I'm concerned about the far-reaching effects of combining mental and criminal history in rgds. to other entities that perform background checks. I can't condone potential employers, credit agencies, hell even insurance cos. finding out that information. The stigma is still too bad for this. It's like branding someone's records with a scarlet letter.

A weapon-purchase only database could work but I have doubts about the info remaining private.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...

I think we settled on getting a Special Prosecutor, pronto, but even that could get problematic.

Let me get this straight...if Rove/Miers refuse to testify before Congress under oath they can be found in contempt of Congress. And then, the US Attorney from DC can choose to pursue the matter (or not)

Problem: that USA is a GONZALES APPOINTEE.

"Jeffrey A. Taylor was appointed interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on September 22, 2006. He was sworn in and took office on September 29, 2006.

From 2002 to 2006, Mr. Taylor served as Counselor to Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Gonzales, where he handled a broad array of matters, including oversight of the Department’s national security, terrorism, and criminal litigation and policy, as well as the operations of the Department’s law enforcement components."

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/dc/US_Attorney/i...

So, uh, isn't there some kind of conflict of interest thing going on? If USA Taylor decides not to prosecute, is this whole thing a done deal? What happens then?

Hi everyone (especially BlueIris!) Please PM me if you'd like birth time / city.

This is my problem: I don't know if it's something about my energy, attitude, or what, but I'm treated like I'm invisible at my workplace. (Even delegation of work has come up and even though I find it plainly obvious that I have time to goof around on DU all day and write out the story of my life they for some reason won't give me anything else to do. They think I have plenty.) It's kind of an odd situation as my mother works here as a manager which changes the dynamic/politics a lot. So there is on occasion a big paternalistic / "pat on the head little girl" vibe which drives me nuts. It may be too much to overcome.

I don't particularly care for the job but as my immediate boss will be out having a baby I feel like sticking around another 3-4 mos is the ethical thing to do. I am a person who defines what they are = their job. A bit of a type A. I can't adapt to the mundane tasks and "life script" (kids) that seem expected of me as a young woman here. I have real problems relaxing and know I am struggling with health issues due to the underutilization of my intelligence. I have channeled this excess brainpower into volunteering lately with a non profit group. That's very fun and I wish I could turn that into a job one day. I also feel like I should be on a grad school track or something but feel stuck due to circumstances, although the truth is that I am insecure in my knowledge of what I enjoy and could pursue on a higher level, and this whole job thing has exacerbated my insecurities. Why pursue more education if everyone assumes all a young woman can do is have children and type spreadsheets?

Anyway, they hired someone new today. What made me finally post is that my boss' boss came around and introduced me as having been upstairs 3 months (um, it's really 8, but thanks.) My boss is out at a checkup and a few people have come in here just asking where she is and not even acknowledging me. (we share an office) I swear I feel like I am wearing the Harry Potter invisibility cloak sometimes.

I toted my BA in to put on the wall beside me, mostly with the goal in mind that it could be a positive visual cue that could get people thinking, and might make the superiors think twice about giving me light data entry tasks and stuff. I'll give that more time, I guess. I have also been working on my assertiveness and speaking plainly about my true feelings. My sense, which is even more depressing, is that they just can't comprehend that I can do more work, vs. anything deliberate or political. I am trying to get "noticed" to no avail because of assumptions people have made about me that I can't control. I would like to change people's perceptions but the energy here is very entrenched. (Many "lifers" in management have been here 18-20 years and this place only has maybe 50 people) My boss' boss has real problems delegating work and the two women in this position before me quit for the same reasons I am complaining about. This has been pointed out but nothing has happened (yet)

I got myself put on the "achievement wall" ( a corny recognition method if there ever was one) and I realized that since my move upstairs I haven't been involved in much. No meetings with customers, no projects, no new accounts, just sort of pigeonholed into an assistant role which my skills greatly exceed. It was good for a while as I was dealing with some health problems in Oct. shortly after I was moved up here but now I feel like I need more of a challenge.

I guess I'd like to know what I can do to change and if I need to recognize that it's time to move forward to something else. Thanks for your attention, everybody.

Sigh.

I found out via MySpace that my HS ex is in his second year of med school on a Carribean island. (No, it’s not likely he is lying.)

The guy I married is a courier.

So…am I scum for caring? I think what I care about most is the ambition. HS guy wound up being an ass and way too devoted to his own projects, but, my hubby lacks any drive to do anything but play Yahoo pool all day. Something in the middle would be good, at least.

I wish sometimes I didn’t get married and followed the grad school track. Is that wrong, too? I never wanted to be a doctor/nurse/lawyer, though I have a fair aptitude for the lawyerly stuff. I might get an MBA one day just to get one...My BA is in English and I’m currently severely underemployed. The business degree could be helpful with my goal to work with a non-profit. Currently I’m on a grant writing committee. Having the heart and idealism to work with/run a charity plus the shrewdness to run it like a business and deal with businesses on their terms when soliciting is something I’m not seeing much with my org.

I do enjoy the growth and perspective I am getting from the “real world” vs. sheltering myself in grad school and falling flat on my face. But, I do find myself running daily into the soft discrimination of low expectations (yeah, that’s a Shrub paraphrase, but it does fit my observations on how I’m treated as a young pink-collar woman very, very well) And how my ex is doing just makes me feel, well, incredibly lazy, like I’ve fallen behind some script I’m supposed to be following. Which is stupid. Everyone has their own life. It just throws into stark contrast the feeling I’ve had for a while that I could be doing a lot more with myself.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I guess I find myself envious of the success of others because my life has been sucking. And I know it’s low, and wrong. But the bootstrap thing isn’t working out for me. The Texan old-boys club doesn’t think young ladies wear bootstraps at all.

no one uses any chat programs at work. Downloading anything is a no-no.

Hm. I never really considered it before but we do have a fair amount of controls on our work computers with significant leeway on internet use. I feel surprised. I know we have abuses but it seems like a good balance for our small company -- email monitoring, no downloads allowed (blocked as an admin function), no chat, spyware scans. No in house IT. I guess they are walking the line OK for now which makes me get so visceral about any further controls. Maybe they don't feel employees respect that they should keep internet to a minimum anymore. Actually, the younger crowd like myself just uses it a lot more throughout the day while working at the same time. Could be a generation gap issue. I guess my point in these things is that businesses should consider why internet use is a problem first. I have been given more work recently and am very happy to do it (I was severely underutilized) and the people who (likely) assumed I was a no good lazy internet surfer are pretty surprised. Now, I feel less guilty on the job, too. I do want to work at work, I just kept getting brushed off when asking around for more to do. One can then fall into a pattern of passing the time however they can.

As an employee at a small business, can I make a few suggestions before you go with all-out internet tracking? I know I shouldn't use the "fair" or "privacy" argument, so let me put it this way -- monitoring traffic 24/7 may not be cost effective for you. Also, having a more liberal Internet policy than larger companies can be something like an unofficial benefit, and keep you competitive when hiring. Behind the scenes, you can still be in control in several ways without seeming invasive.


"1) If I'm not hovering over their shoulders, there are some employees who spend hours browsing the internet instead of working. I don't pay my employees to surf the internet."

Do they have enough to do? Is there a way to track how much work they are completing without bringing the Internet in to it? You may be surprised. Employee A could be finishing 8 widgets a day and staying off the Internet, and employee B could be finishing 10 widgets and surfing the internet 2 hours. It is highly possible that, like at my workplace, the internet is not the core problem, distribution of workload is. Employee C that finishes 2 widgets and surfs 5 hours, you take aside, warn, discipline, fire. Don't ruin it for employee B. Maybe they could make an extra widget a day, but, in the end, you want to keep productive people like them around.

"2) There are people that view inappropriate materials in areas that other employees can see. I don't want to get sued because someone is looking at porn at work."

There are filters that can block out porn sites, etc. That is perfectly acceptable for computers in common areas and a lot cheaper than having a contract IT guy monitor internet traffic. A speech to your company about acceptable use followed by an appropriately worded error message from one of these filters if someone tries to surf something bad at work (you have been REPORTED!!!!11!!) is enough to make most people THINK they will get in trouble for trying anything funny with a minimum of effort on your part.

"3) I would like a way to monitor communications between customers and my employees. Think of it as quality control."

We have e-mail monitoring on Lotus Notes. All of our messages have a duplicate copy sent to a global account that high-ups can read and IT can access in case something's lost. Supervisors also have access to the email of their employees, managers to that of supervisors, etc. Actually, I think that becouse our email is controlled and monitored so well, the Internet issues have been put off as minor.

Hope I gave you some constructive things to think about. There are ways to monitor the use of your equipment and your employee productivity that make sense from a business perpective and still give your employees a bit of dignity (reducing your turnover, and keeping up morale)

BluePatriot (Employee B )

but probably should, in a limited way. They have a "no internet except at lunch" policy...There are people at work who spend 3-4 hrs of their 8 hr day online. My boss gives me her busy work while she surfs MySpace. I know I would get creamed for visiting DU so much but seeing the abuses around me has made me indifferent. People would just revert to getting up and wandering around chatting or hanging out in the kitchen again, anyway, so maybe my company doesn't see the point as long as all the work gets done. Or, they should handle internet use this way -- if someone surfs all day give them more work. If they do it with no trouble they were just bored and needed something to do. No real harm there. If they still surf all day and the work piles up, then the INDIVIDUAL gets taken aside as a problem. I know they may track us soon and I would have a fit. I know we have no legal right to privacy but it's really about human dignity. Would the managers and higher-ups get tracked, too? Pffft. I plan to make the point, how much MORE productive have computers and technology made people in the workplace? Write off the minor abuses, take aside individual repeat offenders, and leave the rest of us alone if we get our work done.



*edit* is 100 percent productivity even POSSIBLE or desirable? Isn't there some threshold where everyone would burn out if they never got to take a break? Maybe I'm set on "work to live" vs. "live to work."

I sort of miss blogging about my job. It was very therapeutic. However, as I noticed the same toxic comments over and over again I decided to delete the thing, in favor of attempting to cultivate a more positive outlook going forward.

Right.

Ten years ago everyone told me when I was being teased by the popular crowd at school not to worry, as one day I would be their boss!

I worked hard and got my BA a semester early. 3.8, cum laude. English -- I wanted to teach. I naively thought everyone enjoyed learning, like me, and it would be fun to show a new generation all the neat language and literature I enjoyed.

I subbed for a while after college to figure out what age group I liked best. I quickly figured out I would need to be more of a battle ax to be in the classroom. The discipline and government standards wore on me quickly. I took a job at the company my mother works at for a few extra bucks while I figured out what to do.

Then, I casually mentioned apartment hunting, and Bam! I was pushed out of the house. The freedom wasn't so bad even though I knew it would limit my job hunt.

Then, a few months later, my boyfriend proposed, and we were married in a small ceremony last April.

Then, hubby decided he would go back to school on the weekends. He has an Associate's with a 2.2. Failed four classes, played video games most of the time, and makes 20 cents an hour more than I do, to courier documents to the airport.

Ten years later, the ditz with a year of community college that's two years older than I am and on her second kid is my boss and telling me to get files and run copies for her. She's excitedly yammering on about her $2700 refund while hubby and I pare out our $900. I think back to the people who told me I had all this potential to be something great and want to kick them in the teeth.

Lounge, frankly, this sucks. I can't figure out why my education isn't worth anything to anyone. I have two years general office experience now and desperately want a more challenging job. I can't figure out how to build on any skills at this place and have a professional network close to zero because no one networks with the copier chick. I could go back to grad school but I feel people perceive me as overeducated already. My attitude isn't so hot because I am bored out of my mind. There are people all around me with piles of work on their desks that I would excitedly jump in to doing but no one is willing to delegate it to me even if I ask. I'm at my wit's end and could use a hug, or some advice, or something. Thanks!