Office

By the time you read this, I
should be lounging around the pool sipping a cool
adult beverage. I will be on a much-needed vacation.

In
order to keep focused and write anything with an
objective mind, I think it helps to step away from
the issues at hand we see on a daily basis in order
not to become discouraged and cynical.

I am overdue. I am a cynical person. I need some
humor in my life and to see the glass half full, not
half empty.

To give you an idea of what has done me in this week
I offer a few examples.

Earlier this week, I was notified that I am being
sued at one of my job sites. A woman came in, last
year and applied for a job. We told her the starting
salary. She rejected it as being less than she
wanted to make. The person doing the interviews came
back to our office. The applicant came in the
following Monday and told our on-site manger she had
been hired and that the person doing the
interviewing had her paperwork. Six weeks went by
and I got a call from her asking why she had not
been paid. I looked at the current employee list for
that location and didn’t find her on the list. I
asked her what her employee number was and she
didn’t have one. I asked her why and she said…."I
never filled out the paperwork since I didn’t agree
with what you offered."   I asked how she had gotten
into the building and she told me by walking in with
other employees.

At this point I sat back in my chair and asked her
if I understood correctly that she had been working
for six weeks, without ever being paid and she told
that this was correct. I told her to report to our
office and leave the building. We then figured out
what she should have been paid, and sent her a
check. She is suing us since we fired her. I am
frustrated since we didn’t hire her in the first
place. She was never on our payrolls, insurance or
issued a company id card or time clock card. I have
never had this happen before.

Another situation involved a person who walked into
one of our locations and filled out an application,
which was unsolicited. We did not have any job
openings at the time. We shred all applications
after a period of time since they contain personal
information. Three months later we had a vacancy and
rehired a former employee to fill the position. The
person who came in and filled out an application is
now suing since they didn’t get the job. The
frustrating part of this one is that the complaint
is from a federal agency. Now if you’ve never had to
respond to one of these before, consider yourself
blessed. There are about 45 questions that must be
answered and returned within 5-7 days. The really
Catch-22 question is one where they are asking for a
complete schedule of all employees by race, sex and
age. Now, as you may know when you hire someone
these days, we aren’t allowed to ask any of these
questions and they cannot be placed on the
application, so how can we provide something to the
government that we are prohibited from asking in the
first place? I called and asked that very question.
They said we had to make a separate list and
maintain it just in case it was ever needed for any
inquiries such as this. Makes no sense to me
whatsoever.

Both of these are bizarre cases and certainly don’t
have much merit, but the time and effort to respond
to them and provide all of the documentation to
prove our side of the issue is enormous.  

It makes you wonder if the moon is full or perhaps
the world has just gone mad.

Along those same lines, let me make one more point.
We are all aware of the current situation in the
Middle East. The news today concerns the evacuation
of some of the Americans out of Lebanon. It seems
they are distraught since the ships sent to help
weren’t as clean as the evacuees expected and the
ship ran out of sandwiches.

Hello? Is anyone home?

Let’s see…. have any of you been tempted by the
Lebanon Tourist Department to sign up for a tour of
their lovely country? I thought not. There is a war
going on over there. Why are Americans over there in
the first place?   I don’t know about you, but if I
was there for one reason or another and bombs were
falling all over the place, I tend to think the last
thing I would be hacked about is a lack of chicken
sandwiches. Or the fact that the water wasn’t really
cold enough. I suppose they wanted white tux waiters
serving Perrier in silver tumblers.   This is a war
zone; you don’t get the Queen Mary to pick you up in
a war zone.

You shouldn’t complain about how slow they were to
arrive. They got there didn’t they?

Stop complaining about the condition of the ship
taking you away to safety. I believe I would be
grateful I was going to get home alive. Most of us
could stand to miss a few chicken sandwiches anyway.

Give me a break.