Do Not Let HR do this to you. It is not illegal to talk about wages in the work place. I did and got a 12% raise!
True info. Now let me add something: The power of documentation. (I was a long time steward in a nurses union.)
Remember: The “‘E” in email stands for evidence.
That cuts both ways. Be careful what you put into an email. It never really goes away and can be used against you.
But can also be a powerful tool for workplace fairness.
Case 1: Your supervisor asks you to do something you know is either illegal or against company policy. A verbal request. If things go wrong, you can count on them denying that they ever told you to do that. You go back to your desk, or wherever and you send them an email: “I just want to make sure that I understood correctly that you want me to do xxxxx” Quite often, once they see it in writing, they will change their mind about having you do it. If not, you have documentation.
Case 2: You have a schedule you like, you’ve had that schedule for a while, it works for you. Your supervisor comes to you and says “We’re really short-handed now and I need you to change your schedule just for a month until we can get someone else hired. It’s just temporary and you can have your old schedule back after a month.” A month goes by and they forget entirely that they made that promise to you. So, once again, when they make the initial request, you send them an email “I’m happy to help out temporarily, but just want to make sure I understand correctly that I will get my old schedule back after a month as you promised.” Documentation.
[Image ID: Text reading: In the middle of a busy clinic at our practice, I got pulled in by my manager to speak to HR, who must have made a special trip because she lives several states away, and told I was being 'investigated’ for discussing wages with my other employees. She told me it was against company policy to discuss wages.
Me; That’s illegal.
Them: (start italics) three slow, long seconds of staring at me blankly (end italics) Uh…
Me: That’s an illegal policy to have. The right to discuss wages is a right protected by the National Labor Relations board. I used to be in a union. I know this.
HR: Oh, this is news to me! I have been working HR for 18 years and I never knew that. Haha. Well try not do do it anyway, it makes people upset, haha.
Me: people are entitled to their opinions about what their work is worth. Bye.
I then left, and sent her several texts and emails saying I would like a copy of their company policy to see where this wage discussion policy was kept. She quickly called me back in to her office.
HR: You know what, there is no policy like that in the handbook! I double check. Sorry about the confusion, my apologies.
Me: You still haven’t given me the paper saying that we had this discussion. I am going to need some protection against retaliation.
HR: Oh haha yes here you go.
I just received a paper with legal letterhead and an apology saying there was no verbal warning or write up. Don’t even take their shit you guys. Keep talking about wages. Know your worth. /End ID]
At one of my old (shit) jobs my boss would continually come have these verbal discussions with me and would never put anything in writing I took to summarizing every discussion we had in email. Like “just to confirm that you asked me to do X by Y date and you understand that means I won’t be able to complete the previous task you gave me until Z date - 2 weeks later than originally scheduled - because you want me to prioritize this new project.
The woman would then storm back into my office screaming at me for putting the discussion in writing and arguing about pushing back the other project or whatever. At which point I would summarize that conversation in email as well. Which would bring her storming back in, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
Anyway I cannot imagine how badly that job would have gone if I hadn’t put all her wildly unreasonable demands in writing. Bitch still hated me but she could never hang me for “missing deadlines” because I always had in writing that she’d pushed the project back because she wanted something else done first.
Paper your asses babes. Do not let them get away with shit. If they won’t put what they’re asking you to do in writing then write it up yourself and email it to them.
Also, keep track of your hours and compare them to your paycheck. Take pictures of your clock in, or get print outs, or just write it down every time.
I had a manager who used to move people’s overtime hours into the next week so he didn’t have to pay them overtime, but we didn’t realize he was doing it for a long time because most of us weren’t keeping close track of our hours.
The thing that gets me about Looking For Jobs is that every hiring site has like miles of just saying words at you that you have to scroll through. Talking about teamwork career building opportunities goals. Talking about “our mission” & it’s a grocery store
I’m too autistic for this amount of extraneous social song & dance bullshit I just want to know if you’ll pay me or not
You’re a grocery store. We both know you’re a grocery store. Your mission is to sell groceries. You could give a fuck about peace and love on planet earth. I could give a fuck about you. I’m here because we live in hell. You know this. I know this. You know I know this. I don’t know what you’re paying though. Because this page is longer than it has any goddamn reason to be and you put that information right at the bottom. With an asterisk next to it
judy grahn, from another mother tongue: gay words, gay worlds, 1984
[“MAINTAINING SECRECY
The secrecy some Gay couples maintain about their relationship to each other can reach great extremes. I have known women lovers together for fifteen years who pretend to live separately, going one night to the house of one and the next night to the house of the other, each time carrying the gear, suitcases, changes of clothing they will need for the next day, for the sake of fooling a few family members and straight friends. Other Lesbian couples go to even greater lengths to ensure secrecy. One couple has lived together for nine years and also works together in the same office, where they are so fearful of being discovered as lovers and lifetime mates that they pretend not to know each other at all.
When I was working in a laboratory as a medical technician, I had a clear lesson in the secrecy of the closet. Six of us were standing around getting ready to take off our white coats and go home for a day, when one woman told an ugly anti-Gay joke. She was a young aide in training to do minor tests, nowhere near as skilled as the rest of us, and she had recently been married; no one expected her to stay long at her job. The point of her joke was See-how-stupid-and-wrong-faggots-are. It made me sick inside to hear it, but following the rule of appearing heterosexual or else, from years of habit and the desire to stay employed and reasonably accepted among my co-workers, I obediently pretended to laugh.
As I did so my eyes met the sparkling blue eyes of our boss, a man who had worked his way up to become the chief laboratory technician of the hospital. In his fifties, he had never married and was continually teased as "most eligible bachelor.” His eyes flashed into mine now as, mouths guffawing, we acknowledged with a special look that straight people simply had to be indulged, that that was a part of The Life. My eyes flicked from him to his lover Robert, a technician like myself and a friend of mine. Large, broad-shouldered, and with his short hair plastered to his skull, Robert looked as if the word straight was invented just to describe him. He and I were teased in the laboratory for going out together, which we occasionally did as a front. But I knew Robert and our boss had been lovers for several years and owned a business together outside the laboratory, operating it on weekends; I had been there to have dinner with them.
From Robert’s distorted, pretending-to-laugh face, my gaze passed to another technician, Rita. She was beautiful, graceful, smart and gutsy. She had recently led all of us in a strike for better wages. The highly skilled Rita was head of the bacteriology department and a specialist in her work. I had a terrific crush on her at the time, and now to my disgust here she was pretending to howl at the rude joke, and so was her lover Alberta who stood next to her with her coat on, ready to go home. The two Lesbians worked together in the laboratory, owned a house and a couple of horses, having lived together for at least ten years. I closed my mouth and stopped laughing. I was too astonished at what my eyes had registered: Of six people standing in the laboratory laughing at a vicious anti-Gay joke, five were Gay— everyone except the woman who had told the joke. The walls of the closet are guarded by the dogs of terror, and inside of the closet is a house of mirrors.“]
another heavy handed symbolism moment: my mom has a potted sunflower in the kitchen. because it is a sunflower, it keeps turning towards the light from the window. my mother keeps rotating it so it faces inward because she wants “to see its beautiful petals and have it really brighten up the space!” . the sunflower is visibly wilting .
that’s definitely a bull shark, and while she’s not actually as massive as she looks in that second picture due to some forced perspective with the background diver, she’s still PRETTY BIG for a bull shark and appears to have some form of gigantism that’s made her face proportions a little off.
normal bull shark:
giant bull shark (hereon after referred to as MEGA CARLA):
basically, it looks like Mega Carla is the shark version of Andre the Giant!
no word on getting her a pro wrestling contract, though.
Millions of Years of Immutable Evolutionary Law: “Cats shall have litters of many offspring at one time. Some will be weak or stricken with disease–they will perish to allow the stronger siblings to escape, and to satiate other predators in order to reduce competition and encourage the existence of more capable adults.”
