This furlough that I have been given is BS. How is it that making loads of money from Seven seas and building all these new rides and a whole building for the corporate people, but when a crisis like this comes, you can't pay your employees or have us keep our insurance? Disney has no problem paying their employees til the 18th. You expect us to just sit at home and wait til you tell us we can return back to work? Meanwhile some of us might be homeless and have no food. Some of us live paycheck to paycheck. Some of us have health conditions where we need medication every day to stay alive. Nice moves SeaWorld. I for one hope to land another job and never go back to that sh– show. Working there has opened my eyes to just how well they "value" their employees.
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And what would you say to the hundreds/thousands of companies who are going through this now that don't have to deal with Scott Ross on their board?
I feel like the “this would have happened even if Scott Ross wasn’t here” post was an amazing piece of satire. I laughed for a good 20+ minutes. I hope you aren’t a higher up at the company because you are way the f— out of touch with reality.
To all who say it’s not the company’s fault, rumor has it they were planning major layoffs before the virus even came into play. Now this will be a good excuse to cover their greed and selfishness.
I've got news for those that are complaining...
Yes, management has been poor. Yes, its a very unfortunate situation. Yes, SR is a known a-hole.
That being said... you are not the only employees going through this. This is not the only company trying to bounce back from debt and poor decisions.
If you dont know, understand that businesses have a cash on hand amount that if operations ceased, the would have X amount of days worth of cash to pay obligations. Also understand that that amount is extremely low for restaurants, retail, and entertainment as they rely on daily cash flow for operations. This furlough would have happened if SR never came aboard when he did and would happen no matter who was on the board.
Your managers who still have a job, this isnt their fault either. No one is obligated to give up their salary or volunteer for furlough. You don't know their situation anymore than they know yours.
In summary, this does blow. But, it's also a lesson learned to understand how important the health of a business is when joining. AND that some things are simply out of your hands and the companys.
Does SR sleep well at night regardless. Probably... but that doesn't mean your situation would've been different with someone else. Learn from it. Use this as an opportunity for growth.
All the best to those affected. You are not alone.
COBRA is a lot more expensive than normal health insurance, and (in Florida) unemployment pays a maximum of $275 per week. If you’re stubborn enough to hold out until the parks reopen, update your resume and make other plans. The letter they sent out said there was no guarantee of future employment, so yeah. I’m sure they’ll try to outsource as much as they can when they reopen, kind of like they did with games.
I don’t know if Seaworld making movies would help them pay employees. They’ve wasted money on things like paying for lawsuits as a result of the stupid sh– their c suite has said or done. Plus they’ve wasted money buying back stock for no good reason, and more importantly they have a lot of debt from when Blackstone bought them In a leveraged buyout. Lots of companies are going to have to furlough people, but most don’t have the same reputation issues and inept/greed driven senior management like Seaworld does.
That’s what COBRA is for. They atleast didn’t leave everyone in the dark and say figure things out on your own. They provided us with an email for questions. They are giving us a chance to talk to them and have them help us. Again if the revenue isn’t coming in how does anyone expect them to pay Aetna for health insurance plans that seaworld provides their employees?
At the very least, seaworld should be paying our health insurance during this. I get not getting hours, I do. However constantly saying you care about the health and safety of your employees and then saying "no we arent going to pay for insurance coverage", that is a slap in the face.
Those of you that might argue against it, I will assume none of you have current health issues for you or your family or you would be on my side with this at least.
Also people might say this was out of their control, but this is on seaworld's leadership too.
The insider trading. The bonuses to people who then leave. Lack of direction or constant changing direction. Half baked projects. Overspending on projects that dont get implemented right or "value engineering" things to save money to have to go back and spend more to do it right.
If seaworld gave any care about us, some of the leadership would also be giving up their pay/bonuses/perks to help out their employees. Until that happens, its all hollow words.
What people don’t realize is that this is not something Seaworld did on purpose. This is a world wide issue. Disney and universal have bigger companies that own them like Comcast and NBC. Seaworld is a complete different ball game. If there is no revenue coming in how does everyone expect them to pay their employees ? Especially if there is no money coming in ? This is not something that was done to personally screw everyone over. It’s totally out of their control. We are not the only ones affected by this.
If SeaWorld made movies like Disney then they could afford to pay you for not working.