As a "morale boosting" measure, the firm is showing "employee appreciation" by giving us all a half day off this month on a rotating basis. Today is my day for our team.

Right.

Our salaries have been frozen for a year and a half, we've had two lay-offs, our workloads have doubled in some cases, the management continues to insult our intelligence (and in some cases our work ethic (not mine of course, mine went out the door sometime last January and is therefore hard to insult)), and a half day off is supposed to make me stop hating being here.

Don't get me wrong, I'll take what I can get and I'm marching out of here at 12:30, but talk about empty gestures. I even wrote a sarcastic e-mail about it to Cass. Can you imagine? . . . me?? . . . sarcastic???