Wonkette
Man remember back when there was this thing called “the dole,” and you could live on it forever while you traveled the country on freight trains, singing hobo medleys and strumming on a banjo? All that changed when Ronald Reagan came to office and cracked down on Welfare Queens, with their diamonds and furs and pink Cadillacs. But if you were a reasonably good employee who got laid off, you could still expect a pittance from the government while you looked for a new job. Not anymore, parasites!
Employers are disputing more unemployment claims than ever, perhaps because new “systems” make it easier for them to track who’s collecting unemployment on their dime, or perhaps because they don’t want their unemployment insurance premiums to rise HMMMM?
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Kenneth M. Brown, who lost his job as a hotel electrician in October.
He began collecting benefits of $380 a week but then discovered that his former employer, the owners of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, were appealing to block his unemployment benefits. The hotel alleged that he had been fired for being deceptive with a supervisor.
“A big corporation like that. . . . It was hard enough to be terminated,” he said. “But for them to try to take away the unemployment benefits — I just thought that was heartless.”
After a Post reporter turned up at the hearing, the hotel’s representative withdrew the appeal and declined to comment.
An employer’s unemployment insurance costs rise as more laid-off employees start collecting. So if they contest the employees’ right to collect, they stand a chance of keeping their costs down. And any businessperson with half a brain will tell you that controlling costs is one of the keys to staying afloat in hard times, which is why Ken Layne only lets us put one lump of coal in the stove every four hours.
Out of Work and Challenged on Benefits, Too [Washington Post]
I’m disappointed. A guy who works for a company called “Gaylord” should certainly be able to count on Republicans to help him out, don’t you think?
I guess employers and their accounting depts prefer crazed desperate gunman to go on a rampage through the company headquarters while screaming “I am the destroyer of worlds” then shell out money for employment benefits that would have gone to the CEO’s hooker sprees.
A continuation of the wonderful short term thinking and unthinking of consequences that got us into this mess.
“And any businessperson with half a brain…”
Ooh, where can I find them?
I want to hear Jim Newell say “Please sir, may I have some more?”
Whydja hafta run dat pictcha? Now I’m hungry! I was supposed to last anudda tree days.
cal: Jim is long past that part of the Oliver Twist continuum. He’s now at the point on the curve where Oliver is interning for the mortician and being fed left over dog food.
Stop complaining about your working conditions or Ken will just replace you with some of those Oakies that are hanging around outside your office every morning looking for work.
A friend in Texas lost her unemployment because her boss showed that she hadn’t always written anything in the supposedly optional Comments section at the bottom of her time sheet.
Your honor, BigMegaCorp Inc. would like to dispute Mr. Henderson’s right to collect unemployment benefits. It is our contention that Mr. Henderson was not laid off, but rather was fired with cause when on December 17, 2007 he prepared a brand new, 12 cup pot of coffee at 4:17 pm, a mere 43 minutes before closing. When the office doors closed shortly thereafter, fully one half of the pot had to be poured out. Such wasteful disregard for company assets could simply not be tolerated and following a year-long investigation of the incident he was finally relieved of his duties this past January.
Terry:
I worry for those who didn’t wear more than 15 pieces of flair.
Good news! Disgruntled workers plus the big bump in weapons sales that Hopey’s election seemed to trigger should open up an investment opportunity in the bullet proof vest market.
Hello, gruel world.
What? In Wonketteville you have Hobo Beans, a stove AND lumps of coal????
I want to go to there.
Too bad Canuckistani EI payouts won’t cover the Amtrak ticket.
ManchuCandidate: …kinda like THIS! Nothing says recession/depression like a man wearing a trench coat slowly and methodically walking down the aisles of his former place of employment, pumping people full of hollow points with a high powered assault rifle, all the while humming the theme of “The Price is Right”.
So the guy dragged a Post reporter to his hearing, and they caved? Man, I wish I had my own Post reporter to tag around my job, ready to write a glaring exposé at a moment’s notice of anything bad happening to me! They should be cheap to hire, too, after print media dies, next week.
Those hobo beans look incredibly large and shiny. More like milk duds or small dog turds preserved in formaldehyde. Or perhaps they’re just GM to the point that merely being in their presence has oncogenic potential. kidney beans; more like kidney cancer beans!
veeeeeeeery ’spicious.
With global warming I didn’t have to heat up my lump of coal this morning. I had it for breakfast instead. It is natural and alters my carbon footprint to a different biological region. Tomorrow I’ll eat the NYT story of legislators grilling banker CEOs!
People used to live off Bob Dole? No wonder he’s so cranky all the time.
DoctorCulturae: And you can use your poop for charcoal if you decide to splurge and cook roadkill raccoon.
Serolf Divad: …ironically that probably could get your fired in many places; however nosediving your flaming and battered bank into the ground, hence causing a global financial nuclear holocaust gets you a 10 million dollar bonus! HOORAY FOR ‘FREE MARKETS’!!!
mattbolt: If only! My life would be so different. I mean, I’d have no more friends, but I’d leak that he was working on a piece about how my loved ones have abandoned me, and I’m sure they’d come crawling back.
4tehlulz: You sir are a creative genius! Raccoons not plentiful, but pigeons?! Ah delectable delicacies await! Where is Dame Peggeth Nooningtonsquirehamptonshirerothschild to join me in the festivities? Dear oh dear, puh-leeze don’t be a denby. Be a do bee. Pull up a plastic crate, tuck a plastic bag napkin in your knickers and enjoy!
Sounds like Post writers also have too much time on their hands.
Terry: Sounds perfectly plausible. Not sensible, but plausible - when bureaucracies reach a certain mass they accumulate enough situational rules to completely contradict themselves for every occasion.
You have coal?
You’re lucky! My boss makes us burn aborted fetuses for heat.
Here’s one for you youngsters:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1079598/jimmie_rodgers_hobo_bills_last_ride/
Lock and load, fuckers!
DoctorCulturae: Legislators are grilling bank CEOs? Tasty! But I would barbecue, not grill.
“A big corporation like that. . . . It was hard enough to be terminated,” he said. “But for them to try to take away the unemployment benefits — I just thought that was heartless.”
Wait, this schmo thought that big corporations actually had a heart to begin with? This alone proves that he should have been fired!
Best watch out, they might start handing out peanuts at the unemployment office, then you will just go home and die. Bet there is some Republican bean counter right watching the exterminator go after some poor little mice and going “Hey! I got an idea!”
I’m quite jealous. My boss only allows us to eat the uncooked coal. You should be grateful for what you have.
Wow, no one here knows who the Gaylord family is?
The Gaylord family owns the Daily Oklahoman, commonly known as America’s Worst Newspaper. It’s the Gaylord family political bludgeon. Google around for stories on Okla. Governor David Walters if you want a glimpse of what the Gaylord empire is willing to do to a political enemy.
They’ve managed to maintain something very close to a media monopoly in Oklahoma City and a big chunk of the rest of the state for many years now. A large part of the blame for Okie benightedness rests on Gaylord shoulders.
I’m not at all surprised the a Gaylord company is trying to block unemployment benefits. For years, their newspaper was notorious for paying minimum wage or barely more than that. They’re about the cheapest bunch of skinflints you’ll ever come across.
Coal burns. Coal is momentary and coal is costly. There will be no more coal burned in this office today. (signed) Ken
Sussemilch:
…and Texas has never been particularly worker friendly.
Meh 50% of people who get their benefits contested won’t show up in court. They’re probably too busy shooting squirrels for sustenance. To actually successfully contest the claim would mean getting some lawyers to do something, which costs many dollars. On the other hand, appealing and seeing if the bums make it into court or not is cheap. So yes, they call this a cost-saving measure. I like to call it “fucking bullshit”.
It’s stories like this that make me wonder if the rentboy industry is experiencing a sudden boom…
Well, there goes my five year plan.
My sleazy job re-categorized my position as an internship, as apparently they didn’t have to pay unemployment benefits on it that way.
Pretty soon, we’ll be like China and have no safety net. Wait..that’s not right.
Today, we are all Chinese.
To combat climate change, Ken is switching to Clean Coal. Sorry that it doesn’t exist yet, or ever.
SKS, Ken is just trying to get you to use the CLEAN coal.
I’ve always thought “Gaylord” was the perfect Republican name. It doesn’t get much better than aristocracy and homosexuality in one convenient package.
Come here a minute: Curse you, stealing my joke by a minute.
SpirolinaAgnew: The Gaylord Resorts are a group of hotels owned by Gaylord Entertainment, started in Nashville TN (home of the Grand Ole Opry yeeehaaa). Don’t know if they are owned by the same family you speak of, but the Opryland Hotel is one truly classy place run by truly classless people known far and wide for doing everything they can to ensure our economy sucks, that cheap labor means competing with illegal immigrants and they turned a moneymaking amusement park into a big fucking mall that is going under.
And if that ain’t enough, they were the group that brought you HEE HAW. Fuck them. also.
Terry: I would have appealed the holy hell outta that one.
In my experience, employers simply trick employees into resigning, because a voluntary quit automatically disqualifies an employee from unemployment benefits in my state.
Which is worse? Companies denying unemployment benefits or companies like IBM offering to move their laid off employees to India and pay them Indian wages?
http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/outsourcing/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=213000389
If we take all of our pennies and short sell as much Gaylord Entertainment stock as we can, they might just learn something.
Hobo? I thought you said homo. Never mind.
If you’re low on cash, I recommend the economy size.
Hobo beans? Elitist scum. Down here in Texas we have to get by on Hobo Soup.
Oh for fuck’s sake. HOBO SOUP
mylesfromnowhere: Yes it is most definitely the same family. Until lately, headed by E.K.
Be sure to check out the “Worst Newspaper in America” article from CJR in the endnotes of the wiki link.
Ich bin ein Idiot. HOBO FUCKING SOUP
As an employer who has had occasion to fire people, I know this one goes both ways. Dude I fired once for not showing up for his shifts, and lying to my face about it, had the cajones to apply for unemployment.
I jumped through hoops, bent over backwards, crossed numerous T’s and dotted many I’s to make sure that POS didn’t get a cent from me. If he’d just been a standard deadbeat, I might have let it pass, but guy lied to me.
Lascauxcaveman: The guys’ name wasn’t Bush was it?
DoctorCulturae: That would have made it a lot more satisfying; but no.
But it links back well to my one ongoing political fantasy. That is to be elected president, and then get fired for habitually not showing up for my shift.
I keep trying to clean this coal, and I just can’t seem to get it clean.
What color is it supposed to be anyway, once you get all the black stuff to come off?
snideinplainsight: Remember, everything is white when you get it pure enough and clean enough.
Min: Too true. At that point you have to stand your ground hard and force them to shit-can you. You have to become Bartleby the Scrivener and just sit there and keep saying “I do not care to.”
It’s anxious while you’re doing it but it can pay off. I got two months of severance, when they were sorely hoping to make me so exasperated I would just fall away and piss off. Nothing doing. Give me my fucking money, Tommy.
Here in Austin, Texas, you can call to ask about your benefits but you get a recording “Due to extremely high call volume we are unable to answer your call at this time.”
That agency has actually been hiring people to make up for the staff they laid off in years past to ’streamline government’ and ‘privatize’ these socialist handouts.
Austin now has 38,000 unemployed.
Mr Blifil: Oh God, my English major genes force me to mention that Bartleby’s line was “I would prefer not to.”
hobospacejungle: I will not rest until I can buy one of these.
chascates: Ha! I can now rest:
http://www.vermontcountrystore.com/browse/Home/Food-Candy/Complete-Meals-In-Minutes/Soups/Hobo-Soup/D/30100/P/1:100:1020:10260:100620/I/f06512?searchid=7KA1SRCH&feedid=froogle
chascates: Congratulations! Please report back on the experience.