I am a Christian. I go to church each Sunday. I volunteer time with my church. I am in the choir. Yada yada.
This morning, my family and I got to church a bit early. I knew the choir was going to have some extra songs, songs we don't sing all the time, so I wanted to have some time to look over the songs, mark the pages, etc. My husband was a Eucharistic minister (that means he assists the priest in distributing the communion to the congregation), so he had some things to do before church started as well. My youngest wanted to be there early because she knew there would be an Easter Egg hunt afterwards, so she was anxious as well. Her best friend was with us, also interested in the Easter Egg hunt. She attends with us at least twice a month.
As I got my music ready, I watched the regulars wander in, greeting each other, chatting and introducing their visiting family. Pretty much the same as every week, except there were more visiting family members than normal. The priests came in, and they greeted the members, checked on various things that needed to be done, etc. Again, pretty much the same as every week. Then it changed.
The strangers started to show up. First, just a few. Well, we occasionally have visitors, and we always try to make them feel welcome. Sometimes they become regulars. Then, there were more, and then more. Soon, there were strangers wanting to sit in the choir area. "Sure", I told them, "you can sit with the choir, but we will expect you to sing with us," I said with just a touch of a light laugh. "Oh, no we had better find somewhere else, we don't know any of the songs." Gee, I thought, that is why we have song books.
More and more strangers are coming in. They are dashing around, looking for 'seven seats together' or 'seats close to the window.' Well, we only have but so many windows, it is a small church. The priests begin. The first part comes where the congregation is suppose to repond to what the priest has said. The response is obviously only being said by the regulars. The others are silent. Maybe they wre just caught off guard, trying to find the right page. Sure, that's it. The next part comes up. It is a standard, the same in every church I have ever been in. Again, only the regulars and their families say anything. This is going to be a long day.
Next song comes up. Good, it is an oldie but goody, everyone knows this song. No one even needs the book for this one. I look out over the congregation. The regulars have books in their hands, the strangers are digging in their purses for mints, or are staring off into space or are messing around with their cell phones.
The readers read from the Bible, again, mostly readings that are really well known, nothing obscure. The priest starts his homily. Welcoming the newcomers as well as the family members of the regulars. And eventually, he gets to it, the Twice a Year Christians. The ones who only show up twice a year, and only to churches that have Easter Egg hunts for the kids. He doesn't chastize though. He says that if you are only going to come once a year, this is the best Sunday to come. He is right. Easter is the one day that sort of wraps up the whole Christian message in one big ball.
It is sad that those people don't have the memories from childhood of singing those songs so many times that if there aren't enough books, they could hand theirs to the "strangers" and sign the songs from memory. Sad that they can't respond to the priest from memory without digging through book. Sad that they aren't familiar enough with the start time that they can come in and find a seat with their family without having to ask someone to find them enough seats together.
Mass progresses. Readings, prayers, etc. The priests then offer Christ's peace to all of us and we offer it back. Then we turn to each other and "Pass the Peace", which means we shake hands with anyone near us and offer them Christ's peace. Sometimes we have a short conversation, ask about each other's health. The "strangers" look hesitant, but the regulars smile and greet them anyway and ask them how they are, tell them how happy we are that they have chosen our little church today.
Then the real test comes. Our church is somewhat unique. Okay, not just somewhat unique, but really unique. The only one like it in the US. Our church started as an experiment between the Catholic Diocese of Richmond and the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia 30 years ago, to see whether it would be possible to have one church that served a congregation of both denominations. Not two separate congregations that shared a building. That is done in plenty of places. This is one congregation made up of people from two (well, more than two) different Christian denominations, and that is sanctioned by both dioceses.
We do everything together that deep conviction does not require that we do apart. Basically, the only thing we don't do together is share the Eucharist. We have two altars. We have two priests. When we get to the part of the Mass when it is time to consecrate the Eucharist, each priest goes to an altar, and they consecrate their own set of Eucharist (in unison speaking at the same time, nearly the same words, though some are different). Then, the Roman Catholics go to the Roman Catholic priest. The Episcopalians go to the Episcopalian priest. Because the Episcopalians, the Lutherans and the Methodists are in communion, if we anyone of those denominations, they can receive from the Episcopalian priest as well.
The priests stand and explain this process. All the Roman Catholics are to get up and gather on the side with the Catholic priest. All the other who are receiving are to get up and gather with the Episcopalian priest. The regulars are used to this. It is the same every week, but the strangers all suddenly look like deer caught in the headlights of a car - scared and motionless.
The choir starts the offetory song, as we reach the last verse, the regulars get us, and start to move to their side. The strangers mill around near their chairs. Some move a bit toward one or the other end of the room, but most just sort of wander around in a circle in the middle. It is going to be a big mess, again.
The consecration begins. Both priests doing their parts, the regulars responding at the appropriate times, the strangers shuffling their feet. The choir pipes in with the service music were it is needed. Then, the Eucharist begins. The regulars step up and demonstrate, some even guide some of the strangers. Some strangers just get in line and hope for the best. Eventually, everyone has gone through, except the choir (we are always last), we get to the refrain of the song (because the congregation can at least carry the refrain) and we quickly head to whichever priest is "ours". Then we return to finish up the song.
After Eucharist, the priests say a few more short prayers, make a few announcements (including information about the Egg hunt), and Mass is over. We sing the last song, and everyone bolts. I sit down in the choir area and watch the people leave. I wonder how many of those "Twice a years" will come back next week. Did we make them feel comfortable enough? Did they get anything from the homily? Did the readings touch a chord in them? Did the verses in the music reach their hearts? Did the candy in the plastic eggs at least sweeten their kids' hearts?
Who knows? Next week, Whit Sunday, traditionally has the lowest attendance of all weeks of the year, so I won't bother to even make a guess based on what I see next week. But, maybe the next week, one or two of those "strangers" will wander back in, and will find it easier to get a seat by that window. Maybe this time, they will go ahead and open the song book and sing part of the song with us, even if they don't really know the song (we don't care if you can sing well, just that you try). Maybe they will follow along and respond with the rest of us when the priest finishes his part. Maybe when the priests go to their sides to start the consecration, they won't just mill about in the middle, but will gravitate to one side or the other. Maybe, when we Pass the Peace, they will stretch out their hand and smile. Who knows, maybe a "Twice a year Christian" will become just a regular Christian.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
At Will Employment
"At Will Employment" sucks. Last summer, I interviewed with a local software company for what appeared to be the perfect position. It was a programming position with a company that has only one product (help desk software). The company appeared to be very progressive - fancy coffee machine in the break room, very casual clothing, ping pong table for the employees to use to recharge their brains. Unfortunately, after I interviewed, the interviewer called me and said that she was in the middle of writing me an offer letter when the "higher ups" had deferred the money for the position, and that while I was the first choice, it would be 4-6 months before the position would be filled.
So, I went back to the job search. Later that fall, after several months of setup for a different job, that required a security clearance, I lost the job at the last moment because my security clearance didn't come in time. It was their own fault because they waited until 10 days before the project was supposed to start before they turned in the paperwork, whereas, I had filled out my end of the paperwork over a month in advance. Anway, with no clearance in hand, they gave my job away to someone who already had a clearance and I was stuck starting my job search over again from scratch.
At this point, desparate for an income, I interviewed for a job as a receptionist in a dentist's office. The interviewer was concerned that I was overqualified, and therefore would leave as soon as something better came along.
I was caught in a no man's land. Where I live, nearly all IT jobs require a security clearance because nearly all IT jobs are related in one way or another to the government. Government jobs nearly always require security clearances. Without a security clearance, getting an IT job is nearly impossible. Jobs that are not connected with the government are for the most part adminsitrative jobs. You know, receptionist, typist, clerical assistants, adminsitrative assistants. And those jobs don't require a degree in computer science. So, unless a person has a security clearance, that person is stuck taking clerical posistions, but if a person has a degree, then when they apply for a clerical position, the interviewer immediately questions why they are "only" applying for a clerical position when they are so overqualified. The interviewers immediately assume there is something "wrong" with someone who would apply for a position so far below their qualifications.
So, I basically had to beg for the job as a frontdesk receptionsist. How humiliating. But they gave me the job, and I was doing a great job with it. How could I not? How hard was it to pull patient files, put them in order by appointment time, call tomorrow's patients to remind them to come in, and then to enter the visit into the computer, so that it would generate a bill and an insurance claim?
I was nearly through the two weeks of training when I got an email from the local programming company - their money came through. The programming position was funded, and I was still their first choice. Did I still want the position? Wow. What a position to be in. I would have to tell the dentist people that after begging for them to hire me, I was going to ditch them. I am not that kind of person.
I went to a lot of trouble to find them a replacement person; someone who had experience as a corpseman in the Navy. Then I met with the programming supervisor to discuss the position. Forty hours a week, repairing coding defects, searching for defects, that kind of thing. Sounded good to me. It was an entry level job, at below entry level wages, but since I had no enterprise level experience, I was okay with that. She agreed to have the acceptance letter sent to me that afternoon.
I started on December 17, 2007. In our first departmental meeting, I learned that we were trying to get version 8.0 ready to release. There was no official release date (drop dead date was March 1 because of a trade show), but the department manager was hoping for end of January, and therefore wanted everyone to work extra hours (after all, we were all salaried), to get it done on time. There were only about 380 defects, so surely that would be doable. And off we went to get our jobs done. I waited to have defects assigned to me (can't just pick a defect to work on, it had to be assigned, so that we knew that only one person was working on any specific defect).
Most of my original defects were really simple. A mispelled word, something bolded where it shouldn't be, that kind of thing. Easily fixed, gave me a chance to learn a bit of the over 800 ASP pages, and the over 5000 SQL stored procedures and tables in the projetcs.
Sounds good, right? Wrong. Each week, we'd have a developmental meeting. Each week, the department head would ask whether we thought we could be done with the defects by the next week. Each week, no one would say that they didn't think they could finish their assigned defects. Each week, I would find more defects while repairing the ones I had been assigned. Now, I am not saying I had immediate solutions for all the defects assigned to me. I didn't. But I had also told them up front that I didn't have a lot of ASP/SQL Server experience beyond classwork. But I do have some PHP and MySQL experience, and I felt sure that I would pick it up quickly. And I did. I was learning it very quickly - but I was also finding some very disturbing things as well. Variables that were being used to track ordinals that were using the data type "float" or worse yet "real". Uhm, no one counts with "reals". There were inconsistencies between the tables, the stored procedures and the ASP code in the sizes and the datatypes of the variables. I tried pointing these inconsistencies out, and I was told that "we inherited this code and have to just live with it." When I found situations were the validations that were being used were insufficient and that I had a better validation plan, I was told to only use it on the two files listed in my defect, and that the program would just ship with the bugs in place, and that they would only be fixed if a customer found them and complained.
I was confused and concerned, but I just continued to do what I was to to do. Then, came the big shock. On Feb 19, 2008, my supervisor called me to her office to tell me that things just weren't "working out", that this "wasn't an entry level position" and that she wasn't able to move me up to move difficult tasks, which she had hoped to be able to do. I was again confused. She had never given me anything more difficult, so how did she know that she couldn't move me up? And this isn't an entry level job? Then why was it paying below the minimum in the area for an entry level position and why was it not advertized as a mid-level position in the first place? Why did they hire me when I told them upfront that I wasn't a looking for a mid-level position, but was looking for an entry-level position? Then she came out with, "I have a special project for you to prove yourself." 34 special defects that would not be part of the 8.0 release, but which would be part of the 8.1 patch. She said there was no particular order in which they needed to be done and there was no time limit in place for completing them. She also said that I should feel free to interrupt her at any time if I needed to get her help. She said I should put the solutions in a specific folder, and she would look at them at the end of each day.
I began to work on the defects. I didn't ask for her help. In less than 2 weeks, I had completed 44% of the defects. Some of the defects had been on the defect list for 2 years. On the 29th of February, she called me back into her office, and fired me, saying again, that "things just weren't working out". She didn't say if she had even bothered to look at my solutions for those defects.
Yesterday, I had a conference call between myself, the HR person from this employer and the Virginia Employment Commission. Apparently, whenever someone applies for unemployment benefits, the VEC has to acertain whether or not the person was discharged for misconduct. The HR person agreed that I had not been discharged for misconduct. When the VEC investigator asked why I *had* been discharged, the responce was "at will employment". The VEC investigator wouldn't accept that as a reason. She asked if they were going to replace me. The HR person said no. So the VEC person asked if that was because there was no work, therefore it was a lay off situation. The HR person got a bit flustered and said, no that it was more like a reorganization of the department. That the department was going in a new direction and that my performance wasn't in that direction. And that they may hire someone, but if they did, it would be a part-time position.
So, basically, what she was saying was that they hired me as a temporary worker to clear defects in their code for their March 1 release. Once they got the 8.0 release ready for the drop dead date of March 1, then they no longer needed me, so since Feb 29 was the end of the pay period, they let me go. Their "reorganization" was to not need any temporary people until their next release. Their use of "at will" in the letters of acceptance gives them an out of the contract without having to give any real reason.
I recommend that people reconsider accepting contracts that include "at will" working unless you don't care about how long you will end up having the job. I also recommend that people consider seriously whether they want to accept positions with certain software companies in downtown Virginia Beach (also known as the Pembroke area of Virginia Beach. Of course, I can't reveal their name, but it shouldn't take too much investigation to figure out who they are.
So, I went back to the job search. Later that fall, after several months of setup for a different job, that required a security clearance, I lost the job at the last moment because my security clearance didn't come in time. It was their own fault because they waited until 10 days before the project was supposed to start before they turned in the paperwork, whereas, I had filled out my end of the paperwork over a month in advance. Anway, with no clearance in hand, they gave my job away to someone who already had a clearance and I was stuck starting my job search over again from scratch.
At this point, desparate for an income, I interviewed for a job as a receptionist in a dentist's office. The interviewer was concerned that I was overqualified, and therefore would leave as soon as something better came along.
I was caught in a no man's land. Where I live, nearly all IT jobs require a security clearance because nearly all IT jobs are related in one way or another to the government. Government jobs nearly always require security clearances. Without a security clearance, getting an IT job is nearly impossible. Jobs that are not connected with the government are for the most part adminsitrative jobs. You know, receptionist, typist, clerical assistants, adminsitrative assistants. And those jobs don't require a degree in computer science. So, unless a person has a security clearance, that person is stuck taking clerical posistions, but if a person has a degree, then when they apply for a clerical position, the interviewer immediately questions why they are "only" applying for a clerical position when they are so overqualified. The interviewers immediately assume there is something "wrong" with someone who would apply for a position so far below their qualifications.
So, I basically had to beg for the job as a frontdesk receptionsist. How humiliating. But they gave me the job, and I was doing a great job with it. How could I not? How hard was it to pull patient files, put them in order by appointment time, call tomorrow's patients to remind them to come in, and then to enter the visit into the computer, so that it would generate a bill and an insurance claim?
I was nearly through the two weeks of training when I got an email from the local programming company - their money came through. The programming position was funded, and I was still their first choice. Did I still want the position? Wow. What a position to be in. I would have to tell the dentist people that after begging for them to hire me, I was going to ditch them. I am not that kind of person.
I went to a lot of trouble to find them a replacement person; someone who had experience as a corpseman in the Navy. Then I met with the programming supervisor to discuss the position. Forty hours a week, repairing coding defects, searching for defects, that kind of thing. Sounded good to me. It was an entry level job, at below entry level wages, but since I had no enterprise level experience, I was okay with that. She agreed to have the acceptance letter sent to me that afternoon.
I started on December 17, 2007. In our first departmental meeting, I learned that we were trying to get version 8.0 ready to release. There was no official release date (drop dead date was March 1 because of a trade show), but the department manager was hoping for end of January, and therefore wanted everyone to work extra hours (after all, we were all salaried), to get it done on time. There were only about 380 defects, so surely that would be doable. And off we went to get our jobs done. I waited to have defects assigned to me (can't just pick a defect to work on, it had to be assigned, so that we knew that only one person was working on any specific defect).
Most of my original defects were really simple. A mispelled word, something bolded where it shouldn't be, that kind of thing. Easily fixed, gave me a chance to learn a bit of the over 800 ASP pages, and the over 5000 SQL stored procedures and tables in the projetcs.
Sounds good, right? Wrong. Each week, we'd have a developmental meeting. Each week, the department head would ask whether we thought we could be done with the defects by the next week. Each week, no one would say that they didn't think they could finish their assigned defects. Each week, I would find more defects while repairing the ones I had been assigned. Now, I am not saying I had immediate solutions for all the defects assigned to me. I didn't. But I had also told them up front that I didn't have a lot of ASP/SQL Server experience beyond classwork. But I do have some PHP and MySQL experience, and I felt sure that I would pick it up quickly. And I did. I was learning it very quickly - but I was also finding some very disturbing things as well. Variables that were being used to track ordinals that were using the data type "float" or worse yet "real". Uhm, no one counts with "reals". There were inconsistencies between the tables, the stored procedures and the ASP code in the sizes and the datatypes of the variables. I tried pointing these inconsistencies out, and I was told that "we inherited this code and have to just live with it." When I found situations were the validations that were being used were insufficient and that I had a better validation plan, I was told to only use it on the two files listed in my defect, and that the program would just ship with the bugs in place, and that they would only be fixed if a customer found them and complained.
I was confused and concerned, but I just continued to do what I was to to do. Then, came the big shock. On Feb 19, 2008, my supervisor called me to her office to tell me that things just weren't "working out", that this "wasn't an entry level position" and that she wasn't able to move me up to move difficult tasks, which she had hoped to be able to do. I was again confused. She had never given me anything more difficult, so how did she know that she couldn't move me up? And this isn't an entry level job? Then why was it paying below the minimum in the area for an entry level position and why was it not advertized as a mid-level position in the first place? Why did they hire me when I told them upfront that I wasn't a looking for a mid-level position, but was looking for an entry-level position? Then she came out with, "I have a special project for you to prove yourself." 34 special defects that would not be part of the 8.0 release, but which would be part of the 8.1 patch. She said there was no particular order in which they needed to be done and there was no time limit in place for completing them. She also said that I should feel free to interrupt her at any time if I needed to get her help. She said I should put the solutions in a specific folder, and she would look at them at the end of each day.
I began to work on the defects. I didn't ask for her help. In less than 2 weeks, I had completed 44% of the defects. Some of the defects had been on the defect list for 2 years. On the 29th of February, she called me back into her office, and fired me, saying again, that "things just weren't working out". She didn't say if she had even bothered to look at my solutions for those defects.
Yesterday, I had a conference call between myself, the HR person from this employer and the Virginia Employment Commission. Apparently, whenever someone applies for unemployment benefits, the VEC has to acertain whether or not the person was discharged for misconduct. The HR person agreed that I had not been discharged for misconduct. When the VEC investigator asked why I *had* been discharged, the responce was "at will employment". The VEC investigator wouldn't accept that as a reason. She asked if they were going to replace me. The HR person said no. So the VEC person asked if that was because there was no work, therefore it was a lay off situation. The HR person got a bit flustered and said, no that it was more like a reorganization of the department. That the department was going in a new direction and that my performance wasn't in that direction. And that they may hire someone, but if they did, it would be a part-time position.
So, basically, what she was saying was that they hired me as a temporary worker to clear defects in their code for their March 1 release. Once they got the 8.0 release ready for the drop dead date of March 1, then they no longer needed me, so since Feb 29 was the end of the pay period, they let me go. Their "reorganization" was to not need any temporary people until their next release. Their use of "at will" in the letters of acceptance gives them an out of the contract without having to give any real reason.
I recommend that people reconsider accepting contracts that include "at will" working unless you don't care about how long you will end up having the job. I also recommend that people consider seriously whether they want to accept positions with certain software companies in downtown Virginia Beach (also known as the Pembroke area of Virginia Beach. Of course, I can't reveal their name, but it shouldn't take too much investigation to figure out who they are.
Been a while
I know I said in my last posts that I was going to be posting at Geekend, and I have, but not as much as I thought I might. Instead, I have mostly spent my time in trying to change to a better job. Last I spoke about it, I was working for a non-profit organization. I was doing their techy stuff, in addition to the rest of the stuff associated with being the assistant program director. But, they lost their funding for my position, so I had no choice but to start looking for another job.
I did accept a job with a software company (which I have detailed in another blog, which I may move here), but what they presented to me as a permanent position was really only a temporary position designed to get their latest version ready for release on March 1. They let me go on Feb 29, because they no longer needed me. They claimed I was let go because things "just weren't working out" but they told the Virginia Employment Commission that they didn't intend to fill my position (and it had been a "new" position for me in the first place.) That sounds like it was created specifically for me to debug their product, doesn't it.
Anyway, I have decided to revive this blog for myself, and to use the other blog for my daughter's fiction writing site.
I did accept a job with a software company (which I have detailed in another blog, which I may move here), but what they presented to me as a permanent position was really only a temporary position designed to get their latest version ready for release on March 1. They let me go on Feb 29, because they no longer needed me. They claimed I was let go because things "just weren't working out" but they told the Virginia Employment Commission that they didn't intend to fill my position (and it had been a "new" position for me in the first place.) That sounds like it was created specifically for me to debug their product, doesn't it.
Anyway, I have decided to revive this blog for myself, and to use the other blog for my daughter's fiction writing site.
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