So you aren't getting a bonus in part because people in Houston built houses inside of reservoirs and were surprised when they flooded.

Yup

That is shit.

Aye. It really is.

Any single one of these big losses/issues and we'd probably have still got a bonus - but as it is...

We're also getting a lower rated pay rise compared to the other regions.

Compared to many people in the UK it's not a bad pay rise - but it's still a little below inflation. My personal performance was rated good, and I'm at the lower end of my pay band, so my raise is 3.25 %

I think much of the disgruntlement is to do with how they announced it.

I don't generally rely on bonuses if I can help it - nice when they come, but it's the wage that counts. But ... last year, they were in the 2nd year of trying to recover from a bunch of bad stuff including serious bottom line losses and bad practice in one of the regions which in some cases was outright fraud - so new CEO and management team rescuing the company - there was a big push to cut costs and stop leakage from bad payouts - there were staffing issues and major weather events - all the signals were we're probably not getting a bonus - but then we did (I got 50% of the bonus as I'd only been there 6 months)

This year the signals we've been getting is rah rah, we're really turning things around and the claims teams are doing better than ever etc etc. Way to go team, we're really flying now - and no bonus.

Update: l sprung him!

Hurrah!

Excellent news.

:cheerldr:

Sweet!

Glad to hear it. :thumb:

:)

...back in on Monday for a sall surgery, but at least we know what's expected (single night ) etc..... Should have been tomorrow, but Thunderboy has swim championships and beest wants to see that, and situation is not currently critical

I don't know what sall surgery is, but I'm glad it's a quickie.

sall good?

Sall stones?

oh fuck off. :p:


it's not really small but ya know...... it's a 3 hour surgery with an overnight, but in the scheme of things.....

life is pretty shit right now, guys. I just can't post about it. There's kids and mothers etc to be endarkened. just going for the small snippets to help process. All y'all don't need to reply, just venting a little an a hidden spot, I know you're all rooting for us etc. thanks :)


Can't even begin to tell you how thunderboy fucked up today, he's a walking comedy of errors....... *sigh*

but at least his shin is healing where he took off most of the skin while shaving down last night... :lol: :rolleyes:

oh and my computer is a pile of crap and not overly portable so I'm trying to do everything from my phone and being and old and with dodgy fingertips and limited tryping skills, this is not going too well......

Glad to hear that Beest is home, we get little enough good news.
We are upset today because we just lost a friend. The young man that we befriended has turned on us. I asked him to pay me the money he owes me for my old MacBookAir that I sold him before Thanksgiving. I wanted my $100.00 and Keryx's cooler and some other things we had lent him since he is moving away. After accusing us of fucking him over he told me to fuck off and never contact him again. Fucking kids. We have no idea what we did to fuck him over.

Oh fargon! What a fucker! So sorry that your kindness has been abused :(

monster, you do have support from here. I'm glad to hear you know you can count on it. Obviously I'm concerned about Beest, but only after reading that over a couple times was I able to figure out it wasn't his shin that was skinned during some preparatory procedure.

poor thunderboy...

hang in there, hang in there.

Upset isn't the right word here, more the feeling you have where *more* is piled on, stuff you have to do stuff you have to worry about, stuff you don't have much agency to affect.

Eight days ago, we went to go visit my Mom, take her a present, say hi, etc--me and Twil and SonofV. We knocked on her door as usual and it took a looooong time before there was any action. My Mom had a stroke in 1997 and her mobility and her speech were both ruined. Consequently it takes her five minutes to walk the fifteen feet from her bed to the door, assuming she is already awake, already has clothes on, brace on, shoes on, cane nearby, etc etc. .... anyhow.

We waited a long time, an aide came in, then left, then more waiting. Finally I went in and found her stuck on the toilet. Not glued, but too weak to get herself transferred. Then she wouldn't let me do the transfer, and it sounded like she was in pain. I finally went to go get help and three aides and I all managed to get her standing up, cleaned up, and pants up. What an ordeal.

We sat and visited for awhile, but Mom looked like hell. We left and then Monday night I got a call that she'd been transported to the hospital. I was able to visit her Tuesday after work after being reassured that I didn't need to be on the first thing smokin. The dignosis was sepsis (!!!) possibly due to a UTI or pneumonia or both. I know UTIs in older patients is serious condition, and google tells me I should fear sepsis even more (thank you google, you fucker).

When I got to see her, she was groggy and in pain and the nurse asked me how long she'd been sitting on the toilet. This was Tuesday evening, and I recounted our long wait in the hallway on Saturday. Come to find out that Mom didn't come down for breakfast Monday, which isn't out of the ordinary for her. She didn't come down for dinner either, also not unusual, but in the same day, *that's* a problem. They came and checked on her and found her on the toilet again, throwing up a little and very weak. The nurse asked me about the wound on her butt. Um, what did you say? It appears that she'd been sitting on the toilet long enough to have an open wound in the shape of a toilet seat on her butt, I saw the picture the hospital took.

W. T. F.

Now an Adult Protective Services investigation is underway, initiated by the hospital social worker, who deserves a superhero cape in my opinion. After these many days in the hospital, she is responding well enough to the medical attention (no UTI, pneumonia antibiotics, pain medication, turning in bed, CT scan of head negative... maybe other stuff) that she is being discharged today to a rehab facility where she's been once before.

The goal at the rehab location is to PT to increase strength and tone to help get back to self transfers and to heal the wound. Mom spends a *LOT* of time sitting, except when she's lying down, also on her backside. Her time spent up and walking is ... nothing. It's the time spent transferring from one sit to another sit or lying down.

At her assisted living facility, a couple new services will be added to her account, things previously left to the resident--toileting assistance and skin checks. It sounds a little ... I can't think of the word. It's another assault on her previous adult independence.

She used to have it all together, as much as any of us. Then the stroke, that's the biggest bomb. The paralysis, the aphasia, those insults can fuck up your quality of life. Then my Dad died, her husband and caregiver, the man who loves her--another blow. She had to move across country, in with me and my family, which was chaos. Then move again to an assisted living facility. Some stability for awhile.

Time marches on as they say and her aging made her more susceptible to these new problems, and the indignities in response.

Protip:

Don't have a stroke.

I'm sorry BigV. That's a big load to carry.

Getting old sucks, not only for the cogger but everyone who loves them. :(

Oh, BigV. I'm SO sorry to hear this news.

I lost both of my folks last summer, 18 days apart. For the 10 months prior, I did everything I possibly could to keep my folks safe and comfortable, but every day they slipped one notch lower on the healthy/independent scale.

It's crushing to watch a parent go through this. My heart is with you. :sniff:

All our old folks are slipping right now. My MiLs hubby a retired professor of biology couldn't remember "porcupine" today. :(

Sorry to hear that, Griff. Was he doing the whole, "the, uh, the little animal with spikes, what's it called," or did he say the wrong word without knowing?

Sorry to hear about Mom, V. Sounds like you/they have things more in control now.:fingerx:

Sometimes it just takes that one person to make a difference.

I have an update to my earlier unhappiness at not getting a bonus...


management have listened to the feedback (howls of derision on the company Yammer and message board and a palpable freeze in morale) and, with the input of the union reps cooked up a response over the weekend.

Yesterday we got into work to emails advising us that while we won't be getting our bonus, we are now getting a 'discretionary recognition award' - it's about 60% of what we would have got as a bonus, but 100% more than we were getting as we went into the weekend :)

I'm pleased for you.
But now I'm thinking about math and am unsure of myself.

Well...the maths is no doubt incorrect - very much not my strong suit :P

[tangent]My kids call it "maths" ironically, because some of their favorite British YouTubers do it and they think it's hilarious.[/tangent]

Perhaps Dana was using historical math(s).

He said "sloth" but he knew it was wrong.

Have him checked out by a neurologist, if he's willing. Word substitution is a different beast than poor recall. Mr. Clod's dad switched a few words, a nurse friend insisted he go see a doctor, and they caught a brain tumor.

Yeah - yeah that's it. Historical maths - totally.

He's very resistant. He has been forgetting words for a while but refuses to take the meds he's been prescribed. I think he was trying to find porcupine in his head but sloth which he knew was wrong was the creature with similar characteristics, so that's all he had. :( He was always the absent minded professor type but it's getting worse.

Sorry. That must be so hard to watch. :(

Could be a series of vascular strokes. This is what my Dad had. Then a bigger one which had him calling everyone Fforbes, and everything either "chicken" or "egg". The entertainment value wore off pretty quickly ...

Dammit, now I'm warping my own mind trying to figure out what characteristics a sloth and a porcupine share...

Slow tree climbing mammals. Something is tearing branches out of his tree likely a porky.

Besides, you're not old enough.

Derp
 

It has somehow eluded me that porcupines climb trees.

Must have killed that brain cell sometime or another.

cunty engineering teacher told Thor he has til Wednesday to turn in missing/corrected work or he will fail the class. Now OK, it's an extension, but his fucking father is fucking"actively dying" like this week and she's been informed. He needs less stress, not more -he clearly struggles with the regular fucking homework load as it is WTFF? :cry: This is too hard

This is the fucking fuck : drop it off the list. Forgiveness VS permission. Your instinct that other stuff is much, much more important is correct. Just stay on track, the teacher's stuff will wash out later. It will. You can freely forget about it starting now.

my daughter's facebook posts are breaking my heart. again.

Got a call from hospital last night, SonofV is back in the hospital for the second time in four days.

Haven't yet been able to reach him this time.

#sandwichgeneration ... But it's kind of a shit sandwich

Oh BigV! Hope you get through to him soon! x

Just got a medical bill for $10,000 due immediately. This shouldn't be possible. Beest maxed out his deductible back in January, we haven't had to pay anything since then. I think the hospital were so late in billing, the insurance was cancelled so refused to pay when hospital sent bill. Offices closed now, don't even know where to start :(

Let it sit for a few days. Six months after my folks' passing, I was still getting bills for things that had long since been paid. Modern medicine's billing system is amazingly pathetic.

Just keep copies of everything in chronological order (most recent in front). When the time comes, you can call someone with all your data and shut them down in nothing flat.

In the meantime, have a cuppa and chillax. :)

yeah, I was just venting, but thanks :) I figured out the place to start is ignoring it :lol: I know it's not right, I just dread the dealing with it

.... despite a bajillion phone calls to prescription companies to confirm the account is closed, the patient is dead and they won't get fucking paid....... Beest is still getting emails telling him drugs are about to ship...... another one today for the super-expensive last ditch chemo pill that didn't work....

Stiff upper lip, my friend. This baloney will continue for awhile. Just make a list, check it twice, and tick off each a-hole company in due time.

My particular headache was trying to close all my parents' bank, checking, and store accounts. It's like I had to have a note from my dead mother to get a few of them to shut things down and call it done.

*smh*

To be fair, I would like it to be hard for someone to close my account and take all my money. :)

Have you heard of chemo donation programs, monster? They may not be legal where you are (or anywhere anymore, for that matter,) but the idea is that instead of flushing, whatever pills you have leftover can be donated to someone who needs treatment but has no insurance.

Even when you have a POA and a death certificate? As I have learned, a POA means next to nothing, and every creditor demands an original death cert - at $25 a pop.

*sigh*

you buy death certs in bulk here and they're only $5 each then :D

I'm going to speak up for the creditors here - the laws governing data protection in the financial sector, certainly in the UK and Europe, but I imagine in the US too, are very strict and there are good reasons for that to be so.

It's a pain in the proverbial, and no doubt there could be some streamlining of the processes involved, but those protections are a necessary evil and in some cases hard won against the prevailing attitudes of the financial industries.

Auntiedigr's husband died on a Friday. "The Authorities" came for his prescription painkillers the next Tuesday.

Fuck cancer.

I get all of that, but I'd prefer that creditors put more energy into making it harder to open fraudulent accounts with fake IDs, instead of fighting against closing legit accounts because the owner died.

:eyebrow:

Well...... I finally got to sleep around noon the day after he died (just before midnight) and my phone rang an hour later to let me know they'd be here in ten minutes to collect the wheelchair (that we never used) and walking frame (used twice).

But they can they rent them to someone else for more charges. The drugs, they keep sending for more charges and just tell me to toss them.

I could fund my widowhood through the shit I have here.... Working on a donation to the local VA but it's so complex :/ They need a lot of paperwork to verify it all....

My doc told me to donate the super expensive meds I had after my stroke when they decided actually I didn't need the after all... but the procedure was so complex when I really didn't need stuff like that I gave up.

We also heard that local animal shelters can use some of the supplies that come with all the chemo stuff -sterile mats, saline syringes etc. They weren't interested.

Long Story, but anon donor paid for food at beest's funeral thing.

1) I needed to do it.

they took that from me. I knew i wanted to do it. (the swim community offered and I was working up to accept graciously, ecause I know they need to do something to help them grieve, but it was hard....) ...now I know I needed to do it. My husband. My goodbye.

2) I think I know who it is and they have an agenda. A documented Indian Giver

I talked to three friends about it independently (online). And two came up with the same name and all agree.

The whole thing feels soiled now :(

I know I'm an ungrateful biatch who can't take an intended complement. But here I'm allowed to be. This is not a well meaning individual.