Man Without A Plan

No, I have a plan... However, I don't have a work schedule for April. April will be here in 3 days. If I were to use deductive reasoning, I work on the 1st, but I couldn't definitively tell you that, since I don't have a fucking schedule! You know, I put stuff off every once in a while, but mostly the things I put off only end up inconveniencing myself. I'd give 3:1 odds that we're not going to have a schedule for April until April. A bunch of us were talking about this yesterday, and we decided that we really should just not show up for work on the 1st, since, you know, none of us are scheduled to work! The other tack we can take is, our work contract stipulates that any modification to our regular work schedule without 30 days prior notice will result in us being paid time and a half for those hours that were modified. So, I got to thinking... Since I have no schedule, I have to assume that I work no days that month. If they issue a schedule that has me working on days I wasn't previously scheduled (which would be every day I now work that month), I should be entitled to time and a half for every day within 30 days of that change!

The more I think about that, the more of a concrete argument I think I might actually have. It's spaghetti logic, but I'm having trouble arguing the other side of it. What can they say? "You should assume you're working the same rotation?" Any answer that has the word "assume" in it usually falls to pieces when attempting to make a legal stand.

If they attempt to pull out the "super seekrit" April schedule that the top brass had access to it shouldn't be too hard to point out that we're entitled to know what our work schedule is, since we're the ones working it!

Our director also managed to line himself up for another spanking the other day also. To truly appreciate this, you must know that our boss is "old school". He's also very pissed off about the fact that we voted in a union and now he can't exercise the power he wants to over our department. As a result he's been sort of taking jabs and fades at us to see what he can get away with.

Here's an example. I applied for a coordinator position in the office I work in. When I interviewed for the position, our manager pointed out that I'm a "little light" on dispatch experience for that position... And I agree.. I've only been dispatching for a little over 2 years.

Then three weeks later he announces that a person who works in crew planning, a department that has about at much to do with dispatch as ditch digging has to do with trucking, is one of the new coordinators. Here's the kicker.... She can't start until June because she doesn't have a dispatcher license! Ergo, she has zero dispatch experience. A hearty 'what the fuck' to that?

Anyway, his latest stunt was to send an email out threatening that he was going to withhold paying overtime unless we sent him our sick/vacation allotment forms. So, if you take a sick day and neglect to submit a form for it, or you fail to request vacation (which you'd already requested and been granted, by the way), he thinks he's not going to pay you overtime. Now, I KNOW this is a violation of our union contract at the least, but I think this is also against the law. The 'breaking the law' part might be a little grey, since airline workers are covered under the Railway Labor Act, which effectively strips you of all of your protection under the Federal Labor Law (and which is why almost everyone in the airline business is unionized). In any event, any attempt by him to actually execute this threat will meet with a barrage of grievances.

Big tall glasses of fun here at the old shop! The reason why I'm bitching about work is, well, I feel like it. I also don't have any poker content to offer at all. I've run into a serious time issue that is just now beginning to resolve itself. Perhaps if I can get the blessing of the Better Half, I'll partake in some evening PartyPoker goodness. I'm seriously toying with the idea of switching to Empire (HDouble, you still reading this?). Toying as in I'm going to do it.

It's about time to upgrade this computer of mine. Presently I'm working with an Athelon XP 1600+ (1.37GHz) with 512MB of memory. Certainly good enough to play poker with, but I think I want to get a little home network action going so that the wife can have a machine to work on and I have a few other projects around here that I'd like to do with multiple computers. I will likely have to do this a part at a time, and so I'll probably pick up the motherboard and processor first then get a new VGA card and a case later. Way I see it, I can pick up an ASUS A7N8X-X motherboard and an AMD XP2600 processor for around $140. Far as I can tell, I can stick my old PC2100 memory and my GeForce3 video card in this board and it should work smashingly. The next purchase will probably be an ATI Radeon 9600 board, which I have on good authority can be goosed up to 9600 Pro speeds for half the price of a legit Pro card. Even if this card doesn't allow me to overclock it, it still is a huge improvement over what I have.

Now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure I have PC2100 memory in my computer. I forgot what the model of my motherboard is and I'm at work, so I won't know until tomorrow... Grrr...

Guess I'll know tomorrow!