbers do not mean anything, they are just a number that is given to a customer service rep when they enter notes (most of which are entered into a separate system than I have access to). How can I help you?
BH - But I have a reference Number!
Me - Ma'am, as I said, that number will mean absolutely nothing to me, could you please describe your problem to me?
BH - But my reference number!
Me - Either you can describe your problem to me so I can help, or I will disconnect this call.
BH - But they said you could help from my reference number, now help me!
Me - I would be more than happy to help you, but first I need to know the problem before I can help you.
BH - But, the number is blah blah blah, now help me!
Me - Ma'am, once you can tell me what the problem is, you are more than welcome to call back *number goes here*. Until then, please have a good weekend *click*
Just tell me your surname and postcode, Damn it.
We do not use any confirmation numbers or anything in this department, all the info is stored under the card account. I had one guy who would not let me end the call until I gave him a confirmation number, under the guise that unless he got one then he couldn't trust me that the job would be done. By the end, I told him that his confirmation number was "1234" and he was satisfied and finally hung up.
A few days later he called back and referenced the number for a co-worker, who was confused until I told him the story.
That customer is a genius.
That's the kind of code an idiot would put on his luggage!
0431-6094-6446-7088
I used to work in IT for a small up-and-coming pre-paid debit card provider. I remember hearing all of the horror stories when I was working there and it's gotten even worse since I left. I think the most fun thing in the world was that they reduced the number of ID verification "hits" required to issue a card, they ended up issuing hundreds of accounts to dead people. Or maybe it was finding out that they were going through with their plan for hiring cheap labor in southern states (otherwise known as "Remote Agents") without their partner banks' approval.
I still keep in touch with people I worked there with because, well, when you go through that kind of hell with a group of people - you tend to bond really well. Only because a lot of people I know from there are still there has kept me from reporting them to the BSA... yet.