The Economy

Wow, what misers.

My mom worked on Wall Street for a while before I was born, so early 70s. She worked in payroll, and thus she had no sales record....but one year her Christmas bonus was equivalent to 28 weeks of pay.

 

That's not even the half of it. I guess it was about 2006 or 2007 when I got either a nickel or dime raise that took me to $10.75 and hour, the owner pretty much told me I should grovel at his benevolent feet for securing me such a generous salary.
I fired back, "You have employees with college degrees who qualify for food stamps and public housing, but clearly your family needs it more than mine, so keep your raise."
Oh, you should have seen him backtracking.

Of course, in 2008 they fired half the staff and took back a quarter of my hourly pay.

 

I think one of the shittiest things they did was we had a woman who was a single mother with two kids living in the projects. They told her she needed to move out of there because it was embarrassing for the public to know an employee lived in the projects. She said she'd love to, but that was the only place she could afford on what they paid her. She did something in circulation. Not long after, they "eliminated her position" and let her go. Miraculously, about a month later, they decided that role was actually vital and hired the GM's wife into it.

 

Awful.

 

I’ve had some raw deals at newspapers over the years, but that’s really bad. Blaming the employee because of something that’s a direct result of the crappy pay they give her! Ugh.

Going back to holiday bonuses — back when I used to get them, early in my career. A family owned chain of weeklies in the western Chicago suburbs was where I got my first full-time job.

I had never received a Christmas bonus before so at an after-work get together I naively said, “Boy, that $100 bonus will sure help with expenses” or something like that.

Dead silence and dirty looks in reply. I must have been on the boss’s nice list, because others in the newsroom got smaller bonuses than that. One of the people there told me later he didn’t get any bonus.

An early lesson in how newspapers say “Merry Christmas.”

 

How would "the public" know where she lived?

 

My wife and I were talking about this the other day when our daughter found out she got no bonus for the second year in a row.
My wife always worked for high-end dentists and her bonuses were very generous.
My first newspaper, we got a certificate for a turkey from a market that was arranged via an ad tradeout. We also got a box of See's candy, which we found out came from from profits from the vending machines in the break room. We also noticed a bump in our paychecks, which turned out to be unused vacation/sick days and, thus, was taxed. It wasn't a bonus at all.
Another paper gave us a large box of fruit. It was pretty good, but as a single guy living alone, it was hard to use up 16 apples, some oranges, pears, apricots, grapefruits, mangoes and a pineapple.

 

One day at my first paper I was tasked with going across the road from a nearby supermarket and zooming in to take photos of the picket line. The hourly wage they were striking to protest was more than I was making at the paper.

Strangely, that was the only place to provide a real Christmas bonus, plus a staff dinner at a steakhouse to boot. Go figure.

 

I guess people seeing her go in and out of her house. Not exactly like I worked in Chicago.

 

We had a company Christmas party at the local country club. All the execs and press room/mailroom people loved it. I worked there for 18 years and never attended. Why? Because sports/news staff could attend the party or cover something and get paid. Working 4-5 hours on the clock or attending a rubber chicken dinner with shitty door prizes? Geee, let me think about that. I think the annual Christmas party went belly up about the time of layoffs/pay cuts.

 

One year we got gift certificates from a high-end grocery store we normally couldn't afford to on our pay. A lot of us went there, bought a pack of gum and pocketed the change.