Happy Anniversary

Where I work, we have people with better than average longevity. Out of eight office staff, the youngest, employment wise, just passed her fifth anniversary. One woman has done thirteen years. I’ve been there nine years, as have two other people.

One of these two is leaving in a week. She doesn’t want to leave, but she lives near the ocean, which is over an hour’s drive to our office. When she first started working for us, she lived ten minutes away. Five years ago, she decided to move to the shore. At that time, she was going to quit. She was not going to drive over an hour every day of the week.

Our boss decided he couldn’t live without her, so he set up a scheme where she could work from home Monday, Wednesday and Friday and come to the office on Tuesday and Thursday. She agreed. We spent megabucks getting this setup – buying an extra computer, cable for Internet access, phones, fax machine, changes in procedures, etc.

This worked well, until just recently. Now, he decided he must have full-time, in-office assistance. He met with her for her review.

“I need you here every day, will you commute?”

“No, I can’t drive here everyday.”

“Well, then, there is no place for you, here.”

“OK.”

“You have one month to leave.”

“OK.”

In the meeting to inform us of this change:

“I spoke with her, I gave her a choice, this was her decision and she agreed this is best for all of us.”

Really, is that because she said OK?

Reading between the lines: This is a quick way for the boss man to save $50,000, to make up for his most recent poor business judgments.

Oh, and by the way, this is just another bad decision. All of the people who have been loyal to him for all of those years, have lost faith in him. More changes will be on the way this year, just not ones he may have expected.


I just got back from our after work drunk fest to say Good-bye. Nine years of faithful service should receive a better reward.