Thursday, April 9, 2020

Well, work today changed a lot.

My boss said that the trickle of work we've received the past two weeks is going to be the nadir.  Didn't feel like that today.  I was in this last wave of staggered shifts in my department, sure, but the last 90 minutes felt like hours.  I got so bored that I got tired of going on the Internet.  My bosses understood we got so bored that they said some of the others (I got there too late) could take a second break.  And this is for a four-hour shift.

So, even though I didn't think even my bosses thought this would happen this week, maybe I understand what my boss was saying about being strict about minutes at work ... and about unemployment.  Maybe he is now worried that we won't have enough work.  You see, once we get below 20 minutes hours of work, we lose our benefits (at least that's what he says).  So, maybe our higher-ups are in fact trying to keep us around instead of pushing us out.  Maybe I'm being generous.  After all, with the "encouragement" we're getting to go on unemployment, it kind of feels as if my bosses, and thus the company, is trying to game the system, and I didn't think that was going to happen, especially after what I consider to be a rah-rah, rally-around-the-company e-mail we all received last week.

But the writing's on the wall.  We're getting 50% of our paycheck for the time being.  I would be OK with 60%, but seeing as if we're not going to get an uptick on work for some time, I don't think I want to be pulling half of my paycheck for the intermediate future.

One sweetener to accepting unemployment: I didn't pay attention to the part of the stimulus plan where everyone on the dole gets $600 dollars a week on top of the determined unemployment benefit.  See, I talked about that with my boss yesterday; I looked at the Minnesota Unemployment Insurance website and that $600 part wasn't sussed out yet, but I looked at that site again today (at work) and it said, plainly, that whatever we're getting, we get an extra $600 on top of that.  That's ... extraordinary.  I still don't believe it.  Minnesota is, thank Buddha, more generous than other states when it comes to UI, and I still wasn't able to pull down a whole lot of money.  (And frankly, I didn't believe it when my boss told me that was the deal, even though the state UI website still says they were hammering out details.  I think I have more experience being on the dole than he does, so I need to forgive myself for not being able to, uh, imagine that such largess would be possible.  He thinks I don't get it.  Whatever, man.)

Add up those factors and I should be applying right now.  One problem: That thing about telling my parents about UI at dinner yesterday?  Yeah, well, I couldn't do that.  And I couldn't fess up today either.  A combination of Father being kind of a dick and the news about 10 million people filing and, well, it didn't seem like the right time.  Tomorrow, though, the last day this week I can apply, and after I get home super early ... well, maybe I won't tell my parents this week either. ...

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