Two managers intimidated 200 employees to conduct unbecoming during the pandemic. The employee's pay was cut by 80%. Half were furloughed. The employees feared for livelihoods which in the best of times was $300 a month.
The managers earned thirty times the local wage. The industry was hospitality, the brand was international. The manager's, expatriates, employees, local, who could have called an international hotline identified in the twenty-four-page ethics briefing that they did not receive.
The owners arrived to ride out the pandemic in sun-baked climes. They had been gifted commercial real estate in the nation's capital thirty years earlier with $20 million a year in free cash flowing out of the pockets of tourists resting hindquarters on land reclaimed from the sea. Thinking about that number a little harder, $600 million as the crow flies, begs the question of the need to furlough employees at all. The run rate for the island properties was $1 million a month.
The expatriate managers' arms shortened in the decision to air-condition empty rooms but lengthened when helping themselves to the supply chain. Preserve the budgets. Turn off the chillers. Fire those that knew better. But not the landscapers who were essential unless the owners wanted to restore ownership to the designs of nature. The price of $12 million a year to keep the reptiles at bay in a locale 80% dependent on the foreign hind quarter seemed a small tribute for the blessings of generations past.
The managers' thinking went to their own backsides as headquarters relieved of vice presidents with ample title and curious duties. The owners rose at noon to consume the choicest champagne poolside delivered by the non-furloughed staff sacrificing 80% of their pay for the privilege. The revelers remained long enough to gift the pandemic they carted from urban enclosures before decamping for a foreign adventure.
The new country head of the international brand was alarmed but reticent until roused by a duty manager to contend with the empty bottles and glasses that greeted the swimmers in the beachside pool on a new year morning on which the resident manager could not be found.
There was mutiny nigh on the Bounty.
Comments