Whisper of the axe

 

Well, the news was bad.

My Bride's position will be cut. We just don't know how hard.

Mind you, she was just one of the three out of ten people who got the axe today. She described it as "Body after body goes into the principal's office, shuts the door, comes out sad."

It's worth noting that the heaviest cuts fell on the most junior, lowly-paid staff. Which is pretty infuriating when you think that the body of one Assistant Deputy Superintendant For Paperclip Procurement would probably keep four of those people at work in the trenches where they will be doing some good.

But that's the way outfits like public schools work, and the deal we made.

The real problem now is that we don't know how hard this will hit us.

If she gets knocked back to 0.8 or 0.6FTE? It'll be hard but we can probably make it for another five years until my Social Security kicks in.

But if it's 0.2FTE? Fuck, we're hosed.

So the bottom line is that I may have had the world's shortest retirement.

That sucks. But what can you do? We can't bargain or appeal; the District will do what it will do, and we wil have to suffer what we must.

UPDATE 2/3/22: Well...the bad news is...less bad than we feared.

The Bride's position is being reduced to 0.5FTE. That lets her keep our major medical - which means losing vision and dental; a shoutout to the "best health care system in the world", what, eyes and teeth aren't "heahtcare" you sorry fucks? - and she might have another 0.1-0.25FTE as a "float".

That's bad. But it's not "the worst", it's not the 0.2FTE that would sink us.

So while it's bad we all have the Plague...at least we won't have the Plague AND be living out of our cars.