Author: Olivia

So, I've recently found myself needing seek additional employment. Job hunting always sucks, but it sucks extra hard when you're disabled. In my case, I have epilepsy. Even though my condition is managed, I still have seizures a couple of times a year. Because of this, I do not drive. As public transit where I live is total crap, not driving severely limits the geographic area and hours that I can work. Employers like to talk a lot of shit about how they're “equal opportunity” employers and they are accomodating to their employees with disabilities. Yet in my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. If you work for a small business, your employer is exempt from providing accomodations. Even if the company is large enough to be beholden to the ADA, that's no guarantee that they will actually bother to accomodate you. For example, once hired, I have…

I feel like employees who are already there are less receptive of external hires compared to if they had simply promoted from within. Additionally, external hires tend to shake up things just for the sake of doing things different, even if the system already in place works fine. But the downside is that you can potentially lose out on talent. What do you think?

I was talking with my mom today about her first job. She got a part time job at UPS (not a driver) when she was 18 in 1978. She worked 20-30 hours per week and was paid $9.50 an hour. Sometimes she loaded trucks, or dealt with opened packages. Teamsters Union, and they negotiated good raises every year. She said a lot of people worked there to put themselves through college as it paid enough to cover living and tuition expenses. My parents struggled with 3 kids, my dad had to pay child support and alimony to his ex wife. He had a lot of debt from his divorce. Dad worked during the day and mom at night so they avoided daycare costs. They bought a house and we had a lower-middle/ middle class upbringing UPS used to have a pension scheme, and you could retire and draw a pension…

Chronic health issues, mental health issues, taking care of a dependent with health issues, disabilities, unsustainable work practices, etc. Have something you can wrap up in a week? Great, we’d love to support you. Anything ongoing or that requires more than 40 hours of time to “get your shit together” (much less try to find and arrange ongoing, in-network, competent care), and you’re an absolute asshole to everyone else and a liability for even mentioning it. They will IMMEDIATELY start trying to build a case against you, and refer you to the textbook HR policy and you better be ready to move on, and have weeks of documented proof that you’re actually suffering from the issues you claim, bc if you’re not bleeding from the head at all times, you must be lying/exaggerating. They’ll admit that they’re having “hiring issues” and that they’re understaffed on an ongoing basis, but does…

My union job sends us to training but refuses to pay overtime if it goes beyond our work hours. Tomorrow I have to come in an hour early to get to the training on time. Is this common practice?

Long time reader, first time posting. Please be kind. I am going to describe a scenario between myself and employer that has been building up for 5 years. I work for a small family owned buisness, the owner is over 70 and his daughter now runs the place. Its a long standing specialized business, the daughter has been wearing two very heavy hats for the last 25 years, and the father getting older does not help with the weight of responsibility. My role was initialy to take some of the pressure off of the managers client facing role so she could manage the buisness. But, the buisness is getting busier and busier that even with me working full time plus some, and her full time plus some, we cant keep up with client demand, and manage our daily workflow. I have been trying to express how overwhelmed I am, but…

What were the worst bosses like? Worst customers? Best day on the job?

It doesn’t seem to matter anyway, last time we got such low scores in my regional office the head HR guy came in from across the county. At the end of a BS presentation he literally said if you don’t want to work here you should probably find a new job because if you look at our social media we’re doing import things here you should be proud of. The company is greenwashed to hell while producing hundreds (probably thousands) of pounds of useless products. I don’t plan on staying past the end of the year why rock the boat?