If you're furloughed, what do you do?

It's easy to bitch about furloughs, but there is an upside if you can afford it or have a two-income family.

Although it's stressful to have the cut in income, I used my week to help my kids with homework, cook dinner and volunteer at school. I felt recharged when I returned, and lucky that I wasn't in the same boat as the hourly employees who were really hurt financially.

 

I did stuff with my family. It was nice to have the night off, and doing stuff with them, and going to two different concerts with my wife, more than easaed the sting of the four days I was furloughed. The ensuing check stunk, but I was prepared for it.

 

In some states, you have to be out of work for more than a week to collect. That makes collecting on a week of furlough problematic.

 

Does this mean you work on your vacation?

 

I took my furlough as scattered days, but when they were convenient for me -- not my employer. I gave myself several three-day weekends, and even went on a short vacation. I decided I could afford to sacrifice unemployment (and a seemingly massive tax hit) if I broke up the hit to my paycheck.

Other people I know -- I think all on desk, though some news and some sports at different papers -- were mandated to take full weeks at specific times, which was against the stated corporate policy. I'm curious how the new furlough will be handled, particularly since our publisher reminded everyone to start taking regular vacation as well.

I think my next furlough will be spent at the SJ outing in Baltimore and other places that are not anywhere near my office. I'm determined to have as much fun as possible while not getting paid.

 

Question - we're doing furloughs, and we are strictly instructed not to do anything work related. My ASE is having his furlough this week. Can he not come into the office to pick up his paycheck?

Yes, I'm being a smart-ass, but hey, that's work related, no?

 

At our place, it means you can't even set foot in the building. I'm in the same boat, but I have direct deposit.

 

But then I'll be employed again after my furlough week is over. Can't imagine that would fly.

 

While I haven't had to take a furlough, I would probably do the same thing I already do a couple of times a year when I have a vacation week with nothing planned: Call a temp agency and get a one-week assignment. Beats doing nothing.

 

Fortunately, I'm in a financial situation where if the fur' flies, I can say bring it on. I can find plenty of nothing to do on my week off.

But the problem is, we only get a seven-week window to take vacation between the end of baseball and the start of two-a-days. If our company does us right on one thing, it's vacations. We can't all take it at once and leave sports unstaffed. And we have to eat all the vacation unused over 80 hours. So furloughs for us won't work unless our company changes its policy and lets us cash out our vacation time to compensate.

 

Generally, a furlough is considered a temporary layoff with a definite return date. It's basically the same thing as when automakers shut down their plants for a month at a time. The real issue is whether your state requires you to be unemployed for a certain length a time (usually one week) before you can collect unemployment money. If your state has a waiting period and doesn't pay until the second week, then it's better for you to split up your furlough time. If your state does not have a waiting period and pays unemployment from day one, then it's better to take it all at once.

 

Two jobs ago, my company instituted two-week furloughs. The kicker was that we couldn't take them in consecutive weeks and we had to take the hit in back-to-back paychecks.

IIRC, I worked one week, went on furlough the next week, then worked one week and went on furlough again the next week. For one of those weeks, I went to visit my grandmother in Maine.

Being unemployed and having no steady income has definitely taught me a lesson in not living paycheck to paycheck...