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I work in a very strange office environment. Here I am right now, at my computer, gray cube walls and no windows even if I did get up and look over the walls. It is very office-like. I will likely have to write a memo today, and I will definitely have to update project timelines. I have attended three meetings today already, and it isn't even noon yet. I have just finished producing powerpoint slides for someone else's presentation. To my co-workers, this is work. This is important stuff. I am a scientist. When I am not stuck attending meetings where nothing useful happens, I abandon my cubicle, turn left and go through the decontamination room into my laboratory. I shut the door, put on headphones, and I do mad loving awesome poo poo. This awesome poo poo is apparently completely unimportant, and needs to be interrupted about four times a day so that I can go to meetings, sit there for 1-2 hours per meeting, and spend about two minutes explaining that I have nothing new to show them because I've had to spend 4-6 hours per day in meetings for the last six months. Every hour I spend stuck with people wearing suits is an hour I'm not spending with people wearing lab-coats. How the gently caress am I supposed to get anything done like that?
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Apr 21, 2010 16:21
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Gorilla Salad posted:"In the shipping department a forklift hits a crate and there's a chemical spill. Workers complain of nausea and dizziness, but the agent hasn't been identified as actually harmful. What do you do?" Funny that you mention this. One of the cost-cutting measures here last year was the elimination of all first aid kits in the laboratories and in their associated buildings. That's right. To try to cut costs... they removed the only things we have for quick and easy injury maintenance in the laboratories. I work with fairly heavy machinery by lab standards, and it would be possible to lose a hand in an equipment malfunction. They have removed the tourniquets to save... oh... $5.00? That's apparently how much an employee's life is worth, given my building is cut off from road access, preventing any emergency services from getting here either. Apparently this is legal, too. All they have to do is supply eye washes and an overhead shower. I was surprised when I looked that up. quote:The same people who always go on about employee loyalty are the first ones happy to throw them under a bus at the first opportunity. This can sum up everything in corporate life, I've found. 
Sundae fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Apr 21, 2010 |
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Apr 21, 2010 19:43
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Yes USA. Nope, entirely legal. OSHA was even notified by one of my lab co-workers, and the response was that the only obligations are to provide safety glasses, appropriate protective gloves (nitrile), and eye-washes / safety showers. Edited for more info.
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Apr 21, 2010 19:51
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veedubfreak posted:Firstly, i'd like to give a big gently caress YOU to all you people who get bonuses. What's a bonus? (2.1% raise here, btw. Salaried Employee average was 1.9%. CEO and CFO got over 12%.)
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Apr 21, 2010 21:28
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Enilev posted:There's definitely no regulation against it. I work at a national lab, and we don't have first aid kits. If we get injured, we're supposed to go to medical and get it treated (or call 911 if it's an emergency). Their reasoning is that way they can keep track of injuries and bug your supervisor about whatever unsafe thing caused it. Enilev - do you have any idea whether or not it's legal to not have access to emergency services or medical departments and still pull that? That's the case at my place. Our company's medical clinic is 15 minutes away from my laboratory, meaning it isn't feasible to reach if you've injured yourself. Additionally, there is no emergency access to the building if you have to call 911, and there is no street route by which to bring an ambulance to it. You'd have to have the ambulance go through the main security area, take a stretcher into an elevator, run it about 1/3 of a mile down a bunch of various halls, take a second elevator, and then go about another 1/3 of a mile just to get to where the injury took place. Repeat in reverse to get out.
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Apr 21, 2010 21:52
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standardtoaster posted:So...there are corporate people who enjoy their jobs even if they feel underpaid? I'd say that I like my job when I don't have to sit in meetings. I love my labwork - very fulfilling to manage to solve (insert problem X here) when it's been a thorn in my side for months. I don't feel underpaid compared to where I could be - I'm definitely underpaid compared to the rest of the people in my department, though. I don't want to work in corporate. I want to work in research. That's why I applied to Research and Development. I just somehow seem to get dragged into corporate hell all the time. (Not that this answered your question any, given I hate the corporate side.  )
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Apr 21, 2010 22:12
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blugu64 posted:Office work sucks, at least the instant coffee is free. HA no it isn't. A small costs $2.99. I have never been so happy to not drink coffee as I was when I started here.
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Apr 22, 2010 14:12
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burmart posted:Courts "Blue Pencil" the hell out of those agreements if they go to court. Generally, the lower the level employee you are, the less and less those things are enforceable. Most employees don't know this, and live in fear of these agreements. I certainly hope they do. My NCA technically claims that I may never work for another company or research firm in this field, ever. I can't imagine that one holds up in court. (I also can't imagine it's even enforced, given how many scientists we lay off.)
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Apr 22, 2010 15:15
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FogHelmut posted:I don't know what the big deal with jeans on Friday is. My haggar slacks are pretty comfortable. Big pockets, plenty of crotch room. I am very happy that casual Fridays don't apply to me. It is well-understood that I am supposed to be a lab peon, so all those dress rules don't apply. Jeans, nice sneakers, and a polo shirt are sufficient for pretty much everything except presentations. If I know I'm going to be in the lab all day, sometimes I even go in with crummier stuff than that. gently caress corporate attire. It does nothing for me.
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Apr 23, 2010 03:12
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Better than that! Unless you guys allow casual clothes, you can't even wear it in the one place it'd make sense! 
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Apr 23, 2010 19:06
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KevinCow posted:I've had a corporate job for about a month now, and I have just one question for those of you who have been doing it for years: How have you not shot yourself yet? I can already feel it draining my soul away. The secret is to hopefully have a higher paycheck there than you would elsewhere. If not here, I'd be in academia. Would my research be more interesting? Probably. Would I write less memos and talk less about stepping forward into new paradigms of ISO readiness? Probably. Would I make less than half my current salary? Absolutely. The job pays for what I do outside of work, and my hours really aren't bad. I spend very little time at work compared to what I see some people saying (I probably do 35 hours a week roughly). That's how I justify it. I deal with dumbasses and buzzwords for 35 hours a week, and the sun's still up when I leave. I'm paying off my loans at a pretty good speed, and that's the important thing right now.
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Apr 24, 2010 04:27
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marketingman posted:I hate the office politics but is it wrong for me to like suits and dressing "well"? A nice french cuff shirt always makes me pretty happy. Sorry Yes, this makes you a horrible, horrible person. Those of us fighting the good battle, the battle of polo-shirts and jeans, are undermined at every turn by traitorous redcoats like you!!! I have no idea what I just typed.
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Apr 25, 2010 16:15
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My company took the "FISH" program and tried to implement it to raise employee productivity. It's stupid poo poo in the first place, but here's info... http://www.charthouse.com/content.aspx?name=home2 Like everything they touch, FISH turned out to be a miserable train-wreck. Their implementation of the Fish program was as follows: Fish cards. Here's how they work at our company, using an actual example... I go do some work for an initiative of mine. It saves our department $1M per month in efficiency costs. Meanwhile, my project has gone into bizarro mode and I have had to fly to France eight times (I'm in the USA normally) for about a total of three months to get it back on track. I fix it up, the income for this is about $130M annually. My total contribution to the company, as an individual: $12M + a portion of $130M (I'm not the only person on that project). Not bad for one person, right? Manager signs me up for a FISH card, which arrives in an e-mail. quote:"Congratulations! Your manager has sent you a Fish card for adhering to (company) values and making this company the way it is today! Fish cards are good for $2.00 at the company cafeteria. No cash value, may not be redeemed, no change given, and cannot be applied to vending machines. It might be worth noting that a single Fish card will not cover the cost of a small coffee. That's it. That's a Fish card. It is a piece of poo poo that reminds you how little the company values you, in the most explicit means possible.
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Apr 28, 2010 20:21
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kissekatt posted:Out of curiousity, how well-paid (if at all?) were the hours you put into it? I know that US tends to be rather odd when it comes to salary, but over here they would have been reamed by the costs for emergency overtime in the middle of the night. I can't vouch for him, but "salaried" workers in the USA usually get neither overtime, late-hours, or weekend pay. Whatever your salary is, annually, is what you get. It's also not that likely that you'll get any meal breaks, either, even though that part's pretty much illegal. Illegal is irrelevant when illegal is unenforced. Example from my company: Biologists working in cell-cultures have their usual salaried shift, which will run about 8:30-5:30 or so. Any meetings at our company are being moved to a mandatory 11:30-1:00 block (phasing it in, meaning all your meetings will be during lunch time). We have a "no food in meeting rooms" policy. Technically you have a lunch break, but you can never actually use it. Those biologists do not have any cover for their culture maintenance on nights and weekends. If you need to be doing reagent changes, you get your rear end into the lab on weekends. If your cells die while you're on vacation, your rear end is fired. Thus, you do not take vacations unless you trust someone else to handle your stuff for you and not screw it up (and find someone willing to come in off-hours for no pay). There is no reimbursement for the time of coming in to handle stuff on weekends or at night.;
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Apr 28, 2010 21:15
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quote:Not being allowed to take vacations is outright theft. Report it to your state labor department, or gently caress it and organize. Eight hour day and five day week my rear end. Reporting it's about all you can do. You can't organize if everyone is so loving stupid and/or brainwashed that they think this is how it should be. My project in France is a real eye-opener in the sense that I got to see the enormous differences in quality-of-life between the workers for our company's overseas divisions versus the ones here. Even more, though, it was an eye-opener in watching my co-workers make fun of the French advantages. They spent dinner making fun of the vacation schedules, the long lunch breaks, the proper hours, etc. Not a single word uttered by anyone along the lines of "hey, why the gently caress don't we get any of this poo poo?" (I keep my mouth shut since I am far and away the minority in my viewpoints.) In short, similar pay-scales (we get slightly more than they do), we have vastly inferior benefits and longer hours, ridiculously shorter vacation schedules, and somehow in the eyes of my co-workers, the French are the laughable ones? To put it another way: If I worked my entire career here, as long as I lived, I would never reach the vacation-accrual granted to entry-level employees at our french sites. They start at 7 weeks, apparently, and our maximum after 30 years is 6 weeks. We start with 3 weeks and gain another week every decade. Sundae fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Apr 28, 2010 |
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Apr 28, 2010 21:57
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Solkanar512 posted:This loving blows my mind. I can't understand it either. As far as I can tell from listening to them and saying "ah" or nodding at appropriate times, they seem to act like the work ethic itself is the important part. "Well, those frenchies are lazy shits... but ME - I'VE GOT VALUES! (I WORK TO IMPROVE OUR CEO'S YACHT COLLECTION!)" I'd write it off as pure ignorance, except there's a ridiculous mental disconnect that makes me think they've all been brainwashed by AM radio. In regard to the salary differences, it's hard to get an exact comparison because the roles in the company are a bit different. Theirs is a manufacturing site with some associated office-work, while ours is a research site. If I was to compare a project lead on the research end with its corresponding manufacturing coordinator on their side of things, though, we'd see about $90K-120K versus EU65K-95K. After you deal with currency conversions, it's really not that far off of what we're getting over here. There are some differences once you compare cost of living, but it's nowhere near as far off as some people seem to think compensation is, at least within our company. The area itself isn't that expensive to live in compared to some areas in France (Tours region), and when you draw a comparison to the surprisingly expensive little bubble in the USA where our site is, the costs are fairly similar. Home ownership would be drastically more expensive in that area than here, but other than that, it's actually pretty comparable.
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Apr 29, 2010 19:06
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Umiapik posted:I've read these posts about holiday entitlement in the USA with my eyes popping out of my head with disbelief. Is it really normal to only have 2 weeks annual holiday in the USA? Do some people really only get 5 loving DAYS holiday a year in their full-time jobs?!? There are businesses in the USA that count their employee's annual leave in HOURS?!?!!! Absolutely this is normal here. It's absolutely disgusting, but for some reason, even the people given those conditions seem to think it is normal. There are no federal laws requiring any vacation days whatsoever. There are no laws requiring, for private-sector employees, that any federal holidays or religious holidays be observed / permitted to be observed. Most companies will do only the absolute bare minimum to actually retain workers relative to their immediate competition. You'll likely get Christmas and July 4th off, or at least 1.5x salary during them, for example. There *are* federal laws requiring employees, in some fields, not be allowed to use their vacation days, go on strike, or otherwise leave work at a reasonable time if it in any way inconveniences other people. (Examples: Nurses, air traffic controllers, etc.) My mother accumulates 4 hours of vacation time per week as an ultrasound technologist. It is, as a result of her medical profession, illegal for her to go on strike, take vacations in the event of any hospital-declared emergency, or leave work at all in the event of a county, state, or federally declared emergency. She was stuck at work for three days straight, full 24-hour shifts, during a major snowstorm late last year after Nassau County declared a state of emergency. Due to being salaried, no compensation was given for the event. Additionally, one woman who left at the end of her usual shift because she had a daughter at home was terminated. In almost every state in the USA, you can be fired for no reason whatsoever. There is a list of causes for which you cannot be fired (non-discriminatory stuff), but burden of proof is (in every state I know of) on the terminated employee to prove it. Additionally, some states allow the company to charge the terminated employee for their time if his court case results in subpoenas for documents or employee testimonies. The USA's employment system is hosed beyond comprehension I'm afraid.
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Apr 29, 2010 20:43
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TasmanianX posted:Go to Biotech while you still can! Until my company buys you.
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Apr 29, 2010 23:06
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Rustybear posted:This is the truth. No matter how bad corporate bullshit gets remember that blue-collar stuff is way worse. Same high school politics only irregular hours, irregular pay, physical exhaustion and health problems. Very, very true. I hate 'corporate life', but it's still way the gently caress better than those summer manual labor jobs in high school. I'll smile and nod at assholes all day before I'll carry piles of bricks up and down ladders again. quote:Now, for my question: Why, in the US, does your previous workplace have a say in whether or not you get unemployment? Do they have to pay for it? Indirectly, they pay for a part of it. Unemployment Insurance (as the program technically is called) is paid in part by federal and state payroll taxes. Your employer *does* pay for it in that sense, but not in the sense of an immediately visible payout. The catch is that, like every other social welfare program in the USA, it falls way short of what it should and could do because of dumbasses who think that it demotivates finding work (completely not true). As with most things in the US, you can blame this pathetic system on conservatives and badly used state-rights. In reality: * The vast majority of US citizens are actually ineligible for it. (Contractors, self-employed, part-time, 'for cause' firings, and some cases of company bankruptcy are not covered.) * Your unemployment benefits are taxed as income both at federal and (I think also for all states) at state level. * Unemployment caps at a certain number of months, varying state by state, and the income you get from it is based on your previous income. Less previous income means less unemployment. You have to prove weekly in most states that you're still eligible for it, and the payment is usually close to or below federal poverty level before taxes. Some states also have other catches. Let's take your notification period as an example. Had you been given a notification period in the USA (  ), if you left before your notification period ended, you would not have received unemployment. You voluntarily left your job. If you accepted a severance package, depending on your state you would not have been eligible for unemployment. That would technically override your unemployment insurance and count for it in its place.In some states, if you are receiving other federal or state aid, you are ineligible for unemployment. For example, a permanently disabled person unable to work does not receive unemployment insurance. They would (hopefully, maybe) receive another form of (underfunded) welfare aid, but not unemployment. As an example, my girlfriend didn't bother with unemployment after losing her job in New Hampshire last year. Due to her former income, she would be receiving $76.00 per week. Due to where she would have to go every week in person to prove she was still eligible for unemployment insurance, she would spend over 1/2 of it on gasoline just to get there and back. It would not be worth losing a full day of job-hunting and interviewing just to receive $30ish after taxes. Sundae fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Apr 30, 2010 |
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Apr 30, 2010 17:18
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Astro7x posted:
In her case, it was actually less - they gave a higher percentage for lower incomes, slightly. She was in a "stipend internship" at $7,000 per year, if I recall her salary correctly. Basically, slave labor for graduates who can't find a real job. She absolutely had to her weekly process in-person, not online, which made it a lot harder. (Personally, I'm happy they laid her off from that shithole. It wasn't an internship - it was an abuse of labor laws. Hotel chains shouldn't be allowed to call their receptionist positions INTERNS.) quote:Ugh... secret layoffs are the worst. Especially when you work with those people as apart of your job, and you find out 4 days later that the reason they aren't responding to your e-mails are because they've been fired and nobody has been trained on the tasks you need them to do! I hate this. They've done that to me on two of my projects now. My supply-chain contacts simply ceased to exist, with no replacements or notification to the project team that we no longer had anyone to get us our poo poo. It absolutely wrecks project timelines.
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Apr 30, 2010 18:25
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Doctor Butts posted:You forgot to mention you have to pay income tax on unemployment benefits you receive! You mean the second bullet point directly below the line you quoted? quote:* Your unemployment benefits are taxed as income both at federal and (I think also for all states) at state level.
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Apr 30, 2010 19:59
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A Rabid Llama posted:Also, I have a hard time believing that 90% of the people in this thread don't work for AT&T. Jesus Christ I hated that place. I'd be willing to bet that 90% of our CEOs know someone on AT&T's board of directors, though. Perhaps that is the explanation.
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Apr 30, 2010 20:27
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I noticed the opposite, actually. The pay reduction was massive (50%) in academia, the hours were far longer (8:00-8:00 was fairly normal, as I had to schedule myself around when PhD students were in the lab), and the faculty were all sorts of awesome. That being said, it was a laboratory manager position for a bioengineering program - not exactly an office position.
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May 1, 2010 18:52
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Depends... what day of the week is it? More specifically: The reporting structure from my department has been rearranged five times since I started here... which was only a bit over 2 years ago. I have kept my primary boss, which is nice. I keep growing more and more dotted lines, though. I currently have my primary supervisor, my project supervisors (two of them), and my initative supervisor. So, 4 bosses at present.
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May 2, 2010 19:32
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I'd add a clarification, though, that some fields may result in you never managing to get out of debt due to the cost of your education. Look into the costs and rewards of your field ahead of time. My girlfriend absolutely loves her job - illustration - but art school is not cheap, and illustrators are not well paid. She's sitting on $65K in loan debt, and she makes $15.00 an hour with no benefits. The job's great, but she's going to be in debt until the day she dies. Edit: Or until I end up marrying her and taking on almost double my own student loan debt as a result. 
Sundae fucked around with this message at 18:21 on May 3, 2010 |
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May 3, 2010 18:15
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Today had two highlights: #1 - The cabinet of office supplies is now locked. When I need new pens, I have to e-mail our secretary and get her to bring them to me. #2 - I find out whether I get laid off on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Came back from my vacation to an e-mail about our department's layoffs. Yay! OFFICE SPEAK(c) of the Day! "Managers will be having face-offs with lower-tier colleagues on Tuesday and Wednesday to communicate to you what your path in the future company is, and whether you're a Go Forward employee or not."
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May 3, 2010 21:59
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Solkanar512 posted:Why in the gently caress are they giving fearful employees a day or two to wreck havoc in the workplace? I mean poo poo, if you're going to lay someone off, lay them off. Don't make them wait to see if they're on the list or not. Solkanar - this layoff round has been threatened since November. We were supposed to know 'just before Thanksgiving'. Then they changed it to 'before the Christmas break'. Then right before Christmas, they changed it to 'after you all come back'. Then it was March. Then it was April. Now finally they're telling us we'll know by Thursday. Meanwhile, they *were* laying off other people, just our department somehow got pushed back and back. Any damage that could have been done has been done, I expect.
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May 4, 2010 00:35
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That is a perfect summary of basically everything that is making me want (to try) to get the hell out of this country as soon as my loans are paid off. The USA's work culture is absolutely atrocious.
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May 4, 2010 14:35
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I am OK posted:I never realised the US was that bad. When are you guys gonna get off your arses and loving revolt, because seriously. I hesitate to use this expression, but it seems to be increasingly suitable to describe it: Common workers in the USA are brainwashed. They think this is how it should be, to the point where they will protest against things that benefit them and vote against their own interests. Combine that with work being almost commingled with religion in a way, and you have a system which cannot be questioned without being almost a heretic. For USA goons, think about how people play up a hard-working life as being a good thing, in the sense of "good vs evil" rather than a "for the good of society" thing. If you want more than 'your fair share' as determined by your employer, you're clearly a greedy bastard who will someday rot in hell. American Exceptionalism exists, but not in quite the way people here seem to think it does.
Sundae fucked around with this message at 16:19 on May 4, 2010 |
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May 4, 2010 16:16
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It really does feel like that! I have no idea how one would go about proving it short of having a big poll with that exact question, and even then people would answer 'no' a lot just because they'd sound like idiots if they answered yes. It's a really bizarre, screwy situation.
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May 4, 2010 16:37
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Solkanar512 posted:So can I ask those who are reading this and are against unions, why? I promise not to jump down your throat, flood you with data or generally be a dick. I just want to hear why. Hope you're prepared for anecdotes from cousins who knew a guy who...
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May 4, 2010 17:35
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Well, I ended up keeping my job, but I got reassigned to a really, really lovely division of the company. I'm assigned to the division whose job is to figure out new ways to squeeze money out of drugs that we've already made. "Lifecycle Management" division. Basically, a department to figure out how many ways we can release a boner drug under different names while not actually adding anything new to it. At least before this I was working on novel compounds. Now I get to deal with even MORE people in suits! WOO.
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May 4, 2010 18:24
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Too late. They've already cut ours down to a max reimburse of $8,000 a year, and you have to pay for it in advance. They then reimburse if you maintain a 3.3 GPA or higher while continuing full-time employment with them. If you had to take a loan for that $8,000, you are not entitled to any interest repayment by them. Additionally, they only approve three specific programs, not a single one of which costs that little. The kicker - they changed this two years ago and made it apply to people who were currently in programs as well. Yes - retroactively. Every single person I know who was in the program had to drop out, because they could no longer afford to continue it after the change. (Coincidentally, every single one of them got laid off too.)
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May 4, 2010 20:15
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Was USA really 1:1? Anecdote and what-not, but the trend in my industry is to hand me an assignment in November and then claim I've had it since July. I've got more of a 1:0.5 really.
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May 5, 2010 18:04
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Wake_N_Bake posted:I worked my way up from the bottom by convincing the owner(s) of my value, and demonstrating it. This isn't even possible in an enormous number of companies. I literally cannot reach managerial level. It is 100% impossible based on our HR department's promotion rules. In fact, based on those, it is all *but* impossible for me to even reach the senior levels of my own job function. I will get one, possibly two promotions over the next 38 years. (Well, no, because I will not stay here 38 years... but still.) That will put me at PhD entry-level position, and that is the highest I will ever attain.
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May 5, 2010 20:10
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jackyl posted:So change jobs within the company... Of course it is impossible if you stay doing the same thing over and over and over and over. I will actually have to leave the company first. You cannot transfer to a higher-level position within the same company. The way you actually get promoted here as a non-exec is to apply to another company at a higher position than your current one, stay there a few years, then get hired back by your original company at yet another higher position. Here's our internal rules in short-hand: #1 - You may not be promoted more than once in ten years. #1b - You cannot receive a rating greater than "meets expectations" in your first year in a new position or promotional level. #1c - You must have multiple consecutive 'exceeds expectations' years to be eligible for a promotion. 85% of employees will receive "meets" or lower, in a skewed bell-curve. #2 - You must fulfill both performance, experience, and promotional-time requirements in order to reach a new position. #3 - Internal percentages of each class of employee must be maintained. If a promotion would throw off those percentages, it cannot be done. #4 - You may not attain a managerial position without a MBA, period. #5 - Internal transfers may only be lateral or downward. You may not apply internally to a higher-ranked position. #5b - You may not apply for internal transfers within your division of the company. Sundae fucked around with this message at 20:21 on May 5, 2010 |
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May 5, 2010 20:18
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Macintyre posted:It will slowly change; the younger generations now more than ever value their life outside of work. The younger generations also aren't being hired. quote:* 12.5% for foreign-born That's the U-3 unemployment for people ages 18-29 in the United States as of April, 2009. They are unemployed at a rate of almost double the full population. This also doesn't count under-employed, ineligible for unemployment benefits, or the 'gave up looking' categories that U-6 would cover.
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May 6, 2010 15:02
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Macintyre posted:Yep, because old people aren't leaving their jobs. It's completely unscientific, but ask around, most places that offer jobs with good pay & benefits are almost entirely void of people aged 18-29. I'd totally believe it. I'm the youngest person in my department, 100ish people, at age 27. February of last year, we had an 830-person layoff in which over 600 were under the age of 30. There aren't any left here, really.
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May 6, 2010 15:55
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Just got back from a meeting. We have been reorganized and renamed once again, and of course re-mottoed. as well. (That isn't even a word. I know.) I have been through five reorganizations in under three years here. Each reorganization was due to a 'lack of results under the previous organizational structure'. I am in pharmaceutical development. The average drug-to-market time is in excess of five years. It is impossible to get a new chemical entity to market in under three years in the USA. Literally 100% completely impossible. (When you line up all the mandatory check-points, requirements for 12-mo stability, review period, etc etc, you cannot do it in under three years for an NCE.) Do you see the problem here? "Hey! Nobody got a 5-year drug product through in only six months! REORGANIZE!" *six months later, we've finally figured out who's doing the jobs that we were all doing just fine six months ago* "Hey! Nobody got a 5-year...' I have a whole bunch of stability samples in my lab right now that need some DSC on them. Where the gently caress is the guy who did thermal analysis for us? Oh right, he got laid off. Nobody was assigned his jobs. Nobody was given his passwords for the equipment. Nobody has a loving clue how to even use the damned machine. Story of my industry.
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May 6, 2010 18:25
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| # ¿ May 2, 2024 05:09 |
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Wake'n'Bake - you very quickly learn to not care about your company when your company makes it plain and clear that they do not care about you. In either this thread or another related one in D&D, I posted about one of my projects from last year. I traveled to Europe (from USA) six times to fix screw-ups by our manufacturing division, lost my weekends due to travel, worked basically non-stop for those eight weeks (in excess of 80 hours per week during them). No reimbursement for travel to the airport (130 miles each way), no reimbursement for expenses other than airfare and hotel at all, and no reimbursement for any sorts of home expenses. (Childcare while you're traveling is on your own dime, as is pet kenneling, etc etc.) On top of that, all my usual work back in the USA had to get handled as well. My work for that year was able to get a drug approved that would otherwise have failed to hit a clinical milestone. This drug's estimated sales are worth in excess of $130M. Peanuts to my company, but think of it relative to my salary. Almost that entire project's success is mine. So, what did 8 weeks of no weekends and double hours, $130M in revenue, and all my other work get me? $2.00 voucher good only at our company cafeteria. No raise, no promotion, no mention on my year-end review. My year end review says "Met all expectations." That's it. I didn't even get reimbursed for my gasoline or the miles on my car to get to the airport, nor did I get reimbursed for parking costs at the airport. YOU ARE LUCKY. Hell, I'm working for one of the largest companies in the US, and they do not give a flying gently caress about their employees. They don't have to - we're a captive audience since we can't exactly emigrate.
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May 6, 2010 23:23
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