u/SynapticSignal

I was recently let go from a job as a contractor through a staffing agency. Since the seperation resulted in my contracted being ended with the client the staffing agency was working with, I was told that I could file under "lack of work" since my contract was ended.

Weeks later, I discover my UI claim is held up due to Issue on File. After reaching out and speaking with the DOL, I was told that they reached out to my most recent employer, and they replied with stating that I was still employed with them full-time. Obviously, this is not correct because my last workday was 4/17.

I've been unable to reach HR directly, I finally got hold of Payroll dept, and the person I spoke with stated that they did not receive any correspondance from the DOL. The information I'm being told is contradictory to what was told to me directly by the DOL representative.

At this time, I do not know what to do because it feels like the previous employer is not cooperating and I'm now stuck in a loop because both sides are contradicting the given information about my situation.

I figured that the best solution would be to request a letter of proof of seperation from HR to then forward to the DoL adjucations dept with the last date of employment. However, HR has either been unreachable, or seem to be giving me the run around. To further complicate things, the automated system provided a number for employment verification that is incorrect - I called the number and it turns out to be a contact for an Auto Parts Dealer.

I need some advice on how to proceed here since the employer does not seem to be cooperating or has any reliable channels of communication.

The worse possible scenario seems to be that the adjucations dept, will have to conduct an investigation that will take 4 to 6 weeks in which that time I will not be receiving any benefits.

I was working through the Intermediate SQL course then I got to the end of it with 90% complete and took a break for a month. Now when I go back to it, its paywalled behind AI credits???

I already pay for a monthly subscription - and after one month they decided they want more money now? wtf is that nonsense??

This is enshitification.

I was thinking about some past experience at jobs and I decided to come up with this term called nickel picking which is the equivalent to nitpicking, but I call it nickel picking because it's more closely related to your salary.

So nickel picking is a type of workplace discrimination where management either unfairly criticizes your work because of your salary or they either nitpick or try to micromanage your time.

The kind of time micromanagement I'm talking about is where you're told that you have to skip your lunch because you had a doctor's appointment and you're a salaried employee, or if you were off task for 10 to 15 minutes because you got up from your desk to go to the bathroom and get a cup of water and ended up stopping and talking to a co-worker in the hallway they then try to use that as a reason to get you to stay 15 minutes after work.

The other part of this is having your work unfairly criticized. You asked for the highest salary possible and then after weeks or months into the job management hold you to the highest standard possible, and in any areas that you tend to be average or below average in they will claim that you're underperforming. Yet this is twofold because when lesser salary employees are underperforming they completely overlook their performance quirks.

And this kind of criticism happened to me randomly even when I was very productive and reliable, and they never had a question of whether I was getting projects done or not. It was random one-off things that turned into a case of underperforming. To me it's not legit because I observed other employees who were way more mediocre in certain areas than I was, and management allowed them to Coast just fine.

In conclusion, nobody should be treated differently because of what they're paid for or what stage they're at in their career. The employer agreed to give you what you asked for and they know what stage you're at in your career because they interviewed you and they assess your skills by your resume and your experience.

I actually do wonder if this is a type of discrimination that's reportable to the Department of Labor.

I had my contract terminated for a small MSP business.

I was doing project management work for a company that never had a project manager before and had several stalled projects and onboardings from clients that they onboarded 8 months before I got there.

My manager frequently talked about how he had to fire the guy who worked before me because he stopped doing his job. Although for some reason I doubt that he just stopped doing his job and maybe there was more of the story. I didn't think about it until after I left that it was a bit unprofessional to be constantly bad-mouthing a former employee, and then making it sound like it was his fault that no projects were done.

I drove 45 minutes to an hour daily to get there -

They had no work from home available except on sick days and not being accommodating to me even telling me I still had to come into the office after having to go to an emergency car appointment in the morning, which only meant that I would start work 2 hours late instead of just an hour late.

They wasted my time by giving me no direction on projects and often leaving me hanging waiting for new assignments for multiple days. There were even days where I felt like I just came into the office and I was sitting at my computer.

All that being said I worked hard for them and I still got all of their stalled projects down to about 4, then there was a day where I actually did make a mistake and then they decided to fire me after that because they said that I was performing poorly. I mean I know I wasn't perfect and I definitely made some mistakes here and there, but I saw so much mediocrity with other employees that they just completely overlooked. It feels pretty unfair that they would claim I'm underperforming when if I wasn't there doing their projects then they just wouldn't have gotten done at all.

At first they made it seem like they were going to revoke my ability to work from home because they asked me to return the laptop and they said they didn't want me to work from home anymore. So they were going to start removing my privileges as a form of punishment.

Then the next thing is that they were kind of invasive forcing me to use my personal phone and my personal computer for work. I never agreed to use MFA or codes on my phone and I told them they should get something like Passportal but they never did it, and when they terminated me they forced me to hand them over my phone so that they can go through it and delete all their stuff off of it.

Now I bet that I'm gone they're going to be bad-mouthing me too either to the team or the next project guy (if they find one).

Just thinking about this company makes my skin crawl, I cannot believe that there are companies in this industry that are that bad.

Anyway I'm unemployed and I just wanted to take the next move to make sure I never work for a company like this again. I can't really use them for reference because they're going to act like I burned them.

It's definitely true because having more income allows you to bounce around more it allows you to travel more often and eventually you can just have your own place.

If you really like a girl but she happens to live in another state or another country, buy her plane ticket and fly her over or invite her to stay at your house.

If she's really cute buy her dinner and treat her special.

I think if dating is at a complete dead stop then the best way to move forward is to increase your income earnings and work out more if you don't already.

Because at the end of the day the problem also isn't that you're not putting out effort, it's that the opportunities aren't there and you haven't increased your value enough to be in and the playing field of the type of woman you want.

That's the Trap because the economy sucks right now and that's why dating is also the worst it's ever been.

I tried mixing some random tracks I have ranging from 80 to 100bpm. Some really ambient tracks don't really layer on other tracks very well, and then there's big bpm jumps from like 90 to 100bpm - but if a track is at 100bpm, it will sometimes sound bad if the bpm is lowered too much to match a slower track.

I know people here are always talking about the CCNA, but I personally haven't seen any jobs in my area ask for it. I've worked for MSPs who don't even use Cisco gear because none of the clients want to pay for it. The insurance giants here (I live in the insurance capitol of the U.S) have started to / have abandoned Cisco due their ecosystem being expensive, and also becoming rather enshitified. Support people hard to reach, long waits for tickets, sometimes jankyness with their tools much like Microsofts, etc

I interviewed at a place where the guy explicitly stated that he feels the knowledge from the CCNA isn't valuable, but the CCNA itself it is a resume booster because it's a difficult exam. This turned me off to the idea of pursuing CCNA altogether, because it just seems like a reason for HR to have high standards (not even for a good reason). If the guy is a total clown, as is that company - then I'll take that, but hearing someone playdown the CCNA like that just makes it seem like it's a gimmick to me.

Before anyone says that it proves you're compotent IT professional. I met a guy once who was a temp contractor from a random company who had a bunch of certifications, he was still in grad school, and had no work experience. Had the CompTIA certs and CCNA (and a few others), yet the guy was a terrible worker - found him sleeping on the job, and when we were tasked with gathering all the printer IPs, I got an entire floor done in the time he had done one printer bc he was sitting there on his phone. If jackasses like that are getting hired bc they have this certificate over someone who doesn't, then that's a problem.

Went to create an account to be able to register for the CCNA exam and the authentication code to email does not, I then immediately get an email saying regarding compliance hold. I also tried to login to an account that I thought I already had, and the verification codes weren't going to my email (checked Junk and everything), but it seems to do that regardless if there is an active account or not.

The help portal has a broken URL on the login and account help guides, I called the phone number and they gave me an email address that just replied with an automated response directing me to the help portal.

I finally got a proper email to create a ticket for and it tells me it has a 24 hour response time?? wtf

Did Cisco really derail their entire account creation system using a janky AI for compliance?
How the fuck is anyone supposed to get ahead in IT now?

What a joke, this makes me sick.