AT&T: Hands Off My Earned Leave!

You heard me Ma Bell.  You too Mellon Bank…

BACKGROUND

This is going to be brief, but here’s the gist of it:

• the company I worked for went into Bankruptcy
• from the beginning we were assured that wages and accrued Paid Time Off (PTO) would be paid
  • THIS WAS CRITICAL because if 15,000 people started using up the PTO they had accrued, the entire company would have fallen apart before it could have been pieced-out and sold-off
  • it was also policy to pay out PTO if you left the company; there was no “use it or lose it”
• now the Committee of Unsecured Creditors has objected to the PTO payout, calling them “golden handshakes” and bonuses
• … nothing could be further from the truth — those who accrued the most hours are those who worked the hardest for the company, and for the creditors during this bancruptcy period — people who put off vacations and time off to BILL HOURS to clients which is the sole source of revenue for the company.  It’s painfully ironic that those who worked hardest are positioned to lose the most…
• for the record, I wasn’t one of those working the hardest — I used 101% of my annual PTO last calendar year; and I still had over 90 hours in the bank when I left…

Many of my colleagues are writing to the judge to explain their position and situation — that’s all well and good, but there seems to be a very real chance that the judge could find legal reasons to support the objection.  Changing that one man’s mind seems like a slim chance to me…

It’s getting a little late in the process, but it just occurred to me that maybe we can find support in the employees of the Committee members, or in their customers.  Do you want to work for, or give your consumer dollars to, a company that demonstrates such disrespect forhard working employees and their families?  Especially in the middle of a recession?

CALL TO ACTION

1. If you work for AT&T, tell management that you are aware of this situation and you think it’s a shame.  Feel free to email your corporate lawyers at James.Grudus@att.com (full address below).Mellon employees and customers:  same thing, and Mellon’s lawyer is at david.m.kerr@bnymellon.com

2. If you agree that this is wrong and want to spread the word:
   LINK TO THIS POST; blog about it, email the link, etc.
   TWEET it — I don’t get fully get twitter, but have at it.
   Visit SaveMyPTO.com for more viewpoints and updates
   If you are a lawyer or legal buff, the case dockets are at BearingPointInfo.com

[untitled]

so I walked the long walk across the parking lot from our client site, thinking I’d treat myself to a Baconator.  the line is suprisingly short, and the gentleman at the register places his order.  nothing out of the ordinary…

then the gentleman turns to his companion (likely his daughter).  she has a cell-phone up to her ear, and rattles off her order: one of their super-deluxe salads I think (I honestly don’t remember).  then she orders a cheeseburger, or something.  (ordering details from this point forward get fuzzy, as my rage builds.)

then she cancels that burger.  she asks the cashier for clarification on the #2, does that come with [something]?  the cashier says yes, she says yes into the phone, the voice on the phone says OK (I can only imagine), and she says OK.  “does it come with cheese?”  same cycle of relaying information through the cell phone…

“so what would your brother like,” she asks…

I’M STANDING BEHIND A WOMAN WHO IS TAKING HER ORDER FROM HER KIDS OVER HER CELL PHONE — NOT AHEAD OF TIME, BUT IN FRONT OF THE REGISTER WHILE A LINE OF PEOPLE GATHER BEHIND HER.

now, I’ve waited behind people writing checks at the grocery store, and I’ve stood behind people that dispute their charges to the cash register, but this was ABOVE AND BEYOND.  I cleared my throat a few times, hoping she’d realize there were people behind her.  I made eye contact with the cashier as if to say, “uh, can you move us along…” and no dice.

apparently unable to get the order translated through her other child, she says “well, then put him on.”

I burst out, “OH COME ON! You’ve got to be kidding me!”  She doesn’t flinch.

“Seriously,” I plead to the cashier, “you’ve got to ask her to step aside and write down her order.”  I say this because she has been writing down the order on a napkin the whole time, and is using it to verify the order with the cahsier — 50% of which is wrong each time, and they have to start again.

I know this has only taken 30 seconds to describe to you, but it was no less than several minutes in line.  the cashier shrugs, the b*tch on the phone is oblivious, and waits for her other kid to get on the phone and place his order.  and another kid.

the next five minutes are a bit of a blur, as there is discussion over what comes on a 1/4 single with cheese, etc, etc — all of it being relayed from cashier to customer to her kid (via cell phone) to customer to cashier.  oh, and then she wants a baked potato, but gets all high-maintenance about what is going on it.  bacon?  LIKE SHE DOESN”T REALISE SHE”S AT A WENDY”S…

the kicker, the really really aggrevating thing, is that at the end of all of it she didn’t even attempt to make nice.  she didn’t hang up on her kids and say, “sorry” to the rest of us.  and this really wasn’t a 30-second delay, it was a good chunk of the 30-minute lunch break I was giving myself before some other meeting back at the office.

I understand that the Baconator is engineered by the good people at Wendy’s to crank my blood pressure up to (something horrifically bad), but this time it was there before I even placed my order.

luckily, nothing a little ‘mayo on the side’ couldn’t cure.

I bet the Germans have a word for it

I’ve been overcome with this emotion, or sensation, many times.  and due mostly to the election campaign, it’s been happening more frequently.

it’s the urge, when presented with an argument (or reasoning that seems particularly forced)*, to want to go above and beyond the other person’s worst fears — often to the point of absurdity.  it can be summed up by the quote from Fight Club:

“I felt like putting a bullet between the eyes of every Panda that wouldn’t screw to save its species. I wanted to open the dump valves on oil tankers and smother all the French beaches I’d never see. I wanted to breathe smoke.”

actually, it’s more like that quote than I realized — this feeling has recently (and repeatedly) been brought on by people who drone on about not drilling for more offshore oil, and the related argument to not drill in ANWR.

my position on ANWR is that drilling should be permitted.  my understanding is that the footprint for the facilities and environmental impact can be quite small.  I may have been horribly misled by the oil barons, but that’s my angle.  I really don’t wish any harm on the local habitat or animals.

but when I hear extremists go on about the horrible consequences of drilling, of the evil cabals that are orchestrating the arctic’s demise — it makes me want to go up there, pump as much oil out of the ground as quickly and destructively as possible, and just flood the whole 19 million environmentally sensitive acres with 6 to 8 inches of crude.  just to spite them.

thinking globally and acting locally, it was the same reaction when the local radio station used to go on and on about global warming — I swear I would subconsciously reach for the air conditioning and crank it up, accelerating for no apparent reason — but possibly to spite them.

that feeling… I bet the Germans have figured it out, after all the invented schaedenfreud.

if anyone knows the word for it, I’d love to know.

* or really any argument I disagree with, for whatever reason.

Hillary on subprime ‘crisis’: “everybody bears some responsibility”

on Meet the Press:

MR. RUSSERT: But, Senator, many people opted for those cheaper mortgages. They could’ve had a fixed mortgage at a higher rate, but they opted for a cheaper one. Should they not bear some responsibility?

SEN. CLINTON: Well, Tim, I think all of us should[1]. But I’d say three things about that. The bankers, the mortgage lenders, the brokers, all bear a lot of the responsibility, because many of the practices that were followed were just downright predatory and fraudulent. There is no doubt about that[2]. I started talking about this last March. A lot of people got into subprime loans who frankly could’ve been in a conventional fixed-rate loan. They were basically told that this was a better opportunity for them. Should they take responsibility? Yes, but [3] look at what will happen if we continue this cascade of foreclosures. Housing values are down. They’re down 6 percent[4]. That’s over $1.3 trillion in housing values in the last year. So everybody bears some responsibility[5].

[1] I, for one, bear no responsibility for any part of the subprime mortgage crisis, and I call shenanigans on Hillary Clinton for implying that I do.  If anyone can prove otherwise, have at it.

[2] I think there is plenty of doubt in her claim that practices were predatory and fraudulent; sure, some may have been predatory, and some fraudulent, but I doubt that many were both.  If they were fraudulent, borrowers should have no problem demonstrating as much and get back their losses plus damages.

[3] this “yes, but” clause is mixing issues; the state of nationwide housing values has no bearing on personal responsibility.  Should I stop paying my car loan because the price of gas is over $3?  Right.

[4] housing was a bubble anyhow, and the dramatic drops are more a function of that bubble than of 0.3% of houses being foreclosed (not that the foreclosures help the situation).

[5] Again, I refute this claim on it’s face, and object to any responsibility that Hillary is trying to project on me or my family.  It doesn’t take a village to screw up a home loan.

Happy Holidays

… from the Westboro Baptist Church:

— words escape me. I almost thought that this was a parody; in which case it would be brilliant.

regarding the Peace prize

nuff said.

31 consecutive years of trade deficits

In the comments to this thread on Lou Dobbs decrying our trade deficits, one Mike Laursen had the winning quote in my book:

You’d think that our having thrived through thirty-one years of trade deficits might spark the thought that maybe trade deficits don’t matter that much.

Ah yes, remember how great things were before the huge trade deficits?  The crappy-funk economy that was the mid-70’s; gas shortages and national ‘malaise’?

Until someone can offer some better proof — historical precedence even — that these trade deficits are bad, I don’t buy it.  The prediction that impending doom is right around the corner is as old as mankind, and it sells a lot of books and TV airtime…

mr. st4rbux neighborhood

for those of you who think I live in the land of milk and honey here in sunny Montgomery County, here’s an excerpt from the local paper the other day:

Forest Oak Middle, Gaithersburg Middle and Gaithersburg Elementary schools were placed on Code Blue at 12:10 p.m., following a series of reports about a man armed with a handgun in the area, said Sgt. Rudy Wagner, a spokesman for Gaithersburg Police. The suspect had not located as of Tuesday afternoon.

A witness told police at about 11:40 a.m. that he saw what appeared to be a carjacking, but police later learned the incident involved a man with a silver handgun who was threatening another man, Wagner said.

The men then fled in separate directions — the armed man toward Girard Street and the other toward North Summit, Wagner said. The victim later told police he believed it might be a B.B. gun, Wagner said.

At 11:44 a.m., a parent dropping her child off at Forest Oak Middle, located at 651 Saybrooke Oaks Boulevard, called police and said she saw a man with a handgun, Wagner said.

The story ended with a SWAT team and tear gas at a house less than 100 yards away from our own front door.

Good times.

overheard

“38 minutes? [expletive deleted]!! who’s paying me to do this?”

“oh [expletive], this is [F’n] rdiculous… the time now is 11:27…
omg, how long is this g/d form… 27 pages long?
[sigh]… Last Name…”

we got our THIRD notice to complete the American Community Survey today, along with a very nice letter from Charles Louis Kincannon telling us that the “survey will help decide where new schools, hospitals, and fire stations are needed. The information also is used to develop programs to reduce traffic congestion, provide job training, and plan for the health care needs of the elderly.”

so what if we don’t think these are programs the government should be in charge of doing? or what if we don’t think

• our income level,
• the amount of our mortgage payment,
• cost of gas and electricity,
• if you attended college in the past 3 months,
• your education level,
• the current market value of our house,
• the time of day we leave the house for work,
• address where you work,
• how much debt we have,
• ethnicity (Canadian?),
• how much “interest and dividends” earned,
• age, and date of birth (I guess they can’t do math)
• [] is any business of the government?

“does this other person [our 6 month old] speak a language other than english?”

“You are required by U.S. law to respond to this survey.” I think that’s what elicited the “38 minutes” question from my significant other (he he, those quotes above were her, not me). yeah, I refused to complete the survey on principle the first time we got it, and she’s doing it because she doesn’t want the government to keep hassling her.

good luck with that — if it isn’t this, they’ll find something else to hassle us about.

seriously, would you give all your personal information to this guy?

no email address, but I’d love to get a phone tree set up and hit him at (301) 763-3030 — 100 times a day, everyday, for the next year, to let him know what I think of his survey.

“only 22 minutes.  22 minutes I lost from my life”

looks like she owes the government 16 minutes.  I wonder how they’ll collect?

my friend killer is a master debater

witness his awesome smack-fu skillz here

and chime in on the immigration debate, if you dare.  idiot.