No offense meant, but the sentence makes perfect sense to me.

Kensey · 2009-10-09 Reply Admin

ozymandias:
Why would you accept a job without a contract? I am not talking as a 'contractor' -- that is something completely different. I am talking as an employee.

In my experience, bona-fide employment contracts are simply not the norm. If you limit yourself to only contracted positions at most companies I've worked at, you're talking upper management to CXO positions only.

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

Lee K-T:
Chewbacca:
I've had a boss use a screwdriver to unlock a bathroom stall to come disturb me while I took a poop.

Well if I had a wookie taking a poop somewhere near my office I'd love to go see how he manages that without spoiling his fur...

I'd tell you to go buy a dog or something, but... EWWWW!

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

Bravo. For answering correctly, you win 7 internets.

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

AlpineR:
I need step-by-step instructions on how to fix any problem that that could come in the future.
1 GOOGLE IT
2 POST AN AD ON CRAIGSLIST
3 GOTO 1

And now, with quoty goodnes. What's that preview button for anyway? Bravo!

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

ozymandias:
Kensey:
ozymandias:
Kensey:
ozymandias:
Where do you get your information? Every job I have ever had (including lifeguard, store attendant, and field hand in high school) all had them. When I hit the college level, the contracts simply got longer and larger, but they certainly existed. I have never even heard of a professional position without a contract -- nor would I, or anyone I know, accept something like that.

There may be an employment agreement, but that is not (necessarily) the same thing as an employment contract that specifies a guaranteed period of employment at a guaranteed rate of pay (barring specified events that trigger termination or modification of the contractual relationship). An employment agreement may (and most do) specify at-will and disclaim contractual employment.

Given that they specified terms for length of employment, how contract renewals would be handled, benefits, compensation, notice, and clauses on how the contract can be terminated, and all referred to themselves as contracts... I'll go with 'they are contracts'.

Then your work history is unusual. Almost every job I've ever had (and most of the people I know as well), from auto-body shop janitor to server architect, was specified in the paperwork as at-will, except for a few people who self-incorporated to make a career out of bona-fide contracting. In my 18 years of employment only two jobs have been "contract" jobs, and on both of them I was simply considered an employee of another company, not a contractor myself.

I still think your's is the odd history. Why would you accept a job without a contract? I am not talking as a 'contractor' -- that is something completely different. I am talking as an employee.

What country do you live in?

Here in the U.S., I have been working for 30 years and I have never had an employment contract. I don't think I've ever known an IT person who has. Unionized employees normally have contracts, but they're almost all factory or government workers.

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

Your Boss:
Jay:
I don't know what you mean. The US has excellent protection for workers. It's called "free enterprise" and "competition". If my employer gives me a bum deal, I can quit and go somewhere else. The fact that the knows that I can do that gives him an incentive to treat me decently, and if he doesn't, then I can carry through on the bluff and leave.
If you find that you can't get a better deal anywhere else, that there is literally no employer anywhere in the entire country willing to hire you under the conditions that you want, then maybe your expectations are unrealistic.

I think that's much better protection than relying on the government to tell both me and the employer what constitutes "fair". If conditions of employment are determined by negotiation between me and my employer, then if I don't like the deal the employer offers, I can go across town and work for someone else. If conditions of employment are determined by the government, then if I don't like the deal, my only alternative is to hope that in the next election the winnner make rules I like better -- a prospect for which I am just one vote out of tens of millions, assuming there is even a candidate in the race that I like -- or I can move to another country.

God bless you, you square-jawed Randroid ubermensch. You do realise that unemployment in the US is pushing 10% right? Good luck with your employment negotiations.

Big corporations good, big government evil. Eeeeeevil. Down with Public Health!

In a free enterprise system, a corporation gets big by satisfying large numbers of customers so that they keep coming back and giving them more money. A government gets big by being strong enough to suppress dissent.

Sure, in a socialist society a business can get big by enlisting the government's help in forcibly taking money from people. e.g. government-sanctioned monopolies or taxpayer-funded bailouts.

So I'd say: Big government: almost always evil. Big corporation: it depends.

Is it your position that voluntary arrangements, like business, are evil, but force and compulsion are good?

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

bob:
employers not paying wages.. fuckers. i had this happen once.. the fuck paid up right fast after mr lawyer said hello.
assholes.. you work your ass off that thats the favour you get in return.

take their code and passwords.. publish it.

Don't try this at home, kids.

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

asdf:
lolwtf:
Many WTFs here... 7) The C++ was so bad it managed to depend on an outdated version of .Net? That's quite the feat, considering C++ (as opposed to C#) has never required .Net.
You haven't heard of "manged c++"?
Yes, you can write c++ to use .net libraries, and to be a .net library itself.

In microsoft's special way they have renamed it to C++/CLI (not command line infrastructure, but common language interface....) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B/CLI

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interpreter

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

rfsmit:

Jay:
The US has excellent protection for workers. It's called "free enterprise" and "competition".
Oh great. Leave it to corporations to feud it out, while the little workers "reap" the "benefits". Hint: most civilized countries gave up on feudalism centuries ago because the little people didn't get to do much reaping (for themselves) and when they did, there wasn't much in the way of benefit.

Umm, you are aware that "feudalism" has little to do with "free enterprise", aren't you? Wikipedia defines feudalism as "a decentralized sociopolitical structure in which a weak monarchy attempts to control the lands of the realm through reciprocal agreements with regional leaders." The feudal states of medieval Europe were generally socialist: The feudal lord owned everything within his domain and the serfs were all legally required to work for him. There were pockets of capitalism in medieval Europe: these were called "free towns", and they were generally outside the control of any feudal lord. Of course it's not hard to imagine a capitalist feudal society where the lord is purely a political leader and the people within his domain have the right to conduct their business as they please. I'm not aware of any such society existing in real life, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

So as best I can figure it, your argument is that capitalism is bad because an example that you can point to of a society that did not practice capitalism was bad. Uh, yeah, that follows.

rfsmit:

Jay:
If my employer gives me a bum deal, I can quit and go somewhere else. The fact that the (sic) knows that I can do that gives him an incentive to treat me decently, and if he doesn't, then I can carry through on the bluff and leave.
I think you ought to know that a bluff is what happens if you don't carry through on a threat.

Yes, that paragraph was poorly worded. Sorry that I didn't do a good job of proof-reading a casual forum post. What I meant to say, of course, was that the threat of quitting if I don't like the working conditions is not just a bluff. If I don't like it, I can really quit.

rfsmit:

Jay:
If you find that you can't get a better deal anywhere else, that there is literally no employer anywhere in the entire country willing to hire you under the conditions that you want, then maybe your expectations are unrealistic.
Perhaps unrealistic, because realism is acceptance of the status quo. But not necessarily unreasonable.

The point, though, is that in a free enterprise system, there are millions of people all entering into different sorts of relationships of their own free will. Take just one element of the employment relationship: salary. If you say that you think you should be paid $150,000 per year, is that reasonable or realistic, or not? If you cannot find any company, anywhere in the country, that is willing to pay you that salary, then I think it is likely that your expectations are unrealistic and unreasonable. If no one is willing to pay you that salary, that must mean that they can find plenty of other people willing to do the job for less. The fact that you believe you deserve that much, or you think you are worth that much, is interesting but of itself, what does it prove?

In a socialist society, the government decides what a fair salary is for your job. If you don't like it, you are pretty much out of luck. In a capitalist society, you can negotiate with the employer. Maybe you can do better and maybe not.

If you think socialism will be inherently more fair to the worker, I can only ask, Why would you think that? Who do you think controls the government? The ordinary little people? Or the rich and powerful? If you honestly believe that any government is run for the benefit of the little guy, wow, I think you're being awfully naive. It's the rich and powerful who can afford to pay big campaign contributions and to hire lawyers and lobbyists.

rfsmit:

Jay:
I think that's much better protection than relying on the government to tell both me and the employer what constitutes "fair".
How so? The government exercises great power; which is kinda the point. The individual, on the other hand, exercises miniscule power, unless certain options are enshrined in rights.

The key assumption here is that the great power that the government exercises will somehow consistently be used to protect the individual, rather than being used to help the rich and powerful to exploit the individual. Tell me, when the government was paying out hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus money earlier this year, how much of that went to rich Wall Street bankers, and how much went to you and me? They originally said they were going to give each working person a $50 per month tax break, but then they decided that was too much and cut it to $33. Remember?

In a free enterprise system, the individual may not have much power to change the course of a giant corporation, but he has great power to control his own life. He can shop where he likes, work where he likes, and live where he likes. The only limit is the voluntary arrangements that others are willing to make.

rfsmit:

Jay:
If conditions of employment are determined by the government, then if I don't like the deal, my only alternative is to hope that in the next election the winnner make rules I like better
Ah... in civilized countries, those rights are determined over time, with agreement across party lines.

Exactly. In a socialist society, the political parties come to agreement over time. The political parties, controlled by various interests of the rich and powerful. And by am amazing coincidence, the agreements they come to tend to benefit the rich and powerful, the same people who contribute to their campaigns and fund the lawyers and lobbyists who negotiate.

rfsmit:

Jay:
-- or I can move to another country.
Some people find that hard to do. Heck, I found it hard to do all three times I've done it. Never has the prospect of better conditions of employment motivated me.

Umm, that was rather my point. If you don't like the laws of the United States, your only choices are: (a) In the next election, vote for someone who will change those laws. At worst your candidate loses the election and you continue to live under laws you don't like. At best your candidate wins, but it is unlikely that any candidate campaigned for EXACTLY what you wanted. You had to take a package deal, some likes, some dislikes. So the best you can possibly hope for is to get some of what you want. (b) You can move to another country. My point was that this is not a small or easy step.

On the other hand, in a free enterprise system, if I don't like the way my employer runs the company, I can quit and go to another company. If I don't like any company in the entire country, I can start my own business.

Take a simplistic example: Where do you go for lunch? Under socialism, we will take take a vote on what restaurants people go to for lunch. If 51% prefer hamburgers, then everyone must have hamburgers. In a capitalist system, everyone decides for himself what makes a good lunch. If 51% want hamburgers, 40% want tacos, and 9% want pate de faus gras, then 51% get hamburgers, 40% get tacos, and 9% get pate de faus gras. That's at best. At worst, the lobbyists for the various restaurants or active interest groups will convince the government to close down competing restaurants and allow only theirs to operate, and the wishes of the ordinary people will be irrelevant. If some activist group declares that hamburgers are bad for you, and they are loud enough, they may well be able to push through a law to shut down the hamburger places. And of course the taco and chicken places will all support them, not because it will benefit themselves, of course, wink wink, but in the interests of public health.

rfsmit:
(If I were you though, I'd learn English before moving to an English-speaking country...)

Not sure what you're referring to. The fact that I accidentally typed "the" instead of "he" at one point. Yeah, that rendered the whole post incomprehensible.

PatrickBeebe · 2009-10-09 Reply Admin

I made the mistake of signing a non-compete clause once. After I left the company because they were a bunch of morons, I also found out they were a litigious bunch of morons. No other company in the area would hire me for fear of getting sued (which this company had done in the past). At least they went out of business a year later (3 days after my non-compete expired, in fact).

Still, it forced me to switch careers, since my other option was to move.

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

Jay:
ozymandias:
Kensey:
ozymandias:
Kensey:
ozymandias:
Where do you get your information? Every job I have ever had (including lifeguard, store attendant, and field hand in high school) all had them. When I hit the college level, the contracts simply got longer and larger, but they certainly existed. I have never even heard of a professional position without a contract -- nor would I, or anyone I know, accept something like that.

There may be an employment agreement, but that is not (necessarily) the same thing as an employment contract that specifies a guaranteed period of employment at a guaranteed rate of pay (barring specified events that trigger termination or modification of the contractual relationship). An employment agreement may (and most do) specify at-will and disclaim contractual employment.

Given that they specified terms for length of employment, how contract renewals would be handled, benefits, compensation, notice, and clauses on how the contract can be terminated, and all referred to themselves as contracts... I'll go with 'they are contracts'.

Then your work history is unusual. Almost every job I've ever had (and most of the people I know as well), from auto-body shop janitor to server architect, was specified in the paperwork as at-will, except for a few people who self-incorporated to make a career out of bona-fide contracting. In my 18 years of employment only two jobs have been "contract" jobs, and on both of them I was simply considered an employee of another company, not a contractor myself.

I still think your's is the odd history. Why would you accept a job without a contract? I am not talking as a 'contractor' -- that is something completely different. I am talking as an employee.

What country do you live in?

Here in the U.S., I have been working for 30 years and I have never had an employment contract. I don't think I've ever known an IT person who has. Unionized employees normally have contracts, but they're almost all factory or government workers.

I was just going to ask where you live.

Here in the midwest US, I have the contracts for my last 4 jobs filed next to my desk -- and not one of them says 'not a contract' -- and in fact refer to themselves as contracts.

Since I have never been in a union job, and only the most recent of them is a government job, I still think you are wrong. Granted, the fact that I was on call at times for each of these jobs may be why -- with higher responsibility they may have wished for a contract. With at the non-government jobs, they were all paired with a NDA -- that may play a role in this as well.

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

Sure. It absolutely is. It also doesn't deter the real dirtbags out there either. It's just like a late paycheck... they KNOW it is more trouble than it is worth (losing your job, countless hours spent) to fight it, since there is no actual return on your side winning.

Yes, and the kind of company you're going to have to just up and walk out on is *exactly* the kind that knows they can get away with not paying you. Been there, done that, and won't be saying yes to the, "Oh please do just a few more hours of work, we'll pay you!" thing again.

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

anon:
ObiWayneKenobi:
If you run a business and don't want to spend any money on anything with it, then you DON'T DESERVE TO HAVE A BUSINESS.
Obviously, the business thinks differently.

More importantly, the many customers of said business think differently as well.

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

Newbius Maximus:
Sure. It absolutely is. It also doesn't deter the real dirtbags out there either. It's just like a late paycheck... they KNOW it is more trouble than it is worth (losing your job, countless hours spent) to fight it, since there is no actual return on your side winning.
Yes, and the kind of company you're going to have to just up and walk out on is *exactly* the kind that knows they can get away with not paying you. Been there, done that, and won't be saying yes to the, "Oh please do just a few more hours of work, we'll pay you!" thing again.

Works fine if you get the check up front.

2009-10-09 Reply Admin

When Michael took a peek under the hood, he saw what looked more like a refrigerator come "Pitch-Out Day"

I don't know what this sentence means. Four pages, and nobody's mentioned it.This article is the second result on Google for the phrase "Pitch-Out Day", and first out of three results for that phrase appearing with "refrigerator", where the other two are copy pasta of this article.

What googly madness bewitched thine narration?

2009-10-10 Reply Admin

Michael: Our heroic protagonist. A little passive, but stil OK.

"took a peek under the hood": literally, look under the hood of a vehicle to see how it runs, or what's wrong; metaphorically, look into, learn, what comprises a system and how that system works. In Michael's case, how the Peripheral Maven computer system worked, was cobbled together.

"a refrigerator come 'Pitch-Out Day': take a refrigerator, fill it with food, turn it off for three weeks, then open it. What you see needs to be pitched out! The day you pitch it out is, ta-da, "Pitch-Out Day."

No offense meant, but the sentence makes perfect sense to me.

In reply to, "What googly madness bewitched thine narration?":

The native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

2009-10-10 Reply Admin

ozymandias:
<snip...> Here in the midwest US, I have the contracts for my last 4 jobs filed next to my desk -- and not one of them says 'not a contract' -- and in fact refer to themselves as contracts.
Since I have never been in a union job, and only the most recent of them is a government job, I still think you are wrong. Granted, the fact that I was on call at times for each of these jobs may be why -- with higher responsibility they may have wished for a contract. With at the non-government jobs, they were all paired with a NDA -- that may play a role in this as well.

Do you work in IT? Given that you're browsing TDWTF I would assume that you do, but it has also been my overwhelming experience that jobs in this industry do not come with a bona-fide contract. In fact, at least in this area, most of them are "contractor" positions where you're a legal employee of a contracting firm who hires you for a specific job at a specific employer. These, however, are not truly "contractual" jobs, as you have the same freedom to leave without consequence (other than to your reputation and availability of a reference) as with any other job that doesn't have a contract.

Perhaps this practice varies throughout the US, but you are literally the first person I've ever heard of it a (presumably) tech role that speaks of having a contract at all, let alone as it being the "normal" practice.

2009-10-10 Reply Admin

Jay,

You're living in a fantasy world in which employer and employee have equal negotiating power. Even ignoring the 6 candidates-per-open-position aspect of the current economy, a company that fails to hire a candidate they want can usually limp along by making everyone else do more work, whereas the candidate that fails to find a job might well be looking at homelessness or starvation.

There's such a thing as economic coercion as well. If your choices are (a) take a really bad job, or (b) not eat this week, do you really have a free choice?

2009-10-10 Reply Admin

Tom has it correct, and in fact there is a penalty for failure to deliver. The employer must pay you a penalty the equivalent of a day's pay for each day the final check is late. My wife had an issue with her employer over her vacation pay that took them 2 months to resolve, BINGO, a check for her unused vacation AND an additional 2 months pay.... Welcome to the People's Republic of California, where we at least try to protect employees from the blind corporate profit motive.

2009-10-11 Reply Admin

Lars Vargas:
Anonymous:
Michael broke his contract when he refused to work a notice period. That would be seen as legitimate grounds for withholding his final pay-check, at least here in the UK.
In the US, each state has its own employment laws. Many states consider employment "at will", which means that no notice is required by either employee or employer fr termination of employment. Depending on who terminated the relationship determines when final pay is due.
Rootbeer:
The RWTF is that the author waited until the last paragraph of the first section to mention that the events took place at a urinal.
I don't see a urinal mentioned specifically. He may have been in a stall. At least he washed his hands.

First off this is awesome! I can't believe this actually got posted, I friggin' hated that job. It wasn't a stall it was a single person bathroom... which made it all the worse.

I have horror stories like you wouldn't believe from that nightmare......

2009-10-11 Reply Admin

lolwtf:
Many WTFs here...

This guy didn't catch on that between the cameras everywhere, and everyone seeming uncomfortable with his socializing? You're there to work, not chat.

Touching someone who is using the bathroom. No no no.

XP's 10-connection limit.

His first thought to get around that limit was "switch to another OS" rather than "install the commonly-used hack that can be found with about one second of Googling to increase the connection limit to something sane".

I don't have a muffin. What's up with that?

Expecting to get any good software from an ad on Craigslist, in exchange for ~$50 worth of gadgets.

The C++ was so bad it managed to depend on an outdated version of .Net? That's quite the feat, considering C++ (as opposed to C#) has never required .Net.

Anyone who thinks the concept of step by step instructions on how to fix any problem that could ever possibly arise even makes sense.

They decided to withhold his paycheck, and he did nothing? Yeah, kind of illegal, like everyone's already said.

The comment system STILL hasn't been fixed, requiring me to submit three times.

Didn't spend any time chatting, that would be an embellishment to make the story better. Did get whined at for being at different computers doing my job resolving issues. "Why aren't you at your desk?" usually asked through ICQ (And that's a story in and of itself).

I believe I said something along the lines of "You can't touch me while I'm touching me...". To be honest I was kind of taken by surprise at the moment. Never had anyone place a hand on my right shoulder while my head was down and I had my equipment in my right hand. Weirdest part was the fact the he was rubbing my shoulder. I kind of froze a bit like a deer caught in headlights.

XP Pro sucked, was not suitable for the task, the connection limit was one issue, but there were many more reasons we needed an actual piece of server software.

My first reaction was to push for a server running a version of Windows Server (didn't care which year). Was told there was no money for it. I didn't really want to pirate it as most software in the company was already pirated, heck even most of the windows OS's were pirated, photoshop, etc.... Didn't want a different OS, but did suggest using a Linux box and some open source software to resolve the numerous issues that required a true server.

Muffin's are awesome. I like blueberry.

Wasn't craigslist, might have worked better that way. He went for an Indian programmer (overseas obviously) that couldn't speak english, didn't understand requirements, and submitted coded that took me HOURS to fix and get working halfway right... all to save $500.

It didn't outright require the .Net framework, however the installer for the software that he cobbled together from God knows where required it, it was hardcoded in to look for it. I had to figure it out, remove the requirements, rewrite some code. It was REALLY ugly.

Welcome to my nightmare. They wanted me to write a procedure on how to code for any future changes they might need in software, procedures for fixing anything that breaks network wide, etc. I tried for days to explain that I couldn't squeeze more than a decade of experience into a help file.

You don't even want to know the amount of illegal going on. They import all products as "samples" to avoid customs fees, all software is pirated, etc.

Can't help you with that one....

2009-10-11 Reply Admin

pscs:
Anonymous:
Ricardino:
TRWTF is that tcpip.sys can be patched to accept more than 10 connections.
No, you're thinking of the limit on half-open outgoing connections. They were hitting the limit on incoming connections to the web server. These are two different things.

Actually, the article is wrong, there IS NO LIMIT on the number of incoming TCP/IP connections in Windows XP.

The '10 connection limit' is for Windows resource sharing - eg file/printer sharing. You can have 10,000 concurrent connections from different sources to a web/pop3/smtp/ftp/etc server running XP.

(It's not as good at handling large numbers of connections because the 'listen' queue is limited to 5 in XP, but it works fine as long as the connections don't arrive too quickly to be handled by the server).

A lot of people misunderstand this.

Actually XP Home is 5 while XP Pro is 10.

I should explain that files needed to be shared from a single source and that the owner required a password manager program on each and every computer to pull passwords from a central file to fill them in lest anyone have a password to anything. Other files like photoshop projects, excel files, etc also had to be shared.

An actual server was the only legitimate way to go. There were other reasons for a server as well.

My favorite day was the Monday I came in with my partner and found that the new secret snooping software that was installed by the owner and his son over the weekend took down the entire network. To this day they still swear the software doesn't exist.... Even when the entire IT staff confronted him about it when it was found to be the reason why the entire network was down (after about three hours of digging).

Sometimes I still wake up in a cold sweat with nightmares from that job.

2009-10-11 Reply Admin

that is such lovely spam! NOT-T-T-T-T-T-T-T Anywho I think that company is a load of fucking crap

2009-10-12 Reply Admin

Adam Robinson:
ozymandias:
<snip...> Here in the midwest US, I have the contracts for my last 4 jobs filed next to my desk -- and not one of them says 'not a contract' -- and in fact refer to themselves as contracts.
Since I have never been in a union job, and only the most recent of them is a government job, I still think you are wrong. Granted, the fact that I was on call at times for each of these jobs may be why -- with higher responsibility they may have wished for a contract. With at the non-government jobs, they were all paired with a NDA -- that may play a role in this as well.

Do you work in IT? Given that you're browsing TDWTF I would assume that you do, but it has also been my overwhelming experience that jobs in this industry do not come with a bona-fide contract. In fact, at least in this area, most of them are "contractor" positions where you're a legal employee of a contracting firm who hires you for a specific job at a specific employer. These, however, are not truly "contractual" jobs, as you have the same freedom to leave without consequence (other than to your reputation and availability of a reference) as with any other job that doesn't have a contract.

Perhaps this practice varies throughout the US, but you are literally the first person I've ever heard of it a (presumably) tech role that speaks of having a contract at all, let alone as it being the "normal" practice.

I do work in IT -- and asking around this weekend, it seems that most of the other people around here that I am friends with are in a similar boat. Some worked at a Fortune 500 company, some at small local tech firms, and some at state and community colleges. They all said that they had contracts -- not that they were some wishy-washy contractor, but contracted employees with the company they work for.

2009-10-12 Reply Admin

EatenByAGrue:
Jay,
You're living in a fantasy world in which employer and employee have equal negotiating power. Even ignoring the 6 candidates-per-open-position aspect of the current economy, a company that fails to hire a candidate they want can usually limp along by making everyone else do more work, whereas the candidate that fails to find a job might well be looking at homelessness or starvation.

There's such a thing as economic coercion as well. If your choices are (a) take a really bad job, or (b) not eat this week, do you really have a free choice?

The point isn't that employee and employer have equal negotiating power. Obviously that varies based on local/regional/national unemployment levels in that field, as well as the urgency of the need both sides are trying to fill. The point is that all employees have equal negotiating power with a given employer.

And yes, in your economic coercion example, you have a free choice. Or I should say "had". Maybe you should have saved more and spent less in the past. Maybe you should have worked longer and harder at your previous job so you wouldn't be unemployed now.

Unemployment is ~10%, which means 90% are still employed. Personally, I was laid off with about 1000 other employees in February of this year. I started a new job less than 2 weeks later, for 14% better pay, and the work is far more enjoyable and less stressful. Sure, maybe most of those laid off recently are crappy software engineers. Based on the volume of stories on TDWTF, this industry could use a good flushing. I personally hope lots of crap coders have to switch to manual labor careers. It will certainly make my life easier in this industry.

2009-10-12 Reply Admin

In the UK it is certainly not the case that an employer can withhold pay because an employee refused to work a notice period. There are very few cirumstances which would enable them to do that.

2009-10-15 Reply Admin

Could be there's no final paycheck to be had. Often, we're paid in advance, or partially in advance, partially in arrears. He didn't give any notice, so it's even possible there's money to be clawed back from him

2009-10-19 Reply Admin

I'd assume "pitch-out day" refers to when the cleaner has to go through the contents of the staff 'fridge, binning anything to old. Old enough for its mould to attempt to walk out of the 'fridge on its own.

2009-10-25 Reply Admin

In California, it's a bit happier than that, they're required to pay you on the same day, and the penalties are severe (e.g. up to 6 weeks of pay per incident.) Plus there's a whole Division of Labor Standards Enforcement who do all the fighting (and collection) for you.

2013-04-05 Reply Admin

Holy shit, Michael's boss came in and grabbed him while he was using the restroom (a single-person restroom, per 287650, assuming it's him)? That's assault, not to mention sexual harassment. He would've been well within his rights to respond with "GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE", loud enough for the entire office to hear, and a hard right to Shawn's face (in states where you're permitted to defend yourself from an assault).

Man, I would've loved to see the fallout that occurred if Michael had taken that employer to the cleaners. He should have quit effective immediately, and when told that he was required to give 2 weeks notice, responded fine, this is my 2 weeks notice, and since you'll be paying me 2 weeks to sit on my ass and do absolutely nothing (at home, by the way), you might as well try to fire me. Which I'd hope Shawn would've tried to do, since it would've found him later trying in vain to explain how it wasn't retaliation when he fired an employee who he'd sexually harassed after that employee put in 2 weeks notice and gave that incident as the reason for quitting.

Stop by the HR department on the way out (assuming they had an HR department) and explain what happened and that Michael was quitting because of Shawn's sexual harassment. More likely than not, they'd realize that Michael had the ability to rip them a new one, and they'd have canned Shawn and tried to offer Michael a sizable severance package to go quietly. If Michael wasn't 100% ecstatic over the deal they proposed (and I mean "so, you're saying I'll never have to work again... well, I'll think about it"), walk right out the door, find a phone book, and start calling. Dept. of Labor for the withheld pay (if they had the balls to try that). BSA for their commercial use of software that's licensed not-for-commercial-use. Police for Shawn entering the bathroom and laying hands on Michael.

I imagine the company would've been bankrupted and Shawn personally found liable for a number of criminal infractions.

Peripheral Maven

"a refrigerator come 'Pitch-Out Day': take a refrigerator, fill it with food, turn it off for three weeks, then open it. What you see needs to be pitched out! The day you pitch it out is, ta-da, "Pitch-Out Day."

No offense meant, but the sentence makes perfect sense to me.

Leave a comment on “Peripheral Maven”