Economy may be recovering but …
Usually everyone at work is excited when Friday arrives — a much welcomed break from the craziness of work, a few days to regain some sanity, and we’re ready for Monday’s helping of management-by-chaos. Last Friday was a little different when an emergency plant-wide meeting quickly curtailed our excitement. We learned that some of us would have pay cuts while others would be working one or two days less per week. Not because the economy was bad or because we couldn’t pay the business loans to the banks. No, that was all covered. What happened was the result of banking greed and bad planning by our leaders. Our financial geniuses at the top had promised the banks that we would sell more stuff in December than we actually will. Missing that sales goal means that the banks could triple the interest rate of the loans (which makes me wonder if a crook is simply a banker without an office). Actually, our sales were right on target for this time of year. In fact, any high school student could look at the past 10 years of sales and see that the numbers are high during spring and summer and low during fall and winter. It’s not rocket surgery or brain science.
So the company missed their fantasy income by almost half a million dollars. Judging by the hastily arranged meetings, our fearless leaders didn’t realize the mistake until last Thursday. Then, panic ensued among the powers-that-be. To make up the $500,000, they quickly decided that we should cut our pay and hours to give them almost $50,000 in savings. OOOOOOOooooooo! That’ll satisfy those mean ol’ bankers.
Of course, the exercise did provide us some valuable lessons about our employer. When management announced who would have their hours cut and by what amount, it was obvious that company leaders have not a clue about who is critical to the operation of their business. When they told us that we would have to work harder, we realized that they don’t know or care about the tremendous effort of unpaid overtime, the multiple jobs that each of us have had to take on and numerous sacrifices we’ve already made to help keep the business going.
If anyone had doubts about leaving, this is no longer the case. I believe I am watching the end-of-days drama of a company as it is run by bean counters and sales instead of by principled business leaders. The countdown begins….
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