This whole post may be moot. I’ll try to make a long story short.
Once upon a time, my mother and I worked for one of the “legacy” airlines. It was a pretty good gig with lots of benefits including travel. After 11 September (yes, we worked that day and without much knowledge about what was happening). Then things changed. The company started pulling in the reins and eventually started letting people go to save money.
Mom and I lasted until June of 2003. About that time, the company, it seemed, started looking for reasons to let people go. They started “nit-picking” if you will, on the rules. We both got in trouble for doing things that, while against the rules, would normally get you a slap on the wrist. I should mention that we worked in Reservations, so safety wasn’t the issue.
I should also point out that I’m not a salesman. Our job, however, demanded that we be good salesmen. We had stats that we had to live up to. We had to process so many calls per hour and sell so many tickets per hour etc. and our stats were posted by our respective team leaders weekly. Needless to say that I was below target 9 times out of ten. Overall, I loved my job and while I was always encouraged to do better, I was never warned to raise my stats “or else”.
It came to pass that after some reshuffling and people with lower seniority than myself being let go (some were brought back), my mother and I were among a large group who were furloughed, in other words laid off, in June of 2003. We were to remain on furlough for 5 years with the possibility of being recalled. If we didn’t hear anything for five years, we were considered terminated.
Yesterday, my mother got a recall letter in the mail. I haven’t recieved one I guess because my seniority was lower than hers. She’s thinking about going back. Meanwhile, I’m wondering if I will get a letter and if so, what should I do? I would take a bit of a cut in base pay, but there’s always the commission. Plus, where I work now, I may have the opportunity to make supervisor before long whereas at the airline, I would have a long way to go. I don’t know what benefits are left at the airline, but I think they would still be better plus the travel benefit is still there. I didn’t travel much before, except to Houston, Laredo and Charleston and I alwayse regretted that. My co-workers went to Europe and (especially) Amsterdam very frequently.
Since I don’t know if I will get a letter, there may be no point in wondering, but I can’t help it. I think that I should go back to the airline, but my senses tell me I’d be better off where I am. One thing that I forgot to mention is that my commute is about half of what it would be with the airline job and there would be no interstate travel. Also, with my current schedule, I have weekends off. With the airline, I’d have to bid for a new schedule roughly every quarter.
I dunno. I’m just sorta thinking aloud here. Another positive with the airline is that it was a gay friendly atmosphere. I had a pic of TGCpartner on my desk every day and sometimes it seemed that hardly a week went by that I didn’t find out somebody else at the office was gay. I also had my partner on my travel plan.
I dunno.
ThatGayConservative 