In a further sign of how bad things are getting over here, BBDO Detroit is granting its 450 staff a four week furlough… Which is Capitalism Speak for four weeks off, without pay. As one commentator put it… “BBDO staffers might want to ask themselves, is getting a European-style four weeks vacation this year really all that bad? Only the U.S. forces its employees to work like slaves with only two weeks off a year. Perhaps it is time for America to come into line with international standards and give workers a decent level of minimum vacation time.”
What this cretin conveniently forgets is that when all those socialist workers get up to six weeks vacation every year… They actually get paid. And lets not get into all that maternity leave and free health care stuff. Bloody communists. Next thing you know they’ll be stopping European workers from owning assault rifles and bazookas.
Meanwhile, back at BBDO’s parent company, Omnicom, they’ve lost $685 million in the first quarter of 2009. At least, all the Omnicom heavies, including CEO John Wren, have taken big pay cuts, unlike the charlatans at Interpublic who after particularly pathetic results received big pay raises and multi-million dollar bonuses.
And let’s not get into Sir Martins projected $94 million five year bonus package from WPP. As my old Mum used to say… It’s the rich wot gets the gravy, it’s the poor wot gets the blame.
two weeks paid holiday per year and high levels of fire-arm ownership - stress relieving high school massacre anyone?
Full Metal Jacket?
It's just another day's work in the Middle East.
A friend of mine from Lebanon told me how his mum picked him up from school one day driving through crossfire to collect him. 15 years later she still can't get in a car.
We had a tank parked outside the compound with a ring of armed soldiers 24/7 in Riyadh. Bomb protection squads checking under cars in and out of barbed wire compounds. I even drove past an Al Queda shoot-out as the building was smouldering from Saudi government troops infiltrating the building. Gunfire was often heard in the city at night. It's all in a days work. That's how the other half llive.
Life must go on. Most important thing was the ads were delivered on time.
That's one helluva courier Kevin !!
George, you hit it dead centre. I'm no major lefty but the 'workers rights' - blue, brown, white, pink, yeller collar or shirt - in the US suck more than just rotten eggs.
As for dodging bullets? Thankfully, I've never had to. Heard them in the distance while in Uganda last year. And I'm going back to do more this year. A recession holiday... go away and do something for someone else and come back feeling a little better for doing it. Did it with a small charity called www.zest4kidz.com (or is it .ie).
Hi John,
Omar, one of the Art Directors, told me when his family worked in a southern state of Africa where his dad was a Lebanese Civil Engineer: "One night, three burglars broke in the house with Machete's, seriously injured my uncle, stabbed my aunt, and tried to kill me. The only thing between me and them was a shotgun, so I fired it, by the time the police came (30 seconds) they were running away.
Apparently the police shot and killed all three of them. They do not shoot to mame because it's too much paperwork, so they shoot to kill. This is the world we live in outside the safety of the Northern Hemisphere.
A friend who was a bank inspector for Citibank told me how when working in South America, he would often have to take a different route to work each day to dodge the bullets on the way to and from the office as rival gangs had a shoot-out.
A native South African kept a Chameleon on the front gate because they don't like to rob a house with a Chamelion. They believe it has some terrible mystic power.
Take great care my friend.
George Parker
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