The Job Hunt Thread

[Lizard Queen]

Dec 8, 2015 8:51:01 GMT -5 TheHaitian said:

I need suggestions... I want to transition into a regular 9-5 job.

Where can I apply and for that that my skills as a store manager would be useful?

Dealing with inventory and managing people. Maybe warehouse or manufacturing supervision? Are you willing to go with lower pay while you transition?

[andi9899]

So my so called manager came into my office yesterday and was completely unprofessional. He said he wanted me to email him if I'm going to be out of the office during business hours and tell him where I am, how long I expect to be there and what I expect to get out of it. I told him I'm not doing that and we already talked about this before. I will quit before I do that. He said "I'll take take is as your notice then. Do you need help cleaning out your office?" WTF?! I said "I didn't give you notice. If you want to fire me, you have a lot of paperwork to do with HR and a whole process to go through. Being as how I have never been in trouble here, you should probably get started." He responded "I'll have you on final warning by the end of the year." I'm debating talking to his manager about him one more time, or just going directly to HR.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

If you have leave available then it's your right to use it and none of his damn business why.   What if it was a medical issue? 

He sounds like my mom's manager.  She wants them all to do the same thing so she can snoop/gossip and deny people leave based on whether or not SHE feels it's a valid reason.   That's totally illegal.

I gave my presentation today, it went really well.   They said I seem to know what I am talking about.  One PI joked that based on the level of knowledge I showed he expects a paper out of me in a year.

They were receptive to my suggestion of doing a timed breeding sometime in the future to figure out why we can't get this line to homozygocity but that will come after I establish the line and we find out of the gene is even expressing.  Should find out the latter tomorrow if everything goes according to plan.   Postdoc said there isn't a lot I can do to screw it up and he's walking me thru the procedure so fingers crossed.

If that gene isn't expressing then we have a whole different set of problems.

[andi9899]

I've decided that I'm going to talk to his boss one last time. I'm also going to tell him that this is the last time I talk to him about it and next time I go directly to HR.

[ArchietheDragon]

sounds like Pheonix's white board sign out issue.... 

[shanendoah]

andi9899 - I am confused. Are you leaving the office during work hours on company time or using personal time? I ask because the wanting to know what you are "getting out of it" is obviously unreasonable if this is personal time but NOT if this is company time. When my staff (or even I) want to attend a training or a conference, we have to fill out a form that says what we expect to get out of the training/conference before the time away from the office (and sometimes the expense) is ever approved.
If you are using personal time, as your manager, he has the right to approve or deny use of vacation time based on department work. Simply taking off in the middle of the day without getting approval isn't actually acceptable. This is generally true even for professional/salaried staff. The only time your manager does not have the right to deny leave is if it is FMLA (or similar type) protected leave- at which point you should have paperwork on file with HR, and HR should have notified him that you have that protection available.
If the culture in your office is such that anyone in your position has the freedom to come and go as they please and your supervisor is trying to enforce these rules only for you, then you do have a discrimination claim and should be going directly to HR. If that had been the culture in your office until you got a new supervisor, and he is simply trying to enforce new rules, then you don't have a claim and just have to suck it up.
Sorry to be a downer, and obviously I do NOT know the whole situation. But I wouldn't want you going to HR thinking you had a case only to find out that you are the one in the wrong.

[raeoflyte]

I believe Andi is in insurance sales.  Even if she isn't a 100% commission employee, requiring that professional sales staff be in the office 9-5 would seem very odd to me.  I'm not in insurance, but in my world we want our sales people out of the office and bringing in business.  Production is king, so if you're bringing in business you shouldn't be babysat, and if you're not producing sitting at your desk 40 hours a week isn't going to help that issue.  

I've had some interesting conversations about what constitutes a resignation lately though, and caution everyone to be careful about stating anything that could be construed as such, in case "they" decide to take you up on it.  

[giramomma]

I also have an incredibly flexible work schedule. If I am going to be working off location, I always let my coworkers (and superiors) know. Because something might come up.

We don't email. We use a micro-blogging tool for project communication.

I also make sure that I can do work that is time stamped in some way for part of the day, minimally, that I'm working out of the office. So there's proof I'm getting things done.

I get this latitude because folks see me as productive. I'm wondering if Andi isn't viewed as being as productive as she should be. That would be my first step, to figure out why the sudden change of attitude..unless you truly are prepared to walk out tomorrow.

I would also go past just "talking" about workplace flexibility. I'd want actual letters, notes, anything of proof saying it's OK. Quoting conversations simply aren't enough. At my workplace, things change about every 5 minutes on a good day. On bad days, you can't keep up with all the change.

[tcu2003]

Dec 8, 2015 8:51:01 GMT -5 TheHaitian said:

I need suggestions... I want to transition into a regular 9-5 job.

Where can I apply and for that that my skills as a store manager would be useful?

Good luck - I've never seen a 9-5 job. 8-5, yes, but not 9-5. :-)

I'd avoid banking - definitely weekend and evening hours unless you're at a corporate location.

[andi9899]

Dec 8, 2015 13:43:16 GMT -5 shanendoah said:

andi9899 - I am confused. Are you leaving the office during work hours on company time or using personal time? I ask because the wanting to know what you are "getting out of it" is obviously unreasonable if this is personal time but NOT if this is company time. When my staff (or even I) want to attend a training or a conference, we have to fill out a form that says what we expect to get out of the training/conference before the time away from the office (and sometimes the expense) is ever approved.
If you are using personal time, as your manager, he has the right to approve or deny use of vacation time based on department work. Simply taking off in the middle of the day without getting approval isn't actually acceptable. This is generally true even for professional/salaried staff. The only time your manager does not have the right to deny leave is if it is FMLA (or similar type) protected leave- at which point you should have paperwork on file with HR, and HR should have notified him that you have that protection available.
If the culture in your office is such that anyone in your position has the freedom to come and go as they please and your supervisor is trying to enforce these rules only for you, then you do have a discrimination claim and should be going directly to HR. If that had been the culture in your office until you got a new supervisor, and he is simply trying to enforce new rules, then you don't have a claim and just have to suck it up.
Sorry to be a downer, and obviously I do NOT know the whole situation. But I wouldn't want you going to HR thinking you had a case only to find out that you are the one in the wrong.

I am working. I go to networking functions and prospecting for new business. We don't punch time clocks here and never have. I am the only one being asked to account for what time I am not here. So I am being singled out. If I have to do something, everyone should have to.

[NastyWoman]

I am working. I go to networking functions and prospecting for new business. We don't punch time clocks here and never have. I am the only one being asked to account for what time I am not here. So I am being singled out. If I have to do something, everyone should have to.

[mojothehelpermonkey]

Dec 8, 2015 15:14:47 GMT -5 andi9899 said:

I am working. I go to networking functions and prospecting for new business. We don't punch time clocks here and never have. I am the only one being asked to account for what time I am not here. So I am being singled out. If I have to do something, everyone should have to.

Ugh. That kind of micromanaging is bad enough when it is evenly applied, but you shouldn't have to be the only one putting up with it.

[flutterby]

Today I got called to go in for a second interview for the federal job. Yay! I didn't completely blow the phone interview. I'm surprised, though, as I thought they weren't doing in-person ones, but at least I have another chance after that disastrous first one. 

[flutterby]

TheHaitian, have you thought about something in procurement? Any business or government agency that needs regular large supplies of anything has procurement specialists. Your background might segue nicely into that. I also second warehouse manager or something similar.

[tcu2003]

Dec 8, 2015 19:35:06 GMT -5 flutterby said:

TheHaitian, have you thought about something in procurement? Any business or government agency that needs regular large supplies of anything has procurement specialists. Your background might segue nicely into that. I also second warehouse manager or something similar.

Good thought, flutterby. I have a friend who does this/supply chain stuff for GE, and her college degree is in fashion design or something similar. She fell into her first job in that area, liked it, and now does it for another large manufacturing company.

[shanendoah]

Dec 8, 2015 15:14:47 GMT -5 andi9899 said:

Dec 8, 2015 13:43:16 GMT -5 shanendoah said:

andi9899 - I am confused. Are you leaving the office during work hours on company time or using personal time? I ask because the wanting to know what you are "getting out of it" is obviously unreasonable if this is personal time but NOT if this is company time. When my staff (or even I) want to attend a training or a conference, we have to fill out a form that says what we expect to get out of the training/conference before the time away from the office (and sometimes the expense) is ever approved.
If you are using personal time, as your manager, he has the right to approve or deny use of vacation time based on department work. Simply taking off in the middle of the day without getting approval isn't actually acceptable. This is generally true even for professional/salaried staff. The only time your manager does not have the right to deny leave is if it is FMLA (or similar type) protected leave- at which point you should have paperwork on file with HR, and HR should have notified him that you have that protection available.
If the culture in your office is such that anyone in your position has the freedom to come and go as they please and your supervisor is trying to enforce these rules only for you, then you do have a discrimination claim and should be going directly to HR. If that had been the culture in your office until you got a new supervisor, and he is simply trying to enforce new rules, then you don't have a claim and just have to suck it up.
Sorry to be a downer, and obviously I do NOT know the whole situation. But I wouldn't want you going to HR thinking you had a case only to find out that you are the one in the wrong.

I am working. I go to networking functions and prospecting for new business. We don't punch time clocks here and never have. I am the only one being asked to account for what time I am not here. So I am being singled out. If I have to do something, everyone should have to.

See highlighted sentence. This is discrimination. You can cc his boss on the note you send to HR, or you can let his boss know, as a COURTESY, that you have set up an appt with HR to discuss this, but beyond that, there's no point in including his boss. This is not a stray offensive remark; this is not a moment of poor judgement. It is a pattern of harassment and discrimination. This is an HR issue all the way.

NOW, next piece of advice. Since this guy will obviously claim to HR that you are just retaliating after he told you he was thinking about putting you on report, go through your sent items and find those previous times you told his boss about this, so that you have proof for how long this has been going on and your attempts to deal with it.

[shanendoah]

TheHaitian - I think I have suggested this to you before, but seriously, check out APICS. Get yourself a professional certification from you. You are not a "grocery store" manager, you are an Operations Manager, and there are constantly lots of good jobs out there for Operations Managers. Getting the cert and joining the professional organization will help you find those, and show that you understand how your job skills transition.

[ArchietheDragon]

Dec 9, 2015 11:23:47 GMT -5 shanendoah said:

Dec 8, 2015 15:14:47 GMT -5 andi9899 said:

I am working. I go to networking functions and prospecting for new business. We don't punch time clocks here and never have. I am the only one being asked to account for what time I am not here. So I am being singled out. If I have to do something, everyone should have to.

See highlighted sentence. This is discrimination. You can cc his boss on the note you send to HR, or you can let his boss know, as a COURTESY, that you have set up an appt with HR to discuss this, but beyond that, there's no point in including his boss. This is not a stray offensive remark; this is not a moment of poor judgement. It is a pattern of harassment and discrimination. This is an HR issue all the way.

NOW, next piece of advice. Since this guy will obviously claim to HR that you are just retaliating after he told you he was thinking about putting you on report, go through your sent items and find those previous times you told his boss about this, so that you have proof for how long this has been going on and your attempts to deal with it.

what kind of discrimination?

[shanendoah]

As I have no idea what the rest of the work force looks like, I have no idea if it is gender, racial, religious, etc or just plain personal. But, if the person who is her boss is giving her one set of rules and requirements and not giving those same sets of rules and requirements to anyone else in the same (or similar) positions, it is discrimination.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Forming a plan regarding classes.   Had a stroke at the cost of taking immunology online.   $1068.58 for an ONLINE class.     I can swallow the kool-aid regarding costs for a class on campus that requires a building and stuff.  But WTF does an online course need that justifies that kind of cost?

Applications open up in May for Fall 2016.   

Looked at the tuition benefits and I am only eligable for up to 6 credit hours a semester.   Biochemistry and Immunology are both offered in the fall so I could take those at the same time resulting in 6 credits.

I couldn't find when stats is offered so I need to shoot off an email to UNO.   I could take that spring 2017.

I need to talk to employee services to find out exactly what the employee scholarship covers.  If it's just tuition and I have to pay all the associated fees or if it covers everything besides books.

[TheHaitian]

Dec 9, 2015 11:35:29 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Forming a plan regarding classes.   Had a stroke at the cost of taking immunology online.   $1068.58 for an ONLINE class.     I can swallow the kool-aid regarding costs for a class on campus that requires a building and stuff.  But WTF does an online course need that justifies that kind of cost?

Applications open up in May for Fall 2016.   

Looked at the tuition benefits and I am only eligable for up to 6 credit hours a semester.   Biochemistry and Immunology are both offered in the fall so I could take those at the same time resulting in 6 credits.

I couldn't find when stats is offered so I need to shoot off an email to UNO.   I could take that spring 2017.

I need to talk to employee services to find out exactly what the employee scholarship covers.  If it's just tuition and I have to pay all the associated fees or if it covers everything besides books.

Registered for 4 classes today ... ~4K!!!

:eek::eek:

[ArchietheDragon]

Dec 9, 2015 11:30:00 GMT -5 shanendoah said:

As I have no idea what the rest of the work force looks like, I have no idea if it is gender, racial, religious, etc or just plain personal. But, if the person who is her boss is giving her one set of rules and requirements and not giving those same sets of rules and requirements to anyone else in the same (or similar) positions, it is discrimination.

But discrimination does not break any rules unless it is discrimination for a protected class.  

[chen35]

Dec 9, 2015 11:30:00 GMT -5 shanendoah said:

As I have no idea what the rest of the work force looks like, I have no idea if it is gender, racial, religious, etc or just plain personal. But, if the person who is her boss is giving her one set of rules and requirements and not giving those same sets of rules and requirements to anyone else in the same (or similar) positions, it is discrimination.

I don't know. If I have two employees who perform at different levels, I'm going to be monitoring one more heavily than the other. Is that discrimination?

Not saying Andi needs to be monitored, just that it will quickly become an issue of he said, she said.

[shanendoah]

ArchietheDragon - Again, since I don't know, I can't say. andi9899 would know, but has no need to tell us. And if it's not discrimination of a protected class, it is then harassment. Either way, still illegal. (But I would guess she could make a gender discrimination argument.)

chen35 - I do agree with you, but I only have andi's own statements to go from, but from those, it does not appear that she is a poor or even a lower than the average performer. However, in all of my jobs, if I wanted to more closely monitor one person in a job than all the others, I would need to have them on a performance improvement plan - ie an official HR action. Per her statements, this boss has threatened her, tried to trick her into quitting, etc, even though she has no prior issues. That is a pattern of harassment/discrimination.

[chen35]

I think it's good Andi has e-mails to prove she's brought this up to the boss. Hopefully she has e-mails back from him agreeing with her that something needs to change.

[mojothehelpermonkey]

I have been looking into retraining too. If I don't have a job by next spring, my SO and I are going to move back to my home state. I don't want to get another graduate degree. However, it looks like I can get in-state tuition at the state university right away since I graduated from high school in that state. That is nice to know in case I do want to take some classes.
Also, it looks like I meet the requirements to take the exam required to become a certified histotechnologist. I am going to spend the next couple of months brushing up on histology and researching job prospects, and then decide if I want to spend the $250 to take the exam.

[andi9899]

Dec 9, 2015 12:17:38 GMT -5 shanendoah said:

ArchietheDragon - Again, since I don't know, I can't say. andi9899 would know, but has no need to tell us. And if it's not discrimination of a protected class, it is then harassment. Either way, still illegal. (But I would guess she could make a gender discrimination argument.)

chen35 - I do agree with you, but I only have andi's own statements to go from, but from those, it does not appear that she is a poor or even a lower than the average performer. However, in all of my jobs, if I wanted to more closely monitor one person in a job than all the others, I would need to have them on a performance improvement plan - ie an official HR action. Per her statements, this boss has threatened her, tried to trick her into quitting, etc, even though she has no prior issues. That is a pattern of harassment/discrimination.

I think it truly is a case of him not knowing how to manage people. He's a decent enough guy, he just doesn't know how to do his job. He has one year experience in this industry as a whole, and 5 months managerial experience having not been trained. The manager he had prior to this position was a horrible micro manager and I think he truly thinks this is the way a manager is supposed to be. This does not excuse his very unprofessional approach and I am not the one to use it on.

[giramomma]

Dec 9, 2015 11:35:29 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

Forming a plan regarding classes.   Had a stroke at the cost of taking immunology online.   $1068.58 for an ONLINE class.     I can swallow the kool-aid regarding costs for a class on campus that requires a building and stuff.  But WTF does an online course need that justifies that kind of cost?

My job deals exclusively with developing online courses. Our master programs use the out of state tuition rate as a flat fee for the program. But, things like servers, paying for technology/computer support, paying for someone like me to put the courses together, paying for the instructor, paying for the bandwith, paying for library services..well, that doesn't really come for free. Neither does the overhead for paying for lights, heat, and electricity so that we can do our work to put an online class together.

Plus, we now have a tax that goes back to main campus..meaning  our programs automatically lose 10% of our revenue. Because it takes effort to connect Learning management systems to registration systems. There's programming behind that. It's not like a little coding happens, and poof, everything talks to each other seamlessly. And that 10% also helps to support things like the registration system period and other systems the university has that our programs use.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

My WB worked!

Now I can add how to do a Western Blot to my resume. .. finally.

I am still learning, I should have added controls and comparison proteins.   I have to do it again so we have something we can publish.

But I got what we wanted out of it, which was to confirm IL-34 is expressing, that's a huge load off of everyone's shoulders.   If it hadn't been then we'd be in deep doo doo and they were paying for all these mice for nothing.

Now I need to clip some mice for genotyping.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

Dec 10, 2015 12:24:13 GMT -5 NomoreDramaQ1015 said:

My WB worked!

Now I can add how to do a Western Blot to my resume. .. finally.

I am still learning, I should have added controls and comparison proteins.   I have to do it again so we have something we can publish.

But I got what we wanted out of it, which was to confirm IL-34 is expressing, that's a huge load off of everyone's shoulders.   If it hadn't been then we'd be in deep doo doo and they were paying for all these mice for nothing.

Now I need to clip some mice for genotyping.

The moon must have been in a good phase!  Seriously.....western blots are one of the more flaky techniques that I've done.  I can have everything absolutely perfect and it turns to crap and those that I slap together publication worthy.  I'm glad it worked out for you.