[OOC]Chapter 1 - New York, January 1925

[Mr. Handy]

Thank you, it is. They finally delivered a laptop to me yesterday afternoon so I can work from home, though I'm still taking vacation for the rest of the week, both because Passover is coming up and to give them less time to harass me before my eventual transfer. My timecard had actually been changed by someone other than my boss to excused time and approved for last week. I still had to comply with orders to use vacation time for yesterday even though I didn't have the laptop for most of the day, but I put in a comment explaining the situation for this timesheet as well, so hopefully my boss will be overruled again. Otherwise, the union will have to file another grievance to get back my vacation time for that day.

[Anatomist]

Your situation is like from a movie for me. Seems your boss dont understand that helping you have normality around your job situation will benefit the business in the long term, not damage it. If i can ask, in what kind of place do you work?

[Mr. Handy]

I work at Police Headquarters, though I, my colleagues, and my bosses are civilians. I think my bosses understand exactly what they're doing; I've been describing it as sabotage for years. For eight years we haven't had any project leaders or supervisors; instead, management has been controlling us directly, which is a huge part of the problem. The union has been on their case about that for years now, but nothing has been done about getting us actual supervisors. Management is definitely being malicious, as they started all this by making false accusations against me and have been making threats against me, presumably to lay the groundwork to get me fired. Fortunately they're incompetent, and with my help the union caught them in their lies. That allowed me to keep my horrible job, but nothing was ever done about them and they escaped any consequences, and they've continued the harassment against me and several others for years. They also harass sworn members of the Police Department. I formally reported the harassment to HR, but the director of HR was (unknown to me at the time) a close friend of my boss's boss, and she has her own history of corruption. She'd been caught in a huge scandal where she took gifts from vendors, and out of all the people involved, she alone was allowed to keep her job. If they simply wanted to get rid of me, all they had to do was allow the promised transfer to happen, but they clearly want to make me suffer. If this were pitched as a movie, it would be rejected because it's completely unbelievable that this could all possibly happen. If it were a movie, it would probably end with them taking advantage of the chaos of the current crisis to attempt to murder me and make it look like random violence.

My boss was at it again this morning, sending another email telling me to resubmit the previously approved timesheet from last week. I replied, pointing out that it has already been approved and that there's no need to resubmit it, so we'll see what she does with that, but she'll probably insist that I change it back to vacation time and falsely accuse me of having changed it back to excused time, which I did not do. They're clearly not expecting there to be any consequences for their actions, and why would they? The last grievance took years to be heard, and under the circumstances the next grievance may never be heard at all. Even if it is, they can just settle it and then violate the agreement again, like they did with the last one.

[Anatomist]

what a nightmare...
you US worker are really weak in your society, a pitty for a country of that size

[Mr. Handy]

Thank you. Yes, it is a nightmare. The union is supposed to protect us, and they did at least keep me from getting fired, but they've been very slow to act. The real problem is corruption in high places. No matter how much evidence and how many witnesses we have, nothing ever gets done because the harassers are being protected by those above them. At least I've had the last month out of work, though even that didn't stop them from pulling their nonsense. Tomorrow I have to start working from home, which gives them more opportunities to do things like assign me massive amounts of work and then hold it against me when I can't finish it fast enough. Still, they can't call me into their offices or come into mine to chew me out while I'm not physically there.

[Leonulf]

Well the problem doesn't sound like its going away soon, but at least at home you dont need to be surrounded by them. For what its worth my wife and I both worked for the same company and this behaviour is no surprise, most large organisations seem to suffer from this kind of nonsense. Union might be slow but hopefully they will do more as time goes on. Where we worked people gave up the right to have a union (which I am sure is not legal, and this internal policy would not be enforceable if something went to court) for a dress down day, which was beyond retarded since the union could have campaigned for that no problem whatsoever plus sort out the actual problems...

Just dont let them goad you into losing the moral high ground at any point - as people like that often try to plan for that I reckon, so they have something real against you to bolster the lies/bbullshit etc

[Mr. Handy]

Thank you. I have been careful about that to make sure they don't have anything real, but that doesn't stop them from making up things. They're particularly fond of taking my words out of context and twisting them from conversations where they weren't even present, which is hearsay as well. That's how they got caught in their lies in July 2017, by claiming specific other people had told them I had said things that I had never said. Large organizations tend to be prone to corruption, as the bigger a group is, the more corruption there generally is, and the more power is available for those at the top, which leads to corruption.

The laptop they sent me to work from home was so badly misconfigured that I was unable to log in until two hours beyond the start of my shift, and that's not even counting all of the time I spent trying to get it to work before my shift's start time and the day before, on my own time. They never gave me the password to use just to log into the laptop, for one thing. I had thought it would take my regular network credentials, but it didn't. The support desk provided me with the default password, but that and several variants didn't work either. They must have set a different password for me. I wasn't able to contact someone who was able to help me until after my shift already started. Eventually he was able to have me use the laptop's administrative account, where he talked me through resetting my account's password. Then I tried to log on to my account only to find that it was disabled. I had to log back onto the administrative account, go back to my account's settings, and uncheck the box that had been used to disable my account. That finally got me onto the laptop. Then I had to connect to my desktop PC at work using VPN, which had its own set of problems. The desktop had been powered down, even though I had specifically told my boss's boss that it needed to be turned on in order for me to connect to it and he had said it would be done. Plus, I didn't have the training that everyone else had, as I was sick and quarantining at the time, and they also had their laptops configured while they were present and were able to select their own passwords. I'm pretty sure my bosses caused this on purpose. When my boss got caught trying to fraudulently get me to remove my comments on my timesheet, instead of getting scared, they doubled down on the harassment and escalated it.

As if that weren't enough, my boss's boss told my boss on Monday that he wants me to work exclusively on a pointless, massive, impossible project he assigned me not long before I went out sick, doing nothing else and passing the rest of my work on to one of my co-workers. He had assigned it to me shortly after learning I was about to be transferred, even though the project would take months. It had been discussed years ago, but nothing was ever done about it until then. If he really cared about it, he would have assigned it to someone else during the month I was gone when nobody was working on it, but he waited until the day I returned to pull this. Then yesterday my boss assigned me and one of the other programmers to learn a new system (probably because the programmer who usually handles it is retiring next month). It's even more work, but at least it means I get to put that stupid project on hold for now. Hopefully I'll be out of there before I have to get back to it. My union representative agreed to talk to the Health Department, where I was supposed to have been transferred in March until they canceled the interview, and explain the situation to them so that he can get me transferred there as soon as possible. He's also a witness to a lot of the harassment himself.

[Leonulf]

Damn thats a nightmare to work with

[Mr. Handy]

Thanks, it sure is. It got a whole lot worse on Friday. They went into my timesheet from three weeks ago and changed it back from excused time to vacation time, and my boss also approved my timesheets for the last two weeks at the end of the day. She added her own comment to the one from two weeks ago, saying that it was approved but that she does not agree with my comment because I had previously requested this vacation on December 31, 2019 and supposedly had not informed them of the change in status, which is ridiculous. The city's policy is that you can use excused time if you don't have the equipment to work from home, which they had failed to provide me. In any case, I had certainly informed them, and in fact my submitted timesheet from the beginning of that week counts as informing them. I sent that additional piece of evidence to the union to add to the rest. What they've done is essentially stealing, as when we retire we get to convert our unused vacation time into cash at 100 percent of our salary at that time. They're going to file the grievance tomorrow, which will not just be about stealing my vacation time but also that this is continued harassment and retaliation against me for having reported the earlier harassment and testified against them at the previous grievance hearing. The Health Department didn't return the union's calls, so they're sending an email that explains the situation. I'm hoping I can get out of there soon.

[Silver Priest]

Best of luck Mr.Handy. It sounds horrible and we're all pulling for you to get out of there. Hopefully the harassers get their just deserts as well.

[Mr. Handy]

Thank you. I hope they get what they deserve too, but I'd settle for getting out of there.

[Raiko]

I hope you're out of there soon Mr. Handy - and also hope you win your grievance against them. I'm very lucky that none of my bosses are arseholes like that, especially during times like this.

Sorry again for being so quiet. I'm safe and well and hope that all of you are. I've just got a new laptop which, fingers crossed, will solve my problems of the kids being on the old laptop 24/7.

I've been copying & installing everything that I need for my RPG campaigns including Masks, so I'll get posting again.

[Mr. Handy]

Thank you. I'm still stuck there, unfortunately. Grievances aren't happening now while the crisis is going on, and unfair labor practices also aren't being heard for the duration. They know it, so they know they can get away with anything, at least for now. Things have gotten even worse. The corrupt HR director found out that the union contacted the Health Department's IT director (probably because she told her) and sent an email saying that the department isn't making any personnel moves such as transfers until the city reopens and things return to normal, which is a lie. The email the union sent did not mention the harassment. Last Monday, my unit suddenly got a new supervisor promoted and transferred in, which proves the HR director is lying. The union (and its lawyers) now have that proof, but we can't use it until there's actually a hearing. We haven't had a supervisor in over eight years, and the one we finally got is the wrong one. She was part of the first wave of harassment against me ten years ago. In the space of three days, she made two false accusations against me to the IT director at that time. The second time she did it behind my back, but I found out about it because I was in his office when she called him. Her office was next to mine, so it looks like she waited for me to leave before making the call so I wouldn't overhear her, not realizing that I was going to see him (probably about the first false accusation from two days prior). After he got off the phone with her, I told him that it wasn't true and what the truth was. She left not long after that, but now she's back and is my new boss. The union tried to contact the department head to present him with the evidence of the HR director's lies and to try to get me transferred immediately. If they can transfer her in, there's no excuse for not transferring me out. So far he's been ignoring the union, which I expected, but at least this gives the union more ammo if it ever comes to a hearing.

[Raiko]

I'm still here. Sorry again for the delays.

[jp1885]

Ready when you are mate

[Anatomist]

+1

[Mr. Handy]

I'm still here and ready too.

[Raiko]

Okay dokay, I've really struggled to get time to sort out any RPG stuff during the pandemic.
Unfortunately working 80-90% from home with all the kids off school and bad bedtime routines have just left me with no free time until very late at night.

Schools are restarting this week & next week, so I'm going to try and make a new post here today, then see how it goes.

I'll try to get back to replying within 24 hours to anyone else's post - which was how I was doing things during the Peru chapter.

@Zero: The cops will arrive in my next post. In order to get things moving, I'm going to assume that Atauchi is going to observe them without interfering for now.

@Anatomist: I will reply to your last PM as well (I'll use a quoted reply, as the original is from months ago! Sorry )

[Anatomist]

I agree on all the above. And dont mind the PM.

Hopefully you get the time for this amazing campain to roll again.

Nemesio Sánchez is ready for action!

[Raiko]

I'll be posting in a few more hours.
I got a bit carried away catching up with the forums and now it's nearly 4am!

So I will return after a few hours sleep.

Seriously I've ended up with terrible insomnia during all this.

Sadly Zero will no longer be playing Atauchi, as he's playing Masks elsewhere. I've not decided what to do about Atauchi yet.