Ouch!
It kinda makes me think of my last job, certified support staff for a group home. 24-7.
One meeting, the manager told us that half of us (maybe 10 I forget) would be laid off, and the rest would be switched to companion shift.
Companion shift=you stay on the job for 3ish days, like 16 hour days, and sleep there at night, unpaid, but you couldn’t leave, clients wake you if an emergency(fairly often) then clock in.
Manager was genuinely surprised I wasn’t interested in the companion shift.
The parent organisation of the one I work for has just offered 7-month-salary voluntary redundancy packages to anyone who wants them. By a remarkable coincidence, I recently wrote up an analysis of the financial implications if parent-org stop giving us what we’re currently getting from them…
This is known as voluntary separation package elsewhere. Voluntary redundancy sounds Orwellian…
Ah well, so it was nothing positive in the end -.- how could I have expected otherwise this is 2020… any monolith sightings anyone?
In unrelated news: I got my first 1-star review for one of my novels on Amazon.
sigh
That’s fine. Art is always subjective, and it means that somebody read (about half, apparently) of my novel, which I suppose is nice.
Not going to take it personally. I write silly sci-fi adventure romps, they’re definitely not for everyone. And I think I have about 10-15 four or five star reviews, so if I can keep that ratio up I’ll be golden.
The formerly Fortune 500 company I spoke about working for offered a voluntary separation package a few years before its demise and, in effect, paid it’s best talent to take better jobs.
I’m not saying that all of their talent left, but a good portion of it… and were given a nice package to help offset the cost to move to Bay Area or Seattle. A good friend who went on to work at Google after taking VSP jokingly said <former company> bought him an Escalade as a parting gift, because he was planning to leave anyway.
Been a rough week, but really they all are. Younger kiddo turned 7 this week. For once, he actually opened his presents without us needing to start them for him and encourage him to do the rest, or let his older brother open them (who is a present fiend and the reason we have to wait until Christmas Eve night to put presents under the tree). Was really proud of him, even as I am reminded of how much my wife and I miss out on the normal, simple things, the pleasures parents get to experience with their kids. He even played a bit with everything we got for him, which felt great.
The good news is that Steve Jackson Games is happy with my latest manuscript; they’re looking at an abbreviated review process that will get it out sooner. I’ve gotten the line editor’s comments back and implemented all the purely mechanical ones; now I have a few weeks to work on the more substantive ones, and maybe add in a couple small extra bits of content. December tends to be a slack month for copy editing, so I anticipate having enough time.
Banging my head against a brick wall - why do we bother agreeing timelines with clients only for them to start trying to arrange a meeting today, that we gave them notice of 6 weeks ago?
I feel your pain on the house hunting. Just got our latest rejection tonight. I genuinely thought it was a strong offer, and it evidentially wasn’t even close. I’m so tired and stressed by the whole process. I don’t understand the housing market at all.
Currently I’m frustrated. I’m having trouble maintaining online connectivity. It shows up on multiple devices; I suspect it’s the router, which intermittently has a red light showing, and is distinctly warm to the touch. We only bought it 8 November, so I’m not happy with this! In the morning I’ll call Apple . . .
Addendum: Apple told me I had to contact Eero. I was able to look up Eero online, and eventually found a form to send them a message, which led to their e-mailing me and providing a phone number. I’ve called them and they’ve given me advice on how to fix the problem (which was basically what I did last night) and confirmed that my warranty is good till next November.
I’m on the countdown to the end of the year - 90 minutes to go now. I’m trying to get transferred out of my role (which is wrecking my brain) and had a chat with the union rep, which seemed promising. Also enjoying a banana in precisely the right stage of ripeness to balance flavours. All in all, not bad.
Is it confidential, or can you drop a hint what you’re working on?
It’s confidential. But I can tell you that it’s primarily a genre book, rather than a mechanics book, an equipment catalog, a setting, or an adventure or set of adventures—though it does have some embedded mechanics, as most genre books do.
