Work Related Gripes V The Wrath Of Jay..

[cramx3]

As part of our continued migrations to our new work overlord's systems, they moved all our email (basically so now all my email uses the new company address and the old one has been deactivated) and by doing this, I lost all my outlook email rules for my mailbox and opened to see 30k unread emails  Spent the entire morning working on that

[Lethean]

30k?  Are these emails that you truly haven't read or did it show some old ones as unread in error?

[hefdaddy42]

Me:  Mr. Client, your workers compensation insurer has not received your response to the annual policy audit.  Please be sure to send your quarterly payroll reports to them by X date so they can complete the audit.

Client:  ............

Me 30 days later:  Mr. Client, the insurer still has not received them.  They will issue a non-compliant audit and double your annual premium if you do not response by Y date.

Client.......

Me:  Mr. Client, enclosed is your non-productive audit, generating an additional premium of $3,000.00.

Client......

Client:  OMG YOU HAVE TO HELP ME, I RECEIVED A BILL FOR $3,000.00 AND WE HAVE TO GET THIS FIXED IMMEDIATELY! 

Just catching up. 

I work for such an insurer.  We perform audits on our Workers Comp and General Liability customers, and I can assure you that the scenario you outline here happens ALL THE TIME.

[Grappler]

Me:  Mr. Client, your workers compensation insurer has not received your response to the annual policy audit.  Please be sure to send your quarterly payroll reports to them by X date so they can complete the audit.

Client:  ............

Me 30 days later:  Mr. Client, the insurer still has not received them.  They will issue a non-compliant audit and double your annual premium if you do not response by Y date.

Client.......

Me:  Mr. Client, enclosed is your non-productive audit, generating an additional premium of $3,000.00.

Client......

Client:  OMG YOU HAVE TO HELP ME, I RECEIVED A BILL FOR $3,000.00 AND WE HAVE TO GET THIS FIXED IMMEDIATELY! 

Just catching up. 

I work for such an insurer.  We perform audits on our Workers Comp and General Liability customers, and I can assure you that the scenario you outline here happens ALL THE TIME.

Haha, I know - I've been an agent for 20 years.  It drives me crazy to be doing my job and reminding clients of their responsibilities, finally having to drop everything and fix things on the back end.

[cramx3]

30k?  Are these emails that you truly haven't read or did it show some old ones as unread in error?

All from the last couple days while my mailbox was being moved over.  It's like 29,500 automated alert emails that I am subject to from work that aren't humanely possible to look at one by one, it's stupid.  So I had to do a lot of maneuvering to find the ~500 emails that may be useful and clear the junk.  I think I did it (I'll probably need to add more rules as certain emails show up over time still), but it took me my entire morning.

[Chino]

As part of our continued migrations to our new work overlord's systems, they moved all our email (basically so now all my email uses the new company address and the old one has been deactivated) and by doing this, I lost all my outlook email rules for my mailbox and opened to see 30k unread emails  Spent the entire morning working on that

Ooof!

Even with 30 or so rules in place, I still have 1800 unread messages in my inbox 

[cramx3]

I actually really needed to redo my rules.  Things just change over time and I had gotten lazy to keep up, but man, I didn't want to do it like that 

Also doesn't help that using Outlook on my 2015 work macbook to migrate thousands of emails slows down just about everything else I'm trying to do.  At least it was a quiet morning for work.

[Lethean]

I don't envy either of you getting that many emails. Sounds like a really fun morning...

Speaking of fun mornings, my team decided to have a team call at 8 every Monday morning.  About essential work related things needed to do our jobs?  No, just a "fun" way to connect and talk about our personal lives.  I imagine a lot of people are going to be pretty quiet at 8 am; this just seems like a really bad idea.  Not to mention that my personal life is really none of their business...

[cramx3]

That's absolutely miserable.  Way too early on Monday to talk about stuff that isn't important.  I'd do everything in my power to find an excuse not to attend. 

[Lethean]

I'm going to see how it goes - I hope the silence on the call is hint enough.  And if everyone else is cheery and chipper and fine with it, I can do some dishes or something.  Or more likely, sit quietly and browse DTF while trying to wake up.

[hefdaddy42]

Speaking of fun mornings, my team decided to have a team call at 8 every Monday morning.  About essential work related things needed to do our jobs?  No, just a "fun" way to connect and talk about our personal lives.  I imagine a lot of people are going to be pretty quiet at 8 am; this just seems like a really bad idea.  Not to mention that my personal life is really none of their business...

We do something similar to this.  We call it a Team Connect.  It's a call on MS Teams with our team (about 30 people, give or take), and it's strictly non-work-related, and about 15-20 minutes in length.  We started it when we all had to stop coming into the office with the pandemic, to keep a sense of connection, and we still do it.

But we don't do it at 8am on a Monday.  Ours is at 10 am on Wednesdays.

[Lethean]

Speaking of fun mornings, my team decided to have a team call at 8 every Monday morning.  About essential work related things needed to do our jobs?  No, just a "fun" way to connect and talk about our personal lives.  I imagine a lot of people are going to be pretty quiet at 8 am; this just seems like a really bad idea.  Not to mention that my personal life is really none of their business...

We do something similar to this.  We call it a Team Connect.  It's a call on MS Teams with our team (about 30 people, give or take), and it's strictly non-work-related, and about 15-20 minutes in length.  We started it when we all had to stop coming into the office with the pandemic, to keep a sense of connection, and we still do it.

But we don't do it at 8am on a Monday.  Ours is at 10 am on Wednesdays.

I'm opposed to it in general, but I'd think a little more favorably about it if it was 10am on Wednesday. 

[hefdaddy42]

Speaking of fun mornings, my team decided to have a team call at 8 every Monday morning.  About essential work related things needed to do our jobs?  No, just a "fun" way to connect and talk about our personal lives.  I imagine a lot of people are going to be pretty quiet at 8 am; this just seems like a really bad idea.  Not to mention that my personal life is really none of their business...

We do something similar to this.  We call it a Team Connect.  It's a call on MS Teams with our team (about 30 people, give or take), and it's strictly non-work-related, and about 15-20 minutes in length.  We started it when we all had to stop coming into the office with the pandemic, to keep a sense of connection, and we still do it.

But we don't do it at 8am on a Monday.  Ours is at 10 am on Wednesdays.

I'm opposed to it in general, but I'd think a little more favorably about it if it was 10am on Wednesday.

I get it. 

If ours was on Mondays at 8am I would feel like opening a vein.

[wolfking]

As part of our continued migrations to our new work overlord's systems, they moved all our email (basically so now all my email uses the new company address and the old one has been deactivated) and by doing this, I lost all my outlook email rules for my mailbox and opened to see 30k unread emails  Spent the entire morning working on that

I'd just mass delete them all.

[jingle.boy]

As part of our continued migrations to our new work overlord's systems, they moved all our email (basically so now all my email uses the new company address and the old one has been deactivated) and by doing this, I lost all my outlook email rules for my mailbox and opened to see 30k unread emails  Spent the entire morning working on that

I'd just mass delete them all.

Before realizing what post you were responding to, I thought it was to Lethean, and you were suggesting mass deleting the team.  

Which totally tracks with you. 

[TAC]

Speaking of fun mornings, my team decided to have a team call at 8 every Monday morning.  About essential work related things needed to do our jobs?  No, just a "fun" way to connect and talk about our personal lives.  I imagine a lot of people are going to be pretty quiet at 8 am; this just seems like a really bad idea.  Not to mention that my personal life is really none of their business...

That's brutal.
I mean most work meetings are unproductive, I can't imagine how useless a non work meeting would be.

[hefdaddy42]

Speaking of fun mornings, my team decided to have a team call at 8 every Monday morning.  About essential work related things needed to do our jobs?  No, just a "fun" way to connect and talk about our personal lives.  I imagine a lot of people are going to be pretty quiet at 8 am; this just seems like a really bad idea.  Not to mention that my personal life is really none of their business...

That's brutal.
I mean most work meetings are unproductive, I can't imagine how useless a non work meeting would be.

Can't speak for Lethean, but ours are fun.

[cramx3]

As part of our continued migrations to our new work overlord's systems, they moved all our email (basically so now all my email uses the new company address and the old one has been deactivated) and by doing this, I lost all my outlook email rules for my mailbox and opened to see 30k unread emails  Spent the entire morning working on that

I'd just mass delete them all.

There were quite a few important emails in there so that would have been a bad idea. 

[Lethean]

Speaking of fun mornings, my team decided to have a team call at 8 every Monday morning.  About essential work related things needed to do our jobs?  No, just a "fun" way to connect and talk about our personal lives.  I imagine a lot of people are going to be pretty quiet at 8 am; this just seems like a really bad idea.  Not to mention that my personal life is really none of their business...

That's brutal.
I mean most work meetings are unproductive, I can't imagine how useless a non work meeting would be.

Can't speak for Lethean, but ours are fun.

I'm with TAC in that it's useless.  Just let me do my work.

As part of our continued migrations to our new work overlord's systems, they moved all our email (basically so now all my email uses the new company address and the old one has been deactivated) and by doing this, I lost all my outlook email rules for my mailbox and opened to see 30k unread emails  Spent the entire morning working on that

I'd just mass delete them all.

Before realizing what post you were responding to, I thought it was to Lethean, and you were suggesting mass deleting the team.  

Which totally tracks with you. 

That would be a very dangerous power for me to have.   

[wolfking]

As part of our continued migrations to our new work overlord's systems, they moved all our email (basically so now all my email uses the new company address and the old one has been deactivated) and by doing this, I lost all my outlook email rules for my mailbox and opened to see 30k unread emails  Spent the entire morning working on that

I'd just mass delete them all.

Before realizing what post you were responding to, I thought it was to Lethean, and you were suggesting mass deleting the team.  

Which totally tracks with you. 

I'm confused at what the problem is here. 

[wolfking]

Speaking of fun mornings, my team decided to have a team call at 8 every Monday morning.  About essential work related things needed to do our jobs?  No, just a "fun" way to connect and talk about our personal lives.  I imagine a lot of people are going to be pretty quiet at 8 am; this just seems like a really bad idea.  Not to mention that my personal life is really none of their business...

That's brutal.
I mean most work meetings are unproductive, I can't imagine how useless a non work meeting would be.

Yeah I agree, fuck that.

[wolfking]

As part of our continued migrations to our new work overlord's systems, they moved all our email (basically so now all my email uses the new company address and the old one has been deactivated) and by doing this, I lost all my outlook email rules for my mailbox and opened to see 30k unread emails  Spent the entire morning working on that

I'd just mass delete them all.

There were quite a few important emails in there so that would have been a bad idea.

I was kinda joking but not joking.

[Lonk]

It would drive me crazy to see so many unread emails, heck it bothers me that I currently have 10 unread emails  I'm usually pretty good at clearing my inbox, but I get that with automated emails you can get a few hundred emails a day. I think on average I get anywhere from 30-40 emails a day.

[Chino]

It would drive me crazy to see so many unread emails, heck it bothers me that I currently have 10 unread emails  I'm usually pretty good at clearing my inbox, but I get that with automated emails you can get a few hundred emails a day. I think on average I get anywhere from 30-40 emails a day.

I'm the complete opposite. If I had an inbox with just a handful of unread emails, I'd be feeling the pressure of them all day. There would be this constant reminder that I have shit to do (the humanity!). By having thousands of unread emails, even if I come into 30 new ones on a Monday, it doesn't seem like all that much.

[cramx3]

I don't like seeing unread emails, it triggers me a bit.  Same with my slack chats, if rooms are left unread, it bothers me for some reason and I'll clear it or read it.  I'm just not good with clutter in general, both physical and virtual.

[Phoenix87x]

At my place, for every 6 emails sent probably 1 may be useful. And since everything is so cluttered from the junk, its hard even finding the one you need 

[Harmony]

So my employer has implemented a "wellness program" via Virgin Pulse that started this month.  Essentially, if an employee chooses not to participate they pay double the amount towards their health insurance costs.  So instead of paying 5% of the cost, you'd pay 10%.  This is not a small chunk of change.

In this particular "wellness program" you earn specific points for specific activities.  You must reach a particular threshold to get the discounted rate on your insurance.  What this means is that I am forced to disclose my personal health information (or financial information) to this company and set goals to improve my health and wellness status or improve my financial status.

This is like big brother run amok.  And I am told by my union rep that there is nothing that can be done about it.  That most major companies are doing these programs in order to save on health insurance costs.

Just when you think the health care in this nation (USA!  USA!  USA!) couldn't possibly get any worse.  Now I have a major corporation tracking my sleep, my exercise, my diet, my stress, my medical information (including lab work), and using this information for god knows what.   

And to top it all off, my employer just LOVES to brag about how "equitable" they are toward their employees.  Yeah, how equitable is it that people who have the financial means to pay more of their insurance costs can easily disregard this nonsense but a single parent with 4 kids who can barely make ends meet is forced to participate even if they don't want to because they simply don't have the money to pay more.  Holy shit balls this fucking sucks ass. 

[wolfking]

So my employer has implemented a "wellness program" via Virgin Pulse that started this month.  Essentially, if an employee chooses not to participate they pay double the amount towards their health insurance costs.  So instead of paying 5% of the cost, you'd pay 10%.  This is not a small chunk of change.

In this particular "wellness program" you earn specific points for specific activities.  You must reach a particular threshold to get the discounted rate on your insurance.  What this means is that I am forced to disclose my personal health information (or financial information) to this company and set goals to improve my health and wellness status or improve my financial status.

This is like big brother run amok.  And I am told by my union rep that there is nothing that can be done about it.  That most major companies are doing these programs in order to save on health insurance costs.

Just when you think the health care in this nation (USA!  USA!  USA!) couldn't possibly get any worse.  Now I have a major corporation tracking my sleep, my exercise, my diet, my stress, my medical information (including lab work), and using this information for god knows what.   

And to top it all off, my employer just LOVES to brag about how "equitable" they are toward their employees.  Yeah, how equitable is it that people who have the financial means to pay more of their insurance costs can easily disregard this nonsense but a single parent with 4 kids who can barely make ends meet is forced to participate even if they don't want to because they simply don't have the money to pay more.  Holy shit balls this fucking sucks ass. 

Pretty sure someone else mentioned this in their company a few weeks back?  Yeah, I don't like it at all by the sounds of it.   I'd be inclined to fork out the extra not to take part.

[jingle.boy]

So my employer has implemented a "wellness program" via Virgin Pulse that started this month.  Essentially, if an employee chooses not to participate they pay double the amount towards their health insurance costs.  So instead of paying 5% of the cost, you'd pay 10%.  This is not a small chunk of change.

In this particular "wellness program" you earn specific points for specific activities.  You must reach a particular threshold to get the discounted rate on your insurance.  What this means is that I am forced to disclose my personal health information (or financial information) to this company and set goals to improve my health and wellness status or improve my financial status.

This is like big brother run amok.  And I am told by my union rep that there is nothing that can be done about it.  That most major companies are doing these programs in order to save on health insurance costs.

Just when you think the health care in this nation (USA!  USA!  USA!) couldn't possibly get any worse.  Now I have a major corporation tracking my sleep, my exercise, my diet, my stress, my medical information (including lab work), and using this information for god knows what.   

And to top it all off, my employer just LOVES to brag about how "equitable" they are toward their employees.  Yeah, how equitable is it that people who have the financial means to pay more of their insurance costs can easily disregard this nonsense but a single parent with 4 kids who can barely make ends meet is forced to participate even if they don't want to because they simply don't have the money to pay more.  Holy shit balls this fucking sucks ass. 

Surely this is a violation of HIPAA somehow?

[wolfking]

So my employer has implemented a "wellness program" via Virgin Pulse that started this month.  Essentially, if an employee chooses not to participate they pay double the amount towards their health insurance costs.  So instead of paying 5% of the cost, you'd pay 10%.  This is not a small chunk of change.

In this particular "wellness program" you earn specific points for specific activities.  You must reach a particular threshold to get the discounted rate on your insurance.  What this means is that I am forced to disclose my personal health information (or financial information) to this company and set goals to improve my health and wellness status or improve my financial status.

This is like big brother run amok.  And I am told by my union rep that there is nothing that can be done about it.  That most major companies are doing these programs in order to save on health insurance costs.

Just when you think the health care in this nation (USA!  USA!  USA!) couldn't possibly get any worse.  Now I have a major corporation tracking my sleep, my exercise, my diet, my stress, my medical information (including lab work), and using this information for god knows what.   

And to top it all off, my employer just LOVES to brag about how "equitable" they are toward their employees.  Yeah, how equitable is it that people who have the financial means to pay more of their insurance costs can easily disregard this nonsense but a single parent with 4 kids who can barely make ends meet is forced to participate even if they don't want to because they simply don't have the money to pay more.  Holy shit balls this fucking sucks ass. 

Surely this is a violation of HIPAA somehow?

What is this mate?  Sorry.

[axeman90210]

Wow, that sucks harmony. At my last job we had to either confirm or deny if we were smokers when re-upping healthbenefits each year, as it impacted our contribution towards insurance, but nothing that granular.

[Harmony]

Surely this is a violation of HIPAA somehow?

Nope - because when employees opt in, they agree to the terms and conditions which includes permission to provide medical information.  That is what is so sinister about this.  Give up your medical privacy rights or pay more.  A lot more.

Wolfking - HIPAA is - in a nutshell - the federal laws that protect a person's medical information.  Healthcare providers are limited by law to share a patient's private health information without consent.  There are loopholes and limitations to this, but in general it is illegal to disclose protected information.

Thanks axeman - I predict for larger companies, this is the wave of the future. 

[cramx3]

Disclosing the smoking status seems pretty standard from my experience (not that I like it).

For Harmony's situation, I have yet to see/experience that myself, but I would opt out as much as that sucks.  Yeah 5% more is not a small amount of money, but fuck all that. 

[wolfking]

Surely this is a violation of HIPAA somehow?

Nope - because when employees opt in, they agree to the terms and conditions which includes permission to provide medical information.  That is what is so sinister about this.  Give up your medical privacy rights or pay more.  A lot more.

Wolfking - HIPAA is - in a nutshell - the federal laws that protect a person's medical information.  Healthcare providers are limited by law to share a patient's private health information without consent.  There are loopholes and limitations to this, but in general it is illegal to disclose protected information.

Thanks axeman - I predict for larger companies, this is the wave of the future.

Thanks for the explanation Harmony.

So, it's not illegal but they can blackmail you by paying more if you don't sign up?  That's full on.

[Podaar]

Sounds like a class action lawsuit in the making, Harmony--both for your employer and for insurance provider. Unless, and this is a big one, unless they have hired a third party security company to strip all the personal identifiers from the information prior to it going to the insurer.