fuck this job.com

So I'm working at this temp-to-hire gig. The deal is that I work for the temp agency for 520 hours (13 weeks at 40 hours a week) and once that's over, the company itself is eligible to hire me. Well, this is the final day of week 13, but because I didn't get credit for memorial day or July 4, I'll be done Tuesday. My boss isn't sure what to do with that, so I called the temp agency and left a message.

They emailed my boss and told her that by their calculations, I won't be done with my indentured servanthood until August 10. I sat there in my boss' office and counted out the days on her calendar. Then she showed me the email.

Does anyone else have a job where you get no vacation/personal days whatsoever until you have been employed there for a year?

What's even more lovely in my case is that I'm a temp....so technically I'll be eligible for time off a year after my official hire date...so I will be working for this company for a year and three months before I can so much as ask for a single day off. Wheeeee!!!

Haven't posted in a while here....I suppose a lot of people thought I would graduate and never come back to visit my alma mater again. Well, as it turns out, I'm not back for a visit - looks like something got screwed up and I must have been a few credit hours short, because my diploma has been taken away. Soooo...I'm BACK!

I've given the job a chance....a two-month long chance. I have one more month left as a temp and I believe that after that time period, just as they can offer me a permanent position, I can give them a permanent "no" - so I'm hoping against hope that maybe I can have something else lined up....unless my job changes. And soon.

The other day there was a problem with an order I entered. It seems I left out a description that the plant needed, which I didn't know they needed. I had processed this order over a week beforehand, but apparently nobody caught it. So the plant sent out a memo asking for whoever entered the order to go back and add the necessary information. Simple, right?

Well, my boss irritated the hell out of me with the way she handled it. I was on lunch at the moment everyone got the memo, but due back in 20 minutes max. She immediately sent out a memo back saying "I'm sorry that the new girl didn't enter the description right." Excuse me, first of all, I am PERFECTLY capable of apologizing for my own mistakes and making them right. Second, by this point I deal with the people in the plant every day. Via email and phone, I'm betting I talk to someone out there at least ten times a day. They all know my name and they all know that I'm new. I feel incredibly degraded that one month into the job I was simply referred to as "the new girl." If she wanted to get a memo out to them quickly, she could have just said, "That was Katie's order, and I'm sure she'll be able to take care of the problem as soon as she gets back from lunch."

I've decided I'm not happy with the new job, and it's probably not going to get any better. I'm on my fifth week there, and they still haven't trained me on the international accounts, which were the specific reason they hired me. Needing someone bilingual was a joke; the sales rep in Mexico speaks fluent English. The only thing they have needed me to do in Spanish is calling him at home once, because a coworker had to call him there and his wife doesn't speak English. A few times, people have asked me to translate emails, but here's the thing - often it's just in the history; the customer and the sales rep converse back and forth and then the sales rep emails the whole thing along to our company, saying, "OK, this customer says he needs this and this..." So people ask me to translate the conversation in the history, when the sales rep had already summarized it in English. They're not training me to do anything new but treat me like a little kid if I happen to get something that's the exception to the rule and don't do it quite right....and believe me, a lot of things are exceptions. My boss still insists that I cc her on every memo I send, even though most of them are routine, and even though nobody is training me so I assumed I was out of training. If I forget she emails me asking me if I've responded to this person, taken care of this minor issue, etc., when it's stuff that I obviously WOULD do. Hey, maybe if you didn't read every memo I send, you'd have time to train me on the stuff that's in my job description! Plus, I'm bored. For me, being bored is MORE stressful than being overworked. I can't stand having absolutely nothing to do and having to sit in my see-through cubicle trying to hide my internet surfing from my boss and the company president - even though there's nothing job-related I could be doing!

So I don't mind the job so much; a bit mind-numbing, but it's not bad. All my coworkers have told me I've caught on really fast. There were a lot of people out of the office last week, so I ended up picking up a lot of the slack and I was doing more work than some people who have been there for years. I don't mind. I like being kept busy.

The only thing I don't understand is my boss. If this woman has something to say to me, she won't do it. She called the temp agency I'm working for because one morning my first week on the job, I was two minutes late. TWO minutes. I was transitioning straight from the restaurant there, I had worked eight days in a row and was getting used to the new schedule. So the temp agency called and "discussed" it with me. I told them they were insane. Then today she was going over all the orders from last week (I processed around 200) and two or three of them had minor mistakes. For a new person, I don't think that's bad at all; and once I found out, I took the necessary steps to fix them. NONE of them had any major consequences. Yet she told one of my coworkers what my mistakes were and had her go point them out to me. Wouldn't it just have been more efficient for her to tell me directly? Does she not realize that her unwillingness to tell me I made a mistake here and there makes them seem about ten times worse and makes me feel worse about them? Last week when we were temporarily shifting responsibilities due to 2 out of 6 CSR's being out, I changed from the territory I usually cover. I found out because I overheard her telling someone else. She also told them what she's training me on next, and when. Isn't this information she should tell me?

Yes, I quit the job a few weeks ago, but one of my best friends is still employed as a server there, God love her. So I've never been out of the loop as far as the goings-on...but what happened to her this past weekend is unbelievable.

It all started when she was having a bad day as far as personal issues, and had to put it all aside in order to smile at dumbass customers and feed their fat, lazy asses. She ended up having a horrible night - bad customers, no help from coworkers, etc. Her last table was extremely rude, and when she was trying to get help from another server, she referred to them as "bitches". Apparently they overheard, though she thought she was being quiet enough about it. Not smart, but somewhat understandable. You'd think she would be written up for swearing within earshot of customers (they even heard a manager drop the f-bomb while I was working there), and they could tell the customer she was referring to someone else. Since she's never been in trouble for something like that before, that's sufficient, right?

Ran into a former coworker at a bar last night. Apparently he used to work for the NY department of labor and he knows a thing or two about fair workplace policies. Anyway, he once saw a suit at a restaurant where the employees won. They were being sent home from training for having improperly ironed uniforms, thus denying them the opportunity to properly train for their job when they made errors during training. Well, that's exactly what they did to us when they opened the new restaurant. They were so insistant that our shirts be wrinkle-free that they sent my aforementioned coworker home every day of training to iron his shirt - even after he had it professionally dry cleaned and pressed and had the receipts to prove it. They tried to send me home for one wrinkle on the back of my shirt. I refused because I had a half hour commute, on a wet winter day, during which I would be in my car with the heat on, wearing a coat and a seatbelt. Of COURSE there may be a wrinkle on my shirt.

....you are all a bunch of fucking morons.

I now have what would be considered a "real job", meaning that I work day hours Monday - Friday in an office. How that automatically makes it a real job, I'll never know, but hey, I have one. It's gotta be a thousand times easier than waitressing. I could've done this job when I was a child. It's so much more low-stress, and I'm actually bored nearly to tears half the time.

They're training me to use the system, and I'm to the point where I can enter orders by myself. (I was actually doing it the first day; I'm not dumb.) So they give me orders every so often, but not especially difficult ones. When I'm not entering orders, I have nothing to do, and I enter about 20 every eight-hour day. My second day there I discovered the "back door" on my computer to access the internet. The first day I thought I was going to die. My third day I discovered that nobody around me cares if I play CDs on my computer. They've also given me some filing to do; they had me doing filing for a coworker the other day. I got halfway through the alphabet but didn't feel like it was fair; they didn't hire me to be her secretary. Once they gave me my own accounts to file (I'm CSR for all the international accounts, and the last person left them in a disorganized mess) it wasn't as bad. Filing sucks, but at least I know I was doing my OWN work.

Originally I was going to stay on waiting tables one day a week, because that job provides me with health insurance. The new position won't be able to offer insurance for 90 days. That would put me working six days a week, plus having the stress of my current job (they were going to stick me on Sundays, THE WORST DAY of the week to be a server!), PLUS the stress of getting used to a new job. However, knowing my luck, the day I cancel my insurance is the day my appendix will burst.

But then I did some thinking and some talking with our benefits department, and realized that my measly 2.13 an hour paycheck for one shift, after they take taxes out of it AND tax my tips, will not be enough to cover my insurance. Hell, my check BEFORE taxes won't cover my insurance. So I'll end up either owing money to the insurance people or back taxes. Figure in the fact that it's a 20-25 minute drive one way to the restaurant, and gas prices are insane....and I realized it's not worth it. It's BEYOND not worth it!

Why is it that I have a shitty job and I hate it, but in a way, I don't want to give it up???

I was just offered a position (finally!). It's a customer service job, in an office. It's not what I want to do with the rest of my life, but money will be a lot better and I think I'll enjoy the environment. It's laid-back; jeans and t-shirts are within the dress code, and swearing - as long as you're not swearing at a client - isn't frowned upon. I got it through a temp agency, and according to them, the woman who interviewed me loved me to death. Surprising, considering I went in for the interview feeling like shit at my spring allergic worst and must have had the personality of a warthog.

There seem to be a lot of new people here, and I haven't posted anything for a while related to the actual job rather than the job search. Plus, things have changed - not for the better - so I thought I'd mention some things. Yes, it's a bitchfest and a cry for attention. I'll say that now so that if you don't like it, don't read it. If you read it, you have no right to comment on it just to complain. There ya go. :)

My life right now is pretty good, actually. I met a man a little over five months ago who managed to sweep the formerly unsweepable me off my feet. He's fun to be around and treats me like the proverbial princess. He's always there when I need him to be, he's seen me at my best and worst and can respond appropriately to either, and I can tell him everything. I'm convinced I've found my soulmate. We basically live together now, for the love of spending time together as well as the fact that I can't stand my current roommates, who are uppity and choose not to understand the more free-spirited me, preferring instead to bitch about things that most definitely do not fall under the category of "things that should offend your roommate." Oh well. So I'm paying bills at one place, living in another (although most of my crap is still at my apartment), cooking him dinner to make up the difference, and am pretty damn happy to be with him. Should things work out, we're planning that the wedding will be fall of '06 - two years after we met.

So I interviewed for a job Friday....yet another one that seems like a great opportunity. It's interesting, carries a lot of responsibility, pays a decent amount with future raises, and is in the field I'd like to get into. The hours suck, but I could deal with that. That's the only thing I wouldn't like about the job. Plus, it's working for the county juvenile court (yes, working with juvenile offenders really IS in the realm of what I'd like to be doing with myself), which means government benefits. For once I'd have good insurance AND I could afford my new dream of graduate school, probably without much financial effort on my part.

One of my closest friends was in a car accident yesterday. Flipped her little Ford Focus and totalled it. She also happens to be a coworker of mine. So, she got a ride to the restaurant yesterday to see if she could get her shift covered for tonight, since she can't get her apartment key out of her car and wasn't sure when she could actually get back into her apartment. She was still a bit panicked when she got there, and apparently still bleeding a bit as well. While other employees were freaked out and telling her she should go get stitches in her hand, she got the GM's attention to tell her it was an emergency, she needed to talk to her really quickly. The manager stopped, looked at her, shook her head and walked away.

I am in shock. I always thought that employers were required to give breaks to their employees. Turns out, in 29 states, they're not required to give any breaks whatsoever.

http://www.dol.gov/esa/programs/whd/state/meal.htm

I don't believe it. The government doesn't have any sort of provision so that some of us poor shmucks can work 8 hours and at least get a chance to have a little food - a basic human need?? Grrr. I guess I have to keep working those 7-10 hour shifts with no food, walk out shaking from low blood sugar, and suck it up.