Author: Olivia

F you, upper management suit and tie sellout

I started a job at the beginning of the month, it’s a job in line with what I have been doing for the past 20+ years. I am supposed to be in a management position with as many as 8 direct reports. Currently I have not been assigned a team and I am not doing any management duties. I am actually doing a job that I hate, hoping that at some point I will be assigned a team. However, from just this months work I’m pretty sure that everyone who works at this company is completely miserable. Staff meetings where no one speaks and everyone looks like they would rather be literally anywhere else. My boss is the only one that speaks and it’s in a mean, I can’t believe I have to talk to you idiots, monotone. I got in trouble my first week because my mouse tracking software…

As I'm writing this I am an hour away from my home, in an office, in a Teams meeting with people that are 10 feet away from me. Please someone explain this to me. I also regularly do IT support for employees across the country with some sitting in their homes while I drive an hour into an office. I just don't understand why I have to waste my time and money to sit in an office if I do 80%+ of my job without interacting with people physically.

After asking my boss for a raise to help with my rent increase and being told that I couldn’t get a raise until December, I decided to put in my notice and leave for a better paying job. My boss acknowledged the resignation notice and that I was giving 2 weeks until I left. I have spent the last 2 weeks training my “supervisor” on how to do my job and well, it hasn’t been going great. Despite my supervisor being the one who trained me on my job, it had been almost 2 years since he has had to do my roles and he is not really doing so hot at picking them up. With only 2 full days left of me at my current job, my boss has finally tried to ask me what it would take for me to stay, or at least consider staying for another…

Has anyone ever been to mediation with their employer as a complainant? If so, what was the reason and outcome? Did they meet your demands?

This is just a rant but I get sent to very expensive locations of the US for work. Most recently, I was on a luxury island and the food is roughly 2x the cost of normal prices on the mainland. I was asking my coworkers if we get per diem to offset the costs, and they said no because we get OT while working travel locations. I was kind of surprised, because in every other job I’ve had I was given a per diem rate. They then went on to tell me they used to have per diem, but the most recent CEO did away with it because he’s “old school.” I was like ??? And my coworkers said well in his eyes, you can make OT on these trips so it makes up for the lack of per diem. I was like it shouldn’t be one or the other.…

Title says it all. It’s kind of wild how many of these posts are people in various laboratory settings.

Could even be possible? How could one even take steps to accomplish it?