I wrote and asked my company to replace my 8-year-old computer with a new one. Their reply was, "We inherited you from another company. We don't want an employee who works in Asia. We certainly aren't going to give you a new computer. Maybe we'll just get rid of you."
That's comforting, eh?
Anyway, I don't know about you, but hearing something like that straightens my spine: I started work exactly on time, cranked out the work until exactly my lunch break, came back at exactly the scheduled time, and worked exactly until quitting time.
During lunch break, Epril and I joined older sister Susan and her boyfriend Jans for a swim up at Kahulugan Pool Resort. We had a relaxing and lovely 90 minutes out in the jungle in the cold spring water.
In the evening, I watched Batman The Dark Knight for about the tenth time. It was on HBO HD, and I must say it was just as good a picture as my (deceased) Playstation 3 BluRay player.
After that, Epril and I joined Susan and Jans, his cousin Ron Schreuder, and Steve and Helen at Ron's bar, Glitz, where we knocked back beers almost until midnight.
There was a class reunion party tonight at the big bandstand in the park. There has been a party there pretty much every moment since December 22nd or so. Walking back from Glitz, I marveled how perfectly Jasaan captures the ideal of small town life, with its vibrant but subdued social scene, (mostly/usually) quiet streets filled with folks out walking and kids playing, friendly businesses, and a genuinely welcoming people.
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15 comments:
Would not expect to be working for a Company like your for much longer, given there attitude. My opinion, cover your rear end with option(s) if you want to stay were you are. All the best for the New Year.
Daryle
Heh. Ya think?
Yes... this coming year is going to be all about saving money, opening small businesses for the family (hopefully one takes off), and looking into new ways to support myself.
But, at the same time, I am going to just keep on plugging away at my current job until the bitter end.
If you are looking for work you can do from your home there send me an email. I have a sales, commission only job available with free training starting on january 4th. Its warm sales calls business to business. Please let me know if you are interested or if you know someone with near first language English skills. I will of course answer any questions you have as well.
Mike J.
Dude keep your head down and churn out the work, don't give them a reason other then your local to let you go. Was this your boss who said this or some IT helpdesk jockey?
Mike J... Forgive me, but I don't know your e-mail address. Obviously, I'd be interested in hearing what you have to offer.
W... My thoughts exactly. The fact is (and I should let other people know this as well...) I'm not worried, because I AM valuable to the company, and it really would take 2 or 3 people to replace me... and that is 2 or 3 people who are more specialized than the average person in this job.
However, the fact that they won't give me a new computer... and my computer is ready to die... makes me nervous. I'm relatively confident enough that they aren't stupid enough to fire me, but perhaps they are stupid enough to just let me die on the vine.
(Oh... it was somebody from HR who made the comment. High enough to matter, but not high enough to make actual final decisions.)
Sorry to hear that. Hopefully you can come up with your own small business. Hope you and Epril and a wonderful New Year.
Sarah
Charish,
Thanks for the thoughts.
Like I said, I doubt my company would actually let me go: They are hemorrhaging employees because we all took a 66% or more pay cut these past 16 months. I imagine that the new year will bring a new spate of resignations. They can't find nearly enough new hires to replace all the people quitting. (Every person who quits apparently gets a call from Personnel begging them to come back.)
They are apparently running out of eligible candidates in India as well, so India can't pick up the slack with new employees either (and those new people that they do hire in India aren't good enough to take the more difficult work from America anyway... which is all that we American employees are doing now).
Out of thousands of employees (well... probably out of 1000-plus employees now), I would imagine I am in the top 20 in terms of the amount of work I do. Add to that 8 years of experience, and the fact that I work on the overnight shift... and I'm not easily replaced.
So, like I said, I don't think my company is stupid enough to fire me at this point in time... but I do believe they are just waiting for my computer to finally die, which it very easily could in the near future. Then they'll just say, "Oh well."
I'm looking into ghosting the hard drive, picking up some spare memory, et cetera.
Also, as a last resort, I could always convince my company that I had moved back to the United States. (I worked in Thailand for 3 years before they found out... and it really was only a fluke that they ever did.) Then I would be given a new computer.
But, I do think it is time to consider other options just because of momentum and gravity and reality of my current position.
Jil,
You do medical transciption work right? If so regardless of what your company says , or does, it isnt a bad idea to work on additional income sources incase your field becomes absolete. I do not understand your field, and know nothing about it, but my mother told me a while back that new technology and such is making the field absolete or at least without need to hire as many people. I have no idea what technology she is talking about even as at the time is was just a passing conversation and sadly I didnt pay much attention.
Anyway, The more income sources the better regardless of what happens with the job.
Anon,
Good thoughts. Currently, my job is in no danger of becoming obsolete. What happened over the past 16 months or so was the convergence of a new technology (speech recognition) with the opening up of a new market of employees (India) which put a tremendous strain on the stability and earning potential of the entire current workforce. Those problems are currently working themselves out.
The speech recognition technology right now is only good enough to be a tool. It is not nearly accurate enough (and really: will never be accurate enough) to replace a human: You wouldn't believe how difficult it is for me to figure out what doctors are saying... let alone a machine to do it. (See here and here for 2 articles that I have written regarding the future of the transcription industry.) The text versions of medical records will always need a human eye to look at them before being finalized. They are too critical to be left purely to a computer. What form that "eye" takes in the future may be up to debate... whether it will be the doctor himself, or a transcriptionist-turned-proofer... but it will be a human, not a computer who has the final say on the content of a medical record.
Hello Jil,
Thanks for the explination and the links as I now understand what is going on. It was same thing my mom was talking about , voice software, but as stated she isnt a transcriptionist but is a Doctor. BTW, That guy Owen in comment section seemed to be quite a jerk.Anyway, Regardless building extra income sources and cutting living costs will be in your best interest regardless of what your employer does.
Why is there a problem with where you live? Given how things are done with your job, I don't see how it would matter. Is there training that you miss because you are not "local."
Tom
Sorry Jil i opted for the link back to my blog choice :) backlinks are something im always trying to build in my spare time. But yes email me if you know of anyone interested in warm call business to business sales job. We have a new class starting on the 4th of january. Commission only.
OnQuest at Gmail dot com.
I am the local Philippines recruiter for the sales job from Berkshire global partners. Its a warm call business to business sales job. Its all done through skype, and can be done from anywhere in the world as long as you dont mind the american work hours.
You can email me at onquest at gmail dot com if you or anyone else reading this has any questions.
Mike Jansen
Tom,
There is no problem really. I think there is just a bit of umbrage and perhaps jealousy on the part of people I work for that I'm not "average".
Mike,
I'll give it some thought. I've got some other things I'm looking into first.
Something to consider might be taking advantage of the relatively inexpensive workforce. You could hire a couple of programmers and advertise your services on places like eLance.com and guru.com. I know from personal experience that there are folks who would prefer to deal with native speakers of English (but who would not care which language the actual programmers use).
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