OUCH indeed. Bummer that you've been shafted so hard Lee. I think all of us have been there at one time or another. I've two such tales that come to mind.
1. In college, I'm working part time as a car wash for a car rental company that I'll not name (but they share a label with a certain decorated line of ships that travel the seas and the stars). Company had a big in house contest going on, major prizes for offices that had lowest losses, highest earnings, that sort of thing. The office I worked at scored tops in four out of the six categories, including cleanest cars (my doing alone). The day prizes were to be awarded, it was announced that ONLY full time employees would take part in winnings, but part timers were S.O.L.
And for some silly reason, they were shocked that I gave notice the following month to go make media, buffer and wash test tubes in a research lab working on Hepatitus A/B/C genome replication.
2. While in the Bloodmines of Boulder, it was announced by the bigwigs that there would be a bonus for all employees, as much as 30% of the years salary for some. Much rejoicing was heard in offices, cubicals and production suites. Until it was learned that the bonus program would only apply to SALARIED employees. Hourly workers were considered just plug & play drones with little skill or worth. Never mind that 99% of the hourly staff had at least a B.S. in the hard sciences (Bio, Chem, a few Engineers just out of school) and we were the ones who actually ran the process that turned salt, sugar, water and air into human hemoglobin. The managers and supervisors (all former "drones" themselves) went to bat and got a bonus for the hourly staff, but it was not long after that those hourly staff, with better than 100 collective years of experince in the industry, started leaving for greener pastures, I among them. New staff tried, but they could not control the process as well, contamination issues arose and today another firm is using the facility to produce other sorts of proteins.
