Wednesday, April 1, 2009

An economic casualty

While biding my time until my education can advance, I'm working in corporate security at a bio-tech firm (which I will keep nameless for obvious reasons). The company, shall we say, isn't doing so well, having laid off more than 50 percent of its workforce in the past year.

Yesterday word came down (not wholly unexpectedly) that they were cutting one full-time equivalent position from the security staff. I'm proud to say, however, rather than cost someone a job, our department was able to spread the harm out by cutting hours among various people. Not necessarily a good thing, but not nearly as bad as it could have been.

Therefore, I am now working just four days a week. It won't be great for the pocketbook, but it could be worse. I have decided to not think of it as 20 percent less pay, but rather 50 percent more free time.

2 comments:

Rob Roy said...

Bio-tech firm cutting costs, eh? Sounds like a zombie-outbreak scenario if I ever heard one!

You're not alone my friend. My company also cut all salaries 10% as of April 1, with a 20% lurking around the corner if we can't dig up some more work soon. It evens out by saying we don't have to work every other Friday.

John C. Baker said...

Don't worry. Part of the cost-cutting was the shutting down of all (un)life-extension projects and the mutant monkees were shipped back to rural England.