• anon (unregistered) in reply to Kiss me I'm Polish
    Kiss me I'm Polish:
    45 hour weeks? Is that legal?

    Of course it is! What exactly did you think "exempt" meant?

  • BBT (unregistered)
    Hi Dan,

    You are correct. There is a discrepancy between the vacation time (2 weeks / 80 hours) and the newly-instituted 45-hour workweeks. At this time, we are not planning on increasing employee vacation benefits, so in order to meet the 45-hour requirement, you will need to either:

    (a) use an hour from your sick/personal time for each vacation day

    (b) work an additional hour for each vacation day

    Note that, if you chose to work the extra hour, it must done within the same two-week pay period. Also, keep in mind that this policy will apply to company holidays as well.

    Thank you,

    Amber J------------ HR Generalist

    I think Amber left out the best option, which would be to (c) tell her to FOAD and find a new job.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to V
    V:
    Anon:
    Note that, if you chose to work the extra hour, it must done within the same two-week pay period.
    The [evil] genius here is that it makes it impossible to take all two weeks of vacation at once (unless you burn through sick / personal time).

    Of course, as always, TRWTF is that 2 weeks a year vacation is considered acceptable in the US.

    Why, what is other places?
    25 days per year right here. I'm in the UK and this is absolutely standard, all the places I've worked have been around the 25 day mark.

  • (cs) in reply to V
    V:
    Why, what is other places?
    The legal minimum in the EU is 4 weeks, and that's by no means the highest worldwide. In fact the US is very much the exception in giving such a shitty small amount of time.
  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to V
    V:
    Anon:
    Of course, as always, TRWTF is that 2 weeks a year vacation is considered acceptable in the US.

    Why, what is other places?

    Germany: 30 days (ie six weeks).

  • (cs) in reply to Alex
    Alex:
    Are you a coworker of mine?

    Of course, our e-mail read (paraphrased) "We will be closed for the holidays. You will be unpaid for this time. Of course, you can use vacation time if you have any."

    It's possible. Do you work for a large company with offices in California, Massachusetts, and Pune (India)?

  • Unfortunate (unregistered)

    This came from one of our "Dev 3" guys who has say so over javascript standards.

    To have Visual Studio format that way for you automatically:

    -Go to Tools/Options, Scroll down to Text Editor and expand the node -Go to Jscript and expand the node -Under Tabs: Indenting: Block Tab Size:2 Indent Size: 2 Insert Spaces -Under Formatting: Check all boxes.

    It’s a preference. I believe the style with the dangling {‘s is called K&R style because Kernigan and Ritchie used it when C didn’t have function prototypes yet and ANSI C did not exist yet or was not yet standard.

    A drawback of that style is that it’s harder to see beginning and ending of blocks. An advantage is that its more compact when you place the opening brace on its own line. The main reason people started doing that instead of starting code on the same line as the opening brace is that it makes for quicker cut-and-paste. I prefer to place code properly indented on the same line as the opening brace and I believe the impact to reading code is minimal, but the code beautifier in Visual Studio (Ctrl-K-D) is too primitive to be able to format that way.

    In our C# code we have the opening braces on the new line and we should format our JavaScript to be formatted the same way. I do want to make the exception that I want to go from our standard of 3 positions for indentation that we use in C# to 2 positions, again to make the code more readable and also to protect developers who can’t swim well - so that we don’t fall into the Atlantic ocean when a few nesting levels takes us to the East. You may be in the Far West, but most of us are close enough to the coast to make this a concern.

    Basically, he wants javascript to be formatted like:

    if() { }

    function() { }

    instead of:

    if () { }

    function() { }

    I'm waiting for the day he writes:

    return { }

    and expects to get an object back.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    RobFreundlich:
    Dear Valued Employees,

    Translation: fuck you.

    It was an awful lot of fun to take the emails we got from the CEO (or his minions) and redact them down to their core statements, pulling out all of the hyperbole and BS, and then to "reinterpret" the core statements.

    I'm pretty sure you've correctly identified our redaction and interpretation of that particular email.

  • Frank (unregistered) in reply to Chris

    In Germany vacation has to be a minimum of 4 weeks per year.

  • Milton (unregistered)

    Valued Employees,

    While recent inclimate weather may have made made your commute more difficult, our office has remained open.

    You are expected to be at your desk at 9:00a.m. Monday-Friday regardless of environmental conditions or loss of office power.

    Due to the unique nature of this event, you will not be penalized for absenteeism, but you will be required to use vacation hours for any time missed.

    Regards, Management

    The "unique nature of this event" was a record 3&1/2 feet of snow during which time the Governor ordered the roads clear of all but emergency personnel.

    This very same storm knocked out heat & power to the office, server room, and automatic door locks.

    The critical product our company produces - Crappy commercial image editing software...

  • (cs) in reply to Aaron
    Aaron:
    Alex:
    Of course, our e-mail read (paraphrased) "We will be closed for the holidays. You will be unpaid for this time. Of course, you can use vacation time if you have any."
    A lot of people don't realize that it's perfectly acceptable (legally, at least) for employers to specify when their employees can or can't take their vacation.

    The key term here is "legally, at least".

    Aaron:
    Imagine if you had a home office and employed 2 or 3 people to help you - well, your vacation is their vacation, they can't walk into your house while you're in Hawaii. It's common with very small businesses

    I'd understand it completely in the case of a home office or small business. Of course, it wouldn't be couched in terms of "we're doing this for your benefit", it'd be presented as "I'm taking vacation and so I'm closing shop while I'm gone". Very different.

    However, in this case, this was one of the ten largest software companies in the world, so they had no excuse. And presenting it as "family friendly" was the height of absurdity. Especially since the scuttlebutt was that they were doing it for accounting/tax purposes.

    Aaron:
    and it's also common with seasonal employment (teachers get a ton of time off, but their vacation time is entirely predetermined).

    In these cases, it's understood up front, so it's not a problem.

    Aaron:
    A lot of us wouldn't take it sitting down, but it's still an acceptable practice - it's just not a very nice thing to do, especially in a wealthier corporation.

    I think your definition of "acceptable" and mine don't match. I find it abhorrent and disgusting, especially when its purpose is very transparently misrepresented. If they'd come out and said "here's why we have to do this" instead of treating us like idiots (did they really think anyone would be fooled by their supposed reason?), we'd have been annoyed or pissed, rather than infuriated and insulted, and it wouldn't have been WTF-worthy.

  • Doug (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Note that, if you chose to work the extra hour, it must done within the same two-week pay period.

    The [evil] genius here is that it makes it impossible to take all two weeks of vacation at once (unless you burn through sick / personal time).

    Of course, as always, TRWTF is that 2 weeks a year vacation is considered acceptable in the US.

    I read somewhere (I'll post source if I find it) that not only do we have fewer vacation days, but we don't even use the ones that we have. And I've also heard that we work longer weeks on average, too. We probably make up for it by slacking off more during the day.

    I did find this interesting: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/64/Yearly_working_time_2004.jpg

    It's the average number of hours worked per year by country: the USA is near the top, but Korea takes the cake!

  • (cs) in reply to Milton
    Milton:
    Due to the unique nature of this event, you will not be penalized for absenteeism, but you will be required to use vacation hours for any time missed.
    Being forced to use vacation time is NOT a penalty? What is? A dozen lashes to your bare back with a cat-o-nine tails?
  • fjf (unregistered)
    Alex:
    1/ From time to time we all need to use a lot of toilet paper. On these occaisions use a little paper then flush, then use some more and flush. This can be repeated as many times as you need.
    I still don't understand this complex procedure. Couldn't he send a flowchart, structogram, or at least some XML?
  • (cs) in reply to RobFreundlich
    RobFreundlich:
    The exact text of the following email was much longer and bureaucratic, but as I am no longer employed by that company, I can't dig it out of archives, so I'm going to paraphrase.

    Date: mid- to late-November From: CEO To: All

    Dear Valued Employees,

    In order to provide our employees with more family time during the holidays (in keeping with our core value of family friendliness), $FRIGGIN_BIG_COMPANY will be closed during the week between Christmas and New Year's.

    Employees will be required to use vacation time during this week. Any employee who does not have enough vacation time accrued will be required to either borrow vacation time from next year or take the time unpaid.

    We wish you all a happy and healthy holiday season.

    Mr. CEO

    They do this every year where I work (and that's in the US, not crazy Europeland). So really I don't get N vacation days, I get N-4 and a long Christmas break. I really don't understand why they don't just make those days official holidays and reduce the vacation benefit accordingly... maybe that would make too much sense. It was extra fun the first year I worked here because nobody told me about it until just before Christmas. Thankfully I had just barely enough vacation time saved up to avoid losing pay.

    At least when we did the 45-hour workweek thing, days were still equal to eight hours for purposes of vacations and holidays.

    Chris:
    V:
    Anon:
    Of course, as always, TRWTF is that 2 weeks a year vacation is considered acceptable in the US.

    Why, what is other places?

    Germany: 30 days (ie six weeks).

    LOL. I think you have to have worked here since the 1970s in order to have enough seniority for six weeks of vacation. USA! USA!

  • epsalon (unregistered)

    Following email was send to all students and employees of Stanford University:

    In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 30th, a Stanford student struck up a conversation with a stranger at a bar in Palo Alto near the campus.  The stranger, a male, suggested that they go out for food.  The student drove the stranger to a McDonald’s in East Palo Alto.  The stranger then asked the student if he could crash at the student’s residence. The student refused, so the stranger got out of the student’s vehicle.  Unbeknownst to the student, the stranger left a bag of personal items in the student’s car.  Upon discovering the bag, the student took it to the Stanford Police (on Monday, February 1) so that it could be returned to the stranger.  Among the items in the bag, the police located a pair of handcuffs and lighter fluid.  The officers were able to ascertain the identity of the stranger and, after some investigation, determined that the individual did not appear to pose a threat to the student or the community.  None-the-less, the Stanford Police would like to remind you to be wary of offering rides to people whom you do not know.
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Unfortunate
    Unfortunate:
    I'm waiting for the day he writes:

    return { }

    and expects to get an object back.

    For everyone who doesn't get what's wrong with this:

    One of JavaScript's what-where-they-thinking type of "features" is semicolon insertion. Now, this wouldn't be too bad, but unfortunately they're trying to do it in a C-like language.

    Guess what the implementation is. Guess what the most braindead implementation possible for this is. Yeah. If the interpreter encounters an unexpected line feed, throw in a semicolon and TRY AGAIN. This ingenuity makes above statement become

    return;
/* Some dead code, but interpreter doesn't care */
    And here we have the world's first C-like syntax where "whitespace" and "whitespace with some line feeds" is not the same. What a mess. (And I like JavaScript.)

  • (cs) in reply to Frank
    Frank:
    In Germany vacation has to be a minimum of 4 weeks per year.

    That explains why the German company my former employer bought couldn't ever turn a profit.

  • GP (unregistered) in reply to mfah
    mfah:
    V:
    Why, what is other places?
    The legal minimum in the EU is 4 weeks, and that's by no means the highest worldwide. In fact the US is very much the exception in giving such a shitty small amount of time.

    I've always wondered, how many paid Holidays do you get in addition to your vacation time? 12 or 13 is pretty typical in the states. Do you additionally get sick time, or is "vacation" really a Paid Time Off bank?

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Doug
    Doug:
    And I've also heard that we work longer weeks on average, too.
    On average it's something like:

    US: 40 hours per week UK: 37.5 hours per week France: 35 hours per week

    French bastards. They get longer holidays, too.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to GP
    GP:
    mfah:
    V:
    Why, what is other places?
    The legal minimum in the EU is 4 weeks, and that's by no means the highest worldwide. In fact the US is very much the exception in giving such a shitty small amount of time.

    I've always wondered, how many paid Holidays do you get in addition to your vacation time? 12 or 13 is pretty typical in the states. Do you additionally get sick time, or is "vacation" really a Paid Time Off bank?

    you really dont want to know :) it will just make you sick

  • Joey Maloney (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Exactly! Add one bitchy girl with a huge chest and a low cut top and you have a recipe for disaster.

    Those bitches, that actually mind being assaulted! Why don't they grow a sense of humor, huh? Probably hairy-legged lesbians.

  • thnurg (unregistered) in reply to Keith Brawner
    My fiance works as a hospital

    Wow! How many patients can she fit inside her?

    Captcha: sagaciter - An old person on holiday?

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to GP
    GP:
    mfah:
    V:
    Why, what is other places?
    The legal minimum in the EU is 4 weeks, and that's by no means the highest worldwide. In fact the US is very much the exception in giving such a shitty small amount of time.

    I've always wondered, how many paid Holidays do you get in addition to your vacation time? 12 or 13 is pretty typical in the states. Do you additionally get sick time, or is "vacation" really a Paid Time Off bank?

    It is all paid, we don't do unpaid holidays. Sick leave is variable but for most companies it is in addition to any holiday time. Last year I had a motorbike accident for which I received six weeks off at full pay. This was in addition to my paid holiday days (which equated to about 4 weeks).

  • (cs) in reply to Aaron
    Aaron:
    A lot of people don't realize that it's perfectly acceptable (legally, at least) for employers to specify when their employees can or can't take their vacation. [...] A lot of us wouldn't take it sitting down, but it's still an acceptable practice - it's just not a very nice thing to do, especially in a wealthier corporation.

    All the world is not IT...

    In many industries, there's no other option. You can't run a manufacturing plant or a foundry with only half your staff. Instead, you shut down the plant for a couple of weeks in the summer, maybe over Christmas as well, and send everybody off on vacation. In some cases, you can take advantage of the downtime to bring other people in to perform maintenance or upgrade the equipment.

    In energy-intensive industries (like aluminum production), it is not uncommon to shut down the plant and give employees paid time off when energy prices spike. When electricity hits $2 / kWh (as it did last week in parts of .no), it can actually be cheaper to pay your staff to sit at home and watch TV or build snowmen with their children than to keep the plant running.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Joey Maloney
    Joey Maloney:
    Anonymous:
    Exactly! Add one bitchy girl with a huge chest and a low cut top and you have a recipe for disaster.
    Those bitches, that actually mind being assaulted! Why don't they grow a sense of humor, huh? Probably hairy-legged lesbians.
    I'm not trying to claim she was a bitch for ratting out the junior dev that was firing rockets down her top - she was just a bitch, end of story.
  • (cs)

    I just this instant got this email. Apparently no one in our office is clever enough to notice on their own that we got a new coffemaker; or that the microwave has moved. Just think -- without this memo, a lot of people would be hungry during lunch.

    Good morning!

    The 10th floor break room will be receiving a new coffee maker. We are hoping that this new coffee maker will work properly! To make room, and to allow more counter space for everyone, the microwave that was over the dishwasher has moved to the table on the south side of the room. The coffee maker will be placed in that new open space. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to ask.

    Thank you,

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to RobFreundlich

    From: Facilities Manager Sent: Monday, September 14, 2009 12:12 PM To: EVERYONE Subject:

    All Employees:

    As you might already know we have installed speed bumps in the parking garage. The purpose of the speed bumps is to SLOW down vehicles that are driving too fast in the parking structure and to help ensure the safety of our employees.

    If you are unsure of how to traverse the speed bumps keep this in mind:

    Slowly approach the bump and roll to the top of it then use your brake to keep it
slow going down instead of just letting it roll off by itself.

    It should not require speed bumps to keep our employees/visitors from speeding recklessly though the garage but it has definitely come to this. Just remember to drive slowly when going up the speed bump and also brake going down the speed bump and you will have no problems.

    Facilities

  • (cs) in reply to V
    V:
    Anon:
    Of course, as always, TRWTF is that 2 weeks a year vacation is considered acceptable in the US.
    Why, what is other places?

    Most of Europe has four to six weeks, fully paid, and strict regulations on overtime.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Joey Maloney:
    Anonymous:
    Exactly! Add one bitchy girl with a huge chest and a low cut top and you have a recipe for disaster.
    Those bitches, that actually mind being assaulted! Why don't they grow a sense of humor, huh? Probably hairy-legged lesbians.
    I'm not trying to claim she was a bitch for ratting out the junior dev that was firing rockets down her top - she was just a bitch, end of story.
    And FYI, she was a lesbian (you insensitive clod).
  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    GP:
    I've always wondered, how many paid Holidays do you get in addition to your vacation time? 12 or 13 is pretty typical in the states. Do you additionally get sick time, or is "vacation" really a Paid Time Off bank?
    It is all paid, we don't do unpaid holidays. Sick leave is variable but for most companies it is in addition to any holiday time. Last year I had a motorbike accident for which I received six weeks off at full pay. This was in addition to my paid holiday days (which equated to about 4 weeks).

    He was asking how many paid holidays (e.g. fixed paid days off such as christmas, new year's, whatever weirdo war memorial days your country has, etc) you get in addition to the vacation days that you take at your discretion.

    While in the US 2 weeks paid vacation is common for low-seniority workers, we also tend to get at least 10-12 fixed paid holidays per year, for a total of more like 4 weeks off.

    If a European worker gets "4 weeks vacation" does that mean discretionary time off plus fixed holidays, or if you include fixed holidays does it become 6 weeks vacation?

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Tyler
    Tyler:
    He was asking how many paid holidays (e.g. fixed paid days off such as christmas, new year's, whatever weirdo war memorial days your country has, etc) you get in addition to the vacation days that you take at your discretion.
    Oh right, That's not so great to be honest. We get 8 annually in the UK.
  • Mr .Sony (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Same with Scala. It has "semicolon inference" too, with similar side effects.

    They should have used identation like Python, Ruby or Haskell do.

  • Ryan (unregistered) in reply to RobFreundlich

    That sounds quite a bit like an email that went around our lovely company in Bellevue =)

    CAPTCHA : appellatio - erm, i'm not gonna touch this one...

  • (cs) in reply to Tyler

    It's 5 weeks of vacation + fixed holidays here in Sweden.

  • SR (unregistered) in reply to V
    V:
    Why, what is other places?

    I work in the UK and get 26 days. In Norway it can be 8 weeks(!) I was stunned when I first heard.

  • FuBar (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    I'm not trying to claim she was a bitch for ratting out the junior dev that was firing rockets down her top - she was just a bitch, end of story.

    You're saying her bitchiness was ha-bitch-ual?

  • (cs) in reply to Tyler

    He was asking how many paid holidays (e.g. fixed paid days off such as christmas, new year's, whatever weirdo war memorial days your country has, etc) you get in addition to the vacation days that you take at your discretion.

    While in the US 2 weeks paid vacation is common for low-seniority workers, we also tend to get at least 10-12 fixed paid holidays per year, for a total of more like 4 weeks off.

    If a European worker gets "4 weeks vacation" does that mean discretionary time off plus fixed holidays, or if you include fixed holidays does it become 6 weeks vacation?

    The law requires a minimum of four weeks excluding fixed holidays of which there are generally between 8 and 12 in each EU country.

    I get 26 (rising to 30) days + 9 fixed in my current job, and its surprisingly hard to use them. And we're forced to use them, meaning most of the company is misisng for December!

  • ShatteredArm (unregistered)

    I usually find it difficult to use all three of my vacation weeks, anyhow... I had almost two weeks left over from last week, and I only had four weeks available for the whole year (plus, I took two separate week long vacations).

    I don't know what I'd do with six weeks of vacation per year.

  • Ozz (unregistered)

    Here's one I saw a couple of years ago (top-posting preserved):

    From: Clueless Luser To: I.T.

    She tried rebooting but it just gave her an error.

    What can't she log into, and what happens when she tries?

    She's tried several times but it still won't let her.

    What can't she log into, and what happens when she tries?

    Jane can't log in.

  • ShatteredArm (unregistered) in reply to ShatteredArm

    "I had almost two weeks left over from last week"

    Er, that would be two weeks left over from last year.

  • Bim Job (unregistered)

    Ah yes, the Safety Directory: "Defying Darwinian Evolution Since 1859!"

  • FuBar (unregistered) in reply to GP
    GP:
    I've always wondered, how many paid Holidays do you get in addition to your vacation time? 12 or 13 is pretty typical in the states. Do you additionally get sick time, or is "vacation" really a Paid Time Off bank?

    In most of Canada, paid vacation is 15 days (3 weeks) per year, plus 10-12 days of "Statutory Holidays" per year (Christmas, Good Friday, and the like), plus 10 - 15 days of paid sick leave if required. Often a person is able to bank unused sick days year after year up to a limit, to provide for a degree of short term disability coverage if needed (but it doesn't carry with you when you change employers).

  • Robb (unregistered)

    We had a request email with an attached form that required some private information including SSN. The email was sent to a lot of people by individual emails, not a list.

    Some guy "replied all" with the filled out form and his private information for everyone on that email to see. Took him a good hour to recall it back.

    Reply All - the true idiot test

  • Lego (unregistered) in reply to anon
    anon:
    Kiss me I'm Polish:
    45 hour weeks? Is that legal?

    Of course it is! What exactly did you think "exempt" meant?

    One of my favourite euphemisms. It doesn't mean you are exempt from working overtime, it means you are exempt from getting paid for it.

  • R Paul (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Really hotels should be required to have those lighted strips on the floors like they have on aeroplanes going from the bed to the bathroom.
    Required? As in if you don't remodel all your hotels within 6 months we will send people with guns to kidnap you and lock you in a cell?

    Really this knee-jerk "OMFG someone bumped his head we need a new law!" mentality is TRWTF. I mean seriously, dude (or ditz), is the government where you live doing such a fantastic job with everything they try to tackle that the biggest problem remaining is one lousy head bump? And do they have money left over to enforce this new law or are they in a pinch like most everywhere else for trying to do way too F-ing much already?

  • Jay (unregistered)

    I always get a laugh when the company makes some announcement of a new policy that is obviously intended to benefit the bottom line at the expense of the employees, but then they describe it as this great gift that they're giving you.

    Like, years ago the company I worked for at the time ran into some financial trouble, so they decided to cut back on the medical benefits to save money.

    If they'd said something like, "We're in trouble, and if we don't do something soon we'll go bankrupt and everyone will lose their jobs. Rather than laying people off, we've decided to spread the pain by cutting benefits while keeping everyone employed", I think I would have taken that as an honest, positive statement. I wouldn't have been happy, of course, but it would have been realistic.

    Instead they called this big meeting where the head of HR stood up and said that many other companies in the area were cutting insurance benefits or increasing the employee contributions toward premiums, but that they had come up with "a better alternative: An all new insurance plan". They had a PowerPoint presentation on a huge screen with the words "All new insurance plan". It didn't take a deep analysis to figure out that the "all new insurance plan" was a lot like the old one except the benefits were smaller and the amount the employees had to contribute was higher.

    I always wonder: How dumb do they think their employees are? If your employees are so stupid that they will be fooled by such a simple deception, maybe what you need to do to get profits back up is to hire some smarter employees.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Kiss me I'm Polish
    Kiss me I'm Polish:
    45 hour weeks? Is that legal?

    What, would you prefer that the government dictate that every company in the country must have exactly such-and-such a set of policies? Personally, I'd rather have the option of picking a job with a company whose policies I like -- or at least can tolerate in exchange for the amount they pay or whatever. I've never understood the philosophy that says, "I am completely incapable of deciding what is best for myself and then going out and getting it. I need Big Brother to tell me what is good for me and then make sure I get it."

  • Jerry (unregistered)

    I'll work the extra hour a day if you let me decide which employees are required to come to work naked.

  • Bim Job (unregistered) in reply to fjf
    fjf:
    Alex:
    1/ From time to time we all need to use a lot of toilet paper. On these occaisions use a little paper then flush, then use some more and flush. This can be repeated as many times as you need.
    I still don't understand this complex procedure. Couldn't he send a flowchart, structogram, or at least some XML?
    Be careful what you ask for. Next time, the process will be put on a wooden table, photographed, and faxed to you.

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