Paternity Leave?



  • In late 2003 I started working for a small screen-printing shop (making t-shirts) as a systems administrator/programmer/web designer/web support person.  They "lovingly" referred to the position as the OMIT (One Man IT) department.

    When I was interviewing for the position, I negotiated for a two-week vacation as part of my acceptance. I had a planned vacation coming up with the days off already accrued at my then current employer.  My wife was pregnant and we wanted to take that time to visit relatives and show off the baby after he was born.  I was in my early 20's at the time and definitely hadn't learned much about how interviews and employers work, so I had not specifically specified paid or unpaid vacation.

    Things went fairly well at the beginning.  The person I was replacing had already left, but luckily he was willing to answer a few emails.  The people seemed all right, though the more I got to know the owners the more eccentric they seemed.  I just chalked it up to everyone having their own quirks.

    My wife went into labor a few months into the job.  I called in to let them know I was going to the hospital.  I was in the labor room when my cell phone rang.  Some of my wife's family was visiting at the time to help with the baby after he was born.  I figured it must be one of them checking to see how things were going.  Much to my surprise, it was work!  The email server went down and they didn't know what to do.  I'm not sure what they expected me to do, but after hearing the situation I said that they could try rebooting the server.  I also made sure to let them know that my wife was in labor and I wouldn't be available for the rest of the day.  I promptly called the family and gave them the room number and turned off my cell phone.  My son was delivered shortly after 2:00 AM, and we didn't get much rest afterwards with all the paperwork and nurse interruptions.

    The next day I got a call in the morning that the email server still wasn't working right, so with maybe an hour's worth of sleep I came into the office and got everything working again.  I even stayed for a full 8 hour shift.  My paternity leave was a total of one day, and that's not counting the call at the hospital.

    A month or so later came the vacation.  It was a whirlwind car trip from the southern border of the US to the northern border and back.  We enjoyed seeing everyone and their excitement about the baby, but half way through the trip I noticed that I hadn't received a paycheck.  I'm a pretty logical person, so after a bit of worrying I realized my mistake of not clarifying if the vacation was paid or unpaid, but I figured it couldn't hurt to check when I got back.

    When I got back, I waited a day or two to make sure that everything was going fine.  The email server was working fine now, and I got caught up on all the work that I had missed while I was gone.  I went to talk to the owner and said, "I noticed that I missed a paycheck while I was on vacation.  I realize that I hadn't specified what type, but was I wanted to check if the vacation supposed to be a paid or unpaid?"  I thought that was a pretty fair question to ask.  The worst he could say was "unpaid", right?  Imagine my surprise when he yelled back, "You come in here asking for more money!  I let you have time off when you had your baby.  I could have made you come in anyway!"  I couldn't believe he was going to hold that over my head.  Even worse was that I only took one day off.

    Within a week I had gotten another job lined up.  I had left on good terms with my previous employer.  I found out they were in need of a systems administrator, and they were happy to have me back.  There was no way I was going to continue working for someone who would hold it against me for taking one day off when my son was born.  I couldn't imagine what other atrocities might come up.  I originally gave them a notice, but I left right away after more yelling about how I'm just a "money grubbing kid".

    A few weeks later I got an email in a local tech worker's email discussion list.  It was from the same company, and they were looking for my replacement.  They specifically mentioned, "The previous guy took lots of time off and left without notice."  I wonder if anyone replied to it.



  •  You should have sent your resume in.



  •  Win for printscreen company.



  • In 2001, I got a job working as a programmer for a small document imaging company with several state government contracts. I worked in a small office with several other programmers including the VP of the company who acted as the boss since the boss lived in a different city.

     After 3-4 months on the job, I asked well in advance to take a Friday off so I could help a friend move and it was approved. The week I was supposed to take off, I came down with a bad cough, but it didn't bother me enough to stay home from work. On Wednesday afternoon, around 2:30 the VP told me I should go home because my coughing was worse and everyone in the room had kids to go home to, and they didn't want to take home anything I might have. I resisted because I knew the boss wouldn't like it, but the project I was working on could be done from home and really didn't require me to be in the office. The next morning he called me and told me not to come in if I'm still coughing, and just to keep in touch via email.

    Friday, I drove up to my friend's apartment and spent the weekend helping him move. The cough subsided mid-way through Saturday. Sunday night, as I was on my way back home, my boss calls and asks if I have been to the doctor and if I'm OK to come back to work yet. I told him I was fine and that I'd be there in the morning, but I thought it was a bad sign.

    He didn't mention anything about it for another 2 months, when suddenly it came up again in a very bad way. He was a particularly abusive boss at times, literally making old ladies cry, and everyone eventually got their turn in his crosshairs. During my round of abuse, he brings up "the time I was absent for a week without a doctor's note." Normally, his abuse is just random and completely made up, and the normal course of action everyone takes is just to wait until he leaves and ignore him... but he was not inventing random garbage here... he really believed I had been absent for a whole week. I told him if he checked our daily time sheets, he would see I recorded that I took off Wednesday afternoon on the request of the VP and still worked from home, even turning in a time sheet so he could bill my time to the customers! His only response was an adamant "that's not what my data says." He wouldn't budge and he refused to actually ask his wife (who receives all of the time sheets) or the VP to verify my side of the story.

    Now, if I'd kept my mouth shut and just accepted the abuse, he wouldn't have fired me... but luckily, I have a big mouth, because I got a much better job with a much nicer boss a month later as a result. The one "interesting" thing about him firing me... he gave me 2 weeks severance (WTF). A month after that, the VP and the other programmer got fed up with the BS and left also. It was a good job, great people to work with every day, but a terrible boss.



  •  Too bad you didn't have a PI call them to check them as a reference after finding out they were saying those things about you.  Depending on where you live, if they give a bad reference for anything but an employee they fired, they are in deep trouble.



  • @Pile of Mush

    Pleeease tell me the country or town where that happend. I am DEAD curious if I also worked for the same boss...

    I cannot freaking belive how we both had such identical pieces of shit of employers :))

    @flamers: no, the WTF is not the getting hired for these incompetent assholes... they only show their small penis attitude a while after you get hired...



  • @PileOfMush said:

    During my round of abuse, he brings up "the time I was absent for a week without a doctor's note." Normally, his abuse is just random and completely made up, and the normal course of action everyone takes is just to wait until he leaves and ignore him... but he was not inventing random garbage here... he really believed I had been absent for a whole week.

    It's been my experience, repeatedly, that bosses (or anyone else) who accuse people of lying without evidence of any lying are themselves habitual liars. Thus they expect that behavior of everyone else.



  • <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link href="file:///C:%5CDOKUME%7E1%5Cadrian%5CLOKALE%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C02%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"><style> </style>

    It's quite easy to give a psychological explanation to such behaviour.<o:p></o:p>

    These kinds of people are stupid. Really. The only reason why they get to be bosses are random chances: rich wife, money in general, son or nephew of someone big, lack of morality, natural bias towards ass kissing and lying. But remember they are truly stupid. They gather some kind of “street smartness” but that’s about it. Then they forget their limit, become despots… and then loose their business.<o:p></o:p>

    I was… lucky to have met lots of these types in my life… but fear not my fellow colleagues in suffering: they ALL lost their business. Usually because of poor financial management, poor people skills, poor political decisions and least but not last: incompetence. It’s just that the customers find out, sooner or later, the pieces of shit that handle their business and they interrupt the contract and bye bye.<o:p></o:p>



  • yes, I copy/pasted from Word cause my FF3 spell checker does not seem to work for the data entry widget from this site.



  • @korsuas said:

    @Pile of Mush

    Pleeease tell me the country or town where that happend. I am DEAD curious if I also worked for the same boss...

    I cannot freaking belive how we both had such identical pieces of shit of employers :))

    @flamers: no, the WTF is not the getting hired for these incompetent assholes... they only show their small penis attitude a while after you get hired...

     

    Austin, TX.

    And as for the 'after you get hired' part... totally agree. He was very schizo when it came to his good moods and bad moods.



  • @Pile of Mush

    well, we're definitely not talking about the same guy…

    but who knows, this could be his long forgotten other stupid twin brother from across the ocean… :D

    as I said, the wheel turns and they loose. sooner or later. too bad it's not sooner though...



  • @korsuas said:

    yes, I copy/pasted from Word cause my FF3 spell checker does not seem to work for the data entry widget from this site.

    Right-click the text entry area and select "spell check this field".  By default FF doesn't spell check RTF elements, although there is probably a setting for this.



  •  @morbiuswilters

    I am soooo stupid:)) there is however an explanation:

    1. I have installed about 50 FF plugins, so my right click popup menu is a huuuge list of options -> i.e. the visibility of the "Check spelling" is veeery reduced.

    2. I actually thought the spell check is a plugin, and knows how to handle text fields or others. I think the spell check actually used to be a plugin and then it got integrated into FF. But I may be wrong.

     anyhoo morbiuswilters, thanks alot for the tip:)



  •  One thread, two good stories.

    Win. 



  • @korsuas said:

    I am soooo stupid:))

    Naw, it's unexpected behavior and I didn't realize at first you could force FF spell check a field through the context menu.

     

    @korsuas said:

    2. I actually thought the spell check is a plugin, and knows how to handle text fields or others. I think the spell check actually used to be a plugin and then it got integrated into FF. But I may be wrong.

    It is integrated now.  The problem is that it doesn't spell check rich text (WYSIWYG) editor fields (like the one used on this forum).  Not sure why that is.



  • @korsuas said:

    1. I have installed about 50 FF plugins, so my right click popup menu is a huuuge list of options -> i.e. the visibility of the "Check spelling" is veeery reduced.

     

     

    Try using "Customize Menus" addon to clear up your context and Toolbar menus.. even tab menus too since addons will clutter this up so badly.



  • my FF toolbars is actually only 1. extremly compact.

    but the right click menu is terrible though. but I don't have time to check out all the settings... (read: lazy;))

    btw, I have ~70 plugins...


  • I survived the hour long Uno hand

    @korsuas said:

    btw, I have ~70 plugins...

     

     

    ...why?



  • I heard at a previous job that they wouldn't let a guy take the day off to be with his girlfriend when she gave birth because they weren't married.  The boss was very religious, or some shit like that.  People like that are real pieces of shit, and don't deserve to own businesses or be successful in life.


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