It's always about the money

I usually post new blog entries while I'm at work. I write a little during my "down" time throughout the day (usually my lunch hour), and eventually I post the conglomerative effort. However, you may have noticed that I've kind of slacked on the postings the last few weeks. This is due to the fact that my job has given me absolutely NO down time lately. Things have become even more crazy than they have been the last couple of months, if that is even possible. I have been pretty stressed out and really exhausted. And this leads me to the long-procrastinated post about my job saga. So get comfortable, put your slippers on, grab yourself a fresh cup of hot cocoa and get ready to settle in for a GREAT story. .......

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (Washington DC), there lived a fair maiden (Me!) who was happy and content with her life. She was single, independent, lived with some wonderful roommates, and had secured a great job. The fair maiden got settled in to her new job and routine with ease. Life was good. A little over a year later, her company was being sold. She was assured that this did not mean trouble, nor should she be afraid of consequently becoming unemployed. The company she worked for was very profitable, and was sold for $80mil to Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dum. The Tweedle-D's merged the fair maiden's former company with another company they already owned, thus forming one large, successful, money-making business. (We will call it Goober; like the jar which contains both peanut butter and jelly)

The problem with working for Goober is that Princess Emily (that's right - she's no longer just a fair maiden) started paying more for health & dental insurance, but got bumped down to a lower plan. So not only were monthly premiums more expensive, but co-pays for office visits and prescription costs went up as well. There was no more company-matched 401K plan, nor did Goober offer a vision plan. But don't worry. That's OK. Because Goober issued each employee a company-paid brickberry (the dinasour version of a blackberry) so that everyone could be connected to work 24/7 :P --- and they planned an all-expenses paid employee trip to Las Vegas to make up for it all. Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dum had enough money to buy a company worth $80 mil, issue every employee a brickberry, and pay for an extensive trip to Las Vegas. But somehow they could not afford to give the employees proper insurance coverage. Hmmmm.

Life went on. The Vegas trip turned out to be a lot of fun. Goober put the employees up at The Bellagio, paid for tickets for a Cirque Du Soleil "O" show (AMAZING!), and gave $50 gambling chips to everyone. It seemed as if they were successful in converting unhappy employees with their gripes and worries about their insurance levels, into happy, intoxicated, sleep-deprived, gambling fools. I'll admit, besides getting intoxicated, I was all of those things while in Las Vegas. It was a good 2 days. Plus, the Princess' good friend, Lady Kelly, drove to Las Vegas from Utah to see her.

11 months after the Tweedle-D's $80 mil purchase and creation of "Goober", it all crashed to a halt. All Goober employees received an email after hours on Monday, January 7th, 2008 that told them not to go to work the next day because all assets were frozen and they would not get paid. The next day, all Goober employees realized that their Tweedle owners were crooks and had taken the company into bankruptcy to fund their own lavish lifestyles. All of the sudden, the once happy and content fair maiden/Princess Emily found herself with no job, no insurance, and no idea how this could have happened. She never received her last paycheck, never got paid out her vacation time, and found out that her insurance had actually been canceled a month earlier.

This bankruptcy did not only affect the Goober employees, but it affected all of the companies that Goober worked with as well. Millions of dollars that were owed to different companies by Goober, were sucked into the bankruptcy and left those companies scrambling and very angry. The customer that the Princess worked with through Goober was gracious enough to hire her on a contractor basis so she could help them through this huge debacle. We will call this customer "Glenda the Good Witch". Glenda had paid Goober all funds owed for the month of December but before Goober could pay the 70 companies that provided service for Glenda (Goober acted kind of like a pay-agent), the funds were gone to the bankruptcy court. Imagine this scenario across hundreds of more customers, and you will be able to start to realize the magnitude of the problem.

For a real story that reads like a TV Drama, check out this complaint filed by the Tweedle's Lender. It's rather long, but scroll down to "Background Facts" to get the juicy stuff.

I didn't want to include the real names of the companies because I know that there are a lot of key word searches going on the internet right now and I didn't want my blog to come up as a search result. But I have included somewhat of a key below so that you could understand where I fall in the complaint...

KEY:

• The Tweedles = JV & RG



• The company that is listed in the beginning of the complaint that starts with an "A", was the parent company of the company I worked for. "A" Company got pulled in to bankruptcy, and the company I worked for got pulled in with it, since we were listed as an asset.



• Goober = the three-lettered company that starts with an "E".

Since the company I worked for no longer exists, we are not able to use the software that we had been using for the last 3 years. This means that everything has gone to a manual process, and work is very super-busy trying to stay organized through it all. There are a lot of details that nobody would understand, so I won't even attempt to explain all of it. I will just say that the result of all of this has caused a ton of personal stress over job security and financial standing, as well as professional stress over the increased and seemingly never-ending work load. I long for a vacation.

Here's another news article that sums up some of it.