My Brother just got fired at his part time job and the whole situation is so bizarre I can't believe it.
Description of events heard from my brother, can't tell if there is more going on in the background that I don't know about. This is the information I was told -
Brother (18) has a part time job where he was called during the middle of his shift to talk to HR. HR asked about a comment on a social media post made by a coworker (they also go to the same school), and asked why he made it. The comment was 'count your days'. He said it was an inside joke and showed that the coworker even liked the comment last night. HR said its a harmful comment and that because of the zero tolerance policy they have to let him go. He works at an 'At will' state.
More background: When prodded about why the coworker might have reported him (I think that's the most likely) Brother swears that even up until this morning coworker was friendly and joking with him all day. He swears that there was no fights/arguments and he is as confused as we are.
Of course, Ik that he is not getting this job back and that's not the point of the post. I am genuinely perplexed and want to understand a few things -

1. Can HR fire anybody for comments? So often we comment stuff like 'watch out' or 'be careful' on friends post. What constitutes a proper investigation to understand the context or are they not liable to to even investigate? I guess I am appalled that they can hear allegations from one person (whoever it might have came from) and then fire someone without any written termination letter within 5 minutes.
   
2. Will this show up on his employment records?
   

Please give me all your knowledge. Good or bad.

My Brother just got fired at his part time job and the whole situation is so bizarre I can't believe it.
Description of events heard from my brother, can't tell if there is more going on in the background that I don't know about. This is the information I was told -
Brother (18) has a part time job where he was called during the middle of his shift to talk to HR. HR asked about a comment on a social media post made by a coworker (they also go to the same school), and asked why he made it. The comment was 'count your days'. He said it was an inside joke and showed that the coworker even liked the comment last night. HR said its a harmful comment and that because of the zero tolerance policy they have to let him go. He works at an 'At will' state.
More background: When prodded about why the coworker might have reported him (I think that's the most likely) Brother swears that even up until this morning coworker was friendly and joking with him all day. He swears that there was no fights/arguments and he is as confused as we are.
Of course, Ik that he is not getting this job back and that's not the point of the post. I am genuinely perplexed and want to understand a few things -

1. Can HR fire anybody for comments? So often we comment stuff like 'watch out' or 'be careful' on friends post. What constitutes a proper investigation to understand the context or are they not liable to to even investigate? I guess I am appalled that they can hear allegations from one person (whoever it might have came from) and then fire someone without any written termination letter within 5 minutes.
   
2. Will this show up on his employment records?
   

Please give me all your knowledge. Good or bad.

My husband and I have applied for our first Family Visa a week ago. We're using an immigration lawyer and they sent us a list of things that we need to gather for the visa. My concern is regarding what they said we should provide as proof of our relationship. Everything else like financial proof, letter from my landlord, tenancy agreement, letter from my work etc. we've done, but by looking at what others have provided, I'm just worried that the relationship proof we provided may not be considered enough.
Amongst the things are letters from family and friends to prove that we're in a genuine, subsisting relationship together with their IDs attached and about 20 photos of us together in different places and with family and friends in the pictures. We gathered all of this and timestamped all the pictures with locations and a little explanation about each. We've traveled quite a bit in the past 3 years to meet with each other and have been doing as much as we could to be together for as long as we could, but most of the plane tickets are individual, so not together.
The lawyer didn't say to include messages or call logs or plane tickets of our travels. He's scheduled for his BIO on June 5th so I'm just thinking is there a risk of being rejected or them asking for further proof if we don't include call logs, messages or travel bookings?
It's the 5th time that we're apart now and I want him here with me as soon as possible as all this being apart is starting to have an impact on our mental health
Any advice would be helpful. Thanks

About a year ago i was terminated from Amazon on what i thought was wrongful termination. I contacted a lawyer and was told there was nothing i could do but perhaps file for workers comp and they gave me the whole “your job took a toll on your body you can be compensated” talk. I reluctantly gave them my info and e-signed some documents (regretfully now) left it at that.
They then called back and i did not answer but their voicemail said “if i was still interested to call back” and well I did not call back for i was not interested.
Fast forward many months later i started receiving letters in the mail about a deposition and QME appointments. I reached out to “my lawyers” and wouldn’t receive a call back from their receptionist. I left voicemails, found their email on their site and emailed them all about withdrawing me from whatever it was they had submitted me in.
Radio silence. I figured it went away but then i received yet another deposition letter. I contacted the firm again and finally someone called me back and i explained to them i wanted to drop the claim. They tried to convince me to not drop it but i didn’t budge. I followed up with a text message (so i had proof) saying i wanted to drop the claim. No response to the text, I figured it finally went away
I have received yet ANOTHER letter in the mail about another QME appointment THREE MONTHS after contact with the lawyer and now the letter claims failure to appear will result in a $500 fee.
$500 fee to who? Why should I even ask, of course it’s for me.
How the heck do i make this go away? Can someone please help me!
Thanks in advance.

Where do I begin. For the purpose of this post, I will use fictious names and locations as it is ongoing, and out of respect (even though she doesn't deserve any)
My name is Daniel. I am 35 years old, and i am dying. I have a disease called systemic sclerosis. I am currently on a supplemental disability plan, until I get approved for SSI (social Security). Until then, my income is about 4K a month. I own a home but after child support and bills, NOT INCLUDING gas, food, haircuts, medical appointments, and or emergencies like my fridge just broke. (which i never go out) I am left with $260 that has to last me a month. I also have three children who I have to take care of half the time per the 50/50 agreement.
Recently, I found out my oldest, (who is 13) is not biologically mine. I decided to look into it as I had concerns for a while since my divorce as her cheating was very rampant. I also had caught her in 2017 with a man in my house, which is what prompted the divorce. But FL being a no fault state, doesn't matter. I also had to pay child support since the beginning and WHILE LEGALLY Married since 2010 because she had applied for financial support like food stamps and government assistance then. I know what your thinking. Why didnt you stop it then? I tried. You cant take yourself off child support. I also never grew up with a father and wanted that two-parent household. I don't run from responsibilities, like he did. Its how I was raised. Anyways, I married her, tried to do the right thing, she lied numerous times. she never worked, and I worked 90 plus hours a week. To look into her cheating, was impossible at the time as I was never home. and to busy providing for my family.
fast forward to now. My disease started to become worse and over three years; it didn't reveal itself until last year fully to actually pinpoint what this was. for instance, I had in 2019 pain behind my eyes and horrible headaches to the point that I thought I had MS. following year, I had trouble swallowing for 3 months. next year itching in the skin for three months. But prior, I had visited various doctors to see what was going on, each time a flare up then would last 3 to four months, which again, when you don't understand what's going on, you need to take time off to go see doctors, run tests, but this illness was and still is very elusive. with that being said I had 5 jobs since its first flare up till last year to continue to support my family and to pay child support. as of last year. I'm having trouble moving on certain days, breathing and acid reflux and muscle atrophy. (disease progression) especially when this is going on, it worsens everything as this is flared up. I was working under the table to try and make ends meet as I was paying child support still. I should add that the child support with 50/50 custody was $1029 for three kids cause I was making six figures at the time of divorce in 2018. Last year however, I couldn't work anymore, and filed for disability.
In june of last year, I had asked Susan, to get the children school supplies, (which she never does) as I was still paying at the time $1029 in child support. She said she didnt have the money despite now making 70k and her new BF living with her and is working whom she cheated on me with. With me working under the table, I bought them clothes, haircuts, school supplies (ive done every year) but then, I noticed she went on vacation to puerto rico and got a giant leg tattoo. At the time, I had already known what I had, and I asked myself why the heck am I doing this? So i turned to an attorney to get it modified. Again, this is June 20th to be exact of last year. My lawyer, stated that this was only going to be a 90 day turn around for the temporary modification then we will go for the final.
Since then, I have gone for a DNA test. I had to know. I am dying. I wanted to know. And you may judge me for this. but i have filed for disablement for paternity, meaning I am removing myself from the birth certificate. However, in the state of Florida, a mother can deny this and so can the courts. before you judge me, I have many reasons none of which have to do with him other then his mental disability (Aspergers) This illness, as days go by takes more and more from me. As previously aforementioned, I am left with 250 a month. I cannot go get a drs appointment pay for groceries or start planning my funeral which I will start making payments on soon. He also eats three times the amount that we all collectively do (Not his fault) but I have paid enough both mentally and financially. He also has trouble communicating as my suspicions is, that he was born of incest (gross) which is why I was 'chosen' to be his father at the time. Before you ask how do you know? Lets just say she had an uncle 'leave' during that time.
anyways, in February, I had the temporary modification hearing for child support and needless to say it was a circus. My doctor was subpoenaed to be there by my attorneys request to better my argument, even though I felt we didn't need her, she advised me to have my doctor there. Well, he attorney attacked my doctor and me for an hour and 40 mins when the court case was only supposed to go for an hour. He said "you saw another dr Max so and so and they said it was all in your head" (again I had flare ups on a illness that hadnt revealed itself correctly since last year). So there argument was that I was doctor seeking to avoid child support. After I have paid for 13 years never missing a payment. Her lawyer also targeted people who are living with me. Now I'll admit that I said they were friends which is true but how else can I pay for my attorney? Cant work, cant sell drugs, cant rob a bank? So they want to take there income into consideration. BS. She also hired a private investigator to watch me exercise outside and stated that because I can exercise, I can work..... Ok. Where's the 23 hours of the rest of the day watching me in pain. or when do you have me on video of a flare up from this terminal illness? (that's what I wanted to say)
Although I was granted the temporary modification, of $209, I left the court thinking wow, this woman can cheat, commit paternity fraud, not give two craps about our children, live with her mom in a section 8 home, and here I am doing whatever I can and I've done nothing wrong but be lied to and this is how my government, my country treats me? No wonder men my age dont have children this is insane. The paternity issue wasn't even brought up they said that this isnt the place for this and that the disestablishment will be another trial for those wondering. My lawyer only spoke for 5 mins. Asking her about her income cause thats the only thing that has changed since 2018 since she didnt work at the time. Other than that, it was an attack on me and my disease arguing my ability to work.
after leaving that, I didnt eat for 96 hours. I have since been crying nonstop. Compilating suicide. I am already heart broken about my son not being mine. Sure does a terminal illness make me said, no question everyday. But a life wasted on another? Cause I decided to be a man and take up responsibility? thats soul crushing. And to say "well, there is a big chance the courts will deny your request' thats BS. If i go to prison because I was accused of a robbery for 13 years, and DNA evidence proves I wasnt there, I get out of jail and can sue. This is no different. If anything, DNA evidence needs to be more of a factor in family law than in almost every court of law if not as equally important. My bad for not investigating her infidelity not only in the beginning but also in the end. How about not being a POS. sorry rant over
gets better. Her mom and dad smoke in the section 8 house, kids reek of cigarette smoke and marijuana, all day. they dont take showers there, they were hand me down clothes, they live in the garage shared with there mother, that isn't air conditioned. and he makes only a few thousand less than I do a month. She stated in court that she pays her mom $500 in rent which is BS, she is only doing that now so that she makes herself look bad. I know she is doing pills, like oxy and what not. Id love to prove it.
after the temp hearing, in april, I had to go to court to contest my drivers license suspension as I hadn't paid child support since, august of last year. again, there is no way, I can pay my bills, feed my children, go to the doctor, pay my lawyer to end all of this BS and pay the current child support amount. and again, this final hearing is still not set yet. So they intercepted my tax return, even though the temporary modification was approved, the final is what gets it retro backed to the date of filing, so they took, a much needed 5500 tax return from me. I needed that cause one of the issues I failed to mention as well, hurricane Ian has destroyed my home and I'm still going through that process too. not to mention I am on payment plans with Mayo clinic and other various medical facilities. (no one cares) but the interest that accrues, makes it impossible to catch up. also, Florida department of rev is overstepping I feel, and asking for medical info to be sent to them as well as updated doctors letters to be sent saying that I am still on disability.
a few weeks ago, I got an email from my lawyer having a withdrawal notice from her lawyer. in the withdrawal, he stated that he cannot represent her, due to something she may have withheld or lied about (more or less wasn't worded like that but you can tell). In feb court appearance they never produced the PI report, or videos, they had medical info they shouldn't have had, and they had very outlandish comments about my lifestyle. So my lawyer filed immediately a motion to compel. meaning, we want to see everything you have on my client. this was filed almost immediately after court appearance on feb 20th. Susan has failed to provide any updated info requested by my attorney so on june 18th, we have that upcoming hearing.
in the mean time, I have sent my lawyer, a very heavily requested topics, such as "where did they get my medical records, if those were lies, what are the consequences if any"? What did exercising have to do with any of this despite various drs saying he has to or he will get worse.
I know wat you must be thinking, what about your oldest, how can you do that to him. Please listen. This woman has taken everything from me. And i mean everything but the roof over my head. I am seeing a therapist to help with the suicidal thoughts. it isnt enough. the reality of it is, I chose to be loyal and it bit me in the butt. This disease will rob me of everything, my teeth will fall out ( I had 5 cavities last time I went to the dentist) I haven't had a cavity since I was 30 and even then I was suspicious. And I am brushing 5 time s a day to save them. My skin is tightening, and my arms and muscles are wasting. I will literally be left with nothing. My organs will also start to harden, and I will have to start getting around the clock care.
I forgot to mention they (child support) recently, sent a letter to SSI (social security) saying that they would garnish my SSI before I even got it, totaling $1029. the incorrect amount. I sent this to my lawyer and she is looking into it. But it shows that child support will overstep and breaks every law or freedom you may think you have. I DO take care of my children. if they need a haircut i do it, school supplies clothes, anything I do it. And I do it, cause she wont. What I want to leave you with, is that woman can be dead beats too. Child support was designed to have woman off of government subsidized programs like section 8 food stamps and what not. Also to make the man pay for their children man or woman I should say, I know this. I am not running from my obligation. I just want Susan, to have to pay for what's she's done to me and the kids.
I would like to hear your thoughts on this, please comment and share, all names are fake, but everything else is unfortunately real. I know it was wordy, but I wanted to provide as much backstory as possible. And please. Respect my descions. When you are end of life, I hope someone would be kind enough to respect yours. You may not agree and that's ok, but I am asking you to respect them. Thank you for reading.

I recently finished reading Cicero's Orator. It is a rather wide-ranging treatise that Cicero dedicated to his young friend, Marcus Brutus, in which he lays out his personal vision of the ideal orator. He touches on many subjects, even prose rhythm, but I thought his brief remarks about the contemporary pronunciation of Latin were the most interesting. Since I know how interested readers of this subreddit are in Latin pronunciation, I thought I'd share them here with my translations. Enjoy!
* * *
Hiatus:
In the first passage, Cicero contrasts the use of hiatus or, from the opposite perspective, the prevalence of syaloepha, the blending of vowels, in Greek and Latin. When he talks about a "collision of vowels," he means a word ending with a vowel placed next to a word beginning with one, both of which were pronounced.

(151-2) in ea est crebra ista vocum concursio, quam magna ex parte ut vitiosam fugit Demosthenes. sed Graeci viderint; nobis ne si cupiamus quidem distrahere voces conceditur. indicant orationes illae ipsae horridulae Catonis, indicant omnes poetae...

"That collision of vowels frequently appears in it [sc. Plato's epitaphios], which Demosthenes generally avoids as a defect. But let the Greeks see for themselves; we [i.e. we Latin-speakers] are not permitted to pull vowels apart even if we want to. It's illustrated by those rough speeches of Cato themselves, and all the poets..."
* * *
Omission of final s and phonetic change:
Cicero also notes the frequent omission of the final s in various words. The examples he cites below are all in the ablative plural. Multimodis in particular is known from Plautus, and even Lucretius uses it (1.895), so we know that the middle i, derived from multis, was short. I wonder whether that also the case in the other examples.
Cicero regards the phonetic change of due- to be- (as in duellum to bellum) as a similar phenomenon. His remarks about the contraction of words with -xill- are not in fact correct, because those words are in fact diminuitives (vexillum, orig. "a little cloth," from velum, for instance).

153 sed quid ego vocales? sine vocalibus saepe brevitatis causa contrahebant, ut ita dicerent: 'multi' modis, in vas' argenteis, palm' et crinibus, tecti' fractis'. quid vero licentius quam quod hominum etiam nomina contrahebant, quo essent aptiora? nam ut 'duellum' bellum et 'duis' bis, sic Duellium eum qui Poenos classe devicit Bellium nominaverunt, cum superiores appellati essent semper Duelli, quin etiam verba saepe contrahuntur non usus causa sed aurium: quo modo enim vester Axilla Ala factus est nisi is fuga litterae vastioris? quam litteram etiam e 'maxillis' et 'taxillis' et 'vexillo' et 'pauxillo' consuetudo elegans Latini sermonis evellit.

"But why should I go on about vowels? Even without vowels they [earlier generations] often contracted words for the sake of brevity, so they'd say: multi' modis ['in many ways'], in vas' argenteis ['in silver vessels'], palm' et crinibus ['with palms and locks'], and tecti' fractis ['broken roofs/buildings']. But what is more impertinent that the fact they even contracted people's names to make them more convenient? Just as the called war duellum bellum ['war'] and duis bis ['twice'], so they named the Duellius who defeated the Carthaginian fleet Bellius, although his forebears had always been called Duelli. But words are even often contracted not for the sake of practicality but for the ears: how did your [sc. Brutus'] friend Axilla become Ala if not because of the disappearance of a rather broad letter? The same letter the elegant custom of the Latin language removed from maxillae [i.e. malae, 'jaws']and taxilli [i.e. tali, 'dice'] and vexillum [i.e., velum, 'curtain'] and pauxillus [i.e., paulus, 'little']."
* * *
Contractions:

154 lubenter etiam copulando verba iungebant, ut 'sodes' pro 'si audes', 'sis' pro 'si vis'; iam in uno 'capsis' tria verba sunt, 'ain' pro 'aisne', 'nequire' pro 'non quire', 'malle' pro 'magis velle', 'nolle' pro 'non velle', 'dein' etiam saepe et 'exin' pro 'deinde' et pro 'exinde' dicimus. quid, illud non olet unde sit, quod dicitur 'cum illis', 'cum' autem 'nobis' non dicitur, sed 'nobiscum'? quia si ita diceretur, obscenius concurrerent litterae, ut etiam modo, nisi 'autem' interposuissem, concurrissent. ex eo est 'mecum' et 'tecum', non 'cum me' et 'cum te', ut esset simile illis 'vobiscum' atque 'nobiscum'

"The also liked to combine words by joining them together, like sodes ['please'] for si audes [lit. 'if you dare'], sis [also 'please'] for si vis ['if you will'], and just in capsis ['take please' = cap si vis] there are even three words; ain ['you say so?'] for aisne, nequire [cannot] for non quire, malle ['prefer'] for magis velle ['want more'], nolle ['refuse, not want'] for non velle ['not want'], and we even often say dein and exin for deinde and exinde ['then', 'thence']. And isn't it easy to spot why, although one says cum illis ['with those'], one does not say cum ['with'] together with nobis ['us']? That's because, if one were to say that, the letters would run together obscenely [i.e. cum nobis would produce the sound cunno, 'cunt'], just as they would have run together if I had not put 'together with' [in the Latin, the word autem] between them. That gives rise to mecum and tecum ['with me', 'with you'], not cum me and cum te, so as to be like those vobiscum and nobiscum ['with you (pl.)', 'with us']."
* * *
Syncopated forms:
It seems that, at least in Cicero's time, the syncopated forms of the perfect stem of verbs were conventional, as well as the shortened from of the perfect 3rd person plural in (-ere for -erunt). I wonder whether the form with -erunt made a comeback as Latin was learned by non-native speakers or perhaps from literary Latin. Certain Romance forms (e.g. Spanish amaron, Italian amarono, French aimèrent from amarunt) seem to descend from it.

157 quid quod sic loqui 'nosse, iudicasse' vetant, 'novisse' iubent et 'iudicavisse'? quasi vero nesciamus in hoc genere et plenum verbum recte dici et imminutum usitate. itaque utrunque Terentius: 'eho, tu, cognatum tuum non noras?' post idem: 'Stilponem, inquam, noveras'. sient plenum est, sint imminutum; licet utare utroque. ergo ibidem: 'quam cara sint quae post carendo intellegunt, quamque attinendi magni dominatus sient.' nec vero reprehenderim 'scripsere alii rem' et 'scripserunt' esse verius sentio, sed consuetudini auribus indulgenti lubenter obsequor.

"How about the way they [sc. proponents of analogy] forbid us to say nosse ['to know'] and iudicasse ['to have judged'] but order us to say novisse and iudicavisse? As if we didn't know in this instance that it is correct to say the full word and conventional to say the shortened one. Thus Terence uses both: 'whoa, you didn't recognize [noras] your kinsman?' And the same author a little bit later: 'You recognized [noveras] Stilpo, I said.' Sient ['they may be'] is the full form, sint the shortened one. You're allowed to use both. Hence, in the same place: 'Later, they realize how dear they are [sint] from lacking them, and how great dominions must be [sient] retained.' Nor would I criticize scripsere alii rem ['others wrote the subject'], and I know that scripserunt ['they wrote'] is more accurate, but I gladly follow convention, which indulges the ears."
* * *
Hidden quantity and aspiration:
Cicero reveals that the i in the prefix in- is long before s and f, and similarly the o in con-. The introduction of aspirated consonants (such as the ch in pulcher) also was a change recent enough that Cicero avoided it until later in life.

159-60 quid vero hoc elegantius, quod non fit natura, sed quodam instituto: 'indoctus' dicimus brevi prima littera, 'insanus' producta, 'inhumanus' brevi, 'infelix' longa; et, ne multis, quibus in verbis eae primae litterae sunt quae in 'sapiente' atque 'felice', producte dicitur <'in'>, in ceteris omnibus breviter; itemque 'conposuit, consuevit', 'concrepuit, confecit'. consule veritatem: reprehendet; refer ad auris: probabunt. quaere cur: ita se dicent iuvari. voluptati autem aurium morigerari debet oratio, quin ego ipse, cum scirem ita maiores locutos ut nusquam nisi in vocali aspiratione uterentur, Ioquebar sic ut 'pulcros, Cetegos, triumpos, Cartaginem' dicerem; aliquando, idque sero, convicio aurium cum extorta mihi veritas esset, usum loquendi populo concessi, scientiam mihi reservavi.

"What's more elegant that this, which isn't the product of nature but some kind of teaching: we say indoctus ['unlearned'] with the first letter short, but insanus ['insane'] with it long; inhumanus ['uncultivated'] short, infelix ['unfortunate'] long; and, to be brief, in words in which the first letters are those in sapiens and felix, in is pronounced long; in all others, short. Likewise: conposuit, consuevit, concrepuit, confecit ['it settled, became accustomed, made a noise, completed']. Consult Truth: she will criticize it; refer the matter to the ears: they will approve. Ask why: they will say they like it that way. Speech should gratify the pleasure of the ears. I myself, since I knew that our ancestors spoke in such a way that they never used aspiration [i.e. h] except with vowels, I used to say pulcros ['handsome men'], Cetegos ['Cethegi'], triumpos ['triumphs'], Cartaginem ['Carthage']; but at some point--and late, at that--the truth [i.e., the 'correct' pronunciation] was wrested from me by the abuse of my ears and I yielded my manner of speaking to the people, though I kept my knowledge for myself."
* * *
Final s again:
And last but not least, Cicero notes the omission of final s in the Latin of an earlier generation. Evidently, it was fairly common to drop terminal s in general, but in contrast to the examples with which we began (like multimodis), the omission occurred in single words, not in one of two in the same number and case.

161 quin etiam, quod iam subrusticum videtur, olim autem politius, eorum verborum, quorum eaedem erant postremae duae litterae quae sunt in 'optumus', postremam litteram detrahebant, nisi vocalis insequebatur. ita non erat ea offensio in versibus quam nunc fugiunt poetae novi. sic enim loquebamur: 'qui est omnibu' princeps', non 'omnibus princeps', et 'vita illa dignu' locoque', non 'dignus'...

"Indeed--and this seems rather boorish now, but once refined--they clipped the last letter of those words that had the same two final letters as optimus ['best'], unless a vowel followed. Thus, it wasn't a faux-pas in verse, which now the new poets avoid. We used to speak like this: qui est omnibu' princeps ['who is foremost of all'], not omnibus princeps, and vita illa dignu' locoque ['worthy of that life and station'], not dignus..."

Hi,
I’m applying for my skilled worker dependent visa very soon.
My husband will be moving into a new rented apartment on 31st May. We’ve got a letter from the estate agent stating that I am okay to live with him in the house once my visa is approved and I pass right to rent checks and that the house will not be overcrowded etc. We’ve also got this added as a special clause in the original tenancy agreement so we’re good on that front.
I’ll be making my application before the 31st of May.
Our question is - since he has yet to move into the new house, we obviously don’t have any council tax / utility bills on his name for the house, which I know should ideally be added to our application.
In this case do we just write this as a note in our cover letter or should he compile 6 months of council tax + utility bills of his current rented accommodation? (I will not be living in that property at all and he’s moving out on 31st May as well)
Kindly advice. Thank you

Hi,
I’m applying for my skilled worker dependent visa very soon.
My husband will be moving into a new rented apartment on 31st May. We’ve got a letter from the estate agent stating that I am okay to live with him in the house once my visa is approved and I pass right to rent checks and that the house will not be overcrowded etc. We’ve also got this added as a special clause in the original tenancy agreement so we’re good on that front.
I’ll be making my application before the 31st of May.
Our question is - since he has yet to move into the new house, we obviously don’t have any council tax / utility bills on his name for the house, which I know should ideally be added to our application.
In this case do we just write this as a note in our cover letter or should he compile 6 months of council tax + utility bills of his current rented accommodation? (I will not be living in that property at all and he’s moving out on 31st May as well)
Kindly advice. Thank you

Hi, I moved out of a rented property in September 2022. The landlord has just sent a message requesting that we pay a bill of £500 for communal hot water costs - we thought we’d paid all outstanding bills.
The property was a leasehold flat in England, with communal hot water that was billed by the management agent. Our tenancy agreement stated that we were responsible for covering the utilities including hot water. When we moved into the property we never signed a contract for the communal hot water. All of the bills were issued to the landlord c/o ourselves. We paid all of the bills that we received.
In April 2022, we received a letter from the management agent stating that they were increasing the charges on the hot water. These charges were to be applied from 3rd March 2022 - 31st March 2023. The management agent said after this the charges would be recalculated thereafter. It was a bit questionable that they increased this retrospectively for the month of March 2022, but the management agent didn't understand our concerns. From this date we received bills at the new rate and paid them every quarter.
In September 2022, when moving out we received a bill from the landlord that he referred to as “final heating bill”. This bill was also charged at the rate we were informed about in April.
We thought this was the end of everything. However, today we have received a message from the landlord asking us to pay £500 covering the cost of how water from 3rd March 2022 to when we moved out. We had already paid this bill. It seems that after we moved out and paid the final bill, the management agent decided to re-review the heat rates for the period 3rd March 2022 - 31st March 2023, and increase the rates again. The bill we have had from the landlord covers the difference in cost of the new rates and the rates we were informed about.
We’re told the management agent has tried to contact us about this a few times, but we’ve received no contact from them - they had our emails as we can still login to the account. They have now given us until 23rd May to pay this bill - this seems unfair for such a large amount.
Where do we stand with this legally? It seems very dubious that they can change the rate of the heat energy after we have consumed it. As we did not sign a heat supply agreement, is it the landlord, who is the leaseholder, that is responsible for these charges? The tenancy agreement states that we are responsible, but the landlord also told us this was the final bill.

Hey all, hope you're doing good. Feeling a little stressed about a recent situation since I filed for early termination end of April with support from my PO and a few letters of recommendation from past POs.
Last night I was riding home on my motorcycle with my girlfriend after getting dinner and a group of riders sped past me in the city heading towards the freeway. I didn't think much about it until maybe a minute or two later when I got pulled over still in city limits and was given a city code infraction citation for a loud exhaust.
I wasn't speeding or doing anything dumb as I'm a new rider and had my girlfriend on the back, so my best guess is that the cop thought we were part of the group earlier that sped through the city onto the freeway and decided to give me a ticket since the others were gone already.
Normally I feel like this wouldn't be an issue, just pay the fine or replace the exhaust and reach out to the prosecutor to get it dismissed -- Wouldn't even effect insurance.
But I'm just a little stressed since I've had no issues or even traffic tickets on probation up till now, and it's right after I've applied for early release and everything seemed like it was going good.
Am I just stressing for no reason? I've already submitted a LE contact form for my PO and planned on calling him tomorrow to ask about it, as well as the city prosecutor to see if I could get it dismissed by ordering a stock exhaust and putting it on.
Thank you in advance for any help / insights on this! Hopefully it's nothing and I'm just stressing for no reason.

I’m Super Embarrassed. Yesterday I got a letter from the court that I have been fined 800 Euros for defrauding Agentur für Arbeit and will also pay for court costs. This happened because I received some payment of about 2K when I lost my job sometime last year. I got a new job within 2 weeks after my employment termination. I honestly thought the money was for the two weeks I had been out of employment and not the whole month. Also, when I got the new role, my employer informed me they'd inform the employment agency. Since my German is poor, I went to the agency with a translator, it could be I missed the fact that I needed to inform them when I got a new role or some missed translation. Agentur für Arbeit reached out asking me to refund the sum I received and I'm ok with that since I didn't actually use it. I actually want to get this done and over with. I currently don't have legal insurance. How should I handle it? Suggestions are welcome. And more importantly, can this affect my current job?

Una breve teoria del tutto $BBBY $GME $IEP
TLDR: RC ha sviluppato un piano nascosto e ben congegnato per utilizzare l'ecosistema Web3 con l'ambizioso obiettivo di costruire una rete complessa di rivenditori al dettaglio online e fisici al fine di rivoluzionare l'esperienza del consumatore prevenendo l'oligarchia della fine del XX / inizio del XXI secolo dal trasferire le loro pratiche di corruzione poiché l’ambiente Web3, se utilizzato correttamente, respingerà intrinsecamente i metodi machiavellici ma rigidi della mafia del mercato. In tal modo RC contribuirà a definire le prime iterazioni di una transizione sociale e tecnologica così profonda che sarà presto intesa come una nuova era dell’uomo, distinta dal passato prossimo e unica per tutta la storia umana. ———————————————-
✅ Molto tempo fa, in condizioni di mercato lontane, un giovane imprenditore canadese di nome Ryan Cohen diede uno sguardo attento al panorama digitale dominato da Amazon per scoprire uno spazio digitale sottoservito se non completamente non rappresentato in quello di un mercato online che teoricamente potrebbe sposa l'esperienza del servizio clienti in negozio con la comodità dello shopping digitale.
✅ Laddove la maggior parte della vendita al dettaglio online dell'inizio del 21° secolo competeva quasi esclusivamente sul prezzo, semplicemente introducendo la mano invisibile del capitalismo sul web2, e pochi altri sfruttavano la nicchia dei prodotti unici/artigianali consentendo margini maggiori, Ryan Cohen ha visto che nessuno di questi le aziende stavano superando lo spartiacque impersonale dello schermo del computer per personalizzare l'esperienza, deliziare il cliente e, come affermato in precedenza, sposare essenzialmente il fascino del rivenditore a conduzione familiare del passato con l'efficienza di un'esperienza digitale ottimizzata.
✅ Quale segmento migliore della categoria Animali Domestici per colmare il divario digitale. Dopo i bambini, la categoria degli animali domestici è pensata per un approccio orientato al cliente. Se Amazon ti contattasse con una nota personalizzata per commemorare l’acquisto di una batteria, patiresti immediatamente una crisi esistenziale. Ma fiori per il compleanno del tuo animale domestico, lettere di condoglianze dopo la perdita del tuo migliore amico, un team di assistenza clienti che ha tenuto registri meticolosi e ti ha parlato come un cliente stimato piuttosto che un semplice numero d'ordine, insieme a un impegno chiaro nel catalogare ogni individuo transazione ed ecco le caratteristiche di un negozio all'angolo digitale. Aggiungete a ciò una generosa politica di restituzione e l'impegno a consentire ai rappresentanti del servizio clienti di utilizzare la meticolosa tenuta dei registri in modo da far sentire ogni cliente come un membro della famiglia Chewy e avrete il connubio perfetto tra Main Street e Silicon Valley. RC capì implicitamente che umanizzare l’esperienza di acquisto digitale, normalmente senz’anima, non solo avrebbe facilitato una straordinaria fidelizzazione dei clienti, ma avrebbe allo stesso tempo favorito una cultura di fiducia attraverso una relazione simbiotica tra il rappresentante del servizio clienti e il consumatore costruita sul principio del piacere reciproco.
✅ I venture capitalist erano nel migliore dei casi scettici, nel peggiore dei casi sprezzanti. Il concetto richiederebbe un’attenzione maniacale ai dettagli, una continuità del messaggio quasi perfetta dall’alto verso il basso, dipendenti ben formati, un posto di lavoro ben organizzato e arricchente, offerte salariali competitive ecc… Ma soprattutto, se RC in qualche modo dovesse costruirlo, nel momento in cui inizieranno ad arrivare in massa Chewy incontrerebbe il grande filtro web2, Amazon e il suo attacco su più fronti contro chiunque si avvicini a una quota di mercato significativa. Un attacco che sfrutta le vendite allo scoperto illegali, l’annullamento della vera scoperta dei prezzi, la manipolazione dei media, l’infiltrazione aziendale e la chiusura di un sistema normativo compromesso.
✅ Conosciamo tutti la storia, Larry Cheng, con il suo approccio asimmetrico alla valutazione delle opportunità, è intervenuto con il capitale iniziale che ha dato a Ryan Cohen le risorse per costruire l'infrastruttura del piacere. Cohen si è trovato faccia a faccia e, con la pura volontà di forza, è riuscito a passare attraverso il grande filtro dell'Amazzonia. Ma nel processo fu costretto a confrontarsi con una sorta di rete istituzionale centralizzata così ossessionata dal mantenimento del potere e del controllo che si potrebbe essere inclini a intenderla come la parte inferiore strettamente intrecciata del subconscio collettivo o, meglio ancora, dell’ego collettivo. L’ego deve sopravvivere, temere la sua forza trainante e quindi l’incessante consolidamento del potere e delle risorse come mezzo per aumentare le probabilità di sopravvivenza delle oligarchie alla fine crea una macchina così grande che nessun individuo può rallentarla dall’interno.
✅ Ryan Cohen ha trovato un difetto intrinseco in questa macchina autosufficiente, nel senso che mentre effettivamente manteneva il dominio e il controllo a breve termine, la sua natura ingombrante la rendeva destinata a soffocare la concorrenza, indebolire l'impulso all'ingegno tra il pubblico in generale, soffocare pari opportunità e alimentano inavvertitamente le fiamme della discordia sociale attraverso la disuguaglianza dei redditi e il collasso economico ciclico. Queste fiamme minaccerebbero inevitabilmente l’oligarchia stessa e le élite, per quanto disprezzino le masse, richiedono un certo grado di conformità e passività per perpetuare il loro potere.
✅ Nella sua essenza il sistema era autodistruttivo, nel peggiore dei casi diffondeva tossicità in tutto il mondo in modi sia sottili che palesi. E così, dopo aver raccolto miliardi dalla vendita della sua partecipazione in Chewy, RC si imbarcò in un progetto così fantastico che non poteva osare rivelarlo ad alcuni dei suoi più stretti confidenti poiché le parti mobili erano tali che la testa non poteva sapere cosa fosse il cuore. fare, e viceversa. Un progetto volto a ottimizzare un ambiente digitale inospitale al colosso centralizzato.
✅ E quindi, sia da un punto di vista tecnologico che sociale, era in corso una grande corsa, anche se la maggior parte, compresi molti membri dell'oligarchia, erano sordi al suo segnale iniziale, quindi continuarono semplicemente ad accumulare il peso del capitale dirottato, il peso ciò li avrebbe ironicamente rallentati una volta che si fossero resi conto che la corsa era iniziata. Questo è stato lo sprint inaugurale aperto solo agli imprenditori più lungimiranti. Presto sarebbe seguito l'evento aperto sotto forma della grande migrazione al Web3.
✅ Primo passo, acquistare una partecipazione di controllo in una vendita al dettaglio di mattoni e malta criminalmente per eccesso di cortocircuito con due caratteristiche chiave. Una nostalgia radicata nel cuore di generazioni e uno spazio perfettamente situato per guidare la migrazione al Web3. Gaming, dove gli NFT avrebbero preso piede prima di diventare un punto chiave nel tessuto stesso della società.
✅ Lo short squeeze di GameStop del 2021 è stato un momento di svolta non solo nella storia del mercato, ma anche come perfetto presagio delle implicazioni sociali del sismico cambiamento digitale all'orizzonte. Nei primi WSB, Superstonk e subs oltre, abbiamo visto la coalescenza dei precisi elementi necessari per creare un consenso organico così potente e adattivo da rappresentare una sorta di precursore analogico della rivoluzione digitale caratterizzata dal più completo ed efficiente sistema di decentralizzazione delega di autorità sempre disponibile per l’uomo, per ordini di grandezza. Quale modo migliore per creare un controllo e un equilibrio per le strutture oligarchiche sempre più obsolete e i loro monopoli di disinformazione che si limitano ad arricchire pochi a scapito di molti se non una macchina per la costruzione del consenso che richiede verità, trasparenza e cooperazione contro il potere corruttore.
✅ Ma, come se fosse stato un segnale, l'ego collettivo non poteva tollerare l'ondata di paura limbica cosmica dell'ignoto causata da un evento così inaspettato e travolgente che la loro risposta istintiva fu essenzialmente quella di rompere il contratto sociale in pieno giorno. e sfidare i contadini a cercare di fermarli. Ai loro occhi questa era una dimostrazione di potere assoluto, attraverso la lente della storia sarà ricordata come una follia nata dalla disperazione. Perché è stato qui che hanno commesso il loro errore fatale. Hanno mostrato la guarigione del loro Achille.
✅ Ricorrendo a una criminalità così sfacciata potrebbero aver guadagnato un po' di tempo, ma hanno perso la loro risorsa più grande, l'illusione di onnipotenza attentamente elaborata. Non solo potevano essere battuti nel loro stesso gioco, ma erano così impreparati che i titani dell'industria diventarono semplici mortali in un batter d'occhio.
✅ Per quanto mi riguarda, gli ultimi tre anni hanno poco a che fare con il prezzo delle azioni del GME e tutto a che fare con un piano in rapido sviluppo che coinvolge un numero di attori chiave che portano tutti un patrimonio di know-how ed esperienza rilevanti e altamente specializzati sia nella vendita al dettaglio che nei moderni meccanismi del mercato, insieme a un disprezzo generale per il casinò di mercato ispirato a Madoff, Griffin perpetuato che continua a lasciare un percorso di distruzione sulla sua scia. Un sentiero ricoperto di cenere da cui ora ha cominciato a rimbombare una Fenice.
✅ Solo Ryan Cohen sarebbe così audace da aumentare il livello di difficoltà di questo progetto a 11 non solo tracciando il percorso verso Web3 tramite GME utilizzando gli stessi strumenti di delega, responsabilizzazione, cooperazione e integrità che alla fine costruiranno i templi digitali del domani, decide, in un inno alla giustizia poetica nella sua forma più raffinata, di resuscitare i marchi familiari un tempo amati di un'era in declino, la cui scomparsa è stata il risultato diretto, o almeno facilitato da, BCG, Citadel, Dark Pool, Jeff Bezos. Nancy Pelosi, macchina degli hedge fund Vulture. Una macchina così ossessionata dalla propria crescita da non aver mai considerato la possibilità che sarebbe stata troppo ingombrante per passare attraverso la porta modesta e democratica del Web3. Una piccola porta verso una distesa illimitata. Il panorama aziendale dell'esperienza Web3 sarà intrinsecamente rivoluzionario in quanto faciliterà naturalmente i movimenti rivoluzionari di tutte le forme e dimensioni. Ciò è in contrasto con le strutture di potere centralizzate della storia che intrinsecamente soffocavano la rivoluzione finché la volontà del popolo non traboccava in una violenta protesta. Facilitare e persino incoraggiare i movimenti rivoluzionari pacifici costituirà forse la caratteristica più importante di Web3 poiché nella pace digitale accelereremo il risveglio spirituale collettivo.
✅ Il CEO di Overstock Jonathen Johnson ha gettato le basi con il suo editoriale su Linkedin del 2020 prevedendo, o forse sostenendo, l'emergere del modello di cooperazione aziendale supportato dalla blockchain basato sul principio giapponese di Keiretsu, un concetto in cui varie aziende con vari gradi di interesse competitivo , formano una rete cooperativa per condividere risorse e manodopera accuratamente selezionate, ciascuna selezionata per le sue caratteristiche reciprocamente vantaggiose senza invadere i vantaggi proprietari e/o i segreti commerciali dei singoli partecipanti. Laddove il tradizionale Keiretsu giapponese si basava sulla fiducia implicita sostenuta da un’enfasi culturale sull’integrità rispetto alla concorrenza spietata, il Keiretsu Web3 sarà protetto tramite la tecnologia blockchain che consente lo scambio di informazioni selezionate attraverso una rete sicura. La blockchain proteggerà contemporaneamente le informazioni proprietarie aziendali e la proprietà intellettuale sensibile, eliminando così la necessità di fiducia cieca. A mio parere non è una coincidenza che Overstock sia un attore chiave nell'accordo BBBY, soprattutto considerando la loro storia unica nella lotta contro la macchina di Bezos.
✅ Carl Icahn, il leggendario attivista, trovò in Ryan Cohen un successore con una visione così avvincente e con un grande piano che incorpora così tante parti in movimento che avrebbe richiesto una ricchezza di esperienza, intelletto e completa segretezza insieme a un set di palle grandi abbastanza da generare una spinta gravitazionale all'interno dei testicoli, una sorta di sistema binario a sfera.
✅ Carl odia i bulli, molto, odia i bulli ma odia i ragazzi che lasciano che i bulli li maltrattano ancora di più. Vuoi che il bullismo finisca, non abbassare la testa e tremare di paura sperando che non si preoccupino di un'anima timida. Hai appena garantito che le tue peggiori paure ti seguiranno. Dai un pugno in faccia a quel figlio di puttana, se devi subire un pestaggio temporaneo, allora prendilo, alzati, asciugati e colpiscilo di nuovo prima che si sfaldi. Domani sarai dolorante, il tuo corpo farà male ma la tua anima sarà intatta. La carne guarisce, l'anima o si nasconde o si libra in volo. Combatti sempre e la tua anima ricompenserà dieci volte il tuo coraggio. Carl vuole sferrare un ultimo pugno e questo taglio superiore sarà il colpo mortale che ha aspettato di sferrare per tutta la sua carriera. Carl ha fatto carriera combattendo i bulli della vecchia guardia e, anche se ha abbastanza punti per arrivare alla vittoria, Carl è il tipo di persona che arriva al 15° round KO.
✅ Brett Icahn è un attore chiave qui. In poche parole, il mercato Web3, come immaginato da Ryan Cohen, faciliterà la costruzione del consenso tra una serie di comunità diverse, a volte sovrapposte, consentendo a queste comunità di monetizzare i propri sforzi senza dover fare affidamento su un’infrastruttura centralizzata per facilitare lo scambio di beni e servizi. per il capitale. Inoltre Web3 creerà un universo in continua espansione di sforzi creativi il cui valore sarà determinato da un'applicazione leggermente evoluta dei principi standard della domanda e dell'offerta.
✅ L'ambiente digitale del Web3 faciliterà anche un ambiente fisico del 21° secolo che sminuirà le file infinite di scaffali riforniti concentrandosi su offerte di stock semplificate per fare spazio alle esperienze di acquisto AR in negozio fornendo agli sviluppatori di prodotti una miriade di opzioni esplorare approcci innovativi e in continua evoluzione al marketing, fornendo così al cliente informazioni preziose e conoscenze del prodotto per facilitare un processo di acquisto altamente informato. Oltre all’AR ci saranno una serie di tecnologie complementari in negozio che delizieranno il cliente in modi troppo vari per essere previsti. Ma se l'ultimo grande vantaggio competitivo della vendita al dettaglio è l'acquisto istantaneo in negozio, allora l'AR non porta semplicemente l'esperienza online nel negozio sacrificando l'acquisto istantaneo?
✅ Entra Ovidio. Invito tutti a cercare su Google il progetto Ovid di Newell, il loro ambizioso progetto di catena di fornitura OmniChamnel, in lavorazione da oltre due anni e mirato a creare una rete di distribuzione estesa ed altamente efficiente per garantire il ritiro in negozio lo stesso giorno. Due punti da considerare. Primo, sono disposto a scommettere che Project Ovid non punta solo alla spedizione nello stesso giorno entro un'ampia finestra di spedizione (4-6 ore dopo l'ordine), ma piuttosto si tratterà di un sistema che consegnerà un prodotto AR selezionato entro 15-30 minuti di acquisto. Come lo farà? Keiretsu ovviamente. ( Flexport è il partner logistico perfetto per questa impresa)
✅ L'unica cosa su cui le aziende concorrenti collaboreranno naturalmente è lo stoccaggio dei prodotti e la spedizione consolidata per aumentare la vicinanza dei prodotti al negozio, accelerare i tempi di consegna e aumentare la gamma di opzioni di ritiro in negozio per servire esponenzialmente più clienti, ad esempio ordinare online presso Teddy.com e ritiralo in uno qualsiasi dei negozi partecipanti, sicuramente uno di loro sarà nelle immediate vicinanze. Per facilitare un rapido ritiro in negozio, la condivisione dello spazio di magazzino sia in negozio che tramite una rete di centri di distribuzione consentirà ai rivenditori di garantire che ogni prodotto venduto tramite AR o qualsiasi altro mezzo virtuale sia in negozio o, nella migliore delle ipotesi, a poche miglia di distanza.
✅ La seconda cosa, e l'ho già menzionata in precedenza ma penso che meriti di essere ripetuta, è ciò che non posso fare a meno di vedere come un enorme uovo di Pasqua nel nome del progetto di fornitura Omnichannel di Newell, Ovid. Questo è un riferimento al grande poeta Ovidio e in particolare alla sua opera epica intitolata Metamorfosi. Questo pezzo di letteratura altamente ambizioso non può nemmeno essere vagamente legato all'idea di una navigazione efficiente poiché questa poesia è una meditazione sulla storia epocale dell'uomo vista attraverso le epoche distinte che sfidano le epoche (Oro, Acciaio ecc...), epoche con distinte caratteristiche che aiutano a spiegare la complessa interazione tra adattamento individuale e progressi umani collettivi. I progressi contemporanei nelle varie epoche sono, in un certo senso, guidati dalle macrocondizioni dell'epoca specifica, ma nel tempo l'ingegno dell'uomo crea scoperte tecnologiche che alla fine facilitano l'emergere di nuove macrocondizioni che a loro volta alterano le dinamiche governative, sociopolitiche e interpersonali in modo profondamente che diventino gli ingredienti per il prossimo Grande Balzo in Avanti. Una nuova era dell'uomo. Perché cazzo dovrebbero intitolare un progetto di fornitura omnicanale con un argomento così grandioso?
✅ Se Ovidio fosse vivo oggi sarebbe costretto a contemplare l'alba del Web3, un'era che verrà a gettare un'eclissi sulle prime iterazioni del Web come lo intendiamo attualmente. Un’eclissi così opaca che ogni sviluppo tecnologico del XX e dell’inizio del XXI secolo che lo precederà sarà visto attraverso la lente storica come semplicemente un periodo di sviluppo delle infrastrutture di base per un’evoluzione digitale così ampia da segnare l’inizio della vera era digitale dell’uomo. Un’epoca che modificherà profondamente i governi, le istituzioni, l’autonomia dell’individuo e quindi il panorama socio-politico, soffocando essenzialmente il polmone d’acciaio delle entità centralizzate egoistiche i cui meccanismi di controllo perderanno il loro più grande vantaggio, la capacità di controllare la diffusione dell’informazione poiché deve ora viaggiare attraverso una rete di complessità cosciente sempre crescente.
✅ Quindi, se questa tesi si rivela corretta, ne consegue naturalmente che il cavallo di Troia di Ryan Cohen nell'iterazione ottimale di Web3 sarà un mercato incentrato sul cliente, potenziato dall'AR e supportato dalla catena di fornitura omnicanale, che mostrerà proprio la categoria che si rivolge agli aspetti più fondamentali e sacri delle esperienze umane. Bambini.
✅ Portare la vita in questo mondo e allevare il bambino attraverso il labirinto di un mondo in continua evoluzione è un processo che richiede uno yin-yang di incertezza e stanchezza che ogni nuovo genitore deve scoprire. Quello Yin può essere Teddy, il rivenditore Web3 che soddisfa le esigenze individuali della tua famiglia in modo così completo e con tale attenzione ai dettagli e al piacere che ti accorgi di vederlo come la roccia su cui puoi riposare la testa stanca e trovare soluzioni a un problema. serie di sfide in continua espansione.
✅ Teddy non avrà bisogno dell'impronta di vendita al dettaglio, l'AR può essere facilmente implementata in casa come in negozio (anche se il negozio dovrà offrire funzionalità esclusive per rimanere rilevante). Immagina una futura mamma che indossa occhiali AR all'avanguardia che pedala tra la culla, la carta da parati e le opzioni del fasciatoio nella futura stanza del suo piccolo. Questa esperienza diventerà tradizione quasi istantaneamente. Teddy può facilitare una fusione inversa di Baby, forzare la chiusura dei cortometraggi, utilizzare questi marchi commerciali mondiali e spalancare la porta all'esperienza di vendita al dettaglio Web3 online / in negozio / Keiretsu / AR che esploderà sulla scia della valanga della stampa libera questa mossa farà scalpore. A parte l'ubiquità dei punti vendita, Teddy avrà una serie di partner di vendita al dettaglio per facilitare il ritiro in negozio lo stesso giorno, mentre molti clienti andranno bene con la spedizione standard in due o tre giorni. L'enfasi sarà deliziare mamma, papà e bambino in modi che non dimenticheranno mai.
✅ Se c'è qualcuno adatto a farcela è Ryan Cohen e non c'è nessun secondo vicino. Lanciando con successo un'esperienza Teddy che non solo implementa il meglio di ciò che offre Chewy ma migliora sia il servizio clienti che i componenti logistici, Ryan Cohen mostrerà al mondo il vantaggio intrinseco dell'esperienza di acquisto Web3. Con una prova di concetto innegabile, le richieste di partnership e collaborazione da parte di aziende di tutto il mondo arriveranno a frotte.
✅ Ma prima di costruire nuove alleanze, RC innalzerà il Jolly Roger commemorativo, segnalando la resurrezione di quei marchi familiari del passato, ciascuno vittima della macchina corta e distorta. Bed Bath e oltre tramite Overstock, Blockbuster, Sears, Toys R Us, ovviamente Buy Buy Baby e probabilmente molti altri rimasti per rivenditori morti dei nostri nostalgici tempi passati. Queste attività saranno riorganizzate per soddisfare le esigenze dell’era moderna e la loro ascesa simbolica rappresenterà un colpo di cannone sull’arco dell’oligarchia delle SS, segnalando la fine del loro regno di terrore. Mentre i criminali ondeggiano nei mari spietati, salutiamo per l'ultima volta il cuore stesso del marciume sistemico al centro dell'era postindustriale mentre affondano lentamente negli abissi dell'infamia, la loro ultima visione è quella dell'ascesa trionfante del marchi che avevano lasciato per morti emergono da tombe improvvisate mentre la nave che un tempo dominava i mari cade impotente sotto la marea.
—————————————-
Epilogo
È importante notare che, sebbene le speculazioni sulla strategia di Ryan Cohen discusse in questo post possano o meno realizzarsi, imploro sinceramente ogni membro di questa comunità di considerare seriamente l'inevitabile passaggio sociale al Web3 e le numerose opportunità che abbondano. Sebbene le comunità di investimento si siano dimostrate abili nel mantenere un discreto grado di continuità in mezzo all’incertezza, al FUD, alla manipolazione dei media e contro un nemico spietato e potente, resta il fatto che il nostro successo rimane intrinsecamente legato a elementi fuori dal nostro controllo, al successo o al fallimento di le aziende in cui investiamo.
La forza di questa comunità si trova nella sua vasta condivisione di risorse, nella sua vasta gamma di competenze individuali ed esperienze uniche, in un senso di gioia e umorismo ovunque e in un incentivo finanziario per alimentare le fiamme dell'innovazione e dell'esplorazione. In particolare dopo Moass, possiamo formare senza soluzione di continuità una varietà di iniziative di crowdsourcing a scopo di lucro che si rivolgono a una moltitudine di settori, soprattutto considerando il nostro dito collettivo sul polso della vendita al dettaglio online, del mercato NFT in evoluzione e molto, molto altro ancora.

In California I was fired three times from the same company while out on disability. I didn’t return to work while out on disability but received three separate termination letters all months apart with different dates. My supervisor was actually the one who recommended that I go out due to some traumatic events so that I wouldn’t lose my job since I didn’t qualify for fmla. While out on disability the company texted me nonstop asking when I was returning. They would occasionally say my fmla was denied and I would reply that I know, I’m on disability not fmla. They never once provided me with a form they needed. My doctor filled out all the forms they faxed to her and she has to confirmations that they went through. I reached out to them asking if they had everything they needed from me and they did not reply. My first termination stated I went AWOL. I asked them to explain this further and stated the above info to them. My second termination two months later was for not turning in required documents, which I had asked for and never got a response to. I even called and was told someone would call back. A week later no one called back so I called again. Same thing. The third termination I didn’t even bother to read because why at this point. My doctor suggested suing them for wrongful termination because the constant contacting and texting me truly did worsen my symptoms from stress and anxiety and caused me to be out longer. Is this even worth filing a lawsuit over? I’m sure the company has great attorneys on hand. I don’t even know if I could win. Just looking for opinions or suggestions I guess.
Eta: I could probably fight to get my job back but I feel it would be so toxic against me at this point that I don’t want to go back even though I loved working there and enjoyed the work I did. I was also complimented on my work and had never received a write up or any negative feedback. I was good at my job and I love working in general and feeling productive. So being out in disability hasn’t been a fun vacation and I was looking forward to going back. I’ve never in my life been fired before so I have no idea how to explain this in job interviews.

Im in England and essentially I was inside a betting shop on the terminal doing the awful low rtp slots while I waited for my horse to race.
I did a spin and the feature triggered however it crashed. Didn’t award me anything but the machine did say total won after first spin was £2.60 and it had 7 more spins. I went to the desk he looked puzzled and said oh it’s only saying on the system you won £1 and he gave it me BUT I received a letter this morning saying I have pay £1 that I wasn’t entitled to plus fees or go to court.
The thing is I was entitled to it well extra. If the 7 remaining spins hit £0 then I’m still owed £1.40 but since their system isn’t seeing that i asked them to check the camera above me but they said the cabling is broken for 3 cameras and that’s one of them.
Where do I stand
Oh the fees are an additional £53.16

So, here is part 2 of my entitled employee story. We left off with discovering Sally’s retaliation of giving me trash as a Christmas gift after her latest write-up.
So, the next several weeks, I am noticing more problems, but here’s some of the highlights.

1. Ever since we had issues of the office’s checks going randomly missing, Sally had apparently decided to just stop throwing any envelope away when opening the mail. She would supposedly search the envelopes/paperwork & then keep the envelopes with the paperwork. So, instead of doing her job better, she would decide to just stop doing the job at all. After all, you can’t get in trouble for screwing it up if you aren’t doing it, right? However, this resulted in items getting left with the paperwork (which sometimes wouldn’t get touched for several weeks due to being busy) that had needed to be collected or addressed right away.
   
2. Sally’s careless mistakes continued at about the same rate (average of 2 to 3 a week). She would put deposit slips/emails with the wrong office’s report, put one office’s mail in another office’s bin, put one office’s funding papers in another office’s bin, put one office’s bills in the folder for their correspondence & vice versa, put one office’s bills in the folder for another office’s bills, put the new month’s bills in the folder without taking out the old month’s bills so they would get mixed up. I could go on & on.
   
3. Sally would still ask for help on things she shouldn’t need help on anymore, ‘cause I had helped her many times on items exactly like it in the 2 years she’s worked here. I mean, the whole point of asking for help when learning new things on a job is so you can take the input you’re given & use it to get better at the job so you don’t have to ask for help anymore. I mean, what kind of office works by their employees constantly needing to be walked through everything every day? Sally would even ask for help on things no one would need to ask for help on. For example, she asked me, “An office took a deposit to the bank without showing it on their report. How do I write that up in the letter to fax to them?” Um, exactly what you just said to me. Or another time, she asks how long she should wait before calling an office back. Well, how long do you think you should give them? Just use your good judgment. You don’t need help with that! Again, you’ve been here 2 years!
   

On Jan 26, I take the Dec bills, correspondence faxes, & timesheets out of their folders to scan them into the computer. Now, one thing the bills should always have on them are the check number used to pay for this purchase & the date it was paid. The offices themselves are supposed to write this on there, but they don’t always, which is why it is our job to write it on there if it’s missing. I had noticed when I scanned Nov’s bills around Nov 30 that a lot of Sally’s offices don’t have that info written on them. So, I explained to her what needed to be written on every bill/receipt. I now flip through the Dec & Jan bills of her offices really quick to check them. There are quite a few of them with no info written down on them. There’s strike one for noncompliance.
Another task we would do several days a week (that’s Sally’s responsibility) is to check the bank accounts online. She is to look at the bank balances & report any low balances to Greg (or me if Greg isn’t there). She is then to look at the transactions in order to see if anything looks fraudulent. Since we are a loan company, check fraud is very common for us. So, we look at the checks for anything funny-looking, & we look to see if there are any auto debits (like when you use your bank account online to pay for a bill) that would tell us if someone got hold of our bank account info.
On Jan 30, at 1:15 p.m., I asked if any of the bank balances were low (Greg was out of town for a few days). Sally said she had forgotten to check the bank accounts that morning. Weird, ‘cause you had to check the Dallas office to make sure the money we sent them had shown up. How did you get the login sheet out to look in their bank account but then forget about checking all the bank accounts? This just further cemented in my mind that she was NOT checking these bank accounts the way she should. I was 100% positive that all she does when logging into these bank accounts is checking the balances to give to Greg but then never checks the transactions. I know this ‘cause, 1) I’ve observed Sally only logging in to write down the balances & then logging back out (she had some flimsy excuse ready when I asked her about it), 2) there have been auto debits that appeared in bank accounts that we didn’t find for weeks until I happened to see it for some reason & guess what? She never pointed those out to us, & 3) Sally hadn’t bothered to check the bank account balances since Greg was out of town, so clearly she only felt the need to check the balances. There’s strike two for noncompliance.
& even more bad mistakes or decisions:

1. At the end of Jan, we discovered that Sally had mailed the employees’ W2s to the managers’ home addresses instead of to the offices to distribute to their employees!
   
2. We had an office that moved locations to right across the street, so the only thing that changed in their address was their street number (12 Main Street instead of 11 Main Street). I explained this to Sally & gave her an updated list of the office’s addresses. 3 weeks later, we get a call from that office saying that mail we send to them keeps going to their landlord’s house. I check the address labels Sally had created for herself. Sure enough, it had the wrong address on them. I go to grab the lease, & at the top is where the tenant’s new address is listed. & all the way at the bottom of the page in the paragraph titled “RENT” where it lists where to send the rent is the landlord’s home address. & that’s the address Sally had chosen to be the new office’s address on her address labels.
   
3. Sally hadn’t been faxing the offices to ask for bills/receipts that never made it to us.
   
4. I used the last towel on a roll of paper towels, so I went to the cabinets to grab another. We were out. Sally is in charge of keeping track of supplies that need ordering, so I go to Sally & say we’re completely out of paper towels, we need to order some. Sally response: “No one ever tells me when they grab the last roll so I know when to order them.” Um, excuse me, since when is it our job to tell you to do your job? It’s your responsibility to keep track of supplies. You should be checking the level of paper towels, toilet paper, Kleenex, etc., to see when you need to order them.
   

So, I knew she needed a second warning write up for carelessness cause of the numerous mistakes since the first warning write up in the middle of Dec, & I would be giving Sally a first warning write up for negligence cause of her not asking the offices for missing bills & not writing the info on the bills I had told her to do at the end of Nov. However, it was only a few days from Feb, which was the time for performance reviews. So, rather than doing a write up now & then in a week or so doing a performance review that was one of the worst performance reviews I’ve ever heard of, I decided to just do it in one fell swoop. You know, just get it all out of the way with one bad conversation, one bad day, & then both of us can hopefully put it behind us & move on.
I decided to do the performance review & write ups on Feb 5 (Monday). It went much smoother ‘cause Greg was there, so Sally couldn’t really give me lip or lash out by showing attitude & anger like she had previously.
On Feb 7 (Wednesday), I log in to get the transactions for an office who is switching banks. I wanted to get an updated list of outstanding checks so they know how many checks are left before they can close the old bank account. & what do I see? Someone had used the bank account to pay $100 on their AT&T bill. I call the office & find out it was actually them, so no fraud there. But I then ask Sally if she had seen that when checking the bank accounts. She said she didn’t remember. Obviously, I have found my proof that she is either not checking them or isn’t paying attention when she does. I have a discussion with Greg about it, & we decide I need to have a sit down with her about her not doing her job. She is sick on Thursday, so I plan to talk with her the next day she comes in.
On Feb 9 (Friday), I begin the conversation about checking the bank accounts & how important it is. I am planning to say things like, we expect you to do this job, you’ve been told multiple times to do this task, if you’re not going to do the job, then you’re welcome to go find another one, etc. But she cuts me off at the beginning with an excuse of, “Well, I didn’t know what I should be looking for, now I know.” & it broke me. She does this exact thing every time I have to have a conversation with her. She has an excuse ready to go on the tip of her tongue, always spins it around so it’s not actually her fault. It’s always, “Well, I didn’t know that, but now, I do.” & I was just done. I didn’t continue the conversation, even though I needed to, ‘cause I just broke down in tears from the stress of having to discipline her & knowing that nothing will ever come of it, but having our hands legally tied to be able to fire her right now. I cried nonstop for over 4 hours.
On Feb 12 (Monday), I sat down to continue the conversation, this time with a written statement for her to sign.
Me: You respond a lot of the time that you don’t know how to do things, which is very frustrating, ‘cause you’ve been shown multiple times how to do these tasks. It’s very inefficient & wasteful that I have to constantly check all of your work & retrain you on the same thing over & over again. This needs to change. This job is about accuracy & accountability.
Sally: You’re not giving me a chance to improve. I never hear “Good job,” from you. All I ever hear is, “You’re doing a bad job, sign this paper.” I get in trouble every time I ask for help, so I guess I’ll just follow the instructions & hope I’m doing it right.
The problems with that response:

1. You’ve worked here for 2 years, Sally. You’ve had plenty of time to improve.
   
2. The reason you never hear “Good job” is ‘cause you’re not doing a good job. How am I supposed to tell you “Good job,” but also need to give you a write up for doing a bad job? If you’re getting multiple write ups for doing a bad job, don’t you think that’s a sign that something is wrong? I mean, she thinks that managers should be telling their employees good job on everything they do right. No, you’re expected to do these tasks. We’re not going to congratulate you every time you do your basic job requirements like some toddler that needs constant positive reinforcement so they know that doing something right is a good thing! You will hear “Good job” when you are doing a really good job on something, when you go above & beyond!! I mean, do you think Greg tells me “Good job” when I’m just doing my job as expected?!! NO!!! I’ve never had a manager constantly tell me “Good job” all the time!!!! (Whew. Sorry about that. Kinda went on a crazy rant there. I’m good now.)
   
3. Here’s another example of her mentality of “if I don’t do the job, I can’t get in trouble for doing it wrong.” She’s going to stop asking for help instead of using the help I’ve given her to do better. I mean, if you’re making these mistakes when you ARE asking for help, how many more are you going to make when you stop asking for help? How does this make any logical sense?!
   

Well, here’s another chance for some malicious compliance. She claimed she didn’t know how to check the bank accounts, right? Well, my job as the manager is to make sure my employees know how to do their job. So, I need to sit down with her & train her how to check the bank accounts. Again. Even though I know she already knows how to do it. So, every time you tell me that the reason why you didn’t do a job is ‘cause you didn’t know how to do it right, well, we’re going to sit down & waste both our times & annoy you having to be retrained on something you do, in fact, know how to do.
Sally continues making careless mistakes & not doing stuff she doesn’t think she should have to do. Like answering the phones. It’s her job to answer the phones; that’s something I as the manager should be delegating to her. However, she never answers the phone unless I literally can’t. So, I had asked her to start answering the phone more. She will wait until the last possible second before answering the phone. By that time, it’s already rung twice, so I have to answer it before it goes on any longer or they hang up. One time, we were both away from our desks when the phone rang. We both went to answer it, but she was closer & got to her desk before me, put her hand on the phone, & watched me until I got to my desk before she picked it up. With a comment of, “Oh, (laughs) I didn’t want to make you walk all the way to your desk.” Well, you did, anyway, you little jerk.
On Feb 27, Sally asks for help on a report. She says that my note stating the office is over-deposited $28 on report 1 but fixed on report 2 by being $28 under-deposited didn’t work out. She says that they were never over by $28 in the first place. I take the report to look it over. Her calculator tape adding up the deposits shows the bank is in balance, but I don’t see deposit slips.
Me: Where are the deposit slips?
Sally: I haven’t gotten them yet.
Me: (trying to comprehend her logic) Then how do you have the deposit amounts added on this tape?
Sally: I got the amounts from the report.
Me: You…(my brain trying not to implode at this point) you can’t add up amounts to see if the bank has too much or too little money in it without knowing what was actually taken to the bank. The amounts on the report don’t always equal what was taken to the bank.
I log into the bank account & discover just that: the report says they took $500 to the bank, but their deposit says $528. They were indeed $28 over-deposited. I then lecture her (for the second time in a few months) on the correct way to account for the deposits at the bank, that we are only to use the dollar amounts on the bank’s deposit receipt. (The first time was her getting the deposit amount from what was written on the deposit slip instead of what the bank gave us credit for on their printed receipt. The bank had shorted us $500, & we never knew until her deposits didn’t work out when reconciling the bank statement at the end of the month. We were missing $500 for 4 weeks! It’s a miracle we didn’t overdraw the account.)
Another task that we do several days a week is checking the CFPB website. This is a government website that uses federal regulations to monitor financial institutions. It’s like the Better Business Bureau, but more official. Customers can make complaints through them, prompting an investigation to make sure we’re following the federal guidelines. We have 2 weeks to respond to a complaint before it is past due.
On Feb 29, Greg just happens to be looking at an email inbox that he never checks, ‘cause after all, we’re checking the CFPB website, so he doesn’t have to look there, right? There is a complaint in 2 of the portals that have been in there since Jan 22. He immediately marches out & tells Sally about them.
Greg: Aren’t you checking the CFPB sites?
Sally: Yeah, I am.
Really? Then how come you didn’t print this complaint off to give to Greg in the last 6 weeks? She came back from lunch to a second warning write up given by me for negligence.
On Mar 5 (Tuesday), we are working on reconciling the bank statements so we can close the month of Feb. Sally brings me a Jan bank statement for an office.
Sally: This never cleared in Feb.
I look at the bank statement. It’s an electronic deposit of $254 on Jan 31. I remember this. She had asked me at the beginning of Feb why this deposit wasn’t recorded on the office’s report. I explained that since it didn’t show up in the bank account until the last day of Jan, they might not have known about it before the end of the month & so recorded it on the first of Feb. We will wait until the first report of Feb. If it’s still not recorded, then we’ll bring that to the office’s attention. & here she is, clearly telling me she hadn’t brought it to anyone’s attention all month long.
Me: (staring at the bank statement as I try to prevent my autistic brain from exploding at her while also trying to prevent a spontaneous stroke) You didn’t keep track of this all month?
Sally: Well, I didn’t know if it was treated differently ‘cause it was OTBP (One Time Bill Pay, which is the electronic deposit). (Oh, what a shocker, she once again didn’t know how to do something.)
Me: But we talked about this. If it wasn’t on the first of the month, we needed to address it.
Sally: Okay, well, now I know that we treat this the same as other deposits. (goes nonchalantly back to her desk like it was no big deal, like she hadn’t just revealed she had once again disobeyed my detailed instructions)
Me: (seeing her flagrant disregard for the seriousness of the situation & wondering just how on earth she could once again think that not doing her job would have no consequences) This is exactly what Greg talks about over & over, about how we can’t leave errors like this to sit for weeks & weeks, that these need to be dealt with as they happen.
Sally: (still as easy-going as if she had simply used the wrong color highlighter) Okay, I’ll make note of that.
Now, I am getting really pissed off. She keeps saying, “Oh, now I know that OTBP is treated the same as everything else.” That doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter that you didn’t know it’s treated the same! I specifically told you to take care of it if it didn’t appear on the first of Feb! It didn’t matter what kind of deposit it was! I said to tell me if it wasn’t on the first of Feb!
Now, this was right before she leaves at 3:30, so by the time I’m finished with my text conversation with Greg (‘cause he isn’t there that afternoon), she has already left. But I’m telling Greg that I have once again caught her being negligent, & she’s already had 2 written warnings about this, which means our next step is letting her go. Not to mention, her carelessness is still continuing. He said that he supports my decision to let her go. By the way, the final decision happened an hour after she left. If I had known before she left that we were indeed going to fire her, I would have done it before she left so she didn’t have to come all the way to work in the morning just to leave again.
So, on Mar 6 (Wednesday), I arrive early to work so I can be prepared. I am standing at my desk, watching her come in. This is unusual, so she frowns as she approaches me.
Me: Sally, we need to talk.
Sally: (still frowns at me)
Me: (handing her the typed up notice) We are going to read this together. “When reconciling the month of Jan, around Feb 5, it was brought to my attention that we had a deposit that hadn’t been reconciled. I gave you instructions to wait a report to see if it works out. If not, you would need to bring it to mine & the office’s attention for further instructions. This wasn’t done. It wasn’t until Mar 5 that you brought this to my attention again. You have been told many times the importance of reconciling the financials of the office. You have been warned several times of negligence. This is another example of negligence with respect to your job. All you had to do was follow my instructions. It is for this reason that it is now time to terminate your employment.”
Sally: When did you tell me to do this?
Me: (thinking, “Um, I kinda just told you when I told you do that, but, okay.”) When you showed me the Jan bank statement—
Sally: Yesterday?!
Me: You showed me the Jan bank statement a month ago when you were reconciling Jan. I told you to wait for the first of Feb & then—
Sally: You did no such thing!
Me: Yes, I did, Sally.
Sally: When does Greg get here?
Me: Around 9, like usual.
Sally: I’m calling him, ‘cause this is ridiculous. You’ve had it out for me from the very beginning.
Me: No, I haven’t.
Sally: Yeah, you have. Just like the other 2. (sets her bags at the front door, goes outside, & calls Greg)

1. How could I have had it out for you from the very beginning when we didn’t have problems for the first year & a half you worked here? If I’d had it out for you from the beginning, you wouldn’t have had a job the past 6 months. Need I remind you what Greg told you about the timesheet thing being something we fire someone for on the spot, but that Molly had gone to bat for you & gave you a second chance? Why would I have done that if I had wanted you gone from the start?
   
2. “Just like the other 2.” She’s talking about Irene (who had left in Feb 2023) & another employee (who we’ll call Phil). Phil had been fired (by Greg, by the way) for continuing to watch movies on his phone at his desk despite being told multiple times by Greg to not do that. & Irene? She wasn’t fired. She gave her 2 weeks’ notice. & we then discovered when going through the work she’s been doing as we started taking over her tasks that she didn’t just not do jobs. She would actually forge the work so she wouldn’t have to work. “A bank imbalance of $2.65? Well, I’ll just add it to the imbalance that’s been building up for who knows how many months & just label it as an over-deposit from the end of the month. That way, I don’t have to look into why the bank isn’t balancing.” But no, I had it out for them, apparently.
   
3. Does she really think that calling Greg was gonna reverse my firing her? Does she really think I would do something as drastic as writing her up or firing her without discussing it with my supervisor first? Did she really think I would do this behind his back?
   

Apparently, she did, ‘cause Greg confirmed that Sally tried telling him about all the stuff I’ve been doing to her as if he didn’t know. She hung up on him when he explained that he’s been told everything as it happens & he supports this decision.
Sally: (storming back into the office & towards her desk) I’m not signing anything.
Me: Ok.
Sally begins packing up her desk. I had known she kept a lot of personal items at the office, so I had gotten a big box or 2 out & placed them nearby for her to use to pack up her desk.
Me: We can give you a box if you need it.
Sally: I don’t need sh** from you guys.
Me: The only thing we’ll need is your office key.
Sally: You’ll get it when you get it. I’m packing my desk.
Me: Ok.
I go back to work, keeping an eye on her as she packs to make sure she doesn’t take anything she’s not supposed to or damage any company property. Sally at some point decides to use the boxes she didn’t want from us to pack up her many items. She takes both boxes to the front door where her bags are & sets them down to put the last of her things in. She picks up one box to take outside.
Sally: You are the worst manager ever. (goes out the door)
Me: (shrug)
Sally: (comes back in for the final box) Seriously, you’re the most evil person I’ve ever met. (leaves)
Really? I rank worse than the guy that beat you up? I’m worse than him?
I continued watching her to see if she’s going to come back to give up her office key. As she packed up her car, another employee had arrived (we’ll call him Randy). He had run into her on the way in & asks me if Sally quit. I explained, no, she was let go. I then see that Sally has gotten behind the wheel of her car without coming back to give us the office key.
Me: Well, I guess we’ll just change the locks.
Randy then takes it upon himself to go out to her car. He phrased it very gently by saying he wanted to spare her having to come back in to turn the key in.
Sally: I guess Molly didn’t have the balls to do it herself. (hands the key over)
& then…she was gone. Despite having to do the entire corporate office’s work all by myself & falling steadily behind little by little, I have never been more happy. I had forgotten how much I loved my job & how much I couldn’t wait to get to work. I haven’t been this stress-free in 6 months, & it feels fantastic! & the great part is, I’m not really falling as far behind as I expected to without her. Having to do 2 people’s jobs by myself is only affecting me a little. Really goes to show you how bad she was for the company & for my job when she disrupted everything that much. For example, me & her would get through maybe 5 to 6 offices’ reports between us in a single day when playing catch up after closing the previous month. One day? I caught up on 10 offices’ reports in a single day. By myself.
Oh, did I mention she smoked marijuana most days on her way to work or while on her lunch break? We could never actually prove it. But, come on, you don’t smell that strongly of marijuana on only select days if you aren’t smoking it recently. If it was leftover from the smell of your house or car, you would smell like that every day. But it was only some days she would come into work or back from lunch smelling like that. Obviously, smoking on the job. So very glad to be rid of her & her awful skunk smell. Although, I do wish her well on a new job search. I don’t wish ill on anyone, ever. But I am just glad she’s no longer my problem to deal with.
(Added 2 months after she was fired): By the way, I am actually gaining on my work. I’m not only not behind on my work, I’m actually getting it done soon enough to work on extra stuff. Also, out of the blue, we’ve started getting about 3 to 4 sales & scam calls every day since Sally left (for things like better Medicare benefits, better retirement benefits, & even one time recently where “Walgreens” was calling to ask if I still had diabetes). I’m convinced Sally signed us up for calls as retaliation. I hope they die down soon, especially as they are starting to get rude. (Our response to every one of these is “Sorry, this is a business.” This one guy responded to me with, “This is my job.” I said, “I understand this is your job, but this is a business. I am not allowed to take personal calls.” He said, “Why?” I said very slowly & firmly, “Because I’m working!” He started to say, “Can you explain to me why—” I hung up. Jerk.)

Oh, boy, Charlotte, do I have a doozy for you. It’s such a doozy that it comes in 2 parts. I guess it would qualify as petty revenge, since that’s the only flair that fit, but it’s more of an entitled Karen story.
For the sake of telling the story a little smoother, I'm going to explain some things up front. I (female, early 30s; let's call me Molly) am the manager in the accounting office of a very small loan company. Like, really small. We have less than 30 offices with only 2 employees at each office. For this reason, we are kind of low-tech, old-fashioned. I'm talking paper timesheets that get faxed to our office (we're also the corporate office that handles the payroll). Our office hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a half-hour lunch. Me & my employee (who we'll call Sally) work this shift. Our boss (who we'll call Greg) is the owner & CEO. He works in the office starting at 9:00 a.m. till whenever he leaves for the day. Most of the time, that's around the time we leave, sometimes it's earlier due to errands he needs to run.
So, in Oct 2022, Sally (female, early 30s) gave us a note that her doctor wants to have daily appointments with her indefinitely. She let us know she would need to leave at 3:30 every day. Greg granted that request & even gave her the opportunity to come in early so she didn't miss any of her 8 hours each day. So, she began coming to work between 6:45 & 7:00 & would take however long of a lunch she needed to so she would have an 8-hour day.
Due to a combination of our fiscal year-end work in Oct & Nov 2022, playing catch-up from Dec 2022 to Feb 2023, & the other coworker (who we'll call Irene) leaving the company in Feb 2023 so we had to play catch-up again for several months before we got used to the bigger workload, I hadn't been able to pay too close attention to Sally's work. But in the middle of Aug 2023, I began to suspect her. I realized that the tasks Sally had in the morning would usually take me an hour & a half to do, which meant I would be relatively finished by the time I would arrive at 8:30. Sally, on the other hand, would only have stuff halfway done. Now, I knew Sally worked slower than me since I knew the job better than she did, but this still seemed very slow. I began to suspect Sally was either not arriving as early as she said she was (she was the only one in the office before 8:30) or she was arriving on time but wasn't working.
On Aug 21 (Monday), I decided to come in early to the office since I had to make up time due to a doctor appointment later in the week. So, I arrived at work at 6:40. 6:45 rolled around...no Sally. 6:50...no Sally. 7:00...same thing. Sally arrived at 7:20. Now, ok, maybe she ran into traffic. However, that's a bit of a coincidence that the one day I show up early unannounced is also the day she happens to be late. But I waited to see what time Sally would write down on the timesheet. However, she didn't write down her time until Tuesday right before she left. She had written down that she had arrived at 7:05. I asked her about it, and her response was "I must have copied it down wrong from my spreadsheet." That's strange, 'cause you hadn't arrived at 7:05 any other day that week. Just where did you copy it down from?
Now, I am curious as to what time Sally puts down when she believes no one has seen what time she arrives. So, for Sept 4-15, I would arrive in the parking lot across the street & read a book & eat breakfast while I wait to see what time Sally would arrive. Every single day, she would arrive around 7:15 or 7:20, but would write down 6:45 or 6:50, a half hour discrepancy every single day. & we have no way of knowing how long she's been stealing a half hour every day. She could have been doing this for the past year since her schedule changed.
On Sept 18, I write down Sally's actual times from these 2 weeks on a paper & tell her to correct all the times I indicated. Sally says that she will use the office clock to write down her times from now on. Wait a minute, you're saying that your phone is a half hour earlier than the rest of the world? But only when you arrive at work. When you go to lunch & leave work, it matches the rest of the clocks. & then switches during the night so your arrival time can be wrong again the next day? Wow, that's a pretty glitchy phone you got there.
On Sept 20 after Sally left, I installed a camera that connects to an app in my phone. I put the camera in a place where it wouldn't be able to see any computers/paperwork & turned off the microphone (I didn't want to risk any company info being seen/heard). I only needed to see when Sally arrived. Where I ended up placing it, I was able to see Sally where she sat at her desk.
On three of the following days, Sally would arrive 10 to 15 minutes after the time she would write down. I speak with Greg about this, & we decide to write her up. By the way, usually when an employee is caught forging the timesheet like this, it's an immediate termination. At any other office, she would have gotten fired in the beginning of Sept after I first discovered the half hour forgery. I am deciding to give her a chance to make this whole thing right.
On Sept 26 (Tuesday), I give Sally the write up when she arrives.
Sally: I'll sign it, but I don't know why. I mean, I get here at 7:00. (Ok, there's a sign right there. Who signs an official write up when their employer is lying or setting them up?)
Me: I've observed you arriving between 7:10 & 7:15.
Sally reads the write up & then keeps it at her desk for a bit after signing it. After plenty of time, I ask for it back. She grabs it, so I lean forward & hold my hand out (our desks are right next to each other), but Sally flings it at my desk. The whole thing is made better by the fact that Greg is out of town Tuesday thru Thursday. So, Sally proceeds to be angry & have an attitude all the way through Thursday. She refuses to talk or answer the phones. She does that tossing/flicking-papers-around, aggressive-typing, heavily-setting-things-down thing people do when they're frustrated or angry (which she did all...day...long). She sped out of the parking lot & down the street so fast that I could hear her engine rev & tires squeal from inside the building.
On Sept 27 (Wednesday), Sally is still doing that slamming things thing. I enjoy not responding to her whatsoever. I could see out of the corner of my eye that she would slam something down & look at me. I wouldn't give any kind of reaction, wouldn't look at her, & it would piss her off. Sally would then start slamming things around again. I admit, that was fun.
On Sept 28 (Thursday), I see on the camera that Sally arrives at 7:00, but then I watch her sit on her phone for 45 minutes! She is still having attitude issues, &—unbelievably—is still slamming things. After she leaves for the day, I then see the calendar that Sally keeps on her desk as I was passing by. On the box for Sept 26 (the day she was written up), she had written the words "F***ING JOKE!". The audacity of her to write that in plain view of everyone in the office & think she wouldn't get in trouble for it.
On Sept 29 (Friday), Sally arrives at 7:00 but sits on her phone for 30 minutes WHILE VAPING! (Not sure about other cities or states, but it's illegal to smoke or vape inside a building in the city where our office is.) But Greg is back this day, & I had been texting him what's been going on. He had texted back he wanted to do a meeting on Friday. So, the 3 of us go into the breakroom for a meeting.
Greg: So, Sally, what's been going on with this timesheet thing?
Sally: I just, I forget to write down the time when I arrive.
Greg: Ok, well, whether it's done on purpose or through negligence, we can't have wrong times on the timesheet. So, from now on, you won't be able to come to work before Molly gets here at 8:30. Now, are there any other problems you'd like to discuss with us?
Sally: (begins getting worked up) I just, I feel like I can't talk to her. She creates such a hostile work environment.
Now, I am blown away. Me? Hostile? I'm autistic, so I'm naturally shy & hate socializing, so I usually don't talk to anyone very much. Everyone I tell this story to, their eyes widen when I mention this, 'cause there's no way anyone would ever describe me as hostile.
Luckily, Greg interrupts her to defend me: This isn't a hostile work environment.
Sally: (backpedaling) Well, I mean, she gets mad at her printer & bangs on it, & that just flashes me back to stuff. I mean, I'm trying to work on myself & the anxiety, & she just sends me back.
Oh, so now, we're claiming we have PTSD & that my "violent" actions are giving her flashbacks? Um, who is it laughing right along with me every time my printer jams? (By the way, I know she's lying about the PTSD, 'cause I have a couple friends with PTSD & recognize the signs. Sally doesn't show any sign of fear or panic or shrinking away from things, nothing like that. There are no signs whatsoever of her being alarmed by anything I do.) Oh, not to mention the double standards. You're allowed to slam things around (for 3 straight days, by the way), but I'm not?
Anyway, we wrap up the meeting after Greg underlines (for Sally's benefit) that everyone in the office needs to get along.
On Oct 2 (the next Monday), I had a good drive & happened to get there at 8:20. Sally arrives at 8:25 & comes in, stopping at my desk.
Sally: (annoyed) Are you gonna be early all week?
Me: (frowning & caught off-guard) Um, I don't know. It just depends how long my drive takes.
Sally: (with a snarky attitude) 'Cause I had to keep driving around waiting for you, so if you're gonna be early, I'd like to know.
Ok, first of all, no one is forcing you to drive around. You can park your car in the parking lot. Do you really think we're gonna fire you for sitting in the parking lot while you wait for me? We only said you couldn't come in & work before I do. & second, it's none of your business when I get to work. My shift starts at 8:30, therefore, you should aim for 8:30, just like Greg told you to do. How am I supposed to predict the exact minute I get to work? & you're gonna get angry at me 'cause I didn't show up before my shift starts? Since when is it a requirement of mine to come into work before I start working?
Well, a bit of malicious compliance in this entitled story: if I can see I'm going to arrive at work more than 5 minutes early, I stop at the store just down the road & shop until 8:30. 'Cause guess what? Sally gets there who knows how early & sits in the gas station across the street, waiting for me. Fine, you wanna be that way? I can be petty, too.
By the way, Sally has a radio talk show she listens to from before I get to work until it ends at 10:00. I'm not into talk shows, but it wasn't too annoying (most of the time), so I didn't say anything about it. The reason why I started having a problem listening to it was that they would get into inappropriate things (s** toy review, for example). It made me super uncomfortable when they did segments like this. From the moment Sally was written up, she started only listening to the show on her headphones, thinking she was punishing me by me not getting to hear the show. Joke's on her. Sally did me a favor by not having to listen to that thing.
Sally was also told that she is no longer allowed to take smoke breaks on the clock. As no one else in the office takes breaks but chooses to work through them, this change would be made so all employees were equal now. But here’s the interesting thing: Sally suddenly stopped taking smoke breaks at all, but her bathroom breaks grew more numerous & longer. When she had been taking smoke breaks, the alarm on her phone would go off at specific times, such as 2:00. She would then go outside to take her smoke break. After the on-the-clock-smoke-break privilege was taken away, the same alarms would go off, such as 2:00. She would then disappear to the bathroom for 15 minutes. & I even smelled smoke in there when I went in there right after one of these long bathroom breaks.
Ever since the write up, there’s been attitude every once in a while. Most of the time, I have no idea what it is I did that could possibly have set her off that day. All I know is that Sally’s suddenly slamming things around again (hmm, PTSD cured now, is it?). & she’s still constantly making mistakes (like she’s always done).
On Nov 27, Sally is working on the Funding (loan proceeds funded onto a customer’s debit card). What we do is get the list of customers, determine how much the office funded that customer, transfer the money from the office’s bank account to the holding account, & then transfer the total from the holding account to the account that directly funds the debit cards to replenish the money. We had two customers with similar names (say, John Smith & Jack Smith). Sally hadn’t paid attention to the whole name & had applied John’s $0 funding to Jack. However, Jack had been funded $250. So, that money was missed, & I had to make a separate transfer for it.
On Dec 4, Sally is working on the Funding & writes down $0 for a customer. But the report from the office says he actually got $96.
On Dec 8 & 9, we discovered 2 checks that were supposed to be sent to our office (one from Oct, one from Sept). Neither had been cashed, & neither had ever reached us, even though we had the rest of the paperwork that would have come with those checks. Due to the dots I had connected, I had a pretty strong hunch that Sally wasn’t thoroughly checking the mail envelopes to make sure they’d been completely emptied before they got thrown away. I believed these checks were still in some envelopes that were then thrown away by Sally.
On Dec 11, on the bank reconciliation sheets we work at the end of the month (like balancing a checkbook), one of Sally’s offices was out of balance by $68, & she couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it, either. I pulled out the one done for the month before. I couldn’t find it there, either. But I did notice one thing. The checks that hadn’t cleared the bank yet didn’t add up to the total amount of outstanding checks Sally had written down. By $68. I go back to the month before that one. There were a total of $68 in old checks that never got cashed & therefore should have gotten written off on the fiscal year-end at the end of Oct. But she hadn’t transferred them to the new month’s sheet. So, now, we have to hold onto them for a whole year to write off next Oct.
The same day, I went through all the offices to double check the GL codes that we post the expense checks to (GL codes determine where an expense gets coded, e.g., post an electricity payment to the GL code for utilities). The day previously, Sally had gotten several GL codes incorrect in the Miller office. She had forgotten to change the codes from the one for the Checkbook to the ones for the expense account. She had caught those ones since it affected the balance of the Checkbook, so I had helped her fix those properly. However, there were expense checks sent to a GL code that wasn’t the right one that Sally hadn’t caught.
I talk with Greg, as I feel that every time I turn around, I am either retraining Sally on stuff I’ve trained her on multiple times, I’m correcting mistakes on stuff Sally should know how to do by now (‘cause again, I’ve trained her multiple times), or I’m disciplining Sally about stuff she’s doing wrong. Greg asks how many mistakes due to carelessness she’s made in the last 2 weeks. I check my notes & tell him 4. He says that’s too excessive for an accounting office. We need to write her up.
So, I made the write up, but I just know I’m going to be dealing with the same attitude as the last time I had to write her up. & guess what? Greg’s out of town till Thursday again. I used my phone this time to record the audio of the interaction. That way, if Sally has attitude towards me again, I’m able to play the recording to Greg so he can hear what Sally’s like when he’s not here (which is why the following conversation is pretty much word for word).
On Dec 12 (Tuesday), I sat her down first thing.
Me: So, in the past couple weeks, I’ve noticed some errors happening due to carelessness, & they’ve become a bit excessive for an accounting office. The most important thing in an accounting office is accuracy. That’s why we focus so much on thoroughness & attention to detail. So, whatever needs to happen to lessen those errors, whether it’s slowing the pace of the work itself or double & triple-checking the work before it’s finished, it needs to happen. For example, when I work the payroll, after I get the total for all the offices, I then subtract each person’s individual hours to double check my entries. That way, if there is an error, at least I know it wasn’t ‘cause I was going too fast or not paying attention or something. So, whatever you need to do to decrease the mistakes, please—
Sally: What errors are we talking about?
Me: I have a page here with the items from the last couple weeks. (hand her the write up)
Sally: (reads the pages for a minute) Ok…
Me: So, whatever you need to do to—
Sally: (talking quickly ‘cause she’s pissed now) I’m gonna need more time & focus strictly on Funding. I don’t wanna touch mail, I don’t wanna touch anything else. I wanna focus strictly on that. ‘Cause I’m getting 80 plus a day (which was a lie, we never get nearly that much), & now, I’m gonna start getting in trouble if it’s not 110%. I am human. I will make mistakes. So, if that’s not allowed, then…(shrugs) let me know, I guess. I’ll talk to Greg & I guess figure something out. I am human, & I am gonna make mistakes, A. B, I feel like crap. He (Greg) has been in here sick the last week. I caught whatever he has. I’ve been hacking. I’ve been sicker than sh** the last week. I am trying. You guys usually have until the 12th to close the month. Since I’ve worked here, I’ve closed before the 8th. Yeah, I made mistakes. I told you I made a mistake on the Miller office. I knew what happened. So, to throw it in my face again that I already made that mistake is kinda rude, but…(shrugs) I’m actually kinda shocked to see that on there.
Me: Well, you did catch the errors involving the Checkbook, but there were other mistakes on that office that you didn’t catch, & that’s the reason that was listed on there.
Sally goes back to her work, & I decide to not ask her to sign the write up I had given her right away since she was diving right into the Funding. She had expressed she wanted to focus solely on it to minimize mistakes. I wanted to use positive reinforcement to convey that this was good behavior & good thinking, so I decided to wait for her to finish before asking her to sign & return the write up.
Now, here’s the issues with her little outburst above.

1. Sally is complaining that she’s human & makes mistakes & we’re not allowing mistakes. We’re not saying that she can’t make mistakes, ‘cause she’s right. Everyone makes mistakes; I make mistakes. What we’re saying is that she’s making mistakes much too often.
   
2. Sally says the reason for these mistakes the last 2 weeks is ‘cause she’s been sick the last week or so ‘cause she caught what Greg had (do you see the timing problem there?). Also, these kinds of mistakes have been happening for months & months. I only brought these examples up ‘cause they were recent.
   
3. Sally pointed out the fact that she closes each month really quick. We don’t care how fast things get done. Our goal isn’t to get things done quickly but to get things done accurately. If we happen to get it done quickly, that’s just a bonus. We would rather things go slow than to have errors causing problems or costing us money ‘cause we didn’t take the time to make sure it was correct.
   
4. Sally states it’s rude that I’m throwing her error back in her face (you already know my reaction to that). She obviously doesn’t know how a job works. Just ‘cause we discussed this error already doesn’t mean it can’t go on the write up. This is just one of the examples that required us to do a write up. We’re not doing this ‘cause we want to write you up or that we’re looking for excuses to get you in trouble. We’re doing our job. If a situation needs correcting, we have to correct it. We can’t just ignore it. & obviously, me talking about your errors all these months hasn’t helped. You’re still making the same mistakes. So, now, we’ve had to escalate to a write up on paper.
   

Sally doesn’t say another word. She, as expected, starts doing her tossing-things-‘cause-I’m-pissed-off thing. I just go back to my work. I’ve said my piece, now we can put it behind us & move on.
Now, we have until 10:30 to make the transfers for this Funding program in order to get the money back to the account the same day. We are still missing the paperwork for 2 customers from an office. (FYI, when we’re missing paperwork, we call the office & ask them to fax it. If we still don’t get it when it gets close to the transfer deadline, we call again & just ask for the amount to get it done.) So, at 10:20, Sally turns to me.
Sally: What do I do for these 2 customers? Do I just skip them?
Me: (frowning) Do what you usually do when you don’t have the paperwork in time. Call the office—
Sally: (in a sharp tone) I did. (she’s assuming I mean call the office to tell them to fax it)
Me: (ignoring her attitude outburst) Call up the office & ask for the dollar amounts.
Sally: But I don’t want to write down the amount without seeing the actual paperwork. If I’m gonna get in trouble for errors now, I don’t want to take down what could be the wrong dollar amount over the phone. I mean, I think that’s only fair to me.
Me: In the instances that were mentioned, they weren’t cases of taking down an amount over the phone. They were instances where we had paperwork or a report to see the amount. We would never write you up if there was a possibility that the office gave you the wrong amount over the phone.
Sally stares at me for a second & turns back to her desk. I turn back to my own work as Sally then calls up the office. I had to deal with her attitude the rest of the day: throwing mail into the mailbox, throwing open the letter folding machine so it made a big bang on the table. I was trying to still be the usual friendly, professional person I am at work; I told her “See you tomorrow” & everything. Sally wouldn’t talk to me unless she had to.
This is when I discovered that Sally has a habit of lashing out at me when she gets in trouble. The first write up involved her trying to drag me under the bus by claiming I’m hostile. This time, it was more personal. See, we do a Christmas gift exchange at the office; we each buy each other a gift. I had searched over & over trying to find something Sally would like. I finally found this desk calendar with gnomes on it (she likes both of these things), so I got it & a couple small items. I open my gift from Sally, & among a few cheap little things, I found…Sally’s own nearly empty bottle of nail polish remover. Wow, this is the thanks I get for not firing you back in Sept with the whole timesheet forgery thing?
& this is where I leave you until Part 2, the conclusion.

So, here is part 2 of my entitled employee story. We left off with discovering Sally’s retaliation of giving me trash as a Christmas gift after her latest write-up.
So, the next several weeks, I am noticing more problems, but here’s some of the highlights.

1. Ever since we had issues of the office’s checks going randomly missing, Sally had apparently decided to just stop throwing any envelope away when opening the mail. She would supposedly search the envelopes/paperwork & then keep the envelopes with the paperwork. So, instead of doing her job better, she would decide to just stop doing the job at all. After all, you can’t get in trouble for screwing it up if you aren’t doing it, right? However, this resulted in items getting left with the paperwork (which sometimes wouldn’t get touched for several weeks due to being busy) that had needed to be collected or addressed right away.
   
2. Sally’s careless mistakes continued at about the same rate (average of 2 to 3 a week). She would put deposit slips/emails with the wrong office’s report, put one office’s mail in another office’s bin, put one office’s funding papers in another office’s bin, put one office’s bills in the folder for their correspondence & vice versa, put one office’s bills in the folder for another office’s bills, put the new month’s bills in the folder without taking out the old month’s bills so they would get mixed up. I could go on & on.
   
3. Sally would still ask for help on things she shouldn’t need help on anymore, ‘cause I had helped her many times on items exactly like it in the 2 years she’s worked here. I mean, the whole point of asking for help when learning new things on a job is so you can take the input you’re given & use it to get better at the job so you don’t have to ask for help anymore. I mean, what kind of office works by their employees constantly needing to be walked through everything every day? Sally would even ask for help on things no one would need to ask for help on. For example, she asked me, “An office took a deposit to the bank without showing it on their report. How do I write that up in the letter to fax to them?” Um, exactly what you just said to me. Or another time, she asks how long she should wait before calling an office back. Well, how long do you think you should give them? Just use your good judgment. You don’t need help with that! Again, you’ve been here 2 years!
   

On Jan 26, I take the Dec bills, correspondence faxes, & timesheets out of their folders to scan them into the computer. Now, one thing the bills should always have on them are the check number used to pay for this purchase & the date it was paid. The offices themselves are supposed to write this on there, but they don’t always, which is why it is our job to write it on there if it’s missing. I had noticed when I scanned Nov’s bills around Nov 30 that a lot of Sally’s offices don’t have that info written on them. So, I explained to her what needed to be written on every bill/receipt. I now flip through the Dec & Jan bills of her offices really quick to check them. There are quite a few of them with no info written down on them. There’s strike one for noncompliance.
Another task we would do several days a week (that’s Sally’s responsibility) is to check the bank accounts online. She is to look at the bank balances & report any low balances to Greg (or me if Greg isn’t there). She is then to look at the transactions in order to see if anything looks fraudulent. Since we are a loan company, check fraud is very common for us. So, we look at the checks for anything funny-looking, & we look to see if there are any auto debits (like when you use your bank account online to pay for a bill) that would tell us if someone got hold of our bank account info.
On Jan 30, at 1:15 p.m., I asked if any of the bank balances were low (Greg was out of town for a few days). Sally said she had forgotten to check the bank accounts that morning. Weird, ‘cause you had to check the Dallas office to make sure the money we sent them had shown up. How did you get the login sheet out to look in their bank account but then forget about checking all the bank accounts? This just further cemented in my mind that she was NOT checking these bank accounts the way she should. I was 100% positive that all she does when logging into these bank accounts is checking the balances to give to Greg but then never checks the transactions. I know this ‘cause, 1) I’ve observed Sally only logging in to write down the balances & then logging back out (she had some flimsy excuse ready when I asked her about it), 2) there have been auto debits that appeared in bank accounts that we didn’t find for weeks until I happened to see it for some reason & guess what? She never pointed those out to us, & 3) Sally hadn’t bothered to check the bank account balances since Greg was out of town, so clearly she only felt the need to check the balances. There’s strike two for noncompliance.
& even more bad mistakes or decisions:

1. At the end of Jan, we discovered that Sally had mailed the employees’ W2s to the managers’ home addresses instead of to the offices to distribute to their employees!
   
2. We had an office that moved locations to right across the street, so the only thing that changed in their address was their street number (12 Main Street instead of 11 Main Street). I explained this to Sally & gave her an updated list of the office’s addresses. 3 weeks later, we get a call from that office saying that mail we send to them keeps going to their landlord’s house. I check the address labels Sally had created for herself. Sure enough, it had the wrong address on them. I go to grab the lease, & at the top is where the tenant’s new address is listed. & all the way at the bottom of the page in the paragraph titled “RENT” where it lists where to send the rent is the landlord’s home address. & that’s the address Sally had chosen to be the new office’s address on her address labels.
   
3. Sally hadn’t been faxing the offices to ask for bills/receipts that never made it to us.
   
4. I used the last towel on a roll of paper towels, so I went to the cabinets to grab another. We were out. Sally is in charge of keeping track of supplies that need ordering, so I go to Sally & say we’re completely out of paper towels, we need to order some. Sally response: “No one ever tells me when they grab the last roll so I know when to order them.” Um, excuse me, since when is it our job to tell you to do your job? It’s your responsibility to keep track of supplies. You should be checking the level of paper towels, toilet paper, Kleenex, etc., to see when you need to order them.
   

So, I knew she needed a second warning write up for carelessness cause of the numerous mistakes since the first warning write up in the middle of Dec, & I would be giving Sally a first warning write up for negligence cause of her not asking the offices for missing bills & not writing the info on the bills I had told her to do at the end of Nov. However, it was only a few days from Feb, which was the time for performance reviews. So, rather than doing a write up now & then in a week or so doing a performance review that was one of the worst performance reviews I’ve ever heard of, I decided to just do it in one fell swoop. You know, just get it all out of the way with one bad conversation, one bad day, & then both of us can hopefully put it behind us & move on.
I decided to do the performance review & write ups on Feb 5 (Monday). It went much smoother ‘cause Greg was there, so Sally couldn’t really give me lip or lash out by showing attitude & anger like she had previously.
On Feb 7 (Wednesday), I log in to get the transactions for an office who is switching banks. I wanted to get an updated list of outstanding checks so they know how many checks are left before they can close the old bank account. & what do I see? Someone had used the bank account to pay $100 on their AT&T bill. I call the office & find out it was actually them, so no fraud there. But I then ask Sally if she had seen that when checking the bank accounts. She said she didn’t remember. Obviously, I have found my proof that she is either not checking them or isn’t paying attention when she does. I have a discussion with Greg about it, & we decide I need to have a sit down with her about her not doing her job. She is sick on Thursday, so I plan to talk with her the next day she comes in.
On Feb 9 (Friday), I begin the conversation about checking the bank accounts & how important it is. I am planning to say things like, we expect you to do this job, you’ve been told multiple times to do this task, if you’re not going to do the job, then you’re welcome to go find another one, etc. But she cuts me off at the beginning with an excuse of, “Well, I didn’t know what I should be looking for, now I know.” & it broke me. She does this exact thing every time I have to have a conversation with her. She has an excuse ready to go on the tip of her tongue, always spins it around so it’s not actually her fault. It’s always, “Well, I didn’t know that, but now, I do.” & I was just done. I didn’t continue the conversation, even though I needed to, ‘cause I just broke down in tears from the stress of having to discipline her & knowing that nothing will ever come of it, but having our hands legally tied to be able to fire her right now. I cried nonstop for over 4 hours.
On Feb 12 (Monday), I sat down to continue the conversation, this time with a written statement for her to sign.
Me: You respond a lot of the time that you don’t know how to do things, which is very frustrating, ‘cause you’ve been shown multiple times how to do these tasks. It’s very inefficient & wasteful that I have to constantly check all of your work & retrain you on the same thing over & over again. This needs to change. This job is about accuracy & accountability.
Sally: You’re not giving me a chance to improve. I never hear “Good job,” from you. All I ever hear is, “You’re doing a bad job, sign this paper.” I get in trouble every time I ask for help, so I guess I’ll just follow the instructions & hope I’m doing it right.
The problems with that response:

1. You’ve worked here for 2 years, Sally. You’ve had plenty of time to improve.
   
2. The reason you never hear “Good job” is ‘cause you’re not doing a good job. How am I supposed to tell you “Good job,” but also need to give you a write up for doing a bad job? If you’re getting multiple write ups for doing a bad job, don’t you think that’s a sign that something is wrong? I mean, she thinks that managers should be telling their employees good job on everything they do right. No, you’re expected to do these tasks. We’re not going to congratulate you every time you do your basic job requirements like some toddler that needs constant positive reinforcement so they know that doing something right is a good thing! You will hear “Good job” when you are doing a really good job on something, when you go above & beyond!! I mean, do you think Greg tells me “Good job” when I’m just doing my job as expected?!! NO!!! I’ve never had a manager constantly tell me “Good job” all the time!!!! (Whew. Sorry about that. Kinda went on a crazy rant there. I’m good now.)
   
3. Here’s another example of her mentality of “if I don’t do the job, I can’t get in trouble for doing it wrong.” She’s going to stop asking for help instead of using the help I’ve given her to do better. I mean, if you’re making these mistakes when you ARE asking for help, how many more are you going to make when you stop asking for help? How does this make any logical sense?!
   

Well, here’s another chance for some malicious compliance. She claimed she didn’t know how to check the bank accounts, right? Well, my job as the manager is to make sure my employees know how to do their job. So, I need to sit down with her & train her how to check the bank accounts. Again. Even though I know she already knows how to do it. So, every time you tell me that the reason why you didn’t do a job is ‘cause you didn’t know how to do it right, well, we’re going to sit down & waste both our times & annoy you having to be retrained on something you do, in fact, know how to do.
Sally continues making careless mistakes & not doing stuff she doesn’t think she should have to do. Like answering the phones. It’s her job to answer the phones; that’s something I as the manager should be delegating to her. However, she never answers the phone unless I literally can’t. So, I had asked her to start answering the phone more. She will wait until the last possible second before answering the phone. By that time, it’s already rung twice, so I have to answer it before it goes on any longer or they hang up. One time, we were both away from our desks when the phone rang. We both went to answer it, but she was closer & got to her desk before me, put her hand on the phone, & watched me until I got to my desk before she picked it up. With a comment of, “Oh, (laughs) I didn’t want to make you walk all the way to your desk.” Well, you did, anyway, you little jerk.
On Feb 27, Sally asks for help on a report. She says that my note stating the office is over-deposited $28 on report 1 but fixed on report 2 by being $28 under-deposited didn’t work out. She says that they were never over by $28 in the first place. I take the report to look it over. Her calculator tape adding up the deposits shows the bank is in balance, but I don’t see deposit slips.
Me: Where are the deposit slips?
Sally: I haven’t gotten them yet.
Me: (trying to comprehend her logic) Then how do you have the deposit amounts added on this tape?
Sally: I got the amounts from the report.
Me: You…(my brain trying not to implode at this point) you can’t add up amounts to see if the bank has too much or too little money in it without knowing what was actually taken to the bank. The amounts on the report don’t always equal what was taken to the bank.
I log into the bank account & discover just that: the report says they took $500 to the bank, but their deposit says $528. They were indeed $28 over-deposited. I then lecture her (for the second time in a few months) on the correct way to account for the deposits at the bank, that we are only to use the dollar amounts on the bank’s deposit receipt. (The first time was her getting the deposit amount from what was written on the deposit slip instead of what the bank gave us credit for on their printed receipt. The bank had shorted us $500, & we never knew until her deposits didn’t work out when reconciling the bank statement at the end of the month. We were missing $500 for 4 weeks! It’s a miracle we didn’t overdraw the account.)
Another task that we do several days a week is checking the CFPB website. This is a government website that uses federal regulations to monitor financial institutions. It’s like the Better Business Bureau, but more official. Customers can make complaints through them, prompting an investigation to make sure we’re following the federal guidelines. We have 2 weeks to respond to a complaint before it is past due.
On Feb 29, Greg just happens to be looking at an email inbox that he never checks, ‘cause after all, we’re checking the CFPB website, so he doesn’t have to look there, right? There is a complaint in 2 of the portals that have been in there since Jan 22. He immediately marches out & tells Sally about them.
Greg: Aren’t you checking the CFPB sites?
Sally: Yeah, I am.
Really? Then how come you didn’t print this complaint off to give to Greg in the last 6 weeks? She came back from lunch to a second warning write up given by me for negligence.
On Mar 5 (Tuesday), we are working on reconciling the bank statements so we can close the month of Feb. Sally brings me a Jan bank statement for an office.
Sally: This never cleared in Feb.
I look at the bank statement. It’s an electronic deposit of $254 on Jan 31. I remember this. She had asked me at the beginning of Feb why this deposit wasn’t recorded on the office’s report. I explained that since it didn’t show up in the bank account until the last day of Jan, they might not have known about it before the end of the month & so recorded it on the first of Feb. We will wait until the first report of Feb. If it’s still not recorded, then we’ll bring that to the office’s attention. & here she is, clearly telling me she hadn’t brought it to anyone’s attention all month long.
Me: (staring at the bank statement as I try to prevent my autistic brain from exploding at her while also trying to prevent a spontaneous stroke) You didn’t keep track of this all month?
Sally: Well, I didn’t know if it was treated differently ‘cause it was OTBP (One Time Bill Pay, which is the electronic deposit). (Oh, what a shocker, she once again didn’t know how to do something.)
Me: But we talked about this. If it wasn’t on the first of the month, we needed to address it.
Sally: Okay, well, now I know that we treat this the same as other deposits. (goes nonchalantly back to her desk like it was no big deal, like she hadn’t just revealed she had once again disobeyed my detailed instructions)
Me: (seeing her flagrant disregard for the seriousness of the situation & wondering just how on earth she could once again think that not doing her job would have no consequences) This is exactly what Greg talks about over & over, about how we can’t leave errors like this to sit for weeks & weeks, that these need to be dealt with as they happen.
Sally: (still as easy-going as if she had simply used the wrong color highlighter) Okay, I’ll make note of that.
Now, I am getting really pissed off. She keeps saying, “Oh, now I know that OTBP is treated the same as everything else.” That doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter that you didn’t know it’s treated the same! I specifically told you to take care of it if it didn’t appear on the first of Feb! It didn’t matter what kind of deposit it was! I said to tell me if it wasn’t on the first of Feb!
Now, this was right before she leaves at 3:30, so by the time I’m finished with my text conversation with Greg (‘cause he isn’t there that afternoon), she has already left. But I’m telling Greg that I have once again caught her being negligent, & she’s already had 2 written warnings about this, which means our next step is letting her go. Not to mention, her carelessness is still continuing. He said that he supports my decision to let her go. By the way, the final decision happened an hour after she left. If I had known before she left that we were indeed going to fire her, I would have done it before she left so she didn’t have to come all the way to work in the morning just to leave again.
So, on Mar 6 (Wednesday), I arrive early to work so I can be prepared. I am standing at my desk, watching her come in. This is unusual, so she frowns as she approaches me.
Me: Sally, we need to talk.
Sally: (still frowns at me)
Me: (handing her the typed up notice) We are going to read this together. “When reconciling the month of Jan, around Feb 5, it was brought to my attention that we had a deposit that hadn’t been reconciled. I gave you instructions to wait a report to see if it works out. If not, you would need to bring it to mine & the office’s attention for further instructions. This wasn’t done. It wasn’t until Mar 5 that you brought this to my attention again. You have been told many times the importance of reconciling the financials of the office. You have been warned several times of negligence. This is another example of negligence with respect to your job. All you had to do was follow my instructions. It is for this reason that it is now time to terminate your employment.”
Sally: When did you tell me to do this?
Me: (thinking, “Um, I kinda just told you when I told you do that, but, okay.”) When you showed me the Jan bank statement—
Sally: Yesterday?!
Me: You showed me the Jan bank statement a month ago when you were reconciling Jan. I told you to wait for the first of Feb & then—
Sally: You did no such thing!
Me: Yes, I did, Sally.
Sally: When does Greg get here?
Me: Around 9, like usual.
Sally: I’m calling him, ‘cause this is ridiculous. You’ve had it out for me from the very beginning.
Me: No, I haven’t.
Sally: Yeah, you have. Just like the other 2. (sets her bags at the front door, goes outside, & calls Greg)

1. How could I have had it out for you from the very beginning when we didn’t have problems for the first year & a half you worked here? If I’d had it out for you from the beginning, you wouldn’t have had a job the past 6 months. Need I remind you what Greg told you about the timesheet thing being something we fire someone for on the spot, but that Molly had gone to bat for you & gave you a second chance? Why would I have done that if I had wanted you gone from the start?
   
2. “Just like the other 2.” She’s talking about Irene (who had left in Feb 2023) & another employee (who we’ll call Phil). Phil had been fired (by Greg, by the way) for continuing to watch movies on his phone at his desk despite being told multiple times by Greg to not do that. & Irene? She wasn’t fired. She gave her 2 weeks’ notice. & we then discovered when going through the work she’s been doing as we started taking over her tasks that she didn’t just not do jobs. She would actually forge the work so she wouldn’t have to work. “A bank imbalance of $2.65? Well, I’ll just add it to the imbalance that’s been building up for who knows how many months & just label it as an over-deposit from the end of the month. That way, I don’t have to look into why the bank isn’t balancing.” But no, I had it out for them, apparently.
   
3. Does she really think that calling Greg was gonna reverse my firing her? Does she really think I would do something as drastic as writing her up or firing her without discussing it with my supervisor first? Did she really think I would do this behind his back?
   

Apparently, she did, ‘cause Greg confirmed that Sally tried telling him about all the stuff I’ve been doing to her as if he didn’t know. She hung up on him when he explained that he’s been told everything as it happens & he supports this decision.
Sally: (storming back into the office & towards her desk) I’m not signing anything.
Me: Ok.
Sally begins packing up her desk. I had known she kept a lot of personal items at the office, so I had gotten a big box or 2 out & placed them nearby for her to use to pack up her desk.
Me: We can give you a box if you need it.
Sally: I don’t need sh** from you guys.
Me: The only thing we’ll need is your office key.
Sally: You’ll get it when you get it. I’m packing my desk.
Me: Ok.
I go back to work, keeping an eye on her as she packs to make sure she doesn’t take anything she’s not supposed to or damage any company property. Sally at some point decides to use the boxes she didn’t want from us to pack up her many items. She takes both boxes to the front door where her bags are & sets them down to put the last of her things in. She picks up one box to take outside.
Sally: You are the worst manager ever. (goes out the door)
Me: (shrug)
Sally: (comes back in for the final box) Seriously, you’re the most evil person I’ve ever met. (leaves)
Really? I rank worse than the guy that beat you up? I’m worse than him?
I continued watching her to see if she’s going to come back to give up her office key. As she packed up her car, another employee had arrived (we’ll call him Randy). He had run into her on the way in & asks me if Sally quit. I explained, no, she was let go. I then see that Sally has gotten behind the wheel of her car without coming back to give us the office key.
Me: Well, I guess we’ll just change the locks.
Randy then takes it upon himself to go out to her car. He phrased it very gently by saying he wanted to spare her having to come back in to turn the key in.
Sally: I guess Molly didn’t have the balls to do it herself. (hands the key over)
& then…she was gone. Despite having to do the entire corporate office’s work all by myself & falling steadily behind little by little, I have never been more happy. I had forgotten how much I loved my job & how much I couldn’t wait to get to work. I haven’t been this stress-free in 6 months, & it feels fantastic! & the great part is, I’m not really falling as far behind as I expected to without her. Having to do 2 people’s jobs by myself is only affecting me a little. Really goes to show you how bad she was for the company & for my job when she disrupted everything that much. For example, me & her would get through maybe 5 to 6 offices’ reports between us in a single day when playing catch up after closing the previous month. One day? I caught up on 10 offices’ reports in a single day. By myself.
Oh, did I mention she smoked marijuana most days on her way to work or while on her lunch break? We could never actually prove it. But, come on, you don’t smell that strongly of marijuana on only select days if you aren’t smoking it recently. If it was leftover from the smell of your house or car, you would smell like that every day. But it was only some days she would come into work or back from lunch smelling like that. Obviously, smoking on the job. So very glad to be rid of her & her awful skunk smell. Although, I do wish her well on a new job search. I don’t wish ill on anyone, ever. But I am just glad she’s no longer my problem to deal with.
(Added 2 months after she was fired): By the way, I am actually gaining on my work. I’m not only not behind on my work, I’m actually getting it done soon enough to work on extra stuff. Also, out of the blue, we’ve started getting about 3 to 4 sales & scam calls every day since Sally left (for things like better Medicare benefits, better retirement benefits, & even one time recently where “Walgreens” was calling to ask if I still had diabetes). I’m convinced Sally signed us up for calls as retaliation. I hope they die down soon, especially as they are starting to get rude. (Our response to every one of these is “Sorry, this is a business.” This one guy responded to me with, “This is my job.” I said, “I understand this is your job, but this is a business. I am not allowed to take personal calls.” He said, “Why?” I said very slowly & firmly, “Because I’m working!” He started to say, “Can you explain to me why—” I hung up. Jerk.)

I never thought I would have a story to share in one of these threads, but it finally happened. I apologize for the length (so long it has to be split into 2 parts), but this one is a doozy.
For the sake of telling the story a little smoother, I'm going to explain some things up front. I (female, early 30s; let's call me Molly) am the manager in the accounting office of a very small loan company. Like, really small. We have less than 30 offices with only 2 employees at each office. For this reason, we are kind of low-tech, old-fashioned. I'm talking paper timesheets that get faxed to our office (we're also the corporate office that handles the payroll). Our office hours are 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a half-hour lunch. Me & my employee (who we'll call Sally) work this shift. Our boss (who we'll call Greg) is the owner & CEO. He works in the office starting at 9:00 a.m. till whenever he leaves for the day. Most of the time, that's around the time we leave, sometimes it's earlier due to errands he needs to run.
So, in Oct 2022, Sally (female, early 30s) gave us a note that her doctor wants to have daily appointments with her indefinitely. She let us know she would need to leave at 3:30 every day. Greg granted that request & even gave her the opportunity to come in early so she didn't miss any of her 8 hours each day. So, she began coming to work between 6:45 & 7:00 & would take however long of a lunch she needed to so she would have an 8-hour day.
Due to a combination of our fiscal year-end work in Oct & Nov 2022, playing catch-up from Dec 2022 to Feb 2023, & the other coworker (who we'll call Irene) leaving the company in Feb 2023 so we had to play catch-up again for several months before we got used to the bigger workload, I hadn't been able to pay too close attention to Sally's work. But in the middle of Aug 2023, I began to suspect her. I realized that the tasks Sally had in the morning would usually take me an hour & a half to do, which meant I would be relatively finished by the time I would arrive at 8:30. Sally, on the other hand, would only have stuff halfway done. Now, I knew Sally worked slower than me since I knew the job better than she did, but this still seemed very slow. I began to suspect Sally was either not arriving as early as she said she was (she was the only one in the office before 8:30) or she was arriving on time but wasn't working.
On Aug 21 (Monday), I decided to come in early to the office since I had to make up time due to a doctor appointment later in the week. So, I arrived at work at 6:40. 6:45 rolled around...no Sally. 6:50...no Sally. 7:00...same thing. Sally arrived at 7:20. Now, ok, maybe she ran into traffic. However, that's a bit of a coincidence that the one day I show up early unannounced is also the day she happens to be late. But I waited to see what time Sally would write down on the timesheet. However, she didn't write down her time until Tuesday right before she left. She had written down that she had arrived at 7:05. I asked her about it, and her response was "I must have copied it down wrong from my spreadsheet." That's strange, 'cause you hadn't arrived at 7:05 any other day that week. Just where did you copy it down from?
Now, I am curious as to what time Sally puts down when she believes no one has seen what time she arrives. So, for Sept 4-15, I would arrive in the parking lot across the street & read a book & eat breakfast while I wait to see what time Sally would arrive. Every single day, she would arrive around 7:15 or 7:20, but would write down 6:45 or 6:50, a half hour discrepancy every single day. & we have no way of knowing how long she's been stealing a half hour every day. She could have been doing this for the past year since her schedule changed.
On Sept 18, I write down Sally's actual times from these 2 weeks on a paper & tell her to correct all the times I indicated. Sally says that she will use the office clock to write down her times from now on. Wait a minute, you're saying that your phone is a half hour earlier than the rest of the world? But only when you arrive at work. When you go to lunch & leave work, it matches the rest of the clocks. & then switches during the night so your arrival time can be wrong again the next day? Wow, that's a pretty glitchy phone you got there.
On Sept 20 after Sally left, I installed a camera that connects to an app in my phone. I put the camera in a place where it wouldn't be able to see any computers/paperwork & turned off the microphone (I didn't want to risk any company info being seen/heard). I only needed to see when Sally arrived. Where I ended up placing it, I was able to see Sally where she sat at her desk.
On three of the following days, Sally would arrive 10 to 15 minutes after the time she would write down. I speak with Greg about this, & we decide to write her up. By the way, usually when an employee is caught forging the timesheet like this, it's an immediate termination. At any other office, she would have gotten fired in the beginning of Sept after I first discovered the half hour forgery. I am deciding to give her a chance to make this whole thing right.
On Sept 26 (Tuesday), I give Sally the write up when she arrives.
Sally: I'll sign it, but I don't know why. I mean, I get here at 7:00. (Ok, there's a sign right there. Who signs an official write up when their employer is lying or setting them up?)
Me: I've observed you arriving between 7:10 & 7:15.
Sally reads the write up & then keeps it at her desk for a bit after signing it. After plenty of time, I ask for it back. She grabs it, so I lean forward & hold my hand out (our desks are right next to each other), but Sally flings it at my desk. The whole thing is made better by the fact that Greg is out of town Tuesday thru Thursday. So, Sally proceeds to be angry & have an attitude all the way through Thursday. She refuses to talk or answer the phones. She does that tossing/flicking-papers-around, aggressive-typing, heavily-setting-things-down thing people do when they're frustrated or angry (which she did all...day...long). She sped out of the parking lot & down the street so fast that I could hear her engine rev & tires squeal from inside the building.
On Sept 27 (Wednesday), Sally is still doing that slamming things thing. I enjoy not responding to her whatsoever. I could see out of the corner of my eye that she would slam something down & look at me. I wouldn't give any kind of reaction, wouldn't look at her, & it would piss her off. Sally would then start slamming things around again. I admit, that was fun.
On Sept 28 (Thursday), I see on the camera that Sally arrives at 7:00, but then I watch her sit on her phone for 45 minutes! She is still having attitude issues, &—unbelievably—is still slamming things. After she leaves for the day, I then see the calendar that Sally keeps on her desk as I was passing by. On the box for Sept 26 (the day she was written up), she had written the words "F***ING JOKE!". The audacity of her to write that in plain view of everyone in the office & think she wouldn't get in trouble for it.
On Sept 29 (Friday), Sally arrives at 7:00 but sits on her phone for 30 minutes WHILE VAPING! (Not sure about other cities or states, but it's illegal to smoke or vape inside a building in the city where our office is.) But Greg is back this day, & I had been texting him what's been going on. He had texted back he wanted to do a meeting on Friday. So, the 3 of us go into the breakroom for a meeting.
Greg: So, Sally, what's been going on with this timesheet thing?
Sally: I just, I forget to write down the time when I arrive.
Greg: Ok, well, whether it's done on purpose or through negligence, we can't have wrong times on the timesheet. So, from now on, you won't be able to come to work before Molly gets here at 8:30. Now, are there any other problems you'd like to discuss with us?
Sally: (begins getting worked up) I just, I feel like I can't talk to her. She creates such a hostile work environment.
Now, I am blown away. Me? Hostile? I'm autistic, so I'm naturally shy & hate socializing, so I usually don't talk to anyone very much. Everyone I tell this story to, their eyes widen when I mention this, 'cause there's no way anyone would ever describe me as hostile.
Luckily, Greg interrupts her to defend me: This isn't a hostile work environment.
Sally: (backpedaling) Well, I mean, she gets mad at her printer & bangs on it, & that just flashes me back to stuff. I mean, I'm trying to work on myself & the anxiety, & she just sends me back.
Oh, so now, we're claiming we have PTSD & that my "violent" actions are giving her flashbacks? Um, who is it laughing right along with me every time my printer jams? (By the way, I know she's lying about the PTSD, 'cause I have a couple friends with PTSD & recognize the signs. Sally doesn't show any sign of fear or panic or shrinking away from things, nothing like that. There are no signs whatsoever of her being alarmed by anything I do.) Oh, not to mention the double standards. You're allowed to slam things around (for 3 straight days, by the way), but I'm not?
Anyway, we wrap up the meeting after Greg underlines (for Sally's benefit) that everyone in the office needs to get along.
On Oct 2 (the next Monday), I had a good drive & happened to get there at 8:20. Sally arrives at 8:25 & comes in, stopping at my desk.
Sally: (annoyed) Are you gonna be early all week?
Me: (frowning & caught off-guard) Um, I don't know. It just depends how long my drive takes.
Sally: (with a snarky attitude) 'Cause I had to keep driving around waiting for you, so if you're gonna be early, I'd like to know.
Ok, first of all, no one is forcing you to drive around. You can park your car in the parking lot. Do you really think we're gonna fire you for sitting in the parking lot while you wait for me? We only said you couldn't come in & work before I do. & second, it's none of your business when I get to work. My shift starts at 8:30, therefore, you should aim for 8:30, just like Greg told you to do. How am I supposed to predict the exact minute I get to work? & you're gonna get angry at me 'cause I didn't show up before my shift starts? Since when is it a requirement of mine to come into work before I start working?
Well, a bit of malicious compliance in this entitled story: if I can see I'm going to arrive at work more than 5 minutes early, I stop at the store just down the road & shop until 8:30. 'Cause guess what? Sally gets there who knows how early & sits in the gas station across the street, waiting for me. Fine, you wanna be that way? I can be petty, too.
By the way, Sally has a radio talk show she listens to from before I get to work until it ends at 10:00. I'm not into talk shows, but it wasn't too annoying (most of the time), so I didn't say anything about it. The reason why I started having a problem listening to it was that they would get into inappropriate things (s** toy review, for example). It made me super uncomfortable when they did segments like this. From the moment Sally was written up, she started only listening to the show on her headphones, thinking she was punishing me by me not getting to hear the show. Joke's on her. Sally did me a favor by not having to listen to that thing.
Sally was also told that she is no longer allowed to take smoke breaks on the clock. As no one else in the office takes breaks but chooses to work through them, this change would be made so all employees were equal now. But here’s the interesting thing: Sally suddenly stopped taking smoke breaks at all, but her bathroom breaks grew more numerous & longer. When she had been taking smoke breaks, the alarm on her phone would go off at specific times, such as 2:00. She would then go outside to take her smoke break. After the on-the-clock-smoke-break privilege was taken away, the same alarms would go off, such as 2:00. She would then disappear to the bathroom for 15 minutes. & I even smelled smoke in there when I went in there right after one of these long bathroom breaks.
Ever since the write up, there’s been attitude every once in a while. Most of the time, I have no idea what it is I did that could possibly have set her off that day. All I know is that Sally’s suddenly slamming things around again (hmm, PTSD cured now, is it?). & she’s still constantly making mistakes (like she’s always done).
On Nov 27, Sally is working on the Funding (loan proceeds funded onto a customer’s debit card). What we do is get the list of customers, determine how much the office funded that customer, transfer the money from the office’s bank account to the holding account, & then transfer the total from the holding account to the account that directly funds the debit cards to replenish the money. We had two customers with similar names (say, John Smith & Jack Smith). Sally hadn’t paid attention to the whole name & had applied John’s $0 funding to Jack. However, Jack had been funded $250. So, that money was missed, & I had to make a separate transfer for it.
On Dec 4, Sally is working on the Funding & writes down $0 for a customer. But the report from the office says he actually got $96.
On Dec 8 & 9, we discovered 2 checks that were supposed to be sent to our office (one from Oct, one from Sept). Neither had been cashed, & neither had ever reached us, even though we had the rest of the paperwork that would have come with those checks. Due to the dots I had connected, I had a pretty strong hunch that Sally wasn’t thoroughly checking the mail envelopes to make sure they’d been completely emptied before they got thrown away. I believed these checks were still in some envelopes that were then thrown away by Sally.
On Dec 11, on the bank reconciliation sheets we work at the end of the month (like balancing a checkbook), one of Sally’s offices was out of balance by $68, & she couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find it, either. I pulled out the one done for the month before. I couldn’t find it there, either. But I did notice one thing. The checks that hadn’t cleared the bank yet didn’t add up to the total amount of outstanding checks Sally had written down. By $68. I go back to the month before that one. There were a total of $68 in old checks that never got cashed & therefore should have gotten written off on the fiscal year-end at the end of Oct. But she hadn’t transferred them to the new month’s sheet. So, now, we have to hold onto them for a whole year to write off next Oct.
The same day, I went through all the offices to double check the GL codes that we post the expense checks to (GL codes determine where an expense gets coded, e.g., post an electricity payment to the GL code for utilities). The day previously, Sally had gotten several GL codes incorrect in the Miller office. She had forgotten to change the codes from the one for the Checkbook to the ones for the expense account. She had caught those ones since it affected the balance of the Checkbook, so I had helped her fix those properly. However, there were expense checks sent to a GL code that wasn’t the right one that Sally hadn’t caught.
I talk with Greg, as I feel that every time I turn around, I am either retraining Sally on stuff I’ve trained her on multiple times, I’m correcting mistakes on stuff Sally should know how to do by now (‘cause again, I’ve trained her multiple times), or I’m disciplining Sally about stuff she’s doing wrong. Greg asks how many mistakes due to carelessness she’s made in the last 2 weeks. I check my notes & tell him 4. He says that’s too excessive for an accounting office. We need to write her up.
So, I made the write up, but I just know I’m going to be dealing with the same attitude as the last time I had to write her up. & guess what? Greg’s out of town till Thursday again. I used my phone this time to record the audio of the interaction. That way, if Sally has attitude towards me again, I’m able to play the recording to Greg so he can hear what Sally’s like when he’s not here (which is why the following conversation is pretty much word for word).
On Dec 12 (Tuesday), I sat her down first thing.
Me: So, in the past couple weeks, I’ve noticed some errors happening due to carelessness, & they’ve become a bit excessive for an accounting office. The most important thing in an accounting office is accuracy. That’s why we focus so much on thoroughness & attention to detail. So, whatever needs to happen to lessen those errors, whether it’s slowing the pace of the work itself or double & triple-checking the work before it’s finished, it needs to happen. For example, when I work the payroll, after I get the total for all the offices, I then subtract each person’s individual hours to double check my entries. That way, if there is an error, at least I know it wasn’t ‘cause I was going too fast or not paying attention or something. So, whatever you need to do to decrease the mistakes, please—
Sally: What errors are we talking about?
Me: I have a page here with the items from the last couple weeks. (hand her the write up)
Sally: (reads the pages for a minute) Ok…
Me: So, whatever you need to do to—
Sally: (talking quickly ‘cause she’s pissed now) I’m gonna need more time & focus strictly on Funding. I don’t wanna touch mail, I don’t wanna touch anything else. I wanna focus strictly on that. ‘Cause I’m getting 80 plus a day (which was a lie, we never get nearly that much), & now, I’m gonna start getting in trouble if it’s not 110%. I am human. I will make mistakes. So, if that’s not allowed, then…(shrugs) let me know, I guess. I’ll talk to Greg & I guess figure something out. I am human, & I am gonna make mistakes, A. B, I feel like crap. He (Greg) has been in here sick the last week. I caught whatever he has. I’ve been hacking. I’ve been sicker than sh** the last week. I am trying. You guys usually have until the 12th to close the month. Since I’ve worked here, I’ve closed before the 8th. Yeah, I made mistakes. I told you I made a mistake on the Miller office. I knew what happened. So, to throw it in my face again that I already made that mistake is kinda rude, but…(shrugs) I’m actually kinda shocked to see that on there.
Me: Well, you did catch the errors involving the Checkbook, but there were other mistakes on that office that you didn’t catch, & that’s the reason that was listed on there.
Sally goes back to her work, & I decide to not ask her to sign the write up I had given her right away since she was diving right into the Funding. She had expressed she wanted to focus solely on it to minimize mistakes. I wanted to use positive reinforcement to convey that this was good behavior & good thinking, so I decided to wait for her to finish before asking her to sign & return the write up.
Now, here’s the issues with her little outburst above.

1. Sally is complaining that she’s human & makes mistakes & we’re not allowing mistakes. We’re not saying that she can’t make mistakes, ‘cause she’s right. Everyone makes mistakes; I make mistakes. What we’re saying is that she’s making mistakes much too often.
   
2. Sally says the reason for these mistakes the last 2 weeks is ‘cause she’s been sick the last week or so ‘cause she caught what Greg had (do you see the timing problem there?). Also, these kinds of mistakes have been happening for months & months. I only brought these examples up ‘cause they were recent.
   
3. Sally pointed out the fact that she closes each month really quick. We don’t care how fast things get done. Our goal isn’t to get things done quickly but to get things done accurately. If we happen to get it done quickly, that’s just a bonus. We would rather things go slow than to have errors causing problems or costing us money ‘cause we didn’t take the time to make sure it was correct.
   
4. Sally states it’s rude that I’m throwing her error back in her face (you already know my reaction to that). She obviously doesn’t know how a job works. Just ‘cause we discussed this error already doesn’t mean it can’t go on the write up. This is just one of the examples that required us to do a write up. We’re not doing this ‘cause we want to write you up or that we’re looking for excuses to get you in trouble. We’re doing our job. If a situation needs correcting, we have to correct it. We can’t just ignore it. & obviously, me talking about your errors all these months hasn’t helped. You’re still making the same mistakes. So, now, we’ve had to escalate to a write up on paper.
   

Sally doesn’t say another word. She, as expected, starts doing her tossing-things-‘cause-I’m-pissed-off thing. I just go back to my work. I’ve said my piece, now we can put it behind us & move on.
Now, we have until 10:30 to make the transfers for this Funding program in order to get the money back to the account the same day. We are still missing the paperwork for 2 customers from an office. (FYI, when we’re missing paperwork, we call the office & ask them to fax it. If we still don’t get it when it gets close to the transfer deadline, we call again & just ask for the amount to get it done.) So, at 10:20, Sally turns to me.
Sally: What do I do for these 2 customers? Do I just skip them?
Me: (frowning) Do what you usually do when you don’t have the paperwork in time. Call the office—
Sally: (in a sharp tone) I did. (she’s assuming I mean call the office to tell them to fax it)
Me: (ignoring her attitude outburst) Call up the office & ask for the dollar amounts.
Sally: But I don’t want to write down the amount without seeing the actual paperwork. If I’m gonna get in trouble for errors now, I don’t want to take down what could be the wrong dollar amount over the phone. I mean, I think that’s only fair to me.
Me: In the instances that were mentioned, they weren’t cases of taking down an amount over the phone. They were instances where we had paperwork or a report to see the amount. We would never write you up if there was a possibility that the office gave you the wrong amount over the phone.
Sally stares at me for a second & turns back to her desk. I turn back to my own work as Sally then calls up the office. I had to deal with her attitude the rest of the day: throwing mail into the mailbox, throwing open the letter folding machine so it made a big bang on the table. I was trying to still be the usual friendly, professional person I am at work; I told her “See you tomorrow” & everything. Sally wouldn’t talk to me unless she had to.
This is when I discovered that Sally has a habit of lashing out at me when she gets in trouble. The first write up involved her trying to drag me under the bus by claiming I’m hostile. This time, it was more personal. See, we do a Christmas gift exchange at the office; we each buy each other a gift. I had searched over & over trying to find something Sally would like. I finally found this desk calendar with gnomes on it (she likes both of these things), so I got it & a couple small items. I open my gift from Sally, & among a few cheap little things, I found…Sally’s own nearly empty bottle of nail polish remover. Wow, this is the thanks I get for not firing you back in Sept with the whole timesheet forgery thing?
& this is where I leave you until Part 2, the conclusion.