Life Updates

Hey friends, I'm here to give some updates on my experiences with therapy and my job sitch.

Therapy

(backstory here)

I'm done with therapy for the time being.  Over the course of three months I did six sessions.

I can't overemphasize how helpful therapy has been and how much that I wish I had done it earlier.  In my defense, it wasn't possible back in the bad ol' days when I was young.  I would have had to take unpaid time off work and pay for almost all of it out of pocket.  In today's day and age evening/weekend appointments are a thing (though you might have to wait for a bit to get in, since they're more popular) and of course there is also virtual.  I don't think that EAP's existed back in those days, but as I mentioned, mine was very easy to work with and covered three sessions.  After that I paid $40 a session on my insurance, and that's chump change given what I got out of it.

I also had a strong stereotype of the whiny neurotic character who has been in therapy for years...the reality is that a lot can be done in very little therapy time.  I might go back for some checkup appointments in the future, but as it is my therapist and I have run out of things to talk about so we're done.

The good news: therapy was very helpful for a handful of "not for the blog" issues and amazing progress has been made.  As a result, my non work life has improved greatly.

The bad news: there's no miracle to fix my work situation.  Mediation helps to take the edge off, but I can't meditate for my entire workday.  My therapist's assessment is that my job sucks.

My Jobby Job 

(Ugh I can't figure out which of one billion posts to link to for the backstory.  I've been complaining about this job for over a year now.)

My company is under a lot of pressure to be profitable, which cannot happen due to the fact that they are in the process of switching from annual customer contracts to monthly subscriptions.  You know, the kind of a situation that was planned for under the previous owners but seems to be a complete surprise to the new owners.

The company has a loan with a hefty payment coming up plus a cash balance that they have to maintain under the terms of the loan.  There's some crisis with repayment/cash balance which is the context for what comes next.

The Layoff Game

Last year around this time my company did a 10% reduction in force and I got a peek at how the layoff sausage is made.  While the powers that be were working on the cut list, we had our monthly all company meeting.  The CEO, who was obviously well aware of the coming layoffs, told everyone how great the business was doing as a result of the war in Ukraine.

At the next monthly company meeting the CEO announced the layoffs and one of the reasons cited was the impact to the business from the war in Ukraine.

In other words, if you've been laid off and you're wondering how you didn't see it coming==>for real you probably didn't see it coming.

This year: oops we did it again.  Lots more layoffs!  Plus a few rescinded job offers (that's when a company hires you and takes back the job offer before you start...so dirty).  The only nice thing that the company did was to include a handful of people who had already quit/gotten fired in the layoff list to bloat it a bit, which prevented further cuts.

My final (not) interesting observation about layoffs is that they are so random.  For both layoff rounds I saw names bounce on and off the list like tennis balls.  The takeaway that I'd like to tell anyone who has been laid off==>it is so not personal.

Make Money from Your Employees for Fun and Profit, Part 1

One thing that my company does very well is to offer first class benefits to US employees and they cover 85% of the premiums.  It's true that our benefits are expensive, but basically all that I pay is my 15% and after that we have almost no cash out of pocket for medical expenses for a family of four.

The company made some noise about leaving our insurance broker, so they came back to us with an incredible deal of a slight reduction in premiums for the next benefits year, which starts in October.  What a win!

Management got hold of those numbers and said...hmmm now is a good time to reduce the amount of the premiums that we pay.  Yours truly got to run those numbers, and it was very much a dig-your-own-grave experience.  Starting with the next benefits year in October, the company will now pay only 80%, so they took our broker's savings and helped themselves to another piece of the pie from the employees.  They've decided that no one will be able to figure this out since it's normal for insurance to go up each year so they won't say anything, they'll just rake in the $.  Some smartypants employee is going to dig in and figure it out, and I will have a good laugh when that happens.

Make Money from Your Employees for Fun and Profit, Part 2

My company used to be public and when they were acquired and went private, they converted all of the company stock awards into cash bonuses.  Stay with the company until the date when you would have gotten the stock and they give you cash instead.  They were supposed to pay out a few million in stock bonuses to employees on July 31st.   Someone figured out that not making the payment would give them a nice assist with the cash crisis situation.   They ran it by legal and were given a blessing.

10 days before the payout date they announced that they wouldn't be making the payments to conserve cash.  Oh don't worry they said, you'll get it by the end of Q1 in 2024 they said.

So in other words, the company is giving itself an interest free loan for nine months from the employee stock bonuses.

The Impact on My Bottom Line

After two years with the company:

Pay increase: $0

Bonus: to be fair I have gotten more than 100% of my bonus for extra work plus covering my boss's job while she's on maternity leave.  I've been told that it's very unusual for someone in finance to get more than 100%, so going forward I'll only get 100%.

Insurance Cost: $1,800 annual premium increase.  I could switch to a cheaper plan and/or we could move to the hubs's insurance, but the increased out of pocket costs would wipe out the premium savings.  Anyway you look at it, we'd be paying more.

Delayed stock bonus payment (a.k.a. interest free loan to my employer): $7,000. 

Quality of Life from a job that I hate: not good.

Soooo what am I going to do about it besides complain on the internets?  

I'm so glad that you asked!  I don't have another job lined up, but I do have an ace up my sleeve.  Look for part two of this post, where I will launch Operation Endgame.

Please share any work horror stories that you've got.  Did your employer ever withhold a payment like mine is doing?  What percentage of insurance does your employer cover?