Does Your Company Pay For Broadband? 1125
masq57 writes "My fellow administrators and I used to have company provided ISDN lines in our homes so that we could respond quickly to issues after hours. That was changed in the last few years to letting us expense our broadband service. Now our new CIO has elected to stop that benefit using the argument that we should be dedicated staff who desire to be responsive and should do what it takes to make that happen. The rumor now is that we should also pay for blackberries, cell phones and pagers. What sort of experiences do the rest of slashdotters have along these lines?"
Trust me... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Easy one (Score:5, Funny)
Clothes?
Why not? (Score:1, Funny)
My experience: (Score:2, Funny)
Never have.
Never will.
Boss: "Help! Our App just crashed!"
Me: "Will you bill my toilet paper usage?"
Boss: "Umm... no... why?"
Me: "Because seeing as how I'M ON THE SHITTER AND YOU DON'T HAVE A DR PLAN, I can't help
you at the moment"
Boss: "...But..."
Me: [Click]
Re:Cell phone unlisted. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mine pays for it all (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Cell phone unlisted. (Score:3, Funny)
My employer... (Score:1, Funny)
Just wondering... (Score:3, Funny)
~Philly
Re:Cell phone unlisted. (Score:5, Funny)
-hadohk
Re:Easy one (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Easy one. (Score:1, Funny)
In Australia we pay our employers.
Re:There's more where you came from. (Score:2, Funny)
I like to foster the believe that I'm a psychotic. People give you wide berth if they think you're going to go postal. This works even better if you know where your boss spends his recreational time.
There is a limit to what an employer can reasonably expect from you. When you get hired let the employer know, that you'll give 100% for the entire time that the job description demands, but nothing more will be given without compensation.
I've lost two jobs over the years because I was NOT willing to put in extra hours for free. Once I was scheduled for 48 hours per week on salary. I gave them 48-50 hours per week. Nothing more. When I was let go the boss actually said this to me "You get here when we open, and you go home when we close. We need someone who will give more."
You know what happened? I got a new job less than two hours later. The guy who fired me ended up losing his wife to an employee who was willing to put in the extra hours, but apparently they were paying him with something other than cash.
I still can't wait until the next time I see him, I'm going to ask him if he still thinks he fired the right guy.
NTITE
Re:Easy one (Score:5, Funny)
>Clothes?
Something tells me that if the average slashdotter arrives at work unclothed, they will not only pay for him to get clothes, they'll pay him to do it immediately. Flip side, they may also bill him for therapy.
It's All My Fault (Score:3, Funny)
A few years ago the company I worked for used to supply a few of us with ISDN lines (this was before cable/DSL was readily available) so we could work from home. They paid for the connection and footed the bill for rental and calls. At the time, though, ISDN was still metered by the minute in the UK and so you paid for the duration of your call - what's more, if you bonded the two channels into one 128Kb connection then you paid for each channel (ie. it was effectively two separate phone calls). Off peak this could be as much as 5p per minute per channel. In otherwords it wasn't cheap :)
Well, all was fine until the sorry day when I downloaded the Unreal Tournament [unrealtournament.com] demo to try out. Suddenly I found that being one of the l337 few with a 'low ping' connection I was really good and so I bought the full game when it was released. Next thing I knew I joined a clan and was playing all the time. Then - you guessed it - the bills started arriving....
You try explaining to your boss how you've managed to wrack up a bill for over 100 ($185) a month by 'working from home'. Not easy, especially when the server logs seem to indicate you'd never actually telneted to the server more than a couple of times to read your mail... Bah!
My Idea (Score:3, Funny)
NTITE
Re:Easy one. (Score:5, Funny)
If my job had that as a fringe benefit, I'd be willing to pay for my own broadband, too.
What do you get for your used slaves? (Score:1, Funny)
I'm guessing the "disdain for the company" shown by employees couldn't ever be as much as the condescension and disdain your post shows for its employees.
I Agree With This (Score:5, Funny)
Absolutely!
At the company I run, not only are my employees dedicated enough that they're willing to go the extra mile to ensure availability in the off hours, but they do the same during workdays as well. They work in a cubicle that they rent, with a desktop PC that they purchase from the company (at a more than reasonable rate, due to the volume discount that we get and generously pass on to them), use office supplies that they provide, and even pitch in for their share of the electric bill.
Some would call it "wage slavery". I call it "smart business".
Of course, this is only theoretical, since I haven't actually hired anyone yet. In fact, no one has even sent me a resume. I'm sure it's because everyone's such loyal and dedicated employees that they just don't want to leave the companies they're already working for.
Re:Easy one. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Easy one (Score:5, Funny)
I had this happen at a previous company. But I was smart about it--I planned on writing off every dime I paid for work-related expenses. This turns out to be very difficult to do if you use your personal items part of the time for business and part of the time for personal use. So the only logical conclusion: get separate items you can use 100% for business, and that way you can write those off 100% without fear of getting audited by the IRS. When I explained this to my manager, she balked but I asked if they would allow me to expense professional tax services (around $400/year) and she said no. The upshot is, when they tell you to pay for these things out of your own pocket, you can choose to do it any way you want to...after all, it's your money, right? :)
I had good cell service and an awesome broadband connection already...so I couldn't justify spending a lot on a second cell and Internet connection, which was necessary for the aforementioned tax purposes. I found a cell provider that had a pay-as-you-go plan...use no minutes that month, and pay no money other than a $1.95 monthly service charge to keep the account open...and I got a free cell phone to boot for signing up (there was like a $50 activation fee, but I was allowed to expense this based on the argument that I already had a cell, I was only doing this for tax purposes and the good of the company, so I didn't want to pay a second activation fee). By deferring to choose a plan that included any minutes, I effectively had a zero minute plan that shuttled all callers directly to voicemail (I would explain that I couldn't afford a lot of minutes, and I couldn't afford a plan for the business phone that included a lot of minutes...and oh yea, I signed a three year contract so no changies! Unless the company wants to let me expense the $150 early termination fee). The good thing is my voicemail could be picked up on the web or forwarded to my email in the form of a wav file, so I didn't need to spend minutes checking it.
This didn't work out so well, so ultimately my manager agreed to deal with my situation as a special case and allow me to expense an inexpensive fixed minute plan. But wouldn't ya know it...just as soon as one thing is addressed, another takes its place! It turns out that the free cell phone I got with the plan had a set of expensive, proprietary batteries that easily set a memory. Little did I know! But within a few weeks of having the phone, the one set of batteries it came with would only go about 5 minutes on a full charge. I was allowed to expense another set for around $80, but those quickly set the same memory at around 5 minutes of talk time. I just couldn't remember to fully cycle those things before charging them for the life of me!
I found a 9600bps modem in my dad's basement and was able to find a service provider that offered very cheap 24kbps connections...the downside of course is that it would drop the connection every few minutes, but what do you expect for $3.95/month? Fortunately, the ISP also provided an email inbox/forwarding service so I could keep the separation between my personal and business life very clean and clear for the IRS. Unfortunately, that forwarding service never seemed to work! And that was unfortunate because that's where all those voicemails from my cell service were getting forwarded to. Oh well!
I felt that since the business cell and the dialup account were purely for business it was completely justified for me to make all research, purchase, setup, and customer support calls from the office during the normal workday. I quickly learned that even the simplest of issues can be quite time-consuming to deal with over the phone. If things got too busy at work, some showstopping problem on my cell plan or dial-up account might not get dealt with for weeks! Finally, I had to schedule several-hour long appointments with myself in Microsoft Outlook to make these support calls and get these problems sorted out. And I did generate a lot of suppo
Re:Easy one. (Score:2, Funny)
Times are Tough (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Easy one (Score:3, Funny)
I think you missed the point, sir. The point I was trying to make is that I was enthusiastically willing to engage the company's policy and did so. But, because the policy was suboptimal (not for me, mind you...for the company) it ended up costing the company far more than if they'd just done the smart thing. The touchstone for all of that was my legal right to deduct my business expenses, and the necessity to completely separate business from personal expenses due to the complicated tax code. This is not what I would have preferred, but like I said, I'm a company man and I'll do what's good for the company and my country!
You know, it hadn't occurred to me until this moment, but what if everyone happened to have the same difficulties in pursuing their absolute, irrefutable rights to separate the business expenses imposed upon them by their companies from their personal lives? I'm just thinking out loud here, but if this same thing happened to everyone, gosh golly, I think companies would end up spending a lot of money and not getting much of the extra work their employees are all too willing to pitch in. Even though their employees are willing to sacrifice for the good of the company, the policy would suck up all the projected savings from such a policy and then some.
sev
Re:Easy one. (Score:2, Funny)