Month: March 2007

The Art of the Possible

Posted on by Jennifer Kuntz

BRANCH STATUS CHANGE
>
> The Board took note of three new branches, the Shire of Blackwater
> (Olean, NY), the Shire of Gryffon’s Keep (Fayette County, PA) and the
> Shire of Westland Mor (Greensburg, PA). The Board also took note that
> the following three branches have dissolved, the Canton of Wintersedge
> (Springville, NY & Vicinity), the Shire of the Wastelands (Enid, OK),
> and the Shire of Dun an Chalaidh (Lincoln County, OR).

The above is mainly of interest to the people who keep up with SCA matters (not that anyone who reads THIS journal would fall into THAT category).  This new group is in the area in which we used to live and is what we were in heavy discussion about while we were there.  I’m glad to see the group established and recognized at the Society level.  It feels like the beginning of something exciting! 

The Hammer, She Falls

Posted on by Jennifer Kuntz

So, Tiernen is now officially out of a job.  He called in yesterday and the sales manager asked to see him in person that day at 3:00 PM.  When he told me about it, we both pretty much knew what that meant.  If he were going to come back, they would have just told him to show up the next morning.  So she gave him some limp twaffle about “did you think about what we talked about?” and when he replied that he wasn’t given any specific information about what he did wrong or any target for improvement she said that they had decided that they could get along without him and they would be “letting him go”. 

I can’t be too mad at the girl who did the firing.  She’s the sales manager, not the office manager who had the problem with him or the mad cheap boss who decided to get rid of him this way because he was too cheap to say  “we’re eliminating your position” and let him go with some dignity.  She got picked to do a crummy job and did it as kindly as she could.  They, I am mad at.  They picked a terrible way to deal with a person who has been loyal and responsible just because there was some personal conflict and they wanted to see if they could save money by getting rid of his job.  

Really, this is coming pretty much out of the blue.  Tiernen’s last performance evaluation gave him a $1.00 raise.  The boss called HIM over New Years for damage control when the stupid schmuck lost his laptop and cell phone in Las Vegas.  To turn around two months later and fire him smacks of some kind of plot, and knowing the cheap bastard invloved, money lies at the root of it.  

Even if there wasn’t a plot, it was still an excrescent thing to do.  And now I have a sad, angry husband to deal with.  It’s terrible to go through something like this when you can’t help and everything you do seems to make him feel worse.  I try to be supportive and upbeat, but at the same time I am so ANGRY.  I am angry at the cowardice of these people.  I am angry at a system that allows this to happen.  I am angry at myself for encouraging Tiernen to stand up for himself and I am angry at myself for being angry at myself.  No one should have to be treated as an emotional doormat, just to keep a job.  It’s hard to have to write off the last two years on a resume as a bad job because of the events of the last two months.

I expect something else will come along.  We will persevere.  But please keep my hubby in your thoughts and prayers.  He’s had a pretty rough birthday week.         

Closing my eyes and thinking of England

Posted on by Jennifer Kuntz

Did you know that workers in a business of less that 50 people have basically no rights in our state? Small business is such a hallowed institution in this country that the boss of a small company can hire and fire his/her workers on a whim, cut their hours and dock their pay and it would take a flagrant civil rights violation for someone to get legal redress.

Case in point, my husband (30-something white guy) works at an office where his job description is to oversee the delivery of a weekly free paper. He manages the once-a-week drivers, sets up and tabulates the routes and audits the drivers for courteous and correct delivery of the paper. He also has some computer training, so he has been managing the paper’s website and community calendar as well as dealing with the office networking and troubleshooting issues (this is not on his job description, however). He also gets called upon to be office dogsbody and change lightbulbs, fix chairs, hang decorations and take out the trash. He (generally) tackles each job with determination and gets things done, often going in early or staying late to make sure everything is finished.

Except he has a new, inexperienced office manager and a boss who veers between absent and micromanaging. The boss is also a complete incompetent when it comes to technology, but he loves to have the latest gadget. So, office manager hasn’t learned to handle the boss in that all important buffer role and transmits his temporal panics and whims directly to the staff. This frequently takes the form of “drop Y and immediately deal with X”. Hubby has repeatedly asked for clarification about what the most important part of his job is and has been told that it is the distribution part. He has taken this to mean that he can put off the computer and dogsbody stuff in favor of dealing with the distribution. He has also had it reinforced to him recently that the distribution job is suffering and he needs to get his act together.

Therefore, this past week, the office manager called him in a panic to come in and fix the boss’s e-mail, just as he was sending the drivers out for the all-important Wednesday distribution. Hubby politely put her off, explaining what he is doing, and she lashed out at him for slacking and demanded that he return to the office and deal with the computer issue right then. Hubby put her off again and dealt with the computer issue once he had sent off the distribution drivers.

Imagine his surprise when the boss calls him into the office the next day and suspends him without pay for two weeks because of his “attitude”. Apparently the office manager has been filing complaints for insubordination every time hubby defers or denies her requests for immediate action. This is the first he has heard of these complaints and at no time in the conversation is a plan for improvement put forward. The boss chews him out for “not being a team player” and “bad attitude” with no direct reference to any particular incident except the prior day or conditions for improvement. He is then sent off and told to call in two weeks if he’s ready to come back to work. Not only is this humiliating, bad leadership, bad management and insulting but it mainly involves the failure to do something that doesn’t fall under the scope of his regular duties. He is embarrassed and I am enraged by this treatment, but he has no legal recourse for redress. This seems patently unfair to me.

Now, I complain about working with the labor focused restrictions here, as in some cases they do foster complacency and apathy. But this is a case where I wish I had the clout of a union to bring to play. It’s so frustrating to expect one person to roll over and take that kind of treatment, while another less able and willing worker has to be handled with kid gloves just because they work for different employers. I know it’s a basic inequity of the system and there are people who have it much worse. But I’m angry for those people, too! Why can’t there be a system that treats all people with dignity and compassion no matter what they do? If people’s grocery and rent payments are dependent upon your ability to correctly evaluate, asses and motivate their work, isn’t it incumbent on you to learn how to mange correctly? And shouldn’t workers have some kind of rights? Criminals have the right to face their accuser and answer to the charges that are brought against them, but a small business employee can be suspended or fired for any reason. A loss of income and an employment gap can be more damaging to some people’s careers as a misdemeanor conviction. I can’t hope for any kind of real justice, I can only hope that karma will apply in this case. We are taking the only action available to us and looking for a new job for the hubby. So please send good job hunting thoughts our way.