A few more boxes added to my pile of moving stuff, with stuff from my office. My officemate helped me carry them from the office to my apartment. (Well, "helped" in the sense that he did all of the actual work, and I just pointed at where I wanted stuff.) I would estimate that I have two or three more boxes worth of stuff to pack at the office, about maybe six or seven more here at the apartment.

From an HR POV it would be weird to have somebody asked to sit in on a "clear things up" meeting that wasn't another supervisor or another HR person, or possibly a Union rep.

There's no reason to have somebody else in the room. And having a witness or recording anything doesn't really matter. They can stay entirely within guidelines while making unreasonable requests and negative performance evaluations. If they want you out they can just keep making the job horrible until you've got to go.

It actually might be beneficial to take the HR person in with you because if she's fired too, you could use her as a witness if you wanted to file an unlawful termination suit against them. (You're old enough, Todd, that your age would be a protected class - I think. Depends on the state.) Which you could probably leverage for a better severance.

But ultimately if they want to make you miserable to quit then the entire work situation has turned toxic.

that's close to the end Hil! That's great! How's it feel to live in Box City?

Any word from PixDesign camp? How ya feeling Drew??

Doing fine thanks,

So glad to hear it, ND.

I'm now in pain from laughing so hard after digging through other strips from the same artist.

I'm . . . sorry? Yeah, the strip on website design is too spot on.

Business ethics/practice question? Went to do a simple install of part I ordered for client. Took me 15 minutes to figure out part was bad and 2 hour 45 minutes to get vendor to admit part was bad. "Just try this one more thing."

So I'm thinking that even though I charge for my time, implicitly that is for productive labor. Right now I'm strongly leaning toward not billing the client for the time I spent today. I'm thinking there is both a fairness issue and a maintain good relations with the client issue here, and both say to me "waive the charges."

I dunno, does anyone running a small business have a different point of view on this?

And having a witness or recording anything doesn't really matter. They can stay entirely within guidelines while making unreasonable requests and negative performance evaluations. If they want you out they can just keep making the job horrible until you've got to go.

This--I just meant if you recorded it, if they said crazy things, or asked you to do things that they later said you hadn't done, or something, you'd have some sort of defense with Unemployment if they tried to deny it. I'm saying you need to start gathering proof for that, now, since they seem to want you out.

I'm thinking there is both a fairness issue and a maintain good relations with the client issue here, and both say to me "waive the charges."

I would waive the charges, for both reasons. I might contact the vendor and ask for some consideration (discounts, extra parts, etc.) for the time that you spent with their tech, which was pretty significant for the damn thing not to work.

Do Typefaces Really Matter?

Um, YEAH!!!