Let's bitch about our stupid, annoying co-workers

Mat leave in Canada, at least everywhere I've been (working FT since I was 20) is a year but a certain fraction of your pay. Pretty decent.. But I probably won't fake one. Unless the replacement proves insufferable.

(The government might pay for some of the year; having never been pregnant I've not paid *that* much attention..)

Geez in australia mat leave isnt paid! You get a year but its unpaid. I think some workplaces might choose to pay or part pay a few months, but its not a govt level thing. Yet, anyway.

US maternity leave isn't even maternity leave. It's just three months of general medical leave that you can use for a serious health condition for you or your family, assuming you meet all the criteria listed above. A friend of mine had to be on bed rest for the last six weeks of her pregnancy, so she only got six weeks of leave after the baby was born since she had to use up half of it while she was still pregnant. And employers can make you use your accrued vacation and sick time contemporaneously so when you get back, you have no time off for vacations of illness. And like quincie said, they can replace you as long as they hold an equivalent job open for you. The US is so far behind on this shit it's not even funny. We're number 1, etc.

(This is a thing that makes me v. angry, obv.)

Good God this is one issue that I get so fucking angry about. We get 6 weeks paid but can take up to three months (FML) which is unpaid beyond the 6 weeks. You can do the thing where you use your vacation/sick time but that isn't really a great option either. These laws also mean that most women work right up until literally the day they give birth assuming they're able to and not on bed rest like CA's friend. Shitty mat leave laws are one of the big reasons having a kid seems so daunting to me. I can't imagine putting a three month old in day care never mind a SIX WEEK OLD! >:o My friends in the UK and Canada get about a year much of which is at full or at least partial pay. That just seems so much more realistic and sensible it's not even funny.

UK govt/business is casting envious eyes at those other countries with their shitty maternity leave and non-existent sick pay.

timely chart
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2012/05/24/489973/paid-maternity-leave-us/

I just checked in with my pregnant coworker and she says our company does not pay any mat leave ;_; I was mistaken. However the government pays about 55% of your wage. We also have parental leave instead of just maternity leave, so Dads can stay home too.

"Out of 178 nations, the U.S. is one of three that does not offer paid maternity leave benefits."

Thing about that chart is that those are the paid weeks given. A lot of those countries allow you to take more time unpaid if you so choose whereas 12 weeks is the max total in the US that a company legally has to allow.

I wonder if conservative America thinks having such poor support for pregnant woman presses abortion rates up or down.

Ha. I glanced quickly at the comments section on that link and saw a couple people mention that possibility.

Yeah, we had little choice but to send our little one to daycare at 10 weeks old, because my wife had to go back to work. Thankfully its been a really great place for him and its worked out really well, but, damn does the U.S. approach to maternity leave piss me off. None of this goes to mention the issues with father's getting time off for the birth (not that I'm at all comparing it to the maternity leave issues for mothers themselves, just another annoyance). Like, I got to take a week off when my son was born, but it meant using up the remainder of my vacation for the year.

That should be women, not woman. I'm sure there's more than one of them or this wouldn't be a big deal.

I got two weeks paternity leave on full pay when my kids were born. I also got an extra week off for getting married!

I'm glad it worked out well for your son, Jon. That just sounds so young to me.

I got to take a week off when my son was born, but it meant using up the remainder of my vacation for the year.

Yeah, see that's messed up.

Attitudes towards vacation and sick time are so weird in the US in general. I don't think I talked about it here but I recently got called into a meeting (WITH HR) to discuss my abuse of our sick time. I had used 6 of the 11 days we accrue each year and that's considered abuse. WHY DO WE GET 11 THEN?! Also, I was actually fucking sick. I've also been told that while we get vacation time it's sort of an "unwritten rule" that people don't use it very often.

It is so young! It was a really, really hard decision to make, but, in the end, we just couldn't figure out a way to make it work financially any other way. I've always found it weird that so-called "family values" conservatives don't go to more lengths to protect family leave or time off for stuff like this.

Unionise! Educate, agitate, organise!

I'm in a union and we still have the same shitty maternity leave. I'm allowed to use sick time but that doesn't change my deadline driven workload. Staying home sick means working late to make up time later.

As for conservative America, they only care about children insofar as they can be used to punish sluts who have sex. They don't actually care about the children themselves. (See also: use of children with disabilities for anti abortion rhetoric while cutting programs for children and adults with disabilities.)

I recently got called into a meeting (WITH HR) to discuss my abuse of our sick time. I had used 6 of the 11 days we accrue each year and that's considered abuse.

holy shit - i would have been fuming! so they basically accused you of feigning illness? i don't think i would have been able to control my temper if an employer pulled this bs.

In my new job people get four months full pay mat leave plus five
Months at something like 90 percent. And can take a whole year in total. People ask me why I wanted to leave the USA; I can't say this is the only reason but it's part of the culture I just don't understand how people live with it (excise shitty phone typing)

UUUUUUGH

I'm in round 433240978 of revising this document. Here's the latest suggested edit:

The version I wrote starts like this: "Among other efforts, the ___ Program has focused..."
That has been scratched that out, and instead the suggested edit is "Amongst other efforts , the ___ Program has focused..."

In google, if you type "among other efforts" in quotations, you get 4 million results. if you type "amongst other efforts", you get 192,000 results.

And it's not even about whether or not it's grammatically correct, it's more like this is the billionth time we've revised this, and THESE are the kinds of edits that are still taking place?
ugh

and yes, the two words are completely interchangeable, although amongst is more old-fashioned. but god this endless wordsmithing is just fucking nauseating

Somewhat related, one of my coworkers is wearing a short bearing a large American flag that says "PATRIOTISM" underneath.

xp oh god that kind of crap goes on around here all the time. One coworker is notorious for randomly striking or adding "that" as a clause introducer.

is it an editor/proofreader or something? if so, could it be that it's the house style for wherever you are? here we have to make sometimes arbitrary decisions so that our pubs are consistent with each other. but if it's just someone making the decision from a non-editorial standpoint, i agree that that sounds like a pain!

in other news, i am about to go into a meeting. i didn't plan well and am starving. i hope this meeting is SHORT.

Also in US business English, "amongst" is archaic and pretentious.

is it an editor/proofreader or something?

nope, just my boss. she must make some sort of change to every single page, otherwise she doesn't feel that she has "reviewed" it.

It's the kind of crap lawyers who can't write throw around in their shitty briefs* in an attempt to sound smarter than they are.

* I read shitty lawyer briefs for a living and let me tell you, some of these jokers wouldn't even come close to passing the community college paralegal writing class I teach pwith the mess they file.

Tell her she's being archaic and pretentious and let me know how it goes.

My favorite is when I reorganize the entire document according to Wednesday's whim, and then in the throes of Thursday she calls me in and says "I don't understand the organization of this document"

but...you were the one who suggested...and I just spent the entire day redoing the whole...and I ...but..

fuuuuuuuuuuuuu

one of my main problems with the executive branch is that i have to execute everyone else's orders

yeah amongst as a house style would be quite silly

nope, just my boss. she must make some sort of change to every single page, otherwise she doesn't feel that she has "reviewed" it.

OMG this was my old boss when redlining construction drawings. He was just incapable of not marking something up on every single sheet. There were times when it would just be him second-guessing himself on one tiny note over and over because he couldn't let it go without markups.

Just put a single mistake in on purpose so they'll correct it and leave everything else alone.

That is actually a strategy, and yes, it sorta works!

Z S, your boss sounds kind of like mine. ~sympathy~

We should get our bosses to work on a document together, kind of a co-review thing. They'll get stuck in a feedback loop of pointless edits and be stuck there until they retire, and in the meantime we can sneak our stuff through!

"I recommend that we rename the "Background" section the "Overview" section"
"Good idea, and perhaps we should also change the bullets from circles to diamonds?"
"Brilliant. I also want to have a discussion about the Draft watermark - shouldn't it be diagonal?"
"Yes, let's make the change immediately. And change the "Overview" section to "Summary" while we're at it."
"I agree. We'll rename the "Summary" as "Background", and then we should be ready to tackle page 2."

We should get our bosses to work on a document together, kind of a co-review thing. They'll get stuck in a feedback loop of pointless edits and be stuck there until they retire, and in the meantime we can sneak our stuff through!

I have seen this happen and it gets ugly. It doesn't end until one of the parties involved refuses to make further non-substantive changes. But then it gets ugly again when there's another doc to review and the person who got shut down gets revenge via petty, unnecessary vengeance edits.

Does it end with a big fist fight and both parties getting fired? If so, I still say we should try to make it happen.

Oh dear god I am totally this boss.

I don't know how to stop!

So YOU'RE the one!

Does it end with a big fist fight and both parties getting fired? If so, I still say we should try to make it happen.

No fist fight but two of the three got transferred to a place where they can't hurt anybody anymore and the third is probably out of here in Jan.

Quincy! You have to learn to trust your staff and your dirt impressions and let go. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

And if you don't trust your staff, you need to retrain them or get new staff.

dirt impressions? Don't trust Carl. ;)

But but but it is better *my* way!

OK I resolve not to be so bad about this. I don't do much editorial work these days, anyway.

ugh. dude in cube next to me always has these horrible telephone conversations. all i can hear is his angry, lecturing voice. 100% of his conversations are like this, even when it's about something mundane like "did you get the word doc" or something. i'm not a ball of sunshine, but he's so angry about everything in the world, and it's impossible to tune out.

dirt impressions? Don't trust Carl. ;)

Autocorrect! Ack!!!

Just gentle teasing :)

Our HR manager is an idiot.

this is not about my co-workers, but it's from an email that the building management company sent out to everyone in the building about proper waste disposal:

• Paper recycling bins are only to be used for paper intended to be discarded and recycled. These bins are not meant for storage and to ensure the safety of your documents, please do not stack files or papers next to the bins.

This is like people who store computer files in the computer trash. Or a former coworker who would delete emails to get them out of her inbox (bc our work had a size limit) and then go find them in deleted items when she wanted them.