Tag: work

Work Benefits – Updated For The Worse

I work for a company that has locations all around the country with quite a few in the state of California.  When same-sex marriage was legalized in California, the question of how benefits would be provided to those same-sex spouses must have come up in company meetings.  Below are two photos.  One shows what our benefits package said for 2008 and the second shows what our benefits package says for 2009.  These are the “rules of eligibility.”

After consulting with a few people about this change, we are all wondering if people’s benefits are going to be taken away by this change.  Does anyone know?  Let’s say that I lived in CA and got married.  Under the 2008 rules of eligibility, I have a qualifiying event to add my spouse to my benefits.  Under the 2009 rules of eligibility, my marriage is no longer recognized by my company’s benefits package.  Does that mean my spouse would be dropped from my 2009 coverage?  Most likely.  How shitty is that!?

Corporations and Twitter

I came into work today and began doing some research into Home Depot issues we’ve been having. I received some emails overnight that were very frustrating. Basically, I was being asked to provide more examples to someone who already said they wouldn’t be able to help me. I’ve been dealing with this issue for over two months. Obviously I was annoyed.

Anyway, I decided to vent my frustration on Twitter. To my surprise, I received a response to my Tweet by someone at Home Depot corporate asking if there was anything they could do to help. I haven’t responded and pobably won’t, but it is kind of cool that Home Depot has people monitoring tweets for dissatisfied customers. Horray for technology!

Gallery Site Ideas

I used to work for a sporting goods company. I was pretty good friends with a girl that worked in the Marketing department and we were discussing the ways in which the company distributes images to various resellers. I was amazed when she told me that they just zip up the files and send them through email, sometimes in multiple emails as the images were large in size. I told her that we needed to get a website created that we could just post the images to that would allow for each reseller to go out and download whatever images they wanted. We found a free solution to this issue through Microsoft Office Live. It’s been a few years now and the website is no longer cutting it. It’s a HUGE pain to update and the customization options for the pages is extremely limited. I’m actually embarrassed at how shitty the pages look. There’s a new person in that position at my old company and I think that I might have been successful in convincing her to go with a new site. Good news for me!

Here’s the question… Do I use a WordPress install to solve this website issue or go about it the old fashioned way (pure HTML coding)? I guess there are pros and cons to both options. I think WordPress would be easier but HTML coding might offer more in terms of options when it comes to customization, etc. Anyone have other ideas or thoughts?

Interesting Meeting – Update!

This is an update to the story posted here.

As I suspected, my old boss was looking for someone to come in and breath life into the company Intranet. When I worked for this company, I was the only person that knew how the site worked and how to update data. The company Intranet was the one thing that kept me from being completely bored. Of course, there were things that I hated about being the sole person in charge of the Intranet. Everyone wanted fresh, new content on the site but no one was willing to give me any ideas as to what they wanted to see on the various pages. Basically, I was asked to try and figure out what each department would want to have and see on their respective pages. It was not fun and made the whole Intranet a tedious beast to deal with on a daily/weekly basis.

Anyway, my old boss wants me to do some work on the site again (after 1.5 years) and I told him that the only way I would do that was if I had a clear understanding of what each department wanted to get from their pages and basically had a road map for the whole project. He seemed agreeable to it but who knows. I’m not sure how long it’ll take them to come up with all this information but I’m not holding my breath. If something materializes in the next few weeks, I’ll be sure to let you all know. :)

Interesting Meeting

I’m going to be having an interesting meeting with my former boss at lunch today.  He contacted me because he wanted to discuss an opportunity.

So, here’s the issue that I have with the whole thing, he isn’t being forthcoming on what the opportunity is.  Not that I’m worrying about what he’s going to propose or anything.  I’m afraid that he’s going to ask me to do something that I can’t actually do and I’ll be wasting my time with this meeting.  For example, crazy programming or advanced HTML coding.  I cherish my lunch hours and I kind of can’t stand my old boss, so this meeting won’t be fun.  An update will be forthcoming.

Parking Spot

Thursday I returned from lunch and someone had parked in my spot at work! WTF!? Who does that? It’s clearly lunch break, not 3pm when it’s entirely possible that someone has left for the day. Called security and got them to move it.  That’ll teach ‘em.

A New American

A coworker passed the citizenship test on Monday. Today we had a “It’s great to be an American” party at work. Does that violate some sort of law? Hmmm.

I’ve only known one other person to take the test, and that was back in college. He was from England and took it along with everyone in his family. He told us that they used to have quiz nights at home on all the types of questions they would ask on the test. A completely different take on family game night.

Congratulations to all the new Americans out there.

Just A Quick Post – Pet Peeves @Work

Two things that are driving me crazy at work right now…

We got a new phone system and now people are able to choose how they want their phones to ring. Instead of having a uniform ringer sound throughout the office and all around me, I have to deal with 8 or 10 different rings now. I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal, but wow! Slightly annoyed.

People go to meetings that can last 2 hours or longer here. This is not uncommon. These people also own cell phones. They have them on vibrate at their desks because it’s not allowed to ring while at the office. That’s the good part. The bad part? They leave these phones on their desks or in their metal drawers when they go to these meetings. I’m constantly berated by loud vibration sounds in the metal drawer or on the top of the desk as the phone dances about. It wouldn’t be so bad if some of these people weren’t uber popular or had significant others/friends that can’t take the hint that they may be working at work and call every 10 minutes. Yikes!

Back From Vacation

Okay, here’s the one thing that I hate coming back from vacation… going back to work! Now, I know you are probably thinking, “of course, who wants to ever go back to work.” The problem isn’t actually going to work, it’s the email! Oh the emails I had waiting… out of control! I had over 200 emails waiting for me. My biggest issue with vacation emails is that I’m never cc’d on the follow up email that someone sends to my backup when they realize that I’m out of the office. I spend half my day trying to find out if the issue that was first presented to me was taken care of or not. Anyway, next time I go on vacation I am going to make sure that I request to be cc’d on any communication with my backup. Hopefully people will remember and coming back from vacation will be just a bit less painful.

Other than my emails, coming back to work hasn’t been so bad. I’m glad that I had a break from the daily grind. Now, let’s just hope this week ends quickly.