Very nice new job

I now have a nice job. It is one of the very few companies in the country that are willing to pay based on experience. I truly wish I had found this before I was abused by a company I used to work for and my abuse stressed my wife so enormously that she lost her battle with cancer and died probably at least several years sooner than she would have had she not been ridiculously stressed. I will not give the company name since they would probably sue me but they have refused to donate any money to me based on the fact that it was some of their local management that was involved in stressing my wife and causing her to die rather quickly compared to most of the other people that had the same cancer she had. I am glad that I now have a decent job paying better since I have absolutely no saved money after the cancer treatments but I may now be able to start saving some money soon so perhaps I will be able to actually retire at some point. I am not old enough to get Social Security income even though I have been working very hard for almost 44 years. I am getting better although I am still slightly alcoholic while recovering from the death of my wife that I was with for almost 39 years when she died. With any luck at all the people from the company that caused her quick death will read this and then give me a very large donation. If they do not then it will show that the corporation itself is just as immoral and unethical as the local management that abused me and stressed my wife making her die way too quickly. I will probably not happen but that company makes so much money that if they donated 10 million dollars to me that is essentially like pocket change from them. If anyone has any thoughts or wants to state anything please comment on the blog.

Employer Hiring Procedures

 

Employers are looking for the best employees they can find which makes sense but in a lot of cases it is pretty obvious, although no provable, that they are looking for the best young inexperienced people to hire so they can pay them as little as possible.

I for instance have applied for over 300 positions which I have well over a decade of very successful experience in and everyone one of them did not even bother to reply to me.

I am beginning to build a list to send to the EEOC at the Federal Government to file charges against everyone who does that going forward.

In many cases refusing to hire experienced employees is actually age discrimination.

I will no longer tolerate this since it is immoral, unethical and inappropriate and causes serious damage to millions of people looking for work.

Every single time an employer hires someone else you should get detailed feedback about why you were not chosen.

The fact that no feedback is ever given is in my opinion proof that they are discriminating because if they don’t give you the reason in writing you can’t prove it.

Technorati Tags: Discrimination,Illegal Hiring Practices

How The Corporations Have Destroyed The Work Ethic That Was At One Time The Best In The World

 

Many of todays corporations are setting up their employees for failure so they can fire a bunch and then bring in a bunch more at a lower salary.

Customer costs are being raised far faster than the actual costs the companies have. Salaries are being lowered by stealthily setting up employees for failure and replacement. In a lot of cases the number of employees is being completely reduced or in some cases there are companies that are still replacing domestic employees with employees from overseas at far lower pay scales.

The reason the work ethics are disappearing is because those working customer service positions are in many cases not permitted to actually help the customers. It also prevents the employees in some cases by being able to spend as much time as they need to with the customer.

Customer service and tech support calls can in many cases be completed rather quickly but not always and one thing the assholes in charge of these corporations are doing is hurting the employees. One thing that is done by a few companies is that if you are on the phone with a customer and you take you break or lunch more than 3 minutes after it was scheduled you are then out of adherence so if you are not done with the customer you can ask if you can call them back although in a lot of inbound call centers outbound calls do not make management happy.

If someone wants to cancel their service the regular agents are not permitted to help them and must send them to a retention agent who has their salary drop dramatically if they actually let people that want to cancel do so.

A lot of the billing systems are seriously screwed up also. I do have the ability to check program coding but based on what we see regularly I suspect that many billing systems have some coding that is set to just randomly raise the bill regularly in some cases and just on random dates for many.

Also many companies love people that sign up to automatically pay there bills from their bank account. That is actually a terrible thing to do. I actually heard a poor representative that ended up on the phone with a person whose automatic payment had taken 20 some thousand dollars out of their back account to pay for a 200 and some odd dollar a month account.

All of this has killed work ethics for a lot of people because if they actually use their work ethics which everyone wants to do they will in an awful lot of cases end up being fired.

 

Technorati Tags: Corporate Greed,Executive Arrogance,Customer Satisfaction,Employees,Work Ethics

Things Are Getting Pretty Darned Expensive Which Hurts Those of Us That Make Far Less Money Now Than We Did 12 Years Ago Even Though We are Doing The Same Thing.

 

I find it very offensive that prices in general are still going up pretty fast in a lot of cases even though salaries are barely moving and in a lot of cases actually going down.

There are far too many companies out there that have put policies in place that set a lot of employees up to fail and be let go so they can then hire new people and pay an even lower starting salary even though the companies in general are making profits that are so much larger that lower salaries are just obscene.

Congress and the President really need to put in place a law that make it illegal for anyone in a company to make more than say 100 times more than their lowest paid employees.

There are way to many companies where CEOs are making well over 1000 times what the lowest paid employees are making. I wonder of they are proud of that?

Companies should absolutely make money and CEOs should certainly be paid the most but when you consider that productivity per employee on the average has climbed dramatically over the last several decades but their salaries have either not climbed or in many cases have gone down.

Not every single employee is worth an extraordinary salary because not all are great but very many are great or very good and should be paid decently.

For instance I am not paid a ton of money. I make almost 5 dollars an hour less today than I did over 12 years ago which is disgusting. It would also be pretty darned nice if todays companies would actually hire and pay based on experience. It is obscene to go into a company with well over a decade of experience with the same type of job and started at a salary that is less than what you started at over 10 years earlier.

It just needs to be made illegal to set employees up for failure so you can keep pay rates obscenely low. I am not the lowest paid person but I have been forced into bankruptcy which means I have now lost my house. I am moving into a very nice small home but the rent is going to be around 48% of my take home pay which will make things not terribly easy although the bankruptcy has ended some of the things I owe people but it should be illegal to pay people so little that the average rent is over 30% of their take home pay.

 

Technorati Tags: low salaries,Income Inequality,poorly paid employees,liveable wages

Hideous treatment of Employees by Large Corporations

 

There has been a great deal of information posted about how Google and Apple conspired to not ever employ one another employees so they could keep salaries low.

Granted low is kind of a relative thing since the employees they were talking about were making quite a bit to start out with.

I strongly doubt that Google and Apple are the only companies that have done that.

The only thing that is important to many corporations nowadays is how much money they can make as fast as possible. They do not in way care about their employees. They actually make changes on the fly to what they want their employees to be doing so that a lot of them can be let go for not meeting the goals that change all the time. That then allows the companies to hire new people at starting salaries that in a lot of cases keep getting lower even though the profits are growing at rates that are obscene.

Many companies have no interest whatsoever in taking care of their employees. I am currently on Workers Compensation because I injured my back at a customers house. I was told that there was no guarantee that my job would be there for me when I was done on Workers Compensation unless there was an FMLA leave running concurrently with the Workers Comp. So there was an application for FMLA sent in and it was almost instantly denied so I am pretty much screwed.

There are ton of companies out there that conspire with each other to screw over employees. For instance where I work if you apply for a job at another company for the same position the pay scale is just as bad as it is now.

I work for the largest company making more money than any other company in this industry. I am currently 2 levels above entry level and the industry average is around 85% more than what I am paid.

I have been working with HR and requesting all kinds of information and all I get it’s the phrase “that is the policy”. No one has been willing to send me a hard copy of the policy which tells me the phrase “that is the policy” is just bullshit and they are using that phrase so they can just sit on their butts and not do anything.

I know a gentleman that worked for the company for around 15 years or so and started having back issues from a congenital problem that was not repairable. He got ready to apply for disability and was let go before he applied so it was instantly denied. He is in the process of suing the company.

We really need to get rid of every single politician that is up for re-election and get new people in here. If that does not happen then we need to start looking at the possibility of Socialism since none of our politicians give a shit about anyone in the country other than the 1% that throw money at them so they have the chance to stay in office.

Any of you out there that hate Socialism better start showing everyone that you give a shit.

Technorati Tags: Socialism,Corporate Greed,Hiring Practices,Employee treatment

My Thoughts on Getting Older!

 

Getting older is a great thing and it certainly beats the alternative but there are some disadvantages.

I have been injured several times at the job I have while none of them have been life threatening the fact that I am older make the healing process take longer.

I am currently working through a back issue with a herniated disk and a bulging disk that are pinching some nerves.

I am a little perturbed at the way companies now handle things like this. I remember working years ago where someone got injured several times and at that point the company would come up to them and say would you like to move to another job so you can no longer get injured?

That no longer happens today. At least at large corporations where they make the assumption that every single employee that is injured is attempting to defraud the company. For instance I have an approved medical accommodation from corporate headquarters which is going nowhere. Even with the amount of local autonomy that is given I am continuously told that there must be a job opening available and that I can not move to another job until I am released for full duty at my current job.

Considering that I have a herniated disk which may make some of the requirements of my current job a bit difficult I just might be screwed. Maybe even more than a friend of mine who has had back issues which have been getting worse for several years who was just recently let go and denied disability.

Technorati: Ageing, work related injuries, employer assistance to injured employees

My Thoughts on the Weather

 

I truly hope that the upcoming winter will have temperatures as mild as what we have had this summer. We have had a few hot days but nothing extremely bad. Hopefully we will not see the hideous cold caused by the Polar Vortexes from last year.

I have no problem with some snow but I certainly hope any snow we get is at least something not extreme. I have no problem driving in snow but there are entirely too many people out there that believe that there vehicles traction is the same as warm and dry weather regardless of what is on the roads.

Hopefully there will also be a bit more thought going into what conditions outside workers are required to work in. Last year during the worst snow it was decided that we were not going to be working because it was dangerous just to get to the locations let alone do the outside work. About 5 of us were already at the shop and a bunch of others were on the road headed that way before the decision was made. I am very glad that decision was made but would it not have been better to make it early enough that no one was on the road? There was already like 11 inches of snow on the ground before I left home and the snow was to continue for several hours.

 

Technorati Tags: Weather,cold,winter,driving conditions

Todays Political Circus

 

With the financial crisis we have gone through and with the Congress pretty much refusing to agree on doing anything to help we really need to look at staying on every member of congress and as they come to election we need to kick the old school and the completely unreasonable new school out of office and get a group in there that can pull together and make things work again.

We certainly do have way to many regulations which is one of the things that is slowing down things to a degree but the problem was caused by regulation being removed because the benefactors (investors maybe?) of many members of congress pretty much told them what to remove and they did it without taking into consideration what might happen.

The removal of the Glass-Steagall act actually is what caused the vast majority of the crash. By removing the barriers that kept the banking system safe and allowing them to do pretty much whatever they wanted to do with the money of people that were placing there money in accounts along with those that were investing directly they caused the bubble by using the money to invest and speculate on things that were promising huge returns. Anyone that has invested knows that when something promises or guarantees a huge return it is not safe because there is no way you can guarantee a return.

Glass-Steagall needs to be put back in place. If it were put back in place it would put an immediate halt to the crap going on on Wall Street. Banks would scream and they would not make much money for a while but they have made such enormous profits that they can withstand that for a bit and if this was done things would start turning around and we would see a much faster pace in the recovery. It will not happen overnight but we could easily see a recovery to the way things were before the bubble started and we were doing quite well as a nation and companies were making a lot of money. They just might have to settle for 100s of millions or single digit billions in profits rather than 10s or 100s of billions.

Now for those that are screaming right now that money will not disappear. It will make its way to to those that are working like hell and barely able to afford the necessities of life. Once they start getting that money they will start to spend again and much of that money will work its way back up the chain to the corporations. That is the best way to handle things because “trickle down” economics has proven over the last decade and a half or so that it does not work. In order for it to work there needs to be an enormous change in the mind set of the corporate leadership that a decent amount of that money needs to go to the folks on the front line that make the business possible.

When that happens they spend more and a lot of it comes back and the country and the economy as a whole will explode into success.

Technorati Tags: Financial Crisis,Glass-Steagall,Wall Street,Banking,Regulations,Economy

My Take On The Last Several Decades.

I have reached the age where one looks more closely at ones mortality. I am starting a project that will put my experiences and views on how things have progressed since the mid to late 60s into a format that can be read by anyone choosing to do so.

I have had a number of relatives, including my parents, die and there are more people that I know or am acquainted with that have reached that final door that must be passed through when ones existence on this earth is over.

I have seen the good, the indifferent and the bad over my lifetime and hopefully we are headed back into a good period although at this point in time Congress is making no effort to really help anyone.

Technorati Tags: recent history,personal experiences,60s,70s,80s,90s,00s,10s

Why Overall Customer Service Sucks At Most Companies!

 

I am apparently not qualified to be a Customer Service Supervisor. This post is not just to moan about not getting the position. My concerns are with the reasoning and I suspect this reasoning is being used at many companies. Just look at Customer Satisfaction scores overall. Not a whole lot of companies with stellar scores although there are some.

I have worked call center jobs of various kinds for many years. I have done Observational Quality Assessments. I have trained Reps, Q/As and Supervisors. I have done process improvements and saved corporations money and I have always, always, always had customers very pleased with me or with people that I have trained.

I am very concerned with the reasons for my not moving forward. I have Call Center experience as I stated but I also have experience physically doing work in customers homes and I, unlike many supervisors and in some cases reps, I actually completely understand how this stuff works behind the scenes and can explain it if need be to just about anyone.

The reasons for my not getting the Supervisor position?

They agree that I bring a wealth of experience to the position. Their concern is that I am too direct in my manner of speaking and also I am too friendly?

I am direct because I will not blow smoke up someone's ass. I am friendly because not being friendly makes people automatically assume that you are an asshole and will never work well with them.

Their are some surveys that puts my employers customer satisfaction scores as the worst in the country.

Anyone that has customer satisfaction scores they are unhappy with and wants to change that contact me. Given the opportunity, some time to dig into details and see the problem and the appropriate authority to make changes, I can have your company getting customer satisfaction scores that place you among the top in the entire world!

Technorati Tags: customer satisfaction,hiring practices,supervisor requirements

Gun Control?

As of today we have yet another shooting. I am not at all against guns. We have the 2nd amendment which I agree with although I believe there are many who have perverted it. I believe many cases (not all) the problem is the media.

As soon as there is a horrible firearm related crime, the media covers it to the point od absurdity. The public certainly has the right to know what is going on but the level of detail is ridiculous. We have had a number of shootings since the horrible day in Connecticut and I believe that the follow-up shooting were at least in part caused by the media.

Right after these shootings, because of the coverage, many people go right out and buy as many weapons as they can afford because they assume from the news coverage that it will happen local to them next and people then see anything as a problem that could be life threatening and they break out the weapons.

One thing I am absolutely against is high capacity magazines in civilian settings. I was a hunter for years. I would have been terribly embarrassed  by needing more than 2 MAYBE 3 rounds when hunting. If you need a 30 or more round magazine then you suck as a hunter and you should not be allowed to even touch a weapon because is you need that many rounds when hunting then you have no idea where your rounds are going downrange and I sure as hell don’t want to be out in the woods with someone like you doing the spray and pray thing hoping to perhaps kill something edible.

Technorati Tags: Control,guns,amendment,media,firearm,crime,shootings,Connecticut,coverage,news,life,magazines,civilian,settings,hunter,MAYBE,magazine,weapon,hell,woods

Independence Day

On this July 4th I truly hope those of my compatriots that work for the company I do and are working today have a slow day and the ability to stay in the shade or air conditioning as much as possible. Please also make sure you are drinking plenty of fluids.

I am fortunate to be off today but I will be back out tomorrow.

To those who are not working, enjoy the holiday and take precautions should you be making use of any fireworks no matter how low level they may be.

Technorati Tags: compatriots,fireworks,air conditioning

Law Office

Guest post by Jewel Cole

My dad and my two brothers are all attorneys and they have been in practice together for a really long time. I have worked as their legal secretary for almost twenty years. They have had several different offices over the past twenty years or so, and they recently moved to another new office. The rent is much cheaper at the new office. They are sharing the office with another law firm, so most of the utilities were already set up. My brother asked one of the other lawyers what they use for phone and internet service because he was impressed with how fast it was. He said they went to t1.xo.com to set everything up. My brother told him that he wished he had known about this service when they were at their old office. As their secretary, I wish I had known about it too. Faster internet and better phone service would have definitely made my job easier. It looks like there is more than one perk to moving to a new office and I think we are all going to be very happy at the new office.

Income Disparity

The news reports and protests about income disparity seem to have died down quite a bit. I think those discussions are very important.

There will always be income disparities between CEOs and the regular workers and there should be since the CEOs are in charge of companies that need to make money to stay in business.

My problem with income is not so much the disparity as it is the way things have been going for decades.

We see news reports and hear politicians speaking about the United States worker being the most productive in the world and I believe that. We get reports about how much more efficient and productive workers have become. All very true. My question is, if workers are more productive and more efficient it means that they produce more in a shorter period of time or with fewer resources. That is a very good thing. So why the HELL have salaries been going down??

We are a capitalist country and I fully believe in capitalism but the capitalism that made this country great through the 60s, 70s and 80s was stakeholder capitalism where the company, the employees, the customer and the stockholders were equally important.

Today we live in a world of shareholder capitalism where the stockholder is king and everything else gets thrown under the bus to make sure that they get returns on their money with percentage rates that were unheard of in years past except by loan sharks and organized crime.

I have no problem with profits. Not even with huge profits but I believe that is time that corporations start looking around and rewarding the little guy that does the grunt work and makes everything possible.

Technorati Tags: Income,news,discussions,disparities,CEOs,workers,money,decades,politicians,States,worker,resources,HELL,salaries,capitalism,stakeholder,employees,customer,stockholders,shareholder,stockholder,percentage,sharks,crime,corporations

Compare your rates

Guest post from: Natalie Walter

If you are big money saver like I am then I know you will like to know about this topic. When you go shop for something that is what you would consider a high dollar item you will probably go around to several stores that carry that item and you will check it out in more than one location. You probably want to see if one store will offer a better price than another store for the same item just so you feel like you are getting the best deal possible. The same holds true for your energy utilities. I know that most people don’t even think about their utility bill until they have to pay it every month and even then it is an afterthought to check out what you are paying per unit. I decided to do a search to find out if there is anyway that I can save money for my family. As it turns out I was able to save a significant amount of money and even enough to help us get started with a vacation fund.

Liking the weather!

I am not very fond of the cold but other than that I like this. We have had some snow and rain but ever since I transferred to a new Tech Ops area I have had much better weather to work in. When I was working in York there would be nice weather on my days off but then rain and slop on most of my days working. I am not sure what it is about Gettysburg. I have nice weather to work in far more often now. Very strange since I am only about 30 miles or so from York. I will take it though.

 

Technorati Tags: Tech,area,York,Gettysburg

girlfriend is using match.com

The Author of this post is Darius Boone

I think my girlfriend wants to cheat on me. I know it is a bizarre notion to have, but I kept getting weird vibes from her. She started acting funny about a week ago, so I got suspicious. I hate not trusting someone and I hate snooping around, but she gave me no choice. I logged onto our Satellite internet Service and looked at her internet history. I was surprised to find match.com as a frequent site. Since we didn’t meet on match.com, it had to be something or someone new. After snooping further, I found her profile and was saddened to see she was actively looking for a different boyfriend. All of this made me so mad and so sad. I thought we had a great connection and I thought she might even be the one. However, now I don’t know what to do. Is it actually cheating to make a dating profile or is it just curiosity? I don’t know if I should bring it up or just see what happens in the next month. This entire situation has me so puzzled.

It’s Nice to See Again.

I had surgery to remove cataracts from my right eye about 2 weeks ago and I marvel on a daily basis about how bad my eyesight actually was.

For those who may not know what it is, cataracts is a problem where the lens of your eye over time becomes cloudy and starts to distort your vision. It is something that is primarily found when you get older. It comes on so slowly and gradually over years that you do not really notice how bad it is.

I found out when I went to an optometrist to get my glasses checked and found that my cataracts had reached the point where there was no correction possible through the use of glasses or contacts.

I had the first cataract removed on the 13th of December and it is the most fabulous thing ever. I am seeing a world I haven’t known for decades and that is with just one eye done. I go in this Tuesday to have my left eye done and I will be able see even better.

If there is anyone out there that is worried about the surgery I would highly recommend having it if needed. While it is like any surgery there are some risks and there is a vague possibility something could happen but it is so common and is done so often that complications are incredibly rare.

The procedure is very simple and it only takes about 10 minutes. The natural lens that is cloudy is removed from your eye and the new lens which is artificial, (acrylic in my case) is inserted. I had a little discomfort for a few hours right after the procedure, a little minor irritation the next day and I didn’t even notice it by the 3rd day.

If you need to have cataracts removed please do not be araid to have the procedure. Just make sure that the ophthalmologist that does the procedure has all your past and present medical information and please follow all the instructions given you for the pre and post operative time frames.

 

Technorati Tags: cataracts,glasses,vision,sight,surgery

What a Wonderful Day

I live for days like today. Sunny, very pleasant temperature and no rain. I realize that rain is needed for things to grow but we have had so very much in the past few months. I work a portion of my day outside, sometimes on ladders working up on cable lines and while I love this job to death, rain makes that part of it a bit unpleasant.

It also makes for some rough driving since so many people do not understand that when the weather gets bad you need to slow down because your car is not the same in rain, snow or ice as it is on dry pavement.

Technorati Tags: weather

Christmas shopping

 

I appreciate the guest post, Ignacio Phillips

In general, I’m not a big fan of advertisements for Christmas coming on direct TV when Halloween has barely passed by, but there is one thing I do appreciate about it – it reminds me to get a jump on present shopping so I don’t have to wait until the last minute. However, there’s only so much I can do ahead of time, especially since my sister and I do a large part of our shopping together, but live in different cities. We typically put our heads together on presents for both our parents and stepparents. Also, my mom is really big on stockings and is, in my opinion, the best stocking stuffer that I have ever met. My sister and I feel as if she needs to have an equally awesome stocking, so we wait until we get home to our parents’ house and get things together for that on Christmas Eve. Now, my mom starts shopping for stuffers way back in the spring and summer, so there’s no way that our efforts can hold a candle to hers. We have to give it a solid try though.