Wednesday, August 29, 2007

The Rich get richer, the Poor get...

The mention of severance pay
yesterday brought to mind how
unfair life is.

It goes back to the rich get richer
and the poorer have more children,
saying of the 20's.

The privileged. One thinks of the
multi rich people like the Roosevelt's,
Belmont, Rockefeller, Bush, and many
other who have been in the top 500 in
Fortune magazine.

But there is the privilege on the middle
too. Take K-mart in its darkest hours
a few year ago. Where most of us lost
our local K-mart stores due to their profit
line. At least that is the song and dance the
public got. But they fired the CEO or they ask
him to step out. And they gave him a leaving
package of big time amount of stock in the
business, and a couple hundred thousand to
help the blow. (I think it was something like (800).
The new guy coming to take his place got a
sign on package of more stock than the first and
a 4 million dollar salary. The other guy only got
2 million.

Now first of all, K-mart was crying poor, right?
Second they were asking this CEO to leave.
What is with those packages?

Even on the local scene we had two, yes
two Superintendents leave the area. One was
asked to.... he got $200,000 as he left.
Hello, he was asked to leave...and the second
one did it even better. He asked to leave 2 years
before his contract was done. Got the money
for those years AND CAME BACK as a paid
counsel!! How does that work?
And this is common in the corporate world.

I got fired once. I got it when I was 18. I
got fired for insubordination. Which I was
told to go look it up, as I would now have
plenty of time to do that, being I was fired.

I had not backsass or refused to do work.
I had put dirty pans and coke bottles on my
fellow workers desk. Why would I do that?

Because we all had kitchen duty once every
two months. I got into trouble for being so long
cleaning up. (pans, taking the bottles downstairs)
so I chose to leave them in a corner for the owners
to do. I got into trouble for doing that, as the kitchen
was not clean. Catch 22. So my solution was to put the
dirty things on the owner's desk. The big honcho saw
it, I was fired.

BUT, I did not get a severance package. I had to
wait for unemployment (whole $60 a month).

I quit because I was due to have a child... I did not
get a severance package. Heck I didn't even get
a baby shower... (against company policy).

So tell me, why is the grunt who does all the
work to keep the company going, gets nothing.
Not even a 2 weeks notice, as they require of us.
But the CEO, who comes in late, leaves early,
goes to long lunches, (all which would get us fired)
gets hundreds of thousands of stock and money
packages..Something isn't right about this.

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