I had to give a new hire a drug test this week. We use oral tests, so as he’s swabbing the inside of his mouth, he tells me, “If this is positive I want a retest. I was at a party with a lot of drugs this weekend so I could have a contact high.”

Umm…ok? Where to begin?

1. I’m your employer. Not your buddy, your pal, or your amigo. I don’t want to hear about how you *might* fail your drug test!
2. Contact high? The only way you’d fail is if the drugs were IN CONTACT with your body, as in being inhaled, ingested, or injected.
3. And seriously…if you KNOW you’re going to start a new job, if you’re LOOKING for a new job…lay off the drugs for a few days and detox.

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Isn’t it awesome when some assclown at work tries to bust up your happy Friday with a nasty email? I just got one of those, from someone who accused me of taking away her access to something very, very important because she missed training. She copied two of her superiors and huffed and puffed that “her contact” at XYZ Company said that I disabled her account, and she SHOULD have been advised ahead of time, since it is very, very important that she have this access.

Snore.

Well, gee, if it was all that important, one would THINK you’d take the REQUIRED training for the account, eh? But you’ve put it off for…oh, three months now?

I didn’t take away her access, and it was oh so satisfying to be able to send her a reply (copying all parties on her original email) setting her straight, and telling her that “her contact” was incorrect, and she shouldn’t even be getting info like this from her contact, since her contact isn’t MY contact, and we need to use the right people for our information, now don’t we?

Taking someone down a notch is a good way to start the weekend.

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…don’t shove it!

I’ve been crazy busy with work issues for the last month, but I think it’s over (or is it just beginning?) and it worked out well for me. Things happened with other people that made me worry about ME (selfish, aren’t I?) but the end result was very, very good for me, to the tune of a 10% raise. Yes, I got a raise last October, one in January, and another one this week. And you know when a company gives you a raise like that, they like you. They really, really, really like you. Yes, there are added responsibilities that come with that raise, but nothing I can’t handle, so I’m quite thrilled.

Somehow, my bread always lands butter side up. (I don’t eat it though, because it’s been on the floor, and that’s just nasty.)

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The idea of having my own business has always intrigued me, and I’ve had several home businesses over the years, in some shape or form. A very LONG time ago, I got talked into doing one of those home party shows – I was actually somewhat successful and it, but I felt it was a lot of work for the amount of money I was making off each “party”. After that, I started a website for moms, which I ended up running for 4 years. Now that was something I could sink my teeth into – being in control, and selling advertising, and creating content…right up my alley! It was something I loved, but after 4 years, I got burned out and needed to move on, so I sold the site. I guess in a way, blogging is a home business. I’m doing it from home and making money, so that qualifies, right?

Have you ever thought about running your own business from home? I have friends who do home daycare, another who is thinking of opening a recording studio in her home, and yet another who sells jewelry. If you want to be your own boss, but you need a bit of inspiration, check out this site listing home based business opportunities. If you don’t like the 4 listed on that page, click to the main page of BusinessOpportunity.com and check out the big picture. You’ll find information on vending machine franchises to things you can do exclusively online, as well as 100’s of other ideas and opportunities. Already own your own home business, but want to let others know about it? You can buy a listing on the site and spread the world!

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This week flew by. Tonight, Jim and I are going to an awards banquet. He’s getting an award from his employer for having over 20 years on the job. Kind of amazing when you stop to think about it – he’s only 37, and he’s been at the same place for 22 years, working his way up. That’s almost unheard of these days. I’m mixed on attending the event – I’m excited and happy for him of course, but it’s one of those things where I’m not going to know anyone, and there’s going to be a lot of talk about work…and I don’t work there!

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are barking!

On a whim, I decided to wear my heels to work. Bad whim. Dumb whim. I don’t normally walk around while I’m at the office, so I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal. But wouldn’t you know, we WALKED to lunch today, and we WALKED back. I just got back from lunch and had to take my shoes off under the desk to let my toes breathe!

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My schedule is slowly getting booked for next week. I’ve got two days of meetings in the middle of the week, and that outta be fun. Actually, our meetings usually aren’t too awful. We have a lot of cool tools we use, from LiveMeeting to video conferencing to present our materials, and we can even train people remotely. Saves the company a ton of money when we don’t need to fly 50 people to one location for training! But it also eliminates me getting to travel for work.

I’ve only traveled once for business, and that was with my last job. I went to Los Angeles for a few days with my boss and a coworker. We had 2 days of boring meetings, but we went out every night and did sightseeing, from Venice Beach to Santa Monica. I only wish we would have been able to sightsee during the day, or extend our trip into the weekend so I could have gone to Disney Land!

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I’m in the office today, and I got in LATE this morning because Jim had to be in early, so I couldn’t start my commute til after I got the kids to school. I was amazed at how many cars were still on the road after 9am this morning. Don’t all you people have jobs to go to? Are you ALL running late?

Anyway, I’m here now, and things are busy. I do love being busy! My husband just called me and I didn’t check the caller ID before I answered the phone, so he got my “work voice”, and said it was hot. HA!

I really need to go pee, but stupid me – I forgot my passkey this morning. That means I have to take the long way around to the bathroom. So…I’m not sure why I keep putting it off. I gotta get up sometime, right? And it’s going to be time for lunch soon. I really want to go to Chipotle or Moe’s but those places are jam packed from noon til 2pm during the week. Maybe I’ll just go to the cafe in our building and veg out reading US Weekly for an hour.

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I was hanging out on the lanai the other night talking to Jim…and the subject of work came up. I am extremely lucky to have a great paying job, a fantastic boss, and oh, did I mention I work from home most of the time? I didn’t expect to work from home when I took the job, but the position has morphed into that over the past 2 1/2 years, and I love it. My company (it’s a staffing company – we do a lot of telecom consulting) doesn’t require me to be in the office, so as long as I get the job done, I can work from home, with an occasional trip into Tampa for the day.

And while my job isn’t as faced paced or high pressure as my last position, I couldn’t ever walk away from the flexibility I have right now. If I ever go back to the real working world, I’m screwed!

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In the last job I had, I worked at a company that did background screening. When someone called in to our company to verify employment, or a degree on someone we were completing a screening on, they’d hear a little recorded greeting saying:

“This call may be recorded or monitored”

You’ve probably heard the same thing when you’ve called your bank, or your credit card company, or your insurance provider. What exactly do these companies DO with those recordings, anyway?

I can only speak for my former company and what we did with our phone recorder, since I was one of the people that got to listen to those recordings and conversations. Sometimes I’d listen live as well. We used it for employee review, mostly. Since we did background screening, it was important that our data be collected in a certain way. We didn’t allow our agents to prompt people for the dates. Let me give you an example. Say that the resume for Joe Schmoe says he worked at ABC Company from 4/1/02 – 5/13/02. Pretty exact dates, right? But when we call Joe’s manager to confirm, we are NOT allowed to give her that info – we want HER to tell us what their employment records show to make sure we have a match. If we gave her the dates up front, it would be too easy for her to agree without really checking the dates. Additionally, when verifying degrees, we want to make sure that someone really did graduate with the degree they stayed, so we’d listen to calls to make sure our agents went through the steps correctly of verifying.

I’m sure other companies do more with their recordings, but that’s what we did with ours. I suppose is someone flips out over the phone, either a customer, or an employee, you could use that recording to either fire an employee, or get rid of that customer.

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