Wednesday, February 28, 2007

0702282040 Redundancy

Progress towards the move today:


  1. Repair a computer so that it can be sold.
  2. Ask for a redundancy at work.


The local computer shop has a website - would you use a computer shop that does not have a website? If they can't get online then they can't be too interested in computers. I could have ordered a new drive online and had it delivered in a few days, but seeing as the shop is on my way to work, I stopped in to buy it the old fashioned way. The shop is set up like an internet cafe' and all the ordering is done online! Customers go to a computer in the shop to order online via their webpage and then pickup from the counter. This makes sense to me - when I buy a hard drive, I already know what it looks like, I only want to know the specifications. The 250GB hard drive that I bought today looks exactly the same as a 4MB hard drive I bought in 1980. This shop has a good idea. There is very little to see on the showroom floor, just advertising. On impulse I bought a PCMCIA CDRW for my laptop because it was too good a bargain to leave behind. I know that later in life I would think back on that moment and wish I had that little CD writer to go with my 10 year old PIII laptop. I can back up my mail from my work laptop now.

Redundancy at work.

I work for a telecommunications company that made over 8 billion dollars profit this year - but there is no money in the budget to lease a laptop computer for $22 a month. I approve payments to our competitors in the millions per year, but my computer is a second hand 10 year old PIII that cannot process signals from a GPS and a CDMA phone at the same time.

So today I took advantage of an opportunity to point out to my employer that I could be made redundant. I would like to leave the company with no more than what is rightly owing to me and I put myself in a moral vs legal dilemma. Although my wife has a contract of employment at a school in Hong Kong, I am under no legal obligation to leave my current employment. There is no legal reason that I have to leave my job. My spouse and I are, according to the law, two separate entities working for different companies. If my employer decides to make my position redundant, then it would be to my advantage.

The moral side - if I know that I am leaving the company, then is it right to ask that I be made redundant and expect a lump sum for leaving? If I were to be open and honest and declare my intentions that I am leaving in 5 months then I beleive that I would have no chance of a redundancy payout. It would also force my manager to act in a certain manner with this knowledge. If he does not know, then he can make an unbiased decision.

My role and responsibilities can be carried out by trained monkeys. What I bring to the department is the responsibility to carry out those duties. I don't have to be there. A scout is honest - he believes in doing his best to do his duty, to help other people and to obey the scout law.

That boy scout promise I made when I was 12 is going to cost me 80 weeks pay.

No comments:

Post a Comment