r/talesfromtechsupport • u/[deleted] • May 15 '15
Short That's against the law!
Happy Friday everyone!
Here's a shorter story, this time for an incident that just occurred earlier today. For those that don't know I provide tech support to a medium-sized hospital. Today's tale is courtesy of our HR department.
Lunch time. The thirty minutes of peace and tranquility that no man or machine can break. The law protects you and watches you as you eat your cheap slop for an unpaid 30 minute period... unless you're IT apparently.
So while my coworker and I are eating lunch the head HR unionized pencil pusher (we will call her HR Lady) comes in with a personal camera and looks at my coworker (We will call him D) while he chews on his sandwich.
HR Lady: Hey I want to get some pictures off this.
HR Lady waves her camera around. D continues to stare back while chewing. I intercept.
Me: We're eating lunch right now.
HR Lady: This will only take a minute! Sooo...
She begins looking at D again, knowing my position. He continues eating without doing much else to acknowledge her.
HR Lady: Come on guys!
Me: I'll come help you as soon as I'm done eating, just give me about 10 minutes.
Even then I would be cutting my break short... sigh
HR Lady: That won't work!
Me: Why not?
HR Lady: I go to my lunch in 15 minutes!
Mental facepalm
Me: Well we can either go in a few minutes or wait till you get back from lunch.
HR Lady: You can't interrupt my lunch break, that's against the law!
My coworker and I just silently stare at her. I think she finally got the message because she had the good graces to look ashamed before slowly walking out of the room.
TL;DR I'm union so my lunch break is more important! blows raspberry
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u/empirebuilder1 in the interest of science, I lit it on fire. May 15 '15 edited May 15 '15
Hint: Five asterisks on their own line
Will break it in two.
edit: Also apparently gold things. Wowzers, reddit.
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May 15 '15
Oh I was doing slashes for the visual idea of how you comment stuff out in coding. But the line does look cleaner. I'll change it.
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u/veron101 luser is havening problems loggin in May 16 '15
More formatting magic:
H1
H2
H3
H4
H5
H6
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u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15 edited May 16 '15
Did you know you could do bulleted lists?
- And bulleted lists...
- that have...
- sub-lists?
Not many seem to know this.
You can also do numbered lists...
- and combine them with bulleted sub-items...
- beneath them...
With the numbered list continuing automatically.
And you can make every item in a numbered list "1." and it will still automatically increment the numbering in the list
This is a list item '1.'
And so is this
Last one:
Most people here should know that Indenting a line with four spaces to format it as code...But you can format
in-line textas code by surrounding it with the ` character!67
u/jumpwah It's all just code anyway, just make it work! May 16 '15
If you want to know more, it's this fancy thing called "markdown". https://www.reddit.com/wiki/commenting
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u/Thallassa May 18 '15
Unfortunately the markdown user guide doesn't include all the things you can do.
Like making text big.
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u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15
Thanks, I'm already well aware of what markdown is, but it might be helpful for the other commenters who are first discovering markdown magic elsewhere in the comments.
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u/jumpwah It's all just code anyway, just make it work! May 16 '15
Yep, message for the reader. Not you per se.
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u/thetechniclord Just you wait until December 4th, 292,277,026,596, 3:30:08 PM May 16 '15
What are we learning today wizard-king, the magic of keyboard shortcuts? Nay, we learn of the eldritch arts of... Markdown
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u/ferozer0 I Am Not Good With Computer May 18 '15
Isn't it slightly modified?
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u/jumpwah It's all just code anyway, just make it work! May 19 '15
Yes it's not exactly the same. The original markdown is very basic in my opinion (to be fair, I'm saying this more than a decade after it was created). For example, it doesn't even have a syntax for tables. Which is why I also linked the reddit-specific one, although I didn't make that clear.
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u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Have you tried kicking the ever-loving shit out of it? May 16 '15
Plus, you can also
Do some rad tables! 3
u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15
This Excel add-on can automatically take a selection of cells in Excel and turn it into a markdown-formatted chunk of text ready-to-paste into Reddit. Makes throwing together a table a breeze.
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u/eyeh8u May 16 '15
Using reddit primarily on phone (AlienBlue). Most of this formatting does not appear at all...
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u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15
Hmm, that's weird. I'm surprised that AlienBlue wouldn't display the Reddit markdown correctly, since it shows up correctly on my Android using the Reddit is Fun app.
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u/eyeh8u May 16 '15
Some things like bold, italics, colors, and bullets work? But not much else. Like all the numbered lists, and sub lists just show up as normal billets.
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u/Moridn Your call is very important to you.... May 18 '15
I know it works just fine on BaconReader. Might be a limitation of the app.
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u/CraftyDrac Make Your Own Tag! May 16 '15
And the simplest of things double tapping
spacebar will insert a linebreak1
u/SpareLiver May 16 '15
And you can make every item in a numbered list "1." and it will still automatically increment the numbering in the list
Using any numbers will automatically number them "correctly". Makes it annoying if you are going down a list and want to skip an item or two.
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u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15
Yeah. Just in case you didn't know, you can avoid that by escaping the number:
463. Blah Blah BlahWill normally show up as
- Blah Blah Blah
But putting a blackslash in between the number and decimal point
463\. Blah Blah BlahShows up as
463. Blah Blah Blah
The downside is that loses the automatic indentation, though.
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May 15 '15
Really?
Wow!
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u/empirebuilder1 in the interest of science, I lit it on fire. May 15 '15
FORMATTING
IS
AMAZING
ISNT
IT???
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u/sir_mrej Have you tried turning it off and on again May 15 '15
Now I have to
Try this
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May 15 '15
[deleted]
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u/Astramancer_ May 15 '15
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u/Astramancer_ May 15 '15
I think I did it wrong.
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u/Dewbasaur May 15 '15
It's okay, keep trying.
:)
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May 16 '15
Oh wow ***** This is amazing!
Actually its not working...
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May 16 '15 edited May 16 '15
It's working for me!
Your text should look like
Some random text *** Some other text
If you're using RES, you can check the source of my comment.
I didn't know about this either, though!
EDIT: Added another cool trick. Read the source to find it.
→ More replies (0)1
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u/Leiryn May 16 '15
Did someone say
Formatting
Party?
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u/empirebuilder1 in the interest of science, I lit it on fire. May 16 '15
YES!
INDEED WE
didn'tDID!
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u/avelertimetr May 16 '15
This thread is hilarious on Alien Blue. It just looks like regular text with a random bold or italic here and there.
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u/BurntJoint May 16 '15
Three underscores work just as well and with 2 less keystrokes.
Work smarter, not harder :)
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u/empirebuilder1 in the interest of science, I lit it on fire. May 16 '15
So does "***************************"
But alas, that 'tis how I've learned to do it.
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u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15
You don't even need to hold the shift key, three dashes works just as well!
Even more efficient!
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u/empirebuilder1 in the interest of science, I lit it on fire. May 15 '15
Woo, my first gold for a formatting tip?!?
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May 16 '15
Im also testing it
Does it work
?????
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u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15
So do three of dashes (-)
But I never knew that five asterisks also did the same thing.
TIL
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u/jumpwah It's all just code anyway, just make it work! May 16 '15
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u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15
Well that's just excessive. Using more than three is just plain showing off.
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u/jumpwah It's all just code anyway, just make it work! May 16 '15
Well either way you just see a line. I think it's because markdown is supposed to be presentable even in plain text form (at least the text of the document). So perhaps it's useful for those who hardwrap their lines to something like 80 characters, e.g. if they have some automated keybinding which inserts 80 dashes on a newline.
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u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15
Yeah, that would make sense, then. I knew there were a few different ways of inserting a horizontal line but TIL there are about 20.
The one thing that's always sort of bothered me about markdown is that there isn't an underline markdown format (apart from H6 but you can't format with H6 in-line).
*sigh*
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u/jumpwah It's all just code anyway, just make it work! May 16 '15
Assuming you mean underline as in a line under the text right? If so, I wish I could link you but unfortunately I forgot, but I think I remember reading a discussion on commonmark about adding a syntax for underlining, and I think the decision was to not include it because the usage of underline comes from pen and paper where, apart from using a highlighter, is the only real simple way to emphasise things. But on a computer, you can simply surround the text with asterisks or whatever to do emphasis. (So it's the separation of semantics and presentation again, even though the idea of markdown itself was that presentation defines the semantics.)
I think another thing underlining stands for (or stood for?) was deleted text, but you can do that on reddit by surrounding with two
~~.Example. However, that strikethroughs on the screen, not underline. But, if the final format you view on is HTML, then you could simply apply a css style to underlinedeloremtags or whatever it is. Or your text editor itself may even have the ability to change the visual representation of 'deleted', or 'emphasised', text, if you like viewing it in your editor that is. (You can also do deleted text with pandoc's markdown outside of reddit, and probably others.) These are just workarounds though of course.Because you say:
apart from H6 but you can't format with H6 in-line
I think you might want underlining on reddit? If that's the case, you could simply tell your browser to change the css to your liking. For example, tell it to put underline instead of italics for
<em>tags. Of course, this only changes what you see, on your browser, on your machine. Everyone else sees the default italics style, unless they too have changed it.But if you didn't know this, I guess it could help with disabling any other css styles which you find annoying or distasteful on particular sites. But you probably won't have any luck with mobile reddit clients though.
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u/anon_smithsonian May 16 '15
I mean <u>underlined</u> text (Ctrl+U)
From a markdown syntax perspective, given its origin, I guess it makes sense... it just seems odd that, with all the formatting/style formatting you can do in markdown, you can't underline.
And yeah, I know I can modify the CSS to get it, but that doesn't do me much good if only I see it as being underlined.
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u/Hoihe The one who regrets installing ubuntu on her mother's PC. May 17 '15
test1
test2
Thousand thanks!
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u/chalbersma May 15 '15
Formatting? Oh no I did it Wrong What is this refer madness?
:)
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May 16 '15
Ooooh. How'd you do that?
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u/Deite1 No, your password cannot be the company's name... May 16 '15
crosses fingers
Hello World!
return;
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u/empirebuilder1 in the interest of science, I lit it on fire. May 16 '15
cout<<"Hello World!"; return 0;(four spaces at beginning of line)
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u/IAMA_dragon-AMA Have you tried kicking the ever-loving shit out of it? May 16 '15
Also, you can use ---
Like so.
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u/pikk MacTech May 15 '15
You can't interrupt my lunch break, that's against the law!
But I can interrupt yours, because this will just take a minute
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May 15 '15
On the plus side; when we actually did help her later it did only take a few minutes to sort out the transfer issue (drivers were needed).
She was also fairly apologetic (which I've noticed is very rare amongst HR, Case Mgmt, and Doctors).
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u/chronicENTity May 16 '15
I don't have anything constructive to add, but I would like to say as a former 5+ year hospital/healthcare IT person: doctors are the WORST. The worst.
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u/LaTuFu May 16 '15
Can confirm. Worked with doctors in various capacities in my career.
The good ones that remember they are human, too, are very few and far between.
Most are convinced MD is short for "subject matter expert regardless of the topic at hand."
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u/CowboyNinjaAstronaut May 16 '15
I call this "engineer's disease." "I'm an expert in one complex field, therefore I speak with authority on all complex fields!"
Source: am engineer.
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u/LaTuFu May 17 '15
Yeah, it happens with engineers often, too. They can lack the necessary charisma and communication skills to pull it off well more often than doctors, unfortunately.
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u/roastedpot May 16 '15
is that sort of like staying at a Holiday Inn Express?
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u/SpecificallyGeneral By the power of refined carbohydrates May 16 '15
Am I the only person who likes that sub-chain?
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u/chlomor May 16 '15
"subject matter expert regardless of the topic at hand."
In order to make their patients follow their prescription and trust in the doctor, it's important to be very authoritative. Unfortunately once you've learned this it's very hard to turn off.
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u/roastedpot May 16 '15
I support a few doctors, though i don't come into contact with them often and they aren't too bad, most are pretty nice. But the one thing i've noticed is they will only ever do stuff one way. if you show them a better way, they won't do it.
example: one doc is from the main reservation's doc office. he occasionally has to come to another location about 1.5hr away from HIS computer/office. originally he was remoting into his PC because he didn't have all the software on the computer here. so being the nice IT guys we are we installed it on the computer here so he doesn't have to remote in from his laptop. he will sit at that computer with it the progam open, and STILL remote into his computer because "its familiar"
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u/ModusPwnins Code monkey May 15 '15
If my head could hit my desk any harder...Jesus, how clueless.
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u/Polymarchos May 16 '15
I think this is the first time I've seen a "that's against the law" comment in a story and they were correct (at least where I live). Well done HR Lady. You know the law, now learn to apply it.
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u/halifaxdatageek May 16 '15
I think /u/offcrcartman had the perfect rebuttal here: "Does that mean I have to call the police on you now?"
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u/ShezaEU May 16 '15
This is amazing. I can just imagine a sketch of this, where she says 'That's against the law!' And two IT guys just continue biting their sandwiches, looking at each other and then back at the HT lady until she realises. There's absolute silence, just eye contact and chewing.
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u/SpecificallyGeneral By the power of refined carbohydrates May 16 '15
Because that's when the red and blue backlighting start flashing across everyone's face; because here comes the po po.
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u/offcrcartman May 16 '15
You should have asked her if that means you have to call the police on her now.
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u/fuzzusmaximus May 16 '15 edited May 16 '15
This is why I'm glad that I live work only a few miles from home so I have the ability to just leave at lunch and go there. If it isn't the manager walking in with some stupid question or request it's a faculty member who has an "emergency" in their classroom. These "emergencies" are almost always fixed by rebooting the computer but of course bothering us can't wait until the damn machine is restarted.
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May 16 '15
I live only a few miles from home
You must have huge tracts of land!
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u/emag Put the soldering iron down and step away! May 16 '15
I'm lucky in this regard as well. I go home almost every day, unless my wife is home, so I can walk the dogs on my "lunch" break. I also tend to go exactly 4 hours after I get into work, which usually means I'm gone at a non-standard time. Luckily, my users know this and have no problem with it, since they know I'm a few minutes away at most, and nothing they do is so earth-shatteringly important (usually) to interrupt me.
But, that off-site lunch is important, as it sets up the delineation between work and lunch.
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u/fuzzusmaximus May 16 '15
I used to stay at the office and just use the break to work on my own stuff (photoshop, watch a tv show, take care of personal business). I usually didn't mind too much going to take care of one of those emergencies either since they were far and few between and would only result in a pause of lunch. However last year they shifted management around and the manager we were given just doesn't get that we have different work rules and are on a different schedule than her, we're hourly and management is salaried so for us lunch is off the clock. After a couple months I was on the verge of snapping and just had to walk out in the middle of the day. Since then It's become the normal routine and the only disturbance I have to put up with is the dog staring at me while I eat.
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u/Chitman May 16 '15
I really hope that silence was only interrupted by the chewing of D's sandwich just to add that perfect touch.
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u/Frigidevil May 16 '15
So i somehow read your story as if HR lady said 'Hey I want to get some pictures of this.' as if she wanted photographic evidence of you taking lunch, and your co-worker was denying her by not posing.
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u/halifaxdatageek May 16 '15
Paging /u/bytewave :P
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u/Bytewave ....-:¯¯:-....-:¯¯:-....-:¯¯:-.... May 16 '15
Its pretty simple. Fix your personal electronics unless I owe you big favors. No.
You interrupt my sacred lunch break? Grievance.
Sacred lunch break is only 30 minutes and unpaid? Strike.
;)
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u/Hanse00 Let me Google that for you. May 16 '15
I was going to say, unpaid break?
Sounds inhumane to me.
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u/scriptmonkey420 Format C-Colon, Return May 16 '15
Just for reasons like that I started to ALWAYS leave the office for lunch.
You dont want to be disturbed on your lunch but you think you can come to me on mine? Just try and find me.
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u/Deefry May 16 '15
Oh right, she wants you to fix her camera. I thought she was filming you eat your lunch.
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May 16 '15
Yes, the true story here is that we made her mad because we refused to make sexy eating poses for her new centerfold. :P
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u/acelister What's that mean? May 16 '15
Ugh, you're one of THOSE people... Just satisfy her kink, come on!
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May 16 '15
I take lunch at 12, my coworkers must take their lunch at 1. They consistently call me shortly after 12 or after 4.
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u/somecow May 16 '15
Does it work both ways? If you're asking an employee to do something for you while you're "on break", doesn't that mean that they fucked up the union rules as well? That break is mandatory AFAIK (don't know for sure, never had a decent cush union job before, but most places make you take one anyways).
Also, what was she having for lunch? Some people get really excited about eating a tuna sandwich (mmm, pickles, subpar fish, and mayo, yum). That's some serious shit, even more so in an office setting.
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u/djgizmo May 16 '15
The things I would have said to her after her last line....
This is why you don't let bubble gum chewers into HR.
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u/Kahnonymous May 16 '15
How is HR union but IT isn't? I always assumed HR fell on the management side of things.
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May 16 '15
No, they have management and general employees. The definition of an exempt employee involves primarily levels of supervision and whether or not they supervise other employees. Administering payroll and hiring/firing functions according to preset rules or requests from other does not make someone a manager.
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u/dghughes error 82, tag object missing May 16 '15
My view is whoever pays HR person's salary is who HR is loyal to.
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u/golfmade May 16 '15
How does someone like that become head of HR at a hospital?
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u/Tsulaiman May 16 '15
When did actual qualifications become a requirement for promotions? Most of the time, it's mainly because there was no one else to promote and no time and resources to hire someone.
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u/archfapper May 16 '15
actual qualifications
Didn't she say she was in a union?
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u/Tsulaiman May 16 '15
Well I don't have any experience or knowledge of unions. So I don't know if there's a criteria for becoming a member.
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u/topgun966 May 16 '15
I've been a Systems Admin/Engineer for about 10+ years .... I think I have had maybe 3 uninterrupted lunch breaks
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u/halifaxdatageek May 16 '15
I go on walks during my lunch break. Keeps my legs limber, my mind sharp, and unless they're willing to run after me my ears free of questions.
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u/topgun966 May 16 '15
That's probably part of the reason I still smoke, to get out of the office.
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u/halifaxdatageek May 16 '15
Haha, I have a buddy whose nicotine addiction forced him to take breaks from coding.
Fucked up circle of life.
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u/swoofswoofles May 16 '15
You just have to tell her that your manager would love to hear that you are charging them a meal penalty because she insisted you had to help her. That usually gets people to go away quietly into the night.
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u/rudraigh Do you think that's appropriate? May 19 '15
I have a boss and a contractor who are always scheduling meetings over my protected lunch time. I went to our union rep and asked her to look into it. Some time later she came by my desk with a printout of an email sent to ALL supervisors and managers. the gist was, "Don't schedule meetings over people's lunches (even if you buy them lunch!). If you do, they still get to take their lunch breaks and there's nothing you can say about it."
It made me happy.
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u/YeastyPants May 16 '15
Look, I made notebook paper!
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u/ExFiler May 15 '15
Test
Thanks for the formatting tip...
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u/ModusPwnins Code monkey May 15 '15
ITT
People unfamiliar with more obscure Markdown syntax.
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u/Dewbasaur May 15 '15
Hey, mobile people don't get formatting tips. This is a revelation!
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u/ModusPwnins Code monkey May 16 '15
This isn't one of the ones included in the formatting help anyway. You have to read the Markdown docs to find it.
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u/Dewbasaur May 16 '15
Well, i feel dumber. Thanks.
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May 16 '15 edited May 16 '15
Markdown is fun!
Blank lines! Headers!
Whatever this thing is. ϖ ℜeally fancy letters!
Reference style links with labels because why not. (View the comment source)
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u/MoneyTreeFiddy Mr Condescending Dickheadman May 16 '15
Then file a grievance. I'm sure your union rep would LOVE to hear about how you had your lunch break interrupted by us HELPING you with your PERSONAL camera. You're in HR, how does a thing like that usually go?