Thursday, March 09, 2006

Let's All Take Turns As the "I" in TEAM

Time is scarce. I work a lot, take care of the kids and now we've even thrown in research on buying and selling homes. Sorry about the neglect but the universe has not shifted and the blog is not at the center of the swirling mass.

I finally had my "training and orientation" at the furniture store job today. After three weeks of working they officially showed my how to use industrial equipment like forklifts, including the terminology like "load center" and "stability triangle," and then they made me sign a paper promising never to operate machinery I haven't been trained on. Starting..... NOW!

Orientation was difficult. I almost made several outbursts and was constantly laughing into my shoulder. It was a strange combination of warehouse dudes and salesmen. The salesmen had NO sense of humor. I thought orientation would make me excited about work, as this is where jobs usually describe in great detail all the ways that they are going to take care of you. But it was just a lot of talk about how "Big Brother is watching" and telling us not to do all the things my bosses do. They won't tolerate harassment, they say, as I described for you earlier.

The health "benefits" are $400 per month. There is no company stock plan unless you want to invest in Warren Buffet, who owns this and many, many other companies. They mentioned the 401k several times over 3.5 hours and in the final minutes I asked what percentage the company matched. The HR lady intentionally coughed as she responded, "Thrrr...percent."

I asked, "Thirty percent?"

"THREE percent." She said.

And then all the salesmen agreed that only some fantasy employer would ever give you a 30% match. It was EVERYTHING I could do not to say, "They sure use a lot of paper and pamphlets to describe such lousy, lousy benefits."

I put my soul into ruin at my desk job. I'm willing to grind my body to dust moving furniture. And I'm not sure what I will have left to work with after that... but I was willing to go on with this for my personal cause. But now I think I finally agree with my wife that I can do better. I was sorely disappointed in my coworkers that none of them thought of these benefits as horrible. Even the store discount was "cost plus 22%." Costco won't mark up ANYTHING over 14% above cost. Makes me want to put a baggie over my hand before I pick up my company discount and put it in the trash.

My coworkers were even annoyed with me for asking questions. They wanted to go home. I wanted to know how my employer was going to take care of my family. I don't mind being the "i" in team but I think it should look more like: Team! (with the "i" inverted)

Back to the grindstone. The fact that the mortgage-man looked at our credit (even with my work history over the past four months) and approved us for $50,000 MORE than what we were approved for when we bought our current house just makes me think lenders are careless and desperate. So maybe we're all in it together.

7 comments:

Native Minnow said...

Wait, you needed to hear about the company discount before you realized how much your 'new' company marked up their prices? I won't even go into that store unless it's to get some of those free hot dogs on a Saturday :-)

PsychDoctor said...

"Inverted I" would be a cool band name...and you could have cool t-shirts

i!

PsychDoctor said...

Oh yeah, and mortgage lenders are criminal in how they get people into loans they cannot afford...It totally depresses the market because so many people foreclose on their homes and sell for dirt cheap. :(

Native Minnow said...

By the way, the company matching 3% on the 401K is infinitely better than the 0% my old shipping company used to match.

Classy organizations all around though, eh?

PsychDoctor said...

Utah county matched my contribution 100% up to 3% of my income...If the company will match your 3%, that is 3% of your income + a 3% raise going into your retirement every month...That's not a bad deal...I don't think your company is only matching 3% of what you are putting into your 401K, I think they will match 100% of what you put into it, up to a limit of 3% of your total income...That is pretty standard, and not a bad deal. The real question to ask is how long you have to work somewhere to be 100% vested (meaning all of the money is yours if you quit). In Utah County, all of us were 100% invested from day one, but many companies will say you are 50% vested to start (so you are entitled tothe money you are putting away), 75% vested after say 3 years...85% vested after 6 years...100% vested after 10 years. That is not as good of a plan because you have to commit to the company for a long time before all of the money they match in your 401K becomes yours...Does that make sense? I really think that their 401K policy is pretty good....depending on how long you have to work to be 100% vested.

Gordon said...

Ebay of course is humming along...like a slow motion trainwreck. My raise was 2.75 percent. Sweet.

Native Minnow said...

What happened to Slimy Sculpin's blog?