The
Loveline
Companion

I think I might really be getting fired soon.

—ZT-In

On the same boat here. Except they're planning on laying off the entire medical records dept, and having one dept that serves numerous hospitals.

Who did you sexually harass?

—L_to_the_A is back!

I made by boss cry a few months ago, he's male. I didn't use my penis, just words.

—ZT-In

daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn

—catloaf

you can't just leave it at that... what did you say to him??

—stellagold

mebbe yo breff stank

—catloaf

Well, he literally told me to tell him if he was doing something stupid.

He wasn't getting the difference between virtual directories and meta directories. So I sent him an email that was phrased (I thought playfully) like a four question quiz that would lead him to the answer and said something like "if you can answer these, you're not stupid." But... yeah... it made him cry.

—ZT-In

lol irl catloaf

—mandee

^my work here is done

—catloaf

if it was a months ago why do you think youll be fired now?

—stellagold

Is he gay?

—acm

acm - he has a wife and two daughters.

stella - things haven't improved much since then, and he tries to avoid talking to me now. Which would be okay if I didn't feel like he was trying to fire me.

I have a pre-interview Monday morning with a middleware-ish place in Denver.

Middleware is a great way to fuck up software and make money.

—ZT-In

i'm meeting with a temp agency next week. i didn't really want to go that route, but i'm so desperate.

—mandee

netware? i'd be crying too

—he sounds like a delight

Speaking of jobs, are managers legally allowed to approach their employees and warn them about the union? For months they have been handing out "fact" sheets and discouraging us from asking the union reps questions.

—L_to_the_A is back!

no

—stellagold

well that's what they have been doing. I'm just neutral regarding the union. If you discuss among your co-workers you can get fired.

—L_to_the_A is back!

unacceptable. go on the offensive. underground. pass around your own document among your coworkers communicating the ideas YOU feel are important. uncensored. without fear. samizdat style.

—he sounds like a delight

unions aren't necessarily bad things, but if you're an educated worker in a profesional career you should really consider their track record. My profession requires a masters degree and so do most teachers yet uniformly in major metro areas teachers top out at 20k higher than your average government policy researcher or librarian despite the teaching masters to be the academic equivalent of Freshman orientation week. Teachers also work a 10 month calendar for that money effecitvely giving them a 35% better deal before they even have worked a day. In other words they have a great fucking union.

Why are they so good? You want a union of fellow professionals vs. a general union covering many. My union includes computer programmers and janitors and nothing against janitors(although for having a great dental plan they have seriously jank teef), but their presence drags down my compensation rate while mine drags theirs up (it sucks up here at the top). Unless you're a 100% socialist you probably want to be on roughly equal footing career/education/salary wise with your fellow union members. In an essential services industry like healthcare or government unionization, done the right way, can be great for workers.

—bguirk

ZT--you're behavior, while maybe a tad insensitive, is about par for the course for every IT situation I've ever been involved in. He should "man up" and learn that exact syntax/specs knowledgbe is not his game anymore and not worth shedding a tear over.

You're sort of in my age range--are you in love with IT or id you fall into it becauae you're a smart person who needs to work and knows your way around computers?

—bguirk

I like development a lot more than administration/maintence/support. Ideally I'd like to be doing more machine learning, data mining and business intelligence kind of stuff. But would settle for an application developer kind of thing for a few years.

—ZT-In