Signs & Portents

Work at the call center has been slow. That, in and of itself, is not news. It’s usually slow in December and January. After election season—our busiest time of the year—things typically drop off until the early spring. Due to the state of the economy in general, however, things have been abnormally slow. The kinds of companies that usually provide us with even a little bit of work in the winter aren’t doing so this year.

It’s got to the point where the owner (to whom I’ve colloquially referred as ‘The Big RT’ in the past) has taken some fairly drastic action. For example:

* We’ve lowered the starting wage at the call center by 50¢ per hour. We’ve actually done this before. When things have become tight, we’ve temporarily lowered the starting wage, then raised it again when things become busy. This helps control the number of applicants we get. However,
* We are also now under a hiring freeze. We’ve never done this before, not in the 6+ years I’ve been with the company, anyway. The freeze went into effect in mid-December, then was lifted for a few days at the beginning of January. Now we’re frozen again.
* We usually offer a $50 referral bonus to employees who recommend their friends and family to us. This has now been eliminated as well.
* Perhaps most surprisingly, there is now a moratorium on raises, too. We traditionally offer employees a 50¢ per hour raise after they complete their probationary period, with additional raises ever 90 days after that. The probationary raise is still in effect, but the quarterly raises have now been suspended.

All of these changes are in effect until further notice. I don’t know how long that will be, but based on what I’ve heard my boss say, these measures aren’t going to change any time soon.

To quote Han Solo, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.