Saturday, December 02, 2006

The intersection of Payroll/Benefits and Trillwing

. . .is not a pretty place, as I'm learning in my transition to my new job.

Exhibit A:

I was told by one of the people who manages payroll stuff for my department's interdisciplinary cluster that since my employment period is less than a year long (Oct. to June), I didn't qualify for benefits.

Ends up my pay period is officially July 1-June 30, so I did qualify for benefits, but my enrollment period was back in October. Meanwhile, I've been paying $600 a month for Lucas and me to be on Mr. Trillwing's health insurance. Boooooo!


Exhibit B:

The whole pay period thing. I didn't get any paychecks for fall until November, when I expected them to begin. Meanwhile, Payroll is saying I was to be paid on August 1, September 1, and October 1 as well. Where's that cash, people? Not in my bank, and not on my earnings statements. . .


Exhibit C:

The whole pay period thing, part deux: Apparently I was to be "prepaid" for fall teaching, and the November paycheck was the beginning of my winter quarter pay (winter quarter begins in January). By my calculations, then, I would be paid for spring quarter during winter quarter. And in spring? Who knows.

But: Since I wasn't paid during the summer (except for my summer teaching, which was a different contract), the university is technically behind on my pay when it's supposed to be ahead.


So: Does the university owe me a whole bunch of money? Appears so. Will they actually pay me that money? Who knows? And if so, will they pay it to me before Christmas, so that Mr. Trillwing and I can, you know, buy gifts and stuff? Or maybe pay some bills? Probably not.

But: The benefits guy was really nice and is going to let me enroll in benefits right away. Yay!

And: for those of you playing along with my payroll-math-is-hard post of last week, the answer is: 50% faculty, 50% staff.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

whoa. payroll sucks big time at your inst.

but at least you get benefits, and money coming soon!

and 50 50 sounds good too. it coulda been worse!

Anonymous said...

Wow! I just "stopped by" to see how you enjoyed your first day of work...and found a wildly convoluted payroll/benefits puzzle which seemed like a wonderful real life qunatitative problem solving exercise for a person practicing up for an impending GRE. But, I couldn't untangle your snarl. Does not bode well for the amount of math prepping time still needed...

Meanwhile, good luck as you follow the trail of dropped paychecks to the den of waylaid booty.

What Now? said...

Good Lord, what a mess. So is the nice benefits guy trying to straighten all of this out for you, or does it fall on your shoulders to untangle their mess? At least there should be a nice fat check coming pretty soon!