Yesterday was my last day on the job Floundering Non-Profit. Strangely, I feel very little relief mostly due to the fact that even at the very end Management was still trying to pull a fast one.
Pay-cut rate salaries are still in effect at Floundering Non-Profit. While I was out on vacation, using up what I thought was to be my last furlough day, some personal days, and a single vacation day, ManagingDirector announced “some good news for a change!” The pay cuts would be ending on March 12 instead of April 1 as planned. She also added,
We appreciate the incredible sacrifices made by our staff to help get the organization on a stronger financial footing…We are optimistic about our financial prospects in 2011 and hope to be able to restore other cuts later this year. In the meantime, we are pleased to be able to make this small gesture to show our appreciation for your efforts.
Really? Fifteen percent of my pay, something acknowledged as an “incredible sacrifice,” only merits a “small gesture” in return? Admittedly, I didn’t actually give up that 15%. I took furlough days which for me were adequate compensation; after all: time is really the only thing you ever run out of. But still, the patronage in this message astounded me.
Logistically the pay cuts ending early meant that my 17 furlough days was reduced to 16 and I’d have to use two vacation days plus the personal days, for which they aren’t obligated to and would not compensate me for when I left, to cover the vacation in the middle of the three weeks’ notice I gave them I was leaving. And I was fine with that, until I got the answer back about the rate at which they intended to pay out my vacation.
Floundering Non-Profit, like most U.S. employers, awards vacation and sick time on an incremental basis per pay period. You work, you earn the benefit to use later. Prior to the pay cuts, I had accrued 11.18 days of vacation. Since the pay cuts went into effect, I’d accrued 2.82 days of vacation. Fairness, and possibly legality, it seems to me dictates that since I earned the bulk of that time at the pre-pay cut rate it should be paid out at the pre-pay cut rate. Sadly, Management did not agree.
Management chose the course of paying me out for all 14 days at the lower rate. So rather than treating me fairly and paying me out as the time was earned, they chose to be cheap. They chose bad karma and ill will, which was unsurprising given their previous performance, to save $354.18.
Management can not do the math.
Instead of two vacation days, I got NewBigBoss to approve my final time sheet with two sick days and the three personal days. That means they will be paying me for 14 days of vacation at the pay cut rate and two sick days at the pay cut rate.
Now, if Management had chosen to be fair, I wouldn’t have had any problems with taking two vacation days for the time I was out. It would have been the right thing to do. But they chose to try to be clever, to try to cut a corner and get one over. They didn’t though.
Two sick days at the pay cut rate is $359.68.
There’s something ineffably wonderful about winning a game of chicken shit against the house. And it always pays to do that math.
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