CHAPTER 185 SKY IS FALLING AND DELAYS 2001
On September 7 I told Sherry Shen where to find certain files, how certain Analysis were done and then wandered about saying my goodbyes. At four-thirty I gathered up my few personal effects and left my Wilmington trust career behind me.
there were about four different ways of setting it up. There were options where my wife would get a lump-sum payment of so much when I died or where she would continue to receive half the monthly amount for the rest of her life. There were other configurations as well, where portions might go to someone else. There would be other things I would have to sign. I was to call Katie Ford (right) when I was ready to decide and she would schedule a meeting.
Coincidentally, as I had come to work for that morning, I had bumped into Jim Wadsworth in the lobby. He was there to sign his dismissal papers and he told me he had chosen Early Retirement
I was also told that someone from Manchester Outsourcing Services would be calling me on Monday to set up a meeting with a counselor there as well. Isn’t it just magnanimous of them to give an axed staff member this wonderful help in doing a job search (but only if you were of the upper grade levels, of course)?
Over the weekend I read all the options and discussed it with Lois. I decided Early Retirement was the best choice, after all, that would keep my 20% discount at the office cafeterias. (Not without humiliation I was to discover.)
company that handled the awards for the Strong Points program for Wilmington Trust. Remember Strong Points was a program I had helped put together. We handled everything internally except prize distribution. We would sent regular point records to Dittman and they would send out a quarterly statement to the employees that showed how many points they had and for what, how many they had cashed in and how many they had available to make a purchase. Points had been awarded for certain things. If you gave the bank a qualified referral, you got 1,000 points. If the referral resulted in a sale, you got another 1,000. You got 1,000 points for attending special seminars or for doing study guides about company services. There were also special awards. The biggest was Exceptional Achievement, which award 100,000 points.
Exceptional Achievement, another achievement in the exceptional ability of managers to twist things in an unfair manner into something they should not be. The idea of this award was that annually each division could name an outstanding achiever, someone who went beyond the boundary of duty and the confines of their job description to the exceptional benefit of the company. You were out somewhere and met a rich dude and you took you personal life to do a sales job on this moneybags, even though your job at the bank was to change florescent lights when they burned out, and you talked this guy in coming with you to a branch and opening a $30,000,000 Trust account. That was what people were supposed to get this award for doing – you know EXCEPTIONAL ACHIEVEMENT.
And there were actually a few such cases awarded, but the majority were favorite sons of the managers, who did nothing more than their everyday duties. Their exceptional achievement might have been having a couple beers with the boss after work.
woman named Shirley Sleva (right) was given this award. Shirley Sleva was an Accounts Payable Clerk and had been forever, 54 years. She went strictly by the book because if she didn’t have the book she wouldn’t know what to do. I actually am happy Shirley got this award for nothing more than showing up, doing her daily postings and going home. She never had an exceptional achievement in her life because the book did have an appendix called “Rules and Regulations on Doing Exceptional Achievements”, but at least a low pay “nobody” got something nice for a change. Shirley died in 2014 at the age of 75.
Still Len Minner never got the award. As you mentioned in an Email, there are those who get things done, those who just do things and the managers who take credit for both. In every area there is always someone who is the go-to guy, the guru, the person who knows how to get it done. You want a problem solved, you want a project finished on time, you want a new operation, you want to get anything completed correctly, this is the person you go find. They are almost never a manager and seldom have a supposedly key position, but in reality they are the glue that holds your area together and moves it down the tracks. Len Minner (left) was the guy in Accounting. He never got that award, but Shirley Sleva did.
I was that guy in Deposit Services, Data Preparation, and Sales Support. In Marketing, Sherry Shen and I saved the AnalytiX system from certain death. We rescued a system the company had paid five million dollars for and had gotten nothing out of for four years. We made that beast work and positioned it to be a key decision making tool going forward. Sherry and I never got that Exceptional Achievement Award.
I was awarded 5,000 Strong Points during my last year at the bank for contributions I made. (I won three recognition awards my last year. I also won Starbucks, which was a cash award given in recognition of outstanding work at the discretion of managers and I would have gotten more Strong Points for helping design the company security policy, except I wasn’t there anymore when the award was announced.)
I had 40,000 Strong Points altogether. This was a lot more than average. I called Dittman first thing that Monday, because once you left Wilmington Trust, your points were worth nothing and I was going to at least get that value out of them. I took them in gift certificates to Barnes & Nobel. Came in handy for buying Christmas presents. Of course there is always the gimmick that lessens the value, isn’t there. First, if you had points, you had to have at least 3,000 to get anything. Each thousand points equated to $5.00, 3,000 equaled $15. Now you could pick a prize from a catalogue, but that was fairly limited, and you know the bank didn’t pay the retail value of the prize, which is what it was given to you as. You have $3,000 and order a little lamp that lists as $15. Dittman sends you the lamp and bills WTC for maybe $10, the wholesale cost plus shipping. Now it was even sneaker with the gift certificates. First you had to have at least 6,000 points to get a gift certificate, because you could only get $25 certificates. Now wait a mo, Larry. I thought you were an accountant. You said every thousand points equated to $5 dollars. Six thousand Strong Points would equal $30, not $25. True, but if you took the gift certificates, they charged you 625 point for handling on each Certificate, so you had to have 5,625 points and since you only got points in increments of 1,000, you had to have at least 6,000 points to get $25. My 40,000 points should have gotten me $200 in certificates; instead it got me $175 worth. And Wilmington Trust only had to pay $87 for these certificates, which I guess is the wholesale value, and that $87 goes on my w-2 as taxable income yet.
No call came. I called up Julie at Human Recourses (Katie didn’t handle this part) and told her I hadn’t heard from Manchester. I got her voice mail because you can never get the people in Human Recourses and it said she was out for the week. So I called Katie anyway. And I Told HER VOICE MAIL that I had not heard from Manchester and that I also wanted to set up out sign-up meeting.
John from Manchester called me on Monday evening saying he had heard from Katie and apologized for not calling me on earlier because that was not like him. If there was one thing he prided himself on was calling people on time and he if you called him and left a message he would always get right back to you. (Now when someone insists they do such a thing, you know darn well they probably don’t. And he didn’t.) “How about we meet at his office tomorrow, September 11 at 2:00 pm?” “Okay, where is your office?” “Oh we’re easy to find. We’re in the Chase building just cattycorner from Wilmington Trust. You can’t miss us, we’re the tallest building in Wilmington.”
On Tuesday I got up, read the paper, walked the dog and a little
after nine o’clock, I went on the computer to check my checking account. I open AOIL and saw: “Two planes crash into World Trade Center”. Whoa. I immediately turned on the TV and you know what I watched for the next several hours. I went and woke Darryl up then too.
Now it was about noon and I wondered about my meeting at Manchester in the TALLEST BUILDING IN WILMINGTON. No one had called canceling it, so I took a bath and got dressed, and then decided to call John at Manchester. I got a voice mail saying Manchester had closed at 12:00 today.
So I got undressed and continued to watch the tragedy that was about to throw more people out of work.
On Wednesday, I was able to get a hold of John at Manchester and we reset the meeting for that Thursday. I went and met with him. No wonder Manchester had closed early. John said they actually hurried everyone out of the building. It is the tallest building in Wilmington, just a floor or so higher than the renowned Pei building across the street from it. It had built just a few years earlier by Manufacturers Hanover, before that bank was swallowed up. It became the Chase Chemical bank building later. It is a mostly glass building, all windows you know. Manchester was on the twenty-first floor, almost the very top.
John was a jolly old soul who assured me I was employable despite no college degree, despite being sixty, despite the high unemployment rate, despite anything. He then spent a lot of time bragging about himself, telling me they would have me take this two-day seminar, make sure I had a salable resume and teach me how to search for a job efficiently. He told me Wilmington Trust had paid for three months service, but they wouldn’t just forget me when the three months were up. They would still talk to me if I needed to talk. I just would get any more seminars or use of their resources database or the use of a cubicle and free phone service and mailing services and free postage or typing service or anything really useful after the three months.
On Friday I went and met with Katie. I signed more blasted papers than I did when I got my house mortgage I think, and that’s a lot of paper. I took early retirement, but not my pension. I wanted to try not to take that until I was at least 62. I signed for my reduced life insurance naming Lois beneficiary. I choose to stay in the company medical plan. The way it worked, I had so many credits for each year I had been employed. These credits would be subtracted from the cost of the medical coverage and that would be what I would pay (of course if I had a credit higher than the plan cost, I didn’t get the difference in cash. Funny that.) I had three choices. Individual, which could be either on myself or on my spouse. My credits covered this and it would have been free to me. But I couldn’t leave me or my wife unprotected, could I? One was on me and my children (but not spouse). This also would have cost me nothing, but was of no use because all my children were of an age and situation where they weren’t eligible for coverage. That left me no choice but the Family option. This covered everyone and was the most expensive. Cost was $654 a month, which was more than my credit, so I now have to pay $230 a month for health coverage. No more paycheck and suddenly a new $140 additional expense a month (Employees paid about $89 a month.) Notice there was no choice of you and your spouse.
Of course I lost my dental and vision insurance.
I had to choose how my 401k was handled. I chose the simplest and hopefully best choice of having it rolled into an IRA Account at WTC. I thought with all the paperwork I was signing this would be taken care of right then and there, but on no, I would have to go to a branch office, open an IRA account and then get back to Katie to do the rollover, and I had so many days to do this within.
At the end I made my little joke about choosing retirement to keep my 20% discount at the cafeterias. “Oh, yes”, she says,” and anytime you wish to use the cafeteria, just come see me and I’ll give you a slip to get the discount. If you plan to use it often, I will give you several slips.”
Say what, lady? If I want to get the 20% discount promised me I have to make a trip into this office and get a permission slip? How big of you. This multi-billion dollar company that consistently brings in a 20% or higher profit is going to go broke if they issue a little retiree identification card you can carry to get your 20% discount? What an insult this is, what an insult. You know that was the one thing that actually made me angry in this whole mess. I was furious about this. I mean how cheap can you get!
Branch to open an IRA. Another stupid humiliation. In this day of the computer, there isn’t any reason in the world if they are terminating you or you are retiring that they can’t set this account up when you do your signing out. Just no reason I should have to make a trip to a branch and then back to Human resources to sign more papers. And then I go to Branmar, our Starfleet hub branch and the person doesn’t know how to do this. Has to be calling all around to find out how to do a rollover IRA, a person who’s job it is to do these things for customers…oops, I mean Clients.
Now it’s calling Katie for another appointment and giving her the account number and signing for the account to move.
I went to the Manchester seminar and other things there, used their resources to do some mailings, both networking and contacting companies about jobs. But I wasted a month before doing any of actual job searching and mailings; because they said don’t do anything until they signed off on my resume. Then there were delays and John, who prided himself on always returning calls, was failing to return my calls. When I did send off my first mailing to companies, two days later the President of Software Services called me. She was one of those who received my mailing and after talking to me; she set up an interview for December 4, which was a month away.
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