I wish I knew how much PTO I have. I asked the newish 2nd person in HR the other day, and she told me that she won't be able to tell me until the other HR person gets back from vacation next week.

Seriously.

Really? That's weird (ETA: that she wouldn't know how to find it out herself).

My company has their payroll forms online--I just have to fill it out every week with any OT (it's never approved anyway, so the rare instance where I stay late, I take comp time instead) and PTO hours and submit it before I leave on Friday. As soon as I hit "submit," it automatically recalculates my remaining PTO for the year.

I have no idea -- we submit leave requests on line, but I think they are actually tracked through our Excel timesheets? Or some shit? It's truly a mystery. Luckily, I get a ton of vacation time and never take it all, but I would still like to know!

PTO ought to be tracked with payroll and on your paycheck. But it sometimes winds up under HR's purview (since it's a benefit) and then somebody's probably got to make a manual calculation on some outmoded system.

signed,
That's What I Used To Do

Somehow HR is involved with entering payroll here, too. This is the problem with small place -- crappy or nonexistent systems are rampant.

good friend with house in the semi-burbs is going to take some of my sealed up storage bins. My storage space is full and the waiting list for another is 5 deep in my building (there are probably only 30-35 storage units for the 108 apartments in the building). YAY!

Yay!

That is great news msbelle!

I am interviewing potential student employees and need a good way to determine if they are people who both listen to direction but are capable and like figuring things out for themselves. Without giving away that that is what I am asking, because of course they will say that they can!

I am so bad at interviewing, because my basic criteria for a student employee is that they not annoy me (including by doing poor work, asking too many questions, not asking enough questions or by being annoying. They also have to workj at a very small desk with me in a very small office, so we really have to be able to get along!

Canadian scientist aims to turn chickens into dinosaurs

After years spent hunting for the buried remains of prehistoric animals, a Canadian paleontologist now plans to manipulate chicken embryos to show he can create a dinosaur.

Hans Larsson, the Canada Research Chair in Macro Evolution at Montreal's McGill University, said he aims to develop dinosaur traits that disappeared millions of years ago in birds.

Larsson believes by flipping certain genetic levers during a chicken embryo's development, he can reproduce the dinosaur anatomy, he told AFP in an interview.

Sophia, you could make it a two part interview process. Think of a typical task that you would assign the student that involves some self starting. After you narrow down the candidates, ask the ones that you do to do the task, and see what you get.