Change Happens (an incredibly long rant, sorry) was: Biggest salary cut you've taken?

Subject: Change Happens (an incredibly long rant, sorry) was: Biggest salary cut you've taken?
From: Emily Berk <emily -at- armadillosoft -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 21:35:13 -0700

On or about Thu, 16 Aug 2001 09:53:09 -0600, "Glenn Maxey" <glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com> contributed a set of truly self-righteous rantings on the evils of consumerism in American Society that included ...

>I apologize if Robert interprets my rantings on society as a personal
>jab. That wasn't the intent.
>
>I was ranting about our AMERICAN SOCIETY and how we all take on more
>debts than we should because ...

As the current crash of the dotcom economy proves, Change Happens.

I am indenting the Personal Portion of This Rant. Feel free to skip to the Message of This Rant, far below. This is truly a rant and I am just back from a vacation and read I think two of Mr. Maxey's postings on this subject and I am replying in haste and anger, which is why this is way too long and for that I apologize. But I am so upset by his insistence that Blaming the Victim is ok that I felt it necessary to respond.

Personal Portion of This Rant
============================

My family first experienced the fact that Change Happens Up Close and
Personal at 3:38 PM on July 3, 1994.

In approximately five seconds, maybe less, we were transformed from:
a family, consisting of

two healthy high-income wage earners,
one child and one child on the way into a family,

into a family with
ONE healthy high-income, very stressed salary earner,
one lucky-to-be-alive-let-alone-walking former-high-income salary
earner,
one traumatized child (she thought she'd witnessed her father's death)
and one child on the way.

At the time, we were living in a home we had purchased for ONE THOUSAND TWO
HUNDRED DOLLARS (that is $1200 -- two zeroes, no more, no typo) in the
ghetto of Philadelphia and renovated with our own hands for nearly 15 years
and we owned ONE car (a 1986 Audi 5000 that we had purchased used, for
cash).

We were on vacation, staying at a Girl Scout campground. (NB: the Girl
Scouts is a non-profit, so even though they were totally at fault for the
fact that the bridge my husband was standing on had been improperly
maintained and therefore collapsed, it is hard to get money from them.)

Cost of this vacation should have been approximately $42.

However, since my husband, then a freelance writer for computer magazines,
ended up missing ALL his deadlines (working on computers in a body cast
that prevents you from sitting upright is kinda difficult) and thereby
losing most of his contracts, this vacation cost us something like
$500,000. We did get an incredibly expensive and memorably beautiful
get-well bouquet from Waggener-Edstrom, on behalf of Microsoft.

If only we had had $500,000 in the bank, the repercussions of this accident
would not have been very severe.

The Girl Scouts have great lawyers. The one that they used drove up to
Philadelphia from South Carolina in his lovely, late-model Rolls Royce.

A legal note of interest to freelance tech writers: contracts to write
which are terminated before the articles are written because the writer is
not able to deliver the copy on time are not considered lost income. The
Girl Scouts' lawyer proudly pointed out to my husband that, since his
income was about $500,000 per year SALARY, it, of course, would have been
reimbursed. However, the lawyer crowed to my husband, freelance contracts
are not recognized as reliable predictors of future (lost) income. Oh, and
psychological counseling for our daughter would have been a separate
lawsuit.

So, after about five years of incredibly insulting legal wrangling, we
gratefully received a check for half of the cost of the health care
we had paid cash for (our insurance was not exceptionally good). The
other half went to our lawyer. One of our funnest days in all those years
was walking into our local bank, dressed in our scruffy jeans, to deposit
the check. The check was SO big, the teller did not know how to deposit
it. (FDIC and all) Course all that money was immediately disbursed.
But it was so interesting to see the look on the woman's face!

Which meant that for our necessary extras -- like -- food, crib for new
baby, child birth, etc., we had to use our credit cards @22% interest over
the 5 years before settlement. Not even the interest was counted in the
settlement.

I, of course, got no maternity leave. Had my baby a couple of months after
the accident and immediately went back to working in the fields. After
work each day, I'd come home and flip my husband over in bed and get up
at night to take care of the baby.

BTW: We did not have disability insurance at the time of the accident and
still do not have it. I have looked into it and although it might have
helped a little, it probably would not have made much of an impact.
However, I have been told that it would have been nearly impossible for our
small company (just me and my husband) to get such coverage at a reasonable
price before the accident and, now that my husband is "high risk" because
his back was broken, there is no way for us to get disability insurance
now.

At the time of my husband's unfortunate accident, we were not living beyond
our means by any definition. However, we did live quite comfortably. In
fact, now, we are now kind of elderly in our fields and I am pretty sure
that we will never live that comfortably ever again. (For example, our
insurance costs are -- incredible -- and will only go higher as we get
older.) It's also clear that we will never be able to retire. Luckily,
we were able to get life insurance (we did take this step after the
accident) and so if we die, our kids will probably be able to pay some of
their college bills.

I love my work and my husband and he and both daughters are well as can be
expected, thank you. (If I'd taken the fall from the bridge or my daughter
had been -- we were all standing on it at the time the railing collapsed --
I would not be able to say that.)

We buy our clothes at garage sales, still drive the '86 Audi, when it
starts, and rent our home, since we can't afford to buy one here in Silly
Valley. We did recently buy a second car (also used; it's a really, really
ugly 1986 Olds) so we can now jump-start the Audi when it does not start.

Am I bitter about this?

Actually, I am a bit. On the other hand, most of the time I realize that:

1. The accident could have been much worse.
2. I could have been left off worse than I was (although our lawyer tells
us that if my husband had been killed, I'd have been set for life).
3. I have now suffered one of the Worst Days I will ever have. And, if I
lose my job or my house or my wallet, it's still not going to ever compare
to my Worst Day.
4. This was fair warning to get life insurance.

However, I do get quite incensed when I hear that my financial woes are
probably due to self-indulgence. Glenn, I know there's something I should
have done to avoid this. Please let me know what it is so I can take those
necessary steps in case something bad happens to my family again. (Well, I
won't get pregnant again, but the baby had little to do with our sufferings
during those years. In fact, it's kind of great to have a baby in a house
when everyone is miserable otherwise.)

Well, Glenn is probably thinking, this never could happen to me. And it is
unlikely Glenn will break his back in a fall from a bridge. I don't wish
that or any other devastating health crisis on ANYONE. On the other hand,
I dread every time I drive on a bridge, think about riding in an elevator,
go camping, ride in a car, on a train, on an airplane, on a roller coaster.
All of these devices, and many others, were constructed and are maintained
by fallible human beings. Any and all of them may fail you while you are
relying on them. And, if one fails, for even a second, you could get
hurt severely or you could die.

Message Portion of this Rant
============================
Change happens, Glenn. And, it MIGHT just happen to you. The Great Depression affected quite a few people who did not expect to lose everything they owned. The work of tech writers in particular is only necessary when there are new products to write about. That means that external factors can and WILL affect your ability to maintain your standard of living, no matter how prudent that standard of living is. If there is job loss in the technical arena, you may suffer. If you have a personal issue that precludes you working, you may suffer.

No matter how righteously you live your life, you are part of the world-wide economic system and you may be affected by it. (My grandmother grew up in Russia during the Russian Civil War. The soldiers of both sides were so desperate, they were willing to steal her family's last loaves of bread. Luckily for her, she owned a sewing machine and knew how to sew. So at 10 years of age, she traded her clothing-repair services for her family's bread. Technical writing is not as important as sewing clothes in Russia in winter or baking bread or administering medical care. Technical writing could be the one of the first job categories to go.)

When the job market suddenly dries up and even one person in a family loses their job, and it then takes half a year for them to find another, there is no way for that family to sell their SUV or cut their mortgage or lower their expenses fast enough to compensate. They are going to have to spent their savings or retirement income or buy food on credit in order to survive.

In the current Silicon Valley economy (which, luckily, I could not participate in, as I had no spare cash with which to buy stock, etc.), many folks did invest in high tech and now that the NASDAQ has tanked those people do not have many savings. Their homes are worth less, their stocks are worth nothing and if they still have a job, they are lucky.

One family I know lost about 90% of the value of their stock options and the company the husband worked for defaulted on $270,000 of already-earned sales bonuses which meant that this family was forced to sell their stock options to close on a home they had just purchased. Stupid? No, actually, maybe foolish, but there was a contract for the sales bonus. It's just that the $ never showed up. Living beyond their means? There was a contract for the sales bonus. It's just that the $ never showed up. Is this an isolated incident? NOT WHERE I LIVE. I may be only one I know around here NOT directly affected by the fall of the NASDAQ.

However, I am indirectly affected, since my clients and potential clients are hurting and so I find that checks are taking longer to arrive and my contacts in those companies are no longer there (harder to get follow-on projects; harder to track down references), fewer projects.

I am really sick of hearing people my parents' ages and some of you young people blame us victims.

Change happens and it's not always possible to prepare for it. See also my thoughts on Kosovo: http://www.armadillosoft.com/cmc/pres.php?newTopic=kosovo

Change happens. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not. Be humble; change may happen, even to you.

--Emily

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ Emily Berk ~
On the web at www.armadillosoft.com *** Armadillo Associates, Inc. ~
~ Project management, developer relations and ~
extremely-technical technical documentation that developers find useful.~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


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