CHAPTER 186: IMPRESSIONS OF MY LIFE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECHERCHE POET OLD JOBS AND NEW LABOR DEPARTMENT BLUES 2001

 CHAPTER  186  LABOR DEPARTMENT BLUES

 

I decided to get signed up at the Labor Department for unemployment.  Delaware is different than most states.  First of all, you don’t become eligible for unemployment until the severance runs out.  Wilmington trust gave me two months severance, which didn’t last two months because I felt I needed to take care of some immediate concerns.  I figured if my official last day was September 21, I would be eligible on November 21 for payment.  I would get the top rate, which was $315 a week before tax.  It was now mid-November; I might as well get the process started.  

So I went and picked a number and sat and sat, and sat.  I had my
forms all filled out, but I had a question that the person on their hot line wasn’t able to answer. I decided to go down to the place and ask.  That’s all. Just answer the question and then I’d mail in the form (if ten pages of questions can be called a form).  Finally I get to the counter and ask my question.  I never really got an answer, but I had to stand there while this clerk asked me all her questions and redid the form.  What a waste.  Then I was told I had to go to another area and do some stuff on a computer.  I went there and they said there wasn’t enough time left to do the computer thing, I’d have to come back.

So I had to make a second trip to the Labor department to do this computer thing,  which was just putting my resume in a database and signing on a job search engine. Then I had to talk to a counselor, who said the Manchester resume format would never work and gave me this other format, which was ugly to look at.  I was told a determination would be made and I would get something in the mail.

Well instead of something in the mail, I get a phone call.  “Mr. Meredith?”

“Yes?”

“I’m so-and-so from the Department of Labor Employment Services.”

“Yes?” 

“We contacted Wilmington Trust to confirm the information you put on the claim form.”

“Yes.”

“You stated you received two months severance.”

“Yes.”

“Wilmington Trust said you received 26 weeks severance.”

“No, I only received two months.”

“We will need some kind of proof of that.”

Oh great. If I had 26 weeks of severance, I wouldn’t be eligible for unemployment until sometime in April 2002. Worst, I could be accused of fraudulent statements on my claim, which could result in fines and/or jail time.

So I called Katie at WTC. Oh, she would prepare a letter.  I would have to come pick it up.  Oh goody, another trip I didn’t need.

I went to WTC picked up the proof, and then I had to take it to the Labor Department and drop it off.  Meanwhile I had these cards from
the Labor Dept. I had to file every week to prove I was looking for a job and what contacts I had made. They had given me four cards and  then checks were supposed to start and a new card would come with the check. But no check and no card came. I had to go to the Labor department and get new cards.  I thought I’d just stop in and pick up some cards and go home.  Oh no, you once again had to pick a number and talk to a counter person to get a card.

I was steamed.  I had a lunch meeting in Wilmington at 1:00 and I had to pick up Lois at her work at noon and take her home first.  I waited until twenty of twelve, and then had to leave.  That meant I had to go through this wait again another day.

I got there before they opened next day.  I was still number 13 in line (Number 13 – utt oh). I got to the counter and they said the counsellor needs to talk to you, please sit over there.  I waited some more. A counselor came. She said things had been straightened out about my severance, but I had to reapply for my claim, so we sat there and I did the form for the third time.  But I wasn’t eligible for the $315 dollars a week anymore, because I had taken my pension and they deducted for that, so I would only get $79 a week.  You know what to this day I never received one cent in unemployment from Delaware, even though I was out of work five months.

Now the pension.  Remember I had passed on that, but when the unemployment snafus began, I realized I had to get some money flowing in. I called Katie and asked what would be the difference between me taking my pension now or waiting until I was 65.  You know what it was?  About $100 a month. Okay, I said start it up. (This was in late October.).  Oh, well, we can’t start it until December now. We need two weeks notice. Okay, fine.  I wanted it November 1, but what can you do.

The next day she called back.  Here’s what they could do. They could began it as of November 1 and pay me two checks on December First. It would reduce my amount by about $7.  Never mind, just go with December 1. 

So I had to start tapping my IRA.  So I got the letter they had sent me on opening my IRA because I had a question about distribution. I dialed the number given on the letter. 

A recorded message from an operator came on. “That number has been disconnected. No alternate number has been given.”

I went to the phone book and called the customer service line, waited for a representation and asked my question. “Oh you have to call the IRA department. (So much for our touted central customer service). “Wasn’t there a number on the letter they should have sent you?" “Yes, there was, but it has been disconnected.”  I wonder if that form letter has ever been fixed. 

And thus I found myself living on my pension and my IRA

savings, receiving no unemployment and heaven knows what my tax bill will end up being. I expect I’m going to have to increase my home equity loan this year to survive.

A couple asides:  

I went into the cafeteria often for

coffee in the morning in the first three months when I went to meetings at Manchester.  No one asked for identification before giving me my discount.  That’s because the cashier knew me.  But just in case it was a strange cashier – well no one ever asked, so I never turned in my ID badge (or my employee handbook), so I had my ID with me ready to flash it if need be.

I wanted to be able to call some people in at WTC, but realized I didn’t know their phone numbers.  So one day I had to go in to meet my old Manager, Bill Shinn. We were going to do lunch, I stopped at the Plaza early, got my coffee and then I broke security. I followed some people leaving the cafeteria to the elevator bank.  The cafeteria was public and on the first floor, which was really the first floor because the first floor was the street floor. Security guards had a station on the street floor you had to pass, but not on the first floor. On the first were doors where you needed your id card to swipe to release the lock. Now I had my ID, but it had been deactivated in the system, so it wouldn’t work, but I just followed some people through the doors. (One of the things in the security policy I helped write was people were to not let people   tailgate in behind them.

These people didn’t let me tailgate.  Oh no, they stepped aside and held the door open for me.  I had to do the same thing on the Sixth floor, where I used to work, because here be more locked doors. Same result.  Somebody got off the elevator and held the door for me.  I went to my old cubicle.  It was a little before nine, so Sherry wasn’t in yet.  I did a couple things.  One, I opened my old binder bin, took the internal phone book and put it in my backpack.  Then I made some phone calls.  Think of what I could have done if I was a saboteur or a bad guy?

I then pinned an Irish Curse upon the bulletin board.  I can’t remember the dire things it promised upon WTC. It was written in Gaelic, but in my opinion the case did come true considering what happen to Wilmington Trust s few years down the line. Essentially it may saying, “pot mo thoin!”

After Sherry arrived I talked with her awhile before I left.  When I went to meet Bill Shinn in headquarters I broached security again. It isn’t hard in the lobby because the security guard never questions people going in there being that public cafeteria on the first floor. Once at the elevators I just rode up to the Sixth Floor (same floor, different building). I got out and though: oh no, they have renovated the floor. All the doors here now had the swipes installed to unlock them.  But after a bit some one came out of Accounting and I noticed the door shut very slowly, so I was able to grab it and walk in.  There wasn’t anyone at the receptionist desk, so I just wandered on back into the work area to Bill’s office.

I sent an email to the person who had headed the security committee saying that security still needed tightening.  I didn’t tell them why I said this.

Then Bill Shinn showed up and asked if I’d be interesting in doing consulting work  after the New Year because they have no one to administer that data base I built, remember, and it will have to have updates when the year changes, I never heard from him to come do it,
so maybe they didn’t need it anymore, or maybe Bill got terminated. Who knows? At this point I didn’t care if that database crumbled to dust.

CHAPTER 185: IMPRESSIONS OF MY LIFE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECHERCHE POET OLD JOBS AND NEW THE SKY IS FALLING AND DELAYS 2001

 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.

But Wilmington Trust was not done with me. First of all, I had to make a decision about what choice I would take: early retirement or termination. I had been given papers outlining all the options of each and been given three weeks to decide.  If I chose retirement, then there were other decisions to be made. How to take my 401K, for instance/ I could take it as a lump sum or have it rolled into and IRA, and the IRA could be at WTC or at some other institution. I would have to decide about my pension, too. First, I didn’t have to start my pension at all. I could wait and start it anytime I wished. If I started my pension, then
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.)

First thing Monday morning, I called Dittman.  Dittman was the
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.

Sometimes there were even weirder awards in this category.  A
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.

I waited around the most of Monday for a call from Manchester.
  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! 

I left Katie’s office and after I had cooled down, I went to a
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.

CHAPTER 184 FULL UP WITH FIL 2001

 CHAPTER 184 FULL UP WITH FIL 2001

 

Wednesday, September 5, at around 10:00 in the morning, Fil Sherry came to my cubicle.

“Hey, Larry, how’s it going.”

  “Fine.”

“Good.  I need to talk to you.  Can we get together around, oh say, 1:30?”

“Sure. Do you want me to come to your office?”

“No, I’ll come get you.”

Dum de dum dum!!!!  

That friend, was the moment I knew.  Why would he have to come get me? I knew where his office was. If he wanted to talk, we could meet there.  It was a private office. He had a door  that shut.

I immediately got up and went to see Deborah Williams.  I said,

“Well, I think this is it.”

“What.”

“I think they’re throwing me out.”

“No.”

I told her about Fil. She said she didn’t believe it.

At 1:30 Fil appeared. 

I got up and he herded us toward the hall and elevators.  I  knew where we were going, the execution chamber. 

 

 “We are going to do some reorganizing that effects the databases and I felt I ought to talk to you about it,” he said, still smiling.

We turned toward the doors to the elevator bank.  “I don’t like our conference room much,” he said.  “I found another conference room that will give us privacy.”

THE EXECUTION CHAMBER. 

I saw my Manager, Mary Murphy talking to someone near the restrooms. I waved bye-bye to her behind Fil’s back.  I could tell by her face she knew.

We entered an elevator and he pushed down…down…down.   There were a couple of other people on the car.

 “Yes, we need to talk about the reorganization.” He kept up the pretense.

I gazed over that the other passengers.

Yeah, you’re going to reorganize me right out of here.  

I thought it, but I didn’t say it. I wonder what he would have said  if I had said it. He act was almost funny.  I almost laughed at him.

We reached the street floor and exited the elevator.

“Yeah,” he said.  A lot of people don’t even know there are conference rooms down here, but I found them one day and said these are nice meeting rooms.”

I knew about these rooms.  This is where he took Harry, then Joyce and then Jim. They had been mean and nasty to Harry and Jim I had heard. I wondered how they would do me in.

We went past a security outpost then turned into the little alcove that hid the “nice meeting rooms” behind it

  There were two of them actually. I saw people sitting in one and knew they were Human Resource staff waiting their queue to enter the stage. We walked into the other little room where Rita Turner sat square center behind a conference table, stiff as a board, her hands folded before her on the table. She stiffly nodded. 

Fil followed me and began: “We have decided to make some changes with AnalytiX. It is going to be moved over to the Headquarters. We have decided that the individual managers and branch staff will be setup with AnalytiX and will do their own reports going forward. Unfortunately, that means your job has been eliminated.  Jim Cameron will continue (between tears) as Direct Mail Clerk.  Sherry Shen will be the technical person, but will no longer have supervisory duties. The unit will be moved to Joan Sullivan’s area in the Rodney Square Headquarters and Melissa will be the new supervisor.”  (Ah, Melissa, who Sherry Shen and I had exiled to Barry Strepko was now to be Sherry’s boss.)

R said, “Larry, you have been with the bank (I didn’t correct her and remind her of her own orders that we don’t use the word “bank” anymore) and you have made many contributions over the years.  I regret we never had an opportunity to work together  (I didn’t share her regret).  It is just that the AnalytiX system is perfect (who is kidding whom?)  now and with this change we just have no place for you (or any other gray-haired old geezer).  In a moment Katie and Julie from Human Recourses will come in and explain your options.”

Fil asked, as they always ask the about to be executed, “Do you have anything you would like to say?” (Any last words before the firing squad fires?)

 “Yes,” I said. “I am concerned about Sherry.  Sherry is a great asset to Wilmington Trust. She should be listened to concerning AnalytiX. You know she has done more than her job.  She has solved a lot problems in Information Technology and I want to be certain she will be treated fairly.”

They stared at me, not knowing how to respond.  I am sure they expected me to defend myself or get angry or something, but not talk about someone else’s welfare.  But I meant what I said. Sherry deserved much better than the way she has been treated. I know doggone well they took advantage of her because she I was a foreigner and made her self-conscious about her accent.  Fil looked like he was in pain and he barely managed to choke out “that is very big of you.”

R just glowered and said nothing. She did reach out a hand and dead-fish my own.  

They excused themselves and in marched Katie and Julie, more bright smiles and chirpy voices as they explained my two bad choices.  I could choose TERMINATION or I  could choose EARLY RETIREMENT.  If I chose termination, then I would get 26 weeks severance pay and that was about it. I would eventually get my pension, because I was fully vested, but I would lose all my employee perks and my mortgage rate would jump up to the normal rate, stripped of the employee discount. 

Now 26 weeks pay, about $37,000, sounds like a lot at first, but you take out taxes, it isn’t that great. And it can go pretty quickly. After all, I would have no insurance, health or otherwise, but I’d have all my bills, including a car payment,  and be paying more on my mortgage because I would lose the discount I got for being an employee.

If I took early retirement, I would keep all my employee discounts, my free checking, my mortgage discount,  and all that stuff. My 401K would roll into an IRA. My mortgage rate would not change. I would stay in the health plan, although I would have to pay more than before.  It was still only a third of the total cost.  I would get life insurance coverage.  It would only be for $7,500, but at least that’s enough to bury you. 

I could start my pension if I chose, and I was at a point where I

wouldn’t actually get much more on my pension even if I stayed until I was 65. I would also keep my 20%  discount at the company cafeterias.  Man, how could I pass that up?

Of course I worked for a very chintzy outfit. You’d think they would give you a little plastic ID card, but no, they gave you a thin piece of paper (on right) and to get it, if you decided to use the cafeteria, you had to come into Human Resources and ask for a ticket. I mean, Personnel was in downtown Wilmington. You’d have to travel into town to get the ticket, and then travel further for a meal at the cheap cafeteria just to get 20% off. Give me a break!

I opted for early retirement.

Harry, Joyce and Jim had all been ushered to the street on the day they were done in, not even allowed back up to say goodbye.  I was asked to stay through Friday because “I knew things that others had to learn before I left.  Would I please come in through next Friday to pass on this knowledge, but after that I didn’t have to come in again if I didn’t want to.”

You’re darn tootin’ I didn’t want to. 

They said September 21 would be my official retirement date.  Then I received a letter saying it was October 1. Then it was the October 10 on something else, so to tell the truth, I don’t know when I really was officially through.

I heard from a reliable source that The Boss had promised Ted Cecala that she would shave a half-million dollars from the Marketing salary budget for 2002.  Well, Jim and I made a dent in that, I guess.  Like others we were booted because we were old, been there a long time and made a lot of money. That is the only reason. Jim Cameron was a total disaster, but he stayed. He was 27 and made half my salary and not near as many benefits

I had lunches with Sherry Shen and Deborah Williams after I left and I made a prediction.  I said I think they will terminate Mary Murphy and move the Small Business Center to Commercial Banking.  Bert Willet will probably be gone then.  Now they will have shrunk Interactive Services down little more than a call center.

They fired Kermit Wooden, the manager of Human Recourses for sexual harassment (he was using a lot of female humans for his own resources).  I said I think they will make Fil head of Human Resources and then make that a Department and him a Senior Manager.  Michele Wilson will be made the Division Manager to replace Fil, but at less money, and her position will not be filled, because it isn’t needed anymore. Maybe the web design people will be let go now that our sites are all up and running.  After all, we could hire an outside firm to administer the websites that we only had to pay if we needed them and that would be an operation expense, not a salary expense.

Well, after I left, Mary Murphy was terminated, as was another

there named Pete Adams. Bert Willet was terminated. The upper limit that defined the Small Business Center, which had served  companies with $10 million or less in sales was  lowered to only $3 million and any accounts higher than that level of sales were given to Commercial Banking. A couple underwriters were transferred out of the division, as was Mary’s old assistant.  Strong Points was also moved to the headquarters under a woman named  Beryl Barmore (in foreground of photo), who I considered a friend at my church,  and Deborah is now managing one half of the call center.  I don’t know if the rest of my prediction has happen yet since I am no longer there to watch. 

On September 7, I shut down my company PC for the last time (legally) and without fanfare, Larry Meredith had left the building.