What a day!

Today I woke up and I thought…well, I didn’t think anything special. But I should have thought to myself, “Today is going to be a good day,” because oh, was it ever.

Why was today so good? I’ll tell you! There are many reasons; if it's alright with you, I’d like to start with number two.

2. Kris Allen won American Idol. I like to think that it was my votes that counted.

3. I dealt with an angry dad today at work. I was so good; I calmed him down and helped his son realize just what he had to do to improve his grade and they both left as happy campers. My boss was very impressed; he thought the dad was a overreacting a bit and that I dealt with it wonderfully. I said, “That’s my job!” but secretly I was being proud of myself inside.

4. I stopped a frustrated student from quitting her BGS degree. She was so stuck in her English work that she wanted to give up getting the degree all together (the course that she is in is required for the degree and there is no alternative). After talking to me, she too was a happy camper.

5. I turned in my pain-in-the-butt scavenger hunt assignment and I swear I will never look at another joke book again.

1. I helped not one, not two, but seventy some-odd people get paid for something they originally were doing for no pay. Here’s the story: Mike found out earlier this week that APX Alarms screwed up with the payroll and he and about seventy others needed to go down to Salt Lake to fix it. At first, this was no big deal. But then I found out that they weren’t getting paid for it. I thought that was a bit shady, but it wasn’t bad enough to do something about. Then, after Mike was down there for six hours today, I thought, “There is no way that they cannot be getting paid for this.” It just seemed too shady and almost illegal to force workers to do something for work without getting paid. So when I got into work today, I went to a website that was my old friend in high school: findlaw.com. It was here that I found that I could go to the Department of Labor website and use their handy tools to learn about the FLSA (Federal Labor Standards Act). While I was here, I learned that it basically was illegal for them to not be paying these employees. I figured that APX had probably found a loophole where they didn’t have to pay, but I thought I’d forward the information on to Mike anyway. He thought the same thing as I, but he forwarded it on to his supervisor. Again, his supervisor thought that APX had found a loophole, but he forwarded it on and then that got forwarded on and so on until Mike got an email informing him that he would be paid for his trip today. So I cost APX about $5,000 dollars and got seventy people their fair pay. I’m so proud of myself!