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ADMRNELSON
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Have you ever worked for a 'Scrooge', and what was the cheapest thing they ever did?
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This one should be easy. Pick a company, almost any company. Most are scrooges now. Remember when you would get a certificate for a turkey? How about that Christmas bonus? Christmas party. Over at CC they gave a portion of the tickets to KOST's private listener party at Disneyland to their employees and called it a Christmas Party. Hey, Disneyland is great, but it's not a Christmas party. Oh hey, you can get Christmas off now, just spend 12 hours a day recording shows for the week leading up to your time off. At least there weren't any huge reductions in staff like the last 7 or 8 Decembers...
Merry Christmas to all!
Calguy
Merry Christmas to all!
Calguy
Top Ten market story. The GM went into the "prize closet" a few days before Christmas and gave us all "prizes". I got a cigarette lighter with the station logo on it. I don't smoke. Another guy got a sleeve of 6 golf balls with the station logo on them. He doesn't play golf. Virtually the entire staff got cheesy, remote give-away stuff they had no use for.
Smaller market story. I was hired to do nights, 10 p - 2 a. First night on the job I went to use the restroom, no toilet paper. I won't tell you how I got around that but I did. The all night guy told me that management didn't trust "night people" so they removed the toilet paper at 5 p.m. when they left for the day. You had to bring your own! I left one of my patented lunatic memo's for the GM threatening to use the bathroom window curtains the next time I needed toilet paper, and asking why they hired employees they couldn't trust with such valuable paperwork. Next night, and from then on, there WAS toilet paper!
Smaller market story. I was hired to do nights, 10 p - 2 a. First night on the job I went to use the restroom, no toilet paper. I won't tell you how I got around that but I did. The all night guy told me that management didn't trust "night people" so they removed the toilet paper at 5 p.m. when they left for the day. You had to bring your own! I left one of my patented lunatic memo's for the GM threatening to use the bathroom window curtains the next time I needed toilet paper, and asking why they hired employees they couldn't trust with such valuable paperwork. Next night, and from then on, there WAS toilet paper!
This story comes from a station, then in a top 50 market...a suburban rimshot FM.
The station was always a 2 share or less. I was promoted to mornings (1980) for $200 a week, salary. No overtime. Typically worked 10 hours a day or more. There was never any money spent on promotion...if it was, the employees paid for it out of their own pockets. (No fooling...I put $100 of my own money in with other employees for some TV ads once.)
The General Manager was a trade out king. Rumor around town was he hadn't paid for a meal in 20 years. Traded out expensive conversion vans when he wanted to take a family vacation. And...when the owner came to town, the traffic director would run into the studio in a mad dash and "white out" commercials on the program log that the GM didn't want the owner to see. This happened dozens of times during my employment there, so I know it was not an isolated incident.
I got lucky doing some morning show bits and got the station top 5 in demo (adults 25-49). Asked for and was denied a $10 dollar a week raise. Never made more than $200 a week salary the entire 5 years I worked there.
However, Scrooge got his later. He re-married and his new wife eventually found financial records about his fraudulent billing and trade out practices. When they ended out on the outs, she mailed copies of the billing records to the FCC. He was fired by the owner a short time later.
While I learned a few things about how not to run stations from this guy, and don't hate his memory, I still chuckle with advice from a DJ I would meet later, who told me, "eventually, all of the a------s in his business get theirs."
The station was always a 2 share or less. I was promoted to mornings (1980) for $200 a week, salary. No overtime. Typically worked 10 hours a day or more. There was never any money spent on promotion...if it was, the employees paid for it out of their own pockets. (No fooling...I put $100 of my own money in with other employees for some TV ads once.)
The General Manager was a trade out king. Rumor around town was he hadn't paid for a meal in 20 years. Traded out expensive conversion vans when he wanted to take a family vacation. And...when the owner came to town, the traffic director would run into the studio in a mad dash and "white out" commercials on the program log that the GM didn't want the owner to see. This happened dozens of times during my employment there, so I know it was not an isolated incident.
I got lucky doing some morning show bits and got the station top 5 in demo (adults 25-49). Asked for and was denied a $10 dollar a week raise. Never made more than $200 a week salary the entire 5 years I worked there.
However, Scrooge got his later. He re-married and his new wife eventually found financial records about his fraudulent billing and trade out practices. When they ended out on the outs, she mailed copies of the billing records to the FCC. He was fired by the owner a short time later.
While I learned a few things about how not to run stations from this guy, and don't hate his memory, I still chuckle with advice from a DJ I would meet later, who told me, "eventually, all of the a------s in his business get theirs."
had a GM that spent the money budgeted for a facility move on new office furniture for himself:
we moved equipment in our personal vehicles (as we had no $$$ to rent a truck).
same guy kept our $100 Kroger gift certificates intended as a Chrismas bonus..
others in the cluster did get theirs at the Christmas party: we got nothin' (very uncomforable).
another GM (same city - different decade) would turn the heat or AC off at 5pm on Friday...
turn it back on upon his return Monday morning. same guy was fond of altering time sheets until caught and fired.
we moved equipment in our personal vehicles (as we had no $$$ to rent a truck).
same guy kept our $100 Kroger gift certificates intended as a Chrismas bonus..
others in the cluster did get theirs at the Christmas party: we got nothin' (very uncomforable).
another GM (same city - different decade) would turn the heat or AC off at 5pm on Friday...
turn it back on upon his return Monday morning. same guy was fond of altering time sheets until caught and fired.
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