We need a workplace benefits thread. For 2016 my company got self managed unlimited PTO and optional work from home Fridays!!

1/15/2016 11:44:59 AM

that would be a workplace enjoyance. There is a thread for that.

1/15/2016 12:07:55 PM

that thread already exists - most unlimited PTO policies are actually just non-accrual PTO - done so that a company no longer has to pay out PTO for states where PTO has to be paid out when an employee leaves - it takes it off their books

studies also show that when employees have unlimited PTO they actually take less and there aren't as many 'use it or lose it' days taken at the end of the year

1/15/2016 12:08:56 PM

^ True. I've got a few friends that work for an "unlimited PTO" company...and they rarely take time off because they're worried it will make them look like slackers in an industry that is constantly promoting from within and hiring new kids at the lower levels. They want to get the promotion and don't want to be replaced at the bottom rungs.

OTOH, my wife works for an international company that gives a ton of PTO that only a certain amount gets carried over. I feel like she takes a ton of vacation days and still has stuff left over at the end of the year that she takes just because she can.

I'd rather have #2 than #1.

1/15/2016 12:32:50 PM

^

1/15/2016 12:40:03 PM

^^^^Found it thanks!

^^^,^^

I understand where those studies are coming from but the people I know with an "unlimited PTO" policy all take 5-7 weeks off on average. That's basically 25-35 days of PTO. My company already gives 15 plus 10 rollover so I have almost 25 this year anyway (saved up from last year for a couple big trips this year).

We're still technically tracking PTO but the idea is if you work on a hard project for 8-12 weeks and then the project is done you should be able to take off time and not have to worry about fitting it into official PTO. If we lose an employee we still pay out whatever "official" PTO they still have on the books.

It's pretty common in consulting and smaller software consulting companies. Obviously not the norm across all industries but from most of the people I've talked to across at least my industry this is how it works.

If we officially had 30-40 days off then yeah but having a set 15/year plus unofficial vacation is IMO the best of both worlds. Also if we work 40+ hours by Thursday and have everything wrapped up from a client and/or project perspective by Friday many people take it off anyway if they have a trip and want to have a three day weekend.

1/15/2016 1:54:53 PM

The vacation policy at my job sucks. After one year we gain the right to earn one vacation day for every month we work after that up to 5 days. After 3 years we get up to 2 weeks vacation. After 18 years we get up to 3 weeks vacation. If we don't use our days then we don't get them paid out to us and we have to use vacation days as sick days. I sort of understand the rules though. We have 3 technicians and 2 parts people once they hire a new parts manager. We are too small to be able to take lots of vacations.

1/16/2016 8:27:07 PM

My Schedule Today

9-10 Meeting (Ran long by 30 minutes)
11-12 Meeting
12-1 Lunch Meeting
2-3 Meeting
3-4 Meeting
4-4:30 Meeting

How the hell am I supposed to get any damn work done

1/28/2016 10:54:12 AM

Quote :

"OTOH, my wife works for an international company that gives a ton of PTO that only a certain amount gets carried over. I feel like she takes a ton of vacation days and still has stuff left over at the end of the year that she takes just because she can."

Similar situation here, I am up to 23 days a year not counting Holiday days and we can only carry over 15. I made sure to not take any real time off my first year so I basically always have some overrage at the end of the year so I can just say "Sorry gotta use it all now or I lose it" and no one hassles me. Really nice to have most of December off every year.

1/28/2016 11:06:18 AM

I have 38 days in the bank and no good opportunity to take any of it.

1/28/2016 11:17:27 AM

^^i do the same

1/28/2016 11:21:50 AM

Too many regional people are coming to my office. They need to go away and let the boss and me take care of things.

1/28/2016 6:44:56 PM

new girl in this office space with me
usually has her headphones on
i let a fart out earlier...like 4/10 loud
figured she had her headphones on
few minutes later i sneeze
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"bless you"

fucccccccccccccckkkkkkkkk

2/2/2016 4:47:03 PM

i hate everyone. literally. if i had the financial security, i would quit in an instance.

2/2/2016 5:21:02 PM

I've been getting e-mails from a customer for multiple days now. She's been asking to get credit for some parts we took back and some cores. She keeps telling me what parts it is, but won't tell me what invoice they are listed on even though I told her to give me the invoice number in the upper right hand corner that is below the word "Invoice." This is getting annoying because she's getting my regional boss all worked up.

2/2/2016 7:12:27 PM

That's not a workplace annoyance...that's just a customer interaction.

2/3/2016 7:50:22 AM

Dealing with this new tax laws on services in NC and whether it affects us or not. I am not an accountant and our CPA that the owner uses hasnt exactly been great best I can tell. I am gonna be super pissed if I spend time redoing our invoice system to add taxes to service, then dealing with the hundreds of phone calls that are sure to follow when we start taxing our customers for service, then find out we were exempt and have to refund them all individually.

Oh also having to pay tax on services now is also gonna be shitty, thanks NC!

2/3/2016 8:25:00 AM

I've been a state university employee since 2004. As of this week, we now have to use a time clock. I understand the need for it, I guess, but it feels a little insulting. I haven't punched a time card since my part-time job in high school.

Oh, and I feel like I've spent more time this week learning about the system and adjusting to timing in and out than I have actually doing my job, which is not cool.

[Edited on February 5, 2016 at 3:30 PM. Reason : sss]

2/5/2016 3:29:05 PM

stop takin 2 hours lunches and maybe they'd trust u

2/5/2016 3:32:30 PM

Well, if anything, they've gotten more work out of me than my hours show... Someone definitely did something to put us in this situation, but there's nothing that can be done about it now, I guess.

And the people who take two-hour lunches don't have to deal with this system.

[Edited on February 5, 2016 at 3:42 PM. Reason : sss]

2/5/2016 3:41:39 PM

When it's a Friday afternoon and there's too much bud light in the fridge.

2/5/2016 5:07:13 PM

So that's like what, one Bud Light?

2/5/2016 10:41:55 PM

All capital projects are frozen until they resolve a capital shortfall. I have a project that involves replacing some equipment and because of the credit we are getting from the vendor the project has no cost (in fact the credit we are getting is more than the cost of the project).

The project costs negative money. It just got denied because capital projects are frozen until they resolve the shortfall.

2/11/2016 9:49:06 AM

Quote :

"new girl in this office space with me usually has her headphones on i let a fart out earlier...like 4/10 loud figured she had her headphones on few minutes later i sneeze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "bless you" fucccccccccccccckkkkkkkkk"

ha ha she heard you fart

2/11/2016 2:05:55 PM

People complain about their meeting space in a multimillion dollar new building because they can't view giant excel spreadsheets full of numbers. There are other meeting spaces that can accommodate this request literally two floors below, but they are now requesting their almost new room have the AV gear replaced instead. And my boss sends us all an email this evening how this will be a fun endeavor to look at other options and we will meet on it tomorrow.

Meanwhile we have places with gear that literally is over a decade old and does not function at all that will now get backburnered for even more years so Dr. Asshole's meeting space can look fancy for a possible TV show appearance. Your tax dollars at work.

[Edited on February 11, 2016 at 10:32 PM. Reason : ]

2/11/2016 10:31:24 PM

The other parts man and 2 of our 3 techs walked out on me at 5 pm even though I was trying to finish up the last overnight air order. The other parts guy is cool, but he is the manager, so he should leave last on Friday not me!

2/26/2016 5:57:01 PM

I hate shitty supervisors

give them an ounce of power, and they become a giant bag of dicks

[Edited on February 26, 2016 at 6:23 PM. Reason : ^case in point ]

2/26/2016 6:22:48 PM

^Actually he isn't shitty. The last manager was though. It was just kind of annoying trying to get the last order in because the software program we use is very sensitive. You have to do things a certain way, or it just keeps saying error. I'm used to using the mouse in those situations and not the delete, or back button. The owner of the company is a jackass though. We wouldn't have half the problems we have, if they would update the software and get us another computer.

2/26/2016 8:37:12 PM

lol, wow that sounds familiar. It looks like I am hacking into MS DOS or some old school shit in the lab I work in, and people pay a lot of $$ for us to run water analysis test, and then you upload their reports and it's like

2/27/2016 12:32:54 PM

^With ours you have to type in your employee ID, then the branch number, then the location number, then the customer number, if you already haven't. If you don't do things in a certain order then some things disappear in the cells. And if you type in an invalid number you can't just use your cursor to delete it out. It's a hybrid of excel and another program. I'm better at using it now, but I am still used to using plain excel and being able to click on cells at free will to correct any errors.

2/27/2016 1:14:29 PM

we just had a lost time reportable accident because of a glade mist air freshener

someone had one of those auto misters sitting on top of a filing cabinet. Someone was standing in front of it reading something from a file when it went off directly in their face. they flushed their eyes and had to go to urgent care and now have a missed time accident because of an air freshener which means that i now have like an hour of paperwork

2/29/2016 2:50:54 PM

People who would rather half-ass it than take 30 minutes to do it the right way.

I wrote a utility class for exporting the data in a vendor-control to excel. I took the time to make it customizable using the vendor's built-in framework, and just made it easy to hook it up to any form that we have with a line or two of code. I then replaced the 8 or 9 copy-pasted implementations of the exporting function throughout the app.

I come in Friday and see that someone has changed what I wrote. They needed to do data transformation of the values being exported, which was fully and easily supported by the vendor's built-in framework, which I exposed. Instead, they hacked it together to export the file using the vendor code, open the exported file using a different library, change the data they needed, and then save it to a new file. The transformation they needed to do only applied to one screen, which meant the other 8 screens would needlessly go through this extra step. Their changes also broke some of the ways the class was expected to behave.

The changes were made by offshore contractors in India, so I reverted their change and sent an email stating the problems and detailed exactly how they should implement the new solution. It would take a little less than 30 minutes to do it (and test it). I received an email late Friday night from one of the guys agreeing to what I had said and that we would talk about it Monday morning to review their revised work. I come in today to an email sent by another guy at 1AM EST that says "sorry, we tested it, it works. We need to get it out before the next build (at 3PM EST), so we're just gonna do it our way and maybe fix it later."

Needless to say, their crap didn't make it into the build.

2/29/2016 11:50:28 PM

If ya want multiple plan sets from several firms to look somewhat consistent, then ya better give us more than terse, one sentence replies on formatting.

Or just don't give a shit about formatting, that's my preferred option.

[Edited on March 8, 2016 at 10:26 AM. Reason : People expect you to mind read, then we end up spending 20% project time re-editing, fuck you.]

3/8/2016 10:22:40 AM

I got grilled by the vice president in our region today. Someone lost the van key, but since I drove it last I was written up and blamed. Then I got pulled in the office and grilled for about 20 minutes. My boss started telling me all sorts of things that I did wrong over the past few months that I didn't do. And the branch manager did a pretty good job of throwing me under the bus too with some false claims.

4/11/2016 4:37:18 PM

Quote :

"Someone lost the van key. I drove it last."

Fixed that for you

4/11/2016 4:40:32 PM

^The techs always take the key to go get the loose change left in there by a former employee. No one is 100% sure what happened.

4/11/2016 5:00:37 PM

lol

[Edited on April 11, 2016 at 5:05 PM. Reason : nvm]

4/11/2016 5:05:17 PM

Bitch, I will judge your character, your competence, and your skill ceiling based on what the fuck you do at the kitchenette.

When you take the last K-Cup in a box, fucking replace the box. You know where that shit is. You don't think about other people, and you don't take initiative when you could improve something!

When you take that little fucking platform out from under the water dispenser so you can fill your bottle, fucking slot it back in place instead of leaving it lying on the counter. You don't pay attention to detail, and you don't question things that should come off as wrong to thinking people!

4/29/2016 7:46:22 AM

So the tech who came to me to inform me last month that the company van key was missing found the key laying next to the bolt bin that I searched around after he told me it was missing. Something is really strange about the whole situation. I got wrote up for his prank and the company paid $265 for a new key.

5/3/2016 6:50:25 PM

don't stand for that shit.

5/4/2016 1:50:00 AM

I now have to CLOCK IN every day. Out for lunch. Back in. It's so ridiculous; I haven't had to clock in since high school. As if that is not enough, our admin assistant has access to the time records and constantly berates me for having too much time, leaving early, not taking a long enough lunch, etc., even though all of that is fine with my supervisor. It is NOT this girl's business at all. I have enough to deal with, without her throwing shade.

I did finally tell her that she'd be a lot happier if she stopped stalking everyone else and focused on herself.

It didn't go over well.

5/4/2016 8:35:20 AM

Quote :

"I now have to CLOCK IN every day. Out for lunch. Back in. It's so ridiculous"

Yeah, I have to do that shit too. So damn annoying. I think our junk was made in Access by one of my co-workers, and it gets corrupted nearly every week. I always forget to close out of the program when I clock in/out, so I always get those passive aggressive emails telling me to remember to close out so they can fix stuff. There's gotta be a much easier program to use. I'm about to just tell them to take this shit off my PC.

5/4/2016 8:58:46 AM

We use Kronos.

5/4/2016 9:05:58 AM

Quote :

"I got grilled by the vice president in our region today. Someone lost the van key, but since I drove it last I was written up and blamed. Then I got pulled in the office and grilled for about 20 minutes. My boss started telling me all sorts of things that I did wrong over the past few months that I didn't do. And the branch manager did a pretty good job of throwing me under the bus too with some false claims. "

sounds like they want you to quit for some reason

5/4/2016 9:30:41 AM

The old parts manager who got fired at my job had his ex-roommate come walking in the shop pissed off today. The guy was covered with tattoos. He said the old manager had been stealing parts and that is why some of our freon is missing. He said he was pissed off because our old manager broke into his daughter's house last night. He then said he would testify against him in court and that he didn't steal our manager's old Jeep, our manager actually sold it to him and the guy's wife and kids were outside sitting in it ( we forgot to look out the window). He said our old manager also smokes crack. I think the truth actually is in the middle somewhere. All of these problems caused by the old manager that still keep popping up are kind of annoying. I'm just thankful the guy wasn't pissed at parts, or service for something we had done. I don't want to get beaten to death.

[Edited on May 5, 2016 at 11:54 PM. Reason : .]

5/5/2016 11:52:56 PM

Damn dude. Just get a new job.

5/6/2016 12:04:26 AM

Quote :

"I now have to CLOCK IN every day. Out for lunch. Back in. It's so ridiculous; I haven't had to clock in since high school. "

I would love to be able to punch a clock compared to the nonsense we have going on right now. They want us to book all of our time in a super low level. So if I spend 10 minutes talking to the customer I put that under one item and then if I spend 15 minutes writing email responses I put that in a different line item. I brought up the question to management if the bookkeeping advantages saved/made us more money than the time wasted being so granular and I got back a bunch of blank stares like they didn't understand that all this timekeeping effort had a cost involved.

5/6/2016 10:10:00 AM

10 minutes timekeeping
10 minutes timekeeping timekeeping
10 minutes timekeeping timekeeping timekeeping

I see where this is going.

5/6/2016 10:12:51 AM

I truly believe that unless you can just charge anything under 1 hour to whichever your main task/contract is, you will waste too much time recording your hours.

5/6/2016 10:18:20 AM

^&^^

Exactly, no one actually did a cost benefit analysis to figure out if the time spent capturing this data costs more than the value added from it.

The problem is that this system was put in place for the home office where people tend to work on more discreet tasks, maybe doing 2-3 things per day. In all our branch offices people have 2-3 different jobs and a bunch more tasks on a daily basis and it's a nightmare.

5/6/2016 10:57:50 AM