Conference 7.286::digital

    
    
    
    Transition Financial Support Option
    
    
    
    
    
    
    BS

    
    RE: .1
    
    Thanks For Shoving Off
    
    

Amazing ,,,

you're just asking what TFSO means, and we've been living it 
for 3 years now....

Your badge DOES say DIGITAL right ?????

I understand there are some different laws regarding this accross the
pond, but this question, although quite honest in nature
does little for our (US based) morale...

In the long run though...

Good luck through the process,,, let's hope they can keep more of the
right people as you guys go through what we now know as a way of life!!
 

	DIR/TITLE=TFSO probably would have given you the Sagans and Sagans
	of other "What does TFSO mean?" topics. (and the alternate
	meanings)

							mike

    Re .3
    
    Actually... we 'across the pond' have also been living it for three
    years now, thank you very much.
    
    Just because someone doesn't appreciate the meaning of the acronym
    doesn't imply unfamiliarity with the concept or process.
    
    Susi
    

Rep. 3

How many other langage than english do *you* speak ?

Rep. 5 

Well said Susi ... 

    TFSO is not only an acronym, but a euphemism.  The words within the
    acronym are not meaningful.  They are designed to obscure, mislead and
    'soften the blow'.
    
    This is something we have also suffered on this side of the pond. 
    English employment law has Redundancy as one of the methods by which an
    employer can terminate an employment contract.
    
    Redundancy has unpleasant emotional connotations, because it is an
    unpleasant emotional experience.  Hence Digital was amongst the first
    to start using euphemisms to obscure the meaning.  Firstly, people are
    called resources, not people.  Secondly, management started talking
    about Downsizing.  Once people figured out that this WAS Redundancy,
    the term changed to Rightsizing, again attempting to hide the problem
    and avoid the emotional impact.
    
    TFSO is the logical conclusion of this process of hiding, refusing to
    face unpleasantness.
    
    It is Political Correctness at its worst.
    
    Many if not all of the Management Communications inflicted upon us are
    absolutely crawling with deliberately vague, misleading terms.
    
    What on earth does 'leadership' and 'world-class' really mean?  These
    terms are used because they are so vague that they will be taken to
    mean whatever the reader wants them to mean.
    
    OK, temper tantrum over for the minute.
    
    Martin
    Campaign for precise use of Language!

TFSO is, really, just the acronym/euphemism for the "package" that accompanies
the layoff.  However, we've come to use it as a verb for the layoff process
itself.

				Steve

.8 

Hear! Hear!  

I suppose there is a time and a place to use different phrases to soften
the blow ("passed away" not "died"), but there comes a time when people
just want to be told straight out.  Unfortunately, it seems there are more
people who are interested in doing just the opposite so that the straight
message is obfuscated.  It is a wonderous quality to be able to say so
much and mean so little.

Being "laid-off" isn't what it used to mean either, which was "when more
work is found to be done, you'll be called back."  We ain't gonna be called
back (most of us).

TSFO means termination of the relationship between employer and employee
(with ever-decreasing humanitarian cushions, which I believe are thankfully
still larger than required by law, even if smaller than previous packages).

Mark

> Being "laid-off" isn't what it used to mean either, which was "when more
> work is found to be done, you'll be called back."  We ain't gonna be called
> back (most of us).

  This is more or less what I was going to say. Digital doesn't formally call
these layoffs, as some other companies such as Raytheon used to, because 
"layoff" implies a temporary condition. It's clear that Digital has no inten-
tion of ever rehiring most of its laid-off people, no matter how prosperous
it becomes. And if any are rehired, they will be starting at square one. 

    Re: 1.2
    
    OTOH, being "fired" doesn't mean what it used to mean, either.
    
    In the old days, being fired meant that you, specifically, as
    an individual, were no longer wanted on that job.  It was for
    unsubordination, incompetence, or severe misconduct.  The implication
    was that the empty slot created was going to be immediately filled.
    
    Today, people refer to someone as having been fired when they
    are let go because their job disappeared, not because they weren't
    a good employee.  I like the English phrase "declared Redundant",
    but othe replies in here suggest that that phrase is suffering the
    same fate as most phrases that describe something painful:  people
    are dreaming up substitutes for the phrase as if that would actually
    reduce the pain.
    
    Dave
    

>    Today, people refer to someone as having been fired when they
>    are let go because their job disappeared

Now there's another euphemism!

They don't "let" you go -- they damn well make sure you go !

:-)

    now a days TFSO = SNAFU covers it for me.

re: .12, Bob

> if any are rehired, they will be starting at square one. 

Is this fact or conjecture? It's been 14 months or better (thank goodness)
since I've personally had to "present the package" to anyone, however I
was under the impression that anyone returning still did so under the
same circumstances as had been traditional (which really only means that
your retirement picks up where it left off - whatever vesting you had
does not need to be re-attained - vacation still goes back to 2 weeks
till your next five years ann., etc.)

-Jack

    Re. .13 >>reduce the pain.
    
      The last guy I saw 'made redundant' here wasn't suffering any pain.
    With thirteen years in the company, he was glad to be going, with a
    healthy payoff; 19 months salary I believe, the UK being on 1
    month/year + 3months in lieu of notice, + 3 months. They tried to do
    away with the latter three months, but found they couldn't, after being
    sued; though it is not widely advertised as being available. Said he
    thought he was getting out at the right time.
    
    Ken

    re: .5, .8, .9
    
    TFSO is not an acronym.  An acronym has to form a word, and can be
    pronounced.

    
>    TFSO is not an acronym.  An acronym has to form a word, and can be
>    pronounced.
    
    Interesting...
    
    might I suggest that you revisit the semantics of respecitively
    "acronym", "word" and "pronounce" and come back and report your
    findings?
    
    re roelof

    
    I think TFSO is quite pronouncable, just like our old friends
    JFCL, JRST, ILDB and the rest ..  :-)
    
    /Ake
    

    Actually, he's correct. TFSO is an abbreviation, as are IBM, HP, ATT,
    DCU etc, and DEC is an acronym, as are "words" like SNAFU, NAAFI and
    NASA.
    
    Laurie.

>    Actually, he's correct. TFSO is an abbreviation, as are IBM, HP, ATT,
>    DCU etc, and DEC is an acronym, as are "words" like SNAFU, NAAFI and
>    NASA.
    
	What does the SN stand for in SNAFU?

    SN = Situation Normal....
    

    Situation Normal, All Fouled Up
    
    A number of variants exist, the above was in my Webster's Dictionary.
    
    Origins were claimed to be US Army, WWII.
    
    ed

re Note 3345.21 by PLAYER::BROWNL:

>     Actually, he's correct. TFSO is an abbreviation, as are IBM, HP, ATT,
>     DCU etc, and DEC is an acronym, as are "words" like SNAFU, NAAFI and
>     NASA.
  
        It's really not that simple.  Obviously "NASA" is as much an
        abbreviation as "TFSO", but it's more easily pronounced. 
        "US", as for the "United States", clearly *is* pronounceable,
        but is never pronounced as a word.  

        According to the Random House unabridged dictionary, the
        definition of "acronym" says nothing about pronounceability. 
        It's definition of "acronym" fits any word formed from a
        sequence of initial letters -- *all* of your above examples
        are acronyms by this definition.

        (Or are you assuming that a "word" must be easily
        pronounced? "T-F-S-O" is, in fact, a pronunciation.)

        Bob
        (who would rather be discussing the DCU election)

OGCRD + CACRMC

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
         <<< HUMANE::DISK$CONFERENCES:[NOTES$LIBRARY]DIGITAL.NOTE;1 >>>
                        -< The Digital way of working >-
================================================================================
Note 2238.42                   DEC 7th TFSO Delay?                      42 of 55
UECKER::CHAKMAKJIAN "Shadow Nakahar of Erebouni"     14 lines  10-DEC-1992 10:41
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After WWI it was called   Shell Shock
After WWII it was         Battle Fatigue
After the Korean War      Combat Stress Disorder
After Vietnam it was      Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome


The first Round was called Separation and Restructuring
The second round was called Transition and Redefining Business Goals
The third round was called Early Retirement and Strategic Planning
This time it is being called Headcount Reduction and Focus on Core Competencies 
Next time it will be called On-going Cyclical Resource Deallocation and
                                 Cohesive Application of Competitive Responses 
                                      with Metaphysical Certitude
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

TFSO = Try For Success Outside

    re: .28
>WAC and LORAN are words which have understandable speach sounds, but TFSO is
>not understandable, at least not in terms of what is commonly understood as a word.
    
    	You are being rather insular in an international company. A Welsh
    person has no problem pronouncing "ll" as in "Llanelly", or in your own
    name, and a Finnish person has no problem in pronouncing the "kk"
    sound. On the other hand a word ending in a final "ac" like "WAC" is
    fairly uncommon in the English language. All examples I can think of at
    the moment have an "iac" ending (like insomniac) and the missing "i"
    could well confuse even a native English speaker when trying to
    pronounce it.

    RE: .25 and .26
    
    "US" (you-ess) isn't an acronym, it's an abbreviation unless you
    habitually pronounce it "us", as in "That ball belongs to us". In the
    same way DEC (deck) *is* an acronym and IBM (eye-bee-emm) is an
    abbreviation unless you habitually pronounce it "Ibbumm", which I
    doubt. TFSO, unless "tuhfussoh" is a recognisable word sound in English
    (which is isn't, it's far too awkward) is an abbreviation.
    
    Abbreviation: n; a letter, or a few letters used *for* a word or words,
                  as in Lat. for Latin, or A.D. for Anno Domini.
    
    Acronym:      n; a *word* made up from the first letters of the name of
                  something, especially an organisation (such as NATO from
                  North Atlantic Tresty Organisation).
    
    Word:         n; a vocal sound or a combination of articulate and
                  vocal sounds, uttered by the human voice, and accepted as
                  expressing an idea or ideas; THE LETTER OR COMBINATION OF 
                  LETTERS WHICH REPRESENT SUCH A SOUND.
    
    I submit therefore, that "tuhfussoh" is not recognisable as an English
    word and therefore TFSO is not an acronym, but an abbreviation. To back
    that assertion up, I'll bet that the vast majority of people who use
    the letter combination TFSO, pronounce it "tee-eff-ess-oh", *not*
    "tuhfussoh".
    
    Oh and Dave, nice rathole (but not as good as this one), but I think
    that for the purposes of this discussion we can restrict ourselves to
    English or American and the associated pronunciations!
    
    Cheers, Laurie.

re Note 3345.31 by PLAYER::BROWNL:

>     ... I'll bet that the vast majority of people who use
>     the letter combination TFSO, pronounce it "tee-eff-ess-oh", *not*
                                   ^^^^^^^^^
>     "tuhfussoh".
    
        Since, by your own admission, it is pronounced, then by even
        your logic it is an acronym!

        Bob

        (Another common, but not universal, characteristic of an
        abbreviation, but never an acronym,  is that it is written
        with a period or periods, e.g., "Dr." or "U.S." or
        "S.E.A.L.")

    Bucko...

    PEDANT:   Person Eroding Digital Assets (on) Notesfile Trivia.
    
    Dave
    

	TFSO: The Flying Saucer Option!

    I don't believe the intent of the basenoter was to end with a thesis
    written whether TFSO is an acronym or whatever!
    
    Typical irrelevant rathole!!!
    
    How about revisiting the essence of this discussion?
    

    For some of us who have received the 'package', TFSO means an
    opportunity to get out of a non-productive, inevitable environment and
    start fresh.  Life on the other side of the TFSO is pretty good, and
    quite a bit less stressful.  After 10 years at Digital, I bid a fond
    farewell!

The Final Software Organization....

		       (not original, forgot where I heard it)

  Re snafu: There actually are three of these; the other two are:

tarfu = things are really fouled up (I very rarely see this)
fubar = fouled up beyond all recognition (sometimes spelled "foobar" and often
  used as a placeholder for node names etc. in manuals)

>fubar = fouled up beyond all recognition (sometimes spelled "foobar" and often
>  used as a placeholder for node names etc. in manuals)

Not in my manuals.  My editor flagged it as being possibly offensive
because the acronym is sometimes expanded with a different word
than "fouled."  Foobar is on the wane in corporate amerika.

    
.40>  Foobar is on the wane in corporate amerika.
    
    Blame it on fascist, humor-impaired editors.
    

    Actually, you cleaned the expression up a bit for our delicate ears.

    re.40
    Does this mean we can't use RTFM anymore as well??
    
    What's this company coming to?!?!
    08-)
    Charles Mallo

>    Does this mean we can't use RTFM anymore as well??

What's wrong with "Read That FINE Manual"???
    

    	I thought it meant Read The Functions Manual ;-).
    
    	Properly phrased, the inferred RTFM meaning should be appended to
    include "RTFM, sir!...in order to avoid offensive confusion!
    
    Phil_who_is_not_always_tactful.
    

      I've always liked RYFM ... where the Y is YOUR.  It's a 
      little closer to being something that english speaking 
      people can pronounce.

      Terry

    
    Well I can't see why RTFM should be a problem. No one complained
    so far... ;-)
    
    /Kjell

    I don't see a problem with using RTFM, especially when dealing with
    Fortran

    	As a minor sideline, FUBAR is the Failed UniBus Address Register
    which can be found on any VAX 11/780.
    
    	If the VAX tried to access an address via its UniBus adapter then
    there was a possiblity that there would be a timeout on the UniBus,
    either because of a hardware fault or because the address was not
    present in that configuration.
    
    	The VAX would not be waiting for this timeout - it would be
    continuing with other instructions. As a result, when the UniBus
    eventually timed out the request, it had to generate in interrupt. For
    the convenience of the interrupt service routine whose main job was
    error logging, it would save the address of the failed access in the
    FUBAR so that it could easily be logged in the error log.

    >...FUBAR ... which can be found on any VAX 11/780.
    
    Surely you meant to say that "FUBAR can be found on every VAX 11/780"?
                                                        ^^^^^

    
    It has been a while, but my recollection is that the FUBAR was
    appropriately named because it often pointed to a red herring due
    to latching limitations.
    
    bill

How about from my KL10 Maintenance Guide Volume II:

Name	Type	Description
-------------------------------
DX2RFU	[CHK]	PHYX2 - ERROR RECOVERY CONFUSED

in the TOPS-20 error information section

re: .52

>How about from my KL10 Maintenance Guide Volume II:
>
>Name	Type	Description
>-------------------------------
>DX2RFU	[CHK]	PHYX2 - ERROR RECOVERY CONFUSED

My all-time favorite error message still has to be one of the ones from an 
ancient Digital Research Pascal compiler:

    Compiler too confused to continue

Would that more error messages were that honest. :-)

    Re: .52, .53

    My favorite comes from the period after they replaced the
    switches/lights panel for the RDC panel on my customer's PDP 11/70
    IAS system while we we're fighting a random hang state.  The
    system manager got so furious he kicked the CPU right in the new
    RDC panel - the LA36 console sputtered with the familiar sound of
    a system crash - we looked at the printout...
    
    Kernel APRs Clobbered

	Mike

    My favorite was from one of the TDMS field tests:
    
    -F-TDMS-NFW, operation not allowed.
    
    I think that one got changed before the product shipped, though.
    
    --bonnie

    Some of the PDP-8s used to print a person's name and phone number.
    
    Error; contact Joe Blow @999-999-9999.

	RSX-11M's directive error -69. was

	IE.NFW, path lost to partner

This one was from SOUP (SOftware UPdate), a TOPS-10 based code management
system from about 1969.  The message:

	La banda esta borracha.

Dave

    One that may not exist, but should:
    
    	Stop doing that!

Back in the 70's the RT-11 HELP command had a special response hardcoded such
that if you typed:

    HELP ME

the response was something like:

    There is no help for you

At the operating system command line:

XYZZY

response:

Nothing happens.

	The SOS editor had a command MAKE which you used to create a new
	file.  If you entered MAKE LOVE it would respond with "Not War?".
	It would then proceed to create the file called LOVE.

re: .62

TECO did that long before SOS.

Bob

    A friend working on some ICL kit saw an error message number that he
    didn't recognise (the meaning not the actual number obviously!) so he
    looked it up in the manual - The message the machine was trying to
    convey to him was "Ho hum, Nothing to do". I liked that ... 
    
    Another, perhaps apocryphal, story involved some programmer writing a
    program (as they are won't to do, on occasions) and coming across an
    error condition. On asking his manager, who we shall call Mr X, about
    what to do he was told that as it was never going to happen he could
    ignore it. The programmer insisted he should check it and a minor
    argument ensued, whereby the manager bet the programmer a pint that it
    would never happen ...
    
    Imagine the quizzical looks the error message must have produced on the
    faces of the users who were greeted with
    
    "Mr X. owes me a pint"
    
    ...
    
    

	RE: .63

	Actually, I couldn't remember if it was TECO or SOS, so I picked SOS.

    re: .62
    
    Even the not-special-cased error from unix make is somewhat amuzing:
    
    strange@squeeze> make love
    Make:  Don't know how to make love.  Stop.
    
    	Steve

And back to the base note...

	*tfso$$
	?SRH  Search failure "o"
	*

  *employee$$
  ?IEC Illegal E character
  *

  *manager$$
  ?NFO No file for output
  *

...the last in a string of error messages...
...
%CC-F-SUCCESS  Normal successful completion

ditto.  If its something that you must "apologize for" witht he original 
message then its a good bet that the message should never have been sent 
in the first place.

Shelly

>ditto.  If its something that you must "apologize for" witht he original 
>message then its a good bet that the message should never have been sent 
>in the first place.
    
    "Y'all must be guilty, or they wouldn'ta charged y'all, now would they,
    Mr. King?  We don't much like your type 'round here..."
    
    No, it's more like this...someone got offended (there's ALWAYS 1 person
    out of the 85k at Digital that will be offended by any given note). 
    They communicate they're offended to the noter and, the noter being a
    general good Joe, apologizes for inadvertantly offending them and deletes 
    the note, no fuss.
    
    It's just good human relations.  You're offended by something I said,
    EVEN THOUGH I DIDN'T MEAN TO, I'll apologize because I never meant to
    offend you and am truly sorry you were pained by whatever I said EVEN
    IF I STILL DON'T BELIEVE IT WAS OFFENSIVE AND IT WASN'T INTENDED!
    
    I got a long note passed from one of my favorite mods (:^]) that was
    sent by another Digit.  They complained severely about a subject title
    in a note offending their ethnicity.  The subject title was supposed to
    be a simple word twist.  They never specified exactly WHAT about it
    offended them ( I had to guess for 5 minutes and if it's what I THINK
    they were thinking they need to wash out their mind with soap).
    
    Regardless, I changed the title (ignored the mod's long-winded
    tsk-tsk), and sent a nice note to the offendee stating I didn't mean to
    offend, had complied with their requests, was sorry, etc.  Never heard
    a thing back.
    
    Personally, I tend to think most of my fellow Digits are nice people,
    pretty unbiased, and aren't out to get me.  Thus, I don't read every
    entry/subject with the firm belief the noter's a prejuidiced,
    obnoxious, sadistic a**hole out to hurt my feelings.  Must be a fairly
    miserable way to go through each day.
    
    								Tex
    
    (Who is NOT a Klan member, John Bircher, White Supremacist, Male
    Chauvinist Pig, English-Firster, Anti-Gay, Staunch Political Anything,
    Hunter, Fur Wearer, Moonie, Geraldo-Watcher or anything else 
    anyone out there would probably much disapprove of. :^])

Re 3345.72  

>        With apologies to my fellow Israelis.

This Israeli does not accept the tongue-in-cheek apology!  If you really are an
Israeli and/or Jew, you should know better than to make insensitive comments
based on this most sensitive of subjects.

I suggest that you at least withdraw the note.

Shalom 
Baruch

    
    > .76
    
    RE: .72 - I withdrew the comment on the same day it wss posted.  You
              must be saving them for later reading.  I apologize. It was
    	      aimed at DEC in general.
    
    Sh'ma Yisrael, Adonai elohenu, Adonai echad,
    Baruch H'shem kevot  malchuto  le olam vaed.

    Re .77     Amen.  Received and understood.
    
    Yes, I use RNU and skim the note headings for those I may want to read,
    and on a rare occasion may answer.   Your .72 heading caught my
    attention, and wrath.  It is not the first time that I have read a note
    some time after it was deleted.  
    
    Oh well, back to work!
    
    Shalom v hag sameuch
    Baruch

    
    I always rather wished that the VAXnotes people would have put in
    something clever for a response to the command:
    
    	OPEN SESAME

re .79:

The developers obviously felt they weren't clever enough to come up with the
"ultimate" response. What they did do, however, was to allow each system manager
to customize a response to that command which could be reasonably guaranteed to
please or annoy (depending on the SM's attitude) a reasonably high percentage of
the Notes users on the local system (after all, who knows the local users better
- the system manager or the Notes developers?).

All that's required is to create a conference in NOTES$LIBRARY and call it
SESAME. Add a clever conference announcement and off you go. :^)

    I guess my favorite response in this area was from a program which was
    really developed as a quick and dirty data conversion utility which
    replied to the "help" command:
    
    "Commands do pretty much what you'd expect."

    I'm not quite sure where best to ask this question and I don't remember
    seeing and specifics on this before so I jumped into this TFSO note...
    
    Does anyone know the time requirements for a TFSO'd employee to stay 
    out of the company before attempting to return and apply for a
    (newspaper advertised) opening. My friend does not recall nor can he
    find anything that he signed that covered this.
    Floyd

    My quess is the length of the TFSO package he/she got. I seem to
    remember some of my TFSOed friends saying this.
    

    Well, things change, but when I was a supervisor and went through TFSO
    with several people, I had to sign the "standard" exit interview
    paperwork on whether you would rehire this employee.  Then ('92) the
    rule was that you could not be rehired for 1 year from termination
    date.  That meant, back then, 9 weeks (for the first round I went
    through) and 1 year from your TFSO date.  We later wanted to hire
    someone back as a contractor, but had to wait a year (it probably
    depends on the manager's clout combined with the VP's clout combined
    with the technical abilities - engineers come back as contractors
    faster, it seems).  I have no idea if that's still what's happening. 
    It doesn't sound like it, in some cases.  But if it is, the last
    package I knew of was x weeks continuous pay, so it would be x weeks
    plus one year.
    
    Good luck to your friend!  Oh, by the way, it was up to the
    supervisor/manager to see that copies of that paperwork went to the
    employee, and because of all the stress, a lot of people might not have
    thought of it.  All I could think was that I'd want copies of every
    single thing I had to sign if I were being TFSOd, so I tried to make
    copies of everything for the people I had to "lay off."  I don't
    remember if I always succeeded, though.
    
    
    Susan

    Quoting from the TFSO letter that I got in December of 1992...
    
    	Employee agrees that Employee will not be eligible for
    	re-employment for a period ending on the last day of the
    	Period represented by the lump sum or the six month
    	anniversary of the Termination Date, whichever comes later.
    
    I also know of at least one person who left the company during this
    round who came back as a contractor before the 6 months were up.  I do
    not know what kind of difficulty there was to make this happen.

   Perhaps there is a difference if you come back as an independent
   contractor versus coming via one of the agencies. In the latter,
   depending on how things are arranged, you may actually be employed
   by the agency, not by Digital, and just located on DEC property.

   Isn't that what we are doing with all our tech writers?

   >Per

.86> quoting from Digital paperwork

>"six month anniversary"

I know of only 12-month anniversaries, since the "Ann" of anniversary means
"year."  Any latin students know of the latin term for month? 

(sorry folks)

    The current TFSO paperwork as of 9 Jan 95 says 6 months, but I also 
    know of someone who was hired back much sooner. So as someone said
    its who you know.
    
    Saul

    (Sounds like a college in Minnesota.)

I suspect it's more a case of how stupidly the layoffs
were done. I'm seeing a lot of formerly TFSO'd phone 
support people back as contracters. Seems they laid off
way too many support folk and when they went to contract
agencies to hire the only availbe people with the right
skills were the Deccies that had been laid off. liesl

p.s. The rumor I've heard is that Paget's leave taking
is somehow associated with the mishandled layoffs. maybe
he was the whipping boy. 

    RE: .88
    
    Let's see, this goes back to 10th grade but if I still remember
    correctly...
    
    	Month = Mens
    
    
    Larry

>    	Month = Mens

Makes more sense than luna(r) [moon], though that was good for another
pun (lunatic).  Sorry for the rathole.  Well, no I'm not.  I'll rathole
this again in a month on the Mensiversary of this note.  (Say, isn't that
sexist?  Never understood some words: womenapause and hisnias, for example.)

*<|%^D

    actually, I think that "mens" is greek for moon, whereas "menses" is
    latin for month (luna is latin for moon). 
    
    Deb

The MIT motto is "mens et manus" (I may have that misspelled), meaning "minds
and hands," nothing to do with the moon (unless MIT folk are lunatics).  :-)

						Brian

    RE: .95
    
    "Mens et manus" is Latin; "mens" does mean mind in Latin, but
    "mens"(spelt with greek characters, of course) means moon is Greek! 
    
    Deb

.97>    RE: .95
.97>    
.97>    "Mens et manus" is Latin; "mens" does mean mind in Latin, but
.97>    "mens"(spelt with greek characters, of course) means moon is Greek! 

Yes, but from .88:

.88> I know of only 12-month anniversaries, since the "Ann" of anniversary means
.88> "year."  Any latin students know of the latin term for month? 

So, the original question was seeking the Latin term.  I was merely providing
evidence that, even if "mens" means "month" in Greek, "mens" is not the
requested Latin term for month.

(Of course, in English, "mens" is a malformed (missing apostrophe) possesive
version of the plural for "man," or a re-pluraled plural of "man," but nobody
asked about English.)  :-)

						Brian

Hi,

   Has the notification policy changed for what the co. requires
for notification for an employee that is moving on?

  I heard that it is now 2 weekd notice for all empoyees..

   

    VTX ORANGEBOOK
    	1 New/Revised Policies
    	    1 Summary of Changes
    
    reveals...
    
    6.01     Termination - Replaces pages 3 and 4.  Proper Notice is no
             longer Required by Terminating Employees.  Proper Notice is
             Requested when an employee terminates.  This change brings
             this policy in line with 2.01 Employment, as it relates to
             "Terms of Employment".
    
    Policy 2.01, under "Term of Employment" now says
    
     TERM OF EMPLOYMENT
    
     | Either the employee or the company may terminate the employment
     | relationship at any time, with or without cause and with or without
     | notice.

Jeez - do I correctly interpret that as meaning that
they can just say "your job just ended" and your salary
stops at that instant?   

If so.. ah, it's good to see a return to solid 
Victorian values!

 Thank you,

  It looks like the polite (used to be responsible) way of letting
  your manager know that you are looking, have a good prospect
  or whatever, just may get you terminated before you expect ...

  It looks like whoever is left to take over the responsibilties
  should not expect any warning that they are going to get alot
  of added work. No transitional period of training either.

  Well, since this is the way that DEC wants it it's
  not the departing person's responsibiltiy..
 
  Wow! Things just got a WHOLE lot more serious...
   

  Thanks again,
   
  Dave
  
   
  

 .98
    
    >Yes, but from .88:
>
>.88> I know of only 12-month anniversaries, since the "Ann" of anniversary means
>88> "year."  Any latin students know of the latin term for month? 
>
>So, the original question was seeking the Latin term.  I was merely providing
>evidence that, even if "mens" means "month" in Greek, "mens" is not the
>requested Latin term for month.
    
    At the risk of digging this rathole any deeper, I answered the origonal
    question in .95; the latin word is "menses".
    
    If you go back and read .95 (or better yet, the string from .88 to .95)
    I think that you will find that the origonal question was answered and
    the additional stuff was not out-of-context.
    
    Deb

    re: .103
    
    The nominative singular (dictionary) form is "mensis", plural is
    "menses". Mensiversary might be the term sought, although my wife and I
    celebrated our "moon-iversary" every month (or so) for the first few
    years we were married.
    
    [We now return you to the terror of contemporary employment...]

>    [We now return you to the terror of contemporary employment...]

How succinct!