• Mads Bondo Dydensborg (unregistered)

    I know this is off topic, maybe even trolling, but seriously...

    In Europe, we have 4-5 weeks of (paid!) vacation. I personally have 6 weeks, my wife 7. Pr. year. From you start working.

    I have no idea how you live with only two weeks of vacation a year.

  • Rob (unregistered)

    I don't really have a problem with this. And it's a large part of why many companies don't specify sick time from vacation time.

    I get 'personal' time.

    I can take a day off. Whether I'm sick, or whether I'm going on vacation, or whether the weather is bad. It is my discretion.

    I'm assuming most of you who are complaining want the company to take responsibility for the weather. 'The weather was bad, so the company should close'. If the company said, 'Okay - we're closed and we're taking a day of vacation time from everyone' - people would be upset with that. I know I would. Likewise, if they said, 'Okay - we're closed, everyone is going to get paid less this paycheck because of the lost work'. People would be upset with that too.

    I felt like the company in the WTF was very accommodating. You could show up to work, take time off, or work another day.

  • Buddy (unregistered) in reply to Mads Bondo Dydensborg
    Mads Bondo Dydensborg:
    I know this is off topic, maybe even trolling, but seriously...

    In Europe, we have 4-5 weeks of (paid!) vacation. I personally have 6 weeks, my wife 7. Pr. year. From you start working.

    I have no idea how you live with only two weeks of vacation a year.

    Yeah, it really sucks. A lot of people don't even take the time off. When I was in management in a previous company I wasn't allowed to take off two consecutive weeks. I had to split it into two smaller vacations which as anyone knows, one week is not enough to de-stress.

  • Spoe (unregistered)

    Where I work I get just shy of 5 weeks (24 days) of time off (vacation/sick days/personal time) plus another 2 weeks, total, of paid holidays along with a pretty liberal work-from-home and flex time policies. I'm in the US.

  • (cs)

    I was still at my last employer during Snowpocalypse. They told us not to come in even in the unlikely event we could, because the power or HVAC or some other major system in the building had had some sort of failure and it wasn't safe.

    Meanwhile, I took this panorama of the scene in front of my house:

    Snowpocalypse 360 (the blue object in the middle distance is a 1992 Dodge Grand Caravan, license-plate deep in snow)

  • RBoy (unregistered) in reply to Mads Bondo Dydensborg
    Mads Bondo Dydensborg:
    I know this is off topic, maybe even trolling, but seriously...

    In Europe, we have 4-5 weeks of (paid!) vacation. I personally have 6 weeks, my wife 7. Pr. year. From you start working.

    I have no idea we get work done with only 4-5 weeks of vacation a year.

    Fixed it for you.

    Ullamcorper: Someone who uses a umlaut when the spell corpse.

  • egg (unregistered)

    The actual email was IMO a little funnier...

    FYI....

    If anyone is thinking about going into work...DONT!!

    Columbia Gateway is impassible without 4wd and our lot is not plowed....as a matter of fact the Snowplow driver is sleeping in our parking lot.

  • swedish tard (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    This is really ridiculous given our line of work. Whenever the weather gets a bit messy I just remote desktop into my machine at work and I'm looking at exactly the same screen I look at in the office. To be honest, I sometimes wonder why I bother going into the office at all. Remote desktop has been a standard feature of Windows for what, 10 years?

    I live in sweden, where 2 feet of snow happens every once in a while so we're kindof used to it and deal with it accordingly. However, I cannot work from home since that would be too great a risk to my workplaces resources. Secret stuff. :) Not that I mind. If the weather is all crap, I have about a week of flex time in my time bank at any given time, so I can stay home. :)

  • swedish tard (unregistered) in reply to Buddy
    Buddy:
    Mads Bondo Dydensborg:
    I know this is off topic, maybe even trolling, but seriously...

    In Europe, we have 4-5 weeks of (paid!) vacation. I personally have 6 weeks, my wife 7. Pr. year. From you start working.

    I have no idea how you live with only two weeks of vacation a year.

    Yeah, it really sucks. A lot of people don't even take the time off. When I was in management in a previous company I wasn't allowed to take off two consecutive weeks. I had to split it into two smaller vacations which as anyone knows, one week is not enough to de-stress.

    Neither is 2 weeks according to the people that really know.

  • Mr. D (unregistered)

    Don't you hate this global warming thing?

  • Dennis (unregistered) in reply to brazzy
    brazzy:
    toshir0:
    And just add the last step of this reasonning : That's why liberals WON'T EVER fight against unemployment : it's too useful to make non-deciding people lower their claims. But wait... they SAY they fight against it, don't they ? Yes, they *say* it.

    That would be the everywhere-except-the-USA definition of "liberal" that you're using, right?

    Actually, it's the republican definition of liberal where all liberals are soulless atheists who quote Marx and Lenin while roasting babies over an open flame.

  • Carbon Taxed (unregistered) in reply to Dennis
    Dennis:
    brazzy:
    toshir0:
    And just add the last step of this reasonning : That's why liberals WON'T EVER fight against unemployment : it's too useful to make non-deciding people lower their claims. But wait... they SAY they fight against it, don't they ? Yes, they *say* it.

    That would be the everywhere-except-the-USA definition of "liberal" that you're using, right?

    Actually, it's the republican definition of liberal where all liberals are soulless atheists who quote Marx and Lenin while roasting babies over an open flame.

    Careful, an open flame means carbon emissions. They just roast it at a variety show.

    captcha: Erat. I knew a duchess from there once.

  • Dennis (unregistered) in reply to Mr. D
    Mr. D:
    Don't you hate this global warming thing?

    Of course, while the East Coast was undergoing Snowmageddon, the Wet Coast was 'enjoying' one of the mildest winters I can remember -- just in time for the Winter Olympics. Yee-hah. And (IIRC) Europe was having one of the more horrible winters, while Australia was having one of their hottest and driest summers. Meanwhile flooding in China has reached unprecedented levels, the arctic ice-cap has never gotten this small in recorded history, etc etc etc. But hey, it's all a liberal plot.

  • (cs) in reply to Smitty
    Smitty:
    frits:
    Anonymous:
    This is really ridiculous given our line of work. Whenever the weather gets a bit messy I just remote desktop into my machine at work and I'm looking at exactly the same screen I look at in the office. To be honest, I sometimes wonder why I bother going into the office at all. Remote desktop has been a standard feature of Windows for what, 10 years?

    While that is a technically feasible and sensible plan, it isn't always practical. The last couple of places I worked had non-developers who get jealous over such "special treatment". They claim that because they can't work from home, it is unfair to allow anyone to work from home. Never mind the fact that most of them don't have jobs that could be done solely from a computer to begin with. The real kicker is that HR and management would rather not deal with the bitching-- no matter how infantile and inane -- so they just quash all work from home.

    This is exactly the situation at my job. Devs used to be allowed to work from home, until a woman in another department (that's right, outside of IT) got wind of it. She threw a huge bitch fit with HR, throwing words like 'discrimination' and 'lawyer' around. Since this company is run by gargantuan pussies, they caved. Now we can only work from home in an emergency, and even then it's unofficial and our manager literally whispers when you ask to do it.

    Aha! It all makes sense now!

    I just figured out why, at the company I work for, all the devs are in Seattle and everyone else (HR, Sales, Product, etc) is in San Francisco. It's so they can't see us working from home!

    We've got a few people here, including two with small children, who come into the office 2-3 days a week, but they're always available over IM if you need them.

  • (cs) in reply to Dennis
    Dennis:
    Mr. D:
    Don't you hate this global warming thing?

    Of course, while the East Coast was undergoing Snowmageddon, the Wet Coast was 'enjoying' one of the mildest winters I can remember -- just in time for the Winter Olympics. Yee-hah. And (IIRC) Europe was having one of the more horrible winters, while Australia was having one of their hottest and driest summers. Meanwhile flooding in China has reached unprecedented levels, the arctic ice-cap has never gotten this small in recorded history, etc etc etc. But hey, it's all a liberal plot.

    Even in Michigan, we had a pretty mild winter. I only had to shovel about 5 or 6 times and there was only one decently bad storm. It got into the 90's most days last week (whereas we only hit the 90's in August for a week or two last summer).

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    This is really ridiculous given our line of work. Whenever the weather gets a bit messy I just remote desktop into my machine at work and I'm looking at exactly the same screen I look at in the office. To be honest, I sometimes wonder why I bother going into the office at all. Remote desktop has been a standard feature of Windows for what, 10 years?

    A decent number of tech jobs in the DC area are government related, and a large portion of those require some sort of clearance or special access rules. As such, to get security accreditation, most fed networks have remote desktop disabled by default.

  • (cs) in reply to Dennis
    Dennis:
    Mr. D:
    Don't you hate this global warming thing?

    Of course, while the East Coast was undergoing Snowmageddon, the Wet Coast was 'enjoying' one of the mildest winters I can remember -- just in time for the Winter Olympics. Yee-hah.

    Yeah, we had our snowpocalypse the year before. The 2008-2009 winter was BRUTAL here in Seattle. I live close to the office, and I was able to make it in easily enough on probably the day that got the heaviest snow, only to find that no one else was there. Luckily I have a key to the office! So I let myself in, sat down at my desk and started working.

    A couple hours later, an email arrived from one of our coworkers:

    "in case you have not been watching the news, the pd is asking people to stay clear from the peripheral roads unless completely necessary.

    i will be doing just that and recommend you do the same.

    many of those roads are not being plowed to the point that we are not getting bus traffic or even garbage collection."

    That might have been useful to me had I received the email before I left, but since I was already at the office, I wrote back:

    "Meh. I'll be fine. I'm a Delphi coder. A lack of garbage collection has never scared me."
  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Mads Bondo Dydensborg
    Mads Bondo Dydensborg:
    I know this is off topic, maybe even trolling, but seriously...

    In Europe, we have 4-5 weeks of (paid!) vacation. I personally have 6 weeks, my wife 7. Pr. year. From you start working.

    I have no idea how you live with only two weeks of vacation a year.

    I've got no idea how you ever get any work done with 6 weeks of vacation. The number of times we've had projects delayed because one or other of our European colleagues has fucked off on holiday...again!

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Mr. D
    Mr. D:
    Don't you hate this global warming thing?

    Weather != Climate.

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to Ollie Williams

    My experience has been that (as in this WTF) the HR people are ridiculously out of touch with reality. The level of ridiculousness seems to grow with the size and general bureaucratic climate of the organization. I once worked for a company in New England, whose headquarters (and HR dept) was in California. Needless to say, they hadn't a clue about snow days (don't think they even had a snow policy) Therefore, I took snow days as necessary (if my wife, the teacher, got it as a snow day, I took one, too) and "forgot" to change the default "I was here and worked 8 hours" on my timecard.

    Nobody ever called me on my policy, and I didn't lose any vacation time, either. Of course, if no one from HR was at work, how would they know you didn't come in?

  • 6721 (unregistered) in reply to Rob Carlson

    Yeah, at first I thought were talking about my company, then I realized there are probably more than one around here with these ridiculous policies. Right? Right?

    Rob Carlson:
    Should probably redact the part about Columbia Gateway. There are a bunch of companies there, but not too many that its impossible to figure out who this is about.
  • tbrown (unregistered)

    Try working in the newspaper industry. A state of emergency isn't even a valid excuse for not being at work. Unfortunately not all cops see it that way and some employees have gotten in a little trouble trying to get to work.

  • Somedude (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    This is really ridiculous given our line of work. Whenever the weather gets a bit messy I just remote desktop into my machine at work and I'm looking at exactly the same screen I look at in the office. To be honest, I sometimes wonder why I bother going into the office at all. Remote desktop has been a standard feature of Windows for what, 10 years?

    I'm on the same page but if you have a boss that thinks "you're just moving that mouse and pressing some keys" then the same boss will think you'll be more productive in the office rather than at home... Isn't it cool having a non-technical boss?

  • Max Kode (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    ~10% unemployment rate (official numbers, more like 17%+) is why companies like this still find employees.
    So if there are thousands or millions of bright capable hardworking people milling around with nothing to do, why doesn't JUST ONE of them start a NEW business and hire all the rest? Hell, give them 8 weeks vacation and all the paid snow days they can justify -- even those who have jobs today will run to join your firm!

    With all those happy, stress-free employees eager to support their beloved employer, this organization could kick its competition right off the map -- right? So what's stopping you?

    "The bank won't loan me enough money to start my business."

    Well we've gone from a sucky employer to a sucky bank. Same problem. Start your own. Do better. Wipe out the slugs.

    "The government won't let me start a bank / company without a ton of paperwork / compliance / litigation."

    Well, maybe there's your problem. "Public-private partnership" means big corp honchos make sweet deals with big gov honchos to lock everyone else out. Also known as fascism.

  • Peter (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward

    Heh. I wonder if you worked for the same COMpany I did?

  • (cs)

    The real WTF is that companies don't see anything wrong in operating like this. I guarantee that the CEO and management would stay home in conditions like that, but it's fine for the "peasants" to brave harsh conditions or else.

    Like I've often said... the way a modern corporation works is more like feudalism in that the workers have little rights and are expected to kowtow to the lords (i.e. management), who pretty much do whatever they want.

  • (cs) in reply to Spoe
    Spoe:
    Where I work I get just shy of 5 weeks (24 days) of time off (vacation/sick days/personal time) plus another 2 weeks, total, of paid holidays along with a pretty liberal work-from-home and flex time policies. I'm in the US.
    Ditto here. We also have meetings around October where some people get chastised for not taking enough time off. We are encouraged to take every day of it every year.
  • (cs) in reply to Somedude
    Somedude:
    I'm on the same page but if you have a boss that thinks "you're just moving that mouse and pressing some keys" then the same boss will think you'll be more productive in the office rather than at home... Isn't it cool having a non-technical boss?

    It's worse than that. If you're just as productive at home than in the office, then your job can be done remotely, or in another country. Kerbleckistan, for instance. And the Kerbleckistani work for a lot less....

  • (cs) in reply to Peter
    Peter:
    My experience has been that (as in this WTF) the HR people are ridiculously out of touch with reality. The level of ridiculousness seems to grow with the size and general bureaucratic climate of the organization. I once worked for a company in New England, whose headquarters (and HR dept) was in California. Needless to say, they hadn't a clue about snow days (don't think they even *had* a snow policy) Therefore, I took snow days as necessary (if my wife, the teacher, got it as a snow day, I took one, too) and "forgot" to change the default "I was here and worked 8 hours" on my timecard.

    Nobody ever called me on my policy, and I didn't lose any vacation time, either. Of course, if no one from HR was at work, how would they know you didn't come in?

    HR people can be entertaining sometimes. I had one change the vacation policy to this:

    --You get two weeks from 0 to 5 years, three weeks after five years. --You can take vacation in week long blocks only. --You cannot take vacation until you've earned it, vacation is earned bi-weekly at a rate that adds up to your allotment. --You cannot carry any vacation over to next year.

    Unfortunately, you don't earn the last part of your last week of vacation until the last paycheck of the year. This policy amounted to forced vacation the last few days of the year. This wasn't intended. Work was scheduled the last week of the year and somebody had to be there to do it. A bunch of us read the policy and mentioned this, but no one listened. Towards the end of the year, management started to realize what was going to happen. They simply "under-enforced" second or third rule as they felt like it. For people they didn't like they simply denied them vacation either due to not yet earning it, or due to too many other people off the same week.

  • PG4 (unregistered)

    Try working at a power plant. You have to come in. If you can't get home because of snow, they have cots and food for you. They told you this up front, and said if the cops stop you when the roads are closed explain where you work, the company would take care of any tickets and talk to the police.

    Like someone else said, a note back to HR and everyone asking if they will pay legal costs if you get pulled over in a snow emergency should do the trick.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    I've got no idea how you ever get any work done with 6 weeks of vacation. The number of times we've had projects delayed because one or other of our European colleagues has fucked off on holiday...again!

    Simple - they only plan for 46 weeks of work per year. If your project is getting delayed, that's just poor planning in general.

    (Of course, I've had bosses that forget to plan for stat holidays, much less vacation time.)

  • wtf (unregistered)

    Sounds like the sick policy they came up with at one of my previous jobs. You got six days sick time per week, no carryover - but it was earned 1/2 day per month, starting in January. So if you got sick in January or February, you had to use vacation time or come in. No big deal, though - nobody gets a cold in January, right?

  • J (unregistered) in reply to My Little Pony
    My Little Pony:
    frost?

    I approve of this.

  • (cs) in reply to Vollhorst
    Vollhorst:
    Only two weeks of vacation? Is that even legal? *shudders*
    We just got a new american president/ceo at my company. When hiring a developer to expand the team he complained to me that the selected applicant was asking for 3 weeks vacation starting at day one!!!! Inbelievable!! The audacity of a young intelligent employee taking advantage of us needing smart people!!! 2 weeks to start should be enough for anyone!!

    Of course everyone else at the company started with 3 weeks (of course they were all hired prior to the new american boss). Even lowest paid employee gets 3 weeks to start (not sure it that's the shipper or a jr tech / solder monkey). Anyhow... the point being that in his perspective 3 weeks is a LOT of time. 3 weeks is barely enough vacation time imho. Luckily I can work from home.. so if I need a "mental health day" I can avoid coming in, but not everyone has it that lucky.

    I am also lucky my direct supervisor is very insistent on me taking time in lieu when I work overtime (which due to my profession and EA's lobbying means they don't legally have to pay me overtime.. yes a gaming ended up pushing changes to labour law for software developers in my province.. as absurd as that sounds)

  • Dan (unregistered) in reply to Max Kode
    Max Kode:
    Well, maybe there's your problem. "Public-private partnership" means big corp honchos make sweet deals with big gov honchos to lock everyone else out. Also known as fascism.

    No, that's Socialism. Fascism is where the Public owns and runs the businesses. The philosophy that government can't make special deals with companies is called (shudder) "Free markets".

    Why people distrust corporations made of greedy people but place so much trust in government made of greedy people, still eludes me. At least the business can fold and be gone. Government is here to stay and keeps getting bigger and more bloated. Well, until the whole system collapses under its own weight. cough Greece cough California cough cough

  • Me (unregistered) in reply to Ollie Williams
    Ollie Williams:

    TRWTF is companies like these still find employees.

    "Hi, this is Joe Random calling from Initech. We'd like to have you in for an interview early next week. We're an Equal Opportunity Employer, and we're a bunch of dickheads who will screw you over at every opportunity."

    I've never received this call, but I sure wish some employers were honest enough to say it up front.

  • (cs) in reply to pecus
    pecus:
    I thought their policies were ridiculous until I realized that the university expects all the students to live on campus in the dorms and the professors to live within walking distance.

    My university has a policy that all students are required to live within a certain distance of campus, if they live off-campus. (That is, students are required to live in university-approved housing, and the only housing that is approved is, with one exception, within that distance of campus. The distance is something like one mile.)

  • Jason (unregistered)

    "I was at work that day.. I thought it odd that I was the only one there."

  • Clem (unregistered)

    What else did he expect? He should have called the compassionate weather hot line, not the inclement one.

  • Whiskey, Eh? (unregistered) in reply to wtf
    wtf:
    Sounds like the sick policy they came up with at one of my previous jobs. You got six days sick time per week, no carryover

    6 days of sick time per week?

    Where do I send my resume?

  • North Shore Beach Bum (unregistered)

    I was a student at Kahuku High School when they were filming the first Jurassic Park movie. When Hurricane Iniki hit, they kept the school open until the winds surpassed 100mph. I can imagine the HR at the company in the story was related to our superintendent.

  • Shanya Almafeta (unregistered) in reply to Mads Bondo Dydensborg
    Mads Bondo Dydensborg:
    I have no idea how you live with only two weeks of vacation a year.

    It's quite simple. When you've saved up enough to have a medical treatment performed you can get approval to have a week off. If you can't save up fast enough to have medical work done, you don't take vacation time; this way you can work to cover the cost of the company mandated "health savings plan" (this is not health insurance; it only takes ~10% of the cost off the top if you exclusively go to plan-approved doctors). Easy, really.

  • Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to Shanya Almafeta
    Shanya Almafeta:
    Mads Bondo Dydensborg:
    I have no idea how you live with only two weeks of vacation a year.
    It's quite simple. When you've saved up enough to have a medical treatment performed […]
    WTF right there. NHS FTW ☺
  • (cs) in reply to Whiskey, Eh?
    Whiskey:
    6 days of sick time per week?

    Where do I send my resume?

    QFT.

  • (cs) in reply to xtremezone
    xtremezone:
    Whiskey:
    6 days of sick time per week?

    Where do I send my resume?

    QFT.

    Quoted For Typo?

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    My last employer, MICROS Systems, is located on "Columbia Gateway" in Columbia Maryland. They absolutely could be Redacted Technologies.

    Their attendence policies were that draconian.

  • nasch (unregistered) in reply to Dan
    Dan:
    No, that's Socialism. Fascism is where the Public *owns and runs* the businesses.

    "Socialism is a political philosophy that encompasses various theories of economic organization based on either public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources."

    "Fascism is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation on corporatist perspectives, values, and systems such as the political system and the economy."

    "One of the most prominent forms of corporatism is economic tripartism involving negotiations between business, labour, and state interest groups to set economic policy."

  • Morry (unregistered)

    I am so starting a company called Redacted Technologies.

  • nasch (unregistered) in reply to pecus
    pecus:
    My university is the same way. I thought their policies were ridiculous until I realized that the university expects all the students to live on campus in the dorms and the professors to live within walking distance.

    It just shows how hard it is for universities to adapt with technology changes.

    Such as... automobiles?

  • (cs) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    Somedude:
    I'm on the same page but if you have a boss that thinks "you're just moving that mouse and pressing some keys" then the same boss will think you'll be more productive in the office rather than at home... Isn't it cool having a non-technical boss?

    It's worse than that. If you're just as productive at home than in the office, then your job can be done remotely, or in another country. Kerbleckistan, for instance. And the Kerbleckistani work for a lot less....

    For suitably small values of "work".

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