make the beast with two backs this place

[ZLTFUL]

Got your attention didn't I?

I don't mean the DMF. I love this place.

I mean my workplace.

HR is at her antics again.
But this time I am prepared to drop a bomb she isn't even remotely prepared to deal with.

The back story...
Last week and the week before, we cut both of our main locations' data services over to a new provider. This entailed me working both weekends.

I wasn't on call one of the weekends but I offered to work it because it would earn me a comp day (comp time is illegal in Iowa but I will get to that).

So this past Friday rolls around and I call the IT manager asking if she has a problem with me taking the day off considering the week before I worked 68 hours and was already at 49 hours for that week. She said she didn't see a problem with it as long as I was still planning on working the cutover at our other location on saturday and sunday.

So I relaxed on Friday. Got some stuff done I hadn't been able to and all around had a good day.

Saturday morning while at our other location, I get an email from the IT manager stating that she spoke with HR and she isn't sure she can get me paid for the day I took off.

Um...I am salaried and considering I will have in nearly 60 hours for the week even though I took the day off, I should be fine. Especially considering my employment contract states, "Work week: You are expected to work 40-50 hours per week as needed based on your on-call duties. Hours worked beyond normal work week hours will be compensated accordingly."

I can't believe this crap. So I send an email reply stating that I have easily covered my required work hours as set forth by my employment contract and as I have never taken a comp day in the past, feel that I easily qualify for one in this case. I grant that the notice was not the standard 30 day notice but also in my contract it states, “All days given as compensation for extra hours worked will be used within 30 calendar days of the day that they are granted.” So I couldn't very well give a 30 day notice as is required for vacation or personal days. But it was also approved verbally by the IT manager who had assumed my duties for the day.

So fast forward to Monday, I get a reply stating that the IT manager and the HR director would discuss this and get back to me by Tuesday.

Tuesday morning, I get a meeting request to meet with the IT manager.
I go in expecting to be told that I would be getting the day but in the future I would have to give some notice as to when I planned to take a day off as a comp day.

I couldn't have been more wrong. Instead, I am asked to sign a form stating that I am being written up for missing Friday. I am dumbfounded. On the form it states that I do not dictate when I receive comp days and that it is at the discretion of the IT manager. Furthermore, it states that my emails to the IT manager and HR director have been rude and disrespectful. I have each email I sent and in no way can they even remotely be construed as rude or disrespectful. The only time I even “raised my voice” in them was in quoting my contract, I used capital letters and quotation marks.

So I refuse to sign. I state that nothing I have done warrants a write up and that if I sign that form, it is me admitting I had done something wrong which I didn't believe I had.

So I call up a good friend of mine who happens to specialize in employment law and used to be an HR director himself for a very large firm here in central Iowa. We discuss the situation and he suggests that I quit. And not that I just up and walk out but give a 30 day notice via a formal letter of resignation. That I should cite “mental duress and an irreconcilable difference in contract stated job duties and work hours versus expected job duties and work hours”.
He also suggests that when I submit it, that I do it both in person and via email including him at his law office email address.

It was also suggested that I file for unemployment for the same reasons stated above. I have only filed for unemployment once in my life and that was during a layoff which the company I worked for encouraged their employees to claim unemployment during winter hours.

The blatant double standard that exists here has worn on me. I am usually far from it but in this case it has touched me directly. I took the liberty of pulling the IT manager's attendance record as well as her punch in/out times and have discovered that she is 1000 times worse than anything I have ever done here.

Her expected hours are 8:00am to 5:00pm and on call duties as required. Mine are 6:30am-3:30pm and on call duties as required.
I went back 1.5 years and looked at her punch in/out times. She is late about 85% of the time and leaves early about 95% of the time. Whereas mine shows that there is MAYBE 5 instances of punching in late and even less of leaving early. She has 3 weeks of vacation time. Yet she took a total of 6 weeks off last year with no valid reasons beyond “personal days” or “vacation time”. I had to “use it or lose it” with 2/3rds of my vacation time.

Yet *I* am the one who gets talked to on the VERY rare occasion when I am 10 or 15 minutes late.

So I ask you, friends of the DMF…should I tell them to “take this job and shove it”? There are even more grievances I could post up and I don't think I am being unreasonable considering my track record. But I question everything on a regular basis and I don't think the HR director appreciates that at all.

We won't go into the fact that I have been ordered by the IT manager to violate software licensing laws countless times in my time here (“It's not illegal. We bought that one copy of Adobe CS4 Master Collection. We have every right to install it on 17 computers.” Or “We have Office 2007 already. It came with that one laptop we ordered. Let's upgrade everyone with it. Just make sure you turn off registration and auto updates.”).

So what would you do? I mean I like a lot of the people I work with. Have made some good friends. But I have also reached a point where I don't agree with a lot of the policies that are being enforced that seem to change on a weekly basis.

[Raux]

the HR manager and the IT manager have bosses. File a grievance with those people and so on up the chain til you reach the company executives. oh and since you have clear indications the company is violating numerous employment and copyright laws, don't forget your whistleblower protection.

[teddy037.2]

the HR manager and the IT manager have bosses. File a grievance with those people and so on up the chain til you reach the company executives. oh and since you have clear indications the company is violating numerous employment and copyright laws, don't forget your whistleblower protection.

+1

go up the food chain first...

[ducpainter]

If he ccs his friends law office all the execs will become aware.

[Raux]

If he ccs his friends law office all the execs will become aware.

+1

document everything. and that part about her timecard, be careful, it you weren't supposed to have access to it...

[Duck-Stew]

+1

document everything. and that part about her timecard, be careful, it you weren't supposed to have access to it...

Get *all* the documents you can **while** you still can.  If you have them, then you can use them later.  If you don't have them...  Just check w/your employment lawyer friend to make sure the documents you want to present in court (which may not be all that you have) are legal for you to have.

And a big +1 to going above the two bosses heads and so on until you get to someone who cares.  Who knows...you could end up with a promotion and a pay-raise out of it.

[ducducgooseme]

Is it worth the fight?  Can you easily get another job in your location?  just things to think about.  Its a rough economy out there for IT

[redxblack]

I'd trust the lawyer. As an observer, you're really in a hostile work environment and it sounds like the HR woman is getting payback for previous incidents. She's abusing her position and if the people above her know and do nothing, they are culpable.

I LOVE the cc: law offices. That's MY kind of passive/aggressive awesomeness (and no sarcasm intended).

[ZLTFUL]

The execs are the owners.
If I walk in there and say I quit because of (see above), they will fight to keep me around.
The problem is, they won't get rid of the HR director even though employees who have been in this business are jumping off like rats from a sinking ship. But the HR director has her nose so far up the CEOs ass, the can't even see her behind him anymore.

I am not really concerned about finding another job right away. I have resources, assets and savings that would allow me a very comfortable6 month job search or a living thin for a year job search.

I hate watching people who have been in this business for 20+ years just one day decide they are quitting because "I don't want to spend every day at work wondering when they are going to fire me" (last guy that quit gave that as his reason).

As for documentation, time punches, etc, I have full administration rights to the entire system. I have even been asked to review confidential HR and accounting files in the past so I am not terribly concerned there.

I guess the whole "spend each day wondering when I am going to get fired" thing has begun to seriously wear on me.
But that's the price to pay when you point out time and time again that the IT manager really doesn't know what she is doing.

[ZLTFUL]

Is it worth the fight?  Can you easily get another job in your location?  just things to think about.  Its a rough economy out there for IT

I got that covered...
I'm a certified Diesel mecanic, a licensed electrician, a very capable carpenter, a fair plumber, a serious IT geek and I have a degree in graphic design. Worst case scenario, I have options. 
Plus I have some friends out in Colorado I could come visit! 

[SacDuc]

QUIT!

[ducpainter]

Summer is nice in NH...

if it happens.

[Pip]

sd wants you to explore your options. He's just too shy to say it. 

[KnightofNi]

honestly, the copyright violations alone should help you nail the IT manager. However, you might need to produce docs with her telling you to do that.

and this isn't a let them know what you have and see what they do thing. it's a quit your job and go to the gov't group on software piracy type thing. there are protections built in for it and i think you get a portion of the fine money.

[ZLTFUL]

Not so concerned about "rewards" from the software piracy thing. I just hate that I felt like it meant my job if I said no. Now that I have decided to cut and run, I have no inhibitions about turning them in.

Frankly, I like 3 of the 4 owners alot and fee bad for ding ot to them but I also warned them several times that wht the IT manager was asking me to do was illegal.