Category: Rantings and ravings

Who is Minding the Store?

Posted on by cms_admin in Rantings and ravings

You don’t need me to tell your retirement savings are currently, well, not experiencing optimum conditions. Here’s an odd story, one which certainly isn’t meant to reflect or otherwise impugn the many financial entities that are doing their jobs ethically and competently. But there are exceptions. This is one of them. 

My father, John Soyka, a former Electric Boat employee, died in October, 2004. On August 2024, twenty years after the fact, I was contacted by phone and subsequently a letter informing me that I had a “large” benefit payout due me as my father’s sole survivor. I was suspicious at first this was a scam, but, it checked out these were legitimate representations. Emphasis on “representations.” 

Some time, effort, and expense went into providing the necessary documentation to claim the “large” benefit promised. I also prepaid taxes on the supposed benefit due to the estate I had to create (as I was not a named beneficiary, unlike all my father’s other accounts, which should have been a red flag). I was told verbally a check was on its way. Shortly thereafter, I received a letter, that “oopsie daisy,” there in fact was no benefit.It took a while to get an explanation of how this could happen, and even then it’s not entirely clear other than that an error occurred. And, golly gee, we’re awfully sorry. I would tend to think that if someone is contacting a person after 20 years about a possible six figure death benefit that they might be sure of this before they do so.

Back in third grade I was taught to “always check your math.” Evidently this lesson hasn’t been learned by some people who handle survivor benefits. While I did file an executive complain, three months later I haven’t heard a peep. Not even another “golly, gee, we really are sorry for the aggravation and inconvenience we caused.” So, just saying that, sure, stuff happens. But it might not hurt to make inquiries to ensure similar kind of stuff isn’t happening with your investments.

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What a Difference a Pandemic Makes? Apparently Not Much

Posted on by cms_admin in Rantings and ravings

The global pandemic and likely recession hasn’t had much effect on the job offers coming into my inbox. What also hasn’t changed is how many of these offers are irrelevant to me–recruiters just spitballing without considering whether I’m actually really likely to move across the country for a three month contract (I’m not and who would be?), or if I’m really a web developer (I’m not) rather than someone who writes web content (which anyone who took the time to read my profile would have realized). What I am finding particularly curious though is the now frequent provision “remote until the COVID-19 crisis is over.” Considering these are all short-term contracts, typically six months, a year at most, what exactly do they mean by “over,” considering that a potential vaccine is 18 months away at the most optimistic?

Presumably “over” doesn’t really mean “over” (any more than a year contract might actually last a year), but until state governors relax sheltering restrictions. At which point, returning to the workplace when this is “over” is likely to involve some recalibration–no more herding people into tiny cubicles stacked next to one another but rather spacing them out, maybe even the return of honest-to-god offices (for a little more on that, see my TalentZoo post A Room of One’s Own); temperature taking required for admittance; masks and social distancing. My question is, why bother with all that? Why not just let people continue to work remotely?

Okay, certain kinds of jobs require physical presence. Most office work doesn’t. There’s very little difference to messaging your manager in the cube next to you than doing it from home. Or working in front of your computer in a cube or in your home office set-up in the spare bedroom. Except maybe you have to wear pants in the office.

The argument for having people at the office is to promote team building and camaraderie, that humans are social creatures needing to interact physically with one another (although the number of meetings I’ve attended where people are paying more attention to their phones than the person running the meeting would tend to dispute that). However, this need for social interaction also tends to conflict with actually getting work done. Think of how many times a colleague leaning over cubicle wall to tell you about their kid’s high school project (as if you cared) while your spreadsheets weren’t getting filled up.

And, yes, some people just aren’t built to work remotely. Then again, people in general aren’t built for isolation and social distancing. But sometimes you just have to buckle up and deal. This is certainly one of those times.

So why do companies have this expectation that people should be back in the office any time soon, particularly during a time when being in the office could actually imperil their health? Because that’s the model they’ve always used. Managers somehow feel that they can’t manage unless they can actually see people. Which is another way of saying they can’t control people if they aren’t in the office. Which might mean they aren’t very good managers. Or, perhaps considering how spyware…er, I mean business software productivity tools…can monitor remote workers in real-time whether people are actually working or watching You Tube (likely they’re probably doing both), perhaps managers consider that a threat to their jobs.

In any event, it’s somewhat disheartening that particularly at a time when new ways of thinking are essential to both the health of people and the economy, the fallback position is that we’ll just continue to do what we’ve always done as soon as this is all “over.” Even if it’s not likely to be over for a long time.