Wow, Unversity, even for you this is shoddy.

[Josh_Kablack]

So, I have recently been actually hired as perm for-real staff instead of string-you-along-forever-temp by the local Unversity. Yay!

Today was mandatory orientation and benefits session - and I having been on the Republican Health Plan ("Walk it off") for most of my life I was initially excited about having an almost-adult job. But then I actually went to the session....and well, the Unversity did what in does best -- and I don't mean persecuting trannies nor reckless security theatre.

• The mailed notice listed, in writing, an 8:30 AM start time, the actual start time was 8 AM
• Of the 12 "new" hires in the room, two of us weren't graveyard shift - and I'm 2nd shift. Zero were day shift. I shouldn't need to point out that holding a meeting at 8 AM for graveyard shift workers like starting it at 6 PM for people on a 9-5 schedule or like 1 AM for 2nd shift people. - especially not since the Unversity does a bunch of noted sleep research.
• The Unversity rep gave us incorrect information about when the authorization for deduction of union dues needs to be sent to the union. This might have been an honest mistake, but I personally am paranoid enough to suspect intentional anti-union machinations here
• The lady explaining health-care options and HMO elections (remember, middle of sleep-cycle meeting ) couldn't handle the math involved in deductions from biweekly paychecks - which only go out to all custodians, groundskeepers, police, electricians, engineers, carpenters and plumbers employed by the Unversity.
• She also assumed that everybody knew what Open Enrollment, Status Change, Term Life Insurance, AD&D Insurance, FSAs, co-pays, deductibles, PCP, out-of-network, FSA, and like a dozen other insurance terms meant with zero explanation. Remember, night shift janitorial crew who had been up all night beforehand - so I'm reasonably sure that several people zoned out and had no clue what she was trying to communicate and I am as sure as sure can be that nobody responded to her "Any questions about that?" because they wanted to get the hell out of there and to bed.
• When after the meeting, I proceeded upstairs to ask one -on-one about filing an affidavit of domestic partnership and what's involved and how that could affect benefits for Darcy - I got the answer "My Acrobat is down, I can't print out the form, I dunno what's up, I should call tech support". Apparently their office doesn't keep copies of common forms on hand and apparently their staff is incapable of discussing ramifications and requirements without help from Adobe. Thus I couldn't even get to the point of asking whether that or obtaining a marriage license would be the better financial option from a benefits perspective.
• Health Care, Vision, Dental and retirement contribution elections need to be made within the week. Only opting out totally or settling for "whatever PCP/Dentist/Optometrist they want to default assign you way out in the sticks" were possible at today's session. The rest have to be done through the Unversity's online portal
• Said portal requires a username and password, which none of the presenters at the session provided nor knew a damned thing about when asked point-blank. Instead we were given a sheet of paper with a link to go see if we had been assigned a username. Here's that link https://www.hr.pitt.edu/lookup note that it leads to a page not found.
• Being bright enough to find the correct link, I see that I am still listed in that directory as a TEMP, despite a perm start date 9 days ago. Did I mention that I have a 7 day window to turn my part around ?
• And then adding everything up, the recommended levels of coverage and contributions come to $350 per month out of the 75% of gross I'd have left over after applicable taxes and other contributions. While this is a decent paying union position, it's still a janitorial position, and that really doesn't quite leave enough for rent and bills. When I muttered something about how these recommended didn't leave enough, I was scolded because these benefits are "really generous". The sad part is, that's actually true in comparison to anywhere else today. However I still have a Constitution-given right to be pissed off about how untrue that is when compared instead to the benefits which were common during my parent's generation.

[erik]

Perhaps the "lookup" website was just directions that you should look up the proper page from their HR home shite.

Congrats on the full time employment and condolences for all the shittiness that comes with it.

[Kaelik]

AD&D Insurance,

You have to be prepared for when the grognards crash your game and starting talking about how you should stop playing that kiddy game 3e and play ADVANCED D&D.

(The insurance pays for your lawyer when you murder them.)

[Josh_Kablack]

I had similar thoughts upon first seeing that abbreviation in the handbook -- although the Unversity means "Accidental Death and Dismemberment". So apparently intentional dismemberment falls under regular life insurance.

[Lago PARANOIA]

You have to be prepared for when the grognards crash your game and starting talking about how you should stop playing that kiddy game 3e and play ADVANCED D&D.

(The insurance pays for your lawyer when you murder them.)

You bastards took all my GP and didn't give me any HP in return!! I didn't even get a friggin' restoration! From on now, I'm going with White Wolf's insurance policy!

[Username17]

My wife teaches at two universities, one public where she is on salary and one private where she is paid by the hour. The tax code in Czechia is a ghastly affair where there is a multi-level flat tax (which means it isn't flat, but whatever) that comes in for a range of incomes. In her particular case, it means that if she clocks more than 23 hours in a month, there is an extra 15% tax on all her hourly income, meaning that if she works more than 23 hours she actually takes home less money hours at her second job. Note that as a teacher, she isn't actually paid for a lot of the work she does: because hours spent preparing lessons don't count, so 23 hours a month isn't a small amount of real work.

As far as I can tell, the tax code here was literally written to try to stratify people into rich and poor as much as possible. If your gross monthly income is more than about $500 a month, you actually make less money unless you make more than $600 a month. And if you make more than $4500 a month, your tax rate actually goes down because less of your income is subject to taxation and your mandatory contribution to healthcare is capped.

-Username17

[Neeeek]

I had similar thoughts upon first seeing that abbreviation in the handbook -- although the Unversity means "Accidental Death and Dismemberment". So apparently intentional dismemberment falls under regular life insurance.

Typically, those plans are supplemental. They pay an additional amount if you happen to get injured or die a certain way. They are utter crap and you should never have one.

[Ted the Flayer]

I have had similar experiences as Josh Kablack working with the local college in town. I don't want to make a generalization based on two data points, but I can't help but feel modern colleges are a bit shady...

[Cynic]

I don't want to make a generalization based on two data points, but I just did.

Fixed that for you.

Josh: Let me reassure you that this sort of shittiness extends far past the university setting. The same sort of bullshit happened at the last two employers I had.

At the first one, I was given a set of papers to fill out at the job fair and was told to bring it in to the orientation the next day. I filled it out. Then I was emailed another different form to fill rather than the one given to me so that I could bring it to the orientation the the next day. When I went in the next day, I was given a form that had the header of "DSU position employment application."

Keep in mind, that the last two forms mentioned that it was for an orientation. An orientation for a job that I had already been offered and had accepted. So, I sighed and filled it in. I went in for the interview and mentioned to the same HR rep that I had spoken to that he had informed me the day before that I already had the job. He informed me that that was just a preliminary decision and it had been changed by him. So I took this in stride (as I really needed to feed 3 people...) and took the same damn interview test that I took the day before. Same questions, very similar answers, same computer test. The HR rep even laughed at one point by blurting out one of the answers that I had given him the other day.

After all this, I was finally given the contract form that *officially* brought me into the fold. At the interview, I was told that I would immediately start selling and be on the higher payroll rather than have to spend 3 months on half the pay while I was in training. But no, that didn't happen either...

This also meant that my insurance didn't start for 3 more months.

Employers just like to fuck with you for the sake of fucking with you. Either that or they possess a level of incompetence that we've only seen since Reagan's administration.

[Ancient History]

I'll go for incompetence. My new employee orientation course lasted two weeks.

[Voss]

• Of the 12 "new" hires in the room, two of us weren't graveyard shift - and I'm 2nd shift. Zero were day shift. I shouldn't need to point out that holding a meeting at 8 AM for graveyard shift workers like starting it at 6 PM for people on a 9-5 schedule or like 1 AM for 2nd shift people. - especially not since the Unversity does a bunch of noted sleep research.
• The Unversity rep gave us incorrect information about when the authorization for deduction of union dues needs to be sent to the union. This might have been an honest mistake, but I personally am paranoid enough to suspect intentional anti-union machinations here
• When after the meeting, I proceeded upstairs to ask one -on-one about filing an affidavit of domestic partnership and what's involved and how that could affect benefits for Darcy - I got the answer "My Acrobat is down, I can't print out the form, I dunno what's up, I should call tech support". Apparently their office doesn't keep copies of common forms on hand and apparently their staff is incapable of discussing ramifications and requirements without help from Adobe. Thus I couldn't even get to the point of asking whether that or obtaining a marriage license would be the better financial option from a benefits perspective.

Can't comment on most of this, but these sort of jumped out at me.

The meeting during the day thing doesn't surprise me. Most Uni staff paperpushers work on their schedule and their schedule alone, and to hell with anyone else. I'm a little surprised it was so early, honestly. And the sleep research done by the university really doesn't matter. What the university is known for affects the staffing bureaucrats in no way whatsoever. Faculty research and staff are entirely disconnected bubbles.


The anti-union thing strikes me as odd. My experiences with Universities (particularly several in PA) is the tend to rabid fucking zealots for unions, even when it makes no sense at all. But naturally that might the staff/faculty disconnect again, and the bureaucrats would probably be more than happy to not have unions around.


'Acrobat being down' boggled my mind. That really did sound like a dodge.

[erik]

'Acrobat being down' boggled my mind. That really did sound like a dodge.

I've seen it happen on work computers. I don't know what the hell was done and didn't have the rights to look into it, but pdfs/acrobat no longer worked on a workstation where they had previously.

[sabs]

this happens all the time where I work.
It's usually one of 3 things.

The enterprise pushout of the latest acrobat patch uninstalled the old version, but failed to install the new version.
An employee did something weird and unassociated .pdf and online pdfs from any program.
Acrobat decided to take a powder and needs a repair.


Acrobat Reader has many many ways to go wrong, across 300 or so users, I would say that acrobat is not working for about 4-5 of them pretty much at any given time.

[Doom]

I'll go for incompetence. My new employee orientation course lasted two weeks.

Never underestimate administrative incompetence. We're hiring two faculty in my department over the summer, and, wanting to have some influence over who I'd be working with, I ask to be on the selection committee (even though I normally don't work over the summer). My only restriction? Not to have the meetings June 4-8, since I'm flapping to L.A. for a trade show.

So, admin puts me on the committee, and schedules the top applicants to come in June 4 and June 5. I find out about it at 4:45 last Friday.

Looks like we'll once again be hiring faculty with nobody in the relevant department on the committee...

[Voss]

I'll go for incompetence. My new employee orientation course lasted two weeks.

Have to say, that sounds like a complete waste of time and money, unless the job in question involves imminent death in some fashion.

[Ancient History]

Most of it was aimed at the 96% of the new hires that were going to be working in the shop and around heavy machinery, welding equipment, sharp tool sharpeners, various and sundry caustic chemicals, etc.

[Josh_Kablack]

And today I got my second paycheck of the new benefit year.

The incompetents in payroll took the MONTHLY premium for the health plan out again in the second check. Oh but merely failing to divide by two doesn't rise to the requisite level of incompetence demanded by the Unversity. Oh no, they are double withholding at last year's premium rate so thanks to them I am both underpaying and also overpaying at the same time.

[Doom]

And here I thought trying, and failing, to convince the vice-chancellor that two categories of expenditures being "mutually exclusive" meant you couldn't have any overlap whatsoever (and yes. that's what it says in the policy, with several examples) was the height of administrative incompetence.

Unfortunately, nothing I said could get through, and he remains convinced you can have a 1/3 overlap between the two categories, causing all sorts of problems later on in the documentation...and yes, I pointed that out, too.