More Magic Jack madness!

Well, kind of anyway.  I was talking to my buddy today at work who has it and asked him some of the questions posed to me in the last blog.  Check this out:

*Call waiting

*Caller ID

*Voice mail

Keep in mind your computer has to be on for all this to work, but still.  And something thats really cool?  My buddy's wife is from Poland and she likes to call home "to the old country", as the Baron likes to say.  The cost for international calls with Magic Jack?  2 cents per minute.  Thats right, his wife calls Poland for TWO CENTS A MINUTE.

Hot damn tamale, can't wait to get mine.

Ended my glorious run of 3 vacation days sandwiched around a weekend today.  I actually felt recharged and rested...I really needed those days off.  Bosses got me added to the purchasing accounts, which means as soon as my application is processed I'll have authority to order supplies on my own under my own account.  I had been using this other woman's account while she was on leave, now they want to give me my own.  Not a huge deal I guess, except that they're giving me somewhat free reign with the company's expense account with the vendor we order from so I guess they trust me.  Thats never a bad thing.

On the negative front, we may have to let one of our temps go.  We only have 2 in our department, but there's been a snag.  Back in late November or so I noticed this kid was late a lot.  Now he's a good kid, does a good job for us.  But the late thing doesn't fly, so I pulled him aside back then and told him he needed to keep an eye on that because its a quick way out the door if it gets noticed by my boss.  Now, the problem is he's the brother of one of the leads there.  Don't get me wrong I like this kid, but I always felt it was a risk bringing him in because of him being a lead's brother.  Maybe if they had brought him in on 2nd shift or whatever, but not on the same shift.  But I kept my mouth shut, he seemed like a good guy and he worked out pretty well.

But after I talked with him I noticed that about a week or so later the lates started up again.  It was right around Christmas by then and I didn't want to say anything so I let it slide til after the holidays.  Now at that point, my boss is going to notice eventually all the late punch ins and if I don't address it with him he's going to wonder what the fuck I'm doing, letting that slide...or worse yet, not noticing.  So I went to him the beginning of January and mentioned that I thought this guy had an attendance problem and I wanted to get a printout of his punch ins.  One of the other supervisors does the payroll for his agency and things were hectic, so it took a back seat.  Until today.

My boss called me and this other woman into an office, where the other supervisor was sitting there with his mouth agape reading off the punch ins.  He printed out the last 8 weeks and I did the math...of 35 possible working days in those 8 weeks, this guy was late 27 times.  TWENTY SEVEN.  lol

Now we've had some weather where being late wasn't a big deal, but even if you pull off half a dozen of those for the weather...sheesh.  So we got our directives and later on pulled the kid into the conference room, me and this other woman.  It was pointed out to him that we like him, he does a good job...but my goodness.  I pointed out that if he had been a full time employee he would have been fired by now.  So I reminded him of our talk a couple months ago, about how I mentioned he needed to check the tardies before it got noticed...well, now its been noticed.  And unfortunately, he's on a 90 day probation now where any more attendance issues...even 1 minute late...will result in termination.  And we've got bad weather tonight, so...sigh.  I hope we don't lose the kid, but honestly with his track record I'll be surprised if he makes it through this week.

And if he goes, well...my boss mentioned that his brother (and friends) will be pissed.  I added that yep, pissed at me...and we both knew I was going to take the brunt of it at first but whatever.  So we'll see.  I really don't care if they blame me or not, I'm not the one with 27 tardies in 8 weeks.

Ah well.