I knew I

I knew I had 1 more thing I wanted to mention in that last boring, crappy entry.

I ran into Jerry today at the grocery store. Jerry was one of my team leaders when I worked for Iona. Real nice guy. I had heard that things were looking up for Iona after a long couple of years in which they weren't making a whole lot of profit. Here's what I found out.

The lay offs: A bunch of people were laid off after I left. None of these people were production people, like I was. They were all middle management, or their positions had been kind of outdated. Like the photographer and videographer... they weren't needed anymore, but I was still sure that my position wouldn't have been cut. For about a year, these were the only lay offs.

Recently, they laid off some production people. I probably would have been one of them, since I hadn't been there as long as most of the people that were there. This is where it gets interesting, so pay attention.

The people who weren't laid off, but were deemed relatively useless were given a 4 day work week and their pay was cut 20%. What a slap in the face! Something tells me that's not even legal, although I don't know why I would think that. If nothing else, it's unethical and shitty. That's worse than being legitimately laid off, because you can't even look for another job.

Think it can't get any shittier? The remaining employees, EVERYONE, were given a 10% pay cut. 10% pay cut! For no reason! They cut everyone's salary by 10%! Now, keep in mind that these were the staff deemed USEFUL. These were the ones that lasted through the layoffs and other pay cuts. "Congratulations. You're more useful to us than a lot of the company is (was). As a reward, we want you to work just as hard for substantially less money. Sound good?"

Surprisingly, these moves didn't make anyone else quit. Granted, the multimedia field is shitty right now with no jobs to go around, but still. It makes me so angry that my former employer is treating it's current employees like that. How dare they.

Hopefully things will turn around for them. I've never liked the decisions that the management made, and I don't necessarily like any of the upper management as business men. But as people, I think they're all great. I'd love to talk to all of them again, but I would never, ever, ever work for that stupid ass company again. I mean, I'm an artist with art school training, and I think I'm more capable of running a business than those guys are. They need to listen to their employees more and not just blow off the advice. Pissing off the help isn't going to make your company succeed. Reward them for doing well instead of punishing them for no reason. How insane. I'm so glad to be working for myself after hearing about bullshit like this.