Double Speak Decoded

Straight on the heels of the USDOL announcement regarding their bitch-slap of It's Greek To Me, Inc. dba GTM Sportswear comes this email from Da Big Cheez. We'll attempt to interpret the true meaning behind the words.

Greetings GTMr’s!

As most of you know we have had a ton of wins and good news recently. In the midst of all of this, however, we had some bad publicity today, and if you hear anything  I wanted to make sure that all of you have the full story.

Last summer the Dept Of Labor visited us for an audit. We learned that our inside sales reps, which we have classified as “exempt” for years, are actually supposed to be non-exempt, meaning that they are to be paid overtime.

When our reps were hired, due to our seasonality, we explained that there would be some weeks that would just require 40 hours per week, but in the fall it could be considerably more than that. We planned on it being an average of 43 hours per week for the year, and put them on salary accordingly. That was the deal going in and everyone knew it.

Actually, everyone did not know "this is the deal" because we reworked the commission structure for existing and new hires 3 times trying to get it to benefit us, not you. You performed above and beyond expectations each time we did this and continued to make a ton of money for us and far more money than we wanted to pay you. We finally just put you all on salary and called you exempt from state and federal labor laws.

We cooperated fully with the DOL and paid back wages to all those affected. We’ve also modified how they are paid to fully comply with the DOL. As a result there were no fines levied by the DOL. They admitted that this part of their “law” is the most widely misinterpreted violation that they find, but it is what it is.

"Law"? In quotes? As in, "I question the validity of a law that prevents me from stealing from my employees?" Speechless. We're f-ing speechless.

We had no knowledge that they were going to announce this at this time, or even at all.  We completed everything in 2012 and we thought everyone had moved on. It’s ironic to me that this came out a day before, by a federal department,  our big job announcement that is associated with the State of Kansas, run by a different political party. I’m not suggesting anything other than I’m glad to continue to choose to stay out of politics…

We had no knowledge that they were going to announce this because we didn't know that federal records are PUBLIC RECORDS and we don't "do" public, we are a privately held company that thinks it can do whatever it wants and no one says boo about it.
 
I’m extremely proud of our track record of always doing the right thing. It doesn’t mean that we don’t mistakes, but I think our Leadership team and company as a whole is as transparent as you can get. We walk the walk. I’m equally as proud of all of you as well for being a part of a great company. As we grow, we will have more naysayers out there that resent our growth and are convinced that it must be due to shortcuts.  There is a saying “People like to see others do well….but not too well”.

But when we make mistakes, we will find someone further up or down the food chain to blame it on and either fire them or make them so miserable they quit. We are transparent, except when we hire outside sales reps knowing they have non-compete clauses with a previous employer. We are transparent, except when the state calls us on our unethical behavior---and Dave, we love to see GTM, or any local company, do well, just not at the expense of the people that make it do well.

In the end, people like to judge each other, but I don’t think that is our role here on earth. Our own self-conscious works fine if we listen to it. I’m going to stick with that.

Try conscience Dave. Or let someone proof read this garbage before you send it out.