adair

Well fuck.

I had the most awesome job ever. Had, past tense, because as of Friday last week, shit hit the fan.

For people who don't know, I work at a newspaper. We work some pretty crazy hours, usually one week of the month, we pretty much don't work at all, than about a week and a half in the middle of the month is normal 9-5 hours, and the last week and a half is insane overtime as we try to get the papers out to press on time.

There are a lot of perks to the job despite the sometimes, shitty hours.

We have always been allowed to come and go as we please, if you took a little longer than an hour on lunch, no big deal, as long as, by the end of the day, you had worked your eight hours.

We had a bar (yes a bar) at work that we could drink from after 5:00 pm- for free.

My boss has let people crash at his place so that they didn't have to drive home late at night.

We had a party or staff function almost once a month.

We even got a staff trip down to the Dominican every year as a Christmas bonus.

All of that is gone because someone didn't realize how good they had it. They called the Ministry of Labour because we working more than the allowable hours in a work week, and though we had all agreed to it in our employment agreement, this person still thought it was unfair. Rather than approaching one of our bosses, they went straight to the Ministry.

I had Friday off, so when I came in on Monday it was awful to sift through my emails and see exactly where everything had gone wrong.

My boss had just announced we were having a staff hockey game, and Christmas party. He had also announced that despite the sheer number of people we had grown to, he was yet again footing the bill. I found out later that he had also compiled a master list of who was getting shares and how many when we went public.

Then I saw an email that I thought was a joke at first, and then realized by everyone's somber attitude- it wasn't.

Christmas Party, Hockey game, trip to the Dominican- cancelled.
Bar, closed to everyone but managment staff- not only closed, but locked.
We are allowed nothing on our desks, except for one family photo and the stuff necessary to due our work.

Basically my boss got justifably mad, and has now stripped down on rights and privileges to just what he has to give us.

Until the Ministry of Labour concludes it's investigation, we can't work any overtime at all. Of course, this comes just as we are gearing up to get out papers out the door.

Apparently tomorrow we find out where we are going to go from here, but I'm still worried.

Among the changes made, we now will have random reviews at a minimum, monthly. The company is contemplating cutting all the designer's wages by 25% so that they can lighten the load and pay more designers, and nobody is getting any raises this year.

I'm scared shitless of getting a bad review just because my bosses are mad, and I'm scared to stick up for myself. Apparently new employment contracts are being drawn up- but I won't sign it now until my lawyer looks at it, I'm afraid of them including something that could put me in a compromising situation later, just because they are mad.

So now we all feel like robots.
Come in at 9:00. Lunch at 2:00. Leave at 5:00.
There's nobody joking around anymore, everyone's depressed.

It basically comes down to we hired one wrong person, and they have fucked things up for everyone.

Worse yet, I am pretty sure I know who did it.

I'll update when I know what is going on- but right now- I'm wanting to jump ship on a job I used to love.