bird feed, food fish, and a flap

[sergebroom]

I spent most of the weekend going thru the final version of one of Sue's manuscripts to make sure there were no typos, or the same word repeated in two consecutive sentences, stuff like that. Sue normally does that herself, but it had to be turned in today and there was no way she'd be able to do that while also working on the first draft of another manuscript. All in the line of duty, ma'am.

Last week at the office was marked by headaches as I was trying to get a handle on one of my projects. I finally figured out what I needed to do, but I had a lot of help. Besides that, during the staff meeting, the co-worker who can't pass a chance to undermine me in front of everybody didn't miss the chance to do so when I mentionned that the mainframe programs I created a decade ago seldom if ever fail. His bringing up the one time in recent memory where one did fail got the response he deserved, all quite professionally worded of course. On the plus side… I got a gift card from my boss's boss and from my boss's boss's boss after my boss put in a good word for me. Why? Remember how the mainframe troubles that meant I had to provide some support on my birthday? The card's total value was in the low 3 digits, and very welcome. Most of it is gone already. One third went to much needed bird feed for the local volatiles. One fifth was spent on dinner with Sue before we went to see Beowulf and, instead of the usual fancy hamburger, I treated myself to some salmon. Another third was spent on getting a replacement flap for our minivan. The old one just fell off and it's no fun driving without any way to shield yourself from the sun's autumnal rays.

But the boss giveth, the boss taketh… Or the boss's boss's boss's way at the top doth.

Because of a recent lawsuit, some California companies are switching many employees from a you'll-work-60-hour-weeks-but-still-get-paid-for-40-hours status to one where you'll get paid for overtime. Sounds great? The problem is that the boss now says there's no money in the team's budget to pay for future overtime and so we're not supposed to work more than 40 hours a week. We have to learn to be more efficient. Of course, yours truly doesn't reach the conclusion that he'll have to work unrecorded hours to keep up with the work load because he knows that having problems keeping up would never be interpreted as a sign of inefficiency. Oh well. There will be some compensation for the all those extra hours I piled up during the last 24 months though.

Comments

[sajia.livejournal.com]

Poor you. Guess the Internet didn't really change everything, eh?

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

The internet means that you have no justification not to work from home, alas. Well, we shall see what comes out of this new overtime policy. It's going to be amusing to have them justify a bad yearly review (should that be what I get) on those ground if I throw back at them that, when my boss and my boss's boss announced the new policy to me, they said how important to the team my contributions are. My fingers are crossed.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

As I grow older, the conclusion that the world is run by idiots becomes more and more inescapable.

[miltonthales.livejournal.com]

If you're like me, Fragano, you figured that out the first time you had any dealings with a large bureaucracy (in my case, first the U of Arizona Administration, then the US Navy), and nothing in your experience since has changed your mind.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That's true (except for the details).