Rude awakening

There we were, cruising along having just been assured the project would last into the next year without much changing and then BOOM, how do you feel about going from 60 hours to 40 for the foreseeable future?

The answer for a lot of folks was, "Not good."

Anyway, yesterday the firm sent somebody in at about 5 p.m. to let us know that we were now capped at 40 hours, effective immediately, please plan accordingly and, oh, by the way, you have to work five days a week.

Well, some of us already had 20 hours for the week by the time they told us, meaning we were supposed to do six-hour days for the rest of the week, or something like that. Well, fuck it, I got sick. I didn't go in today because of my horrible case of the I-have-to-find-another-gig flu. Two short days and a weekend off, and I hope to be on a heavy overtime project on Monday. Just another jolting reminder that they don't call us temps for nothing. And, of course, further proof that Rule No. 2 always applies. Take the overtime while they offer it, baby, because it's going away at some point.

What? Another temp conversation? Oh, yeah.

As I pointed out previously, the sick leave policy of the agency I work for, largely driven by District law, is not helpful if you work overtime, as this project has in the past. The agency took advantage of a loophole in the law and set a policy that allows sick days only to bring you up to 40 hours for the week, which is not very helpful if you routinely work more than 40 hours per week. On the other hand, such a policy can -- and will -- lead some people to work fewer hours per week so they can take advantage of the sick days, even under the agency's restrictive policy.

Now that this project has been cut to 40 hours per week, the sick days are back in play with no sacrifice for the temps. Guess what is happening? Yeah, for those of you slow on the uptake, I give you this actual temp conversation:

Temp 1: Now that we can use sick days, I think I'm going to be sick Friday.
Temp 2: You know, you can be sick two days in a row before you have to have a doctor's note.
Temp 1: I know. I have to find out how many sick days I have before I decide how many days I'm going to be sick this week.

Yeah, folks are planning to burn their sick days, and then bail for a better project. Shocker. This might not have happened if the agency and/or client had allowed people to work 40 hours in 4 days, but under the circumstances, it makes total sense for people with stored-up sick days to use them. After all, if you leave the agency, you lose the sick days. I am predicting a mini-epidemic of unspecified illness to hit this project, starting Friday.

They coulda kissed us first . . .

. . . . . . because the client on my project just fucked us really hard. The grapevine has it that the agency sent everyone an email at their work email address at 6 pm Friday, believing that no one would get it until Monday morning when everybody came back to work, since everyone is gone by 6 on Fridays. Somebody was there to get it and spread the word. I guess somebody at the agency considered this possibility and decided that outrage delayed was still outrage, so they then sent an email to our personal email addresses at 5 pm today that reads:

Good evening,
Thank you for your continued work with [the agency I work for] and [the firm that has hired the agency I work for]! Effective Monday, May 18th, the review will be limited to a 40 hour work week. Overtime will no longer be permitted, and the review center will be open from 9:00am to 6:00pm.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns, and have a great weekend!
Best,
[Some employees of the agency I work for.]

Hard to say where to begin with the lovely missive. I always, of course, love the opening with a "thanks, guys!" with an exclamation point. The very next sentence, of course, cuts out 20 hours of overtime (why, yes, that is a 43 percent pay cut, thank you very much). The next sentence then establishes that we will still have to work five days a week to get 40 hours, meaning we will have to travel at peak rush hour traffic both ways. Thanks for that, and for the 13 percent increase in Metro costs, since rush hour rates are higher. My commute will be longer because of increased traffic, and it will cost more, but at least we'll be making a lot less money! What's not to love?

Finally, having dropped an entire bucket of turds in our punchbowl, they tell us to "have a great weekend!" Yes, with an exclamation point. A four-sentence email telling us we will no longer be making enough to live in this area, and two of those sentences end in exclamation points.

Does anyone wonder why workplace shootings occur?