Say austery one more time....

Sometimes for not much reason at all, I start to feel sad, and want to cry.

That’s not true, there are reasons. Like doing the bills, and realizing that sometime next month, I am going to be broke before the end of the month.

Recently in a morale booster at work (hint, this is heavy sarcasm, OK), they decided since the tax laws seems to be worked out, they could relent on confiscation of 15% of my, and everyone else’s, salary at my work. So now I only have to deal with a 5% pay cut…and an increase in how much I pay towards retirement, a decrease in how much they match in retirement, and an increase in my health insurance. Which pretty much means my net pay stays about the same....thanks.

It’s really not that bad, because by now we are well used to hearing complaints met with  the expression, “Be glad you still have a job”, and they have quit saying that. What used to be that was greeted with open hostility, is now hostility is muted since they decided to lay off about 1,000 people, a bomb they dropped the Monday after Thanksgiving…more precisely, the  email notice went out at 3:50 PM, well after early day shift employees had gone home at 2:30.

Why do companies always seem to say “Hmmmm, when could we screw the employees the best, hey I know, let wreck Christmas!!!!” .  So some of us more senior employees kicked in and had a Christmas, oops, Holiday (what friggin Holiday is it anyway?..ChristmasKwanzaHogmanay?) party in the production area, which usually is full of stuff, but now is a large vacant area…we paid for all the stuff and treated about 200 employees to lunch, turkey, ham, salad, a real potluck, with tons of food. What was left over we gave away to people, or took to the mission down the street. We did this the same day corporate executives were celebrating at the “official Holiday celebration” priced at a modest $27 per person, with catered food consisting of hors d'oeuvres, no bar, salad and (seriously) “brick oven fired gourmet pizza”. GIVE ME A BREAK.

I know I had more fun paying for 20 people to eat at our alternative party than I would of at the schmoozer party.

Austerity – A personal rant

I think I wrote in one of these blogs about the latest great scheme management came up with, consolidation of nearly everything. It’s a part of the newest buzz word in big enterprises, austerity.

Austerity.

As in lets consolidate everyone from everywhere into the company to headquarters, by first figuring out who we can chop and stay in business, then let’s eliminate as much as possible. Let’s scale down the company, so that all hopes of promotion are gone, and managers are leaving by the droves. Let’s consolidate, and make senior level employees (like me) do managerial duties (without the pay), and IT support, and all the stuff she used to do before the new Austerity…

So today on my way home, I heard that damnable word in a news story, “Webster’s dictionary says austerity was the most looked up word in 2010”. I started crying. Not the boo hoo,  red faced,  deep gut ‘ I wanna let it all loose’ crying, but the kind of ‘clench the steering wheel’, and feel the tears start type of cry.  

It was over fairly quickly, as I reminded myself, well, I still have a job. And then the other type of crying started.  Bummer.