Posts tagged workplace
Blame it on the alcohol!
Mar 1st
I will try to make this story as brief as I can. It’s so ridiculous. Since Novemeber 2009, I have been going out drinking with my boss..We are both female. We have always gotten along well. I have worked for her 3-plus years. Now my boss meets this male bartender through her female bartender friend. She develops a crush on him. So pretty much, she talks about him often. Asks for advice, etc. I am often with her 2 or 3 nights a week when we go to this bar. However, I would often leave after 2 or 3 drinks so they can spend time alone. She is basically a nice women. Good natured and educated. Anyway, this bartender is quite flirtatious at times. Now I know that’s part of the job. I myself am an on/off again bartender for the past 6 years. She takes everything he says seriously. Now I know pretty much that he is just gassing her up. But I do believe he valued her friendship and business. She begins trying to invite him back to her place. He declines the few times she asks..I give her my honest opinion (gently) but she insists on chasing this guy nearly every night. So now the month of November passes by and now it’s December. He puts his hands on me often enough. However, I do not take it too seriously because it might be part of his “bartender routine”. For the past couple of weeks in early December, she has been feeling rejected by him and also has been getting angry with him and starting arguments. Mind you, he has never made a date with her or called her or anything. She had told me he would be affectionate with her at times and I did witness that a couple of times. But I do simply think it was affection, not attraction. He was kind of leading her on a bit. But keep in mind, lots of bartenders act that way towards their regular patrons who spend money and bring customers in. So now she begins getting very angry with him and she refuses to go there for at least a week. She decides to send me in there for information. To sum it up: He gets me trashed (I know it’s very much my fault for allowing myself to get that way)and we make out in the bathroom. I didnt remember it afterwards. I must have blacked out. He told his friend a few weeks later about it. His friend told me. I didnt remember so I thought he was lying. But when I think back to this night , a portion of it was a blank. I then tell my boss what his friend said because I really didn;t think it actually happened. The bartender tells her it did and had the owner of the bar confirm that I was in the bathroom with him for 10 minutes. I convince her that I really didnt remember and things were ok with us. So I thought. A few weeks later in early FEbruary she starts suspecting we are having an affair behind her back. Keep in mind, she is basically a nice woman, but since November has been drinking nearly every night to sit with this bartender and keep him company. What I am trying to say, is that she has become paranoid…She tells my other coworker about her suspicions . I believe that she thought this because at the time, he was off on Saturday nights. I dont go out on Saturdays much because I have a child. I think she thought I was with him on Saturday nights.I really wasn’t.. she fired me via text message 3 weeks ago. She wished me and this bartender good luck together. I know I am an idiot for allowing this to happen. But keep in mind I did grow to like this guy as a friend and I trusted him so it never crossed my mind he would try to get me drunk and take advantage of me., I am very hurt by this. I was her manager and I wasn’t fired for a business reason. Also, I can understand her being upset. But not to this extent. Her judgement sucks from drinking so much lately. They are not dating. They are just friends ( well actually bartender/patron mostly) and they have never even been intimate at all>Well thats the summary of my story..,I tried to be as brief as possible. i really didn;t even leave out many details at all. Thats basically it in a nutshell…
This post was submitted by Dina.
Workaholics go to meetings
Chapter 2: Nice and Easy (part 2)
Dec 2nd
As I sat there wasting away minutes at useless calculations, I wondered why everything was bundled into one giant PTO pool. Imagine if baseball didn’t break down hits into singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. You’d be as confused reading the back of the baseball card as the manager trying to set the lineup. Being the statistical guru that I am, I separated everything into categories: PTO that is automatic (like holidays), PTO that is granted (like vacation), and PTO that is urgent (like sick time). This made perfect sense – PTO as a single category should not exist if you plan to track it. But no one really tracked it before. People just entered their PTO hours in the weekly time reporter and that was it. No one checked it, no one cared. But I decided that I would.
The owners were on board right away, and I was writing policy change notices before I knew it. Advance request requirements, half day options, the snowball had been pushed off and was barreling down at the speed of light. And in the midst of it all, there I was, like a wizard waving a magic wand, creating rules and policies, setting requirements… Little did I realize, this made life harder on everyone. Not that I cared. I felt power, I felt importance.
What the f**k did I know about setting policies? I wasn’t a business owner now, I had never been one before. I’ve been an employee my whole life, yet I was sitting there with a suit and tie and a smart ass look on my face setting up hoops for everyone to jump through. Everyone but those deemed exempt, those lucky few living outside the black and white of the policy world. And who would decide who is granted membership to this exclusive club? Why, I, of course.
Workaholics go to meetings
Chapter 2: Nice and Easy (part 1)
Nov 12th
Sometime deep into a closed door meeting it was decided that employees must be kept happy in their workplace. There was much debate about what mechanism would be used in this endeavor, but one fact was undebatable. Any benefits that were to be put in place, they were to come at a minimum cost to the company while providing the maximum effect for recruitment and retainment. This is nothing new. Every company looks to keep costs down while keeping its workforce intact, growing, prospering. And every company looks to provide a wide enough array of benefits that it believes will satisfy those looking for something special, something that few others receive at their jobs.
The brainstorming made their heads spin and their tongues hurt, and it was then that the first ace was pulled out of a 
sleeve and set the bar for the illusion of comfort and stability. Following in the footsteps of companies that love and appreciate their employees, this firm decided to set a “no limit” PTO (Paid Time Off) policy. Sounds great, doesn’t it? It sounded awesome when I first came across this concept. Just to think that there is no limit on how many days off I can take in a calendar year. No counting, no planning your days off months ahead. It started off that way for sure. No one in the company even gave this a second thought. If someone needed a day off, they just requested it, were granted it, and took it. If they needed a week off, same process. The trick for the supervisors was to look to the work ahead, rather than the amount of days off taken in the past. Nice and Easy.
In the grand scheme of things, however, this policy actually benefited the company as much as it benefited the employees. There’s something about human nature that keeps us civil, keeps us from taking advantage. With a policy devised specifically to be unlimited, it was remarkable how many people chose not to take advantage of it. And that’s where the company ate up the benefits. Grasp your mind around this concept – while there’s no limit on how many paid days you receive in a year, there are also no guaranteed days off. So if Joe Schmo worked his ass off for the entire year and took only 4 days off, there’s no fat check for the remainder coming. There’s no remainder to speak of. If Joe Schmo worked for a company that guaranteed employees PTO, even a basic package of say, 2 weeks vacation and 1 week sick, he would receive a check for the 11 days he didn’t take off. Or the PTO would carry over to the next year. Or if Joe was to quit or get fired, he’d receive a check for all the days that he earned and didn’t take. But not here. Here, if Joe took 2 days off or 12 days off, no one would really notice.
I’m not going to lie – there were plenty of Joes that took advantage. But there were also plenty of Joes that for whatever reason did not. They would wake up, come to work, do their time, and go home. The next day they’d do it all over again. And they only took off a day or a week during the holidays. May be an occasional sick day here and there. The system sparked my interest almost immediately. Are people afraid to ask for time off, I wondered? I had to research this further. It was an enormously useful recruiting and retention tool, yet was in effect a lesser cost than a standard PTO package. My interest was piqued. I had to quantify this phenomenon.
And then I fucked it all up…
Looking at porn at work?
Oct 29th
Does anyone really need to tell you that this is inappropriate and undoubtedly a fire-able act? DUH! Well, if other people are doing it…
Sure, that’s a valid excuse (may be for your mother). But even parents will have a quick comeback for such a lame excuse. Would you jump off the bridge if everyone’s doing it? I guess the police are excluded. An Illinois police officer was fired earlier this week for browsing pornography while at work. His excuse – even the Chief has pornographic imagery on his work computer, as well as pornographic magazines around the police headquarters. That’s great. Wait to you hear what the Chief said… “there is a difference between a Playboy magazine and the “hard core, obscene” images found on Hurst’s [the fired officer] computer,” Police Chief Michael Reidy stated after he decided that Hurst’s habit of looking at online porn violated department policy.
Wow. Don’t you feel much safer knowing that the Police department is out there, “serve and protecting,” and making sure that their Read the rest of this entry »
Who’s the B*tch?
Oct 21st
Working at a staffing agency, you really meet a lot of interesting people. As the person that screens every candidate – I hear the good and the bad – I hear it all.
Calming down before continuing an argument will work to your advantage
This woman called today, looking for a job. I was straight to the point in scheduling her for an interview but when verifying her e-mail address she accused me of having an attitude and calling me a bitch.When she asked to speak to my supervisor, I transferred her and she began yelling at my supervisor and my supervisor was just shocked at her language and herattitude. She told my supervisor that she was going to spread the word that we are a terrible agency. Read the rest of this entry »
This post was submitted by Gabrielle.
Workaholics go to meetings
Chapter 1: Entrance (part 2)
Oct 20th
I jumped right into work like a seasoned professional. Accounts receivable, accounts payable, QuickBooks, taxes. The only thing that really qualified me for the job was a nine-month stint doing bookkeeping for a small Long Island company. My Poly-Sci undergrad degree was of no help here, and even though I’ve taken several business classes, I knew nothing about running a company. But I HAVE been employed in a 
number of different settings ever since my sophomore year in high school, and felt comfortable handling bosses, owners, coworkers. But all those were small family businesses, all lacking the PC world of larger, “more professional” offices. These places also lacked the kind of office politics so many of us hate, yet are used to in the demeaning and impersonal corporate world.
There is a lot one can learn for an ethics or business course, but nothing could ever prepare you to be thrust into a social setting of brainwashed kids fueled by hopes and dreams, and the load of shit-sugar coating dumped on them by whoever they interviewed with. Yes, they were kids. The oldest was just about 23, as they were all recruited straight out of college and molded into an “ideal” employee. This made perfect sense after all, it’s much easier to start with a blank slate than to try to re-program a person’s mind. And it all came from the top. From both of them. And they were good. Very good.
The face of general politeness around the office hid beneath it not a trace of sincerity. The half-smiles, the eye nods, the group lunches, they were all present. Read the rest of this entry »
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