Month: January 2009

My mother sent me this joke: Some cannibals get a job in a big corporation on the condition that they don’t eat any of the other staff. Things go very well until their boss calls them into his office one day and gives them some bad news–a janitor

I was recently laid off with 60% of my department. I got 3 months of severance pay by signing a General Release that basically said I won’t sue the company for any reason, and I can’t work there for 6 months. I’ve tried to find out why this

I have a question I am hoping you can answer as I have been searching the Internet for about three hours now and have found nothing. I did what was probably a really stupid thing to do. I was very ill and so not using my best judgment

Is it possible (i.e. legal) for an employer to define some exempt employees as 40-hour per week exempt employees, some as 35-hour per week employees, some as 32-hour employees, etc. when all were originally hired for 40-hour per week exempt positions? This particular employer routinely reduces a 40-hour

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. day. In preparation for this, Offspring #1’s kindergarten class read a story about Martin Luther King Jr. She came home and told me all about it. And then she had some questions. “Mom, are we white?” This was a sincere question, by

I’ve gotten a few questions lately that ask about “secret” HR stuff. So, I’ve decided to spill the secret HR beans and blab about all our secret handshakes and stuff. Except if there are any, no one has given them to me. I suppose this is because I

The Workplace Professor Blog brought a fabulous new way to label a termination to my attention: To Upgrade. As you’ve been upgraded immediately so you can go get a new job. Seriously. Come on, people, this is an embarrassment to a grim reaper like me.

Phillis Dewitt was fired from her job as a nurse. The hospital maintains it was due to insubordination. Dewitt claims it was because her husband was dying of prostate cancer and costing the hospital a boatload in insurance claims. Obviously, I wasn’t involved in any termination discussions, but

Hey, everyone, our favorite Ask-a-Manager is up for the Best Business Blog award for 2008. Go here and vote for her. You can vote once every 24 hours. She’s awesome. And I’m not even jealous that she’s a finalist and I’m not.

I work as an administrator for an accounting firm. Each December we seem to be understaffed due to vacation time to handle year end and month end client responsibilities. We are working to create a restricted vacation policy for the period of 12/15 through year end. There is