These beautiful and intelligent people wrote

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  KrishnaReply

  November 17, 2009 at 8:23 am

  Today’s strip will make more sense in the context of this Thursdays (in case you’re confused) ;)

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  jtoastReply

  November 17, 2009 at 9:24 am

  I got a new job with a major corporation (50,000+ employees) in June. My HR meeting consisted of two things. 1) Me filling out the standard required paperwork and 2) Them handing me a piece of paper with the URL of the HR website and a phone number to call with questions. It took less than an hour start to finish.

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  qkaReply

  November 17, 2009 at 10:55 am

  I have long thought of HR as the guidance counselors of the adult world. Like the guidance counselors in high school, they are fundamentally useless. But you need their signature on all paperwork.

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  tonzillaReply

  November 17, 2009 at 8:40 pm

  In my previous life (I mean job), I worked in the Media Services department of a hospital/health care organization. One of my responsibilities was to record the weekly orientation sessions so that video would be available if a presenter couldn’t make it(or took a vacation).
  Which meant sitting through the entire day’s presentations for recording. Then watching them again several times during editing. Then preparing alternate versions for employees who worked outside the hospital proper and had different rules.
  At least the rest of you usually only have to sit through that just once. (I’m so jealous of you, jtoast!)

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  BartimaeusReply

  November 18, 2009 at 4:51 am

  Now things are looking interesting…

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  Kevin RubinReply

  November 18, 2009 at 8:30 am

  I’m on my fourth job now and the HR stuff takes longer and longer…

  The first company I worked for had 7 people, so I came in the first day and got right to work with the other two programmers… Orientation was basically filling out the W4 form in my spare time.

  The second company was a lot bigger and I think I spent an hour with the HR woman. She talked about a bunch of insurance stuff I didn’t understand, then I went over to the tech support department and started getting trained on the software.

  The third company only had about a dozen people, but I had separate HR orientation things with the husband and wife who owned the company. She went on about how we worked, the various HR paperwork. He went on about his vision for the company, etc…

  The small office of the current company I work for is bigger than all the others put together… I had a full day HR orientation (here in India it’s called Induction and new employees are Joinees) with the other five people who started the same day. We sat through boring PowerPoint presentations on how to enter time in our timesheet application (which I found out later in the week my team didn’t use because its manager hadn’t integrated the project’s codes in with that application yet…), how to find documents on the network, office security policies, HR policies, and more…

  Most of what I remember is that the company had just moved to a new office and so most of the network stuff didn’t work and we spent about 75% of the day sitting around while the inductors waited for the IT staff to come and fix things. So the six of us new joinees got to know each other and visit and chit-chat.

  Now the company somehow stretches induction out to 3 or 5 days for new joinees. I have no idea what they do, since I thought one full day was an utter waste of time…

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  Theala SildorianReply

  November 18, 2009 at 10:28 am

  As a nurse, I have to go through hospital orientation TWICE. First there is general hospital orientation: fill out the W4, learning about benefits, fill out insurance paperwork, get my ID, etc, ad nauseum. You’re always stuffed in a room set too cool to keep you from falling asleep (I’ve become a master of the open eyed nap).

  This usually takes 3-5 days.

  Then there is NURSING orientation. That’s where I learn the specifics about nursing policies and procedures. It’s like a boring repeat of basic nursing: med administration, blood transfusions, infection control, starting IVs, CPR, OSHA, HIPPA, and a lot of other abbreviations. It also is usually a tremendous snore.

  Oh, and I almost forgot the latest: learning the unique, proprietary computer documentation system that is never as efficient as a good old fashioned narrative note.

  This part also lasts about a week. .

  I usually change jobs every 3-4 years. Every hospital I go to makes me watch the same dull OSHA video that was made back in the 1980s.

  Bob has my sympathies.