[TRENCHES] Thursday, July 16, 2015 - Talk About Human Resources
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Talk About Human Resources
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/talk-about-human-resources
Tardiness
AnonymousI worked for a video game / software company back in 2002. Unlike many of the stories submitted here, I was not in testing but in IT support. The job was a godsend as I had been unemployed, and I had to move across the state to take it. The pay was pretty poor, but it was though to cover living expenses. There was health insurance, but it didn’t kick in until six months. However, there weren’t any other choices, so I took the job.
I should have seen the warning signs. The company was so cheap that it bought used computers and refurbished parts that we were supposed to use to fix machines. When they bought new computers, they were so low-end and previous cycle that they didn’t really seem new other than the exterior. Other PCs were like Frankenstein’s monster; we literally scavenged dead PCs for parts. In some ways this was kind of fun, but then you remembered you weren’t working for some quirky start-up but a company that had over 600 employees.
The company had a cafeteria (owned and operated by the company itself), but the food was priced so high that I suspected the company might actually be profiting from its own employees. I always brought my lunch, which I promise you was noted by management. I’m not kidding; my director would make fun of me about it.
At the same time, I was going back to school part-time. I took evening classes, but because of traffic I always left promptly at 5pm to make it to 5.30pm class. I was usually late, but the professor was understanding. My boss (who was also taking classes part-time) told me if I had finished my work for the day, I could take off at 4.45 since it was only two days a week. Great!
Nearly six months into the job, I was summoned to my boss’s office. I had just finished a huge project, which required a lot of team leadership and time spent documenting on top of my normal day-to-day work. Hilariously, I went into the office expecting praise. It turns out they were firing me. I was told I wasn’t a team player (even though I had finished this project that involved 3 other team members), that I left early every day and used school as an excuse, and was often late in the morning. I was shown a print-out of my security-card swipes to enter the building, and all the late times were circled: 8.01am, 8.03am… etc. The vast majority of these times were within five minutes of 8am. There was no acknowledgement of all the times before 8am. When I explained that my supervisor said it was okay for me to leave early on the two days for school, he denied it to my director. I pointed out I only left early two days a week and my supervisor also denied that, claiming I left early every day. The situation was quickly becoming surreal, as these two men built a very detailed case on why they were firing me, which was based on lies and a “history of tardiness” that I had never been given a warning about.
Finally it clicked in my head, and I said: “OH. You are firing me because my health insurance (and other benefits) kick in next week.”
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Plus you said a vast majority of them were within 5 minutes of 8:00 so it seems you also have times you came in the door way past 8:05. I know you don't want to hear this , but that is considered a tarty employee.
Unfortunately... HR thinks I appreciated them a bit too much.
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In a TOTALLY unrelated query, anyone know of any companies hiring MBAs that've resigned from their previous company (without looking too much into the reason for resignation)?