Grimm

"Hello?"
"Hello, Grimm, this is your manager at work."
"What's up man?"
"I know it's late Grimm, but could you come back to work. We have a problem we need you to work on"
"Ummmm... ok..."
"Great, be here at 11pm"
"*Sigh* see you then."
*click*

Grimm

So, here it is 2 and 1/2 hours later.
They'll be ready for me to start any minute now... just a little bit longer until everything is set up...
My bed, 18.5 miles away (12 minutes away at normal driving speeds) is calling to me....

Nija

Lemme guess, your salary too?

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"Nija is the dark soul of gotapex. We don't like to talk about him." - LPMiller

Merlin

It is times like this that one really needs to let caller ID and voicemail do their thing.

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nickel

i saw the title and thought for sure you were going to say

BA-NA-NA PHONE!

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*click me*

cheapie

Hello Peter. What's happening? Um, I'm gonna need you go ahead and come
in tomorrow. So if you could be here around nine, that would be great.

Oh, oh, yea…I forgot. I'm gonna also need you to
come in Sunday too. We, uh, lost some people this week and we need to
sorta catch up. Thanks.

__________________
70% of the world is covered by water. The rest is covered by Bob Sanders

nickel

DarkFury

Just be sure to have his TPS reports ready by Monday....

MMMmmmmmm.... yeah.

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mcs328

"We aren't going to meet our financial outlook this quarter. I've been asked if you have any scheduled vacation through the end of December. If you do, I've been asked if you would not take it so we could meet our financial forecast. I know you haven't taken a lot of vacation so if you go over your limit by not taking vacation this quarter I can get a waiver so you can go over the company maximum. I feel bad about taking that trip to Japan a few weeks ago and that other trip to South America because I'm sure those hurt the forecast also. I cancelled the rest of my vacation except for Christmas week . Is there any vacation you can cancel. I see you have a vacation day coming up, the day after Thanksgiving and the week of Christmas also."

Actual coversation I had yesterday.

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cheapie

how does not taking vacation add to the financial picture? you just get paid the same as if you were working right?

kgsilvas

I was thinking the same thing. Maybe they're in sales and it hurts the company because they're paying a salary without an associated spike in sales??

mcs328

I get paid the same if I take vacation or not. What pot the money gets taken out of is different. If I take vacation, then my company pays that out of thier coffers. If I don't take vacation, then I'm billable which means the client pays my company and a portion of that pays my salary. It's government contracting.

The whole business of not taking vacation is so they can meet their paper financial goal they set in the beginning of the year. Basically it's a cycle.

1. Set financial goal at the beginning of the year.
2. End of the year goal falls short.
3. Raises are small or none.
4. Employees leave.
5. Billable hours (aka revenue) shrinks
5. Hire new people to replace lost position with higher salaries
6. Revenue almost goes back to last years but profits are slimmer.
7. Repeat #2 etc.

To break this chain, you get more money from the client, set a reasonable goal, quit and be a new hire somewhere else or fire all the layers of non-billable management who have no role or involvement in project anyways.

cheapie

if they are already going to miss their targets they might as well have people take vacations now instead of loading all of them into the next qtr.

mcs328

Exactly!!! I think it has more to do with justifying set raises and bonuses for top levels of management when they meet the goals but for the peons raises and bonuses are not set but negotiated from what's left over.

MikeD

www.monster.com

www.dice.com

www.hotjobs.com

www.careerbuilder.com

You get the point...

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mcs328

*ring ring ring* About a few moments ago...

"Hello?"
"Hi...I was talking to manager X and I hate to ask you this."
"Yes....?"
"You have that week of Xmas off correct?"
"Yes....."
"Would you mind if you worked a couple of hours that week from home?"
"I could but since most of my work involves software I can never dream of affording on my own dime, it's going to make it kind of hard"
"How about you work maybe 8 hours that week and I can send you some documentation you can review or something"
"Yeah I guess that can work but since I don't know if I'm doing anything that week I can't guarantee I'll be actually doing any work at all"
"That's ok...I'll put you down for 8 hours that week spread out any way you want"
"Sure thing"
"Thanks"
"Yup"

cheapie

lol. gotta love corp politics.

Grimm

Well, I got out of there a little bit before 4am, not to bad considering it could have gone to 6am or later quite easily. I knocked out my assignment quickly while everyone else slogged on through at a more sedate pace.

mcs328

Will the madness ever end??? I'll spare everyone the long drawn out conversation but basically instead of working 8 hours spread over that one week I can just work an extra 30 minutes every work day in December. I get the picture!!! The company needs warm bodies to bill. I think their next phone call will look like this...instead of taking 24 hours of vacation...work an additional 24 hours spread out anyway you want and that way you don't spend any vacation but you can still take those days off.

Could be worse...I'm not a network guy who is on call 24/7.

MikeD

Hey now! It's not that bad...

mcs328

hehehe...sorry to offend

Kevster

No, it is. Especially when your company has a huge global network and you are the only on-call engineer that is an expert in your company's optical switching network.

On a side note, I'm convinved all of India's telecommunications/optical networks are synchronized off a timex wristwatch with a failing battery. If anyone understands the humor in that, then you will know what my pain is right now trying to get a clean STM-4 circuit out of Bangalore.

__________________
I think over again
My small adventures, my fears.
The small ones that seemed so big,
For all the vital things I had to get and to reach.

And yet there is only one great thing, the only thing:

To live to see the great day that dawns,
And the light that fills the world.

-old Inuit song

Nija

Sounds like a good time to hit them up for a 27% percent raise ala LegendKiller

dbax791

Working with Bangalore sucks. Sucks. Double sucks.

Could they be on a 12 hour time difference? No, it is 12 1/2 hours. What kind of country needs to put their time on a 30 min differential from GMT?

I seriously dread any assignment that involves working with India.

Grimm

It never fails....

LPM doesn't say that they can't take your Friday away... and I am asked to work Saturday.

It's a given.

I don't know how this works, it just always happens. Friday morning I read the news and I don't see it and I already know my boss is on the way, and will soon be "asking" me to work Saturday.

Yes... they took away another Friday.

Grimm

"Hey Grimm, I know you have already put in a lot of overtime this week, but can you come in on Saturday to get some of this work done?"

"Sorry, LPM posted right here (*points to news page*) that no one could take my Friday away. So I won't be working tomorrow. I have plans, fun plans."

"Drats! Well, there's always next weekend..."

Tune in next week fans, for the next spine tingling adventure, where Grimm once again faces of with the fearsome Overtime Monster! Dun! Duh! Dah!

cheapie

you get paid for overtime or are you salaried?

Grimm

I get paid, untill midnight, then I drop back to normal time. Seems the way the law is worded in Cali, they can set the work day to start whenever they like, and consecutive hours don't matter. But after 12 hours I don't care, I just want to go home. After 16 hours I just want to die.