Why do employers think they can control you when you are away from work?

It makes you wonder when companies require access to your Facebook account during the interview process, but how about this one that is now showing its ugly head in the internet age? The company you work for prohibits what websites you can visit in your "off" hours!!

That little gem showed up in an employee handbook that I know about. I can understand about not visiting Twitter and Facebook while at work but not allowing an employee not to use Linkedin in their off hours in something new to me. Also the fact that they cannot mention where they work or what kind of work the company does............people this is a service company that does not have government contracts nor do they make weapons for 007. The company is run by people who are absolutely paranoid about "reputation" on the internet............so far they are doing good........no one even knows who they are. Internet marketing is not one of their strong points.

So why do companies think they can get away with this rubbish? Because no one challenges them. It was only recently that several states have banned the practice of wanting Facebook passwords or that you have to friend your supervisor so they can keep tabs on you.

I say burn employee handbooks that violate your rights.

How to quit your job, let me count the ways

I just quit my good for a small paycheck, high stress job. The feeling is wonderful. I can't seem to get this darn smile off my face.

The last time I quit a job was back in 1989 when I literally walked out in the middle of the day, or was it morning...oh well, that does not matter, what mattered was the fact that I got fed up enough to walk. At the time it was due to an indifferent boss who would not acknowledge my supervisor role and pay me for it. It was only after denying me a promotion (discrimination was the cause, found out later) and demanding I do job duties that only managers did I walked. Of course I stewed for about a week before taking those final steps.

In those days it was common to give a 2 weeks notice of your intent to leave. They could hold that last paycheck for up to 2 weeks if they wanted to. In my case I got my check within 4 hours because I threatened to turn them in to OSHA for violations.

Nowadays employment can be "at will" meaning they can fire or lay you off without warning, so the same can apply to you. You can quit on the spot without cause or warning. Most well respected companies are not "at will" employers but small shady operations are and I have worked for some of them.

While I did not walk out this time on my employer, I called in to quit. The manager was sorry to see me go but understood my reasons. I was the one chosen to send home when there was a lack of work, one time for 3 months!! That was last year and this year it was turning out to be the same way. This time I found a higher paying job with more stability. The manager was also thinking about leaving and almost walked out on several occasions.

Due to new technology there are now several ways to quit your job:

• don't call in for a few days and let the company assume you have quit
• call in and just quit - like I just did
• send an email to your boss. Be polite but official, giving the date of your last day, instructions on what to do with your last paycheck (send it, wait for you to pick it up, etc) and lastly how to handle any personal stuff left at work.
• send a text message to your boss, keep it short and simple and follow up with an email

Follow my suggestions of quitting without seeing your boss in person and you will be less stressed.

I have no intention of going back to that place and hope it goes under due to the way it treats and uses up its faithful employees.

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Being physically sick of the place you work at

I think most of us have had headaches develop during the day at a work place we just couldn't stand to be at anymore. But how many of you have ulcers, high blood pressure and other ailments due to work place stress?

The place I work at right now use to be a low stress work place, I said "use to be." As of the last few months the stress level has gone through the roof. Let me just highlight the several causes of that:

• hired new production boss who has no previous experience of being a manager or knows anything about production. He was hired because he is a friend of the owner.
• production boss fires lead production person and promotes a dip shit from off of the assembly line to run things. Dip shit has no leadership qualities and has no idea how to run a production line.
• Vice-president does not like new production boss, mainly because she did not hire him
• Vice-president tries to run production as well - driving all of us bonkers
• Queen Bee as we call her is in charge of QA and enjoys stirring the pot of emotions on the production floor. She is tight with the VP so she can get people fired, in trouble or what ever she sees fit for herself. 
• time studies are being done all the time. As production workers we are timed for every little part of a unit down to how long did it take to tighten a screw - to the second. This has been going on for almost 2 years now but the last few months it has gotten worse.

After reading what I just wrote, I now realize I should be grateful that I have not suffered a stroke or heart attack from working there. It is one of the worst places I have ever worked at. There is so much backstabbing and political rivalry going on that I almost want to up chuck it all.

After the production lead got fired I saw many people change who they hung out with during breaks. One guy who wanted to be the lead (but did not get the job) is now hanging out with Queen Bee. He probably thinks he can get her to help him get the production lead job. I don't have the heart to tell him that Queen Bee has always disliked him because he makes too many mistakes.

Yes the soap opera goes on, but unlike a soap opera this one will end.

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When does having a lower paid job make sense?

There are times when having a lower paid job than you have now will make sense. For example I am currently paying about $80 a week just in gasoline to get to and from work. I could take a job that pays $80 a week less than I am paid now, be closer to home and break almost even on income.

Another very good example is to get away from a high stress job due to the people you work with. I find that most of the work place stress is not from the actual job but the people who are in charge of you. Recently I was assigned a complicated job that lacked proper documentation, was a prototype, and I had no experience with the type of product. Added on top of that the fact that the dumb ass sales person promised a 24 hour turn around for the customer, just to get the job..............WTF!!!!! So I had less than 5 hours to put 6 of these things together which some of it involved soldering under a microscope. I was interrupted at least 5 times by various supervisors, managers and that dumb ass sales person to ask me when it would be done.

Did the job get done? Yes it did but not without a whole lot of stress put on me for no good reason at all.

I can't wait to find another job.


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Dumb ass boss on the internet all day

Nothing ticks me off more than having a boss that plays on the internet all f#@#ing day then has the gull to ask you how fast can you make something or put together a unit. Damn overpaid nut job is what that man is.

I had to say that. My work bench is facing his back and I get a full view of his computer screen all day long. I wish I had time to burn like that. NOOOOOO, I have to work as fast as I can to keep the production line going at damn near poverty level wages. He even showed off his iPhone and how he could download todays basketball game live. I can't afford that and neither can any of my co-workers.

Go get f***ed boss man. I hope to hell that upper management cans your ass soon, real soon.


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Upper management in a failing company

I will never understand the mentality of upper management or ownership in a small and shrinking company.

Take for example one of the places I worked at. They lost 3 contracts one year due to mistakes on PCBs or so they told us all in a meeting that amounted to the 3rd degree. They (upper management) never got into how many boards or what the mistakes were. They just didn't want to lose more customers so they came down hard on production. They wanted us not to talk or be distracted in anyway and if we made mistakes we were to be written up and if that happened 3 times, we were to be shown the door. I know of no one that has not made mistakes, They wanted robots and they were not going to get any. Over the next few months the better production members found better jobs.

What they failed to do was practice what they put on their website and have processes in place to prevent mistakes and to have teams and use teamwork to proactively improve the process. The customers thought that what they read on the website was how things were done but in reality it was nothing more than a sweat shop that gave

I will not kiss ass to keep a job

I have been looked over or ignored for promotions due to the fact I will not, I repeat, will NOT kiss ass.

What bugs the heck out of me is the fact that others do it and get ahead, not on their ability to work and work well but that they can kiss up to a boss and the boss loves it. It makes me sick.............

I have never been part of a layoff that was done just to "clear house" but this layoff has all the markings

Deja Vu

The place that I work for now is so much like a company that I worked for about 30 years ago. The products are similar. The organization is similar and even the people are similar.

I am so reminded of my co-workers at that company 30 years ago by the people I work with today, that I almost called my lead the name of my lead way back then.

Virgina was my lead 30 years ago. She has a similar build, height and general work ethic to my current lead. Miss "J" (my current lead) only lacks one quality that Virgina had and that was

HP in the news again

When I worked at HP I was working in the printer division. At that time, in 2007, HP was earning lots and lots of money from that section of its company. Ink, paper and printers were where HP was had its earning power.

What HP failed to see at the time was the growing trend from waste to conservation. People were not printing out photos anymore. They were saving them as digital copies and emailing them or posting them on Facebook for family and friends to see. One of the main reasons that I was not printing out photos was that the ink was so damn expensive. I could not see spending $40+ for an ink cartridge that only lasted for about a month of casual use. HP also shot themselves in the foot with

When the boss is away the supervisors are idiots

Is there something about the general manager that says - "when I am gone, you can do what you want to do."  That seems to be the theme for today.

The general manager made it very clear to everyone that there was to be no overtime for anyone. I took it to mean that the company could not afford to pay overtime. That did not stop at least 4 people from putting in overtime today. It was not that the work needed to be done right away, no, it was more of a case of milking what hours they could. I did see one of my co-workers fill out a form for an advance on his paycheck and he was one of the ones who was milking the hours.

Two of the people were supervisors and two of them were their "golden boys," the ones who could do no wrong in their eyes, even though they constantly make mistakes and are incredibly slow.

I can't wait to see if there is any punishment for those who are milking the hours. Most companies that say no to overtime have mandated that all claimed overtime will not be paid for unless it was PREAUTHORIZED with a signed note, not post authorized.

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Management screws up - yet again

I can't even go on a few days vacation from my work place without coming back to more drama. If this keeps up maybe I should be writing a soap opera and not a blog.

While I was gone the dumb shit of a production manager was fired. This was the same dip shit who had a royal fit because I needed to take off a Friday and not work his "mandatory" Saturday work day. Well it turns out that on the Friday, when I was gone, all "mandatory" overtime was cancelled. This happened right after (and I mean within hours) the dip shit was canned.

Today came the bombshell of a meeting of why the idiot got canned. Apparently he was

Could you please grow a set of balls?

The operations manager is on vacation. You would think that it does not make a bit of difference to the company but you would be wrong.

The operations manager has made the company a place where ALL of the decisions have to be run past him first before anyone can change ANYTHING. Just today I found an error on a

A word about company politics

I can't get over the fact that the place that I work at has too much drama and politics going on. You will probably say that it is typical of most companies but this place has less than 15 people in production and that includes the supervisor!!

I am not alone in thinking there is much too much going on in the place other than work. The manager that gave his notice just last week had a very private meeting with me today. He wanted to let me know

I have been talked to....................

Don't you just hate getting called to the office? Most of the time it is bad news and this time it was just odd.

Getting called to the office or conference room usually entails getting fired or laid off or on rarer occasions a rise and a promotion. In this economy it is usually the former rather than the latter.

My morning started out normal and I had plans to get a lot done. I was working a job I really liked and it was easy for me. About one hour into my shift, my immediate supervisor calls me. He needs me to accompany him to the conference room. Gawd, the conference room!! What the heck did I do?? I arrived to be greeted by 2 other managers. I sat down.

My turn to be a dumb shit

I had a blonde moment yesterday at work............yes it was my turn to do something dumb.

I was building and packing some mechanical assemblies. I counted them and I had 48 packaged and ready to ship at least that was what I could swear was the case. At the end of the day, shipping had only taken 16 to ship with 28 units, at least that was my count. The guy doing the shipping swore that every unit had a mechanical assembly with it. So dumb me, I tell my boss that I think the count is "off." So here comes all the upper managers in the company to

The best way to walk out on your employer

Don't you just hate it when you really hate where you are working but can't seem to quit? I walked out on one company and loved it.

Back in the early 1980's I worked for a company in Menlo Park, CA that made controllers for robotics. I worked there for 6 years when I fell in love and married a co-worker. During those 6 years I was convinced by my "old school" thinking dad that you never quit a job. His idea was that once you were in a job for a few years you stayed there until the company shut its doors or

Being in charge does not mean you can goof off

The dream of every production line worker is to be one step higher on the "food chain" at work.

When I just started the job I have now, a co-worker was training me on a product line. After several days of working with him, the conversation turned to where he had worked in the past and what his ambitions were for this company and his future goals. It did surprise me that he wanted our lead's job, considering he lacked the knowledge and personality for it. If he would only take a good look in the mirror at himself, he would realize that nobody wanted to work for him..............heck I didn't even like being trained by him. He liked to tell people what to do, much like a slave owner. He even was so lazy that he had me get up from what I was doing to get him a tool or a folder when he could have done it and in fact it was HIS job to do it, not mine. Now that you have a bit of background on his style of leadership, let me tell you what happened this past week with him.

What he lacks in skill and leadership qualities he makes up for in bull shit. He can con a manager into believing that he is the right person to put in charge of a product line. He has managed to convince the new production manager to let him

The pig sty I work at

The owner of the company I work for has so much pride in the dump (yes it is a dump) that he invited a group of business people that he is a member of, to tour the place today. We were to stop work 20 minutes early just to tidy up the place. I hate to tell him that 20 hours would not make that place look better.

After I cleaned up my work area I left. It was on the drive home that the old saying of making a silk purse out of a sows ear came to mind. You cannot make something out to be what it is not.

Let me give you a good idea of the place that the owner is trying to show off. The building is over 30 years

Stress gives me a headache

I had a doctor's appointment a few days ago, the first in 2 years. The news from him was not good.............high blood pressure. I wonder if the headache I get at work is the cause?

Stress does raise its ugly head, especially where I work. I have never experienced this much drama in such a small company before. Mr. C, the manager who loves to delegate seems to be the main cause of the drama in the place. The day of my doctors' appointment was the day he sent

Who put these people in charge?

Today is the first day back to work after the Memorial Day weekend. There is a distinct lack of work.

I was assigned to cleaning a room because there were no work orders to do. Other people were working but this nutty company will not put more than an "X" number of workers on a job because they claim it puts a higher cost on the product. Yet, don't they understand that the company still has to pay