Texas weather is interesting as you can never tell what it is going to be like. It can swing from 75 and sunny to 40 and wet in a day or so. Of course I have also seen days where you need A/C and heat all within the same 24 hour period. You gotta love it.
Thanksgiving day weekend has been wet and cold. Thursday it was cold, Friday it was cold, Saturday and Sunday it has been wet. Walking the dogs has been fun. We come back and we all need to dry off before we come back into the house. At least it is supposed to clear and dry up over the next 4+ days.
I poke with "Mickey" today. His wife "Mary" is healing very nicely from hysterectomy. They had invited us up on Friday but I did not go...I still was in a pretty crummy mood. I sent him an e-mail explaining why I did not go...he did not tell me if he received it or not. If he did I can tell he did not understand it.
Mickey was also telling me about this new job he will be starting next month. They are offering him $12k more a year, a signing bonus, and six service years to start. I had to admit that I was a bit jealous at first then I asked him about on-call and he said, "I don't know, I never asked." Right now on-call is a rather sore subject with me since my employer is doing away with the on-call pay we get, even though we are still required to be on-call at least one week a month. I am not happy about losing the 5% I get for being on-call and I am not happy that the decision is one that has been made by the business unit I am in...not the company in general (if I am reading the info correctly). It seems my business unit gets the short end of the stick no matter what happens. One good example is bonuses. Last year our group got the smallest percetage of the company. Now one would think that since we received the smallest we must have had the poorest percentage (we received half of what the other groups received), but that is not true. Our group contains the support that is needed to maintain the accounts the other groups signed up (you know the groups that got the larger bonuses). Now do not get me wrong. Getting a bonus of 4.1% was nice, but getting a 9.4 percent bonus would have been nicer. I am betting that is what we get this year...half of what the other groups get.
The overall outlook looks rather grim. I am losing on-call pay and expected to maintain the same level of service or greater, the amount of carry over vacation I can have is now limited to two weeks (I currently have three to carry over and I only use about two a year so if I do not increase my usage, I am going to lose vacation in three years), the cost of benefits went up about 5%, the co-pays went up, and I cannot guarantee that any raise we get will cover the cost of living (we have received two raises over the past two years - one was 2% the other was 1.8%). The longer I stay at this job the more it seems that I am losing money.
I know...be happy that I am employed. I am...really I am but why must I always be in a losing situation? If I could just get a cost of living increase and leave my benefits alone...please?
I am wondering if this is God's way of telling me to keep my eyes open for a better opportunity.
No comments:
Post a Comment