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I got your bonus, right here

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, March 23, 2009

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The more I find out about the bonuses some people are getting, the more I wonder what one has to do to get bonuses like that. And thanks to AIG, I just keep finding out more and more about their bonuses.

My 30 years in daily newspapers saw the traditional Christmas bonus go from two weeks’ pay to one, to a turkey or ham, to a warm handshake, to the announcement that nobody was getting off for Christmas unless they scheduled it a year in advance and turned in nine timeless features the week before they left.

I find it hard to believe that any of the executives at AIG works harder than a police beat reporter in the nation’s fourth largest city. Do they regularly have to stand outside for hours in the rain/heat/cold at airplane crashes and SWAT scenes? Do they often attend 1000-degree fires on 100-degree days? Are they ever called at 3 a.m. and told to go to an explosion that just happened “somewhere,” and driven wildly into the dark with uncombed hair, hoping they can still see the glow in the sky?

I doubt it.

Obviously, the difficulty of the work has much less bearing on bonuses, than who you work for. I, for example, have worked at some newspapers that have later gone belly-up—RIP, Angleton Times and Houston Post.

But I have never worked at a company that was able to lose $61 billion in one fiscal quarter. Had I worked at a company that lost so much so quickly, I’m sure I’d be getting my half-million dollar retention bonus right now—even if I’d already left that company and gone to one that hasn’t been so spectacularly run into the ground yet.

Most of us probably work harder, and produce more, than the AIG executives in line to get those big bonuses. Sometimes it doesn’t seem fair. But if you look closely, you’ll see that you are getting bonuses. You may not recognize them.

I work quite hard out in my back yard, digging massive holes and planting things and feeding things and lugging buckets and hoses and bags of stuff here and there. It’s dirty, sweaty work. The bonus is citrus, berries, tomatoes, figs and other wonderful edibles, along with great beauty. Not everyone would agree, but I think dirty knees and fingernails are bonuses too.

I work hard preparing food for my family. Every time I do, I am thanked three times over. When I do a really good job, I’m often told, “I love you,” by people who mean it.

The newspaper career? There were tremendous bonuses there, they just weren’t cash. I did work I loved, and did it well, and once in a while was able to affect change for the better, or right a wrong. I had the respect and friendship of most of the people I worked with and for. I met thousands of people who were interesting, and many became friends.

None of my bonuses was ever a half-million dollars. They were priceless.

And the biggest bonus of all is: No angry mobs who would like to drag me out of my mansion and light me on fire.

Those poor AIG execs.

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