May 25, 2018
Dear Everyone:
I had lunch last week with a few former co-workers.
In all, there are about five of us who all worked in the same
department at the same time; and who mostly were tossed out in the same
Restructure, or chose to “Take The Package” when it was offered; and who
also happen to live close enough to each other to warrant a quarterly
get-together.
When the Company decides to shed a few hundred workers or so, they
generally offer a “Package”
as incentive for some hardy souls to volunteer to leave.
It usually means two weeks’ pay for every year of service.
In my case, that would have come to around 76 weeks’ pay; or
1.4615 years’ worth. That
would have been inducement enough.
But the Company got smart and typically capped the Severance Pay at 26
weeks, which is still a year’s salary.
Properly managed, a person can live for a year on a year’s
salary.
One time, a certain department got a little bit generous and capped the
Severance Pay at two years’ worth for people who had worked long enough.
In that case, they were so anxious to get rid of people that they
came up with a complicated scheme to have people “volunteer” to be
“involuntarily
terminated”. They named
the “Package” the Special Temporary Retirement Enhancement Program”, or
“STREP”.
So many people grabbed the money and ran that the Company decided
never to do that again. Too
many people who were actually irreplaceable had to be replaced.
Many, many years ago, a woman that I worked with, “Valerie”, told me
that she and her fellow co-workers used to get together for drinks after
work several times each week, plus weekend potluck dinners every month
or so. They liked to sit
around a gripe about their mutually despised
Supervisor.
Then there was one of the dreaded Restructures and the Supervisor was
tossed, to the cheers of the employees.
And when the group next got together, they discovered that about
the only thing they actually had in common was their hatred of the
Supervisor. Once he was
gone, the group drifted apart.
Looking back, I’ve had about a dozen Supervisors, some good, some bad,
some absolutely abhorrent.
And in hindsight, I realize that most of the good Supervisors were ones
who had been Supervisors before.
Most of the bad ones were first-timers who had been dumped into
the job with no training and no experience.
That’s one of the problems with promoting through the ranks.
A person who is good at doing something, like running copy
machines, gets promoted to running the Copy Center and suddenly they’re
dealing with people rather than with machines.
Sometimes it works out; sometimes it doesn’t.
I remember one particular Supervisor who loudly proclaimed that she had
no intention of “Taking The Package” until someone gently read the
handwriting on the wall to her and informed her that if she didn’t
accept the offer, she would most likely be tossed anyway.
When she left, we all danced on
top of our desks singing, “Ding
Dong the Witch is Dead!”
Looking back at the times that I was in charge of people, rather than
doing the actual work myself, I realized that being a Supervisor was
definitely not my cup of tea.
I much preferred being an Analyst.
I didn’t make as much money, but I liked the work a lot better.
And I made enough money to plow up to 6% of it into the
401(k), which is why
I’m so comfortably retired now.
Everyone in the Former Co-Workers Quarterly Lunch Group is much
happier now.
As we agreed last week over lunch.
We also discussed the recent move of our 401(k) money to
Fidelity
Investments. Pretty much
everyone agreed that increasing my monthly “allowance” to match the
IRS’s
Required Minimum Disbursement (RMD) was a good idea.
Which will make me even more comfortable than before.
Oh, frabjous joy!
Love, as always,
Pete
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