Geekery-Science-Teaching

Ok, but if you’re an independent contractor in the US and this happens? Find a lawyer, because you might have just gotten a huge payday.

Your position was just referred to as employment. Independent contractors do not have employers; they do not have employment. Congrats, your contact at this company just provided evidence that you were illegally missclassified.

This contact is claiming that you have set hours you’re obligated to fulfill. Unless a work task can only be done at a set time for practical reasons (i.e. you’re an audio freelancer paid to support a live event that occurs at a particular time and requires a certain amount of pre-show setup), a company cannot set an independent contractor’s work hours. This is further evidence that you were missclassified.

The whole exchange establishes that the company is interpreting an employer-employee relationship rather than expecting a service. Discipline and potential for firing (you cannot fire an independent contractor; no longer purchasing their service is not equivalent) establish that this person views themselves as a manager. Independent contractors cannot have managers.

This one text exchange could:

If the company is going to screw you over like that, may as well make them pay for it.

Since this is getting a lot of reblogs, here’s a federal source that can help you determine if you’re illegally classified as a contractor:

You can also file a form with the IRS to force the company to correct your classification (assuming you meet the criteria), without necessarily having to sue:

Keep in mind that this is just federal. Most states also prohibit missclassification as an independent contractor; and even if states have more lenient rules, companies still have to comply with this federal law. The rules have largely been bipartisan and existed for decades, so they’re common.

States also have an interest in having regulations about missclassification: it’s a significant loss of tax revenue. Your self employment tax does not fully equal what a company would have paid for you in payroll taxes.

A lawyer can help point you in the right direction if a company is currently missclassifying you.

Fantastic addition

also how culture works

why is this about to make me sob

a poem i am sure everyone has seen but i'm still going to share anyway

as well as this other poem inspired by giovanni's

and this beautiful tweet

[id: a photo of a small green spider sitting on a web. Below them is the text: “i’m sorry for scaring you but i didn’t know being seen would cost me my life”]/id.

[id: the poem Allowables by Nikki Giovanni:

I killed a spider Not a murderous brown recluse Nor even a black widow. And if the truth were told this Was only a small Sort of papery spider Who should have run When I picked up the book But she didn’t And she scared me And I smashed her

I don’t think I’m allowed

To kill something

Because I am

Frightened]/end id.

[id: The poem “Mercy: after Nikki Giovanni”:

She asks me to kill the spider. Instead, I get the most peaceful weapons I can find.

I take a cup and a napkin. I catch the spider, put it outside and allow it to walk away.

If I am ever caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, just being alive and not bothering anyone,

I hope I am greeted with the same kind of mercy.

-Rudy Francisco]/end id.

[id: tweet by Kayla Ancrum ✨ ICARUS coming Winte… (@KaylaAncrum) from 2022-12-07: “I had a dream that I was commissioned to write a poem from a bug to a god, and I do not remember any of the poem except for the last line which was: I pray nobody kills me for the crime of being small.”]/end id.

kurt vonnegut, being good at things is not the point of doing them.

ALT

Voting as Fire Extinguishter (poem by Kyle Tran Myhre)

When the haunted house catches fire:

a moment of indecision.

The house was, after all, built on bones,

and blood, and bad intentions.

Everyone who enters the house feels

that overwhelming dread, the evil

that perhaps only fire can purge.

It’s tempting to just let it burn.

And then I remember:

there are children inside.

i think this is probably true of every office, but there's a middle aged woman working in business who doesn't hold any particular place in the chain of command but is Sovereign. i was running support and she has access to more secure network drives than i do. im pretty sure she has an admin account. i was having trouble with my parking pass and my boss just said to talk to kristen- one day later i had parking in any garage on campus. she's not even in charge of parking in our building

This is also true of academia. In pretty much any department of the university — in my experience at least — there’s a person with a small-but-private office and an unassuming title (probably including a word like “secretary” or “assistant”), usually an older woman, and she actually runs the place. Faculty defer to her; department heads come and go, but Jill has been there for thirty years and knows how everything works, and she’s the person you go to if you want to get anything done. You’ll know her because when a professor directs you to her they won’t say “you need to talk to the Office of So-and-So because this falls under their purview”, but “you need to talk to Jill.” Her official job title is basically irrelevant because her actual role is acting as eminence grise for this whole operation.

I’ve personally had the experience where my advisor told me “you should do such-and-such certification, go talk to Jill,” and I went to talk to Jill & she said “actually you can’t do such-and-such because XYZ,” so I went back to my advisor to relay this, and he just kind of shrugged and was like, “well if Jill says no, then it can’t be done” and that was the end of it. Complete veto power, no higher authority to turn to, because the only reason Jill can’t do something is if it’s literally impossible.

Honestly there’s probably a whole dissertation about invisible labor and gender dynamics in there waiting to be written.

The one in my undergrad department was Linda C, and I think her hypercompetence must have risen to the point of allowing her to manipulate time itself, because in my experience, every time you needed to talk to Ms. C, you would end up chatting with her for at least an hour (which was both enjoyable and informative) and yet she got so much work done--it just didn't seem physically possible.

Take secretaries and administrative assistants out of any organization and you'll see it crumble in no time. They are the holder of the secrets to understanding red tape and other administrative nightmares.

The whole project of corporate IT was trying to get rid of this type of person and it's why nothing works anymore and we're all dying

“i helped cody paint it a little… just like old times, eh?”

Here’s the new 24 hour comic I drew this year!  This one is called THE KING’S FOREST.  cw: blood, violence

How the fuck did you make that last panel say so many things without using any words at all that’s so fucking cool.

Fascinating when people get upset at me for using book pages in my art. Modern books can be printed on demand, are often sold at thrift stores for a dollar, sometimes are given to me for the intent to destroy them. They aren't bibles, they aren't holy books, they don't carry information that isn't already widely available.

They can't feel pain when I tear out the pages, even though sometimes I wish they could. The author doesn't lose money. The author is not defamed. The author is not hurt.

The only thing that the world misses out on is a single copy of Art of the Deal that my friend Cait was forced to buy for her economics class for some reason. I think Donald Trump can handle the humiliation of having a portrait of Christine Jorgensen painted on one of his books.

As a librarian you realize how weird people get about mass market books like they're sacred texts or something. They INSIST on donating water damaged, books, books their kid drew it, etc. because they can't bear to recycle them or throw them away (so we have to it).

Oh yes, people are just so weird. When I'm showcasing my work I always meet one person who says something akin to 'that's what the Nazis did, you know?' and its like...

... ah yes, the Nazis would definitely paint portraits of transgender icons on top of books that would ultimately lead to an increased population of Nazis in America (theres a domino meme in my head about this, I'll get to it later.)

Or-

"How would you feel if you were an author and someone did that to one of YOUR books?" Which, I am an author and I am often selling my books at these shows. And its like...

... I'd be neutral about it? I write gay little fantasies. If they made art out of my gay little fantasies it means they felt pretty strongly about something so I'm glad they have feelings. And I suppose its better that they take it out on ink and paper than if they take it out on me, a living breathing person. Chances are that I'd never see them.

"But its censorship!"

No? Drawing up legislation to remove all books with queer content from the libraries is censorship. One weird dude in Ohio making art out of books that threw the first punch isn't censorship, its therapy.

Its just paper.

Garlic Bread

reblog because i accidentally deleted the top option right as i was done filling out all the options and had to manually shift every single option down one by one because you can't move options around once they're made apparently