Life always seems to surprise you when you least expect it. Also at the most inconvenient of times it will throw you a curve-ball. This would have been the second year in a row that I would have gotten the holiday’s off from work, and I was really looking forward to it. Actually this year was going to be a bit nicer than last. We were supposed to work tonight (Monday night) and have the rest of the week off for Thanksgiving, and then like last year we were getting the weeks of Christmas and New Years off as well. I save up about two weeks of vacation time each year to use for Thanksgiving week, and Christmas week, The week of New Years is considered next year to payroll, so I just take it without pay, which isn’t a big deal. We always schedule an out of town week right before Christmas so that we will get a larger than norma mileage check to make up for the week without pay. This year we were doing both of the last two weeks before Christmas in Alabama, so it was going to be a really nice milage check for us.
Unfortunately things don’t always pan out the way they are planned. Corporate has decided in their infinite wisdom that they want to save as much money as they can during the holidays and over the last few weeks of the year. So they have decided to cancel all the scheduled inventories for Period 12 (basically the next three weeks). Which means that I now have 93 hours of vacation time to spread across four weeks of no work. I have the option to go and work in a store for extra hours, but since I haven’t worked in a store in over a year and a half I really don’t want to. Plus everyone has hired all of their seasonal employees and won’t have any labor hours to spend on me either.
I guess in a nut-shell I was laid off today.
Best of all, no one actually has any information about next year. So as far as we know we are employed with the company but have nothing to do (i.e. get paid to do) and might, or might not come the first week of January. So lucky me, no job for a month and I can’t even file unemployment. I got the best ’severance package’ as we’re calling this cashing in our vacation time to cover as much as we can. My boss and co-worker only have 40 and 33 hours (respectively) of vacation time to spread across this coming month.
Needless today tonight at work we weren’t working at full speed. For two reasons actually; one in disbelief, and two we needed tonight to take as long as it could so we could get as many hours on the clock as possible.
So if anyone has any free time here in oh say the next month and wants to hang-out, let me know. I’ll be available and bored. I should probably start practicing doing naughty things on web-cam again for money incase I loose my job entirely. =)
It’s really sad that that’s as positive as I can be…
-Kevin.