Man, Maria. I wish I could get you into my company. I don't mean to be all Pollyanna-y but I am so glad to work somewhere where performance is genuinely valued. I mean, it's not perfect by any means, but if you work hard and show results people notice.

Amy, this is a family-owned dealership group. The dealer principal is a micromanaging, cranky SOB who treats all of his employees like crap.

Ah. That is exactly the kind of privately owned fiefdom hell I escaped from. I was so happy to get back to Big Corporate America with all its bureaucracy and policies and standards of behavior and stuff.

The HR manager there is a friend of mine and we do a good job of separating friendship from work. She knows I'm moving back to PA. It says a lot when she told me she doesn't blame me and if there's anything she can do to help, just let her know. And it's ok by her if I somehow can't give a full two weeks' notice.

Telling, isn't it?

No bereavement leave is just inhuman. I was bitter enough that though my company claims you can get up to a week, during the 18-month period where I had three family funerals (two grandparents and an aunt), I got four hours each time, which came out of my sick time. And none of these were local funerals, obviously.

brenda, I'd jump in a heartbeat. My skills translate well from my current industry to yours.

I thought that might be the case.

I just don't understand how employers can treat their employees like that.

ND, I had it so good at my previous two jobs and I didn't even know it. I miss my Chicagoland employer desperately.

brenda, I love you. This place is so fantastically awesome, and I thank whatever higher power there is on a daily basis that I stumbled across here 9 years ago.

I thank whatever higher power there is on a daily basis that I stumbled across here 9 years ago.

As do we.

The "nine years" still freaks me out, though. Sara was just a few months old when I started posting here. What the hell.

I have never negotiated for shit. They've said "the position pays $XX, want it?" I've never negotiated from a position of strength--the one time I interviewed while I had a job, I got the job and they were so mad I turned it down they wouldn't let me interview again 2 years later, when I was unemployed.

Shit, I just turned on the TV in the middle of the Louisville NCAA coverage and my remote batteries are dead, and now it's "boy doctor from Syria" and WHERE ARE THE BATTERIES???

A computer scans NY Times articles for sentences that work as haiku. Journalists pick the best ones to post: [link]

As dawn broke we warmed // strawberry Pop Tarts over // the dying embers.

As an engineer, // I'm sort of a student of // how things fall apart.