Nicole Brodeur / Times staff columnist
Microsofties don't get sympathy

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How easily can we be bought?

Let's put it this way: Plenty of us here in the newsroom would work until at least 8 p.m. if the company had a stack of pizzas delivered by 6.

We'd eat, we'd work, we'd gripe a little. Then we'd head home, brains drained but bellies full, and call it even.

So I am shedding no tears for the folks at Microsoft, who are up in arms over the company's decision to cut benefits to its workers and make changes in an employee stock-purchasing plan that will save the company $60 million.

No tears not only because I have to buy my own tissues, but because I live in the real world, far from the Xanadu all that code has created.

Microsofties have been spoiled by little things, like free beverages and free tampons and a company picnic so well stocked that employees fill baby strollers with leftovers.

And big things. New employees got three weeks of vacation the first year and Microsoft stock at a 15 percent discount off the market price.

With the cuts, starting vacation will be slashed to two weeks. Stock will be discounted just 10 percent.

Employees also will face a new, $40 copayment on brand-name prescription drugs, and a shorter window of time to take paid parental leave.

I'm sorry, but I'm not sorry. I've worked in places where it took at least three years to get three weeks' vacation. The only brand-name drug I ever see is NyQuil — and that doesn't pack the punch it used to.
 
As for paid parental leave ... isn't that what the rest of us call "hiring a baby sitter"?

Of course, none of this stopped the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers from circulating a Microsoft employee survey grumbling about the changes.

"A significant number of Microsoft employees are very upset that the company is cutting their pay to improve the overall bottom line," WashTech President Marcus Courtney told a Seattle Times reporter.

Yes, it's true the company has some $56 billion in the bank and that Bill Gates is one of the world's richest men.

But when every other company in the region is coughing its way through the economy's dive and the medical industry's spike in coverage rates, it's hard to work up sympathy for a work force that has always breathed rarefied air. Some of the same employees grumbling now are the ones who have long joked about being on the end of the "golden leash."

But one wife of a 10-year, hourly employee — who asked not to be named — said the cuts will be deeply felt.

"Not everyone at Microsoft is a millionaire," she told me, adding that some of her husband's co-workers recently qualified for affordable housing.

"If Bill and Melinda Gates can afford to inoculate most of Africa, can't they afford to ensure good health care for their employees?" she said.

Well, let's think about Africa for a second. And let's remember what our mothers told us when we turned up our noses at the full plate in front of us.

The folks in Redmond may be mourning what they've lost. But they'll gain some real-world perspective.

If not, there's always pizza.

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.

She's watching out for worms.