So, lessee,
I’m scheduled to be out in DC next week. monday morning – wed afternoon. I may see how possible it is to fly out there saturday morning if interesting monsters are available for socializing.
Good news: It seems my first pay check will be direct deposited.
Bad news: It seems my first pay check will be arriving in mid-July.
Transit benefits were provided for the entire internship on the first day. I previously asked if we’d be getting fare cards, or checks or what. I assumed they didn’t trust us. But she said checks, and I assumed checks made out to the recipients of the transit benefits (ie, me). Wrong. They are form checks, sheet printed and perforated. When I explained that I had already purchased my transit foo, the nice hr lady recommended I sell the checks to friends who needed them (if you buy transit passes in chicago, could you help a brother out? $75 in checks of mixed denominations are available). Right, so, we don’t trust you, so we’ll give you these checks, then we’ll turn around in a heartbeat and recommend you resell them.
Crackheads. The lot of them.
Oh, and apparently, the very idea of some alternative keyboard layout nearly gave the IT lady an apoplectic fit. She was pretty clearly following the script and became lost the moment some item in her script failed. I did it quietly, didn’t make dvorak the default or anything. Hopefully they won’t notice.
The work itself seems like it may be of some interest. Will try to remember not to do at home. The cube farm effect isn’t quite as horrific as motorola’s was. I am reserving judgement, it’s only the first day. But I’m giving them the hairy eyeball.
My understanding is that the law allowing you to use pre-tax income to buy transit requires that they issue you a check made payable to the transit companies. The woman you spoke with, on the other hand, has suggested a workaround for this.
Well, this is actually just a flatout benefit, not a salary reducing thing at all, but the pre-tax factor probably still applies. *shrug*. Stupid law.
Meaning no offense, it’s not stupid; it’s just unfortunate for you. If they issued checks of pre-tax money made payable to the employee, they’d be shooting the IRS in the foot. Every single employee would immediately claim the maximum allowed benefits for transportation.
*hugs*
Yeah, but not every employee could whip out their already activated transit pass and show it to the check issuing authority. I’m talking flexibility more than anything.
But also, there’s a certain food stamp element to it. Food stamps: bad plan. If you want to do a care-not-cash scheme, don’t involve the intermediate financial substitute. Though, there are a number of other idiocies involved in the process.
A per dollar subsidy (you spend $5, agency spends $5 or $10 or whatever) up to a certain maximum is really a better plan than a flat-out gift. Depending on their goal, I suppose. *shrug*
It may well be a compensatory response to an even stupider policy regarding parking, and providing it for employees.
Wait, you type using the Dvorak keyboard? Wow.
How much faster does that make youm, since apparently, the Qwerty layout is supposed to be the most hobbling thing a keyboardist can use…?
Qwerty was in fact designed to slow typists down so that they wouldn’t type faster than the typewriter could keep up. (This from an era when each letter had its own little “hammer” to strike the ink onto the paper.)
It took me awhile to adapt; I used to be really fast at qwerty. I have no idea how my speed now compares with my speed then, because I’ve never done the # of words / minute game. I do sometimes wish I had.
It has been most beneficial for my wrists, though.
I gave up trying to learn Dvorak. I need to find a re-keyable keyboard to use as a training keyboard. I prefer the split keyboards, and they’re too ergonomic to just pop out keys and move around.
spend a considerable sum and go for a kinesis dvorak? =)
mmmm, kinesis….