{"id":1795,"date":"2010-10-27T21:20:11","date_gmt":"2010-10-28T01:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/?p=1795"},"modified":"2011-03-05T06:55:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T11:55:05","slug":"85-percent-of-something-is-more-than-100-percent-of-nothing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/2010\/10\/85-percent-of-something-is-more-than-100-percent-of-nothing\/","title":{"rendered":"85% of something is more than 100% of nothing"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s the rare event that has no upside. Right now, I’m trying really hard to see the upside of a 15% pay cut<\/acronym>.<\/p>\n

I sort of knew we were facing pay cuts. It’s not a surprise given the way things have been going lately. The company has moved two offices, in Minneapolis and in DC, to save money into spaces so small that staff in each location are practically sitting on top of each other. We’ve closed one office in Michigan and laid off at least two staff members that I know of, and we’ve had a highly paid<\/acronym> member of the national staff resign and Management has chosen to spread his duties around rather than replace him.<\/p>\n

While the pay cuts weren’t really a surprise, I was still a little bit shocked by Management’s cheek in presenting them. My boss laid out the facts: everyone making more than $30,000 a year is taking a pay cut starting November 1 for the 22 weeks. The brackets start at 10% and go up to 20% with “Senior Managers contributing more.”<\/p>\n

And that was it. No mention of furlough days, no mention of compensating staff for lost salary after finances improve. Nothing. Just a flat we’re going to cut your pay by 15 percent. When I asked about furlough days my boss implied that people who had volunteered to take more than the five days they required us to take in spring 2009 hadn’t actually taken them. <\/p>\n

Yes, that’s right. My employer’s accounting practices are so slipshod that instead of using the pledges we signed as a contract and charging us for the days without pay during the period we said we’d take them they only charged people for days they reported taking. That’s why this time around they decided to just issue pay cuts.<\/p>\n

I allowed as how I understood the rationale of taking the money automatically. I also pointed out to him that there were several compelling reasons<\/acronym> for me to not accept a 15% pay cut while continuing to work full-time. After some back and forth, during which he felt the need to point out to me that no one was happy about taking a pay cut<\/acronym> I finally got him to agree that I would be taking one furlough day a week for the next 17 weeks which is the equivalent time for the amount of pay they’ll be taking from me.<\/p>\n

It could be worse. Yes, they’re cutting my pay to a point where if I were working full-time I’d be making not only less than I was hired in at<\/acronym> but less than they originally offered to me to take the job but they’re giving me back the one thing I can never get more of: time.<\/p>\n

They’re also setting a precedent they don’t realize they’re setting. When I found out I’d be sharing an office not only with our DatabaseManager but also with all our network servers and our telephone switch<\/acronym> Management didn’t see fit to let me work at home full-time despite the fact that I am a web geek<\/acronym>, that all of my work is highly visible, and that 98% of my clients interact with me by e-mail and phone. No, I was told, “morale in the DC office is bad” and because of this my boss “wants me in the office at least three days a week.”<\/p>\n

Because my organization issues live checks every two weeks, and because Management can’t be assed to make our finance folks put a check into the mail and send it to my house, and because I’m not willing to haul ass downtown<\/acronym> on pay day to get my money, Friday as a furlough day isn’t an option.<\/p>\n

Since one of my primary obligations is external communications to supporters<\/acronym> on behalf of our National program, and since I require folks to get me their content for said communications so that I have two business days to process them<\/acronym>, a Monday furlough day would just jam up the schedules of way too many people over the next five months.<\/p>\n

Being cooperative, I suggested Wednesday as my furlough day. I’m already working at home Tuesday and Thursday and I fully intend on taking the furlough day out of the three days I am supposed to be in the office. That way, in March, if I’m still stuck working for this utterly mismanaged organization, I’ll just keep working at home only I’ll do it three days a week.<\/p>\n

It is a very rare event that has no upside.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s the rare event that has no upside. Right now, I’m trying really hard to see the upside of a 15% pay cut. I sort of knew we were facing pay cuts. It’s not a surprise given the way things have been going lately. The company has moved two offices, in Minneapolis and in DC, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-office-space","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1795"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1797,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1795\/revisions\/1797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homemaderavioli.com\/woodstock\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}