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

why am I saddened at the death of William F. Buckley, Jr.?

seriously, I let out a mournful sigh when I read this.  and I’m not at all sure why.

insanitized

Mr. Ortiz said the family’s ordeal began Oct. 19, when his son picked up a bottle of hand sanitizer from the desk of his fifth-period reading teacher at Killian Middle School in Lewisville. He rubbed the gel on his hands and smelled it.

In the view of school officials, the boy “inhaled heavily,” according to Mr. Ortiz, who said his son sniffed the cleanser “because it smelled good.”

The youth was sent to the principal’s office, and the Lewisville police officer assigned to the school began investigating.  […]

The teen was required to serve a brief in-school suspension and was also fingerprinted and photographed at the Lewisville Police Department. He returned to regular classes at the school, including one with the teacher whose sanitizer he sniffed.

Mr. Ortiz said he believed the matter was over until Tuesday when he was served with a petition charging his son with delinquency for inhaling the hand sanitizer to “induce a condition of intoxication, hallucination and elation.”

Killer, oh Killer — on which side of this cookie will you crumble?  I have to assume that since this happened at a school, the kid is automatically guilty…

[full story]  [full disclosure: I also “inhale heavily”; in this context anyhow… title lifted from source]

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.

in other news…

thanks to bittorrent, I’ve discovered this show called Lost. I’m only on episode 5 so far, but I think I might be hooked. I don’t want to give too much away, but these people are stranded after their plane crashes on an island. the island is kind of spooky.

if you haven’t heard of it, I would definitely look it up.

[update:  good news — Jack just found fresh water and made an inspirational speech.  I think they’re going to get rescued soon.]

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.

parent’s just don’t understand

Washington Post:  Officials’ Silence Puts Parents ‘at Arm’s Length’

Schools nationwide are calling on parents to get involved. The Maryland State Board of Education endorsed a broad range of family outreach initiatives in a 2005 report that called public education “a shared responsibility.”

Yet some parents in Montgomery County and elsewhere have discovered limits on the get-involved policy when they ask questions about individual teachers, whether those queries are about alleged abuse of students or a decision to fire a popular instructor.

Parental involvement:  Ignored if you do, condemned if you don’t.  Yet another good reason to homeschool.

[untitled]

This should please all you law-and-order types out there… no namby-pamby liberal kids-gloves here:

When 6-year-old Desre’e Watson threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class a couple of weeks ago she could not have known that the full force of the law would be brought down on her and that she would be carted off by the police as a felon.

But that’s what happened in this small, backward city in central Florida. According to the authorities, there were no other options.

“The student became violent,” said Frank Mercurio, the no-nonsense chief of the Avon Park police. “She was yelling, screaming — just being uncontrollable. Defiant.”

“But she was 6,” I said.

The chief’s reply came faster than a speeding bullet: “Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we’ve arrested?”

Full blog post. “I weep for our future” comes to mind…

addiction, thy name is Facebook

hola.  I suppose it’s been a while since I’ve posted.  I’m almost embarrassed to say why.

I’ve been on a bit of a bender.  3 days, a week, two weeks… it’s hard to say how long it’s been.  it has gone by in a blur.  all I know is that I have 51 friends — if you join now you can be number 52.  it’s not that 51 is a bad/low number, it’s just that I find it hard to believe that [name withheld] has over 120 friends… I mean, they were a real loser back in high school.  so, not that it’s important that I have more friends than them by next week, but seriously, if I don’t I’m quitting Facebook.

Oh, I can quit Facebook.  I can quit anytime I want.  it’s not like it has some kind of hold over me… it’s easy to resist going back and checking the group for my adolescent summer camp or the group for my middle/high school — it’s EASY to resist.  I just CHOOSE to keep those pages open in a tab in my browser and refresh them every five minutes because, hey, you never know who might have posted something witty on the wall, or who might have posted a picture with me lurking somewhere in the background (blurry and obscured — but I know it was me) and I need to tag it so everyone knows it’s me.  or better yet, I can tag it AND write the first witty thing in the comments for that photo.  that’s so perfect; that’s exactly how they’ll all remember me from high school, as the witty blurry lurking guy.  PERFECT.

no — just like coffee, online Texas Hold’em, and RedBullAndVodka before it, Facebook is not an addiction, it’s just another small thing that contributes to the whole person that is me.  and at least 51 people like me for that person that I virtually am, so who am I to decide to just stop?

and like I said before, if you act now you can be #52.  no pressure.