The one group of items I have removed is all the lifelike dolls that I have completed. I still have them though, just stuffed into a gallery.

ugh, yeah the lifelike dolls. Some of those I've never used, but I hesitate to remove them because I do use them sometimes and I want the different color options available.

and @ lypsyl

So I just emptied my last legacy shop, even though I haven't the heart to delete it yet. :/

I have a feeling it was a lot smaller than what you guys have but I wanted to tell you it seems to have gone smoothly. I did NOT stuff it into my vault though! I cleared out my tiny shop that had CWs in it and changed that to a gallery. I did not know that galleries can be ordered by ID number and either descending or ascending. Not nearly as good as categories for you guys but for me it works since mine is all christmas stuff. Now I just need to pull out all the christmas stuff from my vault that I was not able to put in the gallery for the last how many years. Yeah, that is going to take a lot longer.

Anyway. Doing a page at a time and directing it to the right gallery seemed to go okay.

Sorry for not being around and social y'all - I've been given double responsibility at work (but no raise, imagine that) and I've just been wiped out.

That was done to me at one job...the whole workplace had become pretty toxic and I just wanted to get out. Even getting a new job title and raise wouldn't have fixed it by that point.

Crazy part was that it was so much more expensive to the company to lose me than to pay me a bit more - they had to hire two whole new people, plus farm out parts of my job to existing staff. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!

A week later I'd had to go in to sign some paperwork, and I was so happy and cheerful that two staff quit nearly on the spot.

it is always nice to be valued and appreciated :/

I'm glad you got out of there. I really need to get out of mine and I've been looking. It's a miserable place to work and I'm honestly not sure they could pay me enough to stick around as soon as I find something else. They're gonna be very very screwed because I know at least one other person is going to leave when I do. And I don't feel bad at all.

It really is, but I rarely even get a thanks from them which is extra frustrating.

Really the way they are treating you is very old-school. It used to be people would get a job and stay there for life, only leaving when they retire. But the world doesn't work that way anymore.. Employers need to adapt. I have a nephew in his 20's who was changing jobs every 12 - 18 months. But each job was like a promotion or improved his skills in other way. Now he is in a job he loves and runs his own department.

My sister and I were really worried about him for a while because, you know, we are old. To us it made it look like he couldn't hold down a job. But he knew what he was doing. Times have changed.

Keep looking. There are surely decent employers out there who want good people and know how to treat them right. Did I suggest using indeed? I still gets hits from my resume on there.... Guess I should go take it down, lol.

Oh yeah, my boss was telling someone that his employees stay out of loyalty forever and I started laughing and walked outside. I stay because I can't find anything else yet. I would have no problem staying there had they treated me decently and gave me an occasional raise. But I make actually a little less now than I made when I started ($120 a month less) because they altered how I got paid and it totally screwed me. And they're going to be the cause of me losing my state insurance because of that change as well. And I can't really survive on it so like...time to go. Had they given me an occasional raise over the last 10 years, even like $0.50/hour each year or something, it would be different.

But now I'd be like...sure, I'll stay...for $30/hour and health insurance and normal work hours, not 9.5 hour days 3x a week + Saturday.

I don't think most people would consider $120 a month a little bit. Consider how it would have been if they had increased your pay by 120 rather than decrease. for a lot of people that 120 makes the difference in being able to eat for a week. But I know you know all that.

Insurance is crazy. We are fined if we don't have it but don't make enough to buy it but make too much to be on medical assistance? Talk about a broken system! I don't remember the exact numbers anymore but when I was at Zulily the cheapest insurance, which I still couldn't afford, has a huge deductible. My medical expenses were at +$2000 a month that the insurance WOULD NOT pay for and a huge deductible just made for an untenable situation.

Yeah, it's not a little bit but I have to minimize it in my head most days or I'll rage quit and then be really broke.

And yep - I looked into the cost if I have to pay myself, even with the 'discounts' I qualify for and it's like...$200 a month. That's like...2/3 of a single paycheck and I already live paycheck to paycheck. But somehow I can "afford" to pay for it. Okay then.

OMG Kobe Bryant died today! He was killed in a helicopter crash!

Holy shit. I hadn't even heard yet. That's horrible.

yeah. He was only 41.

I understand you needing to minimize it. It is hard enough to get up and drag yourself to work every day even when everything is good. :/

Yeah - it's really shocking but I suppose that's normal since it wasn't an illness thing =/

Oh yeah, I wake up every work day just like...why must I go?

What gets me the most about the US medical system isn't the issue of universal health care (I mean that would be great for you people, but the majority don't seem to want it), its the whole concept of for profit medical care. Talk about putting people over a barrel. If you want to spend your money on a top of the line cell phone with all the bells and whistles, sure charge every cent the market will bear! That's fair enough. But when it comes to health care - pay through the nose or die is just evil.

Thanks , I was so happy to get out of there. The issue was getting out in a way that preserved my unemployment benefits.

its amazing what a difference a thank you can make! When I first started working there I loved the place. The pay was never great, but there were other perks. Among those perks were staff and management working together, a real team atmosphere. We felt listened to and appreciated. The head honcho had her problems, she was never a people person, but there were other upper management staff who blunted her worst issues. Those staff eventually moved on, and it was still okay for a while, but the head honcho deteriorated. With no one to keep her in check and getting away with some minor BS, emboldened her to do more and more BS. Until it because major BS all the time, every day.

One example: She submitted an ATM receipt as an expense to be reimbursed. The accountant said no, that's illegal. Her response was to threaten to fire him if didn't pay it, and it was a major threat because he was an immigrant and needed the job to stay in the country. She knew that and brought it up as part of the threat. Nor was this second hand info - she wrote it in a letter that she gave me to type up. I typed it up, feeling very, very dirty, and personally handed it to her (because I didn't think that should be left laying about). She lost track of it anyway and blamed me of course!

I could go on and on with the crap she did.

Mostly people don't want it because they've been sold the lie that we'll be waiting 5 months to see a doctor and nobody will get better from anything.

Like, if they understood that it actually means cheaper/free for everyone and also competitive pricing on the medications that we federally fund development of already (and therefore shouldn't cost what they cost because we pay for it with our tax dollars), they'd be more in favor. But...uh...something something communism 'Murica.

I laugh or I'd cry you know.

Also it's the worst when somewhere that seems great to work just...rapidly begins to fall apart and everyone is left feeling scared and anxious and worried about leaving and affording to be alive. And the former boss sounds absolutely atrocious. I'm so sorry you had to deal with that for as long as you did but I'm really glad for you that you're free.

Yeah the attitudes about universal health care are really weird down there. I mean yes, there are problems and issues, but compared to what you currently have to deal with its nothing!

And all the hoopla about the so-called "death panels"? So silly! I mean that's the system you have now with your health insurance (even if the health insurers have better PR than to call them that), and I guarantee, those for profit motivated insurance companies are a whole lot stickier about what they'll pay for and what they won't than our government is.

Oh, we 100% have death panels now - and it's literally everyone on medical staff + the social workers from the insurance and the hospitals. The way they've neglected and treated my uncle (all the way down to the orderlies) at some of these places has made it clear they don't see him as a person and that they hope he'd just die so they don't have to pay to take care of him.

The general attitude is so skewed from propaganda that it's bonkers.

yep, and that's one of the huge problems with for profit medicine. People cease to be people and become numbers in a database that don't deserve respect and compassion.

I know that here we have personnel problems with burnout, people who just don't belong in jobs that involve caring for other human beings, resentment for crappy work with low pay and so on. But its on a whole other level when the very system causes people to be seen as expenses (every time you feed them, or give them meds) and a drain on the company.