You got a piece of me, but it's just a little piece of me.

So, the big question at work this week is, are we going to be paid for the two days the office was closed for the Hurricane last week? Today, we received the answer - a big, resounding - sort of? They will pay us for one day, and we can come in on Saturday to make up some of the hours, or use a vacation day to make up the other time.

Of course, we know this is total bullshit and that the office is just cheap and this is a way for them to save a lot of money. For some of us, me, I have no vacation time and the office won’t let me use a sick day for anything other than being sick (a whole different problem in this office), so I am stuck with no choice but to come in on Saturday to make up about 7 hours of work. I am going to attempt to get a couple hours of OT by Friday so maybe I’ll only have to stay 4 hours on Saturday instead.

After hearing of the negative result of our repeated questioning, I decided to try to find any info about this sort of situation from the Texas Workforce Commission via their website. Unfortunately, because this is a special situation, I had a very hard time searching and identifying any type of law that would apply to this situation. This led me to call the TWC and just flat out ask them. The flat out answer I got was a big, resounding N-O, the office does not have any responsibility to pay us for our lost time and can ask us to make up the time or use our vacation time. Most of us in the office are screaming bullshit. Had the office been open, we would’ve worked and that would have been the end of the story. We did not have a choice in this situation and some were told on Thursday not to come in at all (we already knew the office building would be closed on Friday). How can it be legal for a company and a buildings management to tell us not to come in, giving us no choice in the matter, but then have no responsibility to pay us? Bullshit.

This will be one more item on my list of laws to amend when I get myself elected, which should be sometime in the next 10 years. If you’d like to help with this issue and the numerous others I have planned to tackle over the years, feel free to send me an email and ask how you can help.