Maligerent

I’m v bored sooo

I got the coolest light for my Switch dock! 💕

Every time.

Every time I see this, I lose my shit.

EVERY. TIME.

The HR manager tried to convince me that the offer was competitive. She told me that she couldn’t offer more because it would be unfair to other paralegals. She said that if we did not agree to a salary that day, then she would have to suspend me because I would be working past the allowed temp phase. I insisted that she look into a higher offer and she agreed that we could meet again later. Before I left, she had something to add.

“Make sure you don’t talk about your salary with anyone,” she said sweetly, as if she was giving advice to her own son. “It causes conflict and people can be let go for doing it.” (This is to the best of my recollection, not verbatim.)

It wasn’t all that surprising to hear this from a corporate HR manager. What was surprising was the déjà vu.

Just three months earlier, some of my coworkers at the coffee shop told me that our bosses, who worked in the office on salaries, and even the owner, got a higher cut of the tips than we did. One barista told me that when she complained about it, the managers reduced her hours.

When you make minimum wage and have to fight for more than 30 hours per week, tips are pretty important, so I sat down with my managers to discuss the controversy. That’s when they told me not to talk about it with the other baristas. The owner “hates it when people talk about money,” my manager added, and “would fire people for it if he could.” I sulked back to the espresso machine, making my lattes at half speed and failing to do side work.

In both workplaces, my bosses were breaking the law.

Under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA), all workers have the right to engage “concerted activity for mutual aid or protection” and “organize a union to negotiate with [their] employer concerning [their] wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment.” In six states, including my home state of Illinois, the law even more explicitly protects the rights of workers to discuss their pay.

This is true whether the employers make their threats verbally or on paper and whether the consequences are firing or merely some sort of cold shoulder from management. My managers at the coffee shop seemed to understand that they weren’t allowed to fire me solely for talking about pay, but they may not have known that it is also illegal to discourage employees from discussing their pay with each other. As NYU law professor Cynthia Estlund explained to NPR, the law “means that you and your co-workers get to talk together about things that matter to you at work.” Even “a nudge from the boss saying ‘we don’t do that around here’ … is also unlawful under the National Labor Relations Act,” Estlund added.

a coworker of mine (and integral part of a voluntary team he and I are the sole members of) had to have foot surgery and was told he’d need six weeks to recuperate. when he went to HR they told him his best option was to resign and then reapply for his same job after his 6 week recovery time. 

he originally asked them if he could take those weeks as unpaid time off, and was about to take their “quit and come back” offer because they made it sound like the only option. this would have cancelled the very same healthcare he was using to pay for the treatment in the first place. 

this is a fairly common tactic HR managers will try to use to scare workers out of taking any leave at all, or force you to reduce the amount of time you are “unproductive.” 

it is also illegal under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act - http://www.dol.gov/whd/fmla/ 

you are entitled to twelve full weeks of (unpaid) time off to care for a family member or to recuperate from medical conditions. the explicit qualifying scenarios are listed on the website above.

Rather than immediately jumping on the problem and containing it before it became such a large issue, they turned a blind eye to a rampant infestation of bots accounts and child predators openly expressing a desire to exchange illegal material for months.

Apple finally brings the ban hammer down on the official Tumblr app in the App Store, saying they need to get things sorted out because the app has become a safe haven for predators.

The Tumblr staff panics, because if their app isn’t on the App Store, they won’t be able to update and fix their notoriously bug ridden and barely functional mobile app.

Trying to appease Apple and have the mobile app put back on the App Store, the staff hastily programs a bot designed to detect and delete bot accounts, then proceeds to unleash it on the site, giving it authorization to immediately delete any bot accounts it detects without requiring a staff member to review whether the account is indeed a bot or contains illegal material.

The bot deletes a large portion of the bot accounts, but in a programming error that was obviously overlooked as the staff rushed to program and release it, the bot also deleted every account that has ever had a bot interact with it via a reblog or like.

Which, given this is an issue that’s been occurring for months, is a large portion of tumblr.

TL;DR

Tumblr staff chose to ignore a rampant problem with child predators and bot accounts for months, and Apple removed Tumblr from the App Store as a result.

Tumblr staff panicked and released a bot to try and nuke the accounts of the bots causing problems, which accidentally nuked the accounts of everyone the bots reblogged from as well.

We were there, sixteen year old me and seventeen year old her, holding hands and window-shopping, minding our own business.

This Salvation Army shitheel gets aggro about it in the middle of the mall and I’m there totally flabbergasted cause like, it’s christmas

Only, 16!Tabi had even less composure than 26!Tabi, so I lost my fucking mind on her.

Thing is: when I’m really angry, I don’t rage, I go all cold and apparently that freaks people out, because I could see my gf backing up and the lady getting tense and then I realized that anger doesn’t solve problems.

So instead, I started wailing.

Picture this: 5’4, tiny, blonde haired high school girl with her little violin on her back and pearls in her ears just as PTA-approved as could be, full on sobbing in the hallway.

Just, sobbing like my dog’s been shot.

Now my gf’s like, “oh fuck” and the lady’s like “oh fuuuuck!” and I’m here, head thrown back, tears down my cheeks and in that shrill, distressed, /loud/ voice, “WHY WOULD YOU B-b-be so MEAN?! It’s CHRISTMAS!”

And the lady’s like “please stop Oh fuck” because now we have a crowd, and this Molly Weasley of a woman putters over, “what’s the matter, dear?”

And mall security’s coming and this bell ringer is looking very uncomfortable so I just look at this matronly ellen-watching suburban housewife lady, eyes wide and wet and my lip wobbling.

“I was, she s-said, s-s-she said I was going to HELL!”

And I burst right back into tears.

Maaaaaaaan, they didn’t even stick around to ask why she’d said it. Soon as I said it, Mall po-po bounced her like a fucking pogo stick.

We get outside and my girlfriend’s like “that is the most Slytherin thing I have ever seen anyone do.”

So yeah, they’re not just ‘homophobic’, they’re bigoted fucking murderers.

(Wikipedia article on her death conveniently (for SA) omits Salvation Army connection, linking only to expired articles from local newspapers)

SA claims that they didn’t turn her away, and accept all homeless people, except, it’s not like Jennifer Gale was only trans woman refused shelter by Salvation Army, making this denial appear to be worth less than bullshit:

https://thinkprogress.org/salvation-army-refuses-housing-shelter-to-transgender-woman-2660c79b4cd4#.bo53qrxf9