Okay, I'm back
Sorry for the lack of updates everyone. Life here has been a real big ball of stress lately. Both school and work have been taking a bit of a toll on me, so my time away from both is usually spent vegging out or pacing around muttering (okay, not really). Let's start at the top, eh?
Last, oh, tuesday I believe, I went into the student services building to turn in my petition to graduate in May. While there, I decided to see if the school had finished my transcript evaluation that they'd been working on for the past two months. When I got the report, I was greeted by a blank "all requirements met by Bachelor's degree" checkbox. Blank? They've had my transcripts for two full months. Surely they know I have a Bachelor's degree. Do they?
Well, no. I should tell you that the people here at Mt. SAC are a little, uh, dense. My transcript was all marked up with notes and asterisks, and pretty doodles of hearts and pink flowers. Though even through that, whomever the person was that actually did the evaluation completely missed the most important part of the transcript. The part that says that I have a degree. Seriously, it's not hidden in magic invisible ink. It's right there. At the end. You know, right next to where it says "Degree Awarded." Right after the colon at the end of "awarded," there are some more words. In my case, it says "Bachelor of Science, Aeronautical Science." Sumtimes I hav trubble reeding two.
So, I skipped a bit of my next class in order to go speak to a counselor there at the school to get this all figured out. The counselor, as expected, hadn't the slightest clue as to what I was talking about. Someone with a Bachelor's degree coming to a community college? Weeeeird. You'd think that other CTI students like myself would have been in there before trying to get the same thing fixed, but apparently these people only have short term memories.
Okay, I shouldn't say too many bad things about the counselor. He wasn't very helpful at the beginning, but he did make a phone call to the transcript evaluator, and 24 hours after the original shock, I got word back. It'd been an oversight. We're sorry, we sat on your transcripts for two months, and it took us five minutes to go "oh snap, we suck." The offending checkbox is now checked, and I'm graduating officially in May. Now if I can get that ATSAT knocked out, we'll be in business.
Speaking of which, I still haven't heard anything back about that. People that signed up last semester have already been given test dates for mid-late April, but since my name only got submitted to the FAA last week, I'm not sure if I'll be taking it around the same time. That'd definitely be nice, but I'm not holding my breath. Man.
Oh, and so I almost got suspended at work tonight. This is a good story. We have these people called "secret shoppers" that come in every once in a while and rate the servers. They're just volunteers, and are "paid" by the company with a free meal. All they have to do is fill out a survey at the end of their meal, and that's that. Not a bad way of ensuring quality service.
Well, it would be a good way if the results of the surveys weren't held against the servers. Our great franchise thinks that it's just a dandy idea to sabotage its hard working servers by not telling us when we'll be evaluated by someone who's never done our job, then threatening to suspend or fire us because of the results. Long story short, I got a secret shopper in my section on sunday night during a big push, and got marked down quite a bit on the survey because I didn't do things like suggestive sell, readback their food order, or personalize my check when I dropped it off. Let's ignore the fact that I was working six tables and got every order on every table correct for the entire night. Every table that night was run flawlessly, but because I was nickel-and-dimed by a highly subjective survey, I was threatened tonight with suspension. The manager quickly backed down on that though when I kindly reminded her that suspending me would be a violation of the agreement I signed when I was hired. Instead, she wants to write me up, put me in for retraining, and cut my number of shifts per week.
Yes, all because of one bad review from one table that night, who, coincidentally, said that their food came out perfectly as ordered and their drinks were always refilled. Let's get something straight, I ran 20-25 tables that night perfectly, but because of some lady who has never done my job, I'm being punished? Excuse me?
Also, my manager found it necessary to pull me off of my closing shift that I'd picked up tonight. Why? Her impression was that I can't handle busy closing shifts after reading the report. I've closed 3 out of 5 shifts per week for two months and have had one problem. That problem was of course the sunday where I worked upwards of nine tables continuously. She actually brought that up tonight, telling me that I didn't take responsibility for my actions that day by complaining about the number of tables I was running. She said that instead of pointing my finger at management for slamming the servers with a ridiculous load, that I should have just been able to handle it. Amazing.
What's worst about all of this is that I have zero representation. My manager told me tonight (and this is verbatim), that "at the end of the day, this is my restaurant." She slammed the gavel down tonight with ridiculous assumptions about the quality of my work, and I have no way of appealing.
Folks, if there's only one reason to unionize, this is it. I know for a fact that the day I set foot in my ATC facility, I'm joining NATCA.
Last, oh, tuesday I believe, I went into the student services building to turn in my petition to graduate in May. While there, I decided to see if the school had finished my transcript evaluation that they'd been working on for the past two months. When I got the report, I was greeted by a blank "all requirements met by Bachelor's degree" checkbox. Blank? They've had my transcripts for two full months. Surely they know I have a Bachelor's degree. Do they?
Well, no. I should tell you that the people here at Mt. SAC are a little, uh, dense. My transcript was all marked up with notes and asterisks, and pretty doodles of hearts and pink flowers. Though even through that, whomever the person was that actually did the evaluation completely missed the most important part of the transcript. The part that says that I have a degree. Seriously, it's not hidden in magic invisible ink. It's right there. At the end. You know, right next to where it says "Degree Awarded." Right after the colon at the end of "awarded," there are some more words. In my case, it says "Bachelor of Science, Aeronautical Science." Sumtimes I hav trubble reeding two.
So, I skipped a bit of my next class in order to go speak to a counselor there at the school to get this all figured out. The counselor, as expected, hadn't the slightest clue as to what I was talking about. Someone with a Bachelor's degree coming to a community college? Weeeeird. You'd think that other CTI students like myself would have been in there before trying to get the same thing fixed, but apparently these people only have short term memories.
Okay, I shouldn't say too many bad things about the counselor. He wasn't very helpful at the beginning, but he did make a phone call to the transcript evaluator, and 24 hours after the original shock, I got word back. It'd been an oversight. We're sorry, we sat on your transcripts for two months, and it took us five minutes to go "oh snap, we suck." The offending checkbox is now checked, and I'm graduating officially in May. Now if I can get that ATSAT knocked out, we'll be in business.
Speaking of which, I still haven't heard anything back about that. People that signed up last semester have already been given test dates for mid-late April, but since my name only got submitted to the FAA last week, I'm not sure if I'll be taking it around the same time. That'd definitely be nice, but I'm not holding my breath. Man.
Oh, and so I almost got suspended at work tonight. This is a good story. We have these people called "secret shoppers" that come in every once in a while and rate the servers. They're just volunteers, and are "paid" by the company with a free meal. All they have to do is fill out a survey at the end of their meal, and that's that. Not a bad way of ensuring quality service.
Well, it would be a good way if the results of the surveys weren't held against the servers. Our great franchise thinks that it's just a dandy idea to sabotage its hard working servers by not telling us when we'll be evaluated by someone who's never done our job, then threatening to suspend or fire us because of the results. Long story short, I got a secret shopper in my section on sunday night during a big push, and got marked down quite a bit on the survey because I didn't do things like suggestive sell, readback their food order, or personalize my check when I dropped it off. Let's ignore the fact that I was working six tables and got every order on every table correct for the entire night. Every table that night was run flawlessly, but because I was nickel-and-dimed by a highly subjective survey, I was threatened tonight with suspension. The manager quickly backed down on that though when I kindly reminded her that suspending me would be a violation of the agreement I signed when I was hired. Instead, she wants to write me up, put me in for retraining, and cut my number of shifts per week.
Yes, all because of one bad review from one table that night, who, coincidentally, said that their food came out perfectly as ordered and their drinks were always refilled. Let's get something straight, I ran 20-25 tables that night perfectly, but because of some lady who has never done my job, I'm being punished? Excuse me?
Also, my manager found it necessary to pull me off of my closing shift that I'd picked up tonight. Why? Her impression was that I can't handle busy closing shifts after reading the report. I've closed 3 out of 5 shifts per week for two months and have had one problem. That problem was of course the sunday where I worked upwards of nine tables continuously. She actually brought that up tonight, telling me that I didn't take responsibility for my actions that day by complaining about the number of tables I was running. She said that instead of pointing my finger at management for slamming the servers with a ridiculous load, that I should have just been able to handle it. Amazing.
What's worst about all of this is that I have zero representation. My manager told me tonight (and this is verbatim), that "at the end of the day, this is my restaurant." She slammed the gavel down tonight with ridiculous assumptions about the quality of my work, and I have no way of appealing.
Folks, if there's only one reason to unionize, this is it. I know for a fact that the day I set foot in my ATC facility, I'm joining NATCA.
posted by Brent at 3:29 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Brent, great blog! I saw your posts on ATCCTI. Check out my blog, and my girlfriend's (she's a professional writer and ERAU prof).
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