Hungover after celebrating San Francisca’s dismissal with her briefly but efficiently on my way home last night. She’s ecstatic - she's been working here more than five years, which means she gets half a year's severance pay instead of the standard three months, and the timing couldn't have been better in terms of her family's move to Amsterdam. Not to mention she’s feeling as though she’s dodged a bullet, having turned down a transfer back to San Francisco a few months back, which would have seen her get handed a box and a fortnight’s pay, instead of half a year, minimum, upwards-ly negotiable . . . Unworthy as it is, I'm having to deal with jealousy issues where she's concerned, not to mention upset because I'm going to miss her so much, but I'm trying to just focus on being happy for her.
I feel a bit sad in an abstract sense* about all the Americans who got canned, though. Here's a box and two weeks pay, merry Christmas, fuck off now. I don't know how Americans, or Canadians for that matter, can bear it . . . those are some of the worst labour laws in the eurocentric world, in a couple of countries that pride themselves on being the best in the eurocentric world, with that sort of ‘we rock, you suck’ nationalism. And now here we are in this crumbling economic edifice we call the 2008 financial year, and thousands of North Americans are learning the hard way that their political and employment structures don't give a shit . . . they can watch middle class assholes who bought more house than they could afford get mortgage holidays so that whole neighbourhoods don’t run to seed and erode general property values, while the unemployed queue at overstretched soup kitchens. If this all gets as bad as I fear it will it’s going to be really dreadful, and the Marxist lizard part of my brain says ‘about fucking time’. I don't know how long I'll still be able to keep hearing that if this downturn touches my friends and family harder than it has, but something has to give, as they say, and people have to see how powerless they are to get their power back.
*BTW, I say 'abstract sense' because out of the nine Americans who got canned, I only knew two personally, and one probably needed canning, and the other apparently did too, despite being a piece of ass. Ho hum.
martedì, dicembre 09, 2008
lunedì, dicembre 08, 2008
Merry Christmas (Income is Over)
Hatchet fell at work yesterday in preparation for the next financial year. Nine Americans gone, one girl here, where it's much more expensive to sack people. It was serendipitous it was that girl, who was planning to quit in January anyways, and who now gets a great big payout instead of possibly having to work through her looooong European notice. Nonetheless, it hardly fills me with emotions of security, or affection and attachment to my company. She was a good friend of mine, who's already been locked out of her computer - she just won't be back - and I'm going to miss her being around. Oh well.
This is one of the really fucking charming things about publicly owned companies. Their share price rises and falls in part by function of their quarterly reports, and the financial planning they announce in each quarterly or yearly report. Take the present quarter and year – Q4, 2008. It's a bad quarter, all over the world, and turning out to be a bad year. Companies are losing sales. As companies report losing sales, their share price falls. This is unacceptable, because the company is run by shareholders, or a board of directors representing shareholders, and of course their raison d'être is to maintain a high share price. Not to run a quality company, in terms of ethics or even good production standards, but to maintain or improve the value of the shares.
So, our company, like most, is having a bad quarter. Last quarter was also bad, and there isn't much prospect of next quarter being better in terms of making money come in. That means that to maintain share price, or at least stop it from sliding too much, the only thing to do is announce that in the next financial year, starting January, you're going to stop money going out. And that means firing a bunch of people a couple of weeks before Christmas. That is, right before the most successful consumptive holiday season in the history of capitalism, that whole industries rely on. And then retailers complain because they're not making the Christmas bonanza they usually make, because of course when you're sacked two weeks before Christmas, or see your competent colleagues sacked two weeks before Christmas, like literally millions of people are this dismally unsuccessful year, you don't buy shit. So retailers sack staff and cut their orders in an effort to stop their own cash outflow, and then manufacturers, who were already fucked enough to fire a bunch of people, are more fucked, and then our customers, who tend to be manufacturers, are fucked, and then my company is fucked, and next Christmas a bunch more of us will be fired in an effort to shore up the share price for 2010.
And in the meantime, we who see the hatchet come down swiftly disabuse ourselves of any notion that the company we work for will have any regard or loyalty to us as employees, so we should feel free in every way to jump ship at any attractive opportunity. And this means the company loses assets it's spent time and money training to do very specific work, and must hire more, and waste thousands and thousands of dollars training them, and those thousands must be saved somewhere, so come December, if you've been at the company for a few years, long enough to get a salary management feels might be disproportionate to the amount of money you're bringing in . . . merry fucking Christmas.
You know, capitalism works, but so do guillotines.
This is one of the really fucking charming things about publicly owned companies. Their share price rises and falls in part by function of their quarterly reports, and the financial planning they announce in each quarterly or yearly report. Take the present quarter and year – Q4, 2008. It's a bad quarter, all over the world, and turning out to be a bad year. Companies are losing sales. As companies report losing sales, their share price falls. This is unacceptable, because the company is run by shareholders, or a board of directors representing shareholders, and of course their raison d'être is to maintain a high share price. Not to run a quality company, in terms of ethics or even good production standards, but to maintain or improve the value of the shares.
So, our company, like most, is having a bad quarter. Last quarter was also bad, and there isn't much prospect of next quarter being better in terms of making money come in. That means that to maintain share price, or at least stop it from sliding too much, the only thing to do is announce that in the next financial year, starting January, you're going to stop money going out. And that means firing a bunch of people a couple of weeks before Christmas. That is, right before the most successful consumptive holiday season in the history of capitalism, that whole industries rely on. And then retailers complain because they're not making the Christmas bonanza they usually make, because of course when you're sacked two weeks before Christmas, or see your competent colleagues sacked two weeks before Christmas, like literally millions of people are this dismally unsuccessful year, you don't buy shit. So retailers sack staff and cut their orders in an effort to stop their own cash outflow, and then manufacturers, who were already fucked enough to fire a bunch of people, are more fucked, and then our customers, who tend to be manufacturers, are fucked, and then my company is fucked, and next Christmas a bunch more of us will be fired in an effort to shore up the share price for 2010.
And in the meantime, we who see the hatchet come down swiftly disabuse ourselves of any notion that the company we work for will have any regard or loyalty to us as employees, so we should feel free in every way to jump ship at any attractive opportunity. And this means the company loses assets it's spent time and money training to do very specific work, and must hire more, and waste thousands and thousands of dollars training them, and those thousands must be saved somewhere, so come December, if you've been at the company for a few years, long enough to get a salary management feels might be disproportionate to the amount of money you're bringing in . . . merry fucking Christmas.
You know, capitalism works, but so do guillotines.
domenica, dicembre 07, 2008
The sun shines on Benelux
Opening the weekend was this year's Christmas party. That was a nice time but I think some of my co-workers drank more than they meant to and said some things they didn't mean to; it seems to be some sort of outlet for them and they'd really been looking forward to it. Interesting. Highlight of the evening: friend of the vp's husband gave a good college try at getting into my pants, which he opened, upon a colleague asking him what his profession was, by eyeing me and murmuring 'I'm a wildcat tamer.' Nice. Ten years ago it might have worked. A few hours later, spent a sleepy, headachey Saturday hanging out, baking, getting through a sewing pile I've accumulated over the past five years, and making a pair of these. Obviously now I can't wait for my period to start, which is an emotion I haven't experienced since those now very long-ago days of fucking wildly inappropriate people.
Yesterday we went to Amsterdam to see the Fledermaus. Gosh. Bit of a psychological headfucker, isn't it? I had only known things like the Laughing Song and whatnot before, and in general terms that it was a tale of revenge. But goodness gracious, what a nasty little tale. What the fuck is wrong with Austrians anyways? But it was lovely from first to last; the staging was just magnificent - no heat-lamp funeral pyres or Don Giovanni-having-indigestion type shit there - and the performances all very good.
And by the grace of God, Amsterdam was sunny. All day. Amsterdam must be one of the loveliest cities in the world when it's sunny. I sometimes think I'd never leave Benelux if the weather was only about a million times better. So it was a lovely trip.
Read Robinson Crusoe in the train, having exchanged my defective copy from a London Waterstone's at the Brussels Waterstone's without any issue at all. Apparently the Oxford Press has developed a pattern of occasionally fucking up page order at moments of high dramatic tension. Fuckers. I enjoyed it in the normal sense of enjoying any book with lists of comforting possessions and tales of adventure and gunplay, but I was surprised at the layers of irony, social commentary, sodomy, and at how Robinson Crusoe had his moments of being rather an asshole. Friday was quite sympathetic. Lots to think about there in terms of noble savages, and ignoble savages, and grasping towards some sort of moral relativism, and such like.
Anyways. That was the weekend. It was good and now it's over. Fuck.
Yesterday we went to Amsterdam to see the Fledermaus. Gosh. Bit of a psychological headfucker, isn't it? I had only known things like the Laughing Song and whatnot before, and in general terms that it was a tale of revenge. But goodness gracious, what a nasty little tale. What the fuck is wrong with Austrians anyways? But it was lovely from first to last; the staging was just magnificent - no heat-lamp funeral pyres or Don Giovanni-having-indigestion type shit there - and the performances all very good.
And by the grace of God, Amsterdam was sunny. All day. Amsterdam must be one of the loveliest cities in the world when it's sunny. I sometimes think I'd never leave Benelux if the weather was only about a million times better. So it was a lovely trip.
Read Robinson Crusoe in the train, having exchanged my defective copy from a London Waterstone's at the Brussels Waterstone's without any issue at all. Apparently the Oxford Press has developed a pattern of occasionally fucking up page order at moments of high dramatic tension. Fuckers. I enjoyed it in the normal sense of enjoying any book with lists of comforting possessions and tales of adventure and gunplay, but I was surprised at the layers of irony, social commentary, sodomy, and at how Robinson Crusoe had his moments of being rather an asshole. Friday was quite sympathetic. Lots to think about there in terms of noble savages, and ignoble savages, and grasping towards some sort of moral relativism, and such like.
Anyways. That was the weekend. It was good and now it's over. Fuck.
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