First, a little background information: My husband words for the housing department at a nearby university. He’s in charge of a lot of IT stuff, as well as being something of a manager as well. Plainly put? He’s a busy guy. The school’s food service operations are “outsourced” too a food service company. They hire their own workers, etc and so forth. But K has always helped them get things up and running correctly. Mostly, all he has to do is manage the IT side of the student’s meal plans but sometimes he has to go the individual operations and fix their registers or whatnot. Oftentimes, this would mean phone calls in the evenings after he was home from work or on the weekends as well. And a lot of times, he’d go down there and help them out. Even though such support is in no way in his job description.
Now, this food service company provides special meal plans for the people who work in K’s office, so they can use the operations, get food, see how things are running. Since, being the housing and food service department, they have a vested interest. There’s no limits on using these meal plans, meaning not only can K use his to purchase his own lunches, but he can purchase lunches for others. There is also a convenience store that has recently opened up that offers food and some grocery items. The meal plans work there as well and he has used them to purchase anything from pain relievers on a particularly stressful day at work, to picking up a loaf of bread to bring home when we’ve run out. Now, remember, there has been NO restrictions on using the meal plans in this fashion, either stated or written.
You can just see the drama coming here, can’t you?
Yesterday, (that’d be Saturday… the dorms opened this last week and K has had work late since Wednesday and go in for four hours yesterday afternoon) his boss approaches him. He’s being given an official hand slap (meaning letter in his file) for inappropriate use of the meal plan. Now, bear in mind that his boss came to him a couple months ago and expressed concern that he was using the meal plan at the convenience store in the evening’s after work and on the weekends. Now, bear in mind, this has always been when he’s had to go over there to help them with their cash registers or something. So while he’s there, he’d do a little shopping. Well, no problem… his boss let him know it wasn’t kosher so he stopped. He hasn’t gotten a single thing from the convenience store outside of regular work hours since.
But apparently, he’s still getting the hand slap. He can still use this meal plan anywhere he likes between the hours of 8 and 5. But outside of that, no can do. This goes in his file, people. He’s put in for a big raise and now he’s doubtful he’ll even get it, due to this letter. He’s mad (and so am I!) because there was nothing stated before or since about appropriate use. He hasn’t tried to hide anything, he hasn’t done anything *wrong* really. Plus, it’s embarassing.
So his reaction, at least as it stands now, is to not use those meal plans at all any longer. He’ll just bring his lunch to work. And, if they want to call and get his help outside of these “regular work hours”, he’ll have to tell them to wait until 8am the next business day. They’ve insulted him, is what they’e done. He’s always bent over backward to help them out and they singled him out of everyone else in that office. That’s just wrong, people!
The biggest impact here is the raise. We were really hoping that would go through, it would help us out so much. If its not one thing around here, its another. Sometimes it seems like people are looking for ways to rain on our parade.
