Regarding free lunches and other benefits for the senior brass, a reader says: "Have any of you ever taken a look at a typical day for any of the top management? These are people who consider themselves lucky if they can get home to see their families after putting in 14- to 16-hour days, trying to find a way to turn the rudder of a huge ship and to save as many newsroom jobs as they can. They do this day in and day out. So the next time that you're down in the cafeteria enjoying your Gannett-subsidized lunch, remember that the people up on the top floor of corporate don't even get a lunch break; if they're lucky, someone brings them a quick bite to eat while they have 10 minutes alone to eat at their desk and prepare for their next appointment. The rest of the time they're usually working through lunch, hosting lunch meetings or board meetings."Join the debate, in the original post.
Not to demean your sacrifice and all, but you should damn well realize that many of the people left in the newsrooms are working under the same conditions as you are and are getting a hell of a lot less for their efforts. And I might add that my lunches always come out of my own pocket since a cafeteria provided by my employer is a laughable fantasy here.
ReplyDeleteRant over.
Well, given the opportunity, I'd work those hours for the return they get for a year and make the money last right into the grave.
ReplyDelete3:03, you beat me to it. The night workers had no subsidized anything. It was always "who'll deliver and how fast, or who can we spare to pick up the food" which we then ate while we put the paper out.
ReplyDelete"Gannett-subsidized lunch?" Where is this happening? Certainly not at any of the properties I know of.
ReplyDeleteFrom top to bottom in any building, there are "newspaper people" and then there are "people who work at a newspaper."
ReplyDeleteThe "newspaper people" are the ones you would pick if your building burnt down and you had to print your next edition in 12 hours at a plant four hours away.
These are the people who go to work in horrible weather, off their shift, because they know the work has to be done. The publishers who are in the mailroom Saturday nights when the insert line is feeding doubles again. The people in finance who pass on a tip about a new business in town to advertising. The sports guy who delivered a missed paper because a customer somehow got his number.
Unfortunately, when we have to cut positions, some "newspaper people" get cut too. It's sad we lose staff, but tragic to lose the true newspaper believers.
As far as the "people who just work at a newspaper," we'll call the fire department for you after we put this edition to bed.
Lunch?
ReplyDeleteI work at least 12 hours a day, generally don't get a real day off - 4 hours on a Sunday is my day off, and haven't taken a vacation since I don't know when, much less a lunch break.
ReplyDeleteAin't nobody bringin' me "a quick bite to eat."
Hell, I'd be satisfied with 10 minutes alone at my desk.
If I were getting paid what the "top management" is bringing down, I might not be so testy about their pathetic whining about their overwork.
Since I'm not....
Oh boo hoo. Everyone who enters management in Gannett knows what they're getting into. It's never been a picnic. They take those jobs for better pay and benefits -- much better than the grunts get. Someone once said: Life is easy -- you decide what you want and then decide what you're willing to pay for it. Gannett management seems to be open to anyone willing to make the necessary sacrifices, whether or not they really have the capacity to be managers.
ReplyDeleteEveryone works12-14 only some of us only get paid for 8 according to the timecards we are forced to falsify.
ReplyDeleteWhere is this cafeteria? I mean, other than USA Today?
ReplyDelete3:38 PM, there isn't one.
ReplyDeleteThe cafeteria is closed at USAT. No food after 2 p.m. A cost-cutting measure. Starve the night staff. The folks who actually put out the paper, don't see their families, etc. When we moved here, they promised us the moon. Well, we sure got the Moon, didn't we!
ReplyDeleteCafeteria?
ReplyDeleteMore like a breakroom with messy sink, putrid refrigerator, dirty microwave and a full-price snack machine.
If they're silly enough to think for one minute that hosting meetings is going to turn the rudder on that huge ship, fire 'em. It's going to take real work, not meetings.
ReplyDeletePoor babies. I just hope they leave me one of their Beamers, Porsches or Lexuses when they drop dead from overwork.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to be more sympathetic, but too many of them are the kind of people who would prompt me to call the police if I ever saw one of them standing outside my front door.
There was a staffed and low-cost cafeteria at the Courier-Journal. It was replaced with "You'll never know the difference" vending machines... oh, about a year ago. Everyone noticed the difference.
ReplyDeleteIs there still a cafeteria at Florida Today? How about gas for the top execs?
ReplyDeleteSubsidized lunch? Cafeteria? Place to quietly enjoy your lunch? Clean environment? 12-14 hour days with poor pay and shitty increases if at all! That original post on this subject from one of the empty suit butt holes in Virginia is typical of the type of idiots in "corporate management." They have no clue whatsoever and never did. Corporate people get days off that all of the real newspaper properties don't!!! How many paid holidays are given @ corporate? versus the real workers out here in the field. Do the people in corporate work in filthy, dirty unhealthy work conditions? Are their bathroom facilities disgusting and dirty? Are their carpets dirtier than the sewers outside on the streets? Give me a break!!!!!! Want to see the stock rise more? Clean out the drones from corporate. Get rid of Craig and you'll really see a rally!!
ReplyDeleteWhat's a lunch? I can't afford that - and I don't get time to eat it if I did. Hell, I barely have time to leave my desk to go to the bathroom.
ReplyDeleteLiquid lunches favored in my shop. We all know something is up when the brass disappears, usually to the Ruby Tuesday's down the road, for discussions of our future over screaming orgasms (Kahlua, vodka, Irish Cream and Amaretto) and shrimp diablo. Knowing their rectitude, I am sure it is all properly expensed.
ReplyDeleteI love how this 'top exec' sits at his/her desk at 2:59pm and has the time to write a short novel...oh wait, or is that in-between all of the lunch/board meetings? Please, 'top exec', spare us of your pity party and go collect your bonus check and then go lay off your dispensable employee who helps you earn your bonuses. Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteWow, I actually shed a tear at the thought of all those hard-working executives toiling away in the trenches, never seeing their families, their soot-filled lungs aching from so many hours down in the mine. And the pay, well, we all know Gannett executives make next to nothing. Thank you for alerting all of use to this travesty.
ReplyDelete8/14/2008 4:15 PM
ReplyDeleteYes, Florida Today still has a cafeteria that is ran by an outside vendor. No free lunches there. No one has been able to purchase or get free company gas for the last 6 months. They had a tank leak and had to pull the tanks out of the ground.
Florida Today has a cafeteria that is ran by an outside vendor that will eventually give some one there salmonella poisoning.
ReplyDeleteThe gas tanks are about a month away from re-opening. Too bad there won't be anyone there to use it.
As far as our top executives being there late... What a crock of shit. I've been there sometimes from 7am to 10pm and watched everyone of them run out the door before 6.
Hahahahaha! This is funnier than Conan!!!
ReplyDeleteLove this quote "trying to find a way to turn the rudder of a huge ship and to save as many newsroom jobs as they can"... Sorry, Bud, but that rudder fell off a couple decades ago. It's more like trying to duck & cover their a**es while the G-bomb goes off.
Then there's "So the next time that you're down in the cafeteria enjoying your Gannett-subsidized lunch, remember that the people up on the top floor of corporate don't even get a lunch break;"... WTF?!!! Gannett subsidized lunch at our "Cafe" consists of pricey vending machines with choices in the sausage food group and other things you wouldn't throw at a mean cur (including management! LOL). Our "cafeteria" is empty because everyone is eating at their desks or in their cars on the way to an assignment or, heck, probably in the john...
This one's a beaut: "if they're lucky, someone brings them a quick bite..." That someone is probably the exhausted secretary who works 19 hours a day and is on-call for her inept, dysfunctional boss 24/7.
This reply from the reader is so classic, Jim, because it reflects the pandemic hubris of upper management. So f-ing clueless...
If you're all so unhappy, quit. I've worked at my gannett site for years and we only have vending machines in the lunchroom. So what. Bring a lunch or order out. You people need to get out into the real world and mingle with society.
ReplyDeleteAT&T and the "Baby Bells" have been going thru this layoff hell for years. I bet they didn't blog all their woes for the entire world to read. If there's no money coming into the business, how do you expect them to pay us?
It's not personal. And yes, we have had layoffs and buyouts too. It hurts, but we deal with it and move on.
Grow up. This is the real world.
I have always admired this in at least the exec editor at my paper.
ReplyDeleteHe is often in around 6:30 and leaves most often after 7. Sure they make more money, but being on call 24-7 and pulling 60-70 hour weeks for 48-50 weeks a year is pretty tough. Sort of overshadows the women that complains about her 41 hour workweek and not getting OT.
I once got two bags of chips, for the price of one, in our vending machine. Thanks Gannett for lunch!
ReplyDeletemore meetings?????
ReplyDeleteShut up and get to work. I've been in your meetings and had to listen to you stroke your own egos for hours. Do you people have any idea how inefficient you really are?
Thank God most of you aren't around at deadline, or we'd be a weekly newspapr!
Please quit...walk out the door now...don't finish your shift...make our company a lot better..crap on the floor on your way out...it will be a pleasure to clean it up just to get rid of you...you whinning negative people need to go work for state govtment..better yet...go open your own business and depend on your skills to make it work...finally you will work to earn your paycheck....your days of making it look like you're busy are over...1 newsie for each 1000....good ridance...
ReplyDeleteHey, 10:15: AT&T and the Baby Bells workers had to bitch out loud or at home ... look at it this way: Blogs are a great outlet and it just might keep you from hearing your fellow co-workers from saying shit out loud about you!
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure why you think we're not supposed to bitch just because we're grownups. Take off your rose-colored glasses, wake up and realize your company DOESN'T CARE ABOUT YOU.
You know how I know they don't care about you? Because for two years, I've worked for a company that still does care about its employees, and isn't afraid to let us know the bad news. At least we don't think we're being left in the dark.
But I guess you think we (I say "we" because I've lost enough from my Gannett 401k) should all just shut up and be grateful for a paycheck ... oh, wait, you're one of the ones who gets out after 7.5 hours and has one of the few honest time sheets at Gannett.
Lol. I think we have a pretty dedicated executive editor, but I'll be damned if he EVER works 60-70 hours. Now, middle managers, that's a different story - and ain't no one in my shop in middle management working less than 70 hour weeks. I WISH for 60. That would be heaven. Jeez.
ReplyDeleteFor the record - corporate gets the following holidays:
ReplyDeleteJan 1
Memorial Day
July 4th
Labor Day
Thanksgiving
xMas
We also get three "floating" holidays.
New employees get two weeks of vacation, with a third week added at 5 years, a fourth week added at 10 years, and a fifth week added at 25 or 30 years (can't remember).
I don't know if/how this compares to the field.
Free lunches and other perks aside, a lot of people at all levels work through lunch or dinner; work 12 or 14-hour days, sometimes until midnight or later; get called at home, or asked to come in on their day off; or even go 10 or 12 days without a day off. And the circumstances usually aren't as grandiose as "trying to turn the rudder of a huge ship."
ReplyDeleteThe notion that people at the top levels of management work harder or suffer more than anybody else is at best misguided, and at worst arrogant. When it comes to sacrifice and hard work at a newspaper, I'd hold off on handing out medals to any particular group. There won't be nearly enough to go around.
To 10:15pm (and everyone else):
ReplyDeleteBelieve it or not, I've done some mingling in this thing you call the "real world" and I've found businesses that are actually growing in this economy and have things like "subsidized cafeterias." VERY nice ones, in fact.
We can whine about the economy and market trends all we want, but the reason why newspapers are failing is because those in charge don't appreciate the fact that they are in the NEWSPAPER business and in order to be successful they have to concentrate on two areas: the NEWS and the PAPER.
Concentrating on the NEWS involves investing in people who are able to break, actual NEWS stories and are able to tell those stories concisely and vividly through the printed word on PAPER. The PAPER will not sell like it should unless it contains NEWS stories that can be found nowhere else.
Concentrating on the PAPER involves investing in sales people who are able to build relationships with local businesses and sell them on our PAPER product. I've been on too many sales calls in the last two years where the sales people have done nothing but run down our PAPER product. Crazy, I know, but this attitude is cultivated in them by their superiors.
They also need to invest in people who are capable of making the PAPER product look as good as it possibly can. Good design gives the NEWS clarity and punch. Our papers today are little more than ads with stories built around them. Consumers are not idiots. They see this and they refuse to bother with it. Why should they?
The Powers That Be have totally given up on newspapers and that is why newspapers are dying. TPTB want to be Online Information Gathering Centers. Why? Because to their ill-informed, obtuse, sheepish way of thinking it's the cheap and easy way of the future. And besides all the cool kids are doing it. But if any one of them had a clue, or the guts to expose the king, he or she might begin to ask obvious questions like these in their corporate pow-wows:
"Why does a consumer need us to gather information for them when they can do it for themselves, and if they are under twenty, they can do it better?"
(The truth is most of what we have in our papers and on our sites is just a regurgitation of stories that most people have seen on Yahoo News a day or even possibly a week before.)
"So where or what is our product?"
(At some point, in order to stay in business, we actually have to have a product that consumers feel they need or at least want. The internet is a fickle thing. A site that's HOT one month can be ice-cold the next. Is that the basket in which we want all our eggs? Certainly, use the internet, but do it to in service to the product not at the expense of the product.)
OK. QUICK QUIZ:
What's our product?
The NEWSPAPER.
That's NEWS and PAPER.
Don't forget either.
Write it down if you have to, remind your boss every chance you get and, hey, with any luck we'll ALL be able to one day enjoy our lunch in these fabled "company-subsidized cafeterias."
You know what's horrible about this situation? Farking health insurance.
ReplyDeleteThere are, at a random guess, two or three thousand employees *at minimum* out of the 46K (or at this point, probably closer to 44K before the latest buyouts/layoffs) who would happily, gleefully, joyfully walk away from GCi today to roll the dice on their own creative, innovative, ground-breaking ideas on how to do media in the new age.
You know why they can't? Health ***ing insurance. They have spouses, they have children, they have pre-existing conditions (things as ordinary as chronic heartburn) that would make get them turned down by any private insurer you can find, for anything less than confiscatory rates.
Please God, let the new adminstration and new Congress fix this mess and unleash the massive creative, entrepreneurial energy in this country that is now literally shackled by a broken, inefficient, ghastly overpriced insurance and health system.
As a former Gannett exec, when you "buck" any director at a paper in ANY way....you are OUT. No matter if you've moved your family across the country for the "opportunity". By "bucking", I mean: refusing to falsify monthly accounting reports so that unprojected windfalls could be allocated on a "when we need it" basis OR (second example) having objects thrown at you by a director because she "doesn't want to deal with you anymore". As a non-exec, you can run to HR. Does no good when you're in a exec position. If you stand your ground, you should also prepare to leave. There was a time at some Gannett properties where the above would never happen to someone, but those days are OVER and have been for awhile.
ReplyDeleteAdditional comment form 8.15.08 8:47, What I failed to say is that it became increasingly difficult to "cook the books" in a region when advertising took a complete nosedive due to economic reasons, etc. That inability has greatly contributed to the stock decline. As one Comptroller put it, we need to move this money at the request of the Regional pres. They have prepared the stock holders for a certain thing and the additional revenue can be used later on when it's needed (to bolster stock performance, to bolster regional pres bonus??). All of these things are quite inappropriate.
ReplyDeleteSubsidized GCI cafeteria lunches? They've never existed for the common folks. Management: cut out your free hot or cold lunches - anything you want to order from the menu - and get some exercise and walk downstairs to the GCI cafeteria to feed yourselves - you make the salaries to buy your own lunches. Let your executive assistants walk down to get them - and cut out their free lunches too - some are even taking leftovers home and/or ordering for two to share with friends/family.
ReplyDeleteTo 11:09 (from 10:15)
ReplyDelete"oh, wait, you're one of the ones who gets out after 7.5 hours and has one of the few honest time sheets at Gannett."
For the record, I'm on call 24/7 and I work 55+ hrs a week.
To 12:49
You're absolutely right on with your thought process. Hang in there.