Random notes

More for my own benefit than anyone else's...

A few days ago as I was driving out of my workplace's parking lot, I spied a snake on the side of the road, thoroughly dead. It was a black racer. I happened to have some nitrile gloves in my armrest-cd-box thing (from when I stick 'em in my pocket at work, end up not using them, and forget about them; it happens about once a month), so I stuck one on and picked up the snake, examined it briefly, and tossed it into the woods.

Also, we use these electronic calipers at work where the reader part slides up and down the rest of it in a vaguely phallic way. I was compelled to get a new one the other day, because the battery in mine had died, and the batteries are darn hard to remove. So it was sticky. So I needed to grease it up. Apparently, we use Pond's cold cream for this purpose. It lives in a desk three down from mine, and is exactly the stuff you'd expect to find in the desk of someone with dry hands, or in an old lady's purse or something.

Little snapshots of the occasional wierdness in my life.

Good? news

Communication at this company really leaves something to be desired.

( Recap! )

When the transition occurred we Manpower folks met up with our reps and were told that Icoria was going to continue paying the bills. Now it seems Monsanto is paying Manpower for my work. I have no idea when this happened because nobody told me. Now, that might not seem so bad, because I don't *really* need to know who pays Manpower as long as Manpower pays me.

But apparently, nobody told my immediate supervisor C, nor my manager A, at least not until recently. The issue is that while I was under Icoria there were timesheets to fill out for government purposes. Now that I'm under Monsanto, those timesheets go away. I and most of the people I work with thought I still needed to be filling out those timesheets; not just my supervisor but one of the Icoria HR people and another coworker of mine who is still with Icoria (but is not a Manpower temp). (It also explains why I haven't been able to get into the Icoria building for several weeks, when I thought I was still supposed to have access.)

Anyway, while it is highly annoying that I wasn't told sooner, this is good news. It means I can stop filling out the stupid timesheets and it also means that Monsanto has a greater stake in whether I stay with them or not. Before, when I thought Icoria was paying the bills, my instinct said that Monsanto was not going to pay much attention to my desires to have a permanent job here. They weren't paying for my work and there would be no incentive for them to start doing so. Now that they *do* pay the bills, it means they at least know who I am, and it also means that taking me on permanently has some advantages for them, namely that they can stop paying a third party extra money on top of my salary.

We'll see how much, if any, this *actually* increases my chances of getting hired. I'm not optomistic.