January 21st, 2010
My one and only year-end bonus…
News that Goldman Sachs has trimmed back its bonus pool so that each employee at the company gets an average of $500,000 reminds me of the only time in my life when I did get a bonus. It was the first year I worked at the NY Daily News and I believe there are a couple of FB friends who can back me up on this.
I was a copyboy making $127 a week (I think that was gross, not net) out of college and The News was the largest circulating newspaper in the country. The newspaper was fat and bonuses were given out at Christmastime, depending on what group you were in. The groups ran from 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest-paid — the reporters. I was Group 1.
The bonus was totally dependent on your pay scale (or so I was told. If they were lying about that, then they must have thought I was doing a terrible job). I only got the bonus that first year because everything started to go bad for The News after that and bonuses were eliminated (again, that’s what they told me).
My bonus was so embarrassing that for a long time, I couldn’t bring myself to cash the check but I did eventually. Wanna guess the amount?
$9.99 after taxes. I kid you not. It was the last bonus check I ever received so, of course, I really can relate to a lot of Wall Street executives.
lol. I think I once got $50 for something, but can’t remember what. Seems like that $9.99 is what lots of papers are trying to trim reporters’ weekly salaries back to these days–Newsday and Pittsburg Post–given the major cuts being asked for.