Posted 10:43pm, Wednesday, October 30, 2002

Game 6. A crushing blow.

Whenever a Giants game is on TV, my brother and I have a habit of calling each other as the last out is recorded. When the Giants blew a 5-0 lead, we suspected it was over. We kept our fingers crossed, but we knew it was going to be an uphill battle. They’re just not a game seven sort of team. We did not exchange calls after game 7. It was just too much.

Next year, they won’t repeat. 2002 was their year; everything came together. Kent’s probably gone. Dunston will retire. I hope to Hell Dusty comes back. Maybe slide Bell to second and bring in that rookie prospect at third.

 

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Last night, “24” had it’s season premiere. Another great start to the season. The protagonist shoots a prisoner at point blank range in cold blood. That’s why this show rules; you just don’t know what’s coming.

 

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Who owns the company I work for? Last year, my agency network was sold to a larger holding company. The top executives made out like bandits. The buyer traded shares of their company for our company: 75¢ to the dollar. Our profit sharing went into the toilet.

The new owners had been squeezing their subsidiaries for a 15% cut of profits. Our company had previously been accustomed to paying 10% to the boys back east.

Guess what? A lot of people are getting laid off to "meet numbers." The employees who survive have to do the same amount of work as before AND the work of those who were laid off.

On top of that, one of the new owners other investments, which has absolutely nothing to do with us, is taking a beating. Which means they'll be looking in their other divisions to make up for the shortcomings of their bad investments. In other words, they'll be squeezing us even harder.

They want to layoff more people. But they can't layoff people who have a lot of vacation days... that's money they'll have to pay off. So they're sending out the word: take some vacation days.

Never mind that you can't take a vacation day, because of the enormous workload that was created by laying off 10% of your work force to meet the new 15% standard. Take time off anyway; get those vacation days off their balance sheet... so they can fire you and be saved the expense of paying you for all those unused vacation days.

Which is precisely why you shouldn’t take vacation days. Think of that money as extra severance pay. As it stands now, I’ve got almost two months coming to me.

Meanwhile, do you think the big wigs who sold out are panicking about possibly losing their jobs? Hell no... they made millions in the sale last year. They're set. With all the stock options and other compensation they received in the sale, they can afford to be canned, even with the stock price taking a tumble.

Corporate America is totally fucked.