Monday, October 1, 2007

Work rant and plastic issues

Do “real” parents worry about packing their kids lunches in Ziploc baggies? Seriously? My mom never did and she’s pretty environmentally conscious. Maybe there is some new info out there that I haven’t seen, I’m just trying hard to picture my mom (or myself) getting worked up over tossing my pretzel stick snacks or grapes or whatever into a Ziploc instead of something “safer” and reusable. I’ve heard the thing about not microwaving plastic, and, okay, maybe – but for basic stuff? I’m so confused! More research to do, I guess, but I’m having trouble getting behind this being an issue. Maybe when my child is born my sense of safety will change or something?

I just learned that my vacation time will not carry over into next calendar year. I had been carefully hoarding my nearly 2 weeks of PTO all summer long, despite the fact that Mr. Moose has nearly a month coming to him and we could have, in fact, taken a vacation. When I began here, nearly 3 years ago it was unclearly explained and my review of the employee manual fed that assumption that while sick time doesn’t roll over, vacation time does. Ironically, I am the benefits specialist at our company now and have explained it improperly to many of our current employees as well. They pay 50% if you cash out in December your remaining time, but they want to clear the books for the year, so they won’t roll it over. This gives me 2 months to use or lose my vacation time and I am TICKED. I was planning to use that time for the early part of my maternity leave. There is no way I can accrue very much time in 2 months (13 hours, approximately is the total of what I will have if I go into labor on my due date while sitting at work), which is going to put an even bigger financial strain on us during my maternity leave. What really frosts my cookies is that if you quit, they pay you in full for your accrued time off – not 50%. They’re treating ex-employees better than current ones. I’m stressed and ticked off and Mr. Moose is now more than ready to get me out of here. We’re going to test run in November what life would be like without my income (we’ll sock it all away for baby expenses and the like) and I’m discussing my options for other work, etc.).

I know most people rarely ever feel like they are paid what they are worth – I truly don’t even have a number in mind for a salary that would make me feel like I was getting paid what I am worth – I’ve never bothered to try and figure it out and I know I create a lot of down time for myself because I have trouble focusing for long periods of time on one thing. (and I like it that way) But lately, I feel that not only don’t they want to PAY me even close to what I’m worth (for example, there is only one person at the office that has been here longer than me – their first employee when the company began under it’s current ownership/name 5 years ago. I am also the LOWEST paid person in the entire company – which includes the girl they hired to replace my old position who does less than I do and has an attendance problem), but they don’t respect the amount of work I do, the amount of info that I have on their company and what they would do without me. Seriously, the President of the company’s favorite phrase lately seems to be “Mrs. Moose can do it.” (Of course, he doesn’t call me Mrs. Moose, but you get my point.) If I were to stick it to them and walk out (as Mr. Moose as suggested a few times), they seriously would be up a creek. Even if I took my two weeks notice to write out the info that would need to be passed on – I’d run out of time to do it. I remember trying to do that for my old position replacement – and she was only taking 1/5 of my jobs – the info took 5 pages! I don’t know what they’re going to do when I’m on maternity leave - I seriously expect multiple phone calls over my 12 weeks off.

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