Yeah...

[judecorp]

So Jen took me to the ER last night because my throat was starting to close, a la the mystery illness of October 2001. We were there for about 5 hours because they kept ordering tests for an abcess that didn't exist. I can't wait to get the bill for 20% of the ER visit, the IVs, the x-rays, and the damned CT scan I said I didn't think I needed. And now I have to go see an ENT doc in about half an hour.

I slept Monday night. WHEE.

On my current SEETHING HATE list is Jennifer's boss, who told her that it was her decision to return to work or take me to the ENT, and then guilt her with, "Well, you /have/ missed a lot of work." Honestly, those people piss me off. So I think everyone should be extra nice to her right now, because she went into work and is totally beating herself up about how she's supposed to be there for me. <3

I got a totally weird call from my boss, and I'm not sure what to do. I picked the wrong day to miss work, as they're making an important announcement (read: end of life as we know it) about my job. What are the differences between an hourly employee and a salaried employee?

That's all for now. I should shower if I'm going to see that ENT. I probably smell like ass and morning mouth.

Comments

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

Egad, I'm sorry Jude.

Want me to throw things at them?

[juliann.livejournal.com]

Hourly -- you get paid literally per hour. Con is that you usually have to keep timesheets and you get docked for every late morning etc. Depends on how generous they are about sick days (which get converted into raw hours). Pro is that you are eligible for overtime or comp time.

Salaried -- you get a flat rate no matter how many hours you actually put in (unless they dock you for too much sick/personal leave). They are not required to give you overtime or comp time.


Essentially the difference is trivial, but the organization has a lot of flexibility in how they can manage things. IE if you are hourly they can be very strict OR they could be generous. Hourly might not be eligible for as many benefits but again that's not how it usually goes.

Usually if a company wants to switch from one to another they think they will save money somehow.

[juliann.livejournal.com]

BTW does Jennifer get docked vacation time for going to the doctor with you? t's company was being shitty about him taking time off to take an adult to the doctor when people had no problems getting paid time to take their kids in. So because too many people complained they just made it unpaid time for everyone. So can be docked in pay or take it out of your vacation, your choice.

Sucks ass that. But it's all they are legally required to do, allow unpaid time.

[mythicalbeast.livejournal.com]

I assume you actually want an answer to the hourly/salaried thing.
As I understand it (here, I'm north of you one international border remember)

Salaried: Paid a basically flat rate regardless of what is worked, or when (excluding whenever local laws demand overtime pay kick in) is considered on staff in every way that matters. Benifits happen, sickdays etcetc, payroll is automatic based on the yearly salary divided by the # of pay periods per year. Hard to let go without cause unless a layoff situation is in place. Work schedule is typically fixed.

Hourly: Paid only what you work- upside paid what you work. Think time clock. Leave early? don't worry you just won't get paid for it, no need to make it up. Things are getting slow? Well if you don't come in we don't have to pay you - you aren't on salary. No sick days etc, and I would doubt benifits to speak off. Letting someone in this situation go is easy, just slowy reduce the hours they have until they get the message that they aren't really needed and they'll find something else - or not. :( You get your hours when you get your hours...

[mermil.livejournal.com]

Oh, Jude.
I am so sorry you got sick and Jen got crap for being there to help you. You can't help it if you get sick!!

[loudestprincess.livejournal.com]

Dahling, I'm sorry you're sick! That sucks! I hope it's not SARS... ;)

Jen's the bomb. I hope her boss gets off her back.
Get better! XOXOXOXOXOX

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

Very sorry to hear about your night, about Jen's stupid boss, and about the job stuff. When it rains it pours, I guess.

I know the stupid boss thing, too. A couple of years ago I had to go to the ER when I was vomiting blood. After getting back from the ER, I phoned work and said I wouldn't be in that morning (since it was like 3am when I got back from the ER). Well, no later than 9am my boss was calling, asking if I was going to be in...ARGH! What part of "ER" and "vomiting blood" did he not understand? My friends who took me to the ER were worried about my having an ulcer, and if I would have turned up with one, it would have been almost fully due to that boss, too! I don't know who said that engineers were, by default, intelligent, but this guy was incredibly scattered, and a perfect example of why my parents told me 15 years ago that they didn't want me studying engineering at Ohio State, saying it was a diploma mill. But I digress...

Hopefully things won't be so far with regards to your job. I'm not sure what the situation is going to be, given the budget cuts and how they are affecting your agency, though. I'll have to keep you in my thoughts for that, just as I am with my brother (who's an asst. store manager for Big Bear). The whole economy thing has just been really sucking all-around lately. *hugs*

Best wishes...

[indigodove.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Hope life gets better for both of you. Especially the "feel better soon, Jude" part. So much is easier to deal with when you feel good.

[oddharmonic.livejournal.com]

Get a print of your CT scan? I'm still kicking myself for not getting one from mine in 1999, especially since I had to pay for it despite being sent through the wrong way (mine was to look at my sinuses).

Hope J.'s boss gets clue-by-foured, the ENT visit goes well, and you feel better. I want my hero to get well quickly!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Yes! I think that throwing things would be a big help!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I'll have to post more details (now that I know them - I went into work just to have that meeting with my supervisor) under a locked post at a later time, but suffice it to say you're pretty right as to the changes between hourly and salary - except that at my work, salaried employees get retirement benefits after 1 year, and hourlies don't.

But it's apparently more than just the shift in type of position - and being the hourly employee means being expected to work weekends and holidays.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Her job's policies are weird.

For starters, they are salary and are paid based on 40 hour workweeks, yet they only get 45 minutes for lunch. Grr.

Everyone gets 5 sick days that they can use whenever they want. Jen's all got used up when she got mono, plus she had a few more additional days. She opted to take them as unpaid rather than as vacation time. But she's already used up her sick time for the year and they like to keep reminding her. They also seem to think that people should come to work when they're sick, because selling software is just so damned important in the bigger picture. Grr.

So her boss didn't say she couldn't take me to the doctor... but she will not get paid for the work time she took sleeping this morning because she was up all night with me at the ER. (My job would have been more flexible with this, well, as long as I'm salary.) But when she called her boss, her boss gave that "It's up to you" speech that /really/ means, "Your butt better be in this office in 10 minutes."

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I think you're pretty right on.

These are full-time hourly positions, so there's really no worry about them cutting hours. However, they're obviously having budgetary problems, so they might cut jobs. Then again, it doesn't seem to affect salary or hourly... all of us direct-service peons are in jeopardy, and the admins seem set. Figures.

The problem is that the "new" hourly positions require evening/weekend hours, and some holidays. Bogus.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

According to her boss, it doesn't matter! I hate when people have no clue when it comes to human needs. I mean, these people (her bosses) had children! You'd think they would know that sometimes there are needs.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Naw, it's not SARS. I had an abcess on my tonsil, and apparently I'm becoming prone to acute tonsillitis and should get my tonsils removed.

I agree that Jen is the bomb. She's great!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I realize that one of my Fatal Flaws is that I don't understand how people can /not/ think like me. BUT...

How on earth can people not support social services. Do they really think the problems are just going away? It is especially boggling that the government is cutting social services at a time when the economy is so unstable and job loss is so imminent for /anyone/. There are more needy people than before, and there is a greater variety of needy people (there has been an influx of people in the shelters who have college degrees and trade skills, for example) - yet we're cutting positions that are doing things to help.

It seems we're all one paycheck away from the shelters these days. :(

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

You are so right about that.

Thanks!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

I'll have to see if I can get a scan. I know I'll be paying through the nose for it! (Ugh. Note to self: make sure you're still employed.)

The ENT was pretty non-effective. He was very nice and told me that the CT-scan had shown a very tiny abcess on my tonsil - so small that even if he'd wanted to drain it (which he wouldn't due to size), he probably wouldn't have been able to find it. He said that if it should happen again, I should bypass everyone else and just schedule with the ENTs and get my tonsils out. Now I just need to check if my new insurance covers tonsillectomies for grownups.

You're sweet. Hero? *blush*

[prettyvacantone.livejournal.com]

Feel better. *muah Need me to put on a nurse outfit and bring you back to health?

[swisscheesed.livejournal.com]

*hugs* feel better!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I do!

Nurse outfits!

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

HA!!

How funny, because Jen and I were making nurse outfits cracks the whole time.

Are you going to Sean and Saci's party? I need my Brandie!

[(Anonymous)]

feel better!

crena
aka upsoclose (http://www.livejournal.com/users/upsoclose)

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

I think that the problem is that in the 1980s the conservatives were able to convince people that our government was "stealing" money from them (in the form of "excessive" taxation) and just handing it over to shiftless "welfare queens" who were living high on the hog while doing nothing to earn their lives of comfort. And while this may have been true in a couple of extreme cases, anybody who knows people on welfare are aware that's not even close to the reality of most people on welfare. However, that's the impression that most people have, and there's been no effort to change this perception, and that's most sad of all.

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

You are so right. I don't know how the government convinced people that women on welfare were buying Cadillacs, but by gods, it worked. :(

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

Well, President Reagan told us it was so, and we all know that President Reagan would never, ever lie to the American people! ;P

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, that's right, he was in the MOVIES. He would never lie.

(I think it's so funny when they lambast people like Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon and tell them that actors should stay out of politics.)

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

Yet they're all clamouring for Ah-nold to run for governor now, too. The hypocrisy knows no bounds, I swear. I guess it's only okay for an actor to be involved in politics if they are running for an office? Since when were actor's required to waive their First Amendment rights, though???

[judecorp.livejournal.com]

No, no. It's okay for an actor to be involved in politics if they are /conservative/.

[kat-chan.livejournal.com]

Very true, because they've never had a problem with Ah-nold or Bruce Willis or Sly Stallone popping off about stuff. And Sarandon and Robbins are probably two who leave them very conflicted, since Susan was on Nader's campaign committee, and Tim was very vocal in his support of Ralph. After all, they're progressives, but the more people that vote for Nader, the better for them...in the conventional wisdom.