Whine like a baby, now with 500% more drama!

I don't mean to sound so cynical and skeptical. I've had friends, some once very close friends, deal with the demons of addiction and poor choices. When they're that far down the hole, the things they are willing to do in their desperation can go far outside the bounds of what you, a friend, might expect. The only consolation I really have from my own experience, is at least it was me that caught him mid-burglary, and it wasn't a strangers house that might try to shoot him, and that this event was the rock bottom that it took for him to finally seek help.
Its fine man, glad you were there for your friend.
 
So let me expound on my hatred of this paper. It's a policy analysis. There is a basic outline and a rubric in the syllabus, but in class and in our text we haven't learned about anything that is required in the paper. What we're learning in the textbook is about how social policies have been created to solve various problems. In the last week I've gotten 1 page out of 4 written and this is only for the first section of the paper. I asked the professor for help, but her linked examples don't coincide with what she's asking for. I've spoken with other people in the class and they feel just as lost.

Is grad school supposed to make you feel like a big idiot?
 
I can't sleep :(

It's late, I'm exhausted and I want to do stuff tomorrow morning, but I'm wide awake. My pain med prescription should at the very least make me tired, but I think it's doing the opposite and only helping the pain some rather than eliminating it.
 
I
Cupcake has never left the house. The rat would likely take her down.
I Don't know. Cats are awesome.

I was shocked when my fluffy white princess caught a rabbit while leashed on the driveway. (which really means, I guess, that the rabbit was dumber than he was, or maybe just entranced by his beauty).
 
Bah!

Why yes, on my way to the hospital to check on folks and then head home from work on Thursday afternoon (the end of my work week), I would love to miss a phone call from the hospital, another clergy in town, and yet another different retired clergy in town letting me know that the woman who was just moved to palliative care Wednesday night just died, and I just missed her and her family. By, like, 20 minutes. So when I get to the hospital, I find out from a nurse that I just missed her, and that they've been trying to reach me, but not too hard, because one of the nurses on the other ward (yes, there's only 2 wards) thought I was out of town this week (it's next week, thank god! she must have misheard when we were curling together last week or something).
So I look incompetent to the family, and colleagues. AND I wasn't there when I should have been. Which royally sucks.

Oh, and what's that? The daughter really doesn't want to talk, and the first visitation is Friday evening (my day off, and the evening when I had, uh... valentine's plans) so I have to go into the funeral home and meet the family then? And some other distant relative to do the service planning? And the service is Monday? After the AGM on Sunday that won't finish until 3pm? So I'll have even less time to work on the service? Great.

And oh yes, the middle-aged accidental death from the summer... they're hosting a memorial hockey tournament in his honour, and the opening ceremony is Saturday night? And since I did the service, and his parents are "mine," and I've gotten to know the widow and daughters, I really need to go and see how they're doing (knowing that the mother is doing poorly, since I do check on them all regularly and already know that). So I'll be working and counseling on that day off too? In a busy arena? Lovely.

All in all, it means that I have had no days off this week, and have worked a solid 12 hours today. Mostly spent doing some of the work that I dislike the most - I truly loathe writing funeral sermons.

And another person wants me to call their mother who lives 12 hours away, who I have never met, who just had surgery and found out their cancer is basically not treatable and "just say hi, because she (the mom) has always been a strong supporter (of the church)." I have a feeling that that call tomorrow morning before I deal with the orders of service/bulletins for the funeral will take the last shred of emotional energy I have left (if the [super-needy] daughter is any indication).

The JoCo Cruise next week cannot start soon enough! 7 more days!!
 
You just copy/paste into google translate.
:mad:

I'll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled... until... until... until you've had enough! And then I'll do it again! And when I've finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!
 
Yay I finished the first part of the policy analysis. A day early! Now I can...turn..it...

...

There's no place on Blackboard for me to turn in this assignment.

 
Work closed due to snow, so another day not getting paid.

Aaand now there's a water main break, so no water, and it's a holiday, so the government's probably not going to do anything about it today. Yay!

This winter can go fuck itself.
 
Work closed due to snow, so another day not getting paid.
How come that risk is put on the employee, rather than the employer, anyway? Unionize, folks. Or isn't there some insurance to take against that? I dunno, it's just weird to me (you know, from a filthy socialist country).
 
How come that risk is put on the employee, rather than the employer, anyway? Unionize, folks. Or isn't there some insurance to take against that? I dunno, it's just weird to me (you know, from a filthy socialist country).
Whether one is paid during events like snowdays in the U.S. strongly depends on the state's labor laws, the classification of the employee (temporary, hourly, salaried, ...?), the industry the job is in, the labor pool, tradition, unions (like you mentioned), power dynamics, etc.

At my last university job, for example, everyone was paid on snowdays except for temporary hourly employees. This was because salaried employees had to be paid, and because non-temporary hourly employees (of the type that the university needed) are hard to replace (from someone leaving to vacancy being filled usually took 2-4 months there), and easy to piss off (due to employment opportunities elsewhere).

This is a decent write-up of how it works at the generic legal level (i.e. without looking at each State's regulations): http://humanresources.about.com/od/...y-for-snow-days-rain-days-and-emergencies.htm
 
Why should the owner carry the burden?
I didn't say it should, I'm just asking why not - and I asked first :-P

But, more seriously, putting the burden on the employee means you'll have people who live paycheck to paycheck take unnecessary risks to their health just to make it. Placing the risk with the employer means easier insurance, safer, and so on.
of course, in Belgium, snow days are covered like sick days - by the state.
 
But, more seriously, putting the burden on the employee means you'll have people who live paycheck to paycheck take unnecessary risks to their health just to make it. Placing the risk with the employer means easier insurance, safer, and so on.
You would do well to read the Wikipedia article on "right-to-work" laws. It's hard to understand the current employer-employee relationship in the U.S. without either experiencing it or processing background information like this.
 
putting the burden on the employee means you'll have people who live paycheck to paycheck take unnecessary risks to their health just to make it. Placing the risk with the employer means easier insurance, safer, and so on.
You could easily reverse the situation, though:

Putting the burden on the employer means you'll have companies who live order to order fail due to a simple weather problem (leaving everyone unemployed), or abuse their customers/suppliers/employees just to make it. Placing the risk with the employee distributes the burden to the entire company of employees evenly, in small parts.

So I don't see this as a valid reason one way or the other - it's just re-stating the problem by showing the effect it has in either situation.

The reason, of course, in Belgium is:

snow days are covered like sick days - by the state.
Which solves the problem by saying, "Neither are responsible - the state takes care of it," though I'm guessing it isn't as simple as that.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Long story short, it depends who your employer is, where you are, and what your job is. I, for example, would still get paid if weather conditions prevented me from coming in to work (though in Texas, that'd have to be some catastrophic-ass weather). It all boils down to what's agreed to in the terms of employment. Salaried workers generally get paid, wage workers generally only get paid when they're actually working. It's slightly more complicated than that, naturally, but the point is, it isn't uniform across all positions and all companies nationwide.

I also get allocated sick days, personal days, and vacation days - which are all separate from each other... not that I take any of them >_< I'm getting ripped off in that regard. But really, taking time off is 10 times more of a pain in the ass given the work I do.
 
How come that risk is put on the employee, rather than the employer, anyway? Unionize, folks. Or isn't there some insurance to take against that? I dunno, it's just weird to me (you know, from a filthy socialist country).
The risk isn't put on me; my office closed due to snow. I could've made it there, but I wouldn't have actually been able to work because we weren't open.

Today we're open for a half-day, so half-pay. I can't blame them today because everything is encased in ice.

But at least the water is back on, so I'm not bitching.
 
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