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:
Get you back pay for the full duration you’ve worked there, to bring you up to the compensation that an employee would have gotten
Get you back compensation for lost benefits that an employee would have gotten
Get you back pay for the additional self-employment taxes the company should have covered
Get the company to pay back taxes to the government
Get the company to hire everyone who performed a similar role, or face further penalties and fines
A win would encourage the rest of their missclassified workers to sue for the same, or give them leverage to demand a better deal
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.
“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative
“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot
“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.
“you are functionally a conservative” is such a good and clarifying insult
Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women’s bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as “objectively terrible” and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn’t like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn’t like a light “unpopular opinion!” conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.
There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone’s mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.
I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.
Now I can’t find any adults who don’t hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, “well except for book X…”
Functionally conservative. It’s so important to have the language to express that.
Thank you for this addition!
And, following up on the previous post …
“This makes me uncomfortable” is NOT a valid reason for censorship
These fucking book editors should remove themselves from the profession ASAP 😡
The only reason a book should be removed, the ONLY reason, is “we are keeping it in the restricted section for research because its only intended function is to cause harm.”
And to be clear, when I say this, I’m talking about shit like To Train Up A Child and The Protocols of Zion. One is a text responsible for the deaths of multiple children because it’s an abuse how-to, and the other is entirely fabricated “protocols” from a group that never actually existed but is claimed to represent all Jews, and it’s basically one long antisemitic screed.
And even these should be available. Just. Not where they’re gonna be used to start a white supremacist cult.
One of the most life-changing things I ever learned came from Mythbusters, where they tested and proved (with cognitive testing puzzles and reaction time tests) that lying down and resting with the intention to sleep STILL provided significant mental benefits over just staying awake, even if a person couldn’t fall asleep in the amount of time they had.
It helps me to actually sleep to know that just lying down with my eyes closed is still doing me some good, and helps me to not freak out/beat myself up when I stay up later than intended. Any amount of rest is better than no rest!
So if you didn’t know that…now you do
do you know that i think of this post every time i can’t sleep op. what mythbusters did for you, you have done for a great many others.
when gerard way sings “the broken, the beaten, and the damned” and when kermit the frog sings “the lovers, the dreamers, and me” they’re talking about the same people btw
It’s interesting how diseases rip through schools at incredible speeds despite being in an arguably modern, clean(ish) environment. I wonder if it has something to do with the whole “you need a doctor’s note to excuse your absence of even one day” combined with the average price of going to a doctor, the lack of education on things like “you’re still contagious even after the fever goes away”, and the overwhelming message of “if you don’t struggle through it, you’re a failure!”
On my campus there tends to be a problem where even I you have the doctors note professors will still take points off of your final grade regardless of how sick you are. I’ve seen people show up to class with the stomach flu, pneumonia, respiratory infections and all sorts of other contagious ailments.
Here’s a fun story:
The school system I grew up in put an absolutely ungodly amount of pressure on kids to Show Up Every Day No Matter What. Many schools are like this, but looking back, my town’s was borderlinefuckingdystopian. They asked me why I didn’t just “postpone” a surgery at one point— when I was fifteen— to give you an idea of how monumentally obtuse these people were.
So, in elementary school, I started having chicken pox symptoms, right? They were mild because I was vaccinated (yay!) but my mom recognized them quickly and took me to the doctor, because my mom is a reasonable human being with standards. The doctor said “yup, you’ve got those pox, it may seem mild but please for the love of god DO NOT take her to school, she is very contagious even though she may FEEL okay.”
So I had to stay home from school until I got clearance from my doctor to go back. I was an angry little gremlin the whole time, because I wanted to go to the school library and read books about the human skull, but my mother said, “no, you cannot leave this house, and do not scratch the bumps please.” So I sat at home and tried not to scratch the bumps, like a good little gremlin.
A few days into my Chicken Pox Related House Arrest, we got a letter from the school. I was far from the only person with chicken pox, as it so happened. Like… a tenth of my second grade class had Confirmed Pox. We all fell ill within DAYS of each other.
So how did this happen, you ask? Well, a kid had chicken pox, and he came to school anyway. “Ah, well perhaps they didn’t know,” you may very well say. “Maybe his parents didn’t notice!” No. No, they noticed. In fact they KNEW it was CHICKEN POX. They sent him to school anyway.
The kid’s parents…….. were, in fact, teachers at the school. And they KNOWINGLY made him go to school sick, because they didn’t want to risk hurting his precious “perfect attendance” record. They figured that since he wasn’t, like, Literally Dying, it was better for him not to miss school. Never mind the fact that they were actively endangering hundreds of little kids.
Fast forward to my freshman year of college. A kid came to class with mumps because he ‘couldn’t afford to miss’. Guess what happened? Mumps outbreak! Diseases are, as it turns out, good at being diseases! Vaccinations are phenomenal, but they can only do so much, and some people rely on herd immunity to not be killed by preventable illness.
This entire attitude needs to die. It’s dangerous. Food service workers are forced to show up sick, little kids are forced to show up sick, college students show up sick because they’re afraid of flunking out.
And on top of it all, misinformation campaigns are encouraging people not to get vaccinations! It’s 2019 and we’re flirting with the plague! Next thing you know some blogger is gonna be like “actually we should all be fucking rats and eating our meat raw, death to all science and god bless america”
Many kids at my school will show up really sick because we only get like three days of excused absences without a doctor’s note.
this is what those in literary academia call “foreshadowing”
(note the dates)
this post aged like an ice cube in an oven
Btw if you are a food service worker and your boss makes you come in sick: mention it to a customer. Preferably one you know/like, but any customer will do. Hell, mention it to multiple customers.
Because the SECOND customers realize someone sick is handling the food they are putting in their mouths, they will advocate for you. Even if they’re not nice about it (and some aren’t), they’ll still usually demand to speak to a manager and shame them for making you come in while you’re sick, and 9 times out of 10 management will send you home rather than cause further problems.
The customers don’t want you there being sick either, ESPECIALLY if you’re handling their food. But they have to know you’re sick to say something about it, so don’t hide it from them.
If your boss is gonna make you come to work sick, be sick.
I saw
everyone on twitter tearing Emma Watson apart for saying she’s self
- partnered instead of
single and decided to watch her interview for British Vogue to know what the
hell was she trying to say with that. I was very surprised to find a 30 minute video
in which amongst other things she talks about the following:
She felt undeserving when she was appointed
as UN Women goodwill ambassador and sought out Gloria Steinem to learn about
feminist activism.
She thinks the criticism
she received for being a white feminist was useful because it made her educate
herself.
She says there’s a
desperate need to reform the education system in the UK to change the way they
are taught the history of how Britain has been involved in foreign affairs and how
they profited from slavery.
She felt anxious about approaching
30 because there’s a lot of pressure to have a husband and a baby by then and
she’s still figuring her life out.
She was so young when
she was casted in Harry Potter that she doesn’t remember much of her life
before it and she went to therapy to deal with her issues with fame. She used
to feel very guilty for being unhappy because she thought she should enjoy fame
more.
The interviewer is a
transgender woman and they discuss transgender issues for a while. Emma is in
regular contact with a trans child which makes the topic of trans rights emotional for her because she’s very anxious for this kid’s safety.
She talks about her role
as Meg March in the new Little Women movie and defends that unlike what many
people say choosing to be a wife and a mother doesn’t make Meg a less feminist
character and quotes a line from the movie, “Just because my dreams are
different than yours it doesn’t mean they are unimportant.”
She wishes more people would
realize she’s not Hermione Granger but also understands why they want to see
that in her because Hermione is a symbol for her too.
She used to think she
could never be happy without a partner and now that she has learnt to navigate
that better and is genuinely happy single she’s started to think of herself as
self - partnered in contrast to the time when she thought of herself as single
= lonely.
Every media outlet decided
to focus in an out of context quote from the three minutes she talked about her
dating life when the actual interview had a lot of depth and way more important
things were discussed. I’m sad and angry but not surprised.
“If it’s so hard to be homeless, how come they all have nicer phones than I do?”
If you work with the homeless, you hear this sentiment a lot. A lot.
Everyone who hates seeing their tax dollars go to the needy seems to think that this is the ultimate “gotcha”. How can that person possibly be homeless if they have a nice cell phone? How can homelessness really be so bad if you have an Android? How can social programs be underfunded when their clients have iPhones?
You want to know why the homeless have smartphones? There’s a couple of good reasons:
It’s leftover from a previous, more stable life. Homeless people aren’t video game characters, they don’t just spawn on street corners, fully formed.
Most people do not experience long-term homelessness - the average homeless person is on the streets for less than a month. These are people who used to have jobs, apartments, cars, etc, until some sort of catastrophe put them on the street. You might lose your apartment or car, but most people own their cellphone outright, and can hang onto it when something bad happens.
It was given to them by a concerned family member or friend. Most homeless people do actually have non-homeless family members and friends who care about them. Their family might not be able to let that person live with them at the moment, due to addiction or mental health problems, but they still need a way to get in touch with that person and check in on them. Giving them a cellphone is the easiest way to do that.
It was picked up second-hand. People upgrade to the newest device all the time, and when they do that, many of them will sell their old phones. It’s easy to find cheap, secondhand cellphones on the internet or in pawn shops, and they’re a valuable tool worth having.
It was given out by a social services agency or charity. When you work with the homeless, getting in touch with them is one of the biggest challenges you face. You need to be able to get hold of them at a moment’s notice to let them know about appointments, openings in important programs, updates on applications, and all sorts of other crucial information. Instead of wasting hours and gas driving around looking for people the old-fashioned way, many social agencies just give out cheap phones to their clients, to make sure that they can always contact them.
It doesn’t have a plan. Many people who see a homeless person on a cell phone assume that that person is also paying for a costly phone and data plan. That’s usually not the case. Many homeless people use pay-as-you-go phone minutes that they can top up whenever they happen to have the money. Even without any minutes, phones are valuable - free public wifi can be used to make phone calls, look up information and stay in contact with friends.
It’s for emergencies. By federal law, even old, deactivated cell phones are able to place calls to 911. Sleeping rough is dangerous, and it never hurts to have a phone nearby, even if its only use is to call for help.
Cell phones are probably the single most useful tool any homeless person can have - you can use them to look for shelter openings, hunt for jobs, navigate transit, stay connected to friends, find resources and information, remember appointments, wake yourself up on time, call for help, and entertain yourself through long and boring days. They are an essential tool, not a luxury item, and it’s unfair to suggest that homeless people somehow aren’t suffering just because they have one.
Instead of asking why that homeless person has a phone, ask yourself why they don’t have a safe place to sleep tonight.
This goes for poor or financially unstable people with nice things. They deserve nice things.
Had a slightly blazing row with my family about this when they said that no real refugee would have a mobile and they were all fake, trying to get into the country illegally. There were… words had.
I had this conversation with a fourth-grade class one time. I said, “Do you know what costs more than a phone?” and they said, “A house,” and that was the end of that.
