Since it’s Bitch About Your Job Week at Dykewrite [link removed as site has been abandoned to drug spammers] (poor dkitty…and I thought my office sucked) I thought I’d share the final indignity from upper management.
So…the end has come. I took the plunge and have quit THE JOB that has made my life miserable. Why such a big plunge? Quite simply put, I now have no income.
Yes, you read that right boys and girls. Ten years of supporting myself and I’ve been driven so far down that I’m willing to be without income to escape the pressure that has been grinding me into powder, the mind numbing stupidity of management, the humiliation of being responsible for that which I do not control, and the anger that being called a whiner when I ask for the tools to achieve that for which I am held responsible generates.
What finally drove me to over the edge was a simple realization: the people in my life that I love are more important than any source of income will ever be.
You see, I manage the web department in the U.S. office of a well known non-profit advocacy group (which for modesty’s sake shall remain nameless (hey, without cash flow I can’t afford the libel suit)). Like most non-profits, Group X is funded by donations, and like most non-profits Group X has struggled since September 11th, has struggled against Bush’s stubborn refusal to recognize that a “job-less” recovery isn’t a recovery at all. (Last time I checked no job meant no money…see above), but most of all has struggled against its utter inability to get its act together and focus on the business of its mission in an orderly way.
This situation, less money coming in, led to layoffs to the tune of 20% of the staff (which in my section meant deferring one open position, and losing two positions altogether as our section was combined with another, related section in the organization). The deferred position, in my department, is one that I’ve been having to fill in for since I was forced to fire someone for non-performance of her duties in March. Those duties got added on top of the Technical Project Manager job I was already doing as we moved from a flat, HTML site to a database driven content management system, and to the actual Web Manager job that I should be doing but have not had time to pay attention to in nearly 18 months.
The final indignity, though, inspires the title of this entry.
You see, I “maxed out” on vacation days (ie: I’ve earned my four weeks and will earn no more until I actually take vacation) for four months running. However, with just the two of us in the department and this “incredibly important project” about to come to a stage 1 launch, I was “too essential” to take another vacation (this after taking a week off in February and still earning all that leave over again.)
When I resigned, I asked if it were possible to be paid for all or part of the 111 hours of sick leave I accrued since I was, in fact, denied vacation benefits. Now, under the law, Group X, is required to pay me for my annual leave (all 160 hours (4 weeks) of it). They are under no such obligation with sick leave. Today I received this note from our HR person:
First of all, [Group X] will not under any circumstances pay you for yur[SIC] sick leave, even given that you had topped out on your annual leave.
It’s the “will not under any circumstances” bit that really gets me. Why it gets me? The day before I left on sabbatical I found out that despite all the belt tightening, despite the ban on travel, despite the fact that on only $4,200 a month I was trying to run a web site that was supposed to
- give donors access to their membership accounts and the facility to change their personal details
- provide up to the minute fresh content about what was going on in each of the issue areas the organization is concerned with
- somehow fill the needs of the programs and still recruit donors
- be visually appealing and coherently organized for the average visitor while still allowing our most luddite issue expert the luxury of using the web server as his own personal electronic filing cabinet
despite these things, we’d spent $3,000 on a last minute, non-refundable plane ticket to Alaska for one of our issue experts. Three thousand dollars for one person to fly somewhere because on Tuesday some bright light on our Senior Management Team decided this guy needed to be in Ketchikan Alaska on Thursday.
The good faith gesture of paying me for my sick leave would have cost Group X $2,326.17 and would have paid my rent for five months. Five months’ rent for less than the cost of a plane ticket.
Funny, I thought an organization’s soul would cost more than that.
Oh, my world. It is ok