Work Is Hell

Are you guys familiar with fridge lockers?



A few months ago, someone in my office put one in our refrigerator. It's rarely full, and half the time, she doesn't even put her food in it, so it mostly just takes up a whole bunch of space.

This morning, a second one appeared. It's slightly larger than the first one, and the only thing in it is a bottle of coffee creamer.

Our refrigerator is always pretty full. Is it really necessary to take up a third of a shelf just to make sure no one takes a single drop of your coffee creamer?

That would piss me off, NBF. Our fridges are always super full too. I rarely use it and have invested in a larger lunch box/smaller cooler type thing (still canvas and over the shoulder, but fully insulated and such) so that I don't have to use the fridge at all. There's enough room for a decent amount of food and a few ice packs. If someone is so worried about people taking food, they should follow my model/

wow. at my previous job we had a self-appointed fridge police officer who would go through and trash anything not labeled/dated every so often. (it may actually have been required but whatever).
I think you should bring in a small metal safe or lockbox (empty) and stick it in there just for fun.

some kid laid a turd on the bathroom floor today. wtf.

Merit based pay is a garbage system here too. First, there were never any definite rules laid down as to how many people can get a high rating. This has lead different department heads to base their departments off their own interpretation of the information they have received. Our department is going with the bell curve like your boss, so there's a very small amount of people that get the highest rating. These people tend to be in the same office as the department head and/or people that have been here for a while. You can then go to another department where their head views it as there being room for an infinite amount of high ratings and everyone gets one unless they're a total idiot. Second, the language in it says that the highest rating is for people that go above and beyond their assigned responsibilities. This bothers me for a couple reasons. It shifts the focus to doing as much as possible rather than doing what you do well. Also, your assigned responsibilities can change and you get screwed. A co-worker decided he was going for the gold and took on a new project. It was interesting stuff and not something that was being done anywhere else in the department. He got high fives for it. When it came time for reviews, they shifted lowered his duties in other areas then folded the new project into his responsibilities so technically speaking he was no longer going "above and beyond" by doing it. Needless to say, he was a little ticked.

My coworker had something similar happen to her!!  The only area my boss didn't score me super high in was training and that's because we were short staffed and I held down the job for THREE PEOPLE and didn't have time to take bathroom breaks, let alone go a full day to training.  The wording here is similar as well.  If you come in and do your job and what's asked of you, you will never be more than satisfactory.  And while I get that, when you do go above and it doesn't get rewarded because of the bell curve, why go out at all?  Like I said, morale is low around here.  We have been through so many lows, and lower lows, in the past year and a half that everyone is barely hanging on.  

They cancelled our yearly employee appreciation picnic and they've done it here for 20 years.  It's the small things like that, that really tell you times are changing.  Change is inevitable I suppose.

Check in when you can, heyyitskait. Workplace tensions like that give me the creeps. We had someone's husband show up pissed once at my old job, it was pretty dicey. Also had a situation where a guy was realllllly upset about getting let go, to the point where the campus police were to be notified if we even saw him on campus.

Oh, are we bitching about merit-based reviews? Cuz I wasn't gonna but since the gate for that has opened...

For years our company has given a 2% increase for Meets Standards, 3% for Above, and 4% for Exceeds. Last year I got a Meets. This year I got an Above, and was kinda psyched because our GM can be a stickler and occasionally hard to please. Well. This year the company lowered the raises to 1% for Meets, 2% for Above, and 3% for Exceeds. So I'm getting the exact same raise that I got last year, even though I performed substantially better.

And to top it all off, our company gives a minimum $.25 increase if you're getting a raise, so one of my employees who makes less than me and got a Meets (1%) review ended up actually what amounts to a 2% raise because of the minimum increase, and in the end I only got a few cents more than she did. On the one hand I'm happy for her because I care about my employees and wish I could give them all bigger raises (and I generally am not a fan of comparing salaries anyway), but on the other hand it's all pretty demoralizing because I performed better than her and caused nowhere near the amount of headaches she did (all while having more responsibilities and such) just to get pennies more than her.

All in all a raise is still a raise though, and I also have to give a shoutout to our Assistant Manager because she wasn't aware that they had lowered the increases until I told her what mine was, and when she found out they decreased it she was pretty pissed and said that she'd give someone an earful for us. I know it's not going to change anything in terms of compensation, but it's nice to have a boss who will go to bat for you.

I have a friend who got laid off recently because of the "only *this* percent of employees can get exceeds expectations" and then soon after they had to do extensive lay offs. He said he always has had good reviews, is well-liked, gets the job done well and works extra hours to make sure of that. But the people that got exceeds regularly stay until 9 at night. So even though he probably did exceed expectations, he didn't go balls to the wall like some people do.

And I hear ya, Jaz. I remember getting annoyed my 2nd or so year here. Depending on how the budget is (it regularly gets cut), we get 4% living wage increased in July. One year, HR also adjusted all our pay scales to be more on point with our peers. I was already above the bottom, so the adjustment didn't affect me and I got the normal increase, but the 2 people that were below me at the time ended up with like a 10-12% pay increase. I think after that we basically all were around the same rate even though I was here 2 years longer.

That sounds fucking awfullllll. I don't know how you haven't lost it yet.

That's ridiculous lol. Did you guys have a big lunch theft before the lockers appeared? Are they even locked? 

I want to rearrange everything in that fridge.

Who needs almost a whole fridge shelf for themself at work? Does the guy who plays The Mountain on Game of Thrones work with you?

So, back in February, one of my coworkers asked me to trade some shifts with her over our spring break so that she could go to Arizona. We work alternating weekends so it's pretty easy for us to trade shifts. I had already made some tentative plans to visit my family during that time, but I needed to trade shifts with someone so that I could go to Bonnaroo, so I agreed on the condition if she could trade shifts with me in June (as well as one in April). She agreed. Keep in mind this is all via text message so it's not just a verbal agreement or whatever.

So, fast forward to today. I text her to ask which weekend (the one before or after Bonnaroo) she'd like me to work for her. She responds by saying that she thought that I said July 1st (a date that was not discussed at any point at all) and that she has a graduation party to attend on June 10. I know she's not under any obligation to trade shifts with me, but I am so incredibly frustrated right now, especially since she agreed to these plans months in advance and I have previously set aside things that were important to me just to do a favor for her. I'm going to try and find someone else to work these shifts, but we have a staff of about approximately six people at my workplace and my manager just put in her notice that she's leaving in three weeks so things are about to get really intense.

Ugh.

I've come to the conclusion that having loads of responsibility and very little control over said responsibility is a perfect recipe for hating your job.