my first furlough day...

was today. my first day without pay in more than 30 years. nine more to go in 2009.


yuck.

p.s.: if they eff with our christmas bonus on top of this, there's no telling what will become of the shockey family. i know holiday bonuses are non-existent for most in the biz, but it was part of my negotiated salary from when i was hired. so it will be mighty interesting to see how it plays out.

 

Do anything fun?

 

yeah, physical therapy was a blast. ;D ;D ;D

these furloughs are not about "fun" for those of us with families -- including one in college -- and mortgages. they are about survival, plain and simple. as i said on another thread, the furloughs have forced mrs. shockey to insist i drop any plans i had begun had to throw her a 50th birthday bash in july.

"fun" plays no part in any of this crap.

 

Please don't take this as any kind of preachy bullshit, because that's not my intention at all. But I think it might make it just a little easier to swallow if you do something, anything really, that you wouldn't otherwise get to do if you weren't on furlough.

Doesn't have to cost any money. Just something you might not otherwise have the time for. Maybe call your son at school, just to talk. (OK, obviously, I don't have kids. ) Go through old photo albums with mrs. shockey.

I dunno. Just a thought.

 

That's kind of what I was getting at, shockey. Sorry to hear about the problems the furlough is causing.

 

I agree with deskslave. Do errands you normally don't get to do without taking a day off work.

When I had furloughs at my gig two jobs ago, I went to visit my grandmother in Maine during one of my furlough weeks. Normally, I wouldn't have had the opportunity until the company did its annual weeklong holiday shutdown.

 

Not to speak for my friend shockey, but he's not talking about having time to kill. He's talking about a significant loss of income that's hurting his family. That's all.

 

And most of us in this industry are feeling that. My pay's been cut by 9 percent in the last year and I've lost all my overtime.

It's not as if the rest of us don't know how bad it is, but life's what you make of it. I took in a roommate to make up the financial shortfall. Other people are cutting back in other ways. We're ALL going through it, not just Shockey.

 

I can't speak for the other folks who have responded the way I did, but I fully understand what furloughs can do. I've lived through them. Worse yet, I have no income, bills are piling up and I'm living on food stamps.

Nothing we say here is going to magically make furloughs go away. Nothing we do here is going to bring dead newspapers back to life or reverse all the layoffs and buyouts. But if there's something constructive we can do with the time that's suddenly on our hands, perhaps there are ideas we can pass along.

 

Shockey, I feel terrible for any of us taking furloughs, but why think the Christmas bonus is sacred? Mine's been gone for years, with overtime and all the other "perks" that used to come with the job. Were pay cuts and furloughs kosher as part of your negotiated salary? I think the industry has made it clear nothing is off limits.

 

He was talking about himself. I know that's something no one ever does here, but what the heck, there's always a first time.

 

He talks about himself all the time. I'm aware of who he was talking about. Comes off as him being unaware that the rest of us are going through the exact same shit, or maybe worse right now.